Everything Is Great and Amazing

Sabin
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Sabin »

It’s a clear demonstration of incapacity if the President doesn’t understand that he cannot fire the Vice President.
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Okri
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Okri »

Greg wrote:
Sabin wrote:What if that is a trap to get Trump to try to fire Pence?

The President does not have the authority to fire the Vice President.
How does that happen?
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Sabin »

I know. That’s the point. He doesn’t know that.
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Greg
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Greg »

Sabin wrote:What if that is a trap to get Trump to try to fire Pence?

The President does not have the authority to fire the Vice President.
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Sabin »

Two theories come to mind:
1) this is a move by high-ranking Republicans to desperately try to re-instill hope and trust in party loyalists and hold onto a few seats.
2) everybody and their mother has heard the Pence conspiracy at this point (“Lodestar”). What if that is a trap to get Trump to try to fire Pence? At this point, he is firing people on Twitter. That would be enough to invoke the 25th Amendmen and swing enough votes.
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by flipp525 »

criddic3 wrote:Simultaneously frustrating yet brilliant in away, releasing this op-ed anonymously. On the one hand we yearn to know who it could be, but on the other one imagines President Trump dismissing this as a stunt by the NY Times -- "fake news" and so he might not even bother trying to figure out who in his administration wrote it. :)
Not bothering to figure it out? I highly doubt it. From the second that op-ed came out, I can assure you that the Trump White House began conducting its own “witch hunt.” Things are very interesting in D.C. right now. You can really feel it in the air.
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Big Magilla »

The oddsmakers are going for Pence and Sessions, but I think it's Minchin.

https://nypost.com/2018/09/05/bookies-p ... -official/
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by criddic3 »

Simultaneously frustrating yet brilliant in away, releasing this op-ed anonymously. On the one hand we yearn to know who it could be, but on the other one imagines President Trump dismissing this as a stunt by the NY Times -- "fake news" and so he might not even bother trying to figure out who in his administration wrote it. :)
"Because here’s the thing about life: There’s no accounting for what fate will deal you. Some days when you need a hand. There are other days when we’re called to lend a hand." -- President Joe Biden, 01/20/2021
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Big Magilla »

The Late-breaking Anonymous N.Y. Times Op-Ed (Sep 5, 2018)

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.
In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Mister Tee »

So...just another no-news day.
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Greg »

DeSantis has an ad where he helps his young daughter use building blocks to build a wall. Exactly where in Florida he expects a wall to be built, I do not know. Perhaps, he means to build a wall on the western Panhandle border and to keep out Alabamans. This would make sense if he plans to use the campaign slogan, "Keep Florida the only state in the South where people don't talk funny."
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Mister Tee »

I just saw Gillum interviewed on MSNBC, and he's REALLY impressive. Whatever edge personal dynamism gives to a candidate will be in his favor.
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Mister Tee »

It's going to be an experiment, down there in Florida. Party regulars had wanted Gwen Graham, because of her lineage (father was long-time Governor/Senator), perceived greater electability (a good many disillusioned moderate Republicans seemed ready to vote for her), and Gillum's proximity to a Tallahassee corruption investigation (whether it's a legitimate investigation or involves him directly is open to question). Gillum was more openly liberal, but he's not a fringe candidate -- he was a Hillary delegate two years ago, a career Democrat. By most accounts he's an impressive speaker.

Initial reaction from many I follow was uh-oh, a race blown...but, upon fuller reflection: 1) the GOP nominee DeSantis is a full-on MAGA asshole, the far weaker GOP option (had Adam Putnam won the Republican nomination, he'd be solidly favored) -- a notion instantly underlined this morning by his "monkey" quote; 2) David Jolly, former GOP rep and Never-Trumper, surprised me last night by saying GOPers in the state he knows think Gillum's win will drive much higher African-American turnout throughout the state -- so, even if he falls short in his race, he could help elect Dems in state and local elections, as well as boost Bill Nelson in his race against Rick Scott; and 3) it's undeniable that midde-of-the-road Dems have been failing short in recent Florida state elections -- Nelson is their only winner in the past decade or two -- so why not see how this more risky approach works out? The seeming blue wave -- aided in Florida by the Parkland students -- could be enough to pull Gillum through.
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Big Magilla »

Congratulations, Greg, and good luck in the general election. This will be an interesting one to watch.
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Re: Everything Is Great and Amazing

Post by Greg »

Our Revolution, the group I am in that is an outgrowth of the Sanders Presidential campaign, just had a big victory. Andrew Gillum, a candidate we endorsed, has just won the Democratic nomination for Florida Governor!
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