Senate The US Politics 2.0 Discussion Thread

Leonard Peltier for Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs?

 

We all knew that the Biden administration was going to be like this. It's a big reason why I wasn't interested in telling anyone to vote for the obvious looming disaster.

I would like to add to the defense of Sanders, though. I think he's made some mistakes, but as Obama would say, let us be clear. He's a left-wing politician who survived in the wilderness for decades during the era of Reaganism and the neoliberal shift of the Democratic party. He was praising the accomplishments of the Soviet Union and Castro's Cuba-- yes, qualifying that praise with criticism of authoritarian tendencies-- while the Cold War was still happening. And despite all the money he could have received as a Representative and Senator, he never stopped pushing for better things and criticizing our economic system. He decided to run for President as an old man at a moment in history when a good chunk of Americans, though not the people who supposedly represent them, were receptive to a social democratic platform. He played a big role in mainstreaming Medicare for All and tuition-free college and introduced millions of Americans to left-wing politics. I say this as someone who was skeptical of him when he ran in 2016.

 

I don't think "reasonably" applies there. (I mean, he should be pardoned for sure -- but no chance of an appointment...)

 

So Trump decided not to join Crazy Uncle Rudy and the gang at Gettysburg today which is went so well.



At this point it's like Rudy is just throwing darts at a map and going, "See we could won there too". Trump lost Virginia by 10 points but sure you go with that one! Next they will say he actually won Illinois even though Biden got a higher percentage of the vote here then Obama got in 2012 even though this his home state LOL! At this point it's pretty much Rudy and Trump still keeping this up:



Even Paul Ryan finally came out of the rock he was hiding and made his move now that Trump has finally had his big fall. Problem for Paul though is the "Tea Party GOP" he help lead is 1000000x crazier now....and the Tea Party was bleeping crazy too!

Meanwhile the Secretary of State in Georgia is still in shock he got thrown under the bus:



I mean forget where these people been the past four years, where has these people the past FORTY YEARS! I knew Trump was a slick con man back when I was a kid as my dad called him "Donald Trash" because of what happened with the USFL (a few business friends of his were investors in the Chicago USFL team the Blitz and would tell him how they were getting back stabbed by Trump and this was decades before the infamous meeting between Trump and Roselle where he threw the entire league under the bus came out). Hell as Keith Olbermann said Trump was known back in the late 70's as being a real estate con man who pay 90 cents on the dollar to subcontractors knowing they most likely would not sue because in the end they lose more then they just take the lower payment (a few did sue and every single of them won but regrettably not enough of them did it as they simply did not have the finances to do it). I applaud him for his integrity and faithfully doing his job but come on you knew this was coming!

 

Obama's admin denied him a pardon. Speaking of PSL, Leonard was La Riva's VP for 2020 but he dropped out due to health reasons. I doubt Biden would put a friend of pete Seegers, and a legit socialist who doesn't like the FBI in any position. he would sooner put Donald Trump Jr in that role

He put a guy who openly does the "Fidel took my father's slaves" thing in Homeland security. these are the enemy, No differentiation or equivocation. These are going to be 4 more years of hell and misery for the third world, going so far beyond disappointment with the two party system

 

He phone in. It's more insane then you think:



Again Biden has said he will not instruct him DOJ to investigate/indict Trump since well that is not how it works as Trump using the DOJ has his own goon squad is abnormal, not the norm.....but that does not mean he will tell them not to investigate Trump. And they will. All of this needs full investigation by the DOJ come January along with the PA AG. And speaking of BIden, he time his speech to begin exactly when Trump ended:



But of course he will talk about "unity blah blah" like Republicans care. Time to bury these people in the 1930's dustbowl like FDR did with his far right crazies.

Edit: And Florida Man for the win:

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/l...o-stop-radical-left-florida-congressman-says/

Too bad that has nothing to do with the NY or Virginia AG Captian Drinkey!

And Trump even stated at the end of the phone call, "we need to get this election overturn". He knows he lost. He is admitting it. He just wants the courts and state houses to anoint him to be president and found the one person (Crazy Uncle Rudy) who will go along with it. Even a couple of his advisors are starting to walk away as they know this will not end well for any of them.

 

I just like how Rudy, Trump, and the cult, keep calling it a 'hearing'.

It's a meeting. In a hotel.

 

Thankfully the media got on and are just calling it a "GOP hearing" though I wish they just say "GOP meeting".

 

I'm sorry you feel that way but I don't like being lied to.

Nope! I didn't vote for him after all!

