Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

N&P: Discuss governments, nations, politics and recent related news here.

Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital

Locked
User avatar
Ace Pace
Hardware Lover
Posts: 8456
Joined: 2002-07-07 03:04am
Location: Wasting time instead of money
Contact:

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by Ace Pace »

loomer wrote: 2020-09-05 12:27pm
White House memo calls for ban on federal agencies conducting training on "critical race theory," "white privilege" with taxpayer dollars

President Trump is ordering federal agencies to stop funding training on topics including "critical race theory" and "white privilege" with taxpayer dollars, according to a memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought that was released on Friday.

"It has come to the President's attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date 'training' government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda," Vought wrote in a letter to the heads of executive departments and agencies.

Citing press reports that agencies have conducted training where employees are told that "virtually all white people contribute to racism" or that racism is "embedded in the belief that America is the land of opportunity," Vought said trainings of that nature "run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our nation has stood since its inception."

In the letter, Vought told the agency heads to identify contracts or other spending related to training on "critical race theory," "white privilege," "or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil."

He further instructed the leaders to find ways to cancel the contracts and move federal dollars away from "these un-American propaganda training sessions."
Source

Uh-oh! Trump's scared of critical race theory now. The odds on anyone involved in this memo having the slightest concept of what critical race theory actually entails are, of course, zero.
"Whites are bad" summarizes their understanding of the content? :banghead:
Brotherhood of the Bear | HAB | Mess | SDnet archivist |
User avatar
Tribble
Sith Devotee
Posts: 3082
Joined: 2008-11-18 11:28am
Location: stardestroyer.net

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by Tribble »

Ace Pace wrote:
"Whites are bad" summarizes their understanding of the content? :banghead:
Half.

Their limited understanding of the content consists of “whites are bad, non-whites are good.” They of course don’t want to promote either.
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - The official Troll motto, as stated by Adam Savage
User avatar
madd0ct0r
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 6259
Joined: 2008-03-14 07:47am

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by madd0ct0r »

Training gets renamed to "traditional American values in modern America" opening slide is KKK lynching with subtitle "no longer acceptable".
"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Welcome to SDN, where we can't see the forest because walking into trees repeatedly feels good, bro." - Mr Coffee
bilateralrope
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 5938
Joined: 2005-06-25 06:50pm
Location: New Zealand

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by bilateralrope »

A Judge Has Ordered The Justice Department To Release More Portions Of The Mueller Report Before Election Day
The ruling marks the second time the courts have forced the government to reveal previously hidden sections in response to a lawsuit by BuzzFeed News.

Jason Leopold
BuzzFeed News Reporter

Ken Bensinger
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on September 30, 2020, at 8:22 p.m. ET


A federal judge has ruled that the Justice Department improperly redacted significant portions of the Mueller report and must release those sections by Nov. 2, just one day before the presidential election.

In a 40-page opinion released Wednesday, US District Court Judge Reggie Walton said the agency violated federal law when it redacted sections of the report dealing with, among other things, discussions within the special counsel’s office about whether to charge certain individuals with crimes. Government attorneys had justified their decision to withhold those portions under a section of law known as the deliberative process privilege, or “Exemption 5,” but Walton wrote that it “failed to show that it appropriately withheld information” under that standard.

At the same time, the judge ruled that the government was right to redact much of the Mueller report under separate exemptions that are designed to protect the integrity of ongoing investigations, law enforcement techniques and procedures, and individuals’ privacy.

The ruling and an accompanying order mean the Justice Department will be obliged to unveil at least 15 previously blacked-out pages from volume one of special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, on or before Nov. 2. In addition to charging decisions, those pages appear to involve discussions related to the hack of emails from the Democratic National Committee in early 2016 and the Trump campaign’s interest in those documents when WikiLeaks released them that June.

Walton rendered his decision in response to an 18-month legal challenge by BuzzFeed News and the advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) to unredact the entire Mueller report under the Freedom of Information Act.

Last March, in a scathing 23-page opinion on the matter, Walton said Attorney General Bill Barr's public characterization of the Mueller report in March 2019 "failed to provide a thorough representation of the findings." Walton questioned whether Barr's "intent was to create a one-sided narrative" about the report and whether he had undertaken a "calculated attempt to influence public discourse" in favor of President Donald Trump "despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary.”

