US Politics- Banana Republic President’s Day Sale

[Gorn]

https://twitter.com/holmescnn/status/1346987917273608194?s=20

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

@DanteGabriel

I didn’t know that about Vance.  That said, I don’t care who gets Trump so long as he sees a jail cell.

[ljkeane]

The BBC have an article up naming a few of the people who featured prominently in some of the coverage. If they can be identified that quickly by the media it's pretty inexcusable if they aren't being arrested soon.

[karaddin]

So this seems like a pretty good time to bring up another area of electoral reform (that has as much chance of being addressed as the rest) that seems to be desperately needed from an outside perspective.

The lame duck session.

You're never going to get a clearer demonstration of why it's a bad idea to let the guys that just lost the election continue to govern for a further 2.5 months. In that time you've had Trump continually attacking the democratic system, and further poisoning the minds of his supporters from the presidential pulpit.

You've also had 130,000 people die (and that's just the official numbers) from a pandemic he refuses to address and is probably doing the opposite to punish the country for voting against him. And that figure is just those that have died since the election. With the way he's allowed it to rage out of control it's probably locked in to have at least as many more than that before the winner of the election has a chance to try stop it.

That's over a quarter of a million people that might not have died if the winners of an election got to immediately move on to governing as happens in many other countries. 

Does the lame duck session even seem like a problem from the inside, or is it just another of those "that's the way you do things"?

[Spockydog]

Just now, karaddin said:

The lame duck session.

Yeah, I've never understood that. Over here, if you lose you're out of Downing Street on election night.

[Larry of the Lawn]

It's another relic of having a government founded on a difficult-to-change document written before we had electricity or running water.

[karaddin]

Just now, Spockydog said:

Yeah, I've never understood that. Over here, if you lose you're out of Downing Street on election night.

In Aus our government goes into caretaker mode once the election has been called - parliament is dissolved and it's essentially on auto pilot run by the public service. As soon as someone can form government they're sworn in and take over.

3 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Well, apparently, no one is talking about the 25th Amendment anymore because the President PROMISED to behave.

Honestly even this is exaggerating to give him too much credit (on the part of how it's reported, not you). He conceded there would be a transition but did he even say who to? Wouldn't be the first time he's meant "transition to my second term". They're all just falling over themselves to spin his slightest gestures as big changes.

3 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

It's another relic of having a government founded on a difficult-to-change document written before we had electricity or running water.

Oh yeah I definitely get that, that's what I meant by the comment about the chances of it happening. It's just a really glaring one for me and unlike some of the others I never even see people on here, twitter etc talk about it or have a problem with it.

[kairparavel]

This thread moves fast so I could have missed discussions on infosec breaches and other nightmare things given the people fucking with computers and taking documents and drives. Can only imagine the IT nightmare since then. One USB drive with malware etc. Ugh.

[Ormond]

3 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

It's another relic of having a government founded on a difficult-to-change document written before we had electricity or running water.

You do realize that the date of the inauguration was March 4 before the 20th Amendment changed it to January 20 in 1937? And I do believe electricity and running water were widely available in 1937. 

Perhaps the date should be changed again, but let's remember it's better than it used to be. Think how awful it would be if Trump were still President until March 4.

[Week]

8 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Well, apparently, no one is talking about the 25th Amendment anymore because the President PROMISED to behave.

Unfuckingreal. There is no downside. Force accountability.

[Fez]

Since we don't have a shadow government ready to step in immediately, it makes sense for there to be some transition time. But it needs to be much shorter, like a month or less. And there needs to be much tougher guardrails against the outgoing government try anything. Maybe have the new Congress sworn in almost immediately and have the Speaker of the House assume temporary CiC powers as a caretaker.

[Hereward]

Just now, Fez said:

Since we don't have a shadow government ready to step in immediately, it makes sense for there to be some transition time. But it needs to be much shorter, like a month or less. And there needs to be much tougher guardrails against the outgoing government try anything. Maybe have the new Congress sworn in almost immediately and have the Speaker of the House assume temporary CiC powers as a caretaker.

But is there any reason you couldn’t have a shadow government ready to step in immediately? Once the nominee is chosen, he/she could announce a shadow cabinet and they could start preparing. As a bonus, the voters would also have more information on what they were voting for in policy terms.

[kairparavel]

More of this. More. And then arrests. 

 

[karaddin]

1 minute ago, Ormond said:

You do realize that the date of the inauguration was March 4 before the 20th Amendment changed it to January 20 in 1937?

...

Think how awful it would be if Trump were still President until March 4.

I did not know that. Yeah that would be bad. I guess it's also worth stating that I get why it was done that way, there were good faith reasons for it. They're just not relevant to the modern world and the system needs updating.

@Fez do you literally not have a sufficient public service to run the government on auto pilot for a month? I'd assumed it was a lack of trust in them, but I guess so much of what is public servants in other countries are partisan appointments in your system. That definitely makes it harder, I think you've already proposed a substantial improvement on the current situation though.

@kairparavel yeah with hard drives being stolen etc I'm really expecting someone to have taken advantage of the situation to lift something. Whether it's a state actor or fsociety, the opportunity would have been something that could have been planned on.

