The recent for the cancellation was because Wreaths Across America brings an absolute CRUSH of visitors to the Cemetery to help and to watch. There is no way to safely isolate individuals nor test in sufficient numbers ahead of time t ensure safety.
That is the reason for this intelligent decision. The turn around places people at risk needlessly. The dead will still be honored.
And as for it being outside and therefore not a problem....keep in mind Sturgis was an outside event yet it caused COVID to spread.
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Officials almost everywhere are indeed idiots, or rather have spectacular blind spots and require constant challenging to actually produce meaningful results.
If you're coming out of 2020 with an attitude that you should blindly trust our society's Pharisees, I feel sorry for you. This entire year has been a repudiation of the Western technocratic priestly class.Leave a comment:
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Apparently the cemetery officials are idiots. Thankfully we have the orange doctor in the White House.Originally posted by surfgun View Post
Of course, in reality Donald Trump is a fucking idiot that thinks that exercise robs your body of its limited supply of energy and was stupid enough to suggest injecting disinfectant into COVID patients.
I can only imagine what kind of person would still think that Trump is smart....Leave a comment:
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yes, Covid is running rampant in the open air of the cemetery. F’n ridiculous!Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
The immune systems of Boy Scouts may be up to it, you Karen!Leave a comment:
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“The Arlington National Cemetery announced Monday it has canceled its annual Wreaths Across America event out of safety concerns as cases of COVID-19 continue to rise throughout the region. Cemetery officials said there was not a way to mitigate the risks of such an event.”Originally posted by surfgun View Post
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Trump reverses, the Cancellation of Wreaths Across America.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...gton-cemetery/Leave a comment:
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Exclusive: Counterterrorism agency increasingly eyes right-wing threats as Trump era winds down
Even as President Trump and his allies have tried to downplay the threat of right-wing extremism and blame violence on the political left, one intelligence agency has been quietly ramping up its warnings about the threat of domestic threats, such as white supremacists, according to interviews and internal government documents.
The National Counterterrorism Center, an agency formed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to combat international terrorism, has been increasingly focused on domestic extremists, including those who have no known connection to a foreign group. One example of that new focus is its weekly internal digest for the week of the presidential election, when four of the top ten extremist threats highlighted by the agency were purely domestic, including the “boogaloo” movement, white supremacists, and militia members.
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Large article, click on the title to read the whole thing
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They Are What They Say They Hate
Trump is a triggered loser who embodies every trait conservatives spent decades decrying.
Donald Trump is a snowflake who cares only about his feelings not the facts.
He’s a pampered millennial child who can’t handle losing and wants a participation trophy.
He’s a coddled, out-of-touch elite who cares more about what his media friends say about him than the struggles of forgotten Americans.
He’s a fool who leads a selfish ruling class that is bringing America to the brink of revolution.
He is an Ivy Leaguer who requires a safe space to protect himself from painful speech.
He believes in a hierarchy of victimhood with himself at the top and his aggrieved white supporters next.
He’s a wokescold who wants to silence those who reject his magical thinking.
A wanna-be monarch having a “temper tantrum.”
He’s callow and acting in bad faith.
Those who are not standing up to him have “no conception of the national interest larger than his immediate political interests.”
He is a censorious enemy of free speech and freedom of religion.
He is trying to bring about an “End Of Discussion” by leading an “outrage industry that shuts down debate and manipulates voters.”
He is “Triggered”, “driven by hate, and trying to silence the voters.”
He is stealing America.
He’s a whiner who specializes in phony outrage. A beta-soy-boy cuck who won’t take his setbacks like a grown man.
He wants to infuse political culture wars into every crevice of American life, bullying those who don’t accept his hegemony.
He sees democracy as a filthy process that can be cured only by centralized power.
He’s unvirtuous, ignorant, anti-American, and anti-Christian.
He’s a loser who is up to his eyeballs in bullshit.
He is everything that they ever said their “evil” opponents were. And worse.
But they don’t care.
Even in the face of Trump’s humiliating defeat at the hands of an opponent they believe to be weak and suffering from dementia, Republicans and conservative commentators continue to enable the human embodiment of what they once decried.
