STEVE BANNON AND THE ALT-RIGHT: A PRIMER

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Steve Bannon and the alt-right: a primer (CBS News) "The Muslims are coming, and so are the Mexicans. Blacks are out of control in the cities. The feminists are trying to upset gender norms, which is why you can’t get a date. Smart as you are, young white man, you can’t get rich, because of globalists, who 'just happen' to be Jews. This is increasingly the governing ideology of Breitbart, one reflected in its headlines and stories, although it hasn’t gone quite full-bore on the anti-Semitism quite yet. And it is the ideology that’s been encouraged by Steve Bannon. This is not to say either Trump or Bannon are racist. And I don’t know how many Trump supporters have any clue who or what the 'alt-right' is, though I’d suspect the answer is not many. But for anyone wondering what Bannon sees as a winning message, or what directions he’ll push Trump in, it’s worth considering how he’s spent so much of the last year trying to mainstream the alt-right." and Breitbart headlines show how Donald Trump’s new chief strategist, Steve Bannon, sees the world (Quartz) "Under Bannon, a self-proclaimed 'Leninist' who once said he wants to 'destroy the state,' it has published incendiary and sometimes factually incorrect articles and opinion columns targeting women, immigrants, minorities, gays, and overweight people." and Here Are Some Of The Incendiary Stories Published By Trump's Chief Strategist (BuzzFeed)

- Trump allies defend Steve Bannon (Politico) "'The guy I know is a guy that isn’t any of those things,' Priebus said on NBC’s 'Today,' noting that Bannon’s byline had not appeared on any of those articles even though he was overseeing the website at the time. 'The guy I know is a guy sitting in an office all day yesterday, talking about hiring and in the last few months, this is a guy who has exhibited none of those qualities. Here’s a guy who’s Harvard Business School, he was a 10-year naval officer, London School of Economics, I believe. He is a guy who is very, very smart, very temperate.'" and Gingrich: 'Baloney' to blame Bannon for all of Breitbart's content (Politico) "In fact, Gingrich said during a Monday morning interview on Fox News’s 'Fox & Friends,' the controversy stirred up by Bannon’s appointment to such a high-level White House position should be proof to Donald Trump’s supporters that the combative former Breitbart executive is the perfect man for the job. Gingrich said Bannon should not be held accountable for the stories published by Breitbart under his leadership."

BUSINESS:

- A Global Investor, Concerned by World Politics (NYT) "The biggest opportunities are going to be — and it sounds a little too obvious — in two areas. One, you have a part of the world that used to not be part of the economy but has become part of it, as a contributor and an actor and a consumer. All the so-called emerging countries — these are huge opportunities. The other is technology. Technology destroys jobs, but it creates new ones. But it also compresses costs. That’s a big political and social issue."

- Reason And Rationality: The Psychological Keys To Investing Success (Forbes) "The key determinants of investing and trading success are not one's feelings of confidence, but the objective realities of the marketplace."

- How T. Boone Pickens Sits Tight in the Riskiest of Businesses (NYT) "Gathering information, holding firm even if the market is going against you, these are things that the rest of us can do if we put our minds to it. But it’s the size of the risk Mr. Pickens takes — the willingness to bet it all if he thinks he’s right — that most investors will never be able to do. Risk has been a part of Mr. Pickens’s business life for so long, it barely causes him to blink."

HEALTH:

- Genetic Heart Disease Risk Eased by Healthy Habits, Study Finds (NYT) "The investigators found that genes can double the risk of heart disease, but a good lifestyle cuts it in half. Just as important, they found, a terrible lifestyle erases about half of the benefits of good genetics."

- Researchers have found a surprisingly powerful effect of sleeping more (WaPo)

NEWS:

- Breitbart’s Pollak Takes on Three CNN Talking Heads: ‘Most Offensive Thing Bannon Has Done Is Win the White House’ (Breitbart) "'[I] think that when you do this, this is what the media do, this is what the establishment does — they throw out a bunch of innuendo to try to smear someone,' [Breitbart senior editor-at-large and in-house counsel Joel] Pollak said. “The most offensive thing Steve Bannon ever did was win the White House with Donald Trump. And if it was up to these people, it would be Hillary Clinton picking the Supreme Court and cosigning our democracy to decline. And Steve Bannon deserves the praise of these folks, not their condemnation.”

