I will fine you 1 million quatloos for making me think about the TNG episode with candle ghost sex when you could have just said "covert."
Love x 1
shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator
The Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue
shootER, Nov 28, 2020
Technically he's a consultant working for a nominal salary and expenses. I guess he could be fired, but charging him with a crime doesn't seem likely. I wouldn't doubt that he'll tell anybody anything they want to know (provided they can get to him) without losing any sleep over the matter. I seem to recall that he's also made it clear that he plans to resign once the vaccine(s) start getting distributed. Since the Democrats were kvetching about rather obvious conflicts of interest, if he stays a little too long Biden will probably thank him for his service and cut him loose.This is an interesting article from NPR dating from October (how long ago that seems) about him.
The article quotes the person as being told not to convey "confidential" information to the Biden team. There are at least hypothetically several potential bases for information to be confidential. It could be covered by attorney-client privilege. It could be work-product. It could be covered by the deliberative process privilege. It could involve trade secrets/patents/intellectual property. And it could involve material that is classified.
AFAIK, the unauthorized disclosure of classified materials would be the only crime on the list. It seems doubtful to me that anything having to do with the virus response could properly have been properly deemed classified, but the key word is "properly." The Jared coronavirus task force people signed non-disclosure agreemeents, so it should not be a shock if the government classified a lot about their response.
tafkats That'll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo! Moderator
Thing is, whatever confidential communications might be involved ... they're not confidential communications with the Trump administration; they're confidential communications with the U.S. government, an entity that has a legally continuous existence even when the people in charge of it change.
tafkats, Nov 29, 2020
tafkats said: ↑
The first issue is that until recently, the administration was refusing to recognize the Biden transition team as having won. It is their having won that would entitle them to classified information and other confidential information. Technically, I assume, the Biden administration isn't part of the U.S. government until it takes office and only gets access to confidential informaiton by laws saying it does.
The second issue is that regardless of what the actual law might say on these issues, the notion of a Trump administration and a Dept. of Justice where they are working from alt-reality playbooks. They have relatively little time, presumably, to pursue made-up criminal charges against someone, but one can't put it past them.
I think it's time for Trump to hire a Chinese lawyer. Win Won Soon...thank you I'll be here all week...
Trump better hustle or in two months or so He Long Gon
oldfella1962 said: ↑
Ok, that's almost funny...you're getting better.
Let him rant. Maybe he'll be consigned to the prison psych unit. Not as fancy as the country club, but they'll supply him with a lifetime of Depends.
I see somebody is unfamiliar with the idea that the population can, in fact, increase over the course of 12 years.
spot261 I don't want the game to end
Immigrants then?
spot261, Nov 30, 2020
Or that, between mail-in ballots and expanded early voting this year compared to either 2008 or 2012, there would be more people who might vote.
Raoul the Red Shirt said: ↑
And the fact that a bunch of people who usually don't bother to vote got on the Dump Trump wagon.
For him it's one of those "a lot of people don't know that" things.
steve2^4 Aged Meat
Marietta, GA AKA epicenter of the Blue Tsunami
And a whole lot of other folks voted to reelect him. A record number of Republicans.
steve2^4, Nov 30, 2020
steve2^4 said: ↑
True. But you gotta love the ones in your state that are threatening to boycott the Senate runoff.
20 days of fantasy and failure: Inside Trump's quest to overturn the election
shootER said: ↑
Oh, am I going to have fun sharing this with the Trumpanistas on FB!
They'll dismiss it because...NYT
They'll dismiss it because...NYT WaPo
Anything that ain't OAN, Epoch Times, or QAnon is a librul conspiracy. They're that far gone, poor schmucks...
The Ghost of Crazy Horse said: ↑
What you asked was not out of curiosity though.
The American dictionary I have here gives as the first definition of curiosity: "a desire to learn or know". It gives only as the secondary definition of curiosity: "a desire to learn about things that do not properly concern one; inquisitiveness".
Thus, any desire to know something is "curiosity", whether or not one intends to use the knowledge gained for some purpose. To suppose that the word can only mean what is properly its secondary definition, and then tell a professonal wordsmith that the word cannot have its primary definition, is simply to demonstrate your ignorance of the meaning of the word.
And I say that as someone who doesn't even have a dog in this fight about whether or not your ancestors were indentured servants or not. I couldn't care less, because I fail utterly to see what that has to do with anything. I thoroughly reject the "sins of the fathers" mentality, that one can look down on someone for what their ancestors did. We all have plenty of very noble people among our ancestors, and plenty of scoundrels as well. To pretend otherwise is pure nonsense.
To put this in context, @The Ghost of Crazy Horse was doing the "diss someone who isn't from my country" shit that @Ten Lubak seems to think he owns the patent on. It's a throwaway insult that's designed to end the conversation. I wasn't having it.
Before @Jenee decided to put her oar in, I intended to tell Crazy Horse, "Look all of the British colonies - including our own - were formed by what the Empire considered riffraff, but we've turned out pretty well in spite of that." (Though, to be fair, Australia's done a far better job than the U.S. and, IIRC, @Bailey's not a native Australian but a transplant.) Glass houses and all that.
Had @Jenee not butted in, Crazy Horse might have asked me "Well, what about your people?" My answer would have been as follows:
I have no idea who my father's people were or how they got here, but it was before Ellis Island was opened in 1892, because there are no records of them. Sneaky bastids, the Wanders. They could have come through Castle Garden (whose records are spotty at best) or they could have snuck in from Canada or changed their names or who knows?
My mother's people can be traced back through the paternal line to 1670-something - not to the U.S., but to Newfoundland which, at the time, was not yet a part of Canada. There's a great-great-great-every-so-great-grandfather whose name on the ship's manifest (from somewhere in the UK, probably Liverpool) was - I kid you not - Little Arse Gosse.
Now, did that mean he had a little ass (with maybe an older brother or cousin with the same name but a big ass) or that he was a pain in the ass? No way of knowing.
I do know my great-grandparents were illiterate, and that the Gosse men were Newfie fishermen. I have a photo of my great-grandfather where you can see the scars on his fingers from the "cod lines" - the ropes the men used to haul a 100-200-pound codfish into a small boat, ripping the skin off their hands in the process.
My grandparents had a grade school education. Both had to go to work when they were barely in their teens. My grandmother was so malnourished growing up that it stunted her growth. Their daughter was the first person in the family to go to high school.
The last thing I intended was to insult anyone whose ancestry is similar, and it would have been fun to have that conversation with @The Ghost of Crazy Horse.
But among @Jenee's specialties is being insulted on others' behalf, and of dogging me for things she lets the boys here slide on. Curious.
Now wait for her response to this post.
Follow-up for @The Ghost of Crazy Horse who at least had the good grace to go silent, whereas @Jenee's still holding a grudge about something she doesn't/refuses to understand: Petty thievery was enough to get British citizens (yanno, white people) exiled not only to Australia, but to the Americas as well:
Whatever it is you're crying about now, refer to my avatar.
Jenee said: ↑
That you mistake "presenting facts" with "crying" is your fundamental problem. In that respect, you're equivalent to the worst Trumpanista.
You're an ignorant fool. You've tagged me in your posts, then claim I don't know facts. I didn't say fuck all in your post. So, hobble back to your medicine cabinet, take what you need, and leave me out of your mental arguments.
You went on the attack, then ducked out of the conversation. I completely understand your reaction.