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- Randall Flagg
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Re: US Politics Thread
Randall Flagg wrote:Notice anything familiar? Radical Obama appointees according to the right:
http://www.westernjournalism.com/exclus … n-history/
Sortof a moot point tho now since his cabinet selections seem to have all made it thru pretty much unscathed (Unless I'm forgetting some news stories early on). You can disagree with the stances & philosophies (Eric Holder, EPA) but they weren't a disaster of a choice.
Trumps picks, while they do deserve to earn their legacy, the book is unwritten.
Maybe I'm missing something.
I completely agree. I'm just trying to show some of the hysterics from Republicans in 2008.
Re: US Politics Thread
I completely agree. I'm just trying to show some of the hysterics from Republicans in 2008.
Gotcha. Yeah I do think it is part hysterics & hyperboles over every single micro decision. I do think Bannon was a egregious mistake and I think Trumps been informed of this, hence the silence lately. I also think his kids are going to start to become frowned upon. They've lived on easy street, but I think America's going to turn on them. Ivanka probably the most. She needs to shut down her stupid clothing & shoe lines with products made in sweatshops selling for $100+.
Re: US Politics Thread
So far since the election, Trump has been great. People really only bitch about Bannon but I don't know enough about him. But he has seemed presidential for the most part.
He's been great? It's just a few days since the election. He hasn't done much of anything other than meet Obama, tweet the usual crap, give a speech and talk to 60 minutes....he's been great!!!
Was it ok when Amy Schumer called Latino men rapist?
If I didn't know any better I'd think you were an accountant. You're always trying balance both sides of the ledger.
Schumer is a comedian...Trump is the President elect.
I'm staying out of the discussion, but it is curious how focused some of you are on racism. Carry on with whatever pseudo-intellectual bs you want to keep spewing.
Yes, indeed I am the problem here...
You should stay out of it, since you don't offer anything substantial at all.
You're the most insecure drip I've met online in ages...just miserable.
The difference between people who really are smart and you, is that they don't spend all day telling everybody how smart they are.
I mean...when even Glenn Beck is acknowledging white supremacist tendencies in Trumps advisory staff...then what else is there to deny?
They'll just call Beck a "cuck" now...these Alt Right weirdos with underdeveloped vernacular.
Re: US Politics Thread
The transition team has broken down.
And ironically, Pence is having his own email issues.
Looks like they are woefully prepared. Not a good start.
***
WASHINGTON ? Donald Trump’s transition team is nearing a state of stasis, causing concern among both Democrats and Republicans in Washington that his White House will be woefully ill-prepared once he is inaugurated.
The primary cause, according to multiple sources, is the revamped leadership structure at Trump’s transition offices ? the demotion of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie from the top post and his replacement with Vice President-elect Mike Pence.
On Tuesday morning, for example, the Obama administration alerted the press that it had not yet received a memorandum of understanding signed by Pence, which would legally allow the old and new administrations to begin discussions on how to hand off critical government functions. That document still hadn’t arrived by 4:30 p.m., and only later in the evening did a White House official confirm it had been received. The official noted that the language signed by Pence was identical to a memo signed by Christie, making the holdup all the more peculiar.
The disarray has left agencies virtually frozen, unable to communicate with the people tasked with replacing them and their staff. Trump transition team officials were a no-show at the Pentagon, the Washington Examiner reported. Same goes for the Department of Energy, responsible for keeping the nation’s nuclear weapons safe, where officials had expected members of the Trump transition team on Monday. Ditto for the Department of Transportation. Over at the Justice Department, officials also are still waiting to hear from the Trump team.
“The Department began planning for this transition well before the election and we are fully prepared to assist the incoming transition team,” Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle said in a statement. “As the President has said, we are committed to a smooth and successful transition, including the seamless continuation of the department’s essential law enforcement and national security functions which are performed each and every day by its career staff.”
The transition dysfunction extends beyond failure to promptly execute a memorandum of understanding. According to several sources close to the Trump transition team and inside the Obama administration, the president elect and his staff have had difficulty finding able-minded Republicans willing to take on critical posts. One Democratic source, who like others would only discuss sensitive talks on condition of anonymity, said transition officials had been informally asking Obama political appointees to recommend Republicans to take over their jobs.
Other administration officials said conversations had not gotten to that point of desperation quite yet. But they acknowledged the pace of getting people in line for critical posts was moving painfully slowly.
The problem is twofold: Trump and his staff are not creatures of the establishment and are naturally skeptical of those who are. At the same time, many Republican lawyers and government officials who would have jumped at the opportunity to work in a GOP administration are balking at employment under Trump and his cabinet picks.
According to one Trump insider, this is particularly true for potential national security and intelligence officials.
“One issue is [Retired Lt. Gen.] Michael Flynn,” said the insider. Flynn, vice chair of the Trump transition, is reportedly in line for a top national security post in the new administration. “It’s a major problem. No one wants to work for him or around him because of the time he was running the DIA,” or Defense Intelligence Agency.
