Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

He really is that stupid.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Come on, man.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

The revolution will be supervised.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

In my day, never was longer.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / I Can Name One Department They’ll Fill With No Problem

I Can Name One Department They’ll Fill With No Problem

by | 304 Comments

This post is in: 

Deep in my heart of hearts, I hope Hillary Clinton is sitting at home in her house in Chappiqua, tying on nightly gin drunks, and just laughing herself silly at all the economically anxious assholes who rogered themselves voting for this shit show:

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.

I bet they’ll have no problem filling Treasury, though because that is where the looting will take place. Justice will fill up, too, so they can’t be held accountable and can continue voter suppression in earnest.

Reader Interactions

304Comments

  1. 1.

    David Fud

    Aren’t they going to abolish all of those departments anyway? That might explain their lack of concern about the lack of continuity.

  5. 5.

    Hunter Gathers

    Pence won’t sign the paperwork because he’s afraid that the ‘economically distressed’ will learn that he can read, which would make him a fag and therefore subject to ‘conversion therapy’.

  7. 7.

    SiubhanDuinne

    As low as my expectations, and as high as my contempt, for the incoming administration, I still find myself completely stunned at the utter incompetence being reported/leaked.

    I’m not sure if I should laugh uproariously or sink into even greater despond.

  9. 9.

    khead

    I promised cat pics. Have some Bootsy.

    Also, the next a$$hole you are going to hear about from WV is a guy named Britt Beasley. Just remember that you heard it here first.

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @chopper:

    is there a department of epic fail?

    Yes, didn’t you get the memo? It was established exactly a week ago today, right about now.

  11. 11.

    Adam L Silverman

    @David Fud: Part of it is the usual group of Republicans/conservatives who would normally be clamoring for the 4,000 positions that are filled by Presidential political appointment are staying away. And being warned away by those that were willing to consider coming on board. This is married to no one involved with this ever having done this before. The first thing that usually happens is that one of the senior political hands and one of the senior legal hands, or their proteges if the former aren’t available, from the last transition team of that same party are brought on board to advise and assist. That is not the case here. Instead, based on reporting, you have LTG (ret) Flynn, Steve Bannon, and Jared Kushner all being the real players, each with different litmus and loyalty tests, with Governor Pence who has refused to step down as Governor of Indiana until his term officially ends on 9 January, officially in charge.

  12. 12.

    Winnief

    Given all the talk about Trump prosecuting Hillary, I think she and possibly Obama too, might want to consider leaving the U.S and heading to France or Greece someplace to enjoy a much deserved retirement. They tried their best to save us and failed-now let them rest.

  14. 14.

    Shana

    @SiubhanDuinne: My thoughts exactly. Just got back from an evening visiting with a friend whose father just died and while we all gave her our condolences and listened as she spoke about her dad, who was part of the D Day invasion, we kept coming back to the horror show that will be the Trump administration. Someone would mention something like “John Bolton” and we’d just shake our heads contemplating the insanity.

  15. 15.

    Ajabu

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    I’m there with you. I can’t even begin to find humor in what’s going down. I’ve just on a news moratorium (other than what I read here) and I feel better to not acknowledge the existence of that creature, his ludicrous family or his forthcoming :administration.

  20. 20.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    Well,Bush had Regents University grads. Can’t Trump use Trump University grads for all these positions? They have the best grads I tell ya.

  21. 21.

    David Fud

    @schrodinger’s cat: Gallows humor seems appropriate, but I understand the sentiment. We don’t have control of their process, though, so not sure how reacting with stress is going to change or help anything.

  25. 25.

    catclub

    @Mike in dc: Too mainstream, not in tight enough with Trump. Steve Mnuchin is the guy.

    Likewise Giuliani has been a personal friend of Trump for decades.

  26. 26.

    smintheus

    @SiubhanDuinne: Sounds like Julius Caesar’s maneuvering in 50 B.C., trying not to leave a gap between giving up one office and taking on another to prevent any unwelcome law suits.

  27. 27.

    WarMunchkin

    I’ve been reading these leaks and thinking: “this can’t be real”. Which, I suppose, is how we got Trump in the first place. Do other government departments have to deal with staffing changes? Or just the WH staff? Can we get by without a cabinet or white house staff for most day-to-day operations? Serious question.

  30. 30.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SiubhanDuinne: No. No one is sure why he is doing this. No one is sure why he has gone back to Indiana rather than being with the rest of the transition he’s now in charge of. And no one is sure why he didn’t sign the government NDA he needs to sign now that he’s in charge, not Christie.

  32. 32.

    opiejeanne

    @SP: I made a deck of cards for a game like Old Maid or Authors, using old family photos and how they are related to us. I gave them to family members for Christmas that year; I called it Mixed Nuts.
    I don’t remember which site I used but there were several available.

  33. 33.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    @Mike in dc: I read a blurb saying Dimon didn’t want a position but that he would advise from outside the administration. He wants plausible deniability in this shitshow

  38. 38.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Shana:

    My condolences to your friend. That D-Day generation is almost gone.

    I have to think that my late family, as conservapublican as they were, would have been horrified to see Trump and his awful administration and worse family move into positions of power.

  39. 39.

    David Fud

    @Adam L Silverman: Accurate and interesting.

    We usually wish discord on our enemies, so I would suppose that this is perfectly wonderful in a political sense. I can’t help but think that this sort of rooting for injuries is part of the political problem we have in the US, but not sure what else to do since the Republicans seem determined to use every lever at their disposal to ensure the disenfranchisement of the majority.

    I wonder what the boundary conditions are for buyer remorse to actually set in. For instance, my father-in-law, a staunch anti-HRC Republican, was cursing GWB in his final days as more or less a traitor and idiot. I don’t know what it would take to get him to say that this time around, and it would be highly entertaining to speculate endlessly about it.

  40. 40.

    Corner Stone

    Hallie Jackson repeatedly asking Trump about “no heads up for the press President Elect? No heads up for the press?”
    Makes me fucking sick. Fuck you, Hallie Jackson.

  41. 41.

    RareSanity

    They are doing exactly what Republicans always do…make Democrats clean up the mess, complain about their cleaning techniques, point to how messy things are, then present themselves as the only ones that can really clean this up.

    Rinse and repeat.

    The Trump administration is completely unprepared for the task ahead of them, so they basically go run and hide. In the back of their minds, they know that the Democrats currently in all those positions, aren’t just going to leave, knowing that it will be a certain disaster. So they’ll stay to keep the executive branch from imploding, meanwhile Trump will be out grandstanding somewhere while the “transition team” takes its own sweet time doing its job.

    The dual curse of conscious and competence…two things that the Trump “team” will never be mistaken for having.

  44. 44.

    Jeffro

    I’m going to let this spin out for the rest of the week and then ask my right-leaning friends and relatives if they’re feeling pretty good about now. And then I’m going to ask them to contemplate four years of this crap, and lemme know if it was worth it, keeping History’s Greatest Monster from…just running things like normal.

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    @catclub: Giuliani refused to investigate Trump’s laundering money for the mob because Trump was holding fundraisers and bundling funding for his mayoral run:
    http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/wayne-barrett-donald-trump-rudy-giuliani-peas-pod-article-1.2776357

    Rudy and Donald first got together in the late 1980s shortly before Donald became a co-chair of Giuliani’s first fundraiser for his 1989 mayoral campaign, sitting on the Waldorf dais and steering $41,000 to the campaign. A year earlier, Tony Lombardi, the federal agent closest to then-U.S. Attorney Giuliani, opened a probe of Trump’s role in the suspect sale of two Trump Tower apartments to Robert Hopkins, the mob-connected head of the city’s largest gambling ring.

