94 Comments

Bannon is evil incarnate, and would be in jail had tRump not pardoned him.

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I believe he is still awaiting sentencing on the whole build a wall debacle and that's the only reason he is not in jail YET. I have not idea why it is taking so long but Stevie 2Shirts IS going to the slammer, up the river, the big house!!

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Is it just me or are we passing through a cross between the Bermuda Triangle and a black hole?

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You and the spirit of the late great Art Bell, and you're both right - cue the spooky October Halloween ghouls and goblin music, Mwhuh huh huh, thees eeees OWN-LEE the STARRRRT of EEEEET!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2PoSljk8cE

This song was banned by the BBC in '62 for being "too morbid". The ban was lifted in '73. 2:04 · Go to channel · Monster Mash – Dance ...

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I am still amazed that a small radical group can hamstring the machinations of the federal government.I know damn well that the Founding Fathers never ever in their wildest dreams ever envisioned something like TFG and his disgusting MAGATs being a part of our government .If Dems can get control of both houses and the White House again, legislation must be put into place to prevent this from ever happening again.I am living in Gym Jordan’s district in Ohio.This is a man that has yet to introduce a single piece of legislation in 16 years but wants to be considered as Speaker of the House.TGF himself is being touted for this position.This is total insanity and must be legislated to end.

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Jordon is a consummate liar.

And a moron.

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The "legislation [that] must be put into place to prevent this from ever happening again" exists, all right, and it is a standard component of every authoritarian's utopian crackdown sweeping up legitimate, righteous, raucous, First Amendment-protected dissent and demonstrations

- along with the subversive insurrectionists.

No can do, sorry! Would also be unconstitutional, although with the current Supreme Court, who knows?

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Good point, Richard. Democracy is messy, but that is one of the costs of individual freedom. The problem isn't a free pluralistic system, it's those who abuse it. And those are the folks we have to concentrate on. Out with them !

I remember an Italian trope about a man waiting on the platform in vain for is train to arrive: "At least under Mussolini the trains ran on time," he sighed. Be careful what you wish for.

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Looks like Victoria W. was focused on a more narrow result, so it wouldn't be a problem!

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See my comment to Victoria Wilson's post. Legislation *can* be enacted. It basically involves amending (or repealing) the 1870 Antideficiency Act (don't worry, I hadn't heard of it either), whose tweaking by a Carter administration legal beagle helped create the potential for all these shutdown threats. Details in Ryan Cooper's American Prospect article from Sept. 27: https://prospect.org/politics/2023-09-27-end-government-shutdowns-forever/.

P.S. That "comment deleted" was mine.

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Oh thanks! I was talking about a different issue, not limited to the shutdowns , but this is great and I signed up for regular newsletter updates and so on.

I read her comment as proposing to stop it being possible to ADVOCATE a government shutdown, thanks for pointing out on the more limited question of just making it LEGALLY impossible to get one enacted period full stop, it would simply take fixing loopholes in the 1870 law. I hadn't heard of it by any specific name I recall from History of American Law by Lawrence M. Friedman, but I read that in the late 1980s so a lotta water under the bridge since then!

Hmmm now I see that I could get a used copy for $3.31 plus S&H, but depends on the

edition if it's worth doing - is that the "completely revised and updated edition"?

Although these glowing reviews are right on, it's as much "fun" as this kind of set of legal questions can get, but not frivolous, just that it's written for the mass reader and not cluttered overly much with arcane citations to (for example!) the 1710 case of Lord Bowlingsnuffbox's casks of ale being shipped to the Marquis of Wigglesby's estates in Croxley Green escaping from the carter's wagon, when the horses were startled by highwaymen, and striking three of the would-be robbers dead, raising all sorts of weird legal issues, none of that, thank you. *****

" In this brilliant and immensely readable book, Lawrence M. Friedman tells the whole fascinating story of American law from its beginnings in the colonies to the present day. By showing how close the life of the law is to the economic and political life of the country, he makes a complex subject understandable and engrossing. A History of American Law presents the achievements and failures of the American legal system in the context of America's commercial and working world, family practices, and attitudes toward property, government, crime, and justice.

