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  • #16
    Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post

    Incorrect. What you should be saying is that anyone Trump related refrain from commenting on the democratic process in other countries and you would then be completely correct.
    For the outside world Trump and anyone appointed by him is as American as anyone else. No distinction to be made there.

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    • #17
      Originally posted by Firestorm View Post

      For the outside world Trump and anyone appointed by him is as American as anyone else. No distinction to be made there.
      Are you sure they are as American as me? I have my doubts since subverting the Constitution is not the sign of an American in my book.

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post

        Are you sure they are as American as me? I have my doubts since subverting the Constitution is not the sign of an American in my book.
        Yes domestically you can have those debates. But Pompeo is still the SecState and speaks with the authority of the US Government. He routinely expresses concern and criticizes apparent undemocratic behavior during elections in various countries as the official representative of GOTUS. So you can see how this looks now from the perspective of the outside world.

        Comment


        • #19
          Trump blocks Biden’s incoming staff in unprecedented ways
          Trump’s stonewalling of the incoming administration is leaving even some in his own party concerned.

          For the first time in more than half a century, an outgoing administration is stonewalling an incoming one at every level — with no intention of relenting.

          President Donald Trump hasn’t called President-elect Joe Biden. The Trump campaign hasn’t reached out to the Biden campaign. The White House and federal agencies haven't briefed the Biden transition team. First lady Melania Trump hasn’t invited Jill Biden to the White House for tea.

          There are no briefings being given about coronavirus, troop drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq, or aggression by China and Iran. No background checks being done for job applicants. No security clearances being conducted for potential Biden staffers.

          The silence could continue into December, when states must certify their results to Congress, according to several Republicans familiar with the expected plans. Until then, they said, Trump and his team will continue to assert the election was fraudulently stolen from them, using unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud to file lawsuits and recounts challenging the results.

          It’s a situation without parallel since at least 1963, when a federal law implemented the modern presidential transition process, mandating the sharing of office space and the spending of money for the process.

          The posture threatens to leave Biden’s team unprepared in January when it takes over a millions-strong federal workforce, according to officials who worked for Republican and Democratic presidents and lawmakers of both parties. And, they added, it sends a message to the world that the United States, generally a model across the globe, is vulnerable and unable to administer a seamless transition of power.

          Joe Biden won the election more than a week ago. But the General Services Administration — the agency that certifies presidential transitions — is still blocking Biden's transition team from accessing government resources.

          “The transfer of power, even reluctantly, is important for the world to witness,” said Andy Card, former chief of staff to President George W. Bush, who was involved in three presidential transitions.

          Even in 2000, when a recount fight in Florida kept the nation in suspense for weeks over who would become president, Card said President Bill Clinton’s staff allowed Bush to have national security briefings. Bush’s challenger, then-Vice President Al Gore, was already receiving them.

          This year, Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election on Nov. 7, four days after voting ended, and has since received 306 Electoral College votes, 36 more than needed. Yet a Trump appointee, Emily Murphy, the head of the General Services Administration, has failed to affirm that Biden won the election, refusing to trigger a process that would give Biden’s team access to federal resources.

          Biden’s team has tried to work around the impasse, hiring staff, naming agency review teams and contacting former federal employees who worked for President Barack Obama. They’ve also reached out to state and local officials, even as many Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have failed to acknowledge that Biden won the election.

          Trump, who received 232 Electoral College votes, has not conceded and is fighting the results. “I won the Election!” Trump tweeted on Monday to his nearly 90 million followers, a proclamation he has made regularly.

          Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said some outgoing presidents have been “angry” with the outcome of elections but that “never remotely in the founders' wildest dreams” did they envision a president refusing to concede or leave.

          The Trump and Biden campaigns and the Biden transition staff did not respond to requests for comment.

          The White House said it’s abiding by the law. “The Trump administration is following all statutory requirements,” White House spokesperson Judd Deere said.