    Trump attended the closing himself and Hopkins arrived with a briefcase loaded with up to $200,000 in cash, a deposit the soon-to-felon counted at the table. Despite Hopkins’ wholesale lack of verifiable income or assets, he got a loan from a Jersey bank that did business with Trump’s casino. A Trump limo delivered the cash to the bank.

    The government subsequently nailed Hopkins’ mortgage broker, Frank LaMagra, on an unrelated charge and he offered to give up Donald, claiming Trump “participated” in the money-laundering — and volunteering to wear a wire on him.

    Instead, Lombardi, who discussed the case with Giuliani personally (and with me for a 1993 Village Voice piece called “The Case of the Missing Case”), went straight to Donald for two hour-long interviews with him. Within weeks of the interviews, Donald announced he’d raise $2 million in a half hour if Rudy ran for mayor. Lamagra got no deal and was convicted, as was his mob associate, Louis (Louie HaHa) Attanasio, who was later also nailed for seven underworld murders. Hopkins was convicted of running his gambling operation partly out of the Trump Tower apartment, where he was arrested.

    Lombardi — who expected a top appointment in a Giuliani mayoralty, conducted several other probes directly tied to Giuliani political opponents, and testified later that “every day I came to work I went to Mr. Giuliani to seek out what duties I needed to perform” — closed the Trump investigation without even giving it a case number. That meant that New Jersey gaming authorities would never know it existed.

  51. 51.

    Jeffro

    @David Fud:

    I wonder what the boundary conditions are for buyer remorse to actually set in. For instance, my father-in-law, a staunch anti-HRC Republican, was cursing GWB in his final days as more or less a traitor and idiot. I don’t know what it would take to get him to say that this time around, and it would be highly entertaining to speculate endlessly about it.

    That’s funny – I sent my dad the National Review’s “Bannon’s not a racist per se, just a neo Nazi that we need to watch very carefully” article today, and pointed out that this is Trump’s top adviser.

    His response: “me and my old white guy book club are tired of race card being played all the time”

    My response: “I said NEO-NAZI, not racist…quit changing the subject”

    His response:

  52. 52.

    Percysowner

    @schrodinger’s cat: Yes. What I really hope Hillary does is to take a nice long vacation to a country that likes her and that will tell the U.S. to go jump when Trump decides to try her for treason. Frankly, a trip abroad for the Obama family might not be a bad idea either. It won’t happen because both Clinton and Obama are true patriots who will try to help save this country from itself.

  53. 53.

    Aleta

    @SiubhanDuinne: Hate seems to be the only qualification for selection. Then I expect that such an administration will need to be fueled by frequent purges and promotional events to keep whipping up the waves.

  55. 55.

    catclub

    @David Fud:

    I don’t know what it would take to get him to say that this time around, and it would be highly entertaining to speculate endlessly about it.

    The problem is it involves helpless people dying – such as in Katrina, or the case Pierce will bring up, people needlessly thrown off SS Disability rolls – and then dying. Children in the case he has covered.
    The reason the Democrats want the system to work is that there are (relatively) helpless people involved.

  57. 57.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: it’s almost like there are a lot of connections or something between Russia and Trump’s closest advisers. Maybe that’s just me, though. Trump must be one heck of an American (and a genius! but of course, because he’s rich) to take their campaign advice while carefully deflecting any sly pro-Russia whispering from these folks.

  59. 59.

    Adam L Silverman

    @WarMunchkin: There are 4,000 political appointments that every administration has to make. Everyone knows about one to two dozen of them – the cabinet positions, the top line White House jobs that don’t require Senatorial confirmation. The rest are all the lower end of the upper management spectrum. The people that actually have to interface with the general officers/flag officers, senior executives, senior officers (non flag rank), senior civil servants that are the career people that run every agency.

    The list of these positions is called The Plum Book as it has a maroon cover in the printed version:
    https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-PLUMBOOK-2012/pdf/GPO-PLUMBOOK-2012.pdf

  60. 60.

    ArchTeryx

    In the end, I don’t worry about Hillary Clinton or Obama for that matter. They’re wealthy, powerful people. They can take care of themselves. It may be selfish of me, but I worry about us proles who are about to have our entire health care safety net stripped away by our revanchist Congress, not least of which is myself. Or rounded up and put in camps. Or worse.

    That’s the doomer rabbit hole I save my energy for, not what happens to the wealthy and powerful. Obama and Hillary were on the side of light, but it was the swells that did this to us, and they can reap the whirlwind.

  61. 61.

    WaterGirl

    Is there a hashtag yet for “he’s hiring all the best people”?

    Let’s make a total fucking mockery of him.

  63. 63.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Omnes Omnibus: I agree. I was not referring to you at all. SFAW and others. We basically have 2 months of relative normalcy to prepare for what’s coming our way. Are we going to waste it in despondency or being ha-ha snarky. This shit is not funny. Lives are on the line.

  64. 64.

    David Fud

    @Jeffro: Perfect. I love that backhanded smack. Would prefer not to have this asshole in high office to make them re-evaluate, but silver linings and all that…

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Peale: And that includes the GOP in the Senate holding up some key appointments. Like BATF and DHS and several others.

  67. 67.

    Kay

    Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 37m37 minutes ago
    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!

    Wizard of Oz

  70. 70.

    RareSanity

    @Peale:

    I don’t know. If I were in some critical position that the Trump team couldn’t be bothered to staff, I don’t think that I, in good conscious, could just go “Later losers!”

    But I completely understand if they do…you’re right, not their problem.

  72. 72.

    Kay

    ex-GWB nat-sec adviser: “POTUS-elect surrounding himself w/mediocrities. chief qualification unquestioning loyalty”

    Now there’s a shocker.

  74. 74.

    MomSense

    Liz Warren said something like people didn’t vote for him so he could bring a white supremacist into the White House (Bannon). Funny cuz I’m thinking that’s exactly what they were voting for.

  77. 77.

    David Fud

    @Kay: Group think will be the inevitable outcome there. Most radical of solutions will be the one selected due to loudest voice in the room issue. Making me queasy to apply group theory to new executive branch.

  78. 78.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: These conflicts are going to make the Senate confirmations dicey. Senator Paul, bless his heart, has already put his foot down on Giuliani and Bolton. McCain, who is consistently and appropriately, suspicious of Putin – even if he occasionally tips into monomania on it – has also started laying down markers. And McCain won’t be running again, so he’s now free to go all mavericky again. It’ll be interesting to see what Senator Sasse from Nebraska and Senator Flake from Arizona who have been staunchly anti-Trump do. But I think a lot of these folks are going to have trouble in their confirmations, their clearance reviews, and/or both.

  81. 81.

    oz29

    @khead: Britt Beasley was a douchebag sheriff’s deputy in Mercer County when I lived there in the mid-90s (I dated another deputy’s daughter.) I can’t imagine additional years have made him any less of an asshole.

  84. 84.

    Mnemosyne

    @David Fud:

    Most radical of solutions will be the one selected due to loudest voice in the room issue.

    I don’t want to freak you out even more, but this is exactly what that original Nazi guy did. He encouraged his staff to come up with the most outrageous ideas possible and compete to present them to him. We all know what the final result was.