Walton then ordered government attorneys to turn over an unredacted version of the report so he could determine whether the redactions were legitimate, and he subsequently summoned Justice Department lawyers to closed-door hearings to defend their rationale.

This week’s ruling marks the second time BuzzFeed News and EPIC have obliged the government to disclose previously secret parts of the special counsel’s final report. In June, the Justice Department released sections of the report revealing how Trump was warned ahead of time about WikiLeaks’s release of the DNC emails, yet he denied that fact in written testimony to Mueller’s team in November 2018.
I wonder what Bill Barr was hiding under those improper redactions.
User avatar
Tribble
Sith Devotee
Posts: 3082
Joined: 2008-11-18 11:28am
Location: stardestroyer.net

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by Tribble »

Let’s say worst case scenario for Trump and there’s more proof that he colluded with Russia. Or even that Trump is a Russian agent.

How much would that change things at this stage?
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - The official Troll motto, as stated by Adam Savage
bilateralrope
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 5938
Joined: 2005-06-25 06:50pm
Location: New Zealand

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by bilateralrope »

Good question. Last minute news like this will have less of an effect on this election than it would have on previous ones due to increased early voting. Anything new about Trump isn't likely to do much. News about other Republicans might be a different story. Might.

The most likely thing I can see is ammunition for an impeachment to delay the Supreme Court confirmation. But even that's going to need something significant.
bilateralrope
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 5938
Joined: 2005-06-25 06:50pm
Location: New Zealand

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by bilateralrope »

Trump vetoes $740B defense bill, citing “failure to terminate” Section 230
Congress already scheduled veto override votes for after Christmas.
KATE COX - 12/24/2020, 10:36 AM


As was threatened, so has it come to pass: President Donald Trump has vetoed funding for the US military because the massive defense spending bill did not include a provision to repeal Section 230.

The National Defense Authorization Act authorizes $740 billion in defense spending for the upcoming government fiscal year. The NDAA usually moves through Congress with broad bipartisan support, and this year's is no exception. Both chambers supported the bill by wide, veto-proof margins—the House approved by a vote of 335 to 78, and the Senate approved it 84 to 13.

Trump, however, said in early December he would veto the bill if it did not include an outright repeal of Section 230, and today, with the bill on his desk, he followed through on that threat.

"No one has worked harder, or approved more money for the military, than I have," Trump said in a statement about the veto, claiming without evidence that the military "was totally depleted" when he took office in 2017. "Your failure to terminate the very dangerous national security risk of Section 230 will make our intelligence virtually impossible to conduct without everyone knowing what we are doing at every step."

That’s not at all how this works

Section 230, however, has nothing to do with military intelligence. At its broadest, the short snippet of law basically does two things. First, it grants Internet service providers, including online platforms, broad immunity from being held legally liable for content third-party users share. Second, it grants those same services legal immunity from the decisions they make around content moderation.

It's that content moderation bit that Trump really doesn't like. He's been in a protracted feud with Twitter, his platform of choice, since the site first appended a mild fact-checking link to a tweet of his containing election misinformation in May.

Days later, Trump issued an executive order directing various federal agencies to limit social media's "unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit" or otherwise manipulate user content. Following the executive order, the Federal Communications Commission began a Section 230 rule-making procedure, and the Justice Department eventually sent a proposed rewrite of the law to Congress for its consideration. (Congress did not consider it.)

Trump continued to rail publicly against Section 230 throughout the summer and fall. As rhetoric continued to heat up into and past the November election, both Twitter and Facebook expanded their fact-checking policies for information related to voter suppression and election disinformation. In short, the more Trump claimed without evidence that all mail-in voting is fraudulent (it's not) or that President-elect Joe Biden's somehow "stole" the election (he won fairly), the more fact-checking labels Twitter appended to his posts.

So now what?

Congressional leaders, anticipating the veto, already scheduled veto override votes—the House on December 28, and the Senate on December 29.

"My intention was and is to ensure the Senate continues fulfilling our obligation to the men and women of our armed forces," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said at the time. "I hope the president will not veto this bill."

