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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
So far the only confirmed or close-to-confirmed Biden appointees we know are people who worked with him in managerial roles, right? Klain, O'Malley, and Cedric Richmond are all established campaign managers and aides whose new positions appear to be similarly bureaucratic.
Edited by AlleyOop on Nov 16th 2020 at 9:13:36 AM
Anyone who thinks that letting a dictator take over at the head of a populist, anti-democratic movement will lead inexorably to a glorious revolution that installs an anti-capitalist utopia is... well, "optimistic" comes to mind. More strongly, "blatantly and willfully ignorant of history".
Edited by Fighteer on Nov 16th 2020 at 9:15:20 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"2020 was essentially a red wave and a blue wave colliding with each other. The blue wave was a bit higher, which is why Biden won the presidency and the Democrats held the house (and might flip the Senate by the barest of margins).
What does this imply for the overall political situation in America? Aside from it being an obvious symptom of our hyperpolarized environment...I have no idea. It's just not the sort of thing that's happened in recent memory.
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I don't think so. Trump lost the election. GOP voters finally realized who he was: a loser.
A lot of these voters may suffer a Villainous BSoD, and, if Dems are lucky, pull a Heel–Face Turn and leave the GOP.
Edited by clemont107 on Nov 16th 2020 at 9:21:50 AM
"Wow, no Mega Togekiss in Legends Z-A. Or any non-Froslass new Sinnoh Mega Evolutions. Round of applause, everybody." - DawnThat brings the question: will Trump's attempts to discredit the election help or injure that wave of Republican voting? It could energize them just as well as it could backfire and lead to voter apathy (after all, why would you vote for an election you "know" to be rigged?).
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Today's news in one spot courtesy of https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2020/11/16/day-1397/
Global: Total confirmed cases: ~54,786,000; deaths: ~1,323,000
U.S.: Total confirmed cases: ~11,173,000; deaths: ~248,000
Source: Johns Hopkins University
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Live Blogs: New York Times
/ Washington Post
/ CNBC
/ Bloomberg
/ Wall Street Journal
/ CNN
40% of Americans are planning to participate in large gatherings of 10 or more people this holiday season despite concerns over the spread of COVID-19. (United Press International)
The Third Surge Is Breaking Healthcare Workers. “Hospitals have put their pandemic plans into action, adding more beds and creating makeshift COVID-19 wards. But in the hardest-hit areas, there are simply not enough doctors, nurses, and other specialists to staff those beds.” (The Atlantic)
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/11/third-surge-breaking-healthcare-workers/617091/
2/ Trump has not attended a coronavirus task force meeting in “at least five months.” Since Election Day, Trump has reportedly ceased to actively manage the pandemic, which has killed at least 244,000 Americans, infected at least 10.9 million, and slowed the country’s economy. Instead, Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed the election was rigged against him. (Washington Post)
3/ Trump’s coronavirus adviser called for Michiganders to “rise up” against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s new COVID-19 restrictions. After Whitmer announced Sunday a three-week pause on indoor dining, Dr. Scott Atlas tweeted: “The only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept.” Whitmer denounced Atlas’ call to action, saying it is “incredibly reckless.” Dr. Anthony Fauci added that he “totally disagrees” with Atlas. (ABC News / Politico / New York Times)
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dr-scott-atlas-fire-telling-michigan-rise-covid/story?id=74234276
4/ Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine candidates is 94.5% effective, according to the early findings from a 30,000-subject trial that is still under way. The news comes a week after a similar shot developed by Pfizer and Bio N Tech said their candidate was more than 90% effective in an interim analysis. The two companies could have enough vaccine for about 25 to 30 million people in the U.S. in December, with the first doses going to the highest risk groups. Moderna’s vaccine was co-developed with Dr. Anthony Fauci’s institute. Trump, meanwhile, seeking to take credit for the vaccine news, tweeted: “For those great ‘historians’, please remember that these great discoveries, which will end the China Plague, all took place on my watch!” (New York Times / Washington Post / Wall Street Journal / Politico / Bloomberg / Politico / The Guardian)
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/16/moderna-coronavirus-vaccine-effective-436776