          Trump's national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, promised an orderly transfer of power if Biden is certified the winner, but some Republican allies of the president, including former Trump staffers, say it's not clear Trump would attend Biden’s inauguration. If he doesn't, Trump would become only the fourth president after John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Johnson to snub his successor by skipping the inauguration, said Thomas Balcerski, a professor at Eastern Connecticut State University who has studied transitions and inaugurations. Two other presidents did not attend for other reasons.

          “This is unprecedented in modern times,” Balcerski said. “President Trump has once again managed to politicize an aspect of our democratic governance that is supposed to be depoliticized.”

          The Trump administration began planning for a potential transition in May as required by law, establishing groups of career officials to advise departments and agencies on how to prepare. Biden’s team, too, started preparing for a possible administration months ago, focusing on personnel and policy, according to several members of his team.

          But until Murphy’s GSA designates a winner, Biden's team is not expected to be given access to information. It’s an unprecedented scenario, but one Biden officials had contemplated could happen.

          “With every day that passes it becomes more concerning that our national security team and the president-elect and vice president-elect don't have access to those threat assessments, intelligence briefings and real-time information about our engagements around the world because you don’t know what you don’t know,” Jen Psaki, an adviser to the Biden transition, told reporters. “In order to prepare to govern it's important they have access to that information.”

          In the past, the incoming president would send groups of staffers into federal agencies. There, the next administration’s staffers are typically given office space to work while reviewing documents, receiving briefings and meeting existing staff.

          In recent days, even some Republican senators have begun to argue Biden should at least be receiving the high-level intelligence briefings called the Presidential Daily Brief.

          “The bottom line is our adversaries look at a transition period as a moment of potential weakness which they will exploit if possible,” said Michael Chertoff, former secretary of homeland security under Bush, during an online briefing for the media Monday organized by three groups urging the Trump administration to allow a transition to move forward.

          The 9/11 Commission cited a lack of information during a transition as one of the factors contributing to the 2001 terrorist attack the year Bush became president.

          In a Monday speech in Wilmington, Del., about restoring the economy, Biden urged the Trump administration to work on a transition so the U.S. can succeed, particularly in the fight against the coronavirus. “More people may die, if we don’t coordinate,” he said.

          Chris Lu, who ran the transition for Obama after the 2008 election, recalled that GSA made its designation just hours after the election and that he began to speak twice a day with the Bush official charged with assisting with the transition, deputy chief of staff Blake Gottesman. The two discussed everything from security clearances for incoming aides to staffers accessing computers.

          The transition went so well that when Obama signed a bill eight years later designed to improve the transition process, Lu — a former deputy Labor secretary who is heading up that agency's transition team for Biden — made sure to get two extra signing pens from the president to give to Bush’s chief of staff, Josh Bolten, and Gottesman.

          “We’ve been doing transitions for 200 years in this country,” Lu said. “We’ve done it in war and depression and we’ve done it when there were bitter adversaries on both sides. This is the tradition of our country.”
          __________

          Just another lawless action by a lawless administration....one that will likely cost this country dearly, again.
          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

          Comment


          • #20
            McConnell: Transfer of presidential power won’t be delayed
            The Senate majority leader brushed off concerns, despite reports of the GSA blocking President-elect Joe Biden’s transition process.

            Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged on Tuesday that the presidential transition would be orderly, despite concerns that the General Services Administration is delaying the process.

            During a news conference, a reporter asked McConnell (R-Ky.) why the GSA had yet to launch the official transition process. The majority leader responded that legal disputes over the election would be settled in court first, but he promised that “all of this will happen right on time and we’ll swear in the next administration on Jan. 20.”

            “We’re going to have an orderly transfer from this administration to the next one,” McConnell said. “What we all say about it is, frankly, irrelevant.”


