This is a charming little tidbit of what a future Trump administration will do to the country:
If he wins the presidency, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would seek to purge the federal government of officials appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama and could ask Congress to pass legislation making it easier to fire public workers, Trump ally, Chris Christie, said on Tuesday.
Christie, who is governor of New Jersey and leads Trump’s White House transition team, said the campaign was drawing up a list of federal government employees to fire if Trump defeats Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election.
“As you know from his other career, Donald likes to fire people,” Christie told a closed-door meeting with dozens of donors at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, according to an audio recording obtained by Reuters and two participants in the meeting.
At least they are not threatening to publicly execute them. Yet. The reason for this is simple- Republicans don’t like a functioning government, so they will replace all the civil servants who actually do their jobs with apparatchiks. Monica Goodling, “Heckuva job Brownie,” anyone?
Christie, who is allegedly a former prosecutor who is supposed to deal with facts, offers up this justification for this purge of civil service employees:
“It’s called burrowing,” Christie said. “You take them from the political appointee side into the civil service side, in order to try to set up … roadblocks for your successor, kind of like when all the Clinton people took all the Ws off the keyboard when George Bush was coming into the White House.”
Christie was referring to pranks committed during the presidential transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush in 2001. During that period, some White House staffers removed the W key on computer keyboards and left derogatory signs and stickers in offices, according to a report by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress.
Except that never happened, and our failed media let’s it slide:
The technological problems the vandals wrought were so severe that, according to a report in the New York Daily News, “a telecommunications staffer with more than a quarter-century of service was seen sobbing.”
“Phone lines cut, drawers filled with glue, door locks jimmied so that arriving Bush staff got locked inside their new offices,” a disapproving Andrea Mitchell reported on NBC News. The message seemed clear: The trailer-trash Clintons and their staff had enjoyed one last bacchanal at taxpayer expense.
Now it seems those closely detailed stories were largely bunk. Last week it was revealed that a formal review by the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative agency, “had found no damage to the offices of the White House’s East or West Wings or EOB” and that Bush’s own representatives had reported “there is no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the employees of the Clinton administration.”
While cautious GSA staffers won’t issue a blanket exoneration of the Clinton team, Bernard Ungar, the agency’s director of physical infrastructure, told Salon the media clearly exaggerated the extent of the damage. According to the terse GSA statement that formed the basis of Ungar’s conclusion, “the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy.”
Heckuva job, Reuters reporter Emily Flitter!
gratuitous
I don’t know if anyone else remembers, but my online calendar just popped up with the message: Did the Republicans have a brokered convention? If not, call in your bet with jl at Balloon Juice.”
jl owes Balloon Juice a $10 donation in my name. Hahahahaha!
Rabble Arouser
The sad part is, I think the choice between candidates will continue to get starker and starker as we move forward into November. These people are an unending source of disgusting behavior.
sharl
John, your last link needs fixin’. You could use this and/or this, if you wish.
ETA: My first link appears to be the actual source of that block quote you used, so I guess that’s the one to select.
dmsilev
A high school classmate of mine was a White House intern right at the beginning of the Clinton administration, and she told me that there were a bunch of pranks and stuff left behind by the Bush I team, for instance gremlins in the computer network that would pop up “Bush rules! Clinton sucks!” at odd intervals and juvenile stuff like that.
Don’t think I ever saw any stories in the media about that. Which was fine in and of itself, since it was just some juvenile office pranks. But there’s a certain asymmetry at work here…
Villago Delenda Est
They’re projecting on “burrowing”. They imagine that Dem appointees are as utterly evil as Rethug appointees.
Jeffro
John I have a few FB friends who were Bernie supporters and having seen the GOP convention train wreck, are actively trying to get their last pro-Bernie-holdout buddy on board with HRC. Clinton might unify some parts of the GOP, but it’s definitely working the other way, too.
Just saw LOLGOP on Twitter: “A moderate Republican is someone who only wants to waterboard the Democratic nominee”.