However, because we cannot simply squeak through the few waning days of 2020 without at least one more dumpster fire, it appears that Senate Republicans may or may not be particularly inclined to fall in line behind McConnell. Within a half-hour of the veto, give or take, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tweeted, "Congress should vote to repeal Section 230 as requested by President [Trump]. I will not vote to override presidential veto unless effort is made to wind down Section 230."
Basically, he wants to block military funding because Twitter has been fact checking his tweets.
User avatar
Solauren
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 10173
Joined: 2003-05-11 09:41pm

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by Solauren »

Actually, it's more then that. By removing Section 230, Trump could sue Twitter over their fact checking of him. And the twitter platform itself would be the evidence he could use.

So, basically, he's holding the funding hostage, in order to hopefully end up lining his own pocket.
I've been asked why I still follow a few of the people I know on Facebook with 'interesting political habits and view points'.

It's so when they comment on or approve of something, I know what pages to block/what not to vote for.
bilateralrope
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 5938
Joined: 2005-06-25 06:50pm
Location: New Zealand

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by bilateralrope »

Yeah, I'm aware that's probably Trump's plan.

Though I doubt it would go as he thinks it will. I think that repealing Section 230 would lead to Trump being swiftly removed from social media platforms, because they don't want to risk liability for whatever horrible thing he says next.
User avatar
Rogue 9
Scrapping TIEs since 1997
Posts: 18631
Joined: 2003-11-12 01:10pm
Location: Classified
Contact:

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by Rogue 9 »

The downtown of a major American city was suicide bombed on Christmas Day and the President of the United States hasn't said a damn word.
It's Rogue, not Rouge!

HAB | KotL | VRWC/ELC/CDA | TRotR | The Anti-Confederate | Sluggite | Gamer | Blogger | Staff Reporter | Student | Musician
User avatar
TimothyC
Of Sector 2814
Posts: 3793
Joined: 2005-03-23 05:31pm

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by TimothyC »

At least he signed the Omnibus bill. Now we get to see if Congress is going to override the veto on the NDAA.
"I believe in the future. It is wonderful because it stands on what has been achieved." - Sergei Korolev
User avatar
Solauren
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 10173
Joined: 2003-05-11 09:41pm

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by Solauren »

He's either decided to no longer hide the fact he's basically a wannabe gangster, or he's going senile and surrounded with people that are just trying to take advantage of him.

Either way....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ket-newtab
‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor

By
Amy Gardner
Jan. 3, 2021 at 3:22 p.m. EST

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

Trump dismissed their arguments.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

At another point, Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

The rambling and at times incoherent conversation offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Several of his allies were on the line as he spoke, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a prominent GOP attorney whose involvement with Trump’s efforts had not been previously known.

In a statement, Mitchell said Raffensperger’s office “has made many statements over the past two months that are simply not correct and everyone involved with the efforts on behalf of the President’s election challenge has said the same thing: show us your records on which you rely to make these statements that our numbers are wrong.”

The White House, the Trump campaign and Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Raffensperger’s office declined to comment.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that he had spoken to Raffensperger, saying the secretary of state was “unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”

Raffensperger responded with his own tweet: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.”

The pressure Trump put on Raffensperger is the latest example of his attempt to subvert the outcome of the Nov. 3 election through personal outreach to state Republican officials. He previously invited Michigan Republican state leaders to the White House, pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in a call to try to replace that state’s electors and asked the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to help reverse his loss in that state.

His call to Raffensperger came as scores of Republicans have pledged to challenge the electoral college’s vote for Biden when Congress convenes for a joint session on Wednesday. Republicans do not have the votes to successfully thwart Biden’s victory, but Trump has urged supporters to travel to Washington to protest the outcome, and state and federal officials are already bracing for clashes outside the Capitol.

During their conversation, Trump issued a vague threat to both Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s general counsel, suggesting that if they don’t find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County have been illegally destroyed to block investigators — an allegation for which there is no evidence — they would be subject to criminal liability.

“That’s a criminal offense,” he said. “And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”

Trump also told Raffensperger that failure to act by Tuesday would jeopardize the political fortunes of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Georgia’s two Republican senators whose fate in that day’s runoff elections will determine control of the U.S. Senate.

Trump said he plans to talk about the fraud on Monday, when he is scheduled to lead an election eve rally in Dalton, Ga. — a message that could further muddle the efforts of Republicans to get their voters out.

