John Kelly -- Bringing Order to the West Wing?

[Howl]

10 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

My favorite gravy is cream gravy with lots of freshly ground black pepper. Preferably served over a large slab of homemade chicken fried steak and some garlic mashed potatoes.

Best food on the planet! 

Legend has it that a Texas Monthly writer decided to start in East Texas and eat his way west, to find the best CFS in the state.  I think his innards failed around Corsicana.   If you ever get to Central Texas, try the CFS at the Monument Cafe in Georgetown.  You won't regret it! 

 

[GrumpyGran]

What is it, Wednesday? I feel like after last week and the resulting fallout Kelly may be a rotten apple for Dumpy now. His actions did not get great reviews and did not repair the damage for Dump. He failed.

I think Dump had some respect for him but after he did Dump's bidding, he's just a doormat for Dump now and one that did not stop the dirt. 

I think that's the conundrum of working for Dump. He loves the abuse he dishes out. Either you're a challenge for him, someone he tries to cow and sidestep or you've been conquered. Then you're boring. And if you've brought trouble to the door, you're a failure. Oddly this does not seem to apply to women.

Won't be surprised if he's gone by Thanksgiving.

[formergothardite]

Yep, Kelly lowered himself to Trump's level and he came off looking dirty. Trump will now look for a way to get rid of him and/or make Kelly look worse. Trump lives to humiliate people who were once highly respected. I don't have any sympathy for Kelly, he did this to himself. 

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

Those things sound incredibly healthy.

Most comfort foods are unhealthy, so I don't eat them very frequently. I usually make chicken fried steak about 3-4 times a year and enjoy the hell out of it.

Today, I need to use up some ripe tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden, so I'm going to make a cold quinoa salad. 

1 hour ago, formergothardite said:

I don't have any sympathy for Kelly, he did this to himself. 

Very true! He could have come out and apologized, but he's decided to just go hide. I'm with @GrumpyGran, I think he'll be gone soon.

[OtterRuletheWorld]

18 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Most comfort foods are unhealthy, so I don't eat them very frequently. I usually make chicken fried steak about 3-4 times a year and enjoy the hell out of it.

Today, I need to use up some ripe tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden, so I'm going to make a cold quinoa salad.

Good for you!

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

Good for you!

Well, I could tell that you were genuinely concerned about my health, so I just wanted to ease your mind. 

[Destiny]

2 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Today, I need to use up some ripe tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden, so I'm going to make a cold quinoa salad.

That sounds fucking delightful. Have some delivered to me immediately. I’m starving and knee deep in yet another terrible project. 

[OtterRuletheWorld]

15 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Well, I could tell that you were genuinely concerned about my health, so I just wanted to ease your mind. 

Thanks! Keep up the good work.

[Cartmann99]

16 minutes ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

Thanks! Keep up the good work.

Bless your heart! I'll ask Rufus to watch over you!

[Cartmann99]

23 minutes ago, Destiny said:

That sounds fucking delightful. Have some delivered to me immediately. I’m starving and knee deep in yet another terrible project. 

Okay, but there's a slight delivery charge for distances over 1000 miles to cover gas, food, and motels. 

[Destiny]

Okay, but there's a slight delivery charge for distances over 1000 miles to cover gas, food, and motels. 

I have a couple of bottles of wine in the fridge and we can sit for a bit on the deck and discuss the many and varied ways to use my favorite word in a sentence. Does that work?

[nvmbr02]

15 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

My favorite gravy is cream gravy with lots of freshly ground black pepper. Preferably served over a large slab of homemade chicken fried steak and some garlic mashed potatoes.

 

This just made me hungry and it is only 7:40 am here. I love country fried steak, but I only have it every couple of years. I hate the way is smells while frying it so I usually wait until I see it on the menu at a diner or something. The diners here don't have things like CFS though, they have spam friend rice and a mix of asian and island food. I may have to suck it up and make some CFS this weekend now though.

[Nikedagain?]

1 hour ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

Thanks! Keep up the good work.

Trying wayyyy too hard, dude. 

[nvmbr02]

An interesting read about John Kelly in the NYT.