You have to love our media: all over Trump for Melania’s plagiarism; meanwhile, a Trump advisor’s openly calling for Hillary’s assassination and…*crickets*
Villago Delenda Est
Mrs. Greenspan needs a low tumbrel manifest number.
Aimai
The right side of this country lost its fucking mind when bill clinton took the big lollipop away from the old bush and spiraled into gibbering, racist, madness with the obamas. Its just never going to come to its senses.
FlipYrWhig
Wasn’t Christie part of the Alberto Gonzalez US Attorney purge?
dr. bloor
Give her a break. She was like 9 years old when W took office.
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: Here’s a reposted Martin Longman piece about Christie and the USAs: Did Christie Survive U.S. Attorney Firings by Going Along With Politically Motivated Investigations?
Brachiator
Recep Erdoğan ain’t got shit on me!
— Trumping Day
Emma
@Aimai: Much as it hurts me to agree about this, I have come to the realization that the crazy will always be with us. All we can do is carry them along and minimize the damage.
Bobby_D
I work for DoD and have >15yrs in public service.
These GOPers passed Moronic four exits back, and are just entering the Idiotville city limits.
Firing regular federal employees (i.e. non political appointments, non SES) is really, really difficult under existing laws, union agreements, etc. As a supervisor, I went through the process to have a non-performing, lying employee removed from service. It took me almost a year, and at least a hundred hours of putting together documentation, admin hearings, performance improvement plans, time to improve, etc. This guy lied on his resume, was facing discipline and AWOL from his last position, could not and and would not perform work assigned. It was the most painful bureaucratic process I’ve been through, and I had signed, written documentation of his lying that should have allowed firing on the spot.
Alex.S
Going to add this to the pile–
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/07/18/3799553/trump-investigate-black-lives-matter/
Laurie
@FlipYrWhig: He was originally. He got himself off the list by indicting Democrats and fundraising for Bush.
Citizen_X
@Brachiator: I was gonna say, they’re just taking after Erdogan’s purges of academics, judges, and civil servants.
geg6
These muthafuckas are calling for Hillary’s assassination. I’m over finding them funny. These bastards need to be beaten into the goddam dirt. And then the dirt sowed with salt.
patrick II
@FlipYrWhig:
In the sense that he one of the republican attorneys who who weren’t purged because they were willing to carry out bogus lawsuits against democrats — yes. In Christie’s particular case he started a bogus investigation of Robert Menendez who was running for Senate in New Jersey.
patrick II
I would guess Christie might be most interested in firing any federal attorneys who might be investigating BridgeGate and associated crimes.
pat
It’s always about projection with these dopes. Always.
scav
Well, I don’t know if it’s the wingularity, but watching the die-hard business-end repubs tied to this rolling disapster of management, accountability, messaging and PR while team evangelical pro-life repubs break out into fan and/or pole-dancing for plagerizing trophy models while miming lacivious acts with loaded pistols and the Respect Blue Lives Law&Order team calls for extrajudicial lynchings. . . . Certainly has all the fixings of the ratings bonaza they seemed to be promised.
Kent
As a former Federal employee I think the actual number of political appointees in the government is quite trivial and probably mainly limited to only a few executive branch agencies that tend to work closely with the White House on policy….like OMB. At my old agency (National Marine Fisheries Service) I think there was only one political appointee…the Assistant Administrator.
What this proposal really amounts to is a stalking horse for legislation to eliminate protections for ALL Federal employees not just political appointees. So that any agency staff with inconvenient views on any topic such as science can be purged at will. That is what we really need to fear. It would produce an enormous chilling effect on employees who can’t afford to sacrifice their jobs and careers to say “the emperor has no clothes”
WarMunchkin
I worry that there’s no long term societal plan to rehabilitate the right wing and bring it back into something resembling respect for our democracy. At this rate, we’ll chug along until we lose a single presidential election, and then we’ll lose gains that took us a decade to make in one day.
