Off Topic Politics Thread

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St Badger said:
I don’t know how reliable Tortoisemedia.com is, but found this claim that Mike Pompeo is leaving “political land mines” to disrupt Biden’s start as the next POTUS.

“Scorched earth. In Taiwan, Yemen, Cuba and Iran, the outgoing US administration is leaving political landmines for Team Biden in what David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, has called “pure diplomatic vandalism”. The man behind this is Mike Pompeo, the outgoing secretary of state; his aim apparently to make Biden look weak as he restores some common sense to US foreign policy. Looking ahead, there’s another thing: Pompeo wants to be president.

In chronological order:

  • Taiwan. On Saturday Pompeo lifted restrictions on formal contacts between US and Taiwanese officials that have been in place for 41 years. Ostensibly this underlines the Trump administration’s firm support for Taiwan and its democracy in the face of Chinese intimidation. It also hands Pompeo’s successor, Tony Blinken, a diplomatic emergency on day one in his new job. Nothing causes more acute neuralgia in Beijing than recognition for an island it claims as its own.
  • Yemen. On Sunday Pompeo said he planned to designate Yemen’s Houthi rebels a foreign terrorist organisation. In principle this will make it illegal under US law to move food through the crucial Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah from 19 January. The designation allows waivers for aid agencies that help feed 80 per cent of Yemenis, but in practice there’s no way to police it or the waivers – which would only protect US government employees and entities anyway. Pompeo’s main aim is to make it as hard as possible for Blinken to resume talks with Iran, which supports the Houthis. More than 100,000 have died in Yemen’s civil war and famine is forecast for 2021. Iona Craig, an expert on the region, says the impact of the designation is going to be felt by civilians rather than the Houthis.
  • Cuba. On Monday Pompeo added Cuba to the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, principally to reverse a key element of Obama’s rapprochement with Havana before it’s too late. There’s zero evidence of Cuba sponsoring terrorism over the past four years, which is why Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, called this a “blatantly politicised designation”. Pompeo will certainly remind Cuban-Americans of his brave stand on their behalf when he wades into his first presidential primary.
  • Iran. On Tuesday Pompeo said Iran was a new “home base” for al-Qaeda. Again, zero evidence. And again, the purpose seems to be to derail the Biden administration’s efforts to patch Obama’s Iran deal back together before they’ve even begun. Team Trump’s Iran strategy of “maximum pressure” is working, Pompeo insisted in a tweet. Washington’s abiding fear is that this strategy might culminate in military action ordered by an unhinged commander-in-chief.
Question for the post-mortem: what role in all this did the soon-to-be-ex First Son-in-law Jared Kushner have? Everything that hurts Iran helps Saudi Arabia, where he’s been cultivating ties with the Crown Prince – despite the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the jailing of Loujain al-Hathloul and so much else – for most of the past four years.”
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Words fail me .... but, then, I’m no longer surprised at the lengths some of these so-called “politicians” will go to try to make their successors jobs as hard as possible. How on earth can he do this without Senate approval and sign off by the president? Even more important, therefore, to get the orange clown out of the White House pronto
 
tomw24 said:
Damn that won't be enough to convict him.
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The trial and conviction will be done by the Senate, where a 2/3 majority is required to convict. That means 17 GOP senators will need to vote to convict. While unlikely, a lot depends on Mitch McConnell, who has already said there won’t be a whip on Republicans, and might himself even vote to convict. If he does, that might lead to enough others finding where they have hidden their courage,

In some ways conviction isn’t the aim any more though, as all it means is removal from office, and the trial won’t happen until after Biden is inaugurated anyway. The symbolic stigma of being impeached is the important thing, plus the secondary issue of a simple majority vote banning Trump from ever holding public office again.
 
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The Senate might be a different animal, though the bar there is extremely high. In the House, most districts are extremely safe: members face far more of a challenge in a party primary (or from death threats! They're getting a lot of those!) than a general election. In the Senate, while there are a lot of extremely safe seats, there are many more potentially competitive ones overall.

The other element is that Senate GOP leadership is less Trump-adjacent than the House. Mitch McConnell is evil but he isn't a fool, and it increasingly appears that he knows that there will be a reckoning with the forces of Trump at some point. I still expect him to vote against, and for conviction to fail, but there's considerable strategic value for the old guard Republicans in convicting at this point. Trump's the front-runner for the 2024 nomination as it stands, and if the party remains Trumpy, there isn't going to be much room for the Mitch McConnells in short order. This might be their only chance to seize the party back.
 
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It doesn’t seem to have reached the media but British Gas employees are on a 5 day strike because their employers want to sack them and rehire them on worse contracts.

A sad sign of the times.
 
He's finally made an appearance!

Should've been this firm/presidential last week...

Still no apology for inciting or radicalising, though, as that would be an admission of culpability.

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I am not convinced that impeaching Trump will resolve the problems with American politics and the deep-rooted issues which are entrenched there. Trump let the very ugly genie out of the bottle and it will not easily be forced to return. I feel that the unpleasant, far-right elements of society feel confident that they have been given a voice. The tasks facing Biden are almost insurmountable. The office of President has been totally tainted and the State's status in world politics has been irrevocably tainted by Trump. Internally, there is a very large minority who seem open to challenging the Democrats through either the courts or demonstrations and they will continue to have a grievance that a democratic election has let them down despite the fact that this argument has no credibility. Biden strikes me as being quite weak and anodyne but I am not sure that a strong and potentially divisive Democrat president would be the answer either. I keep thinking just how much worse it would be if Hilary Clinton had been elected this time around and that we would have witnessed something far worse than the storming of the Capitol as a consequence.

It will take more than a generation to repair the damage Trump has done. He has reversed race relations back to the 1960s. Most right thinking people feel he should be impeached and claims that he should face some kind of prosecution do not seem at all wild in these circumstances. Unfortunately, this will just exacerbate the problem. As long as Trump is around as either a politician or a figurehead for dissent, there will be major issues in America. If he is jailed, he will be a cause celebre for many people. If he retains leadership of the Republicans, I think he will be back as President in the next term. He needs to be removed by the Republicans themselves before anything can move on and I am not sure this will happen. (He will fight through the courts the same way he contested the presidential election.)

America has produced a unique problem for itself and I am not sure that it is one where there is a tidy solution or that does not have serious consequences. The problem does not go away with the election of Biden or even if Trump quits the political stage. It is a total disaster zone.
 
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St Badger said:
It doesn’t seem to have reached the media but British Gas employees are on a 5 day strike because their employers want to sack them and rehire them on worse contracts.

A sad sign of the times.
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Just as an observation, no party led by Tony Blair is going to redress the balance of power in the workplace in a way that would prevent these abuses.
 
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Saints_Alive said:
I thought the Tories were bad but listening to Trump's impeachment debate there are some complete fruit loops in the Republican party!
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Can’t remember which one, but one of them was complaining about the metal detectors which have been installed which was interfering with his right to bear arms, to save him from the very people he had been empowering by objecting to the election result.
 
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