[DMC]

11 minutes ago, Ormond said:

The 25th Amendment was designed to deal with situations in which a President is medically incapacitated, and includes provisions for the President to resume power if the incapacitation ends. There have been a couple of cases when Presidents (Reagan and George W. Bush) themselves voluntarily invoked it when they were undergoing a medical procedure involving anesthesia which would render them unconscious, and the fact that in those situations the Vice President briefly was Acting President did not "remove" those Presidents from office. 

This is true of Section 3 - which is what Dubya invoked (twice) and Reagan almost invoked (but technically didn't, officially - it's complicated).  But medical incapacitation is plainly not necessarily the only reason to invoke Section 4, which is what would be used here, according to its primary author:

Quote

When did the author intend the 4th section to be invoked?

Late former Sen. Birch Bayh wrote in his book “One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and Succession” that he knew the most controversial aspect of the amendment he authored would be how to handle the rare instances when a president’s team disputed his ability to serve.

“You know, fellows, we've talked about this problem a hundred times,” Bayh recounted, telling his aides when they were in the final stages of negotiation. “The only time it would present itself – the only time the president would say 'I'm well and able' and the vice president and cabinet would disagree – would be if the president was as nutty as a fruit cake.”

Remember the 25th was adopted during shortly after the Kennedy assassination.  One aspect that surely was on the draftees' mind was MAD.  That could certainly be a case where the Cabinet has a clear interest in immediately revoking the president's power whereas the impeachment process would obviously take too long. 

Plus, while I hate using a fictional example, West Wing does present another plausible scenario - what if the president's family member was kidnapped?  While Bartlet (of course) voluntarily invokes it, there's always the possibility a president wouldn't want to give up power and start a war or do something else that is extraordinarily against the national interest in order to secure that family member.  In this case, potentially nobody would want to permanently remove the president from power through impeachment, but would until the issue is resolved.  So, no, I don't think it's fair to say Section 4 is only designed for medical incapacitation.

[Ormond]

8 minutes ago, DMC said:

This is true of Section 3 - which is what Dubya invoked (twice) and Reagan almost invoked (but technically didn't, officially - it's complicated).  But medical incapacitation is plainly not necessarily the only reason to invoke Section 4, which is what would be used here, according to its primary author:

Remember the 25th was adopted during shortly after the Kennedy assassination.  One aspect that surely was on the draftees' mind was MAD.  That could certainly be a case where the Cabinet has a clear interest in immediately revoking the president's power whereas the impeachment process would obviously take too long. 

Plus, while I hate using a fictional example, West Wing does present another plausible scenario - what if the president's family member was kidnapped?  While Bartlet (of course) voluntarily invokes it, there's always the possibility a president wouldn't want to give up power and start a war or do something else that is extraordinarily against the national interest in order to secure that family member.  In this case, potentially nobody would want to permanently remove the president from power through impeachment, but would until the issue is resolved.  So, no, I don't think it's fair to say Section 4 is only designed for medical incapacitation.

But it still does not remove the President from office, but only takes away his powers, since it still clearly states that the Vice President is "Acting President", not "President", if this happens. That's my main point -- whatever the reason for invoking the Amendment is, it does NOT "remove the President from office" but instead transfers his/her powers to the Vice President.

[Fez]

7 minutes ago, karaddin said:

 

@Fez do you literally not have a sufficient public service to run the government on auto pilot for a month? I'd assumed it was a lack of trust in them, but I guess so much of what is public servants in other countries are partisan appointments in your system. That definitely makes it harder, I think you've already proposed a substantial improvement on the current situation though

Yeah, the problem is that the government is filled with over 8,000 presidential appointees, and they have the leadership positions in nearly every agency. There are hundreds of thousands of career civil servants under them, some of whom are quite senior with the experience and skills to manage things. But it would require a massive overhaul of the entire federal bureaucracy to have any sort of autopilot system in place between administration.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Ormond said:

But it still does not remove the President from office, but only takes away his powers, since it still clearly states that the Vice President is "Acting President", not "President", if this happens.

Sure, I wasn't arguing that point - I even presented a scenario where they wouldn't want to remove him from office.  I responding to your contention the amendment was designed for medical incapacitation - which it's not entirely.

[Larry of the Lawn]

24 minutes ago, Ormond said:

You do realize that the date of the inauguration was March 4 before the 20th Amendment changed it to January 20 in 1937? And I do believe electricity and running water were widely available in 1937. 

Perhaps the date should be changed again, but let's remember it's better than it used to be. Think how awful it would be if Trump were still President until March 4.

I did not realize that, but it doesn't really change the fact that getting an amendment passed today to fix something (decided 80+ years ago in a very different world) is going to be incredibly difficult.  The legislative means to change the constitution are pretty much impossible in our current political climate and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

eta: 

And to the quip about utilities, the point was that the constitution was written in a very different world and we are now stuck with a document which has become more difficult to change than was likley anticipated.   Regardless of how it was anticipated, it has become unwieldy and inefficient and has the problem of making it difficult to change inherent problems.

[Maltaran]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

If it was that was a very bad cosplay of Chewbacca.  That dude looked liked some Dionysus horned god 

Apparently he calls himself the QAnon shaman