2020 Presidential Election, The Day After

lizkat

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In case there was ever doubt about the dickery & pettiness of this former administration
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1325610462445260801/

Anyone still putting bets on that concession speech?

No but I'd bet that General Services staffer will get an offer she can't refuse from someone on the hill side of the current government pretty soon.

It's one thing for Trump not to give a formal concession speech, since with or without it, the electors meet on Dec 14 and the inauguration is Jan 20th... but it's a whole other thing for an incumbent administration to sit on the ability of the transition teams to get on together with the work of ensuring there will be an orderly continuation of federal governance when the Biden administration takes the reins.

The Republicans pull a lot of questionably legal moves, but blocking the start of this transfer power has way too much stink of Trump on it for the utility he has left to them now, which utiity is running into negative numbers.

C'mon: even all the living former presidents are on board w/ the declaration of Biden as president-elect. They can't rationally expect Biden to take the GSA to court and lose a suit to let normal processes of the transition commence already

McConnell is hyperpartisan but he's not crazy and I think Graham's blather is approaching a pivot-to-Biden moment any day now, can almost feel the Air Force JAG Corps' copy of the Constitution clawing its way back into Graham's brain. And we can disregard bubble-wrapped guys like Ted Cruz and Kevin McCarthy, they are palel shadows of Newt Gingrich on TV this weekend. All talk no teeth for the situation. Somehow the GSA is gonna get a boot in the behind to dislodge the go-ahead on the transition.
 

JayMysteri0

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https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1325615840071331840/

No but I'd bet that General Services staffer will get an offer she can't refuse from someone on the hill side of the current government pretty soon.

It's one thing for Trump not to give a formal concession speech, since with or without it, the electors meet on Dec 14 and the inauguration is Jan 20th... but it's a whole other thing for an incumbent administration to sit on the ability of the transition teams to get on together with the work of ensuring there will be an orderly continuation of federal governance when the Biden administration takes the reins.

The Republicans pull a lot of questionably legal moves, but blocking the start of this transfer power has way too much stink of Trump on it for the utility he has left to them now, which utiity is running into negative numbers.

C'mon: even all the living former presidents are on board w/ the declaration of Biden as president-elect. They can't rationally expect Biden to take the GSA to court and lose a suit to let normal processes of the transition commence already

McConnell is hyperpartisan but he's not crazy and I think Graham's blather is approaching a pivot-to-Biden moment any day now, can almost feel the Air Force JAG Corps' copy of the Constitution clawing its way back into Graham's brain. And we can disregard bubble-wrapped guys like Ted Cruz and Kevin McCarthy, they are palel shadows of Newt Gingrich on TV this weekend. All talk no teeth for the situation. Somehow the GSA is gonna get a boot in the behind to dislodge the go-ahead on the transition.

You may want to rethink that optimism on Graham

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1325543999357259776/

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1325611475474460678/
 

lizkat

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I've long lost hope to find even a vestigial spine in Lindsey Graham. It's a miracle he can stand up and walk.

With Graham it's going to be not spine --he lost whatever he had borrowed of that from his late mentor John McCain-- but what passes for pragmatism among Republicans who have managed to retain that much ability to think their way out of the mess they have made, and to thread their way in opposition status now versus the White House.

He has won his own Senate race and Trump's headed for the asterisked bits of history books. So unless Graham has reason to think he personally needs a pardon to escape consequence of having helped enable the most corrupt USA presidency in our history, there's not much need to maintain his now storied loyalty to his golfing buddy Donald.

Almost time to pivot to that country-over-party and nearly "royal we" language that Graham has often deployed in the past. "The Senate understands the pressing needs of the American people..." and for Graham to recall that Joe Biden was once a peer and colleague before he became, uh... just another US President?

Graham's malleability --evidenced by his 180º views in 2016 v 2020 regarding the confirmation of a SCOTUS justice in the waning days of an administration-- was even noted by his opponent Jaime Harrison during the recent campaign...

“I think people are waking up to the fact that this guy cares more about being popular in D.C. than he does in terms of addressing [voters’] needs.”​
South Carolina ended up like Kentucky and a lot of other states where the incumbency of a Senator (and the implied extra power of choice committee assignments) outran the huge sums raised and spent to draw attention to the flaws of those incumbents. But Harrison was right about Graham.

Lindsey Graham is a needy, insecure guy and he works best when he's working under a powerful mentor with a larger base than South Carolina can ever lend him. When that mentor was John McCain, Graham had some of McCain's crusty spine and common decency on tap. Since McCain's death, it's been Trump mentoring him out on the links. What a long way down, eh?

Without Trump as golfing buddy, Graham will be back to looking around at his peers and trying on the clothes of an elder himself in the US Senate and and as advisor to American government. It will only look shameless to anyone really paying attention when Graham decides his next stylin' mentor is either of the almost polar opposites Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden, and meanwhile we can expect Mitch himself to be rooting around trying to find his courtly public side for the new administration.