Pitched as Calming Force, John Kelly Instead Mirrors Boss’s Priorities

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — Last summer, the Trump administration debated lowering the annual cap on refugees admitted to the United States. Should it stay at 110,000, be cut to 50,000 or fall somewhere in between? John F. Kelly offered his opinion. If it were up to him, he said, the number would be between zero and one.

Mr. Kelly’s comment made its way around the White House, according to an administration official, and reinforced what is only now becoming clear to many on the outside. While some officials had predicted Mr. Kelly would be a calming chief of staff for an impulsive president, recent days have made clear that he is more aligned with President Trump than anticipated.

For all of the talk of Mr. Kelly as a moderating force and the so-called grown-up in the room, it turns out that he harbors strong feelings on patriotism, national security and immigration that mirror the hard-line views of his outspoken boss. With his attack on a congresswoman who had criticized Mr. Trump’s condolence call to a slain soldier’s widow last week, Mr. Kelly showed that he was willing to escalate a politically distracting, racially charged public fight even with false assertions.

And in lamenting that the country no longer holds women, religion, military families or the dignity of life “sacred” the way it once did, Mr. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general whose son was killed in Afghanistan, waded deep into the cultural wars in a way few chiefs of staff typically do. Conservatives cheered his defense of what they consider traditional American values, while liberals condemned what they deemed an outdated view of a modern, pluralistic society.

“The real issue is understanding really who John Kelly is,” said former Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, a Democrat for whom Mr. Kelly worked at the Pentagon during President Barack Obama’s administration. “If you understand what makes him tick, then it all fits together.”

“He is a Marine first and foremost,” Mr. Panetta said. “In addition to being a Marine, he was born and raised in Boston” among blue-collar families with traditional views about God and country. “You combine those two and you realize” that he “shares some of these deep values, some of which Trump himself has tried to talk about.”

As tall and commanding in a suit as he was in a uniform, Mr. Kelly has become a central figure in Mr. Trump’s orbit. After six months in the cabinet as secretary of homeland security, Mr. Kelly took over a turbulent and tribal White House last summer and by most accounts imposed more order on the building and staff, if not the Twitter-obsessed president himself.

Mr. Kelly’s focus on improving information flow and decision making in the West Wing gave the impression of a good soldier mainly concerned with process. But that obscured a player who expresses his own sharp views in selected areas, most notably immigration, where he shares Mr. Trump’s commitment to toughening the border and deporting many in the country illegally. His views were forged in part by his time heading the United States Southern Command, which oversees American military operations and security in Central and South America and in the Caribbean.

Mr. Kelly not only expressed willingness to curb refugees coming into the country — in the end, Mr. Trump lowered the cap to 45,000 — he embraced Mr. Trump’s various attempts to close the border to visitors from a group of predominantly Muslim countries. He aggressively turned up the heat on internal immigration enforcement, stepping up deportation of undocumented immigrants, even those without serious criminal records, reversing an Obama administration policy.

Under Mr. Kelly’s leadership, the Department of Homeland Security also went after undocumented parents who bring their children into the country. He directed immigration officials to lodge smuggling charges against the parents, saying they were putting children in danger.

“Kelly has been an enabler of Trump’s mission,” said Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant homeland security secretary under Mr. Obama. “Judge him that way.”

His image as a steady, nonideological figure trying to restore order in the White House in the face of a radical president, she added, was not true. Mr. Kelly, she said, was not “the savior or the hostage.”

Other Democrats have expressed alarm at Mr. Kelly’s views on immigration. At a dinner including Mr. Trump and the Democratic leaders Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, Mr. Kelly gave an extended critique of Mexico, calling it a third-world country in danger of collapsing the way Venezuela has and arguing that the United States needed to guard itself against that, according to people informed about the conversation.

But Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, who recommended Mr. Kelly to Mr. Trump last winter, said the retired general’s background gave him an understanding of the dangers and drawbacks of unfettered immigration. “He knows a lot of the challenges that we face south of the border,” Mr. Cotton said, adding that the issue is “something that he’s lived on a firsthand basis for years.”