 

You are asking that as if their complaints are some impossible bar no one could satisfy. DP I know you know that there are more people in this world who are not executives than those who are. Hire any one of those people instead and they will be marginally more approved of at least.

It's like saying "is there anyone NASA could have as director who Jews and Socialists wouldn't complain about?" like yes dude, there are in fact people other than Wernher von Braun. You act like not picking ceos and utter monsters is some annoying complaint and not just the act of having an ideology.

"is there anyone the Bill Clinton could fly on a plane with who would satisfy people who dislike pedophiles?

Just don't pick execs and ghouls and maybe not a "Castro took my slaves" guy while you're at it.

 

It's also not just that his picks are bad, it's that his picks are some of the worst. You could potentially see this in a GOP administration

 

Nope. Really no reason to go on beyond that.

Edit: Good take on Rudy's act today:

 

well Trump has pardoned Flynn
also: crazy vampire guiliani says trump may have won virginia, although he's 450.000 votes behind

 

This is the normal time when most Presidents pardon political allies. Trump is finally Acting Presidential!

 

Like legitimately embarrassing how on the nose these are. He wants trump voters in his cabinet and frankly you could find several who are better than these picks. Next he will choose sec of state as Benito Mussolini's granddaughter

 

And now Flynn cannot plead the 5th. Right?

 

It may be that Donald Trump has met his ultimate, unstoppable enemy that'll shunt him out of the White House, rubber stamp bureaucracy. The system works!

 

I think Trump will have more offensive pardons on the way.

Old Lester Holt asked Biden if he would appoint a Republican who voted for Trump to his administration. But why? I mean, people have been starving during this pandemic, and the Trump administration put people in cages as Trump broke all sorts of laws, including trying to pressure Ukraine into announcing a sham investigation.

 

Now that Flynn has been pardoned I wonder how long it will be before he commits another crime?

 

He’s definitely going to pardon himself. It’ll be his last official act, and in the same tweet, declare his campaign for 2024.

It’ll be absurd.

 

So I heard that a judge has halted the certification process in Pennsylvania are we screwed or is this nothing to worry about?

 

From what i’ve read that applies to PA elections not certified yet. Doesn’t apply to ones already done.

 

Again, he can't. This isn't even a case of "Trump isn't allowed to... he's doing it anyways!". You can't legally 'pardon' someone that hasn't been convicted of a crime. Trump can make all the 'I have immunity forever!' proclamations he wants, they will have literally no effect - Biden's AG can do whatever the **** he wants with regards to Trump.

 

The state is now stuck in limbo though. It’s just really ****ing stupid. Especially with the judge saying mail in voting laws were illegal in Pennsylvania like what?

But at this point there is no way the result will change in Pennsylvania right?

 

Interesting article on how Biden's administration seems different from Obama's so far (never mind Trump's)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bide...onal-security-team_n_5fbeb650c5b66bb88c63ca14

The Key Point About Joe Biden’s National Security Picks: It’s Truly The Biden Show
This shared consensus on foreign policy is a big change from the Trump and Obama teams ― and an opportunity to reform U.S. global relations.

In announcing most of his national security team this week, President-elect Joe Biden sent a big signal about how he will handle foreign policy differently from his immediate predecessors: This will, for better or worse, be the Biden show. Unlike either Donald Trump or Barack Obama, Biden will manage America’s role in the world with a team that is already deeply committed to his perspective ― which could help him get far more done in a job that already has outsize influence over global affairs.


News about Biden’s choices began to spread on Sunday night, when Bloomberg revealed that he would tap Antony Blinken as secretary of state and Axios reported that Linda Thomas-Greenfield would be his ambassador to the United Nations. Less than 24 hours later, Biden’s team confirmed that reporting and unveiled more appointments, notably Jake Sullivan as national security adviser and Avril Haines as director of national intelligence. Reporters, commentators and foreign policy activists scrambled to highlight various parts of the appointees’ pasts to predict how they will behave once in office.

Most of the resulting commentary missed that nearly all of the picks share a crucial characteristic: years of working with Biden, who has his own complex views on international relations and a track record of both achievements and miscalculations. The former vice president is a firm believer in U.S. leadership on the world stage, seeing a role for America in tackling a range of global challenges that may seem remote to some stateside, but he is also cautious about dramatic interventions or attempts to force major changes abroad.


Whether the issue is changing American policy to encourage diplomacy between the Israelis and the Palestinians, reining in U.S. counterterror operations that have killed thousands of civilians overseas, or reducing international troop deployments, Washington’s national security apparatus will soon be guided by the preferences of Biden and people who hew closely to his thinking.

