Joe Biden 2023: The Dark Brandon Rises

[Homercles 10205]

23 hours ago, elfenix said:

times new roman sucks.  it's an adaptation of an old newspaper font for shitty 1990s screens and printers.  our screens are much higher resolution and damn near no one prints anything anymore. 

[Native Horn 3487]

22 hours ago, elfenix said:

some courts have formatting and font requirements in the local rules which dictate what you do in pleadings.  that might get picked up into everything else.  for letters i typically go with 1.15 or so.  full on double space looks kinda weird to me. 

Apparently, capitalization does too.  🙂

[elfenix 34171]

8 minutes ago, Native Horn said:

Apparently, capitalization does too.  🙂

[kevwun 15624]

22 hours ago, elfenix said:

some courts have formatting and font requirements in the local rules which dictate what you do in pleadings.  that might get picked up into everything else.  for letters i typically go with 1.15 or so.  full on double space looks kinda weird to me. 

I had to help someone prepare a pdf packet for an appeals court once and it was ridiculous the hoops we had to jump through.  Fuckers insisted that over 100 pages of scanned documents had to be shrunk to a tiny size, but it all also still had to be text searchable.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33834]

35 minutes ago, kevwun said:

I had to help someone prepare a pdf packet for an appeals court once and it was ridiculous the hoops we had to jump through.  Fuckers insisted that over 100 pages of scanned documents had to be shrunk to a tiny size, but it all also still had to be text searchable.

[kevwun 15624]

I manufacture and sells internets for a living and it was still a pain in the ass.

Edited January 19, 2023 by kevwun

[Walser 1106]

what's a dark brandon

[Bookman 4610]

9 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Fify. 

Sorry, I meant switched *from* two spaces.

[Native Horn 3487]

2 hours ago, elfenix said:

No caps to all caps.  I'm torn.  (And probably soon to be cut.)

[Incredulity 11559]

2 hours ago, Walser said:

what's a dark brandon

It’s mobilizing trunalimunumaprzure.

[elfenix 34171]

2 hours ago, Walser said:

what's a dark brandon

conservative memes that tried to make biden look evil but instead made him look badass and got adopted by the internet left. 

 

 

[Incredulity 11559]

2 minutes ago, elfenix said:

conservative memes that tried to make biden look evil but instead made him look badass and got adopted by the internet left. 

 

 

Lol

[elfenix 34171]

Just now, Incredulity said:

Lol

[Incredulity 11559]

[elfenix 34171]

rocko sock confirmed

[StassneyHorn 6536]

PPI index came out and the news was so good it made the market go down again lol

[Biff Tannen 45491]

[atomheartbevo 89409]

17 hours ago, 'stache said:

Y’all still using typewriters or something? The only reason we used two spaces after a period was that monospaced typewriters made sentence flow look awkward with the period equidistance between sentences if you didn’t use two spaces. Word processors space the periods better and actually looks weird as hell if there’s a huge two space word processor gap. There’s not a single reputable style guide that will tell you to use two spaces. Even back then it wasn’t a hard style rule just mostly something people adopted to make the sentence breaks easier to identify. There’s no valid basis to insist on two spaces anymore, only nostalgia and hard headed olds “that’s how I learned it consarnit and I ain’t ever gonna change!”

TLDR: Two spacers are unequivocally wrong.

15 hours ago, Bookman said:

I switched to two spaces back in 2010 or so. I promise it will objectively make your legal documents look much more professional.

I fucking learned to type on a typewriter back in the 80s, even though we had a computer lab with Apple II's.  Up until about 2020, nobody gave a fuck about my two spaces, and when I went back to school around that time, I let Grammarly and Word handle my two spaces (after a tech writing prof nearly half my age gave me shit about it).

I'm too fucking old to change at this point.

[HamsterHookah 112]

Which thread is the conversation about the debt ceiling and the extraordinary measures to prevent the government from defaulting on debts taking place? I haven't seen it anywhere and thought maybe here as a catchall. Would like to learn by listening you smart government people on what is going on.