Like Mr. Panetta, he pointed to Mr. Kelly’s upbringing.

“I think he appreciates the struggles of America’s working class — the blue-collar workers over the last 30, 40 years, the kind of people who have to take a shower after they get off work, not before they go to work — and the impact that mass unskilled and low-skilled immigration has had on working-class wages in our society,” Mr. Cotton said.

As a cabinet officer, Mr. Kelly frequently lashed out at critics. In March, during a meeting with members of Arab and Muslim communities in Dearborn, Mich., Mr. Kelly threatened to walk out after being posed hard questions about the travel ban and what participants saw as the targeting of Muslim Americans at ports of entry, according to people in attendance.

During a speech in April, Mr. Kelly lashed out at members of Congress who complained about what they called overly aggressive immigration enforcement.

“If lawmakers do not like the laws they’ve passed and we are charged to enforce, then they should have the courage and skill to change the laws,” Mr. Kelly said defiantly. “Otherwise, they should shut up and support the men and women on the front lines.”

That drew a rebuke from Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas. “I don’t think it’s correct for you to tell members of Congress to shut up,” he said.

Mr. Kelly has also engaged in testy public debates with Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California. During a June meeting, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kelly engaged in a contentious back-and-forth as she questioned him about Trump administration threats to cut off funding for so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.

All of that foreshadowed his attack last week on Representative Frederica S. Wilson, Democrat of Florida, who publicly accused Mr. Trump of insensitivity when he called the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, who was killed this month in Niger. Mr. Kelly called her an “empty barrel” and told an unflattering story about her that was proved untrue by videotape of the event he mentioned.

Mr. Kelly decided himself to head out to the White House briefing room to defend the president, colleagues said, and most of his remarks reflected on his own experience as the father of a slain soldier and the nature of military service. He brought tears to the eyes of other White House aides, who afterward traded emails expressing admiration for Mr. Kelly’s passionate defense of Mr. Trump. It was only afterward that they began to see how the attack on Ms. Wilson came to overshadow the emotion of the first part of his speech.

Mr. Kelly was surprised by the criticism of his speech, colleagues said, but he has not apologized to Ms. Wilson for making false statements about her. White House officials said they opted against it to avoid extending the story.

Mr. Panetta said Mr. Kelly’s attack on a congresswoman reflected his lack of experience in high-level politics. “He knows where the land mines are in the Marines, but he doesn’t know where the land mines are in politics,” Mr. Panetta said. “And he’ll make mistakes as a result, and he certainly made mistakes last week in going after people in that news conference.”

But, he said, it was authentic: “As somebody who worked with this guy, a lot of what he got up to say is a reflection of who John Kelly is.”

 

[OtterRuletheWorld]

Panetta used to fly home to Carmel, CA every weekend. Not suggesting he is the only one, but he is certainly part of the "waste taxpayer dollars" club.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/leon-panettas-weekend-commutes-cost-much-gsa-party/329224/

 

Also, interesting story about Panetta and a bet about bin Laden

 

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/10/28/141803083/bin-laden-capture-earns-leon-panetta-a-10-000-bottle-of-wine

 

 

 

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

2 hours ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

Also, interesting story about Panetta and a bet about bin Laden

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/10/28/141803083/bin-laden-capture-earns-leon-panetta-a-10-000-bottle-of-wine

Can you please spell out what's interesting about this piece of gossip? I assume it's not the only article you managed to find naming both names, right?

So you went from "but Obama..." to "but Panetta...", cool.

[OtterRuletheWorld]

Can you please spell out what's interesting about this piece of gossip? I assume it's not the only article you managed to find naming both names, right?
So you went from "but Obama..." to "but Panetta...", cool.

I looked for this article specifically as I already know this story, it is just a story locals in his hometown love to share. I certainly don't think it is shared in a negative way.

I have heard the story multiple times. In fact, one time was right at that restaurant from an older couple who were chatting with us.

Why do you have such a problem with me selecting this particular story?

And heaven forbid I mention negative things about liberal politicians. Any issue I have with any liberal should be ignored, because we must keep the narrative partisan. Just like the NYT. The Atlantic and NPR are fairly partisan too. I don't think the NPR article was written in an attempt to be critical of Panetta. If you are drawing negative conclusions that article, it is on you.

