It is not hard to see why the Trump admin failed.

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Lee Atwater, Jan 22, 2021.

  1. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It's because of things like this.

    Trump hires the wedding planner – to oversee NY federal housing program?

    According to a report in the New York Daily News, Donald Trump has appointed the spectacularly unqualified Lynne Patton to run the Region II office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which covers New York and New Jersey – thus confirming the Trump administration’s haphazard treatment of the problems facing American cities.

    Patton, who has been an event planner and personal aide to members of the Trump family (she planned Eric Trump’s wedding), has no experience in housing or urban development. She will now be tasked with coordinating the flow of billions of federal dollars into New York City, Newark, Trenton and other troubled urban centers.
    https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/opinions/patton-urban-development-louis-opinion/index.html

    White House puts ‘politicals’ at CDC to try to control info

    NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump White House has installed two political operatives at the nation’s top public health agency to try to control the information it releases about the coronavirus pandemic as the administration seeks to paint a positive outlook, sometimes at odds with the scientific evidence.

    The two appointees assigned to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Atlanta headquarters in June have no public health background. When the two appointees showed up in Atlanta, their roles were a mystery to senior CDC staff, the people said. They had not even been assigned offices. Eventually one, Nina Witkofsky, became acting chief of staff, an influential role as Redfield’s right hand.
    https://apnews.com/article/election...lth-new-york-e321f4c9098b4db4dd6b1eda76a5179e

    And then, you know, there's Jared...........and so, so many more. The organizing principle behind Trump's appointments of unqualified lackeys and loyalist hacks was not competence, it was fidelity to Don.

    It explains why the COVID response was so terribly botched. Not only due to the Orange Insurrectionist's idiocy but of those he surrounded himself with. The few competent holdovers from prior years were marginalized and or silenced if not fired.

    Thousands of people are needlessly dead because of Trump.
    Thousands of people are needlessly dead because of Trump.
    Thousands of people are needlessly dead because of Trump.

    Hundreds of thousands of people are needlessly out of work because the response was so terribly botched. Billions of dollars were needlessly spent because the response was so terribly botched.

    If you Trump followers are still wondering why we Trump critics were so "triggered" during the last 4 years, now you know.
     
  2. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    Experience is overrated. Jared Kushner had no experience in the Middle East yet seems to have done a pretty fair job of getting various nations in that area to accept Israel.

    On the bigger stage take the border between India and Pakistan. When British India got their independence from the British, a British official who had never even been to the area was locked in a room with a bunch of maps and a box of pencils and told to draw the new border.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Radcliffe,_1st_Viscount_Radcliffe

    As has been pointed out, considering that about equal numbers of Pakistanis and Indians ended up on opposite sides of the new border probably indicates he drew it up about as fairly as possible. Not that the violence that erupted between the two sides was not his fault.
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2021
  3. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    Experience can be "overrated," but only when confronted with extraordinary talent. Mickey Mantle, Lebron James, Amanda Gorman...

    Trump's picks would be fine if they were based on talent rather than experience, but they're based on loyalty.
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2021
  4. Capt Nice

    Capt Nice Well-Known Member

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    A dictator does not want people in charge of different departments who are capable of making decisions. He, being a dictator, wants to be the only person in government who makes ANY decision and all he wants them for is to kiss his ass.
     
  5. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No, it's not. Neither is expertise. Jared's failure to make real progress towards ME peace is due to the admin's Israel centric approach. It's why Arab countries in the ME discounted the US as an honest broker early on.

    Perhaps more than any other reason the epic failure of the Trump admin can be traced to the priority placed on loyalty over qualifications.
     
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  6. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It's not that the reflexive defense of all things Don, without credible evidence, surprises me anymore. But I did think we could reach an agreement on a basic tenet like experience and qualifications being desirable when appointing members of any admin to serve the country. I mean, a wedding planner picked to run the Region II office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development?
     
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  7. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    Dayton has a valid point. It doesn't apply to those in the OP, and his choice of Kushner and the creation of the India/Pakistan border aren't very good examples, but there are examples before us. Mayor Pete is a good example. There are surely those with more experience in transportation and/or the workings of the federal government, but Pete has the talent to surpass the performance of more experienced people.

    To be fair, though I think the Kushner's are an elite crime family, I don't know what happened in negotiations in the ME. He may be a talented negotiator, but my money is still betting on "not."
     
  8. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser who previously served on ex-President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 task force, asserted on Friday morning that there were deadly consequences to the previous administration’s dishonesty on the pandemic.

    “There’s no secret we’ve had a lot of divisiveness, we’ve had facts that were very, very clear that were questioned,” Fauci told CNN. “People were not trusting what health officials were saying. There was great divisiveness. Masking became a political issue.”

    He pointed to the staggering death toll of more than 400,000 in the U.S. as the reason why the new White House has “really got to restore trust and restore a unified approach.”
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...fic-claims-about-covid-very-likely-cost-lives
     
  9. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Populists like Trump don’t just feed on socioeconomic discontent. They feed on ineffective government and their great appeal is that they claim to replace it with a government that is effective through their own autocratic power. Where Don fell down in his attempt to solidify semi-autocratic rule was in his failure to meet the most basic challenges of governance. Like addressing a national health crisis.