I’m not even thinking about this election anymore. If the clear supermajority of the Republican Party believes in these purges and whichever candidate they nominate in 2020 clears the low bar set by Trump, then they’ll have a dangerous candidate who stands an even better chance of winning than Trump does, which could wipe out everything we’ve achieved.
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig: He was NOT purged. He passed the test of being a fascist asshole.
Trollhattan
Damn fine send-up of Melania’s speech by Laura Benanti on last night’s Colbert.
OzarkHillbilly
Lies, damned lies, and Republican facts.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kent: They want to bring back the spoils system. Which led to Presidential assassinations.
BR
@Jeffro:
Yeah, I’ve been a lukewarm Hillary supporter, but no more. I just signed up on her website to volunteer — we all need to.
Everyone here should click here to sign up.
Punchy
And our failed bloghost, John Cole, apparently has failed grammar.
Kent
@Villago Delenda Est:
Nah, I don’t think so. Most Federal jobs aren’t that good and the political supporters who would actually want them are not that important. The big moneybag supporters behind the Republicans have no interest in actually working in government. What they want to do is burn down the house which means rooting out all the effective people who actually make government work. You know, who protect the environment, protect consumers, that sort of thing.
Chris
Jesus, he really is trying to be Andrew Jackson.
kindness
@WarMunchkin: Being concerned is a proper state. But supermajority? I don’t think so.
Matt McIrvin
I remember “burrowing”! I learned the term when Bush’s people were doing it in preparation for Obama coming in. You’ll notice that Obama attempted no purge of the civil service to fight it, because he’s not a tinpot dictator.
Iowa Old Lady
Speaking of purges, I’m looking at this NH state rep who has TWICE called for HRC to be executed in the last few days. I know the Secret Service investigates threats against the president. Do they do that for anyone they’re protecting?
Villago Delenda Est
@Alex.S: Asshole should watch that. Standing by approvingly as his minions call for the execution of his Democratic opponent for treason falls into the same area.
Hal
@Trollhattan: That was hilarious. The memes this has generated have been pretty damn fumny. Too bad right wingers have no sense of humor.
Villago Delenda Est
@Punchy: PURGE HIM! AT ONCE!
pat
@BR:
I’ve been going door to door, canvassing Dem voters, for 5 weeks already. It’s basically the same system used for the Obama campaign. I plan to start doing two shifts each Saturday from now on, morning and afternoon.
Wish I had a fit-bit. I’d be putting a lot of miles on it. Ha.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: Yes.
patrick II
@pat:
Projection is exactly right. From the Washington Post, Nov 18, 2008:Administration Protects Bush Appointees by Converting Positions to Career Civil Service Jobs
rikyrah
Don’t think it can happen?
Read stories about what happened to Black Civil Service Employees after Woodrow Wilson became President.
Kent
@Matt McIrvin: @Matt McIrvin:
It is really trivial though. There just aren’t that many political appointees and any new administration worth its salt can figure out how to work around anyone who might be an obstacle. The idea that Bush could have torpedoed any of Obama’s initiatives by leaving political appointees in place is nonsense. The problem for Trump won’t be legacy political appointees from the Obama days. It will be that the entire Federal bureaucracy will look on his nonsense for what it is.
Josie
@Iowa Old Lady: I was wondering the same thing. Doesn’t this rate a visit from the Secret Service at the very least?
Mike in NC
This is what is happening in Turkey right now. Probably inspired Trump and his henchmen.
Aleta
@Iowa Old Lady: which rep?
Dadadadadadada
@Kent:
The whole problem is that the Trump Administration (should it ever exist) will not be worth its salt, and so will have to adopt different strategies.
Dadadadadadada
@Mike in NC: But that would require them knowing jack-poo about foreign affairs. Which they don’t.