[Biff Tannen 45491]

7 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

Which thread is the conversation about the debt ceiling and the extraordinary measures to prevent the government from defaulting on debts taking place? I haven't seen it anywhere and thought maybe here as a catchall. Would like to learn by listening you smart government people on what is going on.

If you want an actual explanation of what's going on and why it is stupid, listen to the first five minutes of this.  

https://crooked.com/podcast/kook-ing-with-gas/

But I have a feeling you are not serious.

[jimmyjazz 45546]

13 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

If you want an actual explanation of what's going on and why it is stupid, listen to the first five minutes of this.  

https://crooked.com/podcast/kook-ing-with-gas/

But I have a feeling you are not serious.

Did the user name tip you off?

[HamsterHookah 112]

1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

If you want an actual explanation of what's going on and why it is stupid, listen to the first five minutes of this.  

https://crooked.com/podcast/kook-ing-with-gas/

But I have a feeling you are not serious.

As always, I'm 100% serious so thanks for the link.

The key takeaways in the first 10 mins, which was educational for me and maybe others here:

Congress has already authorized budget and spending and money is spent. By lifting the debt ceiling we aren't authorizing more money being spent, but just allowing us to service that debt that has already incurred, and by doing so it maintains the US Bond power and prestige which may or may not cause a global financial meltdown if the US were to ever default on that debt.

Got that much so far and it's interesting that the government is set up this way to need this permission (the podcast mentions it's a founding fathers old implementation), and it is very clearly then an example of politics at work.

This is 100% political maneuvering and playing the game and being political animals to find or take leverage and then use it in negotiation or as a cudgel to wrest what it is you want, at the optimal gain.

My opinion at least. I'll shut up and listen to the next 30 minutes now but thanks for the link.

Edited January 20, 2023 by HamsterHookah

[HamsterHookah 112]

In 2011 Obama negotiated with the Tea Party at the brink of debt limit default, which is why we are getting this again today.

[Willfully Horn 7913]

7 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

In 2011 Obama negotiated with the Tea Party at the brink of debt limit default, which is why we are getting this again today.

It fucking downgraded the credit rating of the USA. And prolonged the Great Recession. Which was yet another fine mess Rs left us. Might as well put our national debt on that list. 

Edited January 20, 2023 by Willfully Horn

['stache 21763]

25 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

As always, I'm 100% serious so thanks for the link.

The key takeaways in the first 10 mins, which was educational for me and maybe others here:

Congress has already authorized budget and spending and money is spent. By lifting the debt ceiling we aren't authorizing more money being spent, but just allowing us to service that debt that has already incurred, and by doing so it maintains the US Bond power and prestige which may or may not cause a global financial meltdown if the US were to ever default on that debt.

Got that much so far and it's interesting that the government is set up this way to need this permission (the podcast mentions it's a founding fathers old implementation), and it is very clearly then an example of politics at work.

This is 100% political maneuvering and playing the game and being political animals to find or take leverage and then use it in negotiation or as a cudgel to wrest what it is you want, at the optimal gain.

My opinion at least. I'll shut up and listen to the next 30 minutes now but thanks for the link.

It wasn't political until one side decided that shutting down the government and threatening default was a good political strategy, and of course it works on the morons they've courted as voters. They also know that those same morons will blame the democrats if it were to happen, because they also have been duped to believe that it is a spending problem, that only democrats spend, and that tax cuts implemented everytime a republican is in office is somehow irrelevant to the deficit.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33834]

5 minutes ago, 'stache said:

It wasn't political until one side decided that shutting down the government and threatening default was a good political strategy, and of course it works on the morons they've courted as voters. They also know that those same morons will blame the democrats if it were to happen, because they also have been duped to believe that it is a spending problem, that only democrats spend, and that tax cuts implemented everytime a republican is in office is somehow irrelevant to the deficit.

AND that those tax cuts are for them, which we all know they are most certainly not

['stache 21763]

2 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

AND that those tax cuts are for them, which we all know they are most certainly not

They really are the dumbest people.

 

[HamsterHookah 112]

16 minutes ago, 'stache said:

They really are the dumbest people.