It's the way of Washington DC, necessarily used to an abrupt shifting of gears in a politically binary and often divided government. Sure a lot of the players do show some spine now and then. But they more often demo the spine of a cat or a snake than anything else may come to mind. I'm not sure we'd rather have it any other way in the end. I mean we do keep putting them back into office.

I'm hoping the likes of Graham and McConnell in a Biden administration can defuse some of the ugliness of the past four years together, not because they will agree on policy but because they realize we all danced too close to the edge of someplace we don't really want to go after all.

For openers I'm just looking forward to the end of Trump's gaslighting from the White House. We haven't had one moment of peace and quiet, fun, sincerity or true leadership from that place in four long years.
 

iMi

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Huntn

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The Election has been stolen!
The biggest projection of his pathetic life as he attempts to steal the election, minions follow suite. :oops:
 

rdrr

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There is legal avenues that the president is entitled to, but twitter and fox news aren't a legal platform. So why aren't we talking about acts of sedition?
 

Huntn

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Huntn

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From the Poor Lost Souls Dept, Trump, Graham, McConnell will be opportunistic PIECES OF SHITS until they are banished from public office, no strike that, until they change their ways and beg for forgiveness.

Word has it that Trump forces want to start a PAC in his name so they can continue to poison politics in the US.

As you know, I’m critical of religion, but this is the time the Christians would hope for divine judgement/justice. The irony is that many of them would be thinking Trump and his corrupt band of henchmen are the angels in this scenario. 😈
 

JayMysteri0

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From the Poor Lost Souls Dept, Trump, Graham, McConnell will be opportunistic PIECES OF SHITS until they are banished from public office, no strike that, until they change their ways and beg for forgiveness.

Word has it that Trump forces want to start a PAC in his name so they can continue to poison politics in the US.

As you know, I’m critical of religion, but this is the time the Christians would hope for divine judgement/justice. The irony is that many of them would be thinking Trump and his corrupt band of henchmen are the angels in this scenario. 😈
I would leave religion out of this. Religion often involves too much selectivity.

I read this on Facebook this morning and it really hammers home when religion is involved, as opposed to legitimate concern for your fellow countrymen.

From Christian pastor John Pavlovitz:
“Dear White Evangelicals,
I need to tell you something: People have had it with you.
They’re done.
They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why:
They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy.
For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity.
They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him.
And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was,
you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family,
you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities,
you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance,
you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy,
your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership,
your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him,
you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.
You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him.
And yet you give carte blanche to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles.
And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.
With him, you suddenly find religion.
With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution.
With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission.
With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart.
With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement.
With him, you see only Providence.
And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly.
They recognize the toxic source of your inconsistency.
They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities.
They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus.
They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself.
They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it.
They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.
And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition.
Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more.
You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness.
You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation.
You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness.
You’ve lost the plot.
And most of all you’ve lost your soul.
I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you.
But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.”
John Pavlovitz
.
 

Huntn

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I would leave religion out of this. Religion often involves too much selectivity.

I read this on Facebook this morning and it really hammers home when religion is involved, as opposed to legitimate concern for your fellow countrymen.
Please clarify:
I would leave religion out of this. Religion often involves too much selectivity.
 

JayMysteri0

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Please clarify:
I would leave religion out of this. Religion often involves too much selectivity.
I am the biggest fan of "separation of church & state".

As we've seen with many of the Evangelicals, church comes before state, if not state should be part of the church.

This country doesn't ban a group of people based on religion. Nor does it set conditions on one's sexuality.

Religion in the hands of some often requires selectivity in who it aids & respects. Country is not supposed to do that.
 

JayMysteri0

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This is becoming an even more serious case of denial than possibly imagined.

WASHINGTON – The White House budget office has instructed federal agencies to continue preparing the administration’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year, according to multiple administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of private conversations.

The White House budget proposal is typically issued in February, which would be at least two weeks after Trump is scheduled to depart the White House. He lost the Nov. 3 election to Joe Biden and Biden is set to be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021, though Trump has refused to accept the results.

The decision to proceed with President Donald Trump’s budget for the 2022 fiscal year has rankled and surprised several career staffers given Biden’s victory in the presidential election, as well as the fact that the incoming Biden administration is expected to submit its budget plan to Congress early next year.

The insistence on budget planning, even though Trump won’t be in office to offer a budget in February, is part of a recent pattern of behavior from White House officials and senior political appointees who have sought to reject election results.
Sooooo, now the approach is to just pretend 45 didn't lose? o_O
 

lizkat

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This is becoming an even more serious case of denial than possibly imagined.

Denial, or just pulling our chain.

Where the F is a responsible Republican. Are they just waiting for Trump to go "too far" -- a theoretical construction of a purpose of McConnell and Barr's meeting yesterday, about which they would not comment. But.. and then in that (inevitable) event, do what? I mean that feels like telling a five year old not to let the French bead burn under the broiler while Mommy and Daddy step out on the patio for a glass of wine before dinner.
 
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