USA elections 2020 - 2021

[alhoon]

https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/biden-...th-poroshenko/

This is probably worth its own thread, but regardless, it is an interesting read.

A few key things from this:
- It is not a smoking gun. No quid pro Quo. No immediate dirt there.
HOWEVER

- I am very disappointed Biden trashed the incoming administration to a foreign leader. Yes, you can be as salty as you want about it. Blow off steam to your wife and friends, not to a foreign leader that is not the most honest person in the world. Biden didn't realize it but he was pushing Poroshenko away with things like "the new guys don't know crap" and undermines his country's interests with things like "Like most Americans, the Trump administration didn't believe they would win".

- I am that Biden withheld information about Ukraine from Trump's transition team and that he told that to Poroshenko. Sure, sure, Flynn was already in the microscope as a possible Russian asset, but you don't have to admit that to a sleazy politician caught between your country's influence and Russian influence. Also, whether you like their choice or not, the American people voted for Trump. It is indecent to withhold information from the transition team because you don't trust them. It was not your choice.

- According to the article at least, Biden was responsible for Obama administrations handling of: China, Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine.
In short, every trainwreck that happened during the Obama era can be laid on Biden's feet. What a nice campaign slogan for Biden.
"Vote for us. Things are getting boring without ISIS or Russia annexing parts of countries at the outskirts of our sphere of influence."

Trump’s transition had no clearance. Only two people, by virtue of the election, had clearance. Trump and Pence. The rest had to pray they’d gone through a background check. And Trump wasn’t yet President to just waive it when he was conveniently in the room.

This is what happens when you don’t set up your transition team once you win the nomination.

Still, it is and contrary to your national interests to complain to a foreign leader about the new administration's inadequacies. Poroshenko was not his buddy, he was a politician from a foreign country. Telling him that Trump is doesn't help USA.

[Gaidin]

“I don’t like Biden cuz he said this” is the best you got? Down from “They didn’t brief Trump’s transition team” when in fact if you read the call like I did you’d have known about the lack of clearance and skipped straight to the “I don’t like Biden” whining.

Do better.

[Heathen Hammer]

I like how Sleepy Joes rants to another nation's leader with no regard to the damage it can cause internationally, but it is still somehow Trump's fault.

[alhoon]

“I don’t like Biden cuz he said this” is the best you got? Down from “They didn’t brief Trump’s transition team” when in fact if you read the call like I did you’d have known about the lack of clearance and skipped straight to the “I don’t like Biden” whining.

Do better.

I said much more in my post than that. For starters, I have put the "I don't like that Biden said this" in my post (as quoted above). I have also mentioned my surprise and disappointment that Biden was the top guy in 2009-2016 in:
Iraq (ISIS)
Ukraine (Russian annexation)
China (failure to contain Chinese aggression in China sea, failure get them pull the leash to NK and failure to deal with IP theft, capital flight and manufacturing jobs leaving for China)

At least, he is partially responsible for the death of OBL in 2011.

I like how Sleepy Joes rants to another nation's leader with no regard to the damage it can cause internationally, but it is still somehow Trump's fault.

Agreed.

[antaeus]

I'm fairly certain that the Iraq, China and Russia issues are tougher to manage than you make out. Given that none have been suitably 'fixed' or even 'controlled' in the near half decade since they were Biden's to manage. Certainly Obama and Biden were probably too fixated on consensus and using the carrot instead of the stick with regards to Russia and China. But I don't actually see how they could have done anything else, in particular towards Russia, without screwing with the global economic recovery.

Either way... regarding the call... Obama's team offered full transition support and it was largely rejected. Documentation was left unread. Patriotism aside, I'm not entirely convinced that Biden is out of place here.

[skh1]

Cringe… ing utter cringe.
(Incidentally, could the applause be any more tepid?)

[Gaidin]

I said much more in my post than that. For starters, I have put the "I don't like that Biden said this" in my post (as quoted above). I have also mentioned my surprise and disappointment that Biden was the top guy in 2009-2016 in:
Iraq (ISIS)
Ukraine (Russian annexation)
China (failure to contain Chinese aggression in China sea, failure get them pull the leash to NK and failure to deal with IP theft, capital flight and manufacturing jobs leaving for China)

Yea, You literally talked about how you don't like how Biden didn't brief Trump's transition team. And yet when you read the discussion it's because they didn't have clearance. Whenever you are briefed and trained about clearance and whenever something is classified there is one god damn rule. Something is classified because it could damage the nation. If it could be politically damaging to a person, or politically damaging to the nation, but not actually damaging to the nation it is not classified. Something that could damage a person but not the nation is not classified. Something that could embarrass a person but not damage the the nation is not classified.

And yet, we learned, back with Hillary, Snowden, and Manning, that diplomatic communications, are by default, classified. But for some reason this was leaked? Who made this decision? You want to drop this to the press instead of legitimately blowing the whistle? Please.

[Heathen Hammer]

Yea, You literally talked about how you don't like how Biden didn't brief Trump's transition team. And yet when you read the discussion it's because they didn't have clearance. Whenever you are briefed and trained about clearance and whenever something is classified there is one god damn rule. Something is classified because it could damage the nation. If it could be politically damaging to a person but not the nation it is not classified. Something that could damage a person but not the nation is not classified. Something that could embarrass a person but not damage the the nation is not classified.

