On Sinema at the Sinema: October 2021 US Politics thread

That's not even comparable though, that's just born out of sheer stupidity and will always be hilarious.

Why isn't it comparable though? Or, for that matter, the post-vaccine Stanky Leg as I referred to earlier?

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/saving-calvin

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, October 20, 2021 6:14 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

thanks for the link Alfred!

ODing from being within six feet of fentanyl is as believable as a magic ray weapon that's only used against CIA apparatchiks.

If you honestly believe that Canada is a bastion of progressivism, then I can't take anything you say seriously, fwiw.

― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table), Wednesday, October 20, 2021 6:09 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Progressive enough for table isn't the same as not progressive, compare Canada to most nations in the world and you'll find it to be rather progressive despite its many flaws (of which I'm certain I am more aware of than you), and that there is a general consensus by actual experts on those metrics. Perhaps not coincidentally, the countries that rank above are usually also historically dominated by protestant culture.

...

CIA workers

How else is the CIA going to get the funding for their own invisible death ray?

i'm cia worker-class

ok, maybe middle-upper cia worker class

we will be putting out a gofundme, raising funds is tough but necessary!!

I think the point is mostly to reiterate how edgy and cool it is to dismiss CIA workers and I wouldn't take it personally.

fabulous stuff

i haven't given a dime to any cause in 33 years because a part of me died with the end of the reagan presidency, but i will dig deep and give $10 to the cia blue lives matter division, the ones that support our underfunded police officers and foreign intelligence efforts

i don't know what they do at the CIA, i just heard it was cool to make fun of them

Black Site Local 472

god bless, karl malone!

signed,
CIA workers

they analyze the evidence and come up with theories. there is a lot of drinking that goes on. everyone wears shades. it's definitely full of independent thinkers

Perhaps not coincidentally, the countries that rank above are usually also historically dominated by protestant culture.

Okay, if you're going to be such a Captain-Save-a-Protestant Western Chauvinist, then what distinguishes the US strains of Protestantism that makes it so uniquely FUCKED?

You know where some of the most repressive places on the planet are? Places that PROTESTANT COLONIZED after ENSLAVING THE POPULATION

what is the official ranking we're using btw

Pazz & Jop points

This argument definitely needs a top 10 best countries list so we can get some context

VHS started it, let him finish it.

or, rather, them. sorry to presume gender, apologies.

Okay, if you're going to be such a Captain-Save-a-Protestant Western Chauvinist, then what distinguishes the US strains of Protestantism that makes it so uniquely FUCKED?

― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table), Wednesday, October 20, 2021 6:47 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Parallel to any religious activity, I believe an uniquely american strain of racism has developed and has been the cause for most of the country's inequality and lack of welfare policies. The uniquely american strain, in my opinion and this is a discussion and I'll be glad to be corrected, has nothing to do with religion because other religious communities have fully participated in the racism and inequality and continue to do so. Not only that, but protestant figures have been at the forefront for civil rights of course. Also, abolitionism has a much stronger history within protestant circles than within the Catholic church.

I just don't see it for Protestantism. French catholics were coercive too when they arrived in Acadia and Haiti. Spanish catholics were maybe even worse.

personally i base any list of countries on what kind of tax benefits they will give me for investing my crypto in that beautiful land

Those are the true progressives

why does only the good protestantism count

Or the bad for that matter?

there is a separate northern ireland to help people who don't understand directions, something the protestants did because they are generous

VHS, my earlier posts were talking about "work" and the way Protestant and puritan ethics of "work" being tied to one's "worth" in a society have helped contribute greatly to problems in the US. This is not up for debate, afaic— it's a fact.

there are many lutherans in namibia because it became popular on its own

VHS, my earlier posts were talking about "work" and the way Protestant and puritan ethics of "work" being tied to one's "worth" in a society have helped contribute greatly to problems in the US. This is not up for debate, afaic— it's a fact.

― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table), Wednesday, October 20, 2021 7:05 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

The notion that work is tied to one's worth is disseminated throughout the world (because of colonialism as your rightly pointed) and yet the US seems to be only nation to be unable to bring about proper a welfare state on par with these other nations. I just don't think it's the variable.

I agree with jvc re Havana Syndrome.

