Biden Team Lacks Full US Cybersecurity Support in Transition Fracas (wsj.com) 212
When it comes to protecting sensitive information from foreign hackers, President-elect Joe Biden's team is largely on its own. The federal government, which has some of the most sophisticated antihacking technologies in the world, is offering limited assistance to Mr. Biden's transition operation in securing its email and other communications, despite concerns that the team is likely a top espionage target for Russia, China, and other adversaries, WSJ reported Friday, citing people familiar with the transition. From the report: The lack of government cybersecurity support is among the obstacles the Biden transition team has faced as a result of the Trump administration's refusal to acknowledge Mr. Biden's election victory and make available the resources of the federal government ahead of his inauguration in two months. Normally, the General Services Administration would own and manage the setup of government email accounts for a presidential transition team, which are typically assigned the "ptt.gov" domain. The cybersecurity wing of the Department of Homeland Security typically assists in helping a transition to protect those newly created government email accounts, according to current and former officials, and could rely on information from U.S. intelligence agencies to inform its protective efforts. The Trump administration is blocking many of the transition-related resources usually provided to a president-elect, including government email accounts. The GSA so far has declined to identify Mr. Biden as the winner of the election, citing ongoing litigation, even though Mr. Trump has no clear path to victory, according to legal experts. Frozen out of the government network, the transition team is relying on a standard, paid Google Workspace network, the report said.
Best books on cyber-warfare? (Score:3)
Seems like a good time to mention The Perfect Weapon and remember that every book in this field is largely obsolete before the ink dries. However this one is only a couple of years old and does have a lot of good background information.
Spoiler alert: We lost the cyber-war and we're still losing. Are you tired of losing yet?
Could mention various details or even cite a bunch of such books, but I'm still dreaming of FP. How badly did I miss?
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Wow? Eighty-three words and two previews is permissible?
So a couple more good background books: The main one that comes to mind is Cyber War by Richard Clarke. Balanced assessment of offensive and defensive capabilities for various countries as of 2010. Also vulnerabilities, which was a big part of The Perfect Weapon (cited in the previous comment). Both books consider political factors, too. I think that Data and Goliath had some relevant material, though the book as a whole wasn't memorable.
Phishin
Re: Best books on cyber-warfare? (Score:2)
My sense is if you dont have top experts dont even play if at presidential level. Someone needs to put together a typewriter machine that just works through one time pads, all hardware specialized to that function. With that you would have a chance. Anything else i s public in modern world.
Republicans are rewarded for this. (Score:2, Insightful)
How do you expect this would ever change?
The more Republicans do this, the more they are rewarded.
They're making a ton in 'donations' by emailing people, lying about 100x pledge matching, now or never logic.
Because they know this is the biggest excitement they'll be able to generate for a while.
This isn't new in history either - the yellow era of journalism was basically this, with newspapers named for their extreme niche ramping up rhetoric, going back and forth on the robber barons, for and against - and
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Thankfully...it appears the next couple generations after the millennial are back to being conservative already...so, hopefully, the pendulum won't swing too much further left for too much longer and the US can get back to its sensible roots.
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This isn't new in history either
Indeed - as I've watched Trump's actions, I've often thought there are striking parallels to Boss Tweed [wikipedia.org] and Tammany Hall.
It's funny how "drain the swamp" turned into "make it MY swamp".
Re:Republicans are rewarded for this. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's funny how "drain the swamp" turned into "make it MY swamp".
I have a bridge to sell to any individual who thought the reality here would ever be anything but "make it my swamp" -- it was immediate.
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Trump himself touted the fact that "drain the swamp" was just a random slogan that someone else thought up, that he didn't like at first, tried it out, noticed it caught on, started loving it, and then "I started saying it like I meant it" [cc.com].
Re:Republicans are rewarded for this. (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump turned the swamp into a cesspool.
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Trump turned the swamp into a cesspool.
Ever drain a swamp before? The water actually keeps the smell in. All Trump did was make it worse.
Re: Republicans are rewarded for this. (Score:3)
No my complaint is that Trump lead to the downfall of what was "Republican"! He flipped hardcore Republican states like Georgia and Arizona to blue. And he lost in BOTH because of his shear stupidity. Telling his people NOT to vote in Ga and picking a fight with a highly respected war vet who died after decades of Senator service in Az!
There were discussions that Texas may flip?!? That's like saying Cali might go Republican!