“You have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam,” Trump said. “Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”

Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger put him in legally questionable territory, legal experts said. By exhorting the secretary of state to “find” votes and to deploy investigators who “want to find answers,” Trump appears to be encouraging him to doctor the election outcome in Georgia.

But experts said Trump’s clearer transgression is a moral one. Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, said that the legal questions are murky and would be subject to prosecutorial discretion. But he also emphasized that the call was “inappropriate and contemptible” and should prompt moral outrage.

“He was already tripping the emergency meter,” Foley said. “So we were at 12 on a scale of 1 to 10, and now we’re at 15.”

Throughout the call, Trump detailed an exhaustive list of disinformation and conspiracy theories to support his position. He claimed without evidence that he had won Georgia by at least a half-million votes. He floated a barrage of assertions that have been investigated and disproved: that thousands of dead people voted; that an Atlanta election worker scanned 18,000 forged ballots three times each and “100 percent” were for Biden; that thousands more voters living out of state came back to Georgia illegally just to vote in the election.

“So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election, and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this,” Trump said. “And it’s going to be very costly in many ways. And I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it, and you can reexamine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers, not people who don’t want to find answers.”

Trump did most of the talking on the call. He was angry and impatient, calling Raffensperger a “child” and “either dishonest or incompetent” for not believing there was widespread ballot fraud in Atlanta — and twice calling himself a “schmuck” for endorsing Kemp, whom Trump holds in particular contempt for not embracing his claims of fraud.

“I can’t imagine he’s ever getting elected again, I’ll tell you that much right now,” he said.

He also took aim at Kemp’s 2018 opponent, Democrat Stacey Abrams, trying to shame Raffensperger with the idea that his refusal to embrace fraud has helped her and Democrats generally. “Stacey Abrams is laughing about you,” he said. “She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock.’ What she’s done to this party is unbelievable, I tell you.”

The secretary of state repeatedly sought to push back, saying at one point, “Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, they — people can say anything.”

“Oh this isn’t social media,” Trump retorted. “This is Trump media. It’s not social media. It’s really not. It’s not social media. I don’t care about social media. I couldn’t care less.”

At another point, Trump claimed that votes were scanned three times: “Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ’em in three times.”

Raffensperger responded: “Mr. President, they did not. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.”

Trump sounded at turns confused and meandering. At one point, he referred to Kemp as “George.” He tossed out several different figures for Biden’s margin of victory in Georgia and referred to the Senate runoff, which is Tuesday, as happening “tomorrow” and “Monday.”

His desperation was perhaps most pronounced during an exchange with Germany, Raffensperger’s general counsel, in which he openly begged for validation.

Trump: “Do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County? ’Cause that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal.”

Germany responded: “No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.”

Trump: “But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?”

Germany: “No.”

Trump: “Are you sure? Ryan?”

Germany: “I’m sure. I’m sure, Mr. President.”

It was clear from the call that Trump has surrounded himself with aides who have fed his false perceptions that the election was stolen. When he claimed that more than 5,000 ballots were cast in Georgia in the name of dead people, Raffensperger responded forcefully: “The actual number was two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted.”

But later, Meadows said, “I can promise you there are more than that.”

Another Trump lawyer on the call, Kurt Hilbert, accused Raffensperger’s office of refusing to turn over data to assess evidence of fraud, and also claimed awareness of at least 24,000 illegally cast ballots that would flip the result to Trump.

“It stands to reason that if the information is not forthcoming, there’s something to hide,” Hilbert said. “That’s the problem that we have.”

Reached by phone Sunday, Hilbert declined to comment.

In the end, Trump asked Germany to sit down with one of his attorneys to go over the allegations. Germany agreed.

Yet Trump also recognized that he was failing to persuade Raffensperger or Germany of anything, saying toward the end, “I know this phone call is going nowhere.”

But he continued to make his case in repetitive fashion, until finally, after roughly an hour, Raffensperger put an end to the conversation: “Thank you, President Trump, for your time.”

Alice Crites contributed to this report.
In summary -
He wants the Governor of Georgia to commit Voter Fraud to steal the election for him, and he threatened to bring criminal charges against the Governor of Georgia, and his Secretary of State (of Georgia), unless they recalculate the votes in his favor.