Now completely revised and updated, this groundbreaking work incorporates new material regarding slavery, criminal justice, and twentieth-century law. For laymen and students alike, this remains the only comprehensive authoritative history of American law."

https://www.amazon.com/History-American-Law-Third/dp/0684869888

Editorial Reviews

"A treasure for all Americans."

-- Stanford Law Review

"A matchless and unequaled primer for the novice, an invaluable reference source for the experienced scholar, and indeed, the first book that anyone possessing even a slight interest in American legal history should read."

-- The American Journal of Legal History

"The best single, coherent history of American law that now exists...The book touches every conceivable aspect of law....It is a stupendous achievement."

-- The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Lawrence M. Friedman was born in 1930, educated at the University of Chicago where he earned his law degree, and admitted to the Illinois bar in 1951. He received a graduate degree from the University of Chicago Law School in English legal history. After serving in the United States Army, he practiced with a law firm in Chicago and subsequently entered the teaching profession. He has taught at St. Louis University, the University of Wisconsin, and, since 1968, at Stanford University, where he is now Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law. He is the author of Contract Law in America: A Social and Economic Case Study (1965); Government and Slum Housing: A Century of Frustration (1968); Law and the Behavioral Sciences (coeditor; 1969, 2nd edition, 1977); The Legal System: A Social Science Perspective (1975); Law and Society: An Introduction (1977); American Law and the Constitutional Order: Historical Perspectives (coeditor, 1978); Law and Social Change in Mediterranean Europe and Latin America (coeditor, 1979); The Roots of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California, 1870-1910 (coauthor, 1981); American Law (1984); Your Time Will Come (1985); and Total Justice (1985). He has contributed more than eighty articles to legal and associated journals. Professor Friedman is the past president of the Law and Society Association, and a past Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of a number of awards for writing and teaching. He is married and has two daughters.

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Fwiw, I read Victoria's comment as calling for legislation that would bring an end to these continual shutdown threats -- and having read Ryan Cooper's article a few days ago I believe that it is possible to revert back to what the drafters of that 1870 act had in mind without violating the First Amendment or encouraging authoritarianism. Now I'm curious about how that 1870 act came about. The year alone, along with what else was going on in Congress at the time, suggests it had something to do with the Late Unpleasantness.

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Exactly - the Friedman legal history text was assigned as part of a two-semester course on the "The History of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties" where part 1 led up TO the Civil War and part 2 began immediately AFTER, with discussion of Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and other legal moves to counter the Confederacy part of both. IF I can find the copy I still have ("It's around here somewhere!") maybe has a discussion.

The course was taught by this professor, Paul L. Murphy - so we REALLY lucked out - complete with "maker of sly jokes, a superb jazz piano player."

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0738248000005940

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This budgetary chaos was made possible by executive branch legal maneuvering during the Carter administration, followed by congressional amendment of the 1870 Antideficiency Act (which allowed for government shutdowns). Ryan Cooper of the American Prospect explains it all in detail here. Short version: It's unlikely this can be fixed in the current Congress, but after Democrats regain control of both houses of Congress in 2024 (voters willing), a fix is most definitely possible and constitutional. https://prospect.org/politics/2023-09-27-end-government-shutdowns-forever/

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Wiki has it as 1884 but likely it was a reformulation of whatever was done in 1870:

And scrolling down, there it is...Legislative history

The earliest version of the legislation was enacted in 1870 (16 Stat. 251). The Antideficiency Act (Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 97–258, 96 Stat. 923) was initially enacted in 1884.

The Act was amended and expanded several times, most significantly in 1905 and 1906. It was further modified by an executive order in 1933 and significantly revamped in 1950 (64 Stat. 765).[6] The current version was enacted on September 12, 1982 (96 Stat. 923). It is now codified at 31 U.S.C. § 1341.