They do it because their crusade stopped being about anything other than causing their opponents pain a long time ago. They came to the crossroads and struck a deal to make a human troll the president of the United States, because he put Obama in his (birth) place and made all the right people mad. He was their vehicle to give the finger to half of the country.
Their end of that deal paid off in spades the past four years. And as he petulantly refuses to concede defeat they continue to get the liberal schadenfreude they crave.
The only thing they had to do in order to get it, was become everything that they had claimed hate.
They should never be allowed to forget it.
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Welcome to the new face of "conservatism" and the Republican Party.
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Biden hopes to avoid divisive Trump investigations, preferring unity
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden has privately told advisers that he doesn't want his presidency to be consumed by investigations of his predecessor, according to five people familiar with the discussions, despite pressure from some Democrats who want inquiries into President Donald Trump, his policies and members of his administration.
Biden has raised concerns that investigations would further divide a country he is trying to unite and risk making every day of his presidency about Trump, said the sources, who spoke on background to offer details of private conversations.
They said he has specifically told advisers that he is wary of federal tax investigations of Trump or of challenging any orders Trump may issue granting immunity to members of his staff before he leaves office. One adviser said Biden has made it clear that he "just wants to move on."
Another Biden adviser said, "He's going to be more oriented toward fixing the problems and moving forward than prosecuting them."
Any decisions by Biden's Justice Department regarding Trump, his staff, his associates, his business or his policies wouldn't affect investigations by state officials, including Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who has fought to obtain Trump's tax returns.
As Biden tries to balance his own inclinations with pressures from within his party, his advisers stressed that he is seeking to reset the dynamic between the White House and the Justice Department from what it has been under Trump.
Biden wants his Justice Department to function independently from the White House, aides said, and Biden isn't going to tell federal law enforcement officials whom or what to investigate or not to investigate.
"His overarching view is that we need to move the country forward," an adviser said. "But the most important thing on this is that he will not interfere with his Justice Department and not politicize his Justice Department."
A third Biden adviser said that when it comes to any Trump-related investigations, the expectation is "it's going to be very situational" and "depending on the merits." Broadly, Biden's priorities will be the economy, the coronavirus, climate change and race relations, not looking back at the Trump administration, an adviser said.
Presidents generally set the tone for what issues they believe should be priorities for the Justice Department, and questions about Trump-related investigations or retrospective reviews are expected to intensify as Biden gets closer to taking office.
"He can set a tone about what he thinks should be done," a Biden adviser said. But, the adviser said, "he's not going to be a president who directs the Justice Department one way or the other."
Biden's team is also reluctant to send any signal to Trump administration officials that the Justice Department wouldn't look into their actions, given that there are still nine weeks until the inauguration, another person briefed about the discussions said.
"While they're not looking for broad criminal indictments, they do want to make sure that people don't think there are no ramifications for any of their actions between now and the new presidency," this person said.
Emphasizing an arm's-length approach to the Justice Department could give Biden cover from criticism from his supporters about any lack of investigations into Trump, his policies or his staff. Democrats have sharply criticized Trump's direct influence on Justice Department investigations, including his calls for Biden and former President Barack Obama to be prosecuted over allegations of unspecified crimes. Pledging, as Biden has, not to interfere with federal investigations would be welcomed by many of his supporters.
But it will be difficult for Biden to avoid the issue altogether, given the expected calls for investigations into an array of issues involving Trump — from his administration's child separation policy to his taxes, possible conflicts of interest and potential violations of campaign finance law. The issue could set Biden on a collision course with some of his own supporters, who are eager for a wholesale examination of the Trump presidency.
"There's also a strong school of thought that believes the law's the law," a Biden adviser said, describing the internal debate.
Biden said many times during the campaign that he would leave any decision whether to prosecute Trump up to his attorney general. "If that was the judgment that he violated the law and he should be, in fact, criminally prosecuted, then so be it," he said during a debate in Atlanta. "But I would not direct it."
Biden has said he wouldn't pardon Trump should that become a realistic question.
Still, multiple aides said, Biden is generally not inclined to see his Justice Department investigate Trump.
One of the reasons he has given aides is that he believes investigations would alienate the more than 73 million Americans who voted for Trump, the people familiar with the discussions said. Some Democrats, however, have said Biden should be prioritizing the concerns of his supporters, not those of his detractors.