- I Know Steve Bannon–He’s Not a Racist Crackpot Like Rev. Wright or a Terrorist Bomber Like Bill Ayers (Breitbart) "I [Jim Hoft] know Steve Bannon and he is not a racist, sexist, Jew-hater, or homophobe. Out of the tens of thousands of posts on Breitbart.com, the left cherry-picked 5-10 questionable posts to attack Steve Bannon."

- The cracks are already starting to show between Donald Trump and Republicans (WaPo) "It's not uncommon for the party in the White House to have some disagreements with its own members in Congress. But if you take Trump's campaign promises at his word, Republicans have fundamental disagreements with their incoming president on his proposals to spend billions on infrastructure, deport millions of immigrants in the country illegally and institute more protectionist trade policies." and Democrats look to exploit Trump divisions with GOP Congress (Politico) "Their thinking: Exploit the inevitable divisions between Trump and the increasingly conservative GOP leadership over tax policy, infrastructure spending and possibly social issues. And Senate Democrats hope to use the filibuster — the only real leverage they have to stymie Trump and congressional Republicans — sparingly."

- Exclusive–Rep. Mark Meadows: House Republicans Very Fortunate to Have Bannon, Priebus in Trump White House (Breitbart) "'Steve Bannon is not only a very capable individual, but he’s someone who’s quietly been able to understand what the American people want and has been consistent in his message about that,' said Rep. Mark Meadows (R.-N.C.), who led the fight in 2015 to unseat Speaker John A. Boehner (R.-Ohio)."

- What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class (HBR) "For months, the only thing that’s surprised me about Donald Trump is my friends’ astonishment at his success. What’s driving it is the class culture gap. One little-known element of that gap is that the white working class resents professionals but admires the rich."

- On Choosing Trump and Being Bad (New Yorker) "Even if a welfare program like the Trade Readjustment Allowance were amped up, it’s not likely that this population would become meek and grateful. They’re aware that the socioeconomic élite—lawyers, financiers, and consultants—profited mightily from the economic changes by which they were dispossessed over the past couple of decades, and I suspect that they don’t want to be the objects of such people’s charity. They want their dignity back. They want to be what they once were: workers, an independent source of economic value, ambivalently regarded by and even somewhat menacing to the upper class. As I wrote on my personal blog in May, they’d rather, if there’s no other choice, be 'bad.'"

- Donald Trump’s Great Bait and Switch (New Yorker) "To sum up, this is the prospect we are facing. A populist but semi-engaged President who is less interested in governing than in soaking up adulation at big rallies. Meanwhile, his cronies and members of the permanent establishment make many of the actual decisions, which will largely benefit the already rich, including the ruling family. Debt mushrooms as El Presidente approves prestige construction projects but not the taxes needed to pay for them. And skilled propagandists, like Bannon, whip up nationalist fervor to keep the masses diverted from what is really going on.

- 5 takeaways on Trump's first 5 days (Politico) "So what do we know? He’s basically the same brash invader who sacked the establishment citadel on Election Day — but seems a lot more flexible than the sloganeering populist who vowed, in an oath of iron and blood, to build that wall, trash Obamacare and overcome the 'rigged system.'"

- When One Party Held All Branches of Government ... and Still Stalled (Ozy)

- “60 Minutes” with Donald Trump (New Yorker)

SPORTS:

- Strobe-light training: From Michael Jordan to Kawhi Leonard (ESPN) "Jordan used them a handful of times. It was a tool in the program, not the entire program. But Jordan noticed the lights helped in other ways. The game seemed to slow down. He picked up on visual cues he wasn't seeing before. For reasons he couldn't quite explain, it was making him better, even beyond tolerating photographer's flashes."

- Can anyone in the NFL keep the Patriots from winning another Super Bowl? (WaPo)

TECHNOLOGY:

- A 10-Digit Key Code to Your Private Life: Your Cellphone Number (NYT) "In fact, investigators find that a cellphone number is often even more useful than a Social Security number because it is tied to so many databases and is connected to a device you almost always have with you, said Austin Berglas, a former F.B.I. agent who is senior managing director of K2 Intelligence, a private investigator."

- IBM Is Using Tiny Tubes to Grow the Chips of the Future (Wired)

WATCH THIS:

- Dave Chappelle Stand-Up Monologue (SNL)

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Supermoon 2016 (The Atlantic)

- How the West Coast Could Dump Trump (Ozy) FreeCascadia.org

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