 

The only quibble is that I don’t see “Sub 75k” as middle class. Middle class 75k-1m, is getting a cut.

I will caveat that with that the tweet is from 2017 when 60-70k might have been or felt middle class in a way that’s impossible to imagine today.

[Anastasis 23393]

Just now, HamsterHookah said:

The only quibble is that I don’t see “Sub 75k” as middle class. Middle class 75k-1m, is getting a cut.

I will caveat that with that the tweet is from 2017 when 60-70k might have been or felt middle class in a way that’s impossible to imagine today.

That table combines the individual and business distributional effects, and also doesn't represent the number of filers in each category. But that particular table has a good rhetorical value in switching from negative to positive sign @75k, so it is what gets run with.

['stache 21763]

6 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

The only quibble is that I don’t see “Sub 75k” as middle class. Middle class 75k-1m, is getting a cut.

I will caveat that with that the tweet is from 2017 when 60-70k might have been or felt middle class in a way that’s impossible to imagine today.

I would bet that a majority, and maybe a large majority, of republican voters make less than $75K.

[Judge Roybeanbag 11806]

5 minutes ago, 'stache said:

I would bet that a majority, and maybe a large majority, of republican voters live off the government dole, Medicare, social security, publicly funded pensions, and are so fucking brain dead stupid they don’t even know it.  

Fify.  

[cactusflinthead 27594]

Klain is stepping aside

[Longhorn_Fan68 33834]

17 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Klain is stepping aside

I'm paywalled. Does it say why he is stepping down?

[cactusflinthead 27594]

3 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

I'm paywalled. Does it say why he is stepping down?

WASHINGTON — Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff who has steered President Biden’s administration through two years of triumphs and setbacks, is expected to step down in coming weeks in the most significant changing of the guard since Mr. Biden took office two years ago.

Mr. Klain has been telling colleagues privately since the November midterm elections that after a grueling, nonstop stretch at Mr. Biden’s side going back to the 2020 campaign, he is ready to move on, according to senior administration officials, and a search for a replacement has been underway.

The officials, who discussed internal matters on condition of anonymity, would not say whether a successor has already been picked or when the decision would be announced, but indicated that it would come at some point after the president outlined his agenda for the coming year in his State of the Union address on Feb. 7. Mr. Klain likely would stay around for a transition period to help the next chief settle into the corner office that has been his command post for many crises and legislative battles.

His resignation would be a striking moment of turnover at the top of an administration that has been relatively stable through the first half of Mr. Biden’s term, and Mr. Klain takes pride that he has lasted longer than any other Democratic president’s first chief of staff in more than half a century. But with Mr. Biden expected to announce by spring that he is running for re-election, advisers predict more moves as some aides shift from the White House to the campaign.

The departure would also come at a time when the White House faces a widening array of political and legal threats from a newly appointed special counsel investigating the improper handling of classified documents and a flurry of other inquiries by the newly installed Republican majority in the House. The next chief of staff will be charged with managing the defense of Mr. Biden’s White House and any counterattack as the 2024 election approaches.

Among the possible choices to replace Mr. Klain mentioned by senior officials are Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh; former Gov. Jack A. Markell of Delaware, now serving as ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden; Steven J. Ricchetti, the counselor to the president; Jeffrey D. Zients, the administration’s former coronavirus response coordinator; Susan Rice, the White House domestic policy adviser; and Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture. 

Neither Mr. Klain nor any of those named as possible candidates to succeed him had any immediate comment on Saturday in response to messages. Ms. Dunn has flatly ruled out taking the job in conversations with colleagues. 

Mr. Klain has been a singularly important figure in Mr. Biden’s administration. Having worked for Mr. Biden off and on for more than three decades, admirers say that Mr. Klain channels the president as few others can. He is seen as so influential that Republicans derisively call him a virtual prime minister and Democrats blame him when they are disappointed in a decision. 

 

For all the crossfire, Mr. Klain helped rack up an impressive string of legislative victories, including a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan, a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure program, the largest investment in combating climate change in history and measures to expand benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, lower prescription drug costs for seniors, spur development in the semiconductor industry and create a minimum 15 percent tax rate for major corporations.