In short, he's attempting to extort and blackmail elected government officials now, and he's not really trying to hide it.
I've been asked why I still follow a few of the people I know on Facebook with 'interesting political habits and view points'.

It's so when they comment on or approve of something, I know what pages to block/what not to vote for.
User avatar
Lord Revan
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 12211
Joined: 2004-05-20 02:23pm
Location: Zone:classified

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by Lord Revan »

I think it's less about stopping attempting to hide and more that in his desperation he has lost what ever ability he had to hide his motives in the first place.

Trump's near worship of Putin and similar authoritarian rulers combined with his (relative) inexperience in the political arena have made him blind to the fact that USA and Russia operate very differently when it comes to unfavorable results and the sitting president. Putin probably could "find" as many votes as he needed to win any election he wanted, but in US you can't find votes that don't exist.
I may be an idiot, but I'm a tolerated idiot
"I think you completely missed the point of sigs. They're supposed to be completely homegrown in the fertile hydroponics lab of your mind, dried in your closet, rolled, and smoked...
Oh wait, that's marijuana..."Einhander Sn0m4n
User avatar
LadyTevar
White Mage
White Mage
Posts: 23150
Joined: 2003-02-12 10:59pm

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by LadyTevar »

Blackmail and threats.. but Not ONE GOP is talking about sanctions.
I guess they're hoping Jan 20th to wash their hands and be done with it, like Pontius Pilate.
Image
Nitram, slightly high on cough syrup: Do you know you're beautiful?
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
User avatar
Gandalf
SD.net White Wizard
Posts: 16285
Joined: 2002-09-16 11:13pm
Location: A video store in Australia

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by Gandalf »

LadyTevar wrote: 2021-01-03 11:54pm Blackmail and threats.. but Not ONE GOP is talking about sanctions.
I guess they're hoping Jan 20th to wash their hands and be done with it, like Pontius Pilate.
It worked for Bush II.
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"

- A.B. Original, Report to the Mist

"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin
User avatar
Crossroads Inc.
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 9233
Joined: 2005-03-20 06:26pm
Location: Defending Sparkeling Bishonen
Contact:

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by Crossroads Inc. »

So.... Now that Trump has been Perman-Banned from Twitter and Facebook...
Does this mean we can move his Threads to Parting-Shots now?

:3c
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan
Read "Tales From The Crossroads"!
Read "One Wrong Turn"!
User avatar
Broomstick
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 28724
Joined: 2004-01-02 07:04pm
Location: Industrial armpit of the US Midwest

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by Broomstick »

Also perma-banned from Instagram and pretty much every other social media platform.

Also - Apple pulled Parler off the internet and told them to institution a better moderation policy within the next 24 hours or else.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.

Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
User avatar
ray245
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 7954
Joined: 2005-06-10 11:30pm

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by ray245 »

Crossroads Inc. wrote: 2021-01-08 08:48pm So.... Now that Trump has been Perman-Banned from Twitter and Facebook...
Does this mean we can move his Threads to Parting-Shots now?

:3c
He's actively using other accounts as sockpuppets, or using his staff's phone and account to post what he wanted. And all those account got banned as well.
Humans are such funny creatures. We are selfish about selflessness, yet we can love something so much that we can hate something.
User avatar
LadyTevar
White Mage
White Mage
Posts: 23150
Joined: 2003-02-12 10:59pm

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by LadyTevar »

ray245 wrote: 2021-01-08 11:11pm
Crossroads Inc. wrote: 2021-01-08 08:48pm So.... Now that Trump has been Perman-Banned from Twitter and Facebook...
Does this mean we can move his Threads to Parting-Shots now?

:3c
He's actively using other accounts as sockpuppets, or using his staff's phone and account to post what he wanted. And all those account got banned as well.
They posted a massive warning "As per our policy on attempts to avoid a ban, we're suspending accounts being used for that purpose". The only ones they're not suspending are @WhiteHouse and @POTUS, but those are obviously being monitored as they've already deleted Trump's attempts to use them to get around the Ban.

And it's official, Apple has kicked Parler out of the Apple App Store. That means probably 70-80% of Parler's users are no longer able to get online via their iPhone.
Image
Nitram, slightly high on cough syrup: Do you know you're beautiful?
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
User avatar
Solauren
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 10173
Joined: 2003-05-11 09:41pm

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by Solauren »

Crossroads Inc. wrote: 2021-01-08 08:48pm So.... Now that Trump has been Perman-Banned from Twitter and Facebook...
Does this mean we can move his Threads to Parting-Shots now?