  85. 85.

    misterpuff

    @Kay: “And I will announce those finalists in a very special episode of G-Men Apprentice”
    Trump; “You’re Hired”
    Watch, it could be you! Sponsored by Publisher’s Clearinghouse Prize Patrol.

  88. 88.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @debbie: Perfect. BTW, I once saw a possum crossing 3rd St at the corner of State St. in Columbus. Middle of the afternoon on a Sunday. Heading from what was the Capitol Square Hyatt to the Presbyterian church.

  89. 89.

    RareSanity

    @amk:

    Apparently, Paul Ryan does not understand that Trump must have his revenge for Ryan’s lack of loyalty during the campaign. If Ryan thinks he’s about to set the agenda on anything, he’s clearly sniffing glue.

  90. 90.

    Kay

    Jason Kander ‏@JasonKander 7h7 hours ago
    My run in with possible AG nominee Kris Kobach

    Some wealthy person better fund a national voting rights group, pronto. This is gonna be bad.

  93. 93.

    Mnemosyne

    @RareSanity:

    The people with the most difficult decision IMO are the lawyers in the civil rights division of the DOJ, particularly the voting rights department. Do you hunker down and try to stay and mitigate the damage, knowing that you will be required to do some really horrible shit? Or leave, knowing that the person they replace you with will do even worse shit without even blinking?

  94. 94.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Percysowner: Frankly, a trip abroad for the Obama family might not be a bad idea either. It won’t happen because both Clinton and Obama are true patriots who will try to help save this country from itself.

    I expect so, and anyway Sasha’s probably got SATs coming up.

  98. 98.

    GregB

    @Kay:

    Trump’s Twitter is literaly the horror of state propaganda in action.

    This keeps getting worse.

    Trump is using a gold dart board for his final choices.

  100. 100.

    Taylor

    @Kay:

    ex-GWB nat-sec adviser: “POTUS-elect surrounding himself w/mediocrities. chief qualification unquestioning loyalty”

    Now there’s a shocker.

    If that’s Condi Rice, I would have to say, she should know about mediocrities.

  105. 105.

    catclub

    I wonder who gets the job of setting up a private email server for all executive branch employees plus government wide political appointees.

  106. 106.

    Taylor

    @Percysowner:

    What I really hope Hillary does is to take a nice long vacation to a country that likes her

    The Hillary that I saw in the debates is not going to run away, nor will she accept a pardon when she has not done anything.

  107. 107.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: I’d add Collins and Murkowski to the ones-to-watch list, and I say that having less than no respect for Susan Collins, but I think she’d love to get some serious country-above-party media love

  108. 108.

    Mnemosyne

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I found a message for all of us in Jason Kander’s Twitter feed:

    Jason Kander ‏@JasonKander
    Your country needs you at your best and the cause of progress does too. I’m in the gym for the third straight day. Get up. Get moving.

  109. 109.

    Adam L Silverman

    @EBT: He doesn’t like Trump. He put his own tuchas ahead of that reality to ensure he was elected one last time, but now that he’s clear of that it isn’t going to take much to irritate him. Remember, he believes that he should have been President. He believes that he is the Lion of the Senate regarding foreign and defense issues. And as a senator he’s got a lot of power to gum things up.

  113. 113.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay: Some wealthy person better fund a national voting rights group, pronto. This is gonna be bad.

    Don’t know what such a thing would cost, but the Clintons were rumored to be worth around a hundred million in ’08

  117. 117.

    Kay

    @catclub:

    It’s a great story. Kobach had to leave early so left a lobbyist to act as his proxy and vote on his behalf. Lobbyists aren’t permitted to cast proxy votes, so they threw the vote out. Koback’s proposal failed by one vote- his own.

    He tried to commit voter fraud but they caught him :)

  119. 119.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Taylor: No, its Stephen Hadley. He was the last possible hope of the Republican/conservative establishment for one of their professionals working for a Trump Administration as SecDef or Director of Central Intelligence or Director of National Intelligence.

  121. 121.

    Mnemosyne

    All of this is reminding me that I need to write to my 2 senators, current House rep, and former House rep, and urge all of them to resist and vote “no” on every single thing the Reps propose.

    (I usually write letters and then fax copies to both the local and DC office. I feel like it gives me the best combination of immediacy and an actual letter.)

  122. 122.

    EBT

    @Adam L Silverman: Yeah if something happens and the dem wins in louisiana then any two GoP senators at any given moment could be peeled off to kill something. Almost makes it sound like something that could happen outside of the fever dream that is 21st century american politics.

  124. 124.

    frosty

    @Kay:

    Wizard of Oz

    Oh.Dear.God. Sometimes this shitshow is like cheap entertainment and then something like this smacks you in the face. Disconnected from reality? Looking on the bright side? Wha?

  125. 125.

    Jeffro

    @RareSanity:

    If Ryan thinks he’s about to set the agenda on anything, he’s clearly sniffing glue.

    True, and yet…with Trump being this bad, this dumb, this Trumpian even as (in theory) they’re trying to transition…you know all Ryan has to do while Trump’s floundering continues to to guarantee his (Ryan’s) support for Trump staying in power, just as long as he keeps signing these bills. You know, the ones to privatize Medicare and Medicaid, things like that?

    Never forget, Trump’s the fuck-up here, with no way to correct that – he’s surrounded by black-hearted, self-interested yes men. He won’t like it, but his ego won’t allow him to go down with the ship, and so he’ll turn to whomever can ‘save’ him. Which ironically means Ryan and McConnell.

  129. 129.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I don’t know either. It should be dedicated- one issue- all 50 states. Litigate and lobby and advocate in each state, but target. In blue states they could go on offense- expand rights – and then focus in when there’s a real threat- NC right now. In states where they can’t sue they could switch to voter education- get them ID- have them check registration every year, make sure they weren’t purged. People will have to be much more vigilant.

  131. 131.

    Adam L Silverman

    @EBT: Right now you need three. This is going to be an ongoing issue for McConnell, just as it was for Reid in 2009 and 2010. Those three or four or five senators, and they may not always be the same ones on every issue, have a tremendous amount of power on any given nomination or piece of legislation or rules change. And they will expect to be catered to on whatever their pet issue is. Nancy Pelosi in 2009 relearned the lesson that every Speaker learns, even when their own party holds the Senate, the Senate is the enemy of the House, not the opposing party. Ryan is about to learn this lesson.

  133. 133.

    NotMax

    Trivia.

    Highest publicly disclosed* salary of a government official after President?

    Postmaster General.

    *Some positions are shielded from disclosing such data.

  135. 135.

    magurakurin

    This is what the “progressive wing” doesn’t seem to get: the horrible racist nature of the opposition. Personally, I want to see younger leaders emerge, but if Sanders and Warren are serious about become the leaders of the party then they need to start appearing in black churches meeting with African-American leaders and forging networks and alliances…I mean like now. But I really don’t see that happening.

    And suggestion that 79 year old Sanders will be the hope of 2020 is pure folly. Why aren’t the Millennials/GenXers looking inward for the next leaders. Barack Obama is my contemporary. My friend went to school with him at Columbia. Obama is just a year older than me. I honestly do not want to be voting for a president 20 years my elder in 2020. I want to be voting for someone YOUNGER than me. If the Bernie wing of the party wants to lead, they need to stop worshiping and old man and fucking step up and lead. And that means forming networks and alliances with African-American and Latino/minority leaders. Economic populism will not save us. It isn’t enough.