 

Mr. Klain also helped oversee the distribution of vaccines that have curbed if not ended the Covid-19 pandemic and the enactment of a plan to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars of student loan debt for millions of Americans. And he set the tone for the White House message to the world through an active Twitter account that he used to promote victories and jab critics.

On Friday, for instance, he chided Republicans for their approach to federal spending. “How extreme is the House GOP plan to cut Social Security and Medicare?” he wrote. “So extreme that even Donald Trump is saying, ‘Hey, that’s too extreme for me!’” 

He also reflected on the second anniversary of Mr. Biden’s inauguration. “Two hard years,” Mr. Klain wrote. “So much to be done. But so much progress.” 

At the same time, Mr. Klain has presided over a rash of troubles that have drained public support for Mr. Biden. While unemployment has remained near record lows and job creation was robust, inflation reached its highest rate in 40 years, gas prices shot up to an all-time high, economic growth stalled for a time and illegal immigration at the southwestern border surged to record levels.

 

Likely as a result, Mr. Biden’s approval rating has been mired in the low 40 percent range for more than a year. But Mr. Klain is preparing to leave at a moment when gas prices have come back down, inflation is falling and Mr. Biden’s political standing has recovered somewhat after better-than-expected midterm elections.

“He is a truly unique chief of staff,” said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution who studies administration personnel. Mr. Klain’s broad experience in multiple administrations as well as on Capitol Hill, his reputation for managing tough political challenges and his long history with Mr. Biden made him the most important figure in the White House besides the president. 

Finding a successor who encompasses all of those skills will not be easy and may well be impossible,” Ms. Tenpas said. “They are headed into a re-election campaign that also increases Ron’s value in that he has campaign experience and political skills. In addition, the chief of staff’s Capitol Hill experience could come in handy as they confront divided government.”

By this point in his presidency, Donald J. Trump was already on his third chief of staff and his third national security adviser and had lost more than half of his original 15 cabinet secretaries. By contrast, none of Mr. Biden’s statutory cabinet members have left. In fact, even Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, who some had speculated might step down after the midterm elections, recently told Mr. Biden that she would stay.

Ms. Tenpas calculates Mr. Biden’s turnover in his most important positions at 40 percent in the first two years, far lower than the 66 percent turnover in the same period under Mr. Trump, although higher than other recent presidents, like Barack Obama, who saw just 24 percent in his first two years.

Still, few of those who left were at the senior-most level or part of the president’s inner circle, which has remained broadly intact. Mr. Biden’s overall turnover rate is higher than it would have been otherwise in part because of turmoil in Vice President Kamala Harris’s office, where staff members have come and gone with more frequency. 

Other departures are anticipated, possibly after the president’s State of the Union address, scheduled for Feb. 7. Brian Deese, the president’s national economic adviser, is expected to leave later this year, while Cecilia Rouse is expected to leave her post as chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers to return to Princeton University.

Mr. Klain, 61, who grew up in Indiana, graduated from Georgetown and earned a law degree from Harvard, has now served under three presidents and brought more White House experience to his post than perhaps any of his predecessors. He was associate counsel to President Bill Clinton, counselor to Attorney General Janet Reno and then chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore. A central figure in Mr. Gore’s futile fight to win the election recount in Florida in 2000, Mr. Klain was later played by Kevin Spacey in the 2008 HBO film “Recount.”

Mr. Klain also worked for Mr. Biden’s Senate office and served as Mr. Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president before becoming Mr. Obama’s Ebola response coordinator. Altogether, he served under nine previous White House chiefs of staff. “I have worked for more White House chiefs of staff than any other White House chief of staff,” Mr. Klain once boasted.

 

In 2015, Mr. Klain enlisted with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign without waiting until Mr. Biden announced he was not running, an act that was seen as a betrayal by some in Biden world. In an email later made public, Mr. Klain even lamented that he was “dead to them,” meaning Mr. Biden’s circle. But several current and former Biden advisers said it is a testament to Mr. Klain’s strategic value that he worked his way back into the good graces of not only the president but also his wife, Jill Biden. 