The delicate balance of answering to his own supporters and uniting the country is in part why Biden recognizes that his nominee for attorney general is "going to be one of the most consequential decisions he's going to make," an adviser said.
Biden has vowed to sign an executive order declaring that any member of his administration would be fired if found to "initiate, encourage, obstruct or otherwise improperly influence specific DOJ investigations or prosecutions for any reason."
The dilemma facing Biden is similar to the one Obama faced when he took office in 2009. Democrats were demanding the prosecution of Bush administration officials who were involved in policies that allowed enhanced interrogations, or torture, of terrorism suspects.
To appease those Democrats, Obama released memos about the controversial program and then publicly said he didn't support prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised or carried out the policies. He also rejected calls for a 9/11-style commission or a truth and reconciliation commission, like the one that examined apartheid in South Africa, to review the policies.
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No matter what the federal government does, Trump is going to have his hands full with New York and any other state that decides to investigate him. Not to mention his creditors deciding that he's more trouble than he's worth.
Come January 20th, I wouldn't want to be in Donald Trump's lifted shoes for all the whiskey in Ireland -
Trump’s Pentagon: No Place for Good Men
On Monday of this week, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows—fresh from testing positive for COVID-19—called Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to let him know that President Trump was removing him from his cabinet position.
The call had no sooner ended when Trump informed the world via tweet that Christopher Miller, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, was the acting Defense secretary, effectively immediately. The tweet ended bluntly: “Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.”
With that, Esper’s 16-month tenure was over. Another public servant, ejected unceremoniously, reputation tainted by the president for the crime of attempting to serve as his character and conscience dictated.
Esper’s firing was abrupt but not a complete surprise. He’d fallen out of favor after pushing back on Trump’s desire to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 in order to deploy active duty troops to quell unrest associated with the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Esper, still stinging from how he’d been co-opted to participate in Trump’s Bible stunt across Lafayette Square, told the Pentagon press corps, “I say this not only as secretary of Defense, but also as a former soldier, and a former member of the National Guard: The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now.”
I suspect that what pushed Trump to the breaking point was Esper saying “as a former soldier.” It was a reminder that Esper is West Point grad who earned the Bronze Star for valorous conduct during Desert Storm while Donald Trump is . . . Donald Trump. But even before the Lafayette Square incident, Esper had found himself cross-threaded with the White House on issues ranging from Trump’s summary transgender “ban” and the pardoning of war criminals, to the military’s COVID response and the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. In each case, Esper was made to see that his commander-in-chief had no appetite for precedent or the assessment of fact. The only thing the president valued was unconditional loyalty. Intellect was only to be reverse engineered and weaponized in service of the president’s will.
Esper’s pedigree was never going to allow him to be a loyalist and Trump punishes those who aren’t loyal in myriad ways: pushing hot buttons, creating loyalty tests, watching how subordinates respond, in extreme cases even tacitly daring them to quit and doubling down on the abuse when they don’t. That abuse can take the form of issuing nicknames (Trump dubbed Esper “Yesper” in an attempt to brand him as a sycophant even when he wasn’t) or petty gestures, like the way he left the Pentagon without a spokesperson by taking DoD’s Alyssa Farrah and making her Kayleigh McEnany’s right hand at the White House.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that President Trump has focused his toxic management on the Pentagon. As much as anything else, he seems to see the presidency as a platform for settling scores and establishing himself as America’s Alpha Dog. And nothing in his profile is as challenging to that status as the fact everyone in the country knows that Trump ducked serving during Vietnam on bogus medical grounds. Cadet Bone Spurs has seen the last four years as a way of trying to subjugate the men and women who actually answered their nation’s call.
So, he came into office and surrounded himself with what he called “all the best generals” and slowly, methodically, set about an effort to soil their lives of accomplishment. One-by-one respected military figures such as Jim Mattis (“overrated”), John Kelly (“out of his league”), and H.R. McMaster (“a beer salesman”) were chewed up and spit out from the podiums of the White House Press Room or at rallies or, most prolifically, in tweets. Trump has shown his disdain for the military by ignoring the chain of command and, in several extreme cases, giving enlisted men—both active duty and veteran—direct access to his office as he formulated his approaches to national defense. In four years, he has had five secretaries of Defense—three of them acting—and none of them has left gracefully.