What that tells you is actual Republicans had to vote for the OTHER side so not t
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Trump is gone and will not be a factor in two years.
Texas will switch to democrats because to many people are fleeing california and want to impose the reason they fled to Texas. There are far too many of them co
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Trump may have that sort of control, but he does not have the planning and thinking required to be a Boss Tweed type. Tweed pulled the puppet strings from behind the curtain, but Trump wants to be in front of the curtain and doesn't notice that others are pulling his strings and pushing his buttons.
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But Republicans will change. The nature of the system of winner-takes-all elections is that you will get two major parties and they will tend to split the electorate 50/50. If the electorate becomes mostly liberal as the baby boomers die off, then the Republican party will naturally become more liberal or else another major party will take its place. Note especially, the Republican party of today is nothing at all like the Republican party of 2000, or 1980. The Republican party during the Yellow Journal
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...If the electorate becomes mostly liberal as the baby boomers die off, then ...
do keep in mind that in the 60s and 70s, the baby boomers were known as the hippy era, and people back then thought the electorate would become more liberal as the world-war-II generation die off.
Peace, love, and understanding, man; can you dig it?
Re:Republicans are rewarded for this. (Score:5, Insightful)
The QAnon crowd are not senior citizens, they are largely the younger demographic. These will in fact drive the Republicans even further away from the center. Couple all the Holy Rollers and the like who don't care how horrible a Republican candidate is so long as he says bad things about abortion, and I don't see a remedy soon.
Wait your turn (Score:2)
Depends on how you define "soon". The last 4 presidents (5 counting Biden) have been Baby Boomers. The next 3 or 4 presidents will likely be Gen-X (lots of people in both parties are in that age range including Kamala Harris, Nikki Haley, Andrew Yang, Marco Rubio, Beto O'Rourke, Ted Cruz, Amy Klobuchar). That means at least 2040 before we see a Millennial president.
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We're going to be inundated by yuppies.
Get Guy who did ObamaCare Website ROFL (Score:2)
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When I looked into it, it was better than I thought. For a project of that size, to have the final produce readily salvageable is pretty good. We do NOT know how to do software projects on that scale reliably.
What level of support is normal at this stage? (Score:2)
Is it normal for the transition to start significantly before the results have been certified? Wouldn't the official transition normally wait until after the electoral college has actually picked a winner?
Sure, it seems likely at this point that Biden will win. But it's still a future event until the electoral college votes is it not? I would hardly expect official support prior to an official result.
Re:What level of support is normal at this stage? (Score:4, Informative)
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The closest to what is happening now was back with clinton/gore in that case gore did not concede until Dec 13, which was after the states had certified their delegates and was one day before the Electorial College started meeting. At that point the media started to use the term "President-Elect" for Bush and a few days later clinton provided office space and support to Bush's transition team.
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Is it normal for the transition to start significantly before the results have been certified?
Yes, it is. Incoming department heads have to start having briefings. Security clearances have to be processed for incoming staffers who need them. Incoming administrations have to be able to be effective starting 12:01pm Jan 20. There is a lot of prep work that has to be done beforehand.
Re:What level of support is normal at this stage? (Score:4, Informative)
Is it normal for the transition to start significantly before the results have been certified?
Yes.
Wouldn't the official transition normally wait until after the electoral college has actually picked a winner?
No.
Sure, it seems likely at this point that Biden will win. But it's still a future event until the electoral college votes is it not? I would hardly expect official support prior to an official result.
That is the point of the Presidential Transition Act, that official support and preparations for the transition start as soon as possible, before the electoral college votes.
Re:What level of support is normal at this stage? (Score:5, Informative)
Trump's team received GSA funding on 8 November 2016. Basically every Presidential election has been long decided before now, with the notable exception of 2000, and each incumbent / outgoing President had the class to work with the incoming winner regardless of party because it's what's best for the country and they weren't pissy little bitch losers like the current outgoing President.
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The 2000 Presidential election wasn't actually decided for a long time after the polls closed. The 2020 election has been decided for over a week now, arguably two weeks.
Go look up Beau Of The Fifth Column's video (Score:2)
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from YouTube on the subject. The TL;DW; is that Biden knew this was going to happen and has built a parallel structure (more or less a full state department) to assist him with the transition during Trump's temper tantrum.