And yet, we learned, back with Hillary, Snowden, and Manning, that diplomatic communications, are by default, classified. But for some reason this was leaked? Who made this decision? You want to drop this to the press instead of legitimately blowing the whistle? Please.

Remember how Cheney called Angela Merkel and ranted to her about how Obama will start WW3 in 2008?

[Gaidin]

Remember how Cheney called Angela Merkel and ranted to her about how Obama will start WW3 in 2008?

You have no sense of time. Or scale. Why is that getting leaked instead of getting handed to Johnson's shiny new subpoena panel to get published in an official report. In GOD DAMN OCTOBER?

[skh1]

No… No Sir, I have no absolutely idea what you mean. How, in your senescent insipidity, could you possibly make a Donald J. Trump- of all people, of all the people in the entire freaking world- a plausible, an actually reasonable, choice for the presidency of the United Sates of America in this, the (election) year of our Lord 2020?

Jeez!!! Freaking Jeez!!!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Coughdrop addict]

Fox News said Trump was 'ambushed' in a town hall where undecided American voters asked him basic questions

The Fox News host Laura Ingraham accused ABC News of ambushing President Donald Trump on Tuesday night after a town-hall event where voters asked him basic questions.
"The president loves mixing it up with everybody, but this is an ambush," Ingraham said.
Undecided voters in Pennsylvania asked Trump about several issues, including his decision to not pursue a national mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic, his take on the racial divide in the US, and his stance on insurance protections for people with preexisting conditions.
Trump was also asked why he downplayed the threat of COVID-19 to the public.

Trump is so used to softball questions from Fox and other propaganda outlets that he was floored by being asked real questions of the type any President might expect. Now Fox has to come and wipe the tears and snot off of his face and tell him he's a big strong man.

I predict there will be only one debate, during which Trump will storm out and them whine on Twitter about how the world is unfair to him.

[mishkin]

politest ambush ever

[alhoon]

You have no sense of time. Or scale. Why is that getting leaked instead of getting handed to Johnson's shiny new subpoena panel to get published in an official report. In GOD DAMN OCTOBER?

That Republicans are buttholes is nothing new. Or that Trump's team was unprepared.
What is new here is that Bidet was trash-talking the incoming administration to a foreign, corrupt, politician. I totally expected that kind of crap from Trump since he doesn't give a crap about propriety or how what he says may damage his country but not from Biden.

What is not new here but I didn't know is that Biden had Iraq/Afghanistan/China/Ukraine oversight and 3 of those 4 areas were a disaster.

And what is kinda new is that someone calls mid-September as October...

[Gaidin]

And what is kinda new is that someone calls mid-September as October...

Not what I said.

[Heathen Hammer]

You have no sense of time. Or scale. Why is that getting leaked instead of getting handed to Johnson's shiny new subpoena panel to get published in an official report. In GOD DAMN OCTOBER?

If Sleepy Joe didn't want that to leak in such politically inconvenient way he should have probably used his senile brain and realize that badmouthing your new administration to foreign nation in your capacity as an official of previous one is bad look.
However Biden didn't, either because he simply doesn't care about geopolitics (to the point where he'd sabotage his nation just to benefit himself) or he is too stupid for his position to begin with.

[alhoon]

...
In GOD DAMN OCTOBER?

Not what I said.

I am not the one that mentioned October. If you meant something different then you should have been clearer.

[Ludicus]

Trump announces commission to further 'patriotic education

Trump announced plans to sign a new executive order establishing a national commission to promote “patriotic education” in American schools... encouraging educators to "teach our children about the miracle of American history".
We embrace the vision of Martin Luther King... Trump said Thursday.

Really? Trump is an illiterate who doesn't read and processes information orally.
He is not alone...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Illiteracy is America's Secret Shame. Is There Hope for our ...

50% of Americans – “nearly half of the nation’s 191 million adult citizens are not proficient enough in English to write a letter” and have difficulty in “practical matters that people face every day.” They have difficulty with reading comprehension, filling out documents, understanding and summarizing facts in an article or writing a paragraph summarizing information. And our youth are in as much trouble, as almost all high school students in the United States do not graduate with a reading proficiency above a 5th-grade reading level. Combined, the studies show nearly 200 million Americans are illiterate or marginally illiterate, and the real number could be even higher

.

Trump never read Luther King's 1967 speech "Beyond Vietnam". Key excerpts,

“Peace and civil rights don’t mix,” they say... For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace...

... In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution...I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.

We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

... A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries...A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice...

These are revolutionary times.
All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries.

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.

[Gaidin]

And what is kinda new is that someone calls mid-September as October...

Not what I said. Would like what you're smoking to experience it.

I am not the one that mentioned October. If you meant something different then you should have been clearer.

It takes at least a few weeks for a congressional committee to run an investigation and put out a report. Hence, September vote for subpoenas means the possibility for October surprise.

Manage your timeline and do better.

[Heathen Hammer]

Trump is an illiterate who doesn't read and processes information orally.

He also drinks blood of non-white babies and turns into a Werewolf every fullmoon.

[antaeus]

He also drinks blood of non-white babies and turns into a Werewolf every fullmoon.

"I read! I'm the greatest reader. Many many books. I read the best books. I own book buildings..." leans off camera "Libraries. So many books. All of the greatest books. Didn't you see my college records. I was the best student. I did so much learning. More learning than anybody else. Old Joe Biden can't read. I've read sooo many more books than him"