    WASHINGTON (AP) — With a burst of executive orders, President Joe Biden served notice Thursday that America’s war on COVID-19 is under new command, promising an anxious nation progress to reduce infections and lift the siege it has endured for nearly a year.

    At the same time, he tried to manage expectations in his second day in office, saying despite the best intentions “we’re going to face setbacks.” He brushed off a reporter’s question on whether his goal of 100 million coronavirus shots in 100 days should be more ambitious, a point pressed by some public health experts.

    The 10 orders signed by Biden are aimed at jump starting his national COVID-19 strategy to increase vaccinations and testing, lay the groundwork for reopening schools and businesses, and immediately increase the use of masks — including a requirement that Americans mask up for travel. One directive calls for addressing health care inequities in minority communities hard hit by the virus.
    https://apnews.com/article/biden-sign-measure-mask-use-travel-01676a2c85386aa741d83d977e895353
     
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  10. maxLiberal

    maxLiberal Banned

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    America is so thrilled we're dancing the watusi!
     
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  11. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Not that it's a revelatory observation, but it's clear Trump devotees defense of Don more than anything is a defense of themselves. A refusal to admit to their colossal error of judgement.
     
  12. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Even a stopped clock is right twice a day! Wow! Experience versus inexperience? gee! Why aren’t more people hiring inexperienced staff for jobs like neurosurgery?

    mutters got self “the lengths Trump supporters will go to to justify incompetence...........
     
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  13. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    Of course. To attack Jared Kushner's efforts you have to mock his achievements as not being REAL PROGRESS. This is the Middle East. I would think even you would consider the least movement toward peace with Israel by nearby nations to be "real progress".

    No one expects them to turn into versions of the U.S./Canadian relationship.
     
  14. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    upload_2021-1-23_2-14-20.jpeg
    all men have faults

    women too but not so many :p
     

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  15. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    I'll put it this way. I've applied for jobs for years and received the entire "we need experience" matra.

    Much of that time has been applying for football coaching jobs. But if you look at the performance of those "experienced" coaches you find that just about as many fall flat of their faces as prove to be successful.

    The bottom line is that hiring someone "experienced" is simply a way for administrators and school boards to avoid criticism.

    1) If they hire an inexperienced coach and they are a failure, everyone is on their backs for not hiring someone with experience.
    2) If they hire an experienced coach and they are a failure, they can say "well we hired the man with the most experience".
     
  16. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    Actually my daughter was assisting with neurosurgery when she was 19 years old and hadn't been in the OR for more than a few hours.
     
  17. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What you fail to consider is that more progress could potentially have been made by a more trusted, experienced, knowledgeable broker. Respected by parties on both sides. One with the courage to tell Trump it hurt the cause of peace to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.

    Obviously the ME poses enormous obstacles. We need the best possible people working on it. Not the prez's son-in-law.
     
  18. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Now I see.
     
  19. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    Then why wasn't "more progress" made during the 8 years of the Obama Admin.?
     
  20. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Hmmm, let me think, what was going on in the ME when Obama assumed the presidency? Answer....the chaos wrought by Shrub's admin.
     
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  21. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  22. CenterField

    CenterField Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I find that another striking event was for Trump to nominate Rick Perry to lead the Department of Energy. Well, that department deals with advanced physics research and nuclear weapons. The previous heads of that Department were full professors of Physics from Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley, and two recent ones were Physics Nobel Prize recipients.

    So, what's Rick Perry's qualification? He obtained a degree from an obscure minor college in... Animal Husbandry!! No kidding! According to reports, apparently when Perry was told that his name was being considered for the Department of Energy, he said, "cool, I can look into the price of gasoline." Huh, the DoE doesn't set the price of gasoline, something the federal administration doesn't have the authority to do. But we know that Perry is quite confused regarding the functions of the different cabinet-level departments... we remember his blunder in that campaign debate. In his first tour of the DoE, what he'd hear from his tour guide would be "nuclear weapons research this way." Predictably Perry who is very dumb, didn't last there for too long, thankfully.

    Now, this said, Biden's choice for the DoE is not great either, in my opinion. He picked Jennifer Granholm, a two-terms former governor of Michigan and Adjunct Professor of Law at UC-Berkeley. So, no expertise in Physics either. Likely, at least she is smart, unlike Perry.
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2021
  23. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Are you also suited to do surgery? Plan a city? Give advice on epidemiology? There is a REASON why experience is preferred
     
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  24. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This helps explain why Biden picked Granholm.

    https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/here-s-problem-biden-picking-jennifer-granholm-run-doe-n1251867
     
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  25. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    Who cares? We didn't need a Dept. of Energy for most of our nations history. We don't need it now.

    Love it how so many like you label someone you disagree with politically as "dumb".
     

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