Constitutional authority

To some extent, but not entirely, it implements the provisions of Article One of the United States Constitution, Section 9, Clause 7 (the "power of the purse"), which provides that "No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antideficiency_Act

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Thanks for explanation of that 1870 date! Ryan Cooper cites a September 2013 story in the Atlantic by Andrew Cohen, which includes fairly lengthy email commentary by Georgetown law prof Timothy Westmoreland. Westmoreland doesn't give a date but includes the Antideficiency Act among laws Congress passed "just after the Civil War" to "take back its control of the spending power." Westmoreland goes on to say that "a version of this 19th Century statute is still the law," which could suggest that the 1884 law superseded but was based on the 1870 one.

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I'm with you. Were these serious people they would've been expelled by the body.

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Bannon hopes everyone is as stupid as he wants them to be. They are not. His desire to be an evil wizard who destructs the world is large in his mind, but a gnat fart in reality. What kind of person would trust Steve Bannon? There they were … Gaetz and his little coven. The trust fund puke and his uneducated harem. You were 100% correct Lucian!

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Even if Bannon and his group are stupid, they are pretty successful in creating total chaos and getting exactly what they want. Yes, he is dangerous and belongs behind bars!

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Behind bars by means of a legal process evolved out of exactly what crackpots like Bannon and fraudsters like Trump and his neo-fascist cohorts despise: a system of ordered liberties, with a rebuttable presumption of innocence for the accused.

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Bannon has been successful only when he has an audience like Gaetz. If you look at his other projects, he hasn’t been able to show any meaningful results. If I were Queen, all of them would be behind bars.

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🏆 for gnat fart. You win the internet today. 👍🏻😂

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Bless you, Camilla. The original phrase that came to me as a gift from an outrageously funny Creator was “gnat fart in a Texas Tornado.” Use it as you see fit! 😊✌️

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So, Bannon is about to go to jail, right? He has definitely been an insurrectionist on the highest level. If normal house Republicans team up with Democrats they can squash this MAGA gang in a New York minute. Hell, put Jeffries in there and get things done for both sides. This would be a fairy tale ending. This is where those who have been invisible step up to greatness.

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What and where are these "normal House Republicans" of which you speak?

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You mean all the Republicans who have spent the last seven years sucking up to the Second Coming of the Anti-Christ—those “normal” Republicans?

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Good luck

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He is evil and a danger to this country and to democracy.

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Normally I wouldn't agree to a statement calling a person evil, because evil can't be eradicated. I cant find the article now, but I remember reading ab out how dangerous he was, aftter the election. I saved the link in my tool bar, so If I ever heard his name come up, I could refer back to it. When I got my new laptop, I deleted it, thinking it was eradicated. Anyone remember an article like that?

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The title was The most Dangerous Man, I think. The thing that bothered me the most, his reading list.

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This guy has been saying it out loud for a decade: he wants to overthrow our system of government.

He proudly refers to his approach as “Leninist.” And he is conspiring with other similarly minded political movements/candidates in other countries to help them do the same thing.

He does it all out in the open. Bannon is a threat to our future and it’s hard to understand why we aren’t treating that threat more seriously.

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Re: "seven other Republican defectors, huddled with Mr. Bannon for a morning meeting ..." I never got Bannon's deal. "Bring down the government" for what purpose? And then what?

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Certainly the purpose or goal is not the kind of outcomes envisioned by starry-eyed utopians like Trotsky, despite all his willingness to deploy lethal force as head of the Red Army, that's for sure!

Bannon is just another sordid fascist, it's not really hidden any longer.

“But are there not many Fascists in your country?'

'There are many who do not know they are Fascists, but will find it out when the time comes'.”

— Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

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If you've read Jane Mayer's DARK MONEY, you'll have a pretty good idea: the billionaires and mega-rich want a government that doesn't interfere with their right to make money. They've been funding the "originalists" for decades. However, I don't think Bannon has a long-term plan. He's just one of those guys who likes to see things go boom. (I met a few of those back in my antiwar days, but all of them were from what we used to call "the Far Left.")

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The right has turned into the left and the left has turned into the right since I was a hippie. Is that Revolution?

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This could lead to a very interesting and productive discussion! I don't think they've flipped exactly, but I do believe that the fringes on the right and left always had a few things in common with each other, and the current GOP looks like what I used to consider the right fringe. And once you consider women and people of color, you realize that the old right and the old left pretty much ignored all of us.

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Everybody got distracted by the sex drugs and rock and roll (pro and con)

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Please also see Nancy MacLean's DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS.

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This has been recommended by three people I respect so I'm going to check it out -- even though my "must read" list is out of control. :-/

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Research will provide your answers.

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Exactly - it 's for nothing but the greater glory of himself! He was not elected to anything so why the heck is anyone worried about what he has to say?

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so they can pick up the power lying in the streets?

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Bannon=Wormtongue

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Lord of the Rings--thanks. I should have known.

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You're welcome. (You did know. It simply escaped you for that singular moment.)

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You will search Steve Bannon's statements and writings in vain for one single idea that carries as much as insight as even the most banal observations from Trotsky, much less something like this:

The Soviet Union emerged from the October Revolution as a workers state. State ownership of the means of production, a necessary prerequisite to socialist development, opened up the possibility of rapid growth of the productive forces. But the apparatus of the workers’ state underwent a complete degeneration at the same time: it was transformed from a weapon of the working class into a weapon of bureaucratic violence against the working class and more and more a weapon for the sabotage of the country’s economy. The bureaucratization of a backward and isolated workers’ state and the transformation of the bureaucracy into an all-powerful privileged caste constitute the most convincing refutation – not only theoretically, but this time, practically – of the theory of socialism in one country.

The USSR and Problems of the Transitional Epoch (1938)

Or this:

Such terms as “proletarian literature” and “proletarian culture” are dangerous, because they erroneously compress the Culture of the future into the narrow limits of the present day. They falsify perspectives, they violate proportions, they distort standards and they cultivate the arrogance of small circles which is most dangerous.

Literature and Revolution (1924)

And his own life story is filled with deep family tragedies, exiled to Siberia, stalked and finally murdered by Stalin, none of which seems to have made any impression on the bloviating right-wing kook that is Steve Bannon, suitably a part of the same foul forces that have unleashed Donald Trump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky

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You know what's crazy? He was a Wall Streeter, then worked on Columbia University's Biosphere (a gift from Ed Bass). Maybe ... like Rudy, he's an alcoholic.

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In every photo I have ever seen of Bannon, he has always looked like an unhoused drunkard after a three day bender. At his best, during those few weeks he spent in the White House as Trump's advisor (until Bannon's ego got him booted out--Trump doesn't share the spotlight with ANYONE) he generally had th e appearance of an unmade bed.

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He certainly looks like an alcoholic. I forget who commented about a photo of him “this is what late-stage liver damage looks like.” Bannon always looks as if he is just emerging from a week-long bender. He looks like he smells bad.

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Talk about wasting your life. I also remember reading about some openly antisemitic rants from Bannon when his kids were enrolling in a school in California, which surfaced as part of a contentious divorce (so have to take that into account, of course) if so, he fits a truly hateful set of frequently connected profiles in that sense, too. Since it's germane let me locate a link....

https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/steve-bannon-five-things-know

Anti-Defamation League is the source, this runs down plenty of bigoted efforts from him but, fair minded as usual, they summarize the possibility I mentioned as follows:

While there is evidence that Breitbart News served as a platform for a wide range of bigotry, and there is some controversy related to reported statements from Bannon’s divorce proceedings in 2007, we are not aware of any antisemitic statements made by Bannon himself. In fact, some of Breitbart’s Jewish employees have defended him from charges of antisemitism, and have pointed out that Breitbart Jerusalem was launched during Bannon’s tenure.