That poses risks like groupthink and a disregard for dissenting views. But it’s also an opportunity, particularly welcome for those who were horrified by how Trump amplified historic problems in U.S. foreign policy like excessive reliance on the military-industrial complex and who want Biden to be creative and interrogate established thinking.

The outgoing president’s initial foreign policy team seemed to hardly understand the system they were taking over, much less share a vision for it. Halie Soifer, a former State Department official under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush who has also advised Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and senators close to Biden, noted the difference between the team in waiting and Trump’s relationship with his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

“They met for the first time in the interview. It’s just such an incredible contrast: Those two men did not know each other. ... Rex Tillerson probably still doesn’t know what Donald Trump’s worldview is,” said Soifer, now the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “With Biden and Blinken, they’re almost family at this point. They are incredibly close. And similar things could be said about Jake Sullivan.”

A Team Of Allies
Obama became president after less than four years as a senator, which had been his first position that required work on foreign policy. He gathered national security advisers fast and had a deep bench of Democratic talent to choose from, but the figures he elevated were primarily associated with others in the party ― like his primary rival Hillary Clinton, who became his first secretary of state, or John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee before Obama and his top diplomat in his second term.

As Obama confronted crises abroad, the feeling that there were different, sometimes competing centers of power at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and elsewhere never fully abated. The question of who best represented the president or who could swing his views was frequently debated both publicly and privately.

Under Trump, who saw diplomacy as a question of how nicely foreigners treated him and was even less familiar with the world of national security experts, the fractures among important agencies working on global affairs became even starker. Trump’s penchant for sudden hires and fires based on a dizzying mix of personal and ideological reasons exacerbated the sense that no one really knew who was in charge or what the U.S. was trying to do.


Biden’s Washington will operate very differently.

At Foggy Bottom, for instance, Blinken will have a clear mandate. “There is no doubt not only that he has the ear of the president but that he has been a part of shaping Biden’s worldview and policies. He just intuitively knows where Biden stands on every issue that matters,” Soifer said.

Former officials expect coherence and team spirit to grow even stronger between Biden and his top advisers after having secured such a hard-won election victory.

John Brennan, a former CIA director, believes that will be the case for chief intelligence official-to-be Haines, who, like Blinken, previously worked with Biden in the Senate. “She enjoys the complete trust and confidence of Joe Biden, who will look to Avril to restore integrity and honesty at the helm of the intelligence community,” Brennan said in a statement.

And international observers welcome the sense of predictability and competence that many believe has been missing for four years.

Biden’s named and likely choices “are experienced, well-informed and with views that are close, if not identical, to the views of the president,” former Israeli diplomat Gadi Baltiansky told the newspaper Ha’aretz.


Not Seeking The Spotlight
In talking about his administration, Trump frequently described people as appropriate for jobs and worth trusting because they were straight out of “central casting.”

The joke among Washington national security hands preparing for the new president is that while Trump gave posts to people who were recent college graduates and either looked the part or had the right ideological credentials, “with Biden, it’s like, you have five years’ experience and a Ph.D.? Maybe we can get you something as a scheduler,” one current official told HuffPost.

By avoiding high-profile political picks for critical foreign policy jobs ― in contrast to Obama and Trump ― Biden has made clear that his administration will prioritize skills and experience in handling global affairs. That affects what advice he gets on foreign policy, in particular lowering the danger of his counselors pushing plans chiefly for the sake of their own future careers, as figures like Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seem to have done. And it boosts the sense that his appointees are focusing on the national interest and Biden’s objectives without veering into politicking, not least because many of them are taking over the jobs that have always been their ultimate goals.

Veteran diplomat Thomas-Greenfield, who Biden plans to send to the U.N. to succeed GOP donor Kelly Craft and likely GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, is a prime example of the approach he seems to be taking.

“A lot of people might not even know her. ... Anyone who’s worked at the State Department for the last 35 years would know her,” Soifer said. “She is not political; she’s someone with a wide breadth of diplomatic experience who will be incredibly helpful in rebuilding our relationships.”

Biden’s approach could be the first step in reversing Trump’s yearslong assault on civil servants, which the defeated president has been ramping up in recent weeks.

“Whether or not you agree with them across the board, Biden is building a team of people who actually value government expertise & public service,” David Kaye, a University of California, Irvine, law professor who previously worked with the U.N., wrote on Twitter. “That actually is building back.”
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