A different cabinet
Oh hey, the grownups are back.
It’s a very minimal thing to rejoice at, but that’s where we are.
Avril Haines, who is set to be the new director of national intelligence, has taken the podium.
‘I will never shy away from speaking truth to power,” she said.
She promised to tell the president whatever is “inconvenient and difficult”. She said the intelligence community is indispensable to America to address threats that come not just from terrorism, cyber hacking or other traditional directions.
“Also the challenges that will define the next generation – climate change, pandemics and corruption,” she said.
Adults. Serious people. Not corrupt greedy clowns.
Antony Blinken has come to the podium to speak, just after Joe Biden said of his new team: “They will tell me what I need to know, not what I want to know” and added “they will make us proud to be American”.
Blinken, who if confirmed by the Senate will be Biden’s new secretary of state, is telling the public of the story of his family. He has relatives who variously escaped communism in Hungary and survived the Holocaust.
He just told of his late stepfather who survived the camps and fled a death march, hiding in the woods in Bavaria until he stumbled on an American tank and, when a Black GI popped out of the top, the man sank to his knees and said the only three words he knew in English, Blinken said: “God bless America”.
Makes a change from Pompeo.
What a sense of relief you must be feeling. I only hope that the outgoing team don’t do everything they can to make things difficult for the incoming team.
Oh, they’ve already made it difficult. I just hope they don’t make it impossible.
FINALLY. Four years of sycophants has been more than enough.
In my line of work, there is a tool called Git. It’s for introducing changes into things–software, documents, you name it. When one issues a change, one must select at least one reviewer for the change before it can be officially incorporated into the thing. There is one person whom I always choose for my changes, because he absolutely nitpicks and forces me to produce a better thing. A lot of people don’t do that–they’ll choose a reviewer who will rubberstamp their changes.
But you don’t make progress by telling people what they want to hear, when it’s not true.
I think it’s quite possible that the Senate will block all appointees, but maybe Collins will spend enough time being concerned for that not to happen.
Hopefully, although I’m not au fait enough with American politics to know if these statements can be taken at face value.
I’ve certainly never heard a new appointee state that they are glad their years of arse-kissing has finally paid off and that they look forward to telling their bosses exactly what they want to hear. On the other hand I’ve heard plenty of bosses say they don’t like yes men; when the only possible justification is that the don’t like being surrounded by yes men – they love it.
I’m probably being overly cynical. What’s definitely true is that, contrary to the popular adage, in this case the devil you don’t know couldn’t possible be worse than the devil you do.
Just to be clear my “Hopefully” refers to “Oh hey, the grownups are back” in the top section; not to the bit about the senate blocking the appointments.