This is going to be really quick with mostly links - we have been running back and forth to the states, need to go up again tomorrow for knee & blood work, then Friday for my pre-surgury Covid Test, then back for eye surgery, staying overnight in a motel and arrangements for the kitties to stay at Dr. Silva's....wait, I need to scream !
Naturally, Trump is causing chaos; but we knew all along he was going to pull his shit. As you probably already know, today he fired Mark Esper who made it to Trump's shitlist when Esper did not agree to pull out the Military to contain Black Lives Matter protestors in Washington D.C. and around the nation, not to mention Esper agreed to the replacement of Confederate Military statues across the country:
~ From Foreign Policy:
Trump Fires His Embattled Pentagon Chief by Tweet
"U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he fired long-embattled Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a tweet on Monday, just two days after news networks called the U.S. election against the incumbent commander in chief, another move that current and former officials worry could upset an already tumultuous transition to a new administration.
The move comes amid lingering tensions between Esper and Trump. The Department of Defense chief’s decision to publicly oppose using active-duty U.S. troops to quell protests against racial injustice in June and his endorsement of renaming military bases that honor Confederate generals angered Trump and nearly led him to push Esper out earlier. Top aides and senior Republican lawmakers helped convince him to keep Esper in place so the administration did not look to be in chaos ahead of the elections, current and former officials said.
Trump tweeted that Christopher Miller, a former Defense Department official recently confirmed as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, would take over as acting secretary of defense. Under federal vacancies law, the president can appoint another Senate-confirmed official in place of Esper, who some officials in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill had hoped would remain in place after Trump leaves office to ensure a smooth transfer of power.
“Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service,” Trump tweeted. The move marks another Trump firing by tweet, after he removed his embattled Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by surprise two years ago while the top diplomat was traveling in Africa.
Veteran Pentagon officials reacted to the sudden news with a mixture of shock and anger.
“It’s unprecedented, it’s absolutely crazy,” said Jim Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who spent decades working in the Pentagon. “There’s no practical reason to do this, except for personal vengeance.” A defense official said that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows informed Esper of his termination before Trump tweeted the news.
Townsend said Esper’s firing adds a new layer of uncertainty to what the final months of Trump’s presidency will look like, even as the president refuses to concede his electoral loss: “What it shows us is we don’t know what’s going to happen over the next two months when he begins his transition out of office.”
A Pentagon spokesman referred questions about Esper’s termination to the White House. A White House official said that Miller is eligible to serve in the acting role because he is Senate-confirmed.
The plan comes as officials inside the Pentagon and other agencies have anticipated a spate of potential high-profile firings in the wake of a possible Trump defeat in the November election—some of which have already come to pass. The president is also considering sacking his CIA chief, Gina Haspel, who reportedly fell afoul of the president after she opposed declassifying unverified Russian intelligence alleging Democrats tried to create a scandal about Trump’s ties to Russia ahead of the 2016 elections.
On Friday evening, the White House also forced the resignation of the deputy head of the top U.S. foreign aid agency, U.S. Agency for International Development Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick. Officials familiar with the matter said that she was fired so that the acting head of USAID, John Barsa, could take her deputy job and remain de facto head of the agency to get around time limits for officials serving in interim, acting capacities set by federal vacancy laws.
It was not immediately clear if Capitol Hill got a heads-up before the decision, and top Democrats in Congress were quick to slam Trump’s move. “Dismissing politically appointed national security leaders during a transition is a destabilizing move that will only embolden our adversaries and put our country at greater risk,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat. “President Trump’s decision to fire Secretary Esper out of spite is not just childish, it’s also reckless. It has long been clear that President Trump cares about loyalty above all else, often at the expense of competence, and during a period of presidential transition competence in government is of the utmost importance.”
Some experts said firing officials out of spite, even at the tail end of an administration, could cause blowback.
“You’re trying to have as seamless a transition as possible. Don’t do things that make the system more chaotic,” said Mark Jacobson, the assistant dean for Washington programs at Syracuse University who was a Defense Department official during the transition between Presidents Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s administrations. “Our enemies are going to take note of that, they know that now is a particularly vulnerable time.”
All of that could have a compounding effect on a possible Biden administration’s flexibility to set its own course on Pentagon policy after Inauguration Day. “You don’t want to box them into a corner,” Jacobson added.
Townsend said that Trump officials may also be reluctant to aid in a smooth transition to the next administration, for fear of incurring the White House’s wrath.
“At a time like this, to have [Esper’s] firing happen, it makes the atmosphere even more uneasy. If you are a Trump political appointee and you want to do a good transition, you’re going to pull in your reins and become very conservative because you’re afraid he could do that to you,” he said. “It just makes everyone walk on eggshells.”