  136. 136.

    Askew

    Hillary’s a multi-millionaire whose life will in no way change under a Trump Presidency so of course she can sit back and laugh. The people she fucked over by running a campaign that had less enthusiam and direction than Mitt Romney on the other hand are screwed. She doesn’t need Medicare.

  137. 137.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay:
    Matthew Yglesias Retweeted Donald J. Trump
    He should probably tell senate leadership and a vetting team who the finalists are. IDK.

  138. 138.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SP:

    Once everyone is appointed, do we get to make clever card decks like they did with the Iraqi regime?

    Well played, sir or madam. Well. Played.

  139. 139.

    EBT

    @Adam L Silverman: I have been operating under the impression the GoP is far better at keeping everyone in lockstep, so defections even for single issues seem rare. McCain being done with campaigning however means his inner old man crank flag may fly freely though I agree.

  140. 140.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @RareSanity: If not willingly offered, the incoming administration is free to ask for a resignation. Remember the thing the from The West Wing, “I serve at the pleasure of the President?” True of all political appointees. Career CS are different.

  141. 141.

    Kay

    @frosty:

    Wha?

    I don’t think it’s that complicated. The President has no idea what he’s doing and he’s surrounded himself with egomaniac lunatics, like himself. That’s where we are. It will be fine as long as nothing important or urgent happens or Obama agrees to stay on and babysit, which he would do if he really cared because he can’t just leave us like this can he? :)

  142. 142.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Askew: The people she fucked over by running a campaign that had less enthusiam and direction than

    but a fuckton more than O’Malley’s

    If you’re going to come back here with that bitter horseshit, why not go back to wherever you’ve been?

  144. 144.

    Peale

    @Adam L Silverman: I’m really trying to change come to grips with a Trump national security team.from the sounds of it, everything is going to be interpreted as an imminent attack by the Jewish and Muslim conspiracy. Argentina should totally make another run at the Falkland Islands. I bet half the memos on the crisis would be about the mysterious al quaeda base camp at iguazu falls.

  149. 149.

    Sab

    @WarMunchkin: I don’t
    know but Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC who has lots of govt experience says not to worry: the longer the transition takes the longer the professional civil service guys will be running the govt.

  152. 152.

    Another Scott

    @NotMax: The previous head of the SmithsonIan made over $600k, IIRC. The head of the National Gallery makes over $1.2M. Presidential pay is relatively tiny in comparison.

    But people don’t run for president for the salary.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  153. 153.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @magurakurin:

    Why aren’t the Millennials/GenXers looking inward for the next leaders.

    You don’t know that they aren’t. It is a week after the election, I don’t expect us to have our shit ironed out yet. We still don’t know the specific ways in which Trump is going to arse things up.

  154. 154.

    hovercraft

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Frank Gaffney. This should be fun.

    And Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who once posted the instructions for building a nuclear bomb on the Internet…

    So we really are all going to die fairly soon. Why not just go ahead and name Pam Geller to Homeland Security, Oily Taitz to AG and Marl Levin to the Supreme Court? I mean if the world is going to end in the next year or so, then why not give the base their wet dream of a cabinet. Alaska Snooki can run Interior and give those economically challenged citizens an oil derrick in every yard to ease their economic anxiety. And just to show that he is reaching out to the blacks he can appoint David Clarke Jr to HUD, so he can get all those inner cities sorted out, that’s where they all live right, in the projects? And now that Sheriff Joe is out of work why not slide him right into ICE, after all they have a lot of rounding up to do, and Joe’s shown himself to be very good at rounding those people up. There are so many first round draft picks for him to choose from, this team is going to be truly awesome, America you’ve outdone yourselves this time. I thought Shrub was the bottom of the barrel, who knew that there was an entire stack of them underneath and all we had to do was dig way, way, way down to find this scum.

  155. 155.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: They’ll submit the SF 86 and the process will start when they accept the position. Some require Senate confirmation, some don’t. Those that don’t will, depending on the position and its requirements, either start and not have access to anything classified or will not start until the clearance process is completed. For those requiring Senate confirmation, each committee/sub-committee has their own questionnaire too.

  157. 157.

    Peale

    @Omnes Omnibus: does anyone have to tell them how many offices they have to fill? Is there a list? I’m sure they’ll forget most of them and add things in that don’t belong to them. Like the mayor of DC, and Spain’s ambassador to the US. I totally bet they are arguing about who is qualified to be some other country’s Ambassador.

  158. 158.

    frosty

    @Kay: Helping committed voters get birth certificates and photo ID is something I would volunteer to do. It’s a) the right thing to do and b) a much less scattershot GOTV than the stuff I’ve been doing every four (or two) years.

  159. 159.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Kay: President Obama already said he’d be spending extra time, above and beyond what is normally done during transition, with the President Elect.

  161. 161.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @magurakurin: Why aren’t the Millennials/GenXers looking inward for the next leaders.

    Like Kamala Harris, the Castro brothers, Corey Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jason Kander… just off the top of my head

  164. 164.

    amk

    The wishful thinking that mcangry, maine sister, alaska whasshername will somehow save the republic from this kkklown is laughable. Have you guyz ever took a dekko at their voting record in the last 8 years?

  166. 166.

    OGLiberal

    @jk: I did feel for the poor single mom who didn’t vote. The black former coal miner guy, obviously, made the most sense. The politician dude hedged big time. The coal mine owner guy wasn’t completely reprehensible but wonder who he – a self proclaimed lifelong Democrat – voted for for president from 2000 forward. The one person I absolutely despised was the woman at the parade who said that Trump will do whatever he said he would because “he’s that good.” Lady, you’re in la-la land.

  169. 169.

    Lizzy L

    The people she fucked over by running a campaign that had less enthusiam and direction than Mitt Romney on the other hand are screwed.

    Fuck off.

  170. 170.

    hovercraft

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    This is not helpful.

    Until we know just how bad it’s going to be, some of us are indulging in gallows humor. It’s either that for me, or constant raging and despair. Laughing is better than crying.

    Suggestion to our blogmaster and the other frontpagers, perhaps during these turbulent times, you could post dual open threads at a time, one for all of our political rants, and one for those who do not feel ready to engage, or who just want a break from the path of destruction the Shitgibbon is already laying, barley a week into it’s new reign.

  171. 171.

    BBA

    Wait, are Jews white or aren’t we? I was going to make yet another disparaging post about my “fellow” white people but if I’m not white anymore it just feels mean.

  172. 172.

    frosty

    @magurakurin:

    I honestly do not want to be voting for a president 20 years my elder in 2020. I want to be voting for someone YOUNGER than me.

    Exactly. I was so disappointed that we had two people older than me running, and I ain’t no spring chicken. That was one of the reasons I liked PBO.

  175. 175.

    Peale

    @Omnes Omnibus: Obama admitted that he’s bad at filing. About January 19th when they still have 1000 open positions, Valerie Jarret should pop in and plop another 2,000 on them.

  176. 176.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sab: And even if he fills the top spots, the trouble they’re having, as I’ve indicated repeatedly, is going to be filled the couple of thousand Deputy Assistant Secretaries, Directors, Deputy Directors, Assistant Directors that will actually oversee the work of the career uniformed and civilian personnel, specifically interfacing with the general officers/flag officers, senior officers, senior executives, and senior civil servants. The less experience the people that the transition finds for these positions actually have, the easier it will be for the career folks to do what is supposed to be done. They all know how to work the system.