            The comment follows reports that Emily Murphy, the head of the GSA and an appointee of President Donald Trump, has yet to certify Joe Biden as the official winner of the election, despite multiple news outlets calling the race for him. The delay is blocking the president-elect’s team from coordinating with federal agencies in preparation for his transfer of power.

            As of now, Biden and his team are beginning the transition process without the help of the GSA by setting up their own “agency review teams.” Meanwhile, Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey, Gerry Connolly of Virginia and Dina Titus of Nevada sent a letter to Murphy on Monday, demanding she explain the reasoning behind her delay by Wednesday night.
            _________
            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

            Comment


            • #21


              Four things you didn't know about President-Elect Joe Biden.



              Joe Biden is only the second Pennsylvanian elected to the highest office, after James Buchanan.

              He is the 15th Vice President to become President, but only the second (after Richard Nixon) to not succeed directly to the office.

              Biden is only the second former Senate Judiciary Committee chair to be elected president, following Martin Van Buren 183 years ago.

              And, he is only the second former Senate Foreign Affairs Committee chair to be elected president, following James Buchanan 163 years ago.

              Trust me?
              I'm an economist!

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by DOR View Post

                Four things you didn't know about President-Elect Joe Biden.



                Joe Biden is only the second Pennsylvanian elected to the highest office, after James Buchanan.

                He is the 15th Vice President to become President, but only the second (after Richard Nixon) to not succeed directly to the office.

                Biden is only the second former Senate Judiciary Committee chair to be elected president, following Martin Van Buren 183 years ago.

                And, he is only the second former Senate Foreign Affairs Committee chair to be elected president, following James Buchanan 163 years ago.
                Not sure any of those are examples I'd be keen to see him follow. ;-)
                sigpic

                Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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                • #23
                  Originally posted by Bigfella View Post

                  Not sure any of those are examples I'd be keen to see him follow. ;-)
                  Yeah, I moved along quickly....
                  “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                  Mark Twain

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                  • #24
                    I'd like to think Van Buren would be a hell of a lot better in today's world, with Buchanan and Nixon both being even worse than what we've already got. However, Buchanan would be HILARIOUS because shit would spiral out of control SO fast. Like "Let's buy Greenland and send all the BLM there: wait, you guys don't like that idea? Uhhh...Georgia's electoral votes will be decided by knife-fight!"

                    Nixon would be utterly terrifying.
                    "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

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                    • #25
                      Nixon at least understood the way government worked and actually did some positive things. Nixon founded the EPA and expanded other environmental initiatives which was badly needed at the time.He also began a serious detente with the PRC & the USSR which greatly reduced tensions, got SALT & ABM Treaties, began what became the Middle East peace process, and began the process of getting us out of Vietnam. His failures were of overreach and refusal to stop the actions of his subordinates.
                      “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                      Mark Twain

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
                        Nixon at least understood the way government worked and actually did some positive things. Nixon founded the EPA and expanded other environmental initiatives which was badly needed at the time.He also began a serious detente with the PRC & the USSR which greatly reduced tensions, got SALT & ABM Treaties, began what became the Middle East peace process, and began the process of getting us out of Vietnam. His failures were of overreach and refusal to stop the actions of his subordinates.
                        A couple of other Nixonian items:

                        Dirty political tricks (smear campaigns in 1946 & 1949; Watergate); McCarthyism, the Checkers Speech; Khrushchev and the Kitchen Debate; deep (and very wide) bigotry; Anna Chennault and interference in LBJ's Vietnam peace initiative; “silent majority;” invasions of Cambodia and Laos; “peace with honor;” Allende and Pinochet; oil embargo; wage and price controls; dollar devaluation vis-a-vis gold; federal budget deficit blow-out; and the famous White House tapes.

                        Trust me?
                        I'm an economist!

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          My two cents, as a Not American History Major: Nixon-competence combined with Nixon-paranoia is a bad 21st century cocktail. It's the "imagine if Trump were actually competent" nightmare scenario. Nixon was a paranoid guy even at his time, if he grew up in an era of conservative talk radio, he'd be way out in lala land.