Eliot Cohen, a longtime neoconservative voice, tweeted a window into the disorder, recounting his talks with transition officials.
The internal rivalries inside Trump’s transition have not helped matters. The promotion of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff was supposed to set the tone for the rest of the administration. But it came with Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon as chief strategist, a move that delighted the ardent, anti-establishment wing of the party, but has given others pause because of his history peddling anti-Semitism and white nationalism.
Priebus, according to sources, is also skittish on the possibility of former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski replacing him at the RNC, worried that he may undo a lot of the work from the past six years.
Perhaps nothing illustrates the warring fiefdoms roiling the Trump transition effort better than the demotion of Christie. According to the Trump insider, the president elect and his team soured on Christie after he “abandoned Trump,” refusing to do media appearances after videotape of Trump bragging about sexual assault surfaced and skipping surrogate duties during the presidential debates.
When Christie’s top aides were indicted in the Bridgegate scandal, Trump decided to cut him loose, along with the officials he had brought along to help with the transition. One of those officials, former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), left the transition team on Monday morning.
This article has been updated to note White House receipt of the memorandum of understanding.
Re: US Politics Thread
^^ This is going to be ugly/hysterical.
Anyone think they promoted Christie just to fire and humiliate him?
What does all this mean? Now that Trump doesn't have anyone to shine the spotlight on and disparage....he can't seem to step into it.
I don't know how to interpret this because I have nothing to compare it to...
Re: US Politics Thread
^^ This is going to be ugly/hysterical.
Anyone think they promoted Christie just to fire and humiliate him?
Christie was already demoted to Beta male during the primary and caught a lot of shit for teaming up with Trump if you recall. To be relieved of his (short lived) duty already must be a little humiliating.
Re: US Politics Thread
Because Christie brought in the lobbyists, according to this:
Pence removing lobbyists from Trump transition team
Lobbyists are being purged from official roles in President-elect Donald Trump's transition team, sources told Fox News late Tuesday.
The move to get rid of lobbyists in key roles was one of the first decisions made by Vice President-elect Mike Pence in his role overseeing the construction of a Trump administration.
One source said the decision to remove the lobbyists "makes good on [Trump's] vision of how he wants his government constructed."
Tuesday evening, Pence formally signed a memorandum of understanding putting him in charge of the transition team. A similar document had been signed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who spent months running transition operations before his demotion last week.
The switch slowed Trump's ability to coordinate the transfer of power with the Obama administration. White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine told the Associated Press the administration was waiting on more documents required by law before agencies could begin sharing information with the transition team.
Pence ignored questions from reporters Tuesday, both as he entered Trump Tower with a thick binder tucked under his arm, and as he left six hours later.
A person familiar with the transition efforts told AP different factions in Trump's team "are fighting for power."
"That organization right now is not designed to work," according to the person close to the efforts, who like others involved in the transition, insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the internal process.
The group organized by Christie had featured a litany of lobbyists, former bureaucrats, academics and corporate lawyers. That caused consternation from Trump, who won cheers on the campaign trail for his repeated promises to "drain the swamp" in Washington.
It had also drawn the attention of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who repeatedly attacked Trump during the campaign on behalf of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. On Tuesday, Warren called on Trump to replace more than 20 members of his transition team with ties to Wall Street firms and other corporations.
"If you refuse," Warren wrote, "I will oppose you, every step of the way, for the next four years. I will champion the millions of Americans you will fail to protect. I will track your every move, and I will remind Americans, every day, of the actions you take that fail them."
Among those who departed Trump's transition team Tuesday was former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Christie recruit and a respected Republican voice on national security issues. The Wall Street Journal reported that Frank Gaffney, a former defense official in the Reagan administration, had been brought in to assist on national security issues, along with Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and former Rep. Pete Hoekstra.
Former GOP national security official Eliot Cohen blasted Trump's team on Twitter, calling them "angry, arrogant." Cohen opposed Trump during the campaign, but in recent days, he said those who feel duty-bound to work in a Trump administration should do so. But he said Tuesday that after an exchange with Trump's team, he had "changed my recommendation."
Trump's transition team was also reviewing secretary of state candidate Rudy Giuliani's paid consulting work for foreign governments, which could delay a nomination or bump Giuliani to a different position, according to a person briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly about it.
Giuliani founded his own firm, Giuliani Partners, in 2001, and helped businesses on behalf of foreign governments, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. He also advised TransCanada, which sought to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, and helped the maker of the painkiller drug OxyContin settle a dispute with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Businessman Carl Icahn disclosed on Twitter, based on conversations with the president-elect, that Trump was considering Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker, and Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor, to lead the Treasury and Commerce departments.
Trump himself broke with protocol Tuesday night by leaving Trump Tower without his press contingent. The transition team had told reporters and photographers there would be no movement by the president-elect for the rest of the day and night, but less than two hours later a presidential-style motorcade rolled out of the building, suggesting that Trump was on the move and leaving reporters scrambling.
