DL Open Thread: Sunday, November 22, 2020

Filed in Featured, Open Thread by on November 22, 2020

Trump Supporters Deliberately Jamming Up The Wisconsin Count.  This stuff was all planned well in advance.  If this election had been closer, Trump might’ve stolen it.  Think about that.

Trump Appointees Going To Extreme Lengths To Prevent Rollback Of His Legacy:

During the past four years Mr. Trump has not spent much time thinking about policy, but he has shown a penchant for striking back at his adversaries. And with his encouragement, top officials are racing against the clock to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, secure oil drilling leases in Alaska, punish China, carry out executions and thwart any plans Mr. Biden might have to reestablish the Iran nuclear deal.

In some cases, like the executions and the oil leases, Mr. Trump’s government plans to act just days — or even hours — before Mr. Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

At a wide range of departments and agencies, Mr. Trump’s political appointees are going to extraordinary lengths to try to prevent Mr. Biden from rolling back the president’s legacy. They are filling vacancies on scientific panels, pushing to complete rules that weaken environmental standards, nominating judges and rushing their confirmations through the Senate, and trying to eliminate health care regulations that have been in place for years.

How Biden Can Hasten Companies’ Commitment To Climate Change.  He’s got a great chance to jump-start companies’ sustainability.

Could Thousands Of Pfizer Covid Shots Go To Waste?  ‘Use it or lose it’ applies here, due to short shelf life.

Economic Cliff Coming December 31.  Trump golfs.

What do you want to talk about?

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  1. Jason330 says:

    Biden is looking very weak.

    I know this isn’t a popular point of view, but every day that he cedes the field to Trump’s operation chaos, is a day that GOP can spend nursing the asinine grievances and trying to fuck things up.

  2. Alby says:

    @Jason, re: Biden’s weakness.

    My mother was a voracious reader of pop-psychology books, and would talk about them endlessly. One strain of them concentrated on something called Transactional Analysis, which social transactions are analyzed to determine the ego state of the communicator (whether parent-like, childlike, or adult-like) as a basis for understanding behavior.

    In practical terms, you’ll notice that Donald Trump never acts like an adult. He either acts like a parent, giving orders, or a child, whining and tantrum-throwing. The danger for those interacting with his is that they will follow his lead and fall into similar behavior, and most do. When Trump is childish, it’s easy to get mad and respond on his level, or to scold him like a parent would. In either case the respondent is now playing Trump’s game.

    What Biden is doing is acting like an adult. He’s disapproving but very dispassionate about it. This has the effect of doing what everyone claims to want — Biden is not playing Trump’s game. While Trump acts like a child, Biden acts like an adult. It has the positive effect of disrupting Trump’s game.

    Is this the most effective approach? Nobody knows yet. But it should be appreciated that Biden is not the only one doing this, and that his approach is being noted elsewhere:

    Are there lessons here for the wider world in how we engage with far-right populist movements? Quite possibly. In the UK, Sir Keir Starmer has won praise and criticism in equal measure for his often dispassionate engagement with prime minister Boris Johnson. Critics see his approach as tepid. Supporters believe his calm approach is a deliberate contrast to Johnson’s bombast. While Johnson’s now-former senior advisor Dominic Cummings liked to think of himself as the enemy of the stuffy and slow-moving civil service, Starmer talks up his credentials as a former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, well experienced in subtle, rational and persuasive argumentation, and by proxy a defender of institutions, of checks and balances.

    You can read more here:

    https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/19/joe-biden-s-election-offers-lessons-for-europe-on-how-to-deal-with-far-right-populism-view

  3. Jason330 says:

    …what does it matter if a bunch of jerkoffs keep on whacking?

    March 19, 2005 — — House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said that he and other Republican members of Congress would continue to work through the weekend to come up with a bill to force doctors to reinsert Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.

    Isolated acts of whacking are absurd, but the damage done by whacking is cumulative. Democrats continue to think winning on TV isn’t really winning.

    • Alby says:

      Because it isn’t. You want Biden to play Trump’s game. Nobody beats Trump at Trump’s game.

      Last time I checked, Terri Schiavo was still dead.

      Republican politics is performance art. Democrats aren’t good at it, and it’s a mug’s game to try.

      • Jason330 says:

        Terri Schiavo was still dead, and Republicans now control 4,170 state legislative seats and both chambers in 32 state legislatures.

        But whatev’s. It’s all good. None of this is related to Republicans owning Democrats in every phase of the PR game.

        The other show will drop. The The arc of the moral universe is long, and it bends toward something or other.

        • Andrew C says:

          That MLK quote was always so inspiring. I thought it went a little differently but who am I to fact-check Jason?

        • Alby says:

          “Republicans now control 4,170 state legislative seats and both chambers in 32 state legislatures.”

          And you think it’s because they look like tough guys on TV? Down, boy.

          • Jason330 says:

            They know how to turn out the base. Democrats don’t. I’m not saying anything controversial but, I’m sure everything will work out if we just keep thinking happy thoughts.