  177. 177.

    boatboy_srq

    @Another Scott: Correction: people don’t run for President for the salary; people don’t run for pResident for the direct compensation. That’s what divides the Dems from the Teahadis.

  178. 178.

    frosty

    @Kay:

    …Obama agrees to stay on and babysit, which he would do if he really cared because he can’t just leave us like this can he? :)

    Hmmm. Mentor my replacement and save the country or face Michelle, who just wants to go somewhere she’s allowed to open a window …..

  183. 183.

    Another Scott

    @NotMax: True, but they are somehow nominally part of the US government (and the PO is kinda semi-nongovernmental).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  184. 184.

    magurakurin

    @Adam L Silverman: thanks. I actually deleted the first posts. It was my fault, I think. I misspelled my handle. Thanks. And as always, some of your well reasoned posts have kept back from the ledge this past week. cheers.

  187. 187.

    Ksmiami

    @jk: they done fucked themselves. Maybe the free market will save them oh wait. The Democrats gave the US the WPA, social security, Medicare, the Aca , the civil rights act, gay rights and I could go on, but people wanted to watch Fox News to indulge their hate and believe in sweet simple lies and here we are. I have NFLTG and can only use my resources to help protect the most vulnerable and survive but if we come out of this re-education camps are starting to sound as necessary as denazification programs.

  188. 188.

    magurakurin

    @Omnes Omnibus: this is true…but all I am seeing is Bernie, Bernie, Bernie. It’s time to move on. I mean damn, Abbie Hoffman’s cry was “don’t trust anyone over 30.” But you are right, I don’t know that they aren’t and I hope fervently that they are.

  193. 193.

    frosty

    @Adam L Silverman: So is this blank SF86 a publicly available document like the SF171? Could I download one and try to fill it out just to see what kind of land mines I left for myself back in the hazy distant past?

  195. 195.

    Mnemosyne

    @BBA:

    Please don’t joke about that right now. There are commenters here who are genuinely talking about suicide because they’re going to lose their healthcare.

  197. 197.

    Matt McIrvin

    Hey, remember when they were talking about repealing the civil service laws and purging all of the career civil servants? Maybe they didn’t realize how many of those there are?

  199. 199.

    EBT

    @Adam L Silverman: You are really doing a lot to help convince me that the damage will be lessened by the sheer ineptitude of everyone involved with the administration from a governmental ability standpoint.

  200. 200.

    BBA

    @Mnemosyne: sorry, that wasn’t what I meant at all. I was referring to the bizarre warning to stock up on those items issued by DHS before the ’03 Iraq War started.

  202. 202.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: While I understand your comment, some react to horrible things with black humor. We may need threads for each for a while. I appreciate the sincere and the horrible comments. I could cross between the two. But don’t think that a horrible joke from a known commenter is someone being arch with the situation. It may well be the only way the person can handle it right now, and rejecting it could have disastrous effects on that commenter.

  203. 203.

    Adam L Silverman

    @frosty: Here you go:
    https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86-non508.pdf

    Its normally filled out online, not in hard copy, through a secured portal. When I did mine for my renewal, even though it pulled from what I’d entered in 2010, it still took me five hours. Some of that was updating stuff. Some of it is that there were new questions/questions that hadn’t been there previously. Some of it was a bizarre programming glitch that required me to go back and make all my previous employment end the same month as the follow on job because the program could not handle job ending date of July 14, 2004 and the next job start on date of August 4, 2004. That made the program think I’d had a break in employment and was unemployed. Of course there were no instructions on this and it took me an hour to figure it out. So with that hour included, it took me five hours to get that thing done. Its not fun. And its all under pain of perjury.

  204. 204.

    Feebog

    You can either laugh or cry at this shitshow. I choose to laugh because I think it is the healthier approach. But I understand perfectly the trepidation. I feel like I’m in some kind of bizzaro circus; and I have to either train the lions or walk on the high wire.

  206. 206.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Matt McIrvin: There’s a little over a million civil servants. This includes career and term appointments. The positions to be filled in transition, while technically term appointments, are considered political appointments. There are 4,000 of them.

  207. 207.

    dogwood

    @Adam L Silverman:
    The press on the McCain plane really liked him because he paid them a lot of attention. The press on the Obama plane complained that the last 6 weeks he spent a lot of time up front pouring over the Plum Book.

  208. 208.

    hovercraft

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Maybe they didn’t realize how many of those there are?

    These idiots didn’t realize they had to staff the West Wing and the Executive building, do you actually think they realized how many political appointees there are (approx. 4000), they are clueless. Forget the fact that getting rid of civil servants is hard when they’ve done nothing wrong.

  210. 210.

    SFAW

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    SFAW and others.

    Yeah, I get that sometimes. Sometimes I’m wrong, sometimes I’m right. Imagine that. We’ll see whether Chaffetz and the rest of his merry band back off of their pledge.

    Are we going to waste it in despondency or being ha-ha snarky. This shit is not funny. Lives are on the line.

    Who says it’s funny, except in a very-dark-humor way? Outside of the MSM and various pundits, and of course the economically anxious, who does not think that there’s going to be a shitload of suffering for at least two, and probably eight, years?

    And so what do you propose? If you’re in the process of putting together a PAC (or some appropriate org) to start working on 2018, let us know, so people can start donating or volunteering. If you’ve built — or are in the process of building — some type of network to help 50-state things, let us know how to get involved with that network. Or, if you know of one, other than the standard fundraising ops, post it here.

  211. 211.

    Sprightly but bitter

    Just think, after they impeach Trump, and then they impeach Pence, we’ll have President Ryan.

  212. 212.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: I saw it. Either the Boston Globe significantly misrepresented his book, he’s been significantly misrepresenting his book, or his book was crap. He either has a thesis or he he doesn’t. He seems to be trying to both have a thesis that explains how this works and that, at the same time, the thesis does not explain how this works. Based on this he has no business being a professor and I’m not sure he should be allowed to tie his own shoes.

  213. 213.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I lean towards black humor myself, but we have someone here who says he is making actual plans, though I think we have at least convinced him to hold off until he talks to a healthcare navigator in his state.

    So I’m not saying, “never,” just “today is not the best day.”

  215. 215.

    danielx

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    In each of those pics, Rudy looks like someone is brandishing a crucifix at him.

    Clearly you know too much; I’d put wearing a crucifix and a garlic bouquet well up there in my accessories list. There are more than a few bloodsuckers working for DOJ.

    In other news: Read an article (do not recall which, unfortunately) today with a line in it about national security briefers and the like being aghast at, among other things, Trump’s inability to focus for more than a few minutes at a time and impatience with facts and charts. Aside from my first two reactions, 1) what did anyone expect and 2) bitter amusement – hey, sounds like just the guy I want in that job! -, the whole tone of that and several other articles today left me surprised if not shocked. The people running this clusterfuck (Pence, Bannon, and so forth) apparently could not organize an orgy in a brothel, nor yet a drinking party in a brewery. Now, those of us who know Mike Pence are something less than amazed, since by past experience we know that good ol’ Mike isn’t really good at stuff that demands more intellectual effort than bipedal motion. But you’d think someone in Trump’s circle, even if not the orange shitgibbon himself, would have devoted some attention to this whole transition deal. The truly terrifying aspect of this is the more or less complete incompetence shown, at a time when there are more than a few problems confronting the country. If the transfer of power is being bungled, what then when the phone rings at three a.m. and it’s the chief flag officer on duty at the Pentagon saying something awful has happened or is about to happen?