:3c
Wait until after Biden is officially sworn in, even if Trump is impeached and removed from office.
I've been asked why I still follow a few of the people I know on Facebook with 'interesting political habits and view points'.

It's so when they comment on or approve of something, I know what pages to block/what not to vote for.
bilateralrope
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 5938
Joined: 2005-06-25 06:50pm
Location: New Zealand

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by bilateralrope »

Hours before leaving office, Donald Trump undoes one of the few measures he took to 'drain the swamp'
Josh Dawsey
12:01, Jan 21 2021


Outgoing US President Donald Trump rescinded an executive order early Wednesday morning (Thursday NZT) that had limited federal administration officials from lobbying the government or working for foreign countries after they leave their posts, undoing one of the few measures he had instituted to fulfil his 2016 campaign promise to "drain the swamp."

Trump had signed the now-reversed executive order with much fanfare in an Oval Office ceremony in January 2017.

"Most of the people standing behind me will not be able to go to work" after they leave government, Trump said at the time, flanked by senior aides.

The order required executive branch appointees to sign a pledge that they would never work as registered foreign lobbyists, and it banned them from lobbying the federal agencies where they worked for five years after leaving the government.

Ethics experts at the time noted the order had loopholes – but still offered cautious praise for Trump's attempt at halting the revolving door that allows government employees to use their positions to land lucrative jobs in the private sector.

No explanation was given for why Trump chose to rescind the order. The White House released the directive at 1:08 am. on the day he will leave office. It had been signed on Tuesday.

Government watchdog groups expressed disgust with Trump's decision to reverse the policy in his final hours as president.

"The revocation of the 5-year lobbying ban for presidential appointees is the perfect coda for the most corrupt administration in American history," Robert Weissman, president of the group Public Citizen, said in a statement.

Weissman said Trump cited the ban "to buttress his preposterous claim that he actually cared about corruption and cronyism. Now, as he exits the White House, Trump is revealing that even that signature policy was nothing more than a prop in his demagogic play-acting before the American people."

Trump largely failed to fulfil the pledges he made to change Washington's culture, including the specific promises he made to curtail moneyed interests in a 2016 campaign speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

He promised he would push Congress to pass a five-year lobbying ban into law so it could not be lifted by a future president. But he never proposed such legislation. Nor did he ask Congress to impose a similar five-year lobbying ban on its members, as he had promised he would do in the speech.

He also never tried to seek to "close all the loopholes" used by former government officials who get around registering as lobbyists by calling themselves "consultants" and "advisers." And he never acted on his pledge to stop foreign lobbyists from campaign fundraising – and in fact, benefited from their financial support.

Among the five pledges Trump made to "drain the swamp" and curtail the influence of lobbyists, a Washington Post review last year found that he sought to address only two – through the executive order in January 2017 that he has now reversed.

Meanwhile, Trump gave wealthy donors ample access to him and his top aides, holding pricey fundraisers where supporters personally pitched him on their ideas.

He also forced the government to spend money at his private hotels as he and his family travelled around the globe. And he sidestepped rules that had been designed to prevent nepotism, allowing his son-in-law to serve in a top government role.

The Washington Post
I'd forgotten that he'd done anything to fight against corruption. Luckily, he decided to undo the one thing he had done, so my memory is now accurate.

Also, has anyone looked at the list of people he pardoned to see if there are any there that we'd agree with ?
I won't have time to look until monday.
EnterpriseSovereign
Sith Marauder
Posts: 3999
Joined: 2006-05-12 12:19pm

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

Trump’s pardons: The list, from Steve Bannon to Lil Wayne
The 45th president granted clemency to allies including Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn during his reign.
Too long to quote in full.
User avatar
LadyTevar
White Mage
White Mage
Posts: 23150
Joined: 2003-02-12 10:59pm

Re: Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

Post by LadyTevar »

DING-DONG, THE BASTARD'S GONE

This Thread is now locked.
Image
Nitram, slightly high on cough syrup: Do you know you're beautiful?
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
Locked