She served for 27 years, and is highly respected.
If some colossal dick just fired YOUR boss, how energetic and enthusiastic would YOU be about doing efficient and productive work for the new guy?
Take a breath. Keep your rage. It's going to be needed in six months.
Remember, we are only a week into this thing. Pace yourself.
Oh, never mind then. Thanks for the filler. In some mini-debate on NPR between a Rep. campaign worker (I missed what their role was, but knowing NPR it was someone in-the-know) and a college law professor (for the left), the argument on the right was that Bannon is likely making such rash moves to purposely rile up Americans with intent to get them more involved with politics. As if to imply Americans hadn't paid attention to politics in the past like they should. If said intention is true, then mission accomplished. If otherwise, then we are where we are for just cause.
"Ms. Yates’s letter transforms the confirmation of Mr. Trump’s attorney general nominee, Mr. Sessions, into a referendum on the immigration order. Action in the Senate could come as early as Tuesday."
Not sure how much merit there is in crossing fingers anymore, but here's hoping this somehow keeps Sessions out. In the meantime, if anyone here happens to live in Iowa, Utah, South Carolina, Texas, Nebraska, Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina, or Louisiana, please do this.
I live in NC, and Thom Tillis's and Richard Burr's offices both recognize me by caller ID and can tell me what I was planning to say before I say it at this point. Thus I called, again, knowing perfectly well it will do no good.
It's worth calling your Republican senator, but only because it's not much effort and you get to annoy the kind of subhuman that's willing to be a staffer for a Republican senator. If they don't know you, you might even manage to ruin their day. It's the little things.
Oh. And the fact that Trump's actions are indistinguishable from a moron's.
That's a pretty short shrift subtitle to a fairly interesting article. The real argument made is that the unilateral moves from a strong administration and the unilateral moves from a weak administration are both unilateral, but without knowing the health of the administration you don't know if they're acting from weakness or strength.
- "The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States. Ms. Yates is an Obama Administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration. It is time to get serious about protecting our country. Calling for tougher vetting for individuals travelling from seven dangerous places is not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country. Tonight President Trump relieved Ms. Yates of her duties and subsequently named Dana Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to serve as Acting Attorney General until Senator Jeff Sessions is finally confirmed by the Senate, where he is being wrongly held up by Democrat senators for strictly political reasons."
That reads like a Sarah Palin Facebook post, not an official statement from the White House. Yet it is the latter. So while unilateral actions do not allow you to judge the health of the administration, there are nonetheless indicators.
> Ms. Yates is an Obama Administration appointee who is weak
And was specifically asked to stay on by Trump.
> betrayed the Department of Justice
The oath she took was to uphold the Constitution. Her loyalty should not be to the DOJ or the POTUS. By characterizing this as a betrayal of an institution or administration completely ignores Constitutional fundamentals.
DT fires her for not obeying his whim; that is his prerogative. She was making a major statement with full understanding of the consequences and got what she wanted. She seems principled. The first major official to simply tell him to fuck off. DT seems (understandably) vindictive and unconcerned about the Constitution. Assuming he thought this through, that his his basic message.
I do not see that he had any alternative to immediately firing her. I also shows that he did not get buy in from his AG to the extent she went incredibly public with her displeasure. That is a weak administration. IMO
I am not sure if the completely foreseeable consequences of the EO were unanticipated or were intentional. Either scenario is really shitty.
- DT fires her for not obeying his whim ...
Three days before her replacement was to take office.
So yes, DT is being a petty tyrant by firing her. She did her job. She did it well. And he could have let it sit until the weekend, but our Chief Twitterer was unable to abstain from a childish tantrum.
In a REAL Presidential administration, the order would have been passed by the heads of the different offices to get their feedback and help them plan for implementation and execution of the order. Trump (cough, cough BANNON) ignored that process, went around the people he knew would nix the order, and just issued it anyway.
... to highly predictable results.
Did you mean to quote:
> I do not see that he had any alternative to immediately firing her.
Of course he did but that would be inconsistent with his persona of being knee-jerk impulsive, petty and vindictive. Despite the fact that came at the cost of giving her a badge of honor.
Driving circles in my mind trying to figure out what the hell is going on with this executive branch, mostly.
Maybe talk me into a straight line is more apt.
So check it.
Let's pretend the president is John McCain. There's blood in the water over some damn mass shooting or other and the money (because McCain loves the money) wants a muslim ban. The process goes something like this:
- Conservative think tank does push-polling on a muslim ban
- talking heads hit the sunday shows to talk about the necessity of a muslim ban
- left-wing outrage is parried as unpatriotic and harmful to the country and Good Strong Men say Brave Things to journalists
- President McCain addresses the nation about the need to "secure our borders"
- Democrats say impassioned, eloquent things about Muslims
- Muslims say impassioned, eloquent things about the freedom of religion and how great the United States is
- Congress argues about a resolution for weeks and/or months
- The ACLU, the NAACP, the ADL and everyone else goes on a media blitz to try and prevent this dark stain from besmirching the cloth of our great nation
- Congress votes along party lines and the resolution narrowly passes
- Liberal groups demand everyone call President McCain
- McCain signs it anyway
- Liberal groups immediately launch six challenges in court
- the ban maybe goes into effect 18 months later, maybe doesn't, depending on what squirrels there are to chase
Count how many groups there are. Count how many decision-makers have been enrolled. Count how much of the process happened where the people that can stop it either failed to fair and square or were convinced to go along to get along. Measure the sheer inertia of the process there. Then measure its momentum. That's a tough thing to get started. That's a tough thing to get stopped.