    There are no grownups in charge and Trump is already bored with the whole deal.

    And from what I can tell, a great many of the grownups in various areas of expertise do not wish to be associated with the Trump group in any way whatsoever. At least in W’s administration there were some people who knew a thing or two about national security and foreign policy issues, even if they were mostly a bunch of fucking neocons.

  216. 216.

    Mnemosyne

    @BBA:

    Phew! I admit I am a little oversensitive today because of today’s conversations, and I actually had nightmares about a different commenter who was saying similar things a few days ago (though they seem to be doing better now).

  219. 219.

    Gelfling 545

    I’ve been rooting for Paladino for Sec’y of Education. He’d certainly be a disaster but so will anybody else That Person names so why shouldn’t Buffalo get the good of it and get him out of town and off our school board?

  220. 220.

    CaseyL

    Here’s the thing, though: Republicans are not about “governing.” They don’t like government, they don’t want government to succeed. The only thing they’re interested in is looting the Treasury on behalf of their cronies.

    Oh, and taking revenge on the rest of us. Orange Scrotum wants revenge on everyone who hasn’t properly respected him; the GOP in general wants revenge on all women, POCs, ethnics, etc., who refused to shut up, sit down, and know their place. Omarosa summed it up perfectly: Everyone must bow down.

    Viewed in that light, it really doesn’t matter who the Orange Scrotum has on his transition team, or even who gets nominated to fill the appointed positions. Competence, knowledge, intelligence, and personal integrity are not the attributes they’re looking for. In fact, having any of those character traits is disqualifying for a position in Trumpland.

  221. 221.

    hovercraft

    @Mnemosyne: See I took the comment to mean he/she was thinking of ways to dispose of a body. In the movies the professionals do the deed on plastic tarps and then wrap the body up in it and seal it with duct tape. That way there is no mess to clean up. Some of the fools celebrating the Shitgibbons elevation to our overlord, seriously they are talking like he is the savior of America, come to take it back from those people, make me fantasize about doing away with them. But that’s just me, I’m in that frame of mind at the moment, tomorrow, who knows.
    @BBA:
    I remember that, it was supposed to be our defense against the anthrax attacks.

  222. 222.

    BBA

    I’m truly sorry. I didn’t mean to cause offense. I was just trying to make a vague reference to preparing for the apocalypse, and that weird line from 2003 popped into my head. But I can see how it would be misinterpreted. Mea culpa.

  223. 223.

    frosty

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks for the SF86. I sure as hell ain’t filling it out and submitting it online. About the only thing I ever did to prepare for a clearance was to keep track of everywhere I lived and traveled…. I’m sure I can find that again, it’s in a filing cabinet somewhere.

    Anyway, I ended up in a branch of civil engineering so it didn’t matter. In the words of one of my favorite engineering jokes: “Mechanical engineers design weapons. Civil engineers design targets.”

  225. 225.

    Mnemosyne

    @BBA:

    Like I said, I think I’m oversensitive today, so it’s not really you. But thank you.

    I may head up to the other thread and post more animation clips now.

  227. 227.

    Adam L Silverman

    @danielx: The only good thing you could say about the Cheneyites and the neo-Cons is that they were professionals who knew what to do and how to do it.

  228. 228.

    Lizzy L

    @danielx:

    Trump’s inability to focus for more than a few minutes at a time

    This — the sheer inability of the man to do the job — is what’s been giving me nightmares. The racism, sexism, antisemitism, and venality of the people around him isn’t helping.

    I will admit, the Barack & Joe meme on FB makes me smile.

  230. 230.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @frosty: Me, I could say that, “Yeah, one weekend my buddy and drove from Germany to Davos, Switzerland (and, honestly Klosters would have been a better location, same skiing fewer d-bags). I think it was 1990. Fuck if I know. The skiing was great.” We both had TS/BI clearances.

  231. 231.

    frosty

    @Adam L Silverman: Wow, unless I misread it that SF86 form is a piece of cake. It only goes back 10 years, and they only want people who’ve known you for 7? Hell, if you’re reasonably stable that’s one residence and one job. The SF171 looks like a lot more work to me.

  232. 232.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: I haven’t read the book. I’ve read the Boston Globe review and I’ve read that interview. Like I said, something seems to be out of whack between the BG review, what he may or may not have actually written in the book, and what he’s telling the guy at Slate. And since I’ve not read the book, I can’t really say more.

  233. 233.

    sukabi

    @Adam L Silverman: he’s the asshole that dressed up in Afghani garb and interviewed them right? Didn’t he do something else potentially bordering on treason with an “enemy” state wrt unauthorized “policy” discussions? Or was that another stupid repub?

  235. 235.

    hovercraft

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I sure do relish having people even more incompetent

    This is a feature not a bug. You fill the government with people who are incompetent, and have no interest in governing and no experience, and when they fail you point out that they were the bestest ever in the field they came from, therefore there is no such thing as a competent government so it must be destroyed. Remember knowledge and experience are elitist. Only smug liberals value those attributes, real America values telling it like it is and following your guts.

  237. 237.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: I got interviewed about that by the major Philadelphia newspaper, as well as NPR. I explained that almost every house, unless specially built and maintained that way, was not airtight. So the best bet was to wrap oneself in the plastic sheeting and then duct tape the seams tightly.

  243. 243.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sukabi: One of the GOP House or Senate folks spoke approvingly of a coup in Cote de Iviore a few years back. And a different one in, I think, Honduras. Its hard to keep them straight sometimes. Perhaps a deck of cards?

  245. 245.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Can this be widely disseminated to Trump voters?

    I think you want a slight variant: have Obama go on primetime, and say “Don’t do that! It’s a bad thing! And don’t drink antifreeze either!”

  247. 247.

    danielx

    @Lizzy L:

    It’s not just the inability, but the disinterest. Trump has indicated more than once that he’s more interested in reaching a goal than he is in the goal itself. He is having to meet with people he regards as inferiors and listen to stuff that he doesn’t want to hear. As with any ten year old in the same position, he’s bored and resentful and isn’t making a secret of it.

  250. 250.

    Wapiti

    @danielx:

    But you’d think someone in Trump’s circle, even if not the orange shitgibbon himself, would have devoted some attention to this whole transition deal.

    The problem is that by all reports Donald is a needy emotional basket case. If his closest and apparently most competent lieutenant, Kushner, has to stay up with him until 3 am every morning, reassuring the needy fuck, then Kushner has no chance of getting up to speed on anything. And I suspect Kushner only seems impressive because he’s hanging around a bunch of grade C intellects.

  251. 251.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: Yes. It wasn’t a letter to the editor, they interviewed me as a subject matter expert. Especially as Director Ridge was the former governor of PA, so local interest angle. They quoted me accurately and completely.

  254. 254.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Wapiti: His dad had to buy him into Harvard. From all reported accounts his grades and SATs were horrible. Whether they were bad because he’s a smart rich kid that couldn’t be bothered or because he’s a mediocre rich kid that gets by because he’s rich I cannot say.

  255. 255.

    BBA

    I figured the Cabinet would, after a few weeks of having to listen to him, declare him incapacitated under the 25th Amendment and make Pence the Acting President. Which would suit Trump just fine – he gets to be President without having to do any of the actual work.