? Martin
@Kent:
No, the real issue here is that a lot of career staff appointments have the unglamorous job of ensuring the rules are being followed, that laws aren’t being broken. They aren’t advancing a political agenda, they’re enforcing the law. That’s what they want to route around. And yes, Bush’s appointees would have stopped Obama actions should Obama have initiated something that was illegal.
burnspbesq
@FlipYrWhig:
It has been alleged that Christie was on a preliminary version of the Gonzalez hit list, and got himself off by initiating a corruption investigation of then-Sen. Menendez. AFAIK, there is no direct evidence of any of this, but the timing of the Menendez subpoena is a little bit skeevy.
scav
@Mike in NC: Seems also a sort of management technique (intimidation, support the boss or else), plus perhaps a little smidgeon of outreach by terrorism towards people actually in the jobs currently — putting them in the position of making Pascal’s Wager. If they’re not observed to be Trump friendly, they’re in the position of losing their jobs under certain outcomes.
SiubhanDuinne
@Aleta:
His name is Al Baldasaro. He’s a state rep from NH and is Trump’s veterans’ affairs advisor. According to a couple of tweets I saw when I googled his name, the Secret Service is indeed investigating.
Gelfling 545
@Punchy: more likely hostile autocorrect. It does that stuff to me all the time. Today it turned see into sexy, nephew into inch chew and just attempted to change the word into to insidious before I foiled its evil plan. It also saw fit to insert card after the word Trump in a comment i was writing.
slag
@Punchy: Apostrophes in plurals seem to becoming the new norm, for whatever reason. Waste of a perfectly good punctuation mark.
Iowa Old Lady
@Aleta: Trump Veterans Advisor and New Hampshire state representative Al Baldasaro
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
No, “the media” clearly lied.
OzarkHillbilly
@Aleta: New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro,
joes527
@slag: I think you mean: Apostrophe’s in plural’s seem to becoming the new norm
SiubhanDuinne
@Josie:
I don’t know how to link from Twitter, but if you google the name Al Baldasaro you’ll see a few tweets that say he is indeed getting a call from the Secret Service.
Brachiator
@Trollhattan:
Very nice piece of satire.
I guess I’m going to have to watch more of Colbert’s late night show.
BR
@pat:
That’s great! We all need to sign up to volunteer. I may be a bit late to it since I wasn’t picking sides in the primaries, but now it’s game time.
Keith P.
@Villago Delenda Est: Takes a certain hubris to use Chris Christie as your messenger. But then, it takes a certain hubris to send Chris Christie out to “indict” the other party’s candidate when he himself is currently at risk of indictment.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Why is my quote in italics? For the record, I didn’t put it in italics. Are they always in italics? Weird…
CONGRATULATIONS!
I have enough doubts about how this is going to go that I’m experiencing a bit of domestic friction at home: really think we should have packed up and left for a Crown nation before I turned fifty last year. Wife was adamantly against it. She’s not so against it now, but too late. We don’t have the money to buy our way in now that I’m the big 50, and she will be as well next year. Shame as we had the job skills, both of us.
Hillary will probably win but that’s not my concern, so much. What about the next one? And the next? These people aren’t going away and they’re not getting mellower. Not to mention that locally, they’ve absolutely 100% conquered the political process, school board to city council, and that’s permanent. We lost that one. We were going to anyway, as the area continues to whiten and get richer, but I was hoping we could hit retirement before it happened. And those elections were the ones I gave a shit about and worked on, because they’re the ones that will hit my family square in the pocketbook.
What the GOP is doing is quite obvious. Why we can’t get a damn bit of traction against them – at all – is not. I don’t get it. What are we doing wrong? We’re not losing voters but we’re not gaining them either.
Probably all questions for another time or even another venue. But today, I have a troubled mind.
SiubhanDuinne
Admittedly, I’m not glued to the radio 24/7 or anything close, but I have yet to hear anyone on either MSNBC or CNN so much as mention the name Al Baldasaro.
On edit: Our media are as misleading and influential through their omissions as their commissions.
Punchy
@Villago Delenda Est: Im waiting for Cole to convert to Indian, so us commenters can set him up with an arranged marriage. Not sure which gender tho….