As Esper has fallen out of Trump’s good graces, loyalists to the president sitting in high-ranking Defense Department roles have attempted to assert themselves over Pentagon policy.
“They can just do whatever they want,” the former senior Trump official said.
In an exit interview with Military Times, Esper—whom Trump himself had mockingly called “Yesper” for his reputation for upholding the White House line—fatefully mused that he could be replaced by someone much more amenable to the president’s whims, or worse.
“I could have a fight over anything, and I could make it a big fight, and I could live with that —why?” Esper said. “Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.”
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More Slash & Burn by Trump:
He is on a rampage...now fired top scientist Michael Kuperberg, to be replaced by David Legates:
"Kuperberg's departure comes in the wake of the Trump administration hiring of David Legates, an academic at the University of Delaware who has written that "carbon dioxide is plant food and is not a pollutant," to a newly created political position at NOAA."
More firings, video included on the link:
~ From Politico via MSNNEWS:
Trump Removes Head of Climate Science Report
By Zack Colman and Alex Guillén
Updated 10:34 PM ET, Mon November 9, 2020
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So here's the latest, I'm going to miss what happens tomorrow. through next week What we know for a fact at this point however is that there was no voter fraud, and history will remember Trump as a black stain, full of vitriol and puss. He already is a laughing stock around the free world, although it seems the populists are in his corner. Ah well, birds of a feather flock together.
~ From CNN:
By Meg Wagner and Melissa Macaya, CNN
By Fernando Alfonso III and Mike Hayes, CNN
Vance no longer has to worry about that problem. Donald Trump will be a private citizen on January 20. Moreover, Trump cannot seek preemptively to pardon himself from a crime brought in a state court, nor could President Biden pardon The Donald for crimes against the state of New York. Only Governor Andrew Cuomo could pardon Trump if he were convicted in state court. What do you think? Would he do it?
The Manhattan District has empaneled a grand jury to consider the proceedings designated Trump v. Vance, 19-cv-08694. The grand jury proceedings are secret, but Manhattan DA Vance has indicated that it is looking into a number of matters, including Trump’s payoff to porn star Stephanie “Stormy Daniels” Clifford, but also “bank, tax and insurance fraud, as well as falsification of business records.”
DA Vance has sought 8 years worth of Trump, Inc. tax returns, and while Trump has fought the subpoena, his challenge has been consistently turned back by several courts. It seems likely that he will now get these records. There is evidence that Trump undervalued his New York properties in order to avoid taxes.
Me, I think the state prosecution of Trump for the Stormy Daniels payoff is the most potentially explosive case, precisely because no pardon could be proffered by President Biden in the genteel tradition of keeping presidents out of jail. Moreover, it would be great legal theater, in a way that dry business or tax fraud would not. I hope the judge allows cameras. Imagine Ms. Clifford’s testimony on national television.
Trump paid Ms. Clifford for sex in 2006 while he was married to Melania. On the eve of the 2016 election he directed his attorney, Michael Cohen, to conclude a non-disclosure agreement with Ms. Clifford for $130,000. Cohen was reimbursed by Trump, Inc. via a dummy corporation Cohen set up for the purpose. It is not clear whether campaign funds were used, but that would be a further illegality. Trump was afraid that Ms. Clifford might reveal the tawdry incident of prostitution by a married man to the press, which might sink his presidential bid if it offended the party’s evangelicals and little old ladies (“blue hairs” in campaign parlance).
If things unfolded in this way, Trump was guilty of election fraud, since he knowingly spent money on a “good” for his campaign and did not report it. Nor were donation limits observed. He could be fined $260,000 and sent to prison for 5 years.
The case would be relatively easy to prove, since the government raided Cohen’s office for records, and Cohen himself is willing to testify.
If Trump were convicted of election law violations for trying to cover up paid-for sex, I think that would do more to hurt Trumpism than anything else. His fanatical followers would be put in the position of trying to deny that Trump had sex with a porn star, or to deny that he illegally paid hush money to cover it up, and that is a hard defense to make among evangelicals, just because it would be hard to talk about these matters. Somewhere along in Trump’s third year in Rikers, my guess is that the sheen would be permanently off him."
Yep.
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So now neither Jair Bolsonaro or AMLO have congratulated our new President-elect, Joe Biden or Vice-President -elect Kamala Harris on their win. What's up with that...yea, yea, yea, I know I've read that AMLO says he is waiting for authoritative affirmation. Do I have a comment on this behavior? Nope, I cannot comment because I live here. But I think you can guess what I am thinking, no matter what excuses are being made.
Stay Safe Y'all, should be back in a few days....