It is unclear whether in this scenario Manchin would end up caucusing with the Democrats, which would allow them to continue to control the Senate, or side with the Republicans and place the Senate in GOP hands. In either event, he would hold great sway over this half of Congress...But he was encouraged by the conversations with Sanders and top Democrats that occurred at the start of the week and did not yet see a reason to take this step. Still, he has informed associates that because he is so out of sync with the Democratic Party, he believes it is likely he will leave the party by November 2022.

This part seems more and more plausible, although of course it would even w out the tale of leavin':

Manchin has repeatedly said he has a significant philosophical difference with most of his fellow Democrats. He has told reporters that he believes major programs in the Build Back Better bill would move the United States toward an “entitlement mentality” and that he cannot accept that. In a recent meeting with Biden, Manchin told the president that he sees government as a partner with the public not the ultimate provider, according to people who heard the senator’s account of the conversation. He explained to the president that in his view Biden didn’t win the presidency last year by championing progressive proposals, and he pressed the president to recall his campaign promise to bring people together. He also reminded Biden that he has vowed not to support any package unless it contains the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, except in cases of incest or when the life of the mother is at risk.
...Manchin told associates that he is hopeful a compromise that creates an overall framework for the bill can be reached by the end of this week—but at no more than the $1.75 trillion he supports. He has said that he believes if a deal is not attained on the social infrastructure package, he expects to be blamed and receive a ton of criticism.

Manchin’s press secretary did not respond to a request for comment.

UPDATE: After this article was published, reporters questioned Manchin about it. He replied, “I can’t control rumors, and it’s bullshit, bullshit spelled with a B, U, L, L, capital B.” Mother Jones stands by the story.

yes this was the response

MANCHIN to @burgessev and me on the report he is threatening to leave the Democratic Party if his demands are not met on infrastructure: “I can’t control rumors and it’s bullshit, bullshit spelled with a B, U, L, L, capital ‘B’”: pic.twitter.com/ex8iHMIiSs

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) October 20, 2021

all of us lower-case bullshitters are feeling a little hurt by that but ok

Curious to know what Manchin's response is to reports that he may become a republican

scroll up

Too difficult, guess I'll never know

Re mention of dark money in this, I'm thinking the effort to discredit science as well as gov is, among other things, about preparation for further opposing efforts to deal with climate disruption--
When Nick Lawyer, a physician assistant in Sanders County, Mont. was asked by local leaders to take on the voluntary position of county public health officer, it felt like the right thing to do to serve his community in a crisis.

"I kind of think I was one of the few who expressed any interest in the position who had any reasonable qualifications for the job," Lawyer says.
...Little did he know, those qualifications would soon become a mark on him in the eyes of some local activists.
Things came to a head for Nick Lawyer in Sanders County when he penned an op-ed for several small town newspapers in the region in which he urged people to get the life saving vaccines (only about 40% of the population in Sanders County is fully vaccinated today).

Angry confrontations and protests at local meetings followed. It appeared there was a coordinated campaign of harassment targeted at him.

"It's really disappointing that these people who I've cared for, these people whose kids I've coached suddenly decided that I'm sort of outsider," Lawyer says.

Lawyer grew up in Sanders County. His family goes back five generations. He and his wife are also serve on local boards and he coaches in the schools. Today, he also works in the same hospital his mom once did.

"To see this fraction of our community become so vocally hostile towards me and my family, to threaten my wife and my wife's business, it's really disappointing," he says.

It all came to a dramatic, troubling crescendo in September after an elderly local activist spoke at a county meeting, angry and grieving, saying his 82-year-old wife had died from COVID. He reportedly called Lawyer a "petty tyrant."

"I never met her," Lawyer says. "I actually never provided her any care. But her husband blames me for her death saying that I put up barriers to her receiving unproven measures like ivermectin and other treatments."
fter that latest ruckus, county commissioners decided they couldn't do their business anymore because these activists were so loudly and frequently disrupting their meetings. So they asked for Lawyer to resign and he did.

"This is a very good example of where the bullies won," says Travis McAdam, an extremism expert at the Montana Human Rights Network.

McAdam says far right groups have developed a play book for how to disrupt public meetings and the lives of public health officials.

"They're using bullying, intimidation and harassment as political tools," he says.