    But at this rate there won’t even be a Cabinet.

    (My nightmare scenario is that Trump gets impeached, removed from office – and then declares Congress “rigged” and starts holding rallies for his 2020 run.)

  258. 258.

    Lizzy L

    @Omnes Omnibus: They are good words! The best words!

    We have a p-elect with the reading comprehension of a third grader. Somewhere in the universe, the atoms that used to make up the being once called Thomas Jefferson are slowly spinning…

  261. 261.

    OGLiberal

    I’m from NJ, I live in NJ. I love Booker as my Senator. He is too weird for national office. Not in a bad way, just generally kind of weird. And he has, to a lesser extent, the Hillary Wall Street problem. I like Kamala Harris although this year led me to think that we are perhaps a generation away from having a woman president. However, Harris is black (well, Jamaican and Indian) and I think a lot of the fence sitting white folks would vote for a Democratic black person over a white Republican dude who was less than inspiring, simply to be able to say, “see, I’m not racist” (I think that drove a small but meaningful portion of white Obama voters…I’ll take ’em any way I can get them) , a la the McCain and Romney candidacies). The wild card this year was that Hillary was both white and a woman…easy to vote against without being accused of being a racist…although you could be accused of being sexist, and I think a lot of the soft Trump voters were.. Harris wouldn’t offer that opportunity. The wild card moving forward is that Trump has normalized racism so fear of shame may no longer really exist. And I worry about the “she’s an out of touch Californian” thing. Yeah, Obama was pretty much from Hawaii but with roots in the Midwest and appeared very Midwestern. In reading Harris’ bio looks like she was raised in Berkeley, Oakland and Montreal – not exactly the American heartland. Still, this might be the person we need to get behind because I think there will be an opportunity in 2020, not because of impeachment but because Trump, if he’s even still there, will be so bored and tire of being president. The only reason he’d stay is if it made him money. Sadly, not sure our current laws can prevent that and he might get them changed so they do – Ryan would give him whatever he needs to privatize Medicare and eliminate Medicare as we know it. Art of the deal, man.

  267. 267.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: Shhh! Don’t tell him…

    You all are quite welcome. I just hope that when my PR is finalized (waiting, waiting, still waiting, waiting), the PAO where I’m supposed to go (actually have gone, was supposed to be there last July – freaking SSOs!) is okay with me continuing to write about strategy and policy here deconflicted from my work. Which, based on the job, shouldn’t be an issue. But want to make sure the tuchas is CYed!

  269. 269.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Mnemosyne:

    Please don’t joke about that right now. There are commenters here who are genuinely talking about suicide because they’re going to lose their healthcare.

    Oh good lord, perhaps people should calm the fuck down and wait and see what happens before doing something that’s irreversible? So far the Trump admin has show itself only good for stabbing each other in the back with plastic forks. Trump is coming across as such an epic fuck up it’s likely they won’t be able to impeach him because no will be able figure out what he does.

  270. 270.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: Adam, I hope you get again a job you are obviously good at. If you do, we will miss you here. But we will wish you well. And hope that you will pop up again. To be honest, I doubt that these fucks will call you up. I think they are that dumb.

  271. 271.

    ArchTeryx

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Try saying that with a loaded gun pointed at your head. That’s exactly what those of us on Medicaid are facing.

    That Trump is an epic fuckup means nothing when it comes to us losing our entire healthcare safety net. He’ll sign whatever Granny Starver sends him. THAT is the threat, and they’re already revving up the machine in Congress while the press is busy covering the Trump transition shitshow.

    There have been plenty of links posted in these threads that show Granny Starver wants it to destroy it all – repeal Obamacare, privatize Medicare, and block-grant (read: kill) Medicaid. And they’ve already passed test bills to do all of the above. Trump’s even calling for a special session on Inauguration Day so they can rush it all through while the press is covering the inauguration.

    We have a right to be frightened.

  273. 273.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: It was supposed to happen in July. I’m waiting for the periodic review to resolve. Don’t ask, by the time I finished trying to explain the process my eyes would glaze over. Basically, and to be honest as a professional I get why, we’re dealing with a Special Security Officer that isn’t going to take any risks and is being officious in regard to the rules. He says do the review before he’ll allow me to inprocess, we do the review. Of course, because they caught another Booz Allen contractor at NSA stealing all sorts of stuff, everything is slowed way down again. Which also contributes to the Special Security Officers all being super officious. Anyhow, until its finalized, my company won’t relocate me. As for them, as long as I don’t engage in partisan politics in posts, and don’t post/comment on anything my work would prevent me from doing, I’m good. The owner is a good guy. The sequester has done a number on the slots he could put me into because of my experience/seniority. When I left my last full time assignment, it was over a combination of a toxic environment and being told to do something that violated Federal law, regulations, and DOD policy. He was very, very supportive. He thought he had me lined up for an immediate relocation for another assignment, which got killed by the sequester and lack, at that point, of a CR. Then this thing popped, we jumped on it, hurried up, and hit the big WAIT! So I’m waiting. I do some consulting, but I have been immersed in a months’ long study of the concept of patience.

  276. 276.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m not in line, regardless of administration or party, for one of the Plum Book jobs. Even if I found one I was a perfect fit for, I’m not connected enough to even know who to contact. I’m in the wait stage of clearance renewal for a contract position. My boss is fine with me doing this as long as I don’t engage in partisan politics in posts or comments, which is why I’ve repeatedly remarked about not doing that. Or write about anything I know I shouldn’t, which I’m always careful with. He’s a good guy. Very supportive. And not pleased with the delay either because he can’t make any money until the process finishes. And, as you are aware, he’s had to outlay a lot of money for the renewal process. It ain’t cheap. I don’t expect any issues when I get where I’m going. I’d just like to get there!

  278. 278.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @ArchTeryx: It’s been pointed out numerous times why this is likely not to happen. If you didn’t listen then, why would I expect you to listen now?

  279. 279.

    Adam L Silverman

    @ArchTeryx: That was Conway demonstrating her profound ignorance of Congress. Congress comes back into its next session at the beginning of January. It will already be in session on Inauguration Day. Its like the entire crew slept through 5th grade civics. I’ve never seen so many highly credentialed, and ostensibly successful, ignorant people in one place before. And I’ve dealt with people from the Coalition Provisional Authority!

  281. 281.

    Это курам на смех

    @Lizzy L: Didn’t Woodrow Wilson’s wife run the country for a couple of years? As long as Trump gets his TV time, someone else will do the job.

  282. 282.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sukabi: So its been reported that the request for the clearances for his kids was made by an intern, without permission, and has been retracted. Its not clear if that included Kushner. I really do not know how this would work. He cannot hire or appoint Kushner, or any of his children/family, to a position. Its against Federal Law. Clearances are, but statute and regulation, only available to people either directly or indirectly (contractors, some classes of term civil servants under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act) in the employ of the Federal government or state or local governments (law enforcement, emergency management, the state equivalent of homeland security) where the jobs require the clearance in order for the work to be performed. One cannot get a clearance outside of these. And one cannot volunteer to do work for the Federal government. It violates the Anti-Deficiency Act. So if you decide you want one, and have the $75 to $100K to pay for it because you think it will help you get a job, you can’t pay for it and get one. You only get one if you have the job. That’s why getting a job that provides the clearance that first time, specifically at the Top Secret and Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) level, is such a big deal. The clearance opens a lot of doors. Without my clearance, I’m basically unemployable. I’ve been away from academia as a practitioner for far too long. And for all my experience, if I didn’t have the clearance, I couldn’t do the work I do.

