Hey, I made a meme, inspired by the troubles besetting Trump’s transition team.
In case you haven’t been following the issue, here are a few just slightly alarming quotes from a Huffington Post piece on the chaos.
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 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. …
According to several sources close to the Trump transition team and inside the Obama administration, the president elect and his staff have had difficulty finding able-minded Republicans willing to take on critical posts. One Democratic source, who like others would only discuss sensitive talks on condition of anonymity, said transition officials had been informally asking Obama political appointees to recommend Republicans to take over their jobs.
Yeah, that’s kind of what happens when you elect a dude who has no freaking idea what he’s doing to the highest office in the land.
Wow. I would not expect that.
Olimar needs to get better friends.
@Jack
He’s been described with multiple variants of “sad,” “pathetic,” and “drunkard,” at this point. He likes to slip his favorite into his tea, I like to think.
He has Louie, but he’s become estranged from his wife, his children (who for reasons manage the entire operation and made several “patches” to his mental state that led up to a terrible crisis), and both of his parents. And damned if his parents didn’t try. (I like to think his mom is absolutely kickass, and is still…trying, at least.)
Also, a Flying Pikmin took to following Rick (who doesn’t damage it due to actually kind of liking Olimar’s presence). Spooked him a bit when it tried to say his name.
re: weird story
Oh! Forgot to mention: the story is scaled to Smash standards. Otherwise Olimar and all of his species (which we’ll just call “Hocotatians” because we don’t have anything more official) would be about the size of a quarter. Instead, they’re more likely to look you in the knee.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Well, ish. I’m not sure I’d entirely call it trading, the things they did over there. I think referring to the locals as “wretches” and sacrificing one of them was a fairly bad start. The Vinland settlements did not last long, after all.
Dog catches car. Carnival barker gets promoted to elephant handler.
BTW, if the electoral college wants some republican other than Trump, who can they pick?
Hmm, if this is even making the republicans nervous, perhaps that increases the odds of the electoral college going with the popular vote?
If the electoral college keep faith with the electorate, we get four years of misrule.
If the electoral college betray the electorate, we may have blood in the streets and a Greece-style swing even further to the right.
I don’t know which to hope for.
The Electoral College isn’t made up of randoms, they’re people who are connected to the political establishment, chosen by the parties. To my understanding, most are Republican, but they’re all Establishment people. Given the way that the establishment has been lining up behind “Give Him A Chance”, I don’t think the EC is going to go against the grain here. I know that a lot of people are clinging onto that hope, and I don’t want to break that hope – it’s possible – but, well.
Please brace yourselves, friends. I think it’s decided, and that the real work will be in protesting the hell out of the government, in a way that makes the Vietnam War protests look like a Farmer’s Day parade.
@ scildreja
I was told by some American lawyers (but they may well have been wrong*) that the way the electoral college works is that each party puts forward their own candidates and depending on which party wins that state that’s the group they use; which is why faithless electors are a rarity as you’re effectively voting against your own party.
(*One of them did end up as Deputy Secratary of State though. Although if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the Trump thing it’s that you don’t necessary have to be that smart to get a position in government)
snrk
While I’m happy to hear (thanks Skiriki) that Trumplethinskin’s requests for security clearances are still subject to background checks, it sucks that the prez can override them. >:(
Makes me feel like the two years of checks I had to go through at the tender age of 19 meant nothing. The worst part wasn’t the interviews I participated in, it was hearing about the interviews my friends and family endured. It made me feel bad, but we all pretty much agreed it was the price of security and freedom.
I mean, hell; I know of a young lady at one of my overseas duty stations who nearly got her clearance taken away because she had a relative in East Berlin (this was 1986) that she and almost none of her family even knew about, let alone had any contact with!
wwth – I saw on Rachel Maddow that Trump thinks he can get around the anti-nepotism thing by making his kids undpaid advisors. I hope this loophole isn’t real.
@ scildreja
There is virtually no chance that the Electoral College votes against Trump. Since they are all Republican loyalists, the only reason any significant number would change their votes would be if the Republican Party suddenly turned on Trump. That’s not gonna happen. Even if it did, they wouldn’t vote for Clinton instead. They’d probably vote in Pence.
I’ve noticed the same thing too, and it’s part of the reason that it was hard for me to really support Bernie was that a lot of his supporters seemed to think he was a saint and could do no wrong and that kind of scared me about him. While there are things that I do like about him, there are important criticisms to be made about him and it bothers me that a lot of his supporters were incapable of thinking critically of him (I think that is why his supporters where so fast to call the election rigged–I knew people who were convinced there was no reason why black people wouldn’t like him more than Clinton and the only reason why he lost the south was because black people don’t vote when black people have a lot of reasons to prefer Clinton over him)
@margot
if the president is impeached, the vice president becomes the president, however congress can impeach the president, vice president, and any member of the president’s cabinet, and any civil officers the president appoints, so it’s possible that if everyone in involved in the Trump presidency is horrible they could all get impeached
@Falconer
I have a feeling that Clinton made her concession speech because that’s what you do and if she didn’t the media would tear her apart–I believe that either they are still counting votes or that they were still counting votes for a while after the election where called so I think that at this point if Clinton saw a chance to get the presidency she would take it
@Ohlmann
I’m sorry if this is a stupid question but can members of the electoral college literally vote for anyone? I was under the impression that the electoral college members had to vote for someone who was actually running for president
sparkalipoo, I was also wondering this above. The system just looks more and more complicated the closer I look.
I feared beforehand that a close election would be highly divisive regardless of who won but never thought it could get this absurd.
Finnish newspaper cartoonist just made a parody of an old Calvin and Hobbes strip, where Calvin tries to extort his father by claiming that “your Father approval rates are way down and re-election seems unlikely unless quick policy changes are instituted”. The father, reading news about Trump, goes, “I don’t think you understand these things, son…”
@Arctic Ape
that cartoon is great. The founding father’s really did pick the most convoluted system for picking a president.
sez sparkalipoo: “I’m sorry if this is a stupid question but can members of the electoral college literally vote for anyone?”
Yes. The whole point of the Electoral College is, it’s the part of the whole ‘checks and balances’ deal which is specifically intended to make sure the voting public doesn’t vote a clusterfuck-in-human-form into office. One could argue that if the EC voters did cast their electoral votes for Clinton, thus keeping the Angry Cheeto out of office, that would be exactly and precisely what the Electoral College is supposed to do.
Me, I’ma call the Cheeto “President-Electoral” if the EC fails to do its job.