Luckily, as a former VP and current Senator, Biden and Harris still have active clearances. But they can only get their briefings right now from subject experts or former administration members who, while certainly highly knowledgeable in their fields, may not have fully up to date information, no classified material (because the GSA won't make the ascertainment declaration you likely have people on the transition teams without the necessary clearances), etc. So likely any material they are getting is mor
Remember his words (Score:5, Informative)
He also said he loves the poorly educated [snopes.com], and boy are the poorly educated sucking up his lies.
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The con artist
I'm not sure why people keep calling him a con artist. He's one of the few politicians who tells the truth. He admitted that he's only a good winner and not a good looser, he said he wouldn't leave the white house, he said he wouldn't just accept the result of the election if he lost, I mean we've been complaining about him lying for 4 years and now he finally tells the truth and everyone keeps complaining. Hypocritical democrats!
*note this post is sarcasm, and at this point I only hope Trump chokes on a ch
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The con artist
I'm not sure why people keep calling him a con artist. He's one of the few politicians who tells the truth.
Don't worry, I know you were being sarcastic, but it's interesting WHY he sounds honest.
Lying is hard, it's hard not just because doing something wrong is stressful, but because you're having to conjure up their alternate reality where the lie makes sense (and it's easily exposed).
That's why, when normal people lie, their speaking slows down, they start hedging what they say, and they sound a bit hesitant. Fittingly, this is also what it sounds like when you're trying to avoid over committing or getting mis
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I am going with the theory he is trying to find opportunity in chaos where he can strike a deal with the Biden admin to provide him immunity from all current and previous acts. However the farther he goes, the more he pisses people off the less likely he will get what he wants.
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I have my doubts he's intelligent enough to be doing what you say intentionally, even if his advisors recommended it. Because he's not shown any ability to play the political game in any fashion other than "I said it, it's happening, and I refuse to hear otherwise." I think it's far more likely he truly believes he can stretch this out and fuck something up well enough to stay in power. I don't personally believe it *WILL* happen, but we're dealing with fantasy land when it comes to what goes on in his h
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Fortunately, the Biden administration has no power to interfere with Trump being prosecuted, almost certainly convicted, and very likely imprisoned by the State of New York. Nor can a Presidential pardon be used for a civil lawsuit.
Doesn't care (Score:2)
Probably because he doesn't give a crap if foreign groups (hackers, IP thieves, intelligence agencies, or otherwise) penetrate US systems.
Re:Election not certified (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. The Biden team lacks the resources because Trump has arbitrarily ordered to GSA to withhold that support.
Even if you stipulate that Trump's complaints about the election have any legitimate basis (they do not) there is no reason for this order. If for some wild reason it turns out that Biden loses president-elect status then there would be no harm done from the transition activites. The Trump administration would simply proceed as before. In fact they would be better off because the transition protocol would effectively conduct a status audit of all government departments.
The order to stall transition is purely in Trump's self interest and against the national interest. This is irrefutable.
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The latest actual news is that biden has no extra powers or position then Kanye West does, so did Trump order that Kayne also not get those resources?
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We still have time for all deadlines and a smooth transfer of power to occur.
Under president orange man-baby? The man who cheated at golf by stealing a golf ball from a 10 year old kid [businessinsider.com]. Yeah right ... that's gonna happen.
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We still have time for all deadlines and a smooth transfer of power to occur.
Under president orange man-baby? The man who cheated at golf by stealing a golf ball from a 10 year old kid [businessinsider.com]. Yeah right ... that's gonna happen.
Hey, hey, hey, that's slanderous!
The son was at least 20.
Also, apparently Trump has Oddjob as his caddy.
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Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf. He cheats like a three-card Monte dealer. He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs. At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: “Pele.”
Re: Election not certified (Score:2)
So its Judge Smials playing with Oddjob as caddy
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"Why the ANY administration provide support to the presumed president-elect if the election hasn't been certified? "
Because the Presidential Transition Act requires transition activities before certification.
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Probably because these transitions need every single minute of every day they get between the election being called, and the winner putting his hand on a bible. You know, if they give a shit about doing a good job.
Which this outgoing President clearly does not.
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Because it's always been done that way, and transitions take a lot of time. Reports from the 9/11 commission have hinted that there was less preparedness by the Bush team because of the confusion surrounding the transition. A smooth transfer of power, even between foes, has been a hallmark of the American system where the country and its people are seen as more important then the petty squabbles at the top, and sabotaging the incoming administration is also a sabotage on America.