Extremist group monitors like McAdam interviewed for this story say dark money groups are increasingly making all the training and social media tools readily available online. It's not so much that money is flowing into these communities or targeting certain races or positions, they say, it's more that groups such as those run by Ammon Bundy quickly send out text alerts or use Facebook groups to alert activists to mobilize across the rural Northwest.

"In most cases, no, it's not just a spontaneous thing where a hundred people all the sudden decide to go to the school board meeting that night," McAdam says.

Anti government militants like Ammon Bundy started recruiting and organizing around lockdowns early on in the pandemic, seeking to capitalize on long held antigovernment sentiment against in rural areas.

Lately McAdam points out that Bundy and others have shifted strategy toward actually running for political office and trying to fill seats on health boards and other local organizations. In Sanders County, there are murmurs that one local Bundy sympathizer is making moves to try to take over Nick Lawyer's former health post.

"In some cases, people are much more afraid of their perceived government overreach than they are of the virus," says Diana Lachiondo, a former commissioner and health board officer in Ada County, Idaho.

Last December when she and other members on the state's Central Health District board expressed support for preventive measures like extending mask ordinances, they were confronted by an angry mob that tried to break into the building where the meeting was being held. Protesters also screamed, banged pots and played clips from Scarface outside Lachiondo's Boise home.

Today, she's worried qualified people will no longer step up to serve in these positions.
More here, transcript and stream/dl:
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/20/1047336966/organizing-on-social-media-covid-skeptics-drive-public-health-professionals-from

jvc, while I understand your frustration in this conversation, I just don't really understand why you're so concerned about these people who are, by dint of their job alone, objectively *bad* people.

Because the implication in this argument is that, as long as you view some subset of other as "objectively bad people", it's a-ok to completely throw basic decency and empathy out the window. And you don't have to spend more than five minutes glancing at American history to see why it's a really fucking awful idea to let people dictate the medical treatment of others by how "worthy" any particular subset might be.

Look I think we can all agree that the CIA is bad, no one itt needs to prove their leftist credentials to prove that point. But it grosses me out when people throw empathy out the window because it might accidentally get spent on someone they don't like. It's odious and deserves to be noted as such.

And let me reiterate, this is not coming from a place of "oh think of the feelings of the poor CIA agents". It's coming from a place of, "holy shit, this exact line of thinking has been twisted in some pretty horrifying ways through our country's history so maybe be careful".

But I know that I'm going to get blasted for finding this a hill worth fighting on, so be it.

Thanks jaymc, at least I know I'm not completely off base here.

xpost Oh yeah, and this is in Montana:
Starting last winter, when the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, Lawyer found himself in the crosshairs of what he calls a small, yet vocal group of extremists. He was surprised, because by then Montana's far right Governor Greg Gianforte had already overturned the state's mask mandate and the state's Republican controlled legislature had passed the only law in the nation banning private businesses from requiring their employees to get vaccinated.

"Although there was no mask mandate, there were no vaccine mandates, there were no health restrictions in our county, people still felt that their rights were being trampled on," Lawyer says.

Are they really all CIA.

Back to Manchin and the environment too, The Daily had a good discussion of RIP bill---"there's no version of i he will accept"---that is, not one that provides incentive, incl payments, to speed up transition from coal etc, because climate disruption way ahead of sched:

...o he has a philosophical objection and a parochial, in my backyard objection, which is: This is going to destroy an industry and its jobs in my home state for which I am a United States senator.

Coral Davenport
Absolutely. I mean, and that’s a legitimate objection as well. But there’s something else, which is: Senator Manchin does also make a lot of money off the coal industry himself. Back before he was Senator Manchin, when he was Joe Manchin of Farmington, West Virginia, he founded a coal brokerage company, which he turned over to his son when he first ran for state office in West Virginia. So it is not his company anymore, but he’s still a stockholder in that.

And last year alone, he made almost $500,000 in dividends from this coal brokerage. So it’s absolutely true that he has a personal financial investment in which he profits quite handsomely in this same industry that would be shut down by this policy.
...Coral Davenport
But to be very clear, and to be fair to Senator Manchin, he absolutely is in compliance with senate ethics requirements. He’s very open about this. He has filed all of his financial disclosures. Nothing is concealed. He himself does not own this company. He’s been subject to a lot of criticism for essentially making personal profit on the coal industry, but senators are allowed to have these investments, and he complies with the letter of the law of the ethics requirements.

