The Revolving Door: Biden's National Security Nominees Cashed In on Government Service—and Now They're Back
Top Biden advisers Tony Blinken, Michele Flournoy, and Lloyd Austin face new scrutiny.
Out with the old corruption, in with the new.
Biden revolving door picks being grossly unethical even before getting in
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Out with the old corruption, in with the new.
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Is anyone (at least on this forum) booing you? Sure, some people (myself included) put the stress on "lesser" rather than "evil", but "evil" is still there.
- Feb 7, 2011
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Before election day every time I said that Biden is Trump lite the Biden defense squad would show up to tell me that I'm wrong and that Biden is the most progressive candidate we've ever had (I believe Lil Devils was the one that used that particular phrase).
What Dirty Hipsters said. If you wanted to point out that Biden was in fact a really terrible candidate, you got a litany of "He's not perfect, but look at his website, he's the most progressive president we'll have ever had". It was bullshit then and it's bullshit now.
Someone actually said that?
The best thing about Biden is that he's not Trump. To be fair to him though, he is a decent human being, but he's also a pushover who most likely ran for office because the DNC leadership convinced him to run. Everyone knows that Kamala Harris will be running the show. She's the ruthless one with the unhealthy amount of ambition. Basically a younger version of Hillary.
I believe I remarked that Joe Biden was running on the most progressive platform we've ever seen in a presidential nominee. Which was factually correct. That he abandons part of said platform or does something unethical later doesn't change the fact that his stated goals were very progressive.
Ah, yes, I'd forgotten about Lil Devils X, definitely were people defending him.
I give it 6 months until they switch Joe for Kamala. I always saw her as a black Hilary.
I really don't see how electing Biden is an improvement when I've seen so many people see it as a sign that they can ignore politics again. Trump's loud mouth got people paying attention to what our government is doing and instead of deciding to do something about it they decided they'd rather hit the snooze button and stick their heads in the sand until someone worse than Trump shows up. Doesn't matter what our government is doing, just that they do it quietly.
What good did paying attention do for the Paris accord, or the Syrian Kurds, or the Iranian nuclear deal? It didn't matter that people "paid attention". The damage was done anyway.
Firstly, it's not clear at all that things can go "back to normal". Let's remember, "normal" created Trump: if there is to not be a repeat, something has to change.
Secondly, Trump is not the answer, because despite what his fanbois claim, he solved precisely none of the longstanding problems facing the USA, was not even attempting to solve many of them, and then got many tens of thousands of his own citizens killed in the bargain through general incompetence. Trump was a distraction from the stuff that matters. He was a good old-fashioned demagogue. He created a load of make-believe enemies (foreigners, "cultural Marxists", etc.) to rile up nationalists and right-wing authoritarians, and then sat back and let all the deep structural problems of the country - the toxic political money and lobbying, the wealth gap, the racial disharmony, the onrushing climate change, etc. - continue utterly untouched. Well, untouched except for when he was aggravating them.
In time, had he won again many of the Trumpistas would probably eventually have twigged that for the all the feel-good, aspirational rhetoric he'd actually achieved none of what he said (assuming he hadn't found some other issue to keep them distracted). But really, we need someone to bring attention to all the Big Stuff That Matters who threatens to really do something about it, not someone who blusters and outrages and inflames, but underneath it all just cements the same old system.
What's your point? There seems to be this weird assumption that because I don't think Trump is a neo-nazi that that means I must like him or think he's a stand up guy. You saying, "Well Trump did this that and the other thing." means absolutely nothing to me outside of trying to paint Biden as somehow better.
Every president is involved with shit, Biden will be involved in just as much as Trump was, he'll just be quiet and keep his head down. Nothing has changed and the one advantage we gained from a Trump presidency, people paying attention to our government, wasn't capitalized on, instead people decided to settle for jack and squat.
Or to put it another way, a runny nose is a symptom that you have a cold, you don't notice this and then go running around outside in freezing rain, you take medicine and rest your body. Trump is a symptom of a very serious problem and next time we get someone like him it will only be worse if nothing is done to make things better. My hope after the 2016 election was that the Democrats would try to reevaluate and put forth a decent candidate at least, but they didn't go for offense, they went for defense and had the media do its damned hardest to paint Trump as being Hitler so everyone would settle for Biden, and the people just went with it.
So congrats, you settled for nothing and got nothing and the parties have been told that they don't have to do better to get your vote, they just have to sling more mud than the other while keeping their actual decisions on the down low. Bravo!
Edit: And one more thing! I don't have a problem with the reasons people like Obsidian have for why they voted Biden, because his reason makes sense and isn't based on the idea that Trump is an evil villain but that the actual issues with Trump, which there are many, make him worse by comparison. That makes sense, that's not a reason based on kidding yourself. My issue with that take is only that I don't see how settling for Biden tells the politicians they need to do better, I think it just tells them that they can get away with whatever they want so long as they aren't too loud about it.
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My point was nothing to do with Biden, which is why I didn't mention Biden. My point was that "people paying attention to what our government is doing" had zero practical positive impact in the last four years. You can't chalk it up as a positive; the damage was done regardless, it did no good.
Firstly, how am I not focusing on "the actual issues with Trump"? Biden is a terrible, terrible candidate, but I did give three areas on which Trump would be significantly, materially worse than any other candidate (or even just a continuation of the status quo). A specific, direct comparison can be made there. Very few of the others would have made those three calls, even shitty candidates like Biden or Clinton. And those calls were ruinously awful.
"Settling for Biden" doesn't tell the politicians they need to do better, no. Neither does settling for Trump. Neither does abstaining. After the primaries, come the general election, none of the options provided that message. During the primaries, supporting a better candidate would have sent that message... hence why I supported Sanders and urged people to opt against Biden.
People need to pay attention to politics in the right way. You're asking for radical politics, but Trump wasn't radical politics, he was just a loudmouthed arsehole who ran a chaotic government, and the main interest in politics he therefore drove was to not have a loudmouthed arsehole running the country.
If people actually wanted to "drain the swamp", they don't need to elect someone to do it, they can do it themselves. Nothing is really going to change until people vote out both of these parties.
Yes.
Why? Where is the rule that every PotUS must be exactly as bad as every other one. I'm certain Biden will be less bad than Trump was. Not great, but we realistically don't get great, we get bad or worse.
Color me shocked that getting a real politician back into the white house reveals that politicians are corrupt pretty much 99.9% of the time.
At least Biden's corruption is factual and obvious, meanwhile they had to make up a bunch of shit about Trump to make him seem just as much of a piece of shit.
(not that Trump didn't have his own problems, he is a selfish jackass, but you know whatever)
Though if the rumors of Biden actually canceling the federal student loan debt, he'll become my favorite president ever.
At least Biden's corruption is factual and obvious, meanwhile they had to make up a bunch of shit about Trump to make him seem just as much of a piece of shit.
(not that Trump didn't have his own problems, he is a selfish jackass, but you know whatever)
Though if the rumors of Biden actually canceling the federal student loan debt, he'll become my favorite president ever.