[samurai_sarah]

19 minutes ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

(snip)

Why do you have such a problem with me selecting this particular story?

(snip)

As a courtesy to our fellow members we ask that links come with a brief summary. Not everyone wants to click on random links. Thank you.

 

[formergothardite]

32 minutes ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

And heaven forbid I mention negative things about liberal politicians

It seems like something is actually preventing you from saying anything negative about Trump or Kelly. 

 

9 hours ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

Panetta used to fly home to Carmel, CA every weekend. Not suggesting he is the only one, but he is certainly part of the "waste taxpayer dollars" club.

It is very telling that instead of actually addressing the problems with Kelly's behavior, you went with trying to bring up problems with Panetta. Like I tell my teen daughter, if the best you can do is deflect to what someone else did, well then you have a big problem. 

[OtterRuletheWorld]

I don't have anything negative to say about Kelly.

I do have a problem with corruption from politicians from all sides and find it laughable that people believe otherwise. I think you are all keeping up to date on issues you have with Trump and Republicans (using them separately here because I hardly think Trump is actually GOP) but I have yet to see anyone here hold a democratic politician accountable for any issues. Clearly very partisan. At least own it.

[Ali]

This is a John Kelly thread. If a pregnant pron star wearing otter socks wants to discuss the actions of Democrats, it is possible to do so in other appropriate threads or we could create a new appropriate thread if it doesn't exist. In this thread, I would be shocked if Witherwings could actually address Kelly's behavior without using a "but somebody" argument. I think she is stuck in summer of '60 or something.

[OtterRuletheWorld]

This is a John Kelly thread. If a pregnant pron star wearing otter socks wants to discuss the actions of Democrats, it is possible to do so in other appropriate threads or we could create a new appropriate thread if it doesn't exist. In this thread, I would be shocked if Witherwings could actually address Kelly's behavior without using a "but somebody" argument. I think she is stuck in summer of '60 or something.

I thought part of the fun was thread drift.

[Ali]

12 minutes ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

I thought part of the fun was thread drift.

I don't think you understand thread drift. Discussing pregnant porn stars, "Harry Potter" characters, missing socks, or past summers like 1960 is thread drift. Constantly using "but somebody" arguments shows your head is in the sand and you can't defend Kelly's behavior

Edited October 26, 2017 by Ali

[AnywhereButHere]

Because it's been not so much drift as an attempt at redirection. You support Kelly and the republicans. Cool (or not actually - but hey, everyone's got a viewpoint), but if your only argument in support of your position is - Well, the other guys do it too - then I agree with @formergothardite. You really don't have an argument worth making.

[OtterRuletheWorld]

7 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

Because it's been not so much drift as an attempt at redirection. You support Kelly and the republicans. Cool (or not actually - but hey, everyone's got a viewpoint), but if your only argument in support of your position is - Well, the other guys do it too - then I agree with @formergothardite. You really don't have an argument worth making.

I wouldn't say I support "the republicans" but I am not against all republicans nor I am against all of "the democrats". 

I am however against partisanship without question. I also support media outlets, I just happen to realize that virtually all are fairly, if not extremely partisan. That is fine, because I support that heavily over repressive and restrictiveness over media outlets, but I think it is really important to recognize this. Fox News could be one's favorite source of news, but you have to be a complete fool to believe it is a bipartisan outlet, just as you would have to be a fool to believe that CNN is bipartisan. Both report with a slant, and being aware of such things is important. This is REALLY personal for me. I personally have a hard time understanding why Americans seem to embrace partisanship within the media. I read the NYTs, but with the knowledge that they have a slant. I cannot think of a single outlet in the English language that does not have a slant. I always have that in my mind. When people parrot the media from one side exclusively, I always find it jarring. It just makes me nervous and uncomfortable. I don't believe everything the NYTs tells me, I don't believe everything Fox News tells me. I do think that left leaning news outlets have a bit of a monopoly and that makes me nervous, but it is not like conservative outlets do not exist.