Mr. Klain has long been open that he expected to leave at the two-year mark, especially since the midterm elections. He told Chris Whipple, author of “The Fight of His Life,” a new book on Mr. Biden’s presidency published last Tuesday, that he was readying to depart at that point and predicted that his successor could be a woman, without naming her.

Officials said in recent days that it was not at all certain it will be a woman after all, however. But after the rough and tumble of his tenure, Mr. Klain took the midterm results as validation. “Maybe,” he wrote Mr. Whipple in an email at 1:16 a.m. on election night, “we don’t suck as much as people thought.”

[Neonmoon 38127]

23 hours ago, 'stache said:

It wasn't political until one side decided that shutting down the government and threatening default was a good political strategy, and of course it works on the morons they've courted as voters. They also know that those same morons will blame the democrats if it were to happen, because they also have been duped to believe that it is a spending problem, that only democrats spend, and that tax cuts implemented everytime a republican is in office is somehow irrelevant to the deficit.

It’s going to keep happening. The US is full of the brainwashed stupid. Republicans need stupid people to keep power. Religion, Fox News, Facebook keeps them stupid and angry. 

[shakahorn 1625]

1 hour ago, cactusflinthead said:

WASHINGTON — Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff who has steered President Biden’s administration through two years of triumphs and setbacks, is expected to step down in coming weeks in the most significant changing of the guard since Mr. Biden took office two years ago.

Mr. Klain has been telling colleagues privately since the November midterm elections that after a grueling, nonstop stretch at Mr. Biden’s side going back to the 2020 campaign, he is ready to move on, according to senior administration officials, and a search for a replacement has been underway.

The officials, who discussed internal matters on condition of anonymity, would not say whether a successor has already been picked or when the decision would be announced, but indicated that it would come at some point after the president outlined his agenda for the coming year in his State of the Union address on Feb. 7. Mr. Klain likely would stay around for a transition period to help the next chief settle into the corner office that has been his command post for many crises and legislative battles.

His resignation would be a striking moment of turnover at the top of an administration that has been relatively stable through the first half of Mr. Biden’s term, and Mr. Klain takes pride that he has lasted longer than any other Democratic president’s first chief of staff in more than half a century. But with Mr. Biden expected to announce by spring that he is running for re-election, advisers predict more moves as some aides shift from the White House to the campaign.

The departure would also come at a time when the White House faces a widening array of political and legal threats from a newly appointed special counsel investigating the improper handling of classified documents and a flurry of other inquiries by the newly installed Republican majority in the House. The next chief of staff will be charged with managing the defense of Mr. Biden’s White House and any counterattack as the 2024 election approaches.

Among the possible choices to replace Mr. Klain mentioned by senior officials are Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh; former Gov. Jack A. Markell of Delaware, now serving as ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden; Steven J. Ricchetti, the counselor to the president; Jeffrey D. Zients, the administration’s former coronavirus response coordinator; Susan Rice, the White House domestic policy adviser; and Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture. 

Neither Mr. Klain nor any of those named as possible candidates to succeed him had any immediate comment on Saturday in response to messages. Ms. Dunn has flatly ruled out taking the job in conversations with colleagues. 

Mr. Klain has been a singularly important figure in Mr. Biden’s administration. Having worked for Mr. Biden off and on for more than three decades, admirers say that Mr. Klain channels the president as few others can. He is seen as so influential that Republicans derisively call him a virtual prime minister and Democrats blame him when they are disappointed in a decision. 

 

For all the crossfire, Mr. Klain helped rack up an impressive string of legislative victories, including a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan, a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure program, the largest investment in combating climate change in history and measures to expand benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, lower prescription drug costs for seniors, spur development in the semiconductor industry and create a minimum 15 percent tax rate for major corporations.

 

Mr. Klain also helped oversee the distribution of vaccines that have curbed if not ended the Covid-19 pandemic and the enactment of a plan to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars of student loan debt for millions of Americans. And he set the tone for the White House message to the world through an active Twitter account that he used to promote victories and jab critics.