5/ Biden called the vaccine news “really encouraging” but warned “more people may die” if the Trump administration doesn’t cooperate and start the transition process. “We are going into a very dark winter,” Biden said. “If we have to wait until January 20th to start that planning, it puts us behind, over a month and a half,” Biden continued. Dr. Anthony Fauci, meanwhile, said it is “obvious” that the Trump administration’s refusal to begin the presidential transition is not good from a public health perspective and could stall the rollout of potential vaccines. “Of course it would be better if we could start working with” Biden’s team, adding that the “virus is not going to stop and call a time out while things change. The virus is just going to keep going. The process is just going to keep going.” (The Guardian / NPR / Politico / NBC News / Politico / Associated Press / CNN)
6/ Trump acknowledged that Biden won the presidential election, but then refused to concede. “He won because the Election was Rigged,” Trump tweeted, but an hour later added: “RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN!“ followed by “He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!“ Trump also continued to blame his loss on debunked conspiracies theories about the 2020 election in a series of posts that Twitter flagged for their disputed information. (CNN / Politico / Wall Street Journal / Bloomberg / New York Times)
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/15/politics/trump-biden-election/
7/ National security adviser Robert O’Brien promised a “professional transition” with the incoming Biden administration. “If the Biden-Harris ticket is determined to be the winner — and, obviously, things look that way now — we’ll have a very professional transition with the National Security Council, no doubt about it,” Trump’s national security adviser said. Trump, however, has refused to acknowledge the results of the Nov. 3 election, which he lost to Biden. He has falsely proclaimed several times on Twitter that “I WON THE ELECTION” or complained about the process. Twitter put a warning label on the tweets, noting that “official sources have called this election differently.” A growing number of top Republicans have urged Trump to start an orderly transition of power. (NPR / NBC News / Politico / New York Times)
https://apnews.com/article/trump-campaign-lawsuit-pennsylvania-fe4754fa7cd077d66854c724e1df91e7
Lawsuits that tried to disrupt Biden’s wins in four states are withdrawn. (CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/16/politics/lawsuits-michigan-pennsylvania-wisconsin-georgia/
9/ The Trump administration will auction off oil and gas drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska before Biden takes office. The Federal Register posted a “call for nominations” from the Bureau of Land Management relating to lease sales in about 1.5 million acres of the refuge along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. In a reversal of decades of protections, Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress in 2017 authorized potential oil and gas development in the refuge. Biden has opposed drilling in the refuge and any sales would be subject to review by the Biden administration. (Washington Post / New York Times)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/11/16/arctic-refuge-drilling-trump/
10/ Chad Wolf has not been serving lawfully as the acting secretary of Homeland Security and his suspension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is invalid, a federal judge ruled. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration wrongly tried to shut down DACA protections, but Wolf nonetheless suspended DACA on July 28. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has renewed its effort to get Wolf confirmed before Inauguration Day. (CNN / NBC News / Axios)
11/ Trump is expected to order the Pentagon to reduce troop levels to 2,500 in Afghanistan and 2,500 in Iraq before Trump leaves office on January 20. The Pentagon, however, has repeatedly warned that doing so could jeopardize lasting peace in the region. There are currently 4,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq. (CNN / ABC News / Bloomberg / Washington Post)
12/ Hate crimes in the U.S. rose to the highest level in more than a decade. The number of hate crime murders also hit a record high in 2019. White nationalist hate groups, meanwhile, rose by 55% between 2017 and 2019. (Associated Press / Axios)
https://apnews.com/article/hate-crimes-rise-fbi-data-ebbcadca8458aba96575da905650120d
Edited by sgamer82 on Nov 16th 2020 at 6:37:41 AM
Look, I'm still stuck on the fact that 48 percent of voters thought that Donald Trump would be a good choice for a second term as President. That should tell you everything you need to know about this nation. There's no "blue wave": we teeter on the precipice of the failure of democracy with every election.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Personally, I'd find it hilarious if the republicans just kept paying lip service to Trump while he insisted on shit-talking them for "failing" to secure him a win. Although honestly, that'd probably be bad since it would just mean the current republican establishment would get primaried and replaced with more true believers.