Consider that when a busin
Re:Election not certified (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the ANY administration provide support to the presumed president-elect if the election hasn't been certified?
They wouldn't.
Unless, of course, they actually cared about America.
In which case they might want the country to run well, by, for example, having the best security experts we have working to make sure foreign powers aren't infiltrating all the electronic systems of the new administration.
Re:Election not certified (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the ANY administration provide support to the presumed president-elect if the election hasn't been certified?
Because it is the only approach that isn't utterly stupid. Let's look at the four possible scenarios here:
The only cost of providing transition support early is financial, and it isn't much. So providing support is not a problem even in the extraordinarily unlikely event that the Republicans manage to subvert democracy and overturn the results of a free and fair election. By contrast, the cost of not providing transition support is potentially immeasurable. It could cause the next 9/11.
Once you have a presumptive president with reasonable certainty — and we're way past that point already — you start the transition process. Period. Realistically, there can be no harm caused by doing so, and this is doubly true when the losing candidate is the incumbent, because the courts are deciding between a transition team and no transition team, rather than between two competing transition teams. Thus, there is simply no way to justify not providing that support unless your goal is to screw up the country as much as humanly possible while watching the world burn.
Re:Election not certified (Score:4, Informative)
Why the ANY administration provide support to the presumed president-elect if the election hasn't been certified?
We still have time for all deadlines and a smooth transfer of power to occur.
The Congressional 9/11 report noted that the delayed transition from the 2000 election likely contributed to the intelligence failures that led to the 9/11 attacks.
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Why the ANY administration provide support to the presumed president-elect if the election hasn't been certified?
We still have time for all deadlines and a smooth transfer of power to occur.
Did you ever start a new job? How long did it take you to get up to speed? How many dumb mistakes did you make in that period?
The transition isn't about paperwork deadlines, it's about ensuring that the US Government can actually function after January 20th.
Re: Election not certified (Score:5, Informative)
The basic electoral process in the USA is that after the votes are tallied, the loser is man enough (or woman enough) to admit the results and give a concession speech for the good of the nation. Then if the incumbent was not the winner, the transition begins.
Once the concession happened, the elections were certified after a bit of checking just to be sure, and the actual EC process was seen largely as a formality. This happened in parallel with the transition team getting set up.
Even the famous "Dewey defeats Truman" incident corrected quickly and things got on (no transition needed).
The 2000 election was an absolute disaster of an election with the margin of victory down to 300 or so votes, an incomplete recount, AND a mismatch between the popular vote and the EC. Even there, neither candidate launched a raft of evidence free lawsuits all over the place.
The transition of Obama to Trump went quite smoothly in spite of close margins and a mismatch between popular vote and the EC.
Re: Election not certified (Score:4, Informative)
Yes it has. The Presidential Transition Act [presidenti...sition.org] was passed in 1963. It is the responsibility of the head of the GSA to ascertain the apparent winner of the election so a transition can be started as soon as possible to ensure a smooth process.
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Close. The transition doesn't begin until the Electoral College has met and voted on a President-Elect.
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You're wrong. A concession has nothing at all to do with it. According to the Presidential Transition Act of 1963:
What happens if the result of the election is unclear? The law provides that an eligible candidate has the right to the facilities and services provided to eligible candidates until the date on which the Administrator is able to determine the apparent successful candidates for the office of president and vice president.
This isn't 2000, where one State made the difference in who was going to be President and that was down to 547 votes.
https://presidentialtransition.org/publications/presidential-transition-act-summary/ [presidenti...sition.org]
It's not about toys (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, Trump (and moreover Mitch McConnel) want to do damage to the country because voters are likely to blame Biden and Biden's party in the Mid Term and hand Congress to the Republicans. Then they can do more obstruction and damage until the voters hand the Whitehouse over.
This isn't partisan speculation on my part, go read Newt Gingrich's Wikipedia page. This is part of a strategy the Republicans have been employing since the 90s to seize power at any cost.
The important takeaway here is that our lives, health and wellbeing do not factor into their equations. We are expendable.
Re:Election not certified (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not about the *rights* of the incoming president. It is about the *duties* of the outgoing president to protect the people, government and Constitution of the Republic.
That's why no prior administration has ever waited for the formality of states certifying their election results. Obama had Trump in the White House on November 5. The GSA release of transition funding occurred on November 8, weeks before state elections were certified.