On Friday, for instance, he chided Republicans for their approach to federal spending. “How extreme is the House GOP plan to cut Social Security and Medicare?” he wrote. “So extreme that even Donald Trump is saying, ‘Hey, that’s too extreme for me!’” 

He also reflected on the second anniversary of Mr. Biden’s inauguration. “Two hard years,” Mr. Klain wrote. “So much to be done. But so much progress.” 

At the same time, Mr. Klain has presided over a rash of troubles that have drained public support for Mr. Biden. While unemployment has remained near record lows and job creation was robust, inflation reached its highest rate in 40 years, gas prices shot up to an all-time high, economic growth stalled for a time and illegal immigration at the southwestern border surged to record levels.

 

Likely as a result, Mr. Biden’s approval rating has been mired in the low 40 percent range for more than a year. But Mr. Klain is preparing to leave at a moment when gas prices have come back down, inflation is falling and Mr. Biden’s political standing has recovered somewhat after better-than-expected midterm elections.

“He is a truly unique chief of staff,” said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution who studies administration personnel. Mr. Klain’s broad experience in multiple administrations as well as on Capitol Hill, his reputation for managing tough political challenges and his long history with Mr. Biden made him the most important figure in the White House besides the president. 

Finding a successor who encompasses all of those skills will not be easy and may well be impossible,” Ms. Tenpas said. “They are headed into a re-election campaign that also increases Ron’s value in that he has campaign experience and political skills. In addition, the chief of staff’s Capitol Hill experience could come in handy as they confront divided government.”

By this point in his presidency, Donald J. Trump was already on his third chief of staff and his third national security adviser and had lost more than half of his original 15 cabinet secretaries. By contrast, none of Mr. Biden’s statutory cabinet members have left. In fact, even Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, who some had speculated might step down after the midterm elections, recently told Mr. Biden that she would stay.

Ms. Tenpas calculates Mr. Biden’s turnover in his most important positions at 40 percent in the first two years, far lower than the 66 percent turnover in the same period under Mr. Trump, although higher than other recent presidents, like Barack Obama, who saw just 24 percent in his first two years.

Still, few of those who left were at the senior-most level or part of the president’s inner circle, which has remained broadly intact. Mr. Biden’s overall turnover rate is higher than it would have been otherwise in part because of turmoil in Vice President Kamala Harris’s office, where staff members have come and gone with more frequency. 

Other departures are anticipated, possibly after the president’s State of the Union address, scheduled for Feb. 7. Brian Deese, the president’s national economic adviser, is expected to leave later this year, while Cecilia Rouse is expected to leave her post as chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers to return to Princeton University.

Mr. Klain, 61, who grew up in Indiana, graduated from Georgetown and earned a law degree from Harvard, has now served under three presidents and brought more White House experience to his post than perhaps any of his predecessors. He was associate counsel to President Bill Clinton, counselor to Attorney General Janet Reno and then chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore. A central figure in Mr. Gore’s futile fight to win the election recount in Florida in 2000, Mr. Klain was later played by Kevin Spacey in the 2008 HBO film “Recount.”

Mr. Klain also worked for Mr. Biden’s Senate office and served as Mr. Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president before becoming Mr. Obama’s Ebola response coordinator. Altogether, he served under nine previous White House chiefs of staff. “I have worked for more White House chiefs of staff than any other White House chief of staff,” Mr. Klain once boasted.

 

In 2015, Mr. Klain enlisted with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign without waiting until Mr. Biden announced he was not running, an act that was seen as a betrayal by some in Biden world. In an email later made public, Mr. Klain even lamented that he was “dead to them,” meaning Mr. Biden’s circle. But several current and former Biden advisers said it is a testament to Mr. Klain’s strategic value that he worked his way back into the good graces of not only the president but also his wife, Jill Biden. 

Mr. Klain has long been open that he expected to leave at the two-year mark, especially since the midterm elections. He told Chris Whipple, author of “The Fight of His Life,” a new book on Mr. Biden’s presidency published last Tuesday, that he was readying to depart at that point and predicted that his successor could be a woman, without naming her.