  283. 283.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Это курам на смех: Beyond commending you for readying yourself for our new Russians overlords – his own people have said with Trump a bad idea is someone else’s idea and the only good idea is the idea that comes from behind his eyelids.

  284. 284.

    ArchTeryx

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Apparently your crystal ball has far more clarity then mine, Nostrodumbass. I’d far rather be proven wrong then right, and eat a nice big plate of crow for my health rather then my Oxy cocktail. But I guess we’re going to find out who’s right come February of next year.

  285. 285.

    ArchTeryx

    @Adam L Silverman: Well, good point there. Unfortunately, it makes the situation even worse: They have that many more weeks to pass their Four Horsemen bills before Trump is there to sign them all on Inauguration Day.

  286. 286.

    SFAW

    @Adam L Silverman:

    That was Conway demonstrating her profound ignorance of Congress. Congress comes back into its next session at the beginning of January.

    Just because Conway is clueless on process doesn’t mean it won’t happen ASAP. And maybe Trump will wise up and not kill it — highly unlikely, but more likely than Ryan having an epiphany. But if I were a betting man, I’d place my money on repeal before March.

    Of course, if I knew what I was doing when gambling, I’d probably be less in debt.

    ETA: ArchTeryx — not trying to add to your stress level. But I shoulda thought of that BEFORE I hit the Submit button.

  289. 289.

    Adam L Silverman

    @ArchTeryx: I’m concerned too. My Mom is on Medicare. And as a contractor I’ve been on a great Exchange plan for the past couple of years that is far cheaper than if I had to make a contribution to a policy my company provided. I highly recommend that everyone start calling the Democratic Senators and Representatives, ask them about this, and tell them you expect they’re going to push back hard. Especially the Senators as they’ll have the most tools to tie things up.

  290. 290.

    ArchTeryx

    @SFAW: You didn’t, it’s perfectly okay. You’re only confirming what I already know. And frankly, I’m not really thinking that clearly at the moment. I haven’t been since the blind horror of last Tuesday night.

  292. 292.

    Tripod

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

    That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

  293. 293.

    TriassicSands

    @ArchTeryx:

    Republican plans for Medicaid will probably be devastating to millions of Americans. Many of those who get it through the ACA will simply go back to being uninsured. The block grant plan has always been a way to starve the program while pretending to leave the safety net intact. As always, the stupidity and ignorance of American voters, which brought us to this point, will protect the Republicans up to a point. Perhaps, when enough elderly parents who are relying on Medicaid for long term nursing home care are forced to move in with the kids (or what, become homeless if there are no kids?) it will get the attention of some Trump supporters. I heard one tonight on the radio saying that he didn’t want Trump to get rid of Obamacare, but rather tweak it so it was better. Hmm, now let me think. One candidate ran on doing just that and the other ran on repealing it altogether. Gee, which was which? Obviously, that bozo is in for some unpleasant surprises.

    I know this is not a viable option for most people, but if you are dependent on Medicaid and you live in a red state, if there is any possibility of moving to a blue state, it might be a good idea. Of course, if too many people did that it could cripple the blue states’ Medicaid programs. Besides, there may not be enough money available to make much difference. (Moving is expensive. Obviously, most people dependent on Medicaid won’t be able to afford to move anywhere.)

    I’d say I feel for those dependent on Medicaid, but the truth is I feel for anyone who voted for Clinton and has any form of government health care. We could be in for a rough four years.

    Some of us won’t make it out alive. To the Republicans that’s a feature, not a bug.

  294. 294.

    TriassicSands

    Don’t bet the farm on the continued existence of the filibuster.

    It appears likely or at least very possible that if the filibuster seems like it will be a problem, the GOP may move right away to kill it altogether. After all, if they can load the Supreme Court with young ultra right wingers and shove enough legislation through in the next four years, it could take decades (if ever) to undo the damage — and that would be assuming the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress and the White House.

    (Many of the GOP’s casualties over the next four years may be measured in coffins and urns.)

  295. 295.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sukabi: Them too. Though, from the reporting, they’re denying that any such thing is happening. The Democratic members seem surprised that its happening at all. They could use some spine stiffening.

  298. 298.

    Applejinx

    @Jeffro:

    Never forget, Trump’s the fuck-up here, with no way to correct that – he’s surrounded by black-hearted, self-interested yes men. He won’t like it, but his ego won’t allow him to go down with the ship, and so he’ll turn to whomever can ‘save’ him. Which ironically means Ryan and McConnell.

    Assumes Trump considers himself a fuck-up, that Ryan’s agenda would save any fucking thing, and that Trump is capable of trusting Ryan to have his best interests at heart rather than just straight up stabbing him in the back.

    That’s a strike-out as far as I can see. What gives you these ideas, and notably the idea that Ryan’s agenda can save anything? You hangin’ out with Villagers or something?

  299. 299.

    Matt McIrvin

    @TriassicSands: I’ve heard Trump is going to try to pull all federal money from cities that don’t deputize their police forces to turn in undocumented immigrants. He may try the same kind of strongarm tactics with the states: block-grant everything and then make the block grants conditional on following Trump’s every whim. That would take legislation, though.

  300. 300.

    sherparick1

    @Adam L Silverman: They will all vote for the big tax cuts, and except for Rand Paul, they will all vote for the big Defense build-up and blowing “the Deficit” up and then turn around vote to end Medicare and privatize Social Security. The interesting thing will be when AG Chris Korbach brings his big voter suppression (only white men and white married women can vote) and national show your papers/stop and frisk bill up). It will be very tempting for Republicans to eliminate large numbers of Democratic voters from the electorate and make the world 1928 again. And the Villagers will say “both sides.”

    This election has really made H. L. Mencken, who never thought much of American Democracy, a true prophet:

    “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

    Wonkbog has a good interview of Professor Kathy Kramer up on why the good white working people of the rural and small town upper Midwest and Pennsylvania gave us this moron.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/15/donald-trump-didnt-hoodwink-his-voters-says-professor-whos-spent-nearly-a-decade-researching-them/

    What do these people want. Well, they wanted “change” although they said they did not expect the “change” to affect them good or ill. They voted for Trump because they bought into the cult of the “businessman” and Trump because of his celebrity is the the one “businessman” they know.

    “…Just this morning I was in Central Wisconsin, and there’s this group that meets in the back of a warehouse. We talked for a long, long time. They’re happy that Trump won. They have a lot of hope for the future, because they think that finally, we have someone who is not a politician. There is a chance he will run the country like a business, and he will stop spending money that we don’t have…”

    The article was about how these voters were not “hoodwinked” by Trump, but they sure sounded hoodwinked to me.

    ….

  302. 302.

    OGLiberal

    @Omnes Omnibus: Sorry, Professor Writing Style 101.

    Very sorry.

    Will make sure I have my copywriter, proofreader and editor review my next blog comment thread posting before publishing.

    My apologies.

    Won’t happen again.

    Have a nice day.

  304. 304.

    les

    @catclub:

    I wonder who gets the job of setting up a private email server for all executive branch employees plus government wide political appointees.

    No problem; just go with Darth Cheney’s approach, and use the RNC servers.

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