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That's why no prior administration has ever waited for the formality of states certifying their election results.
Seriously? Not even in 1876?
When someone says "No X has ever Y," you better take a long look at what they are saying before taking them seriously.
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1876 was before the presidential transition law.
Re:Election not certified (Score:5, Insightful)
The GSA has to certify Biden as President-Elect to start the transition. It took hours after the networks called it for Trump for Obama's GSA to certify Trump. It's a Trump employee refusing to certify it.
Other than using the same word, it has nothing to do with state level certification of votes or Congress's certification of the electoral votes.
Just Imagine (Score:2)
If Obama had done this after Trump won. Republicans would be shitting bricks.
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The 2000 election was unusual in that the result depended on one state (Florida) that had an extremely small margin for one candidate or the other, and it took time to certify the election It was complicated by the voting machines in use, which could lead to ambiguous results (hence the discussion of "pregnant chad", "hanging chad", etc.) We literally did not know who was the President-Elect for some time after the election.
In this case, the winner was evident in the week of the voting. Even assuming
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The only reason it hasn't been "certified" yet is because of a President who is completely detached from reality, and has such a fragile ego that he can't possibly believe that the country would rather have Joe Biden, of all people, than him.
Which should really tell you something. It's not like Biden is most people's idea of an ideal candidate.
Trump needs to get off his ample orange ass, get his shit together, face reality like an adult, and concede the race. Whatever long-shot bullshit he's trying to do
Trump was ascertained before certification (Score:2)
Trump was ascertained and began his transition [wikipedia.org] the day after the 2016 election, well before the results were certified.
Re:Election not certified (Score:5, Informative)
If someone falls out of an airplane at 60,000 feet over a rocky plain, there's no need to wait for the splat to draw conclusions. Even parts of the GOP have come to realize that there's no legal way that President Biden won't be in office starting Jan 20th. The People have spoken.
This result should surprise nobody. The Trump administration has been working for months to prevent an election and to lay groundwork to question the results. That means they expected those results to be unfavorable.
All of this boils down to Trump, probably for the first time in his life, losing definitively. He can't delude himself into believing that he could get his way by opening his wallet wide enough and then 'decide' that it's not worth it, making the outcome his decision.
Even sadder, the vast majority of people he claims to understand have experienced that decades earlier in their lives and on a regular basis.
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You have anger issues my dude.
Re:Election not certified (Score:4, Insightful)
the massive irregularities
Care to share those 'massive irregularities' with the class? I'm all for scandal. I have my popcorn here and ready.
But so far, not a soul has provided so much as a shred of actual evidence of irregularities that would affect more than hundreds (as in y*10^2) of votes.
With a popular vote margin of 6+ million votes, more than twice the margin Clinton outdid Trump with in 2016, there is no doubt that Biden is the de facto president-elect. Everyone with more than half a brain knows it, whether or not they're willing to admit it.
So while you may be technically correct about the "-elect" status, the writing is on the wall, and pretending you can't see it is, well, asinine.
The "massive" irregularities are simply the fantasies of a washed-up, pathetic, childish loser.
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Care to share those 'massive irregularities' with the class? I'm all for scandal. I have my popcorn here and ready.
Apparently there is a list with the names of thousands of dead voters in Michigan. The BBC got hold of the list, picked 30 names at random, and then added the oldest person on the list, and searched for these people.
They found every single one of them well and alive. The oldest one was a 100 year old lady that they talked to, she was in a home and quite lively. Most of the "dead" people were people with the same name and year/month of birth as voters in Michigan, who had died in other states. And a tiny
Re:Election not certified (Score:4, Informative)
The county next to mine was given a list of about 200 names of people who allegedly voted in 2016 despite being felons. It happens that the person chosen to investigate is a good friend of mine.
His first sweep was to throw out people who voted despite having the same name as another person who had committed a felony, people who had been convicted only of misdemeanors and hence retained voting rights, and people who had completely served their sentence and therefore by law had their voting rights restored. (Laws vary from state to state; this is the law in ours.)
After that, he had a list of twelve names that might have been illegal voters. The county board then removed him from the investigation, as he had disproved the allegation of fraud at more than a trivial scale.
Re:Election not certified (Score:4, Funny)
But those individual hundreds add up. Put enough of 'em together and you can get to 6 million votes easy. Just find a few hundred irregularities in each of 10000 States and you're golden!