Bannon has often demonized Jewish philanthropist George Soros, for promoting a liberal/left-wing agenda.

In August 2020, Bannon was arrested for defrauding donors in a scheme to privately raise money for building a wall along the Southern US border, a project that former President Trump promoted. Authorities said that Bannon and others involved in the scheme spent the money on personal expenses, including travel, hotel bills and credit card debt. In January 2021, before leaving office, President Trump pardoned Bannon and the charges against him were dropped.

In September 2021, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection subpoenaed Bannon to come before the committee to ask about the role he may have played in the events of that day. Bannon refused, citing Trump’s “executive privilege.” In October 2021, Bannon was charged two counts of contempt of Congress. Bannon pleaded “not guilty.” The Department of Justice brought charges against Bannon and a grand jury indicted him in November. Bannon is currently awaiting trial.

Anti-Defamation League

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Yes, Bannon is anti-Semitic and yes, the Jews who work for Breibart are nuts also. They are the ultra-Orthodox who spew disinformation with pride. These are the same bunch who refused to wear masks, burned them in the streets of Brooklyn, and were Trumpers. They disgust me! Jewish woman, here.

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I was going to let someone else point that out, thanks Marlene!

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He's an ultra conservative Catholic nutcase along with Bill Barr, Kevin Mulvaney, McCarthy, the latest Supremes, Leonard Leo, Clarence, Mr. Crow, et al!!!

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https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/steve-bannon-sentencing-10-20-22/index.html So he's awaiting sentencing on contempt of congress - you're right about the pardon on the build the wall BS!

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That 8-months and $6500 may be the "thin edge of the wedge" - there's every possibility the fraud case can be reconfigured (so it doesn't violate protection against "double jeopardy") and Bannon gets far more prison time a huge fine, but of course it is the money, follow the money as Ben B told Bob W Carl B in Watergate investigation, Bannon's OBVIOUSLY hiding significant funds. So maybe he won't end up getting away with that, THANKS FOR THE LINK been busy with various " PC -mobile phone tech issues" etc.

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I thought he was awaiting sentencing on that scam...not pardoned?

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Maybe he is an alcoholic but i think he is addicted to a "will to power."

More dangerous than booze or drugs.

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I agree with you. The alcohol just fuels desires people have that they know are improper - ie, womanizing.

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Exactly, it's one thing to be open to new relationships (I am talking about unmarried people without the subsequent contractual and most of all, emotional commitments attached!) and something altogether different to dump partners, cheat on them, mislead them about matters of import (as opposed to teasing jokes about less important topics with the matter clarified immediately) - any and all of that unaccountable meanness, and what used to be called "caddish" behavior.

Substance abuse is bound to make that worse if it exists in the first place, hell, it's been a theme in world literature and religious texts for thousands of years!

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Possibly a drug addict. Ever notice the pot-marks on his face?

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He sure looks like one!

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Ban the Bannon Big Mouth machine! He is as bad as Roger Stone and Manafort. All three have been around, disrupting and causing chaos fir way too damn long. It’s too bad that the FCC is trying to be eliminated by the R’s. No power left there and thank you for that, Ronald Reagan!!

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If anybody is a world-class authority on cootie infestations, it is the perambulating one, Mr. Bannon.

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I knew it. The two Steve’s are the worst of the bunch and their malign influence cannot be overstated.

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And Steve Bannon should be in jail.

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The Republicans are a bunch of assholes.

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So, Steve Bannon has been the power behind the throne all along. What is his goal..to break down the us government?and then what? Just laugh and get our of hiding? What's his connection to putin/Russia? Just more mental games? Money? I can't believe he works alone. Some one or many has put a lot of thought and research into this whole endeavor.

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No, no, don't fall for Bannon's self-aggrandizing b.s.

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Research

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Remember he was arrested on a Chinese billionaire's yacht!

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