Michael Barbaro
So what has been the reaction to Joe Manchin’s decision to essentially kill off this program?

Coral Davenport
Well, as you can imagine, there are progressive Democrats, Democrats who have built their whole political careers around climate change, who are furious. They’re furious, of course, not only at Manchin, but they’re furious at the idea that this piece could be taken out of the bill at all. And almost immediately when this happened last week, I talked to the staff of Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, who has been central in writing this program, who said, essentially, if they don’t have a strong climate program, if they don’t have a program that cuts carbon emissions, they should not count on our vote.
transcript:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/podcasts/the-daily/joe-biden-climate-plan-joe-manchin.html?showTranscript=1

pod: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/podcasts/the-daily/joe-biden-climate-plan-joe-manchin.html

And let me reiterate, this is not coming from a place of "oh think of the feelings of the poor CIA agents". It's coming from a place of, "holy shit, this exact line of thinking has been twisted in some pretty horrifying ways through our country's history so maybe be careful".

Still don’t see how this differs from ODing cops and Vax Victims, though? Because cops are in a position of power and the vax victims are ridiculous? But how is that different from “CIA case officer targeted by headache gun”?

this really is one of the least interesting arguments you guys have had and that’s saying something

who is winning? i haven't really checked into the particulars, but i know a guy in dc. he has "high clearance". apparently he's just one of over 1.5 million people around there who do

Still don’t see how this differs from ODing cops and Vax Victims, though? Because cops are in a position of power and the vax victims are ridiculous? But how is that different from “CIA case officer targeted by headache gun”?

Not sure I understand the question here? I understood the reference upthread to cops touching fentanyl to be a nod to those faked videos of cops pretending to OD when they brushed their fingers against it. I don't think any cop faking an OD is deserving of sympathy at all. If you are asking if I have sympathy for cop ODing from recreational drug use? Yeah, I do have sympathy. I can wish that every cop in America immediately quits policing to do something non-destructive with their lives, but also realize that they likely have family, friends and loved ones who are going to be impacted should they die. As for "Vax Victims", I'm not sure what that term, exactly. But assuming you mean anti-vaxxers dying from their own stubborn refusal and belief in stupid ideas, well, it depends, I guess. If we are talking Tucker Carlson or someone who has gone out of their way to spread disinformation, nah, probably not going to have a lot of sympathy (though he's a bad example because I'm certain he has been vaxxed). But if it's someone's random grandma who has been isolated and ended up in an echo chamber that reinforces harmful beliefs in her head, I am going to have sympathy for her death, absolutely. It's a shitty system that killed her. Though again, I'm not sure I understand your question, so this may be a different reading than you intended.

My point being that I think the more often we reduce things to "X group is bad, so all members of X group should suffer or die", the more we allow space for other people to do the same and I sure as hell know that other people are going to have a very different "group X" in mind.

And I realize we are talking about a "mystery" headache and sickness, not anything as severe as death, I was just picking up on the "ODing cops" and "Vax Victims" part of that post.

I'm going to bow out of this now because I realize when I'm fighting a losing battle.

My point being that I think the more often we reduce things to "X group is bad, so all members of X group should suffer or die", the more we allow space for other people to do the same and I sure as hell know that other people are going to have a very different "group X" in mind.

This is broadly true (and thus hard to disagree with), but

a) in this situation we who are making fun of so-called "Havana Syndrome" sufferers are not so much saying "those people over there are bad, and they should suffer and die" as "those people over there are full of shit, and it's funny that journalists' brains are so broken that they take this obvious bullshit seriously", and

b) your broader principle is so broad that it ultimately would prohibit you from making any kind of judgement about any group at all, ever, because Bad People might exercise the same right and then you'd be... bad by association, because you did it once, too? It's the paradox of tolerance, where you have to be "tolerant" even to people who are themselves intolerant, because to not do so would make you intolerant, too, which is bad, all over again. And just like that's horseshit (you're not obligated to be tolerant to Nazis), so is this. Making fun of CIA agents who claim the Russians aimed a migraine cannon at them is not the same as denying that black hospital patients really feel pain when they get surgery. It's just fucking not.