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And literally, as every election chief has mentioned, EVERY election has irregularities because.. HUMANS are involved.. and humans do very poorly on repetitive tasks, especially when they are annual and seemingly change/tweak every year. (https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-and-jobs-where-humans-are-better-than-algorithms-and-vise-versa/) This should NOT be news to the Slashdot crowd...
Those irregularities are not indicative of a problem or fault.. especially when the numbers are so small that it doesn't chan
Re:Election not certified (Score:5, Interesting)
If there is all this photo / video evidence, where is it? Post that shit on Instagram or YouTube and link it. Show the world, or it didn't fucking happen.
Show us sworn affidavits that actually disclose the name of the affiant and would be something that a judge, literally ANY judge, would allow in their courtroom. If you don't have that, you don't have anything. Waving around a stack of paper and saying "OMG look at the affidavits!" proves nothing, if the documents in question don't actually have any bearing on anything, or don't have someone standing by their sworn statement enough to even put their name on it.
The clock is ticking down to when the electoral college makes their vote. Remember that faithless electors can be legally punished according to the Supreme Court.
306 to 232, buddy.
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Photographicds evidence, video evidence, sworn affadavits, statistical evidence, and physical evidence that the Trump team has apparently been utterly unable to put before a court. Any of the many courts they have gone to.
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Last I saw their court cases were 32-0, they hadn't won a single case anywhere.
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Considering that I saw it on the Common Dreams web site, it was probably the latter.
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Every affidavit has been rejected by teams of lawyers or immediately thrown out when sent to a judge for review for being completely irrelevant or hyper-paranoid rambling that ultimately meant nothing. If there's video evidence, photo evidence, or physical evidence, maybe somebody on Trump's many legal teams could produce some of it and not get their cases laughed out of court?
Like it or not, just proclaiming evidence doesn't make the evidence real. It actually needs to be shown to the public and/or in co
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You may have stated a "fact" but that fact is immaterial to the discussion.
Nothing in federal law says that the electoral college must have met and voted for the GSA to release transition funding.
Tell you what, you find the regulation that says that must have happened, and we'll go ahead and stack that up against literally every single Presidential transition in history except maybe Bush / Gore in 2000, including Trump's transition team getting their GSA provided funding on 8 November 2016, practically a fu
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In which states would these undetermined votes be? (I'm saying "states", plural, since switching one seriously contested state from Biden to Trump would not affect the outcome.) Georgia just certified the Biden win, maybe a few hours ago as I write this.
Without solid evidence of massive vote fraud in multiple states, there is no legal way for Trump to win.
Re:Use Hillary's Email Server (Score:5, Insightful)
Republicans in Congress were outraged by breaking off the W keys. They demanded the FBI investigate. Oops, turns out the Clinton team never did it! W.'s FBI exonerated him. They did find a couple of white house staffers in W's administration breaking off W keys to cover the lack of a story.
Stop spreading lies.
Liars always prosper on the Web? (Score:2)
And you should stop feeding trolls. I think the lack of real identity on the Web is the root of the troll problem, and those thoughts were significantly strengthened by the parts of The Perfect Weapon that describe the operations of troll farms.
Nice and normal people have a foolish tendency to be polite to strangers. But the Internet is packed with strangers full of lies. Not even real strangers, but many of them are just sock puppets. Created yesterday and discarded tomorrow.
My favorite solution approach
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Republicans in Congress were outraged by breaking off the W keys. They demanded the FBI investigate. Oops, turns out the Clinton team never did it! W.'s FBI exonerated him. They did find a couple of white house staffers in W's administration breaking off W keys to cover the lack of a story.
Stop spreading lies.
That bit about the missing "W" keys seems to be true. However bold Republican claims about democratic staffers stealing priceless paintings turned out to a lie. The biggest scandal in this ridiculous incident, apart from the fact that a significant amount of the damages bill of $9,324 was incurred replacing 62 keyboards at $75 a pop back in 2000, was the fact that the investigation of the whole thing cost the taxpayer $200.000.
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I hadn't heard this one but at this point if a Republican is claiming something I assume it's a lie until there is overwhelming evidence. No debunking needed.
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if a politician is claiming something I assume it's a lie until there is overwhelming evidence. No debunking needed.
FTFY.
