You’re being sarcastic but this is horrifying.
In the country my parents immigrated from, government officials appointing their family members to important positions is very normal.
It also did get bad enough that my parents had to leave that country behind.
Official numbers from 2019: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245789/record-numbers-americans...
Anecdata suggest this has significantly increased in the last year, and especially in 2020.
We live in what amounts to a failed state. There's still some hope it's repairable, but it's rapidly dwindling, and Jared's crown prince role is a large contributor to that dwindling.
And now, with the current administration removing watchdogs and ramping up corruption, it will be a miracle if any opposition with a majority of votes can actually win. Look at the attack on vote by mail, as an example.
Roger Ailes is dead, but his legacy lives on.
I know it sounds preposterous that a president would refuse to leave office, but it also seems preposterous that an impeached president wouldn’t step down, and he’s become accustomed to degrading norms and breaking the law with impunity.
US lifestyle is still very good, but for those of us looking at the trend it’s really concerning. I know I’m personally making decisions with the possibility of needing to leave in the future.
Like Clinton? Like Andrew Johnson? No impeached US president has ever stepped down. Nixon resigned before he was impeached.
I think maybe the bar for conviction in the Senate is too high in a way that is corrosive to presidential accountability. Both Trump and Clinton committed serious crimes without real consequence and it is disgraceful, regardless of politics. (note: I don't care about the sex, I care about the perjury and obstruction of justice)
Government contractors were genuinely ecstatic. There is no downside for them.
People say he's unqualified for anything. But he is uniquely qualified in that he is immune to being fired for fucking up everything.
1. Senior Advisor to the President
2. Director of the Office of American Innovation within the White House Office (position created specially for him). The office exists only to make recommendations the President.
When he meddles with the CDC or the US foreign policy, he is not bearing any legal responsibility. He is grey eminence operating in unofficial capacity. He can't legally make anyone to do anything, but everyone knows that he is just phone call away from the real power.
Logan act does not apply to Kushner when he is acting on behalf of the president as he is doing today. Kushner has authorization to do what he does. He even has senior position in the WH. What he does not have is executive power or position on his own.
I'm not sure how this is going to turn out, but even if the US elects a different president, the current one has provided a nice handbook to a potential autocratic future president to gain unlimited power.
Even then it's easy to blame it on someone else. There's a reason they are calling it the Wuhan Virus.
Instead of this, we have the usual situation modern space exploration has settled into, some president boasts that we will do some thing and then after they left office some other president quietly kills it because its way to expensive.
What we should be doing is building coalitions with other countries to do join missions to the moon and all that, thats why the ISS has been so successful, its not just the US or Russia contributing, but dozens of countries. Not to say it could happen without the US or Russia, but the large number of countries working on it helps quite a bit.
Kennedy committed to the lunar landing shortly after Shepherd's suborbital flight, and the idea from NASA was that they'd orbit the moon. Kennedy thought a landing would be more spectacular, but it took NASA quite a while to settle on lunar orbit rendezvous, let alone the Saturn V architecture.
Kennedy was on the verge of cancelling Apollo when he died, and Johnston was anything but a space expert. Johnson was definitely responsible for ensuring no American woman went to space until after he was out of office, the evidence is clear on that one.
The single person most responsible for getting America to the moon was probably John Houbolt (or perhaps Konstantin Tsiolkovsky).
There is also a lot of debate as to whether the ISS has been successful; this really depends on what your objectives were/are.
[1] John Logsdon's Bibligraphy
[2] https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Rendezv...
I will argue quite firmly that without Johnson, there would be no moon landing or no space program as it developed later and as we know it now.
Johnson definitely did a lot of pork-barreling with the space program funds, but I think the main reason that Apollo went forward was because Kennedy had espoused a grand vision shortly before being shot. Without Lee Harvey Oswald, I doubt that Neil and Buzz would have made it to the moon, especially given Apollo 1.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90376962/if-president-kennedy-ha...
NASA has plan to get into the Moon by 2028.
Pence blindsights NASA and contractors by moving timeline arbitrarily forward without a plan in a grandstanding speech. "At the direction of the President of the United States, it is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years”. It's not a Tweet so NASA must scramble to make a plan. Funding for a new timetable is not there.
Gerstenmaier is removed without explanation as a head of HEO almost immediately after he testifies to congress. Gerstenmaier quits NASA to consult SpaceX.
Loverro comes in, is very bullish about the timetable. Now Loverro quits suddenly.
I think it's time for Jared to come in. If he can handle Middle-East peace and Covid-19, why not a Moon landing as well.