Villago Delenda Est
@Aimai: After 12 years of Rethug incompetence in the White House, the shock of a Democrat there (let’s be blunt…in their eyes, a usurper) drove them nuts. It only got worse when a blah man beat the pretender in 2008.
Mike in NC
@SiubhanDuinne:
It escapes me why draft dodgers like Mitt Romney and Donald Trump get any veteran support whatsoever.
singfoom
So Joe Mcarthy + Richard Nixon. I’m worried for my liver on election night. I mean, I’m confident that Hillary will crush Drumpf, but there’s a little voice that worries about the amount of my fellow citizens who have seemingly lost their fucking minds.
Anyone think any of the Republicans in Congress would try to stop Trump if he tried to remove protection for Civil Service Employees?
different-church-lady
@slag: Won’t someone think of the commas?
Mike J
@BR:
See if there is a coördinated campaign office nearby, Mayor, city council, and state lege can be as important as president. Here in Washington, we have coördinated offices with state Dems and DNC splitting expenses and promoting all of our candidates.
scav
@Punchy:
Well, I can see where the extra apostrophe wandered from. . .
Josie
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks. I should have thought to look it up on Twitter. I am registered there, but I never use it. I am glad they are taking his comments seriously. People should have to pay a price for inciting violence.
catclub
@rikyrah: Also John Cole needs to give you a Hat Tip since you pointed this article out yesterday.
I saw your mention and read it.
Emma
Oh boy. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce endorses Hillary while at the RNC, according to Talking Points Memo.
slag
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I think we should all chip in a buy Hilary a tire swing. It might help.
Brachiator
@Kent:
@? Martin: @Matt McIrvin:
I think you’re right. The net impact might be very weak. What galls me here is Trump’s expression of total disdain for Obama, a sentiment which dovetails with the frankly racist belief of some conservatives that Obama was either illegitimate, ineffectual, or both, and all vestiges that he was ever president must be expunged.
catclub
@singfoom:
Plus Erdogan as a more recent example.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
Baldasaro is also the one who said he wasn’t paying any attention to questions earlier this year about the $6 million that Trump had claimed to raise for vets’ groups, that it was a “low priority” for him.
O. Felix Culpa
@SiubhanDuinne:
Trouble is that Baldasaro himself is probably not directly a threat to HRC, but some deranged person inflamed by his remarks might act on his comments.
And of course email server issues are totally capital crimes, unlike another administration outing Valerie Plame, an actual CIA operative.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator:
Maybe Trump will pass an Act of Oblivion.
Brachiator
@Emma: Sadly, it doesn’t appear that the endorsement was made to those actually present on the convention floor.
Still, this has got to burn. Heh!
Roger Moore
@Dadadadadadada:
They know whatever Comrade Putin tells them.
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator: Something they can’t do while he is still President because he is so…. effective.
Emma
@Brachiator: Maybe he was worried about being torn apart by the jackals? However it was done, it’s done. That will be useful to Hillz.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
Sorry, but for many of our laws- e.g. environmental, workplace protections, taxation, etc.- enforcement has become a political issue. The simple act of doing their jobs puts many federal employees in the Republican crosshairs.
Aimai
@? Martin: there were bush holdivers. And they slow walked or bureaucratted things to death.
Ridnik Chrome
@Gelfling 545: Can’t you just turn it off?
Dadadadadadada
@Mike in NC: Gay hate is probably a good place to start. Most of today’s vets are pre-DADT. Then there’s the knee-jerk GOPism of many of the military’s most fruitful recruiting grounds (rural, poor, very white). Then there’s the inconvenient fact (not widely known among non-vets) that military culture is much more about unthinking obedience than most people want to admit. Plenty of reasons for vets to reflexively support the Republican no matter what.
Archon
@WarMunchkin:
People as far down the rabbit hole as today’s right wing usually only regain their senses when their sons are killed in battle and their homes are reduced to rubble. Now I hope American’s institutions are stronger then Republican crazies but if it breaks (instead of just currently bending vigorously to protect us from their insanity) then all bets are off.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Wouldn’t Trump want the opposite of this?