Officials said in recent days that it was not at all certain it will be a woman after all, however. But after the rough and tumble of his tenure, Mr. Klain took the midterm results as validation. “Maybe,” he wrote Mr. Whipple in an email at 1:16 a.m. on election night, “we don’t suck as much as people thought.”

I'm very happy that all the possible replacements are out of the executive branch.  You need someone who knows how the sausage is made to be CoS.  Never been a fan of lege branch folks as CoS.  Just seems like politicians who want to further their career.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33834]

17 minutes ago, shakahorn said:

I'm very happy that all the possible replacements are out of the executive branch.  You need someone who knows how the sausage is made to be CoS.  Never been a fan of lege branch folks as CoS.  Just seems like politicians who want to further their career.

am I interpreting your meaning correctly?: you're glad they're only considering people with a business/how to run things mindset than those that are politically motivated; kinda like hiring a CEO vs a PR person? am I close? if so I think that's a great point and not one I had considered significant until you pointed it out

[Thatguy 8492]

On 1/20/2023 at 2:59 PM, HamsterHookah said:

In 2011 Obama negotiated with the Tea Party at the brink of debt limit default, which is why we are getting this again today.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

Good thing the FBI director wasn’t appointed by Trump under the most shady of circumstances.

[4th&Five 41457]

Jfc

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

Mistakes were made

[Incredulity 11559]

38 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

Jfc

 

Obligatory 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13546]

7 more years of weekly bombshells like this gon drive me to the both sides camp

[YGIFS 19449]

I don't want to excuse the behavior and actions of Biden nor Trump here, but this is getting to a point where we also need to point some serious fucking fingers at the DNI/office of Nat'l Sec. Adviser, et. al.  This has  been going on for at least 6-7 years across two previous administrations.  Who the fuck is signing these things out in perpetuity?  The chain of custody seems to mysteriously stop on pizza day in the White House Situation Room when some intern goes in after the sensitive high-level meetings, walks out with a bunch of 'empty' pizza boxes that are filled to the brim with top secret docs, and promises he's just going to compost bin?  WTF?  

[Biff Tannen 45491]

11 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

I don't want to excuse the behavior and actions of Biden nor Trump here, but this is getting to a point where we also need to point some serious fucking fingers at the DNI/office of Nat'l Sec. Adviser, et. al.  This has  been going on for at least 6-7 years across two previous administrations.  Who the fuck is signing these things out in perpetuity?  The chain of custody seems to mysteriously stop on pizza day in the White House Situation Room when some intern goes in after the sensitive high-level meetings, walks out with a bunch of 'empty' pizza boxes that are filled to the brim with top secret docs, and promises he's just going to compost bin?  WTF?  

Seriously this.  If anything, it's making dotard look more competent, not Biden less.  This is starting to point to a complete breakdown of the chain of custody and whatever institution is ultimately responsible for classified info.  

You know what?  Still fuck that.  The ultimate point here is dotard MEANT to take the classified shit and Biden most likely did not.  

[Incredulity 11559]

6 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

and Biden most likely did not

[bolverk 29397]

Fresh Air had a really great interview with an historian on the classification process and its abuses a couple of days ago, basically saying that too many folks are classifying too many documents at all levels.

Obviously, we don't know shit about the nature of all these that are getting found, but it's worth keeping in mind before / if the public finds out more.

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/19/1149906531/classified-documents-biden-trump-matthew-connelly-declassification-engine

[YGIFS 19449]

Maybe Biden can play the Uncle Leo card, "I'm an old man, I'm confused.  Can you help me get home?"

Hunter, "Dad is stealing classified documents?"

Jill, "Or I do sometimes."

Hunter, "Why do you do it?"

Jill, "Sometimes your father forgets to."  

[Biff Tannen 45491]

4 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

What reason would he have?

[Incredulity 11559]

16 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

What reason would he have?

Carelessness.

“He didn’t mean to” doesn’t cut it.  

Amplified by raiding Maralago.