I wonder if he tries to squat in the White House and the cops have to bring him out. Will his supporters claim "Police brutality" if they have to grab his hands and drag him? Gonna look mighty odd for those guys defending shooting black people in their house while sleeping then saying "But you weren't supposed to hurt white President God!"
Accelerationism is what destroyed communism in America, FYI. The communists were ordered by Moscow to not support the New Deal during Roosevelt's administration because if the Great Depression was ended with capitalist reform then it would prevent a Soviet-style revolution.
Black Americans, the people who were and remained pretty much the core of communism in America, more or less ended up abandoning the cause. Especially when combined with the fact that the leadership toned down calls for racial equality to support America's participation in WW 2 (after initially opposing it due to...again, orders from Moscow).
At that point, they had no credibility.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
The response to that is generally that the public sold out and betrayed the communists to capitalist interests. There are also posts about reclaiming the term Tankie as a mark of pride, support for Mao and how he ushered in a glorious new era, and even a comment about how they need to just OWN the Holodomor citing the Red Amry needed to eat. Some of those feel like the stuff you'd get from some guy sitting in a chair on a Troll Farm, but some legit come from sites too obscure for those types to give a shit. What I find frightening is how easy it seems for them to get some people on the left to just nod along and throw support to them even when those regimes(back then and even now) would likely oppress some of them since I dunno Russia or China's stance on LGBTQA issues and race from then and now, but I can't imagine it being very progressive.
Edit: To say that they dislike Obama and consider his 8 years as president disappointing is an understatement. You'd think it was Bush Parts 3 and 4 namely with regards to things involving the housing crash, the lack of prosecution of bankers, and some stuff involving members of his cabinet coming from banking firms and/or corporations or some such thing. I'm not familiar enough with a LOT of this stuff hence asking here since by the large, you guys are SIGNIFICANTLY more reasonable
Edited by FinestArts on Nov 16th 2020 at 10:58:27 AM
Not going to say the numbers are a conspiracy, but take that into account, and you can probably shave a few percentage points off. It may be closer to 45%. Which is still alarming mind you, but we have to take in the possibility that the Republicans, in usual fashion, cheated in an alarming way. Such a scenario would, to quote M84's sig, leave me "Disgusted, but not surprised."
Edited by ScubaWolf on Nov 16th 2020 at 10:54:57 AM
"In a move surprising absolutely no one"TBF, the investigations into election fraud have already confirmed that there's no real proof of widespread voter fraud. That goes both ways.
And the GOP already played dirty, but in a (mostly) legal fashion. They stacked the deck in their favor in various ways such as disenfranchisement of voters and what not.
Individual Trump voters have of course tried stupid shit like voting twice. But that's not quite the same thing.
Edited by M84 on Nov 16th 2020 at 11:56:37 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedIf that was true then all our talk about how secure elections are would be bogus. I don't doubt Republicans cheat, because we've caught them doing it before. But unless there's hard proof Republicans have been forging votes of dead people in such a mass degree that it would shave off a chunk of the popular vote margins, I don't think it's a thought worth entertaining.
Though speaking of the numbers, Trump is now closer to 47% and Biden's popular vote advantage has gone up from 5 million to 5.5 million.
Edited by Parable on Nov 16th 2020 at 7:59:21 AM
The answer is simple: 47% of people in this nation are wastes of oxygen who would gleefully take out one of their own eyes if it meant their minority neighbor would have to go blind. Let's just hope that percentage gets lower.
Edited by astrokitty on Nov 16th 2020 at 11:06:51 AM
Somebody once told me the world was macaroni, I took a bite out of a tree

And Trump getting elected means that the Democrats will unite under an electable candidate, not necessarily a progressive one
"Enshittification truly is how platforms die"-Cory Doctorow