In any case, Trump’s little outburst here is another confirmation that his entire run for the presidency is a gigantic act of ego for Obama having dissed him at the White House Correspondents Dinner a few years back, and for making him look like a fool over the birther nonsense. Problem is, Trump is making all of us suffer for his bruised ego.
SiubhanDuinne
@Emma:
Wow. That’s ballsy.
TPM article says it’s the first time the HCoC has ever endorsed in the general (they have done primary endorsements).
SiubhanDuinne
@O. Felix Culpa:
Yes. On top of everything else, these folks are cowards.
Cat48
I hope the SS can keep Hillz safe. Lots of anger out there after the I Hate Hillary Convention. There is no reason to vote GOP unless you hate Hillary.
tofubo
if only we could say trump was a fucking racist imbecile on the teevee
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/temporarily-suspend-parts-title-18-united-states-code-section-1464-during-2016-election-season
Major Major Major Major
@SiubhanDuinne: Kasich & Hillary in the primary. So obviously they’re either pro-amnesty internationalist centrist squishes trying to drag the Republican party to the left, or neoliberal sellout whores trying to drag the Democrats to the right. Either way, they can’t be trusted.
WarMunchkin
@Archon: I don’t think Dems have an appetite for civil war, and I think we all know that the consequence of Shermanism in the modern era is that we end up needing to spend trillions of dollars that nobody will let us raise via taxes to repair any infrrastructure damage. Besides, enough people have died.
NotMax
@Cat48
Phrasing!
dmsilev
So, via what seems like an actively suicidal National Review, is a fun bit that presages well for tomorrow:
Sounds like he’s going to go onstage with a self-written and probably under-rehearsed speech, undoubtedly will go off script multiple times, etc.
Cacti
The Christie speech was by far the creepiest thing I’ve seen at a GOP convention in my lifetime.
You had a former United States Attorney, holding a kangaroo court, leading a call and response for extra-judicial punishment, and encouraging a frenzied mob, as if he were the generalissimo of some third world banana republic.
D58826
@geg6: The Trump campaign has issued a statement that they don’t think Hillary should be executed by a firing squad. Left unsaid is if other forms of execution were acceptable.
srv
Obama’s treacherous example of executive edicts by fiat will force Trump’s hand. Socialists and near-Marxists infest every branch of government.
Deobamanization will be like Debaathification.
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: And, at least from what I saw, he was so bad at it to boot! Maybe I’m just used to watching them in foreign languages.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cacti:
Well, he IS the governor of New Jersey.
(sorry Jersey-ites, couldn’t resist.
OzarkHillbilly
@srv: Whatever are we going to do with those whackspurts in your head tho?
Cacti
@srv:
So you’re hoping for an American ISIS too?
Roger Moore
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think a wrackspurt siphon is the standard response.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@srv: Got your brownshirt yet? Or did you opt for the black one with the two lightning bolts?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cacti: It sounded better in the original German*.
*H/T to the late and great Molly Ivins.
Mike G
Christie was a US Attorney under the cronyist Bush Assministration, which was rife with political prosecutions orchestrated by KKKarl Rove, and firings of those insufficiently ideological or burdened with a conscience. That’s damning enough to put him on my shit list for life.
gogol's wife
@Matt McIrvin:
Right. That’s when I first heard the term. They fucking invented it, the bastards.
Pogonip
@geg6: Sounds like it’s time for a Lovey break.
OzarkHillbilly
@Roger Moore: I could not remember the correct spelling and was too lazy to look it up, knowing full well that somebody around here would lend a helping spellcheck. ;-) but I’m not sure the siphon will work on srv as the nozzle is much to large for his tiny little head.
Kay
It’s good though, in a way.