Trump turned up at Club 21, a midtown Manhattan restaurant where he was having dinner with his family. Reporters were not allowed inside, and Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks asked that they respect that he was having an evening out with his family.
A short time later a tweet appeared on Trump's account: "Very organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many other positions. I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!"
Re: US Politics Thread
Trump bringing people together. Give this man the peace prize. 
Edgy over rise of Trump, Jews and Muslims ramp up alliances
JTA — For years, whenever Jews and Muslims engaged in dialogue and activism together, it usually concerned — or foundered — on one issue: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
With Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency, that appears to be changing. Regardless of what’s happening across the ocean, Jews and Muslims in the United States are joining together to fight for shared domestic concerns.
“It is a perhaps growing recognition that [the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] cannot define how American Jews and American Muslims relate to one another,” said Rabbi David Fox Sandmel, the Anti-Defamation League’s director of interreligious engagement. “The shared concerns we have about prejudice, about bias, about threats of violence, about disenfranchisement — these are the kinds of things that can bring us together.”
On Monday, the American Jewish Committee and the Islamic Society of North America launched the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, a group of religious and business leaders from both communities who will help draft domestic policy legislation and advocate on issues of shared concern.
The ADL is planning to increase its efforts to provide support for legal and legislative efforts in the fight against anti-Muslim bigotry.
And the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative, which educates young Muslim leaders about Judaism and Israel, held a retreat over the weekend titled “Living in Trump’s America: Muslim Vulnerability and Jewish Echoes.”
“What’s happened as a result of the poisonous atmosphere that Trump has created is that American Muslims are desperate for allies,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, the Muslim Leadership Initiative’s co-director. “And the argument that MLI has made to the Muslim community — which is that the Jews are, at least in theory, natural allies for embattled Muslims — now has become compelling.”
Both Jewish and Muslim groups have expressed worry about Trump’s rhetoric, and his supporters’ actions, over the course of the presidential campaign. Muslims have protested Trump’s 2015 call for a ban on Muslim immigration to the United States, as well as his insinuations that Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attacks and have withheld information from law enforcement about terrorism. Anti-Muslim attacks rose during his campaign, and a string of attacks has followed his election.
And while Trump has not explicitly targeted Jews, Jewish groups raised alarm over his endorsements by white nationalists and online attacks on Jews by his supporters, along with his remarks late in the campaign that echoed anti-Semitic tropes. Jewish groups have protested his naming as his chief strategist Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of a website, Breitbart News, that has been accused of incitement against Muslims and coddling anti-Semitism among its writers and readers. In addition, the ADL decried “a wave of anti-Semitic vandalism” following the election.
In the past, differing stances and sensitivities regarding Islamic extremism or Israeli military action drove groups apart. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he hopes Jewish groups will be more willing to work with his organization following Trump’s election. Jewish groups, including the ADL, have resisted working with CAIR due to its anti-Israel stances.
“It’s always been our position that we’re open to shared and cooperative action with the Jewish community,” Hooper said. “It doesn’t really take Donald Trump to spur that. I think it’s created an urgent need for mutual cooperation between all like-minded organizations and communities.”
The newly formed Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, which has 31 members from both communities, formed shortly before Trump was elected last week. The council will focus on protecting the right to wear religious head coverings, prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, recording hate crimes and advocating for immigrants and refugees, according to Robert Silverman, the American Jewish Committee’s director of Muslim-Jewish relations.
“It is a reaction to some of the bigotry and hate speech that came out of the campaign,” Silverman said. “We’re concerned about the public discourse in the whole country. We’re also concerned about messages that originated within the two communities. The Trump phenomenon is only going to make it come together more quickly.”
Jewish activists who have long championed Jewish-Muslim collaboration believe their community is finally coming around.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, co-founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which brings together leaders from the two religions, says he hopes Jews will come to the defense of Muslims if Trump follows through on his proposals to ban Muslims from entering the country, or to create a registry of American Muslims.
In June, Schneier’s foundation launched an initiative called Muslims are Speaking Out that highlights Muslim condemnations of extremism and aims to dispel misconceptions Americans have about the Muslim community.
“We have the obstacle of greater Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric,” Schneier said. “The opportunity is that this is another test for the American Jewish community. Will it step up to the plate, and will it perform as it has done in the past?”
Re: US Politics Thread
misterID wrote:misterID wrote:^^ This is going to be ugly/hysterical.
Anyone think they promoted Christie just to fire and humiliate him?
Christie was already demoted to Beta male during the primary and caught a lot of shit for teaming up with Trump if you recall. To be relieved of his (short lived) duty already must be a little humiliating.
Trumps son in law is his closest advisor, another reason there's a stink he's trying get him security clearance. Christie prosecuted his father, very publicly. He sent him to jail and had a press conference to totally humiliate him. Looks like pure retribution.