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From your link:
"Also, the claims that Clinton staffers damaged and stole various items from the White House are overstated. The Washington Postâ(TM)s âoeReliable Sourceâ column did report on Jan. 23, 2001, on a âoepractical jokeâ involving the removal of the letter âoeWâ from several computer keyboards. A few months later, after claims of widespread destruction at offices in the White House and the Old Executive Office Building had been bandied about, the General Services
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Damage, theft, vandalism, and pranks occurred in the White House complex during the 2001 presidential transition. Incidents such as the removal of keys from computer keyboards; the theft of various items; the leaving of certain voice mail messages, signs, and written messages; and the placing of glue on desk drawers clearly were intentional acts.
So your political bias meant you were wrong.
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Republicans in Congress were outraged by breaking off the W keys. They demanded the FBI investigate. Oops, turns out the Clinton team never did it! W.'s FBI exonerated him. They did find a couple of white house staffers in W's administration breaking off W keys to cover the lack of a story.
Stop spreading lies.
Except they did pull off keyboard keys
https://www.factcheck.org/2009/02/the-class-act-e-mail/ [factcheck.org]
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jun-12-na-clinton12-story.html [latimes.com]
It wasn't a particularly big deal, per the reports. Doesn't say 'every keyboard' was broken. But it absolutely does indicate some childish behavior.
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Yes, it was kind of petty. But very minor. The Bush administration was not hampered in its transition by this prank.
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How childish.
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Bill Clinton's team broke all the "W" keys off every keyboard in the Whitehouse when G. W. Bush was coming in. It's like they're all a bunch of children.
How childish.
There is a prank that isn't childish?
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GAO looked into this and found 33 keyboards that had been damaged that way. To put that in perspective, there are over 4000 employees who work in the White House and Eisenhower buildings.
Should it have happened? No. It was an immature prank, but it's not like there was systematic sabotage.
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And when W left office, Obama's team commented on the manner of which his administration cooperated and left: with class and dignity. Same with when Obama's administration left and transitioned to Trump - they left the place as good or better than they found it.
What do you think the chances of that happening this time around is? I'd put the over / under at roughly "no chance in hell".
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Bill Clinton's team broke all the "W" keys off every keyboard in the Whitehouse when G. W. Bush was coming in.
Not all (not the West Wing computers) - but certainly quite a few [go.com].
It's like they're all a bunch of children.
I would argue that you should have include the adjective "spoiled". We certainly see a lot of it - from both sides of the political spectrum.
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Yeah a couple of damaged keyboards worth a couple hundred dollars total is roughly equivalent to stealing an election and denying millions of people their voice - essentially discarding our 200 year Republic. Pretty much the same.... sheeeshhh.
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More like State prison, New York's to be precise.
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The Presidential transition Act of 1963 recognized that it takes some amount of time to do an orderly transition, and so provides for the transition planning to start before that.
https://presidentialtransition... [presidenti...sition.org]
Re:The President Elect has not been chosen. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to live by splitting hairs and technicalities, then fine. However, we have sufficient data from certified elections from the Secretaries of State in each state to know who won. Even if by some miracle Trump's legal horseshit manages to flip Michigan (it won't, as there is no legal mechanism for un-certifying election results once they are certified, which they have been) he still loses 290 - 248.
Even if the absolutely ridiculous happens - Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada flip - he still loses 273 - 265. Georgia is in the bank, and that's the fucking ball game.
Time for Trump to be a man and concede, or go down in history as the sorest of sore losers. At this point he's starting to make school children that don't know any better look graceful in defeat by comparison. It's fucking sad.
Also, don't forget that when Trump won in 2016, he was sitting in the Oval Office with President Obama on the 5th of November, and GSA let loose with transition funding on the 8th of November. This is just pure obstructionism on the part of a sore loser, and the sycophants of said sore loser.
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The Electoral College does not meet in one place. As per the Constitution, the electors of each state cast their votes in the state they represent. You clearly do not understand the actual election process. See the Constitution, Article II, Section 1,first sentence of Paragraph 3.
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I have to admit, the utter incompetence of the current Sadministration has managed to keep us out of any wars. Hell, their only foreign policy accomplishment was the coup in Bolivia, which has already been reversed with the Socialists being reelected. Even Shrub was competent enough to bring in the British and El Salvador to build his Coalition of the Coerced when invading Iraq. These bozos can't even accomplish that.