                          I wouldn't mind the domestic and foreign policy changes, but I suspect it's not going to change much. The domestic political environment of the 2010s is not the environment of the late 60s, and there's no equivalent grand strategy change you can do right now that matches detente. IMO bad trade-off between the democratic system and policy outcomes. Maybe you could get lucky with a LBJ, but LBJ in charge of current US foreign policy is even more frightening than Nixon in the Twitter-age.

                          I'd either pull Bush the Elder forward as the conservative option, or drop in Andrew Jackson and hope he just guts the healthcare system and big banks.

                          I also wouldn't mind dropping in Grover Cleveland because I think he's overrated: the 21st century ripping him a new one would be good lulz.
                          "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by GVChamp View Post
                            My two cents, as a Not American History Major: Nixon-competence combined with Nixon-paranoia is a bad 21st century cocktail. It's the "imagine if Trump were actually competent" nightmare scenario
                            Someone like that will come along very very soon. He'll need Trump's charisma, media-savvy and animal cunning at identifying who best to prey upon, but they'll be along shortly, I have no doubt of that.

                            Originally posted by GVChamp View Post
                            Nixon was a paranoid guy even at his time, if he grew up in an era of conservative talk radio, he'd be way out in lala land.
                            Nixon would be right at home with conservative talk radio, albeit seen as a boring drudge, no pun intended.
                            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Democrats demand briefing from GSA chief on delay in ascertaining Biden’s win
                              Four senior House Democrats are demanding that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy brief them Monday on the reason she has yet to ascertain Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election, warning that her answers will determine whether they intend to haul her to Capitol Hill for a public hearing, along with other senior General Services Administration officials.

                              “We have been extremely patient, but we can wait no longer,” said House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey, in a four-page letter joined by Reps. Gerry Connolly and Mike Quigley.

                              Biden’s team can’t begin accessing federal resources to aid the transition until Murphy makes an official “ascertainment” of his victory, a relatively routine step based on the unofficial but clear results of a presidential election. As Trump has contested the election results, Murphy has withheld a decision despite enormous pressure from Democrats to begin the process. Trump recently praised her on Twitter, saying she’s doing a “great job.”

                              “White House officials claim they are not pressing you to block the ascertainment determination and that you have made this determination entirely on your own,” the Democrats wrote, adding, “If this is accurate, it is critical that you now follow the law and make the ascertainment designation without any further delay.”

                              The Democrats say Murphy’s refusal to act is having “grave effects,” from impeding the transition of power and blocking Biden’s ability to begin assuming national security responsibilities and preparing a pandemic response plan.

                              They also pointed to the 2016 election, a race that featured closer margins in key swing states won by Trump and a smaller popular-vote win for Hillary Clinton. Yet that year, the GSA administrator ascertained Trump’s victory by Nov. 9, the day after the general election.

                              A GSA spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
                              _________

                              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
                                Nixon at least understood the way government worked and actually did some positive things. Nixon founded the EPA and expanded other environmental initiatives which was badly needed at the time.He also began a serious detente with the PRC & the USSR which greatly reduced tensions, got SALT & ABM Treaties, began what became the Middle East peace process, and began the process of getting us out of Vietnam. His failures were of overreach and refusal to stop the actions of his subordinates.
                                I'm going to go with 'mostly yes' for those. Giving Nixon credit for basically getting out of Vietnam is factually correct, but overlooks that he extended US involvement in the conflict and then sold out Sth Vietnam anyway. He could have done that earlier and saved a bunch of lives.

                                I'm also going to agree with GVChamp that Nixon in the C21st would be terrifying. In the early 70s there were still members of his own party prepared to act as a brake of some sort on Nixon's excesses. No chance of that now. As Top points out, you will eventually get your C21st Nixon, and that will be a terrible time for America.
                                sigpic

                                Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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