Trump’s election loss has accelerated his settling of scores, which is why Esper is gone. Don’t look for any meaning beyond that. Trump doesn’t play chess. He doesn’t even play checkers. He plays the binary game of “I win, you lose” that changes moment to moment. And at this moment he’s satisfied that he showed Yesper who the real big man is.
There is some concern as to what acting Secretary Christopher Miller, he of Green Beret street cred but lacking executive experience, and the band of FOX News regulars and conspiracy theorists with whom Trump has surrounded him, will do in the next two months. The worries include a force-fed initiative to get American forces out of Afghanistan by Inauguration Day.
The reality is that a conflict that has lasted over 19 years can’t end for good in a couple of months. We fought this war in a uniquely American way, which is to say, when faced with an asymmetric threat that largely consisted of bands of insurgents armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, we countered with platoons of highly trained infantry and special operators supported by drones, helicopters, and attack jets directed by fully staffed mission control centers. Even if we pull all of the warfighters out tomorrow, somebody has to stay behind to guard the stuff we don’t want to fall into Taliban, Russian, or Chinese hands until we can dismantle everything and load it on a few hundred sorties worth of C-17s.
That can’t happen between now and January 20, 2021.
No, most likely what’s going to happen at the Pentagon during the next few weeks is that Trump loyalists will make meetings unpleasant for the uniformed folks around the E-Ring.
Yes, this is small comfort. But in the meantime we can hope that actual stewards of democracy in those rooms will take good notes. Because this interregnum should make for interesting reading in the early days of the Biden administration.
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Remember when conservatives actually revered the military, had nothing but contempt for draft-dodgers and would've utterly destroyed anybody who disparaged POW's?
Now look at them.
Pathetic.Leave a comment:
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Do not be surprised if it happens...
Trump TV and online streaming service
...all of the whackjobs and their whacky conspiracy theories, 24/7
...all while asking for donations to "Save America", DJT's new leadership PAC slush fund
Originally posted by Slate
...Leave a comment:
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regardless of the merit, amending the Constitution is nigh impossible these days-- another sign of the sclerosis of our political system.Interesting proposals, absolutely needed in the face of an amoral career criminal like Donald Trump. And utterly DOA for as long as scumbags like Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are in command of the Republican Party. Blatant and unchecked corruption will become the norm. Trump's banana republic administration has pointed the way forward for the Republican Party: Do whatever you want, as long as you and your party hold the reins of power, because that's exactly what your constituents want.
And it's only a matter of time before some Democrat does exactly the same thing.Leave a comment:
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The last time we had a big burst of ethics legislation, it led to the creation of a special counsel that in directly led to Ken Starr and Monica Lewinsky. This is a knee-jerk reaction that with 99% certainty will blow up in your face in spectacular fashion. Not worth it because Trump granted Roger Stone clemency and had people stay at his hotels. The GOP absolutely won't support it when they think Russia-gate is a biased investigation built on top of partisan witch-hunting.
I can absolutely say that I will not under any circumstance support any curtailing of the pardon power. It's an absolutely essential arrow we need in the quiver and it needs to go to the President, and he needs to be able to exercise it in the lame duck period so he can pardon people even when it is politically toxic. It's a critical component of how we can move past particularly divisive periods. Trying to restrain it for political use is exactly the opposite of what we want.
"But it's so restricted!" Yeah, bullshit. The Supreme Court has defined subsistence farming as interstate commerce. You do not want to open even the tiniest crack, because lawyers and judges will drill into it and make an expressway for their political benefit.Leave a comment:
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Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
I'm inclinde to agree with this in the broad. While Trump is a uniquely corrupt individual among more recent US Presidents (the C19th might have thrown up some competition) that doesn't mean that others from both sides aren't capable of doing the wrong thing. I'm not from the 'they're all the same' camp. I think most elected officials try to do what they see as the right thing, but there is consistently a minority - sometimes a substantial one - that will take opportunities for corruption. Further, if it is easy enough and becomes sufficiently widespread it becomes even more tempting for people who might not have been initally so inclined.
Make it harder to do for everyone and everyone good across the spectrum is a winner.Leave a comment:
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