On Sinema at the Sinema: October 2021 US Politics thread

Maybe "the phenomenon that has been labeled 'Havana Syndrome' by some bad people who are full of shit"?

Ask Alex Jones?

but that I also believe that some people are indeed suffering legitimate symptoms that are worthy of being considered

Don't know who you are, but you're right that we won't agree.

[...]

― jaymc, Thursday, October 21, 2021 11:30 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

uh oh

Tbf, there are lots of people on ILX these days that I don't know, or have no real sense of. (The original .xls joke was like 15 years ago.) Just didn't recognize the screenname.

lol I don’t feel like deadnaming myself (and thus making my 17-year-old drunk posts easily searchable) but I’ve been reading ilx for 20 years and posted some, but I just don’t have poster brain (too many self-edits and superfluous parentheticals to keep it up) so you prob don’t remember me

hope that’s enough for the .xls

xp

It's enough to assure me that you're not the capital-N Nicole who used to post here, whom I briefly thought you might be.

Was wondering about that too.

the xls is twitching!

It’s been a wild few days for this thread.

Can only speak for myself but my own xls was on old format that I didn’t upgrade so I can’t read it anymore

In American political news:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/us/politics/bannon-contempt-jan-6-subpoena.html

He probably won't suffer any consequences for it.

I will also say:

I don't have empathy for CIA agents, cops, prosecutors, DAs, most military servicemembers, or anyone else who has voluntarily joined up to represent US empire. They can get fucked, and so can their sympthatizers afaic.

⭐️

I don't have empathy for CIA agents, cops, prosecutors, DAs, most military servicemembers, or anyone else who has voluntarily joined up to represent US empire. They can get fucked, and so can their sympthatizers afaic.

― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table)

I deal with ROTC students. I have a mild cynical admiration for the men and women who enlisted for a free ride in college who killed no one and had the dumb luck not to get sent to a theatre of war.

They can get fucked

Well, with DADT gone they probably do, thank goodness.

I'm confused that everyone in this thread is attributing Havana Syndrome solely to CIA operatives in the Havana embassy/diplomatic corps. Is the presumption here that everyone in the diplomatic service who is assigned to Havana is a CIA employee rather than a State Dept employee? Or do the news reports specifically state that only CIA employees suffered from this (which would be odd, since that might 'out' them as intelligence agents)? idgi, where is this 'fact' coming from?

Without making moral judgments about how much these individual people affected deserve or don’t what’s happened to them, the most likely *explanation* seems related to the fact that the institutions involved (cia and state) have a record of being incompetent liars.

Is the presumption here that everyone in the diplomatic service who is assigned to Havana is a CIA employee rather than a State Dept employee?

The State Department serves as a primary cover for CIA agents so if you don't want to be presumed to be part of the torture corps you should probably also turn down State jobs. (Not that the State Department is markedly better than the CIA itself.)

"how do we know you're NOT a spook?"

I knew that. Every US embassy in the world has a complement of CIA operatives serving under diplomatic cover. That's a given. But diplomatic service training is not the same as CIA training, nor do the two perform identical functions where they are assigned. My question was, are we assuming there no State Dept diplomats in Havana or are we saying they were they exempt from this syndrome? Or are we just being lazy?

Seems like it would be exhausting to move through life without understanding not-literal speech.

my personal perspective if is that you’re there to serve American business interests and provide cover for CIA agents, you are the moral equivalent of a CIA agent, so I don’t really care about the distinction, at least in terms of how much should I believe their explanation for (or the severity of) their symptoms

if I were trying to make some legal or public procedural point I would certainly make that distinction, but I’m just bitching online while the laundry dries so w/e

Good for Chuck!

Today, I endorse @indiawaltonbflo, the Democratic nominee for Mayor of Buffalo. She's a community leader, nurse, & mother with a clear progressive vision for her hometown.

Dems are at our best when we build a big tent & forge inclusive coalitions to fight for everyday people. pic.twitter.com/Bm5B4lwXoH

— Chuck Schumer (@chuckschumer) October 21, 2021

Was just about to post that on the left wing drift thread. Would not have happened a couple of years ago.

Seems to me that working at any level for a Cabinet secretary or executive branch position required to deal in foreign policy is akin to being president: the presumption is you'll suffer some kind of soul rot/moral decay, major or minor, depending on the position. I had to deal with this shit Tuesday when a couple former low level State Department people in this FB group -- Democrats! -- defended Colin Powell for "modernizing" the department and came at me hard for condemning him, period.

So if any ILXer wants to work at State, by all means! You might do some good. We need good people over there and learn to live with yourself when the bad happens.

wau @ Schumer

move through life without understanding not-literal speech.

so you are saying I should take you all seriously, but not literally? Seems to me that same advice was offered in regard to some other person.

We need good people over there and learn to live with yourself when the bad happens.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, October 21, 2021 6:48 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

In my experience, most jobs present dilemmas, soul rot/moral decay and the need to compartmentalize.

In the meantime, let's just hope we can access the level of purity Rev. Milo requires of every person.

What was Beria supposed to do, the man needed a job just like you and me.

^^^ see, Aimless? There's your non-literal speech

In my experience, most jobs present dilemmas, soul rot/moral decay and the need to compartmentalize.

― Van Horn Street, Thursday, October 21, 2021 3:59 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is true, but there's also CHOICE involved here.

is there any level or frequency of acknowledging our own weaknesses, or really *anything at all,* that will allow people who are farther left than American Democrats to say we expect better things from our politicians than are currently likely or even possible without being accused of doing horseshoe theory or purity politics, or is that just, like, baked in at this point

also I’m pretty fuckin’ sure that e.g. doing data entry at a shitty telecom company or something involves significantly less moral compromise than a gig providing cover for quasi-legal arms sales in Yemen, but sure, both do involve some compromise, yes

nicole, getting people further left than our current leaders into Cabinet positions whose mission