Compare and contrast:
Except I deliberately gave you the wrong link because that link goes for like eighteen months and ends in August 2016. no, no. The real timeline says shit like "approximately 10:18 PM" on it.
- Hamed Hosseini-Bay, an Iranian researcher at Tufts, reunites with family after a more than two hour delay at Boston Logan.
Again, celebrating, not denegrating: Here's a heartwarming picture of an Iranian college professor who was detained for two fucking hours by DHS.
What's going on is that either the Trump administration didn't think the free world would lose their shit over the entire legislative process being bypassed or didn't care. Either way, it demonstrates that they are not good at this.
Shit is wack in a general way.
Firing a democrat appointed acting attorney general who just majorly dissed you seems like one of the more lucid things Trump has done.
There will be no straight lines for a while, gird your loins for cognitive dissonance and frustration.
It's not so much the action as much as the official statement (assuming this isn't fabricated in any way).
https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/826255624610729985
The following quotes are my own emphasis:
- ...has betrayed the Department of Justice...
- ...weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.
- It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country.
- ...until Senator Jeff Sessions is finally confirmed by the Senate, where he is being wrongly held up by Democrat senators for strictly political reasons.
A democratic transition of government is happening. You know the kind that happens ever 4-8 years. One party's swamp people are being replaced by another's. All the sensational headlines and click baity bullshit is getting you freaked out. Stop reading WA-po and focus on something else for a while. Your life will be better that way. There is literally nothing you can do about the bs in Washington and luckily for you it probably won't afftect you one way or the other (except piss you off)
It's an unusually rancorous transition (historically so I believe) that is hollowing out a good deal if institutional understanding and skill. It's not business as usual.
And of course click bate and page views rule the media and a good deal of focus on what's really happening is lost to hysteria.
- Signal to noise ratio is poor
This, of course, has nothing to do with the administration branding the media "the real enemy" and choosing to communicate via tweetstorm.
Make no mistake: I'm on Donald Trump's mailing list. It's nothing but pleas for money:
- KB,
We’re so close to hitting our Party’s end-of-month goal.
All we need is $124,639 in the next 14 hours until we hit our January budget. So important!
Will you be the one that helps put us over, KB?
I'm on Trump's Facebook page. It's nothing but gripes, lies and shit the media has already been told:
- I will announce my pick for the United States Supreme Court tomorrow night at 8pm from the White House.
- The Democrats are delaying my cabinet picks for purely political reasons. They have nothing going but to obstruct. Now have an Obama A.G.
- When will the Democrats give us our Attorney General and rest of Cabinet! They should be ashamed of themselves! No wonder D.C. doesn't work!
I know you really, really, really want this to be an either or situation, but you chose the wrong horse. Hugo Chavez was a better communicator and a more effective politician.
- A democratic transition of government is happening.
Is it, though? 'cuz the ranking member of the National Security Council went on record as telling the press to shut the fuck up. I would argue that we're well beyond "sensational headlines and click baity bullshit."
That's a false equivalence. I agree that every administration does shady things, but (1) the current administration's are much worse from my value system, and (2) just because one side didn't get called on it like they should've doesn't mean we should give the other a free pass.
I've posted...3...WaPo articles in the past 500+ days, and have shared probably a proportionately larger amount considering my post/share ratio and typically don't read it much.
I appreciate your assumption given our differences in politics, though.
- You know the kind that happens ever 4-8 years.
Thanks for the reminder on this.
Actually the Wapo reference is because for some reason that shit finds itself into my news feed all the time. I've found myself reading something that seems crazy bad then googling it to find the original source is Wapo, doing more research and finding out that this is something that has historically happened during transition of power. I was thinking that might be happening to you as well and the situation seems worse than it is.
Also keep in mind that bush/Obama was essentially one 16 year president. That's a really long time so any transition is gonna seem chaotic in comparison.
I'd like to caveat this by saying that trump is doing some undesirable things with his first 100 days but the at least to me don't seem more than 1std deviation bad.
This is an ignorant and insane statement.
- Also keep in mind that bush/Obama was essentially one 16 year president.
Right. Because Obama's campaign manager put gay marriage bans on the ballots in 11 states in 2004 while Bush hailed same sex marriage in 2015. Obama launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Bush drew them down. Obama pushed for regime change in Cuba while under Bush, Jet Blue flew to Havana.
You can want your statements to be true? But you can't defend them.