Trump is such a weak candidate Christie has to promise them purges of lower-level employees to get them interested. No one ever runs on federal employee staffing decisions. It’s ridiculous and petty.
misterpuff
@Matt McIrvin: And I think it hurt him. The burrowers drug their feet on making Obama led changes.
Citizen_X
@Punchy:
Oh, only a couple times.
A JOKE! IT WAS A JOKE!
geg6
@Pogonip:
Lovey would tear those mothafuckas apart. She’s small, but fierce as all hell.
scav
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Black, more likely. It’s so slimming.
Pogonip
@geg6: Really? Has she bitten anyone?
KS in MA
@geg6: I’m with you.
Shell
Sounds like a character from “Good Fellas”. Come to think of it, Trump always sounds like that.
Gene108
@Cacti:
And yet so many talking heads loved it.
Marc McKenzie
@Rabble Arouser: I hope so, Rabble. And I hope that it shuts up the “both parties are the same!” crowd. Because right now, I have to fight the urge to unscrew the heads of people who tell me that codswallop.
singfoom
@srv: I know I shouldn’t feed you, but…. Really? Really? You’re citing debaathification as a good thing? Do we live on the same planet? Because from every objective angle, debaathification was a horrible idea and one of the reasons Iraq devolved into civil war.
Try again.
Aleta
@geg6: And then the salty dirt covered over with tar and feathers. Then perhaps a couple feet of nice leaf mulch. And scattered with logs seeded with mushrooms.
Aleta
@OzarkHillbilly: (Thanks.) His pupils look dilated.
Villago Delenda Est
@singfoom: srv is an utter dipshit of a troll.
singfoom
@Villago Delenda Est: Oh, I’m aware, I feel bad for feeding him but I couldn’t let that one go. Sometimes he’s amusing at least.
gratuitous
@Cacti: I remember when conservatives just hated commies and their fellow travelers. Grrrr! Oooh, they hateses them sooooo much! Now, they all want to Trump in the White House. Trump, who is good friends with Vladimir Putin and whose current wife is a born communist.
How long do you suppose it will be until conservatives try to tell us that Joe McCarthy was really a liberal Democrat?
Jacel
@Brachiator: I remember hearing about this “embedding” effort during Bush’s last year. I think there was a repeatable cycle where a political appointee could be shifted into a persistent civil service position, then another political appointee in that position starts the cycle anew. Some positions churned in this way as fast as the rules allowed. During the first year of Obama’s administration this seemed plausible, due to the frequency that Obama would announce a policy, then some federal agency would take a well publicized action that contradicted that policy (but was within the law).
burnspbesq
@OzarkHillbilly:
We have long memories and extraordinary patience. We are everywhere. We neither forgive nor forget.
201 fa life!
J R in WV
@Kent:
You are being an ass, “the entire Federal bureaucracy” is what these people intend to fire. If no one suitable to the Republican administration applies for one of those openings, GOOD! No one will be in charge of approving new regulations, which all Republicans know are the work of the Communistas.
Pay attention to what these traitors intend to do if they win this election. We’ll be back in 1850 or so before you can see the scenery whiz by.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
You guys are all missing the point that Crispy was making – Trump intends to pass legislation to end federal civil service rules. Then they intend to fire everyone who run the federal government, and either replace them with hard-core conservatives or leave rule-making positions vacant.
They intend to end the power of the federal government as soon after inauguration day as they can; given the attitude of the current legislators, that would take a couple of weeks. Then they would end the EPA, the Justice Civil Rights unit, the FDA, Ag rules, Federal Parks, which would be donated to the wealthy, etc.
You are thinking small ball, and Trump and his minions are thinking game-changing rule re-writing ending the liberal viewpoint of government as a positive good in society. Then they will revise the Voting rights act, to eliminate protections for people who might be Demoncrat voters, and protect the rights of the BrownShirt movement to vote without being bothered by such unAmerican scum as Afro-notAmericans, Wetbacks, Libtard Commies, etc.
Think big, folks, that’s what these traitors are doing.
They announced their intentions yesterday! Believe them!