US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

I wonder if he will get a home in Chicago (murder capitial of the northern US) after he leaves DC (suppose to be staying there till his daughters finish school).

Yes, it looks like Chicago will be in his future:http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama...ry?id=44506776

President Obama is preparing to give his farewell speech from his home city of Chicago.

"I'll go home to Chicago to say my grateful farewell to you, even if you can't be there in person,"
he said in an email announcing the Tuesday, January 10 speech.

[August]

Interesting take on the election.

http://fredoneverything.org/uniquely...lost-to-trump/

A great uproar goes forth from the enemies of the Trump Beast, with much gnashing of hair and pulling of teeth. He will be a terrible President, they say, and they may well be right. There are ominous signs, particularly as regards foreign policy, and he seems radically incoherent and contradictory. Interestingly, his critics have no slight idea why he won.
The reason is obvious: He won because everybody was campaigning for him, in particular the media, Hillary, Black Lives Matter, Obama, Democrats, and far leftists. Everybody worked for Trump. He couldn’t lose.

The election was a referendum on Marie Antoinette’s court. It was the revolt of the unnoticed downtrodden, the financially sinking, the working classes rising against privileged snots–but it was engineered by the elites. The glittering elite of course did not say “working class,” this being a loaded phrase redolent of Marxism and of the Democratic Party of five decades back before it became a royal court. They spoke instead of disgruntled white men, racists, homophobes, sexists, and the Islamonauseated–phobic, I meant.

and

The privileged worked hard for Trump. Every time they described his people as uneducated white males, implicit dregs, they drove votes to Donald. And they so described the working class unceasingly.
It made him President. Good, bad, or indifferent, it is how he got in.
The privileged denigrated all whites unlike themselves. Then Hillary made her “deplorables” speech, confirming her contempt for half of America–those uneducated, shapeless, dull-witted proles in Flyover Land, obese, farting and belching, swilling Bud, watching NASCAR for god’s sake in awful trailers. And why not not sneer at them? Why did Hillary need their votes? Did not Rachel Maddow love her?
For Trump it was gold, pure gold. If he had written her speech, he could not have come up with a better line to destroy her. It was the purest product of the establishment’s hubris. She did it to herself. Sweet.
It made him President.

I think he makes a great point. Belittling large swaths of the electorate is a recipe for political failure and the Democrats have made a habit of it in recent years.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

I wonder if he will get a home in Chicago (murder capitial of the northern US) after he leaves DC (suppose to be staying there till his daughters finish school).

When you are going to live in a gated community with lifetime 24/7 USSS protection, you are not all that concerned with the crimes of the common people.

[Mr Quatro]

Obama won't sign this bill, but POTUS Trump will: http://thehill.com/homenews/house/31...tions-en-masse

Legislation to allow Congress to repeal in a single vote any rule finalized in the last 60 legislative days of the Obama administration sailed through the House Wednesday, the second time in less than two months.

The GOP-backed Midnight Rule Relief Act, which passed the previous Congress in November, was approved largely along party lines by a vote of 238-184 on the second day of the new Congress, despite Democratic opposition.

If passed by the Senate and signed by President-elect Donald Trump, the legislation would amend the Congressional Review Act to allow lawmakers to bundle together multiple rules and overturn them en masse with a joint resolution of disapproval.

The White House has already threatened to veto the bill if it were to make it to President Obama's desk before he leaves office.

Lot less to worry about now ... from a King to a Jack in just two more weeks.

[vienna]

Hmm...

It seems I might have missed it...

Did anyone happen to catch the revelation of evidence to refute the allegations of Russian hacking and interference Trump promised and swore to reveal on "Tuesday or Wednesday"? I man, it is now Thursday, isn't it? After all, Trump is a well known man of his word...

Maybe Trump was too busy watching RT and swooning over his latest love letter from Putin...


<O>

[ikalugin]

As far as I am aware USG did not release any evidence regarding the attribution process to back up it's claims. It appears that the FBI was peer pressured into going with that agenda driven narrative, which is really quite a shame.

[August]

For 8 years the Obama administration has ignored numerous successful hacking attempts by not only the Russians but a multitude of foreign entities against federal, state, local government agencies and many more against the private sector. Back in 2012 Mitt Romney said that the Russians might be a threat and he was mocked for it by the very same people who are now all up in arms now. I guess hindsight can be little embarrassing if it costs you your legacy huh?

I mean literally hundreds of millions of medical records, financial data and other personal information of Americans have been stolen over the past 8 years by the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians and a host of other national and private players and they did nothing about it. Utilities have been hacked, secrets have been stolen, agencies have been breached and none of that moves the government into action. But the theft of some very damning emails from a political hack who was dumb enough to click on email links sent by unknown senders and who uses the word "password" as his password, an idiot btw who works for an even bigger idiot that thinks she could somehow safely conduct classified government business on a home brewed mail server that she rigged up in her basement, and suddenly they're expelling foreigners and launching investigations like it never has never happened before.

Could they possibly have been that appallingly incompetent to be just now discovering this kind of thing has been going on? Hard to believe but the way I see it the Democrats have no right to lecture anyone about cyber security when it's obvious they have no clue what it is themselves.

[vienna]

Gee, I sure am glad the country and its intelligence operations, after the inauguration, is going to be run by the Great Equivocator who has no trust in those same intelligence operations and its leadership and who has not only expressed a great animus towards the intelligence community, but has also publicly stated he knows more than the trained, very heavily experienced personnel and experts. It is reassuring to know we will be protected by the object of Putin's bromance...

Well, at least, Trump won"t muck about with the military and its leadership..no,...wait,... didn't Trump also declare he knew more about military matters than the generals?...

Oh, and regarding that border wall; it looks like the US taxpayers are going to get stuck for the bill:

http://www.businessinsider.com/who-w...wall-us-2017-1

If anyone really believes the US will get any significant reimbursement, much less the full cost of a wall, from Mexico, I've got this bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in...

The concept of creating massively expensive projects with very little actual benefit while cutting revenues (taxes) smacks very much of the 'don"t tax but spend like crazy' ethos of the Reagan Administration which resulted in the second most severe recession in US history...



<O>

[ikalugin]

Well, how many of those likely to be purged are political apointees from the two Obama terms?

I ask this because to me it appears that the leadership of said services is made up of political apointees, not veteran career officers. If this is so, then what is bad about doing the same thing Obama did and apointing the people he could trust?

[vienna]

Those at the top are almost always there for political reasons and are swept aside when the political tide changes. They are also many times those who are there for political reasons are not career veterans; that is why they are called "political appointees", not "best candidates for the job". There are exceptions: FBI Director Comey leaps to mind; he is a life-long GOP member and was a part of the Bush administration; not the kind of person you would expect a DEM President to appoint to a crucial position, yet Obama did appoint him as FBI Director. Why? Well, he had impressive, well-known credentials and experience in the field of Federal law and had even served as Acting Attorney General when then AG Ashcroft was incapacitated; it was then Comey showed he was made of sterner stuff. When the Bush White attempted to exert undue pressure to get their way on a dubious NSA program, Comey defied Bush and refused to certify the program; the White House then tried to coerce a hospitalized AG Ashcroft, who also had concerns about the NSA project, into overriding Comey, but Comey was able to get to the hospital and give support to Ashcroft's own refusal. Comey stood his ethical and moral ground in the face of political maneuvering; if you want someone to do a task right for you, you also need someone who is morally and ethically centered enough to stand up and tell you when they think you are wrong, not some party hack "yes man". For a any President, having someone with the guts to stand up to you is someone you should want around you...

What I have seen so far in the Trump appointments is the same old signing on of party-bound healers, cronies, dogmatic self-servers, and barely qualified appointees: essentially more of the same as we have seen before, from both parties; in fact, this upcoming lot of appointees may be the most dubious since the lot that came in with the Nixon administration, and, as we know, that didn't turn out so well. If Trump is really so dedicated to, as he puts it, "drain the swamp", all he's done is stock it with more 'gators. As always with Trump, big talk, small results (you know, like his hands)...

Mention was made of career veterans. In any government, the actual work in any agency is not done by the Secretaries, Directors, or Ministers; it is done by the mainly faceless veterans who do their jobs in the background regardless of what party is in power or whoever sits in the Big Chair. When you are hearing the results of investigations into matters, it is not the guy who happens to be a buddy of POTUS or a functionary of POTUS' party who did the work, it is the men and women with the 10, 15, 20 or more years of actual field and analytical experience who did those investigations, For a surprisingly large number of them, the party or person in power is irrelevant; their tasks and duties continue on regardless of the political revolving doors. They are the real experts in their field and when I see a report, I tend to give them a bit more weight than the talking heads and spokespersons who give the summary press briefings and, I particularly give them more weight than a know-nothing, newly-minted politician who claims to know more about the functioning and responsibilities of government operations than those who have been dedicated to doing the best possible work in their fields as a life-log career. Maybe those much sought after seats in the head offices should be filled with people who have actually worked their way up to that position rather than be occupied by the political flavor of the moment; however, by and large, given his appointments so far, I don't see Trump as a 'Great Reformer' but more of the "same old business as usual". As the Great Philosopher Townshend once aptly said "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"...




<O>

[August]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

Well, how many of those likely to be purged are political apointees from the two Obama terms?

I ask this because to me it appears that the leadership of said services is made up of political apointees, not veteran career officers. If this is so, then what is bad about doing the same thing Obama did and apointing the people he could trust?

There's nothing bad about it. The Left will say anything to de-legitimatize Trump. He could personally cure cancer and they would have nothing good to say about it and neither will they about anyone Trump nominates. Too bad for them that they exercised the nuclear option to eliminate filibusters when they were in charge of Congress.

As for political appointees, most of them are purged when the White House changes hands. There are a few like the FBI director that are appointed for a set period of time (10 years I think) but rarely do they stay on through a change in administration.

[vienna]

There is a huge difference between "people you can trust" and "people you can trust and are fully qualified for the job": I trust my doctor, but I wouldn't want him or her to operate on me if he or she wasn't a certified surgeon or to diagnose and treat me for a condition outside their specialty. What happens in the case of POTUS appointments, in both parties, is akin to assigning an EMT to do neurosurgery; in either case, the results can leave the patient brain dead...



<O>

[yubba]

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ne...exit-rt7j9lccb ,, see we can all learn some thing from this.

[Oberon]

No-one tell him we haven't actually left the EU yet...don't want to ruin his dream

[yubba]

Originally Posted by Oberon

No-one tell him we haven't actually left the EU yet...don't want to ruin his dream

Oh, I thought you were in a panic when the common folk wanted out,, what shall we do if we leave the pu.. I for one would have thought you of all people,, wouldn't want to be a subject to other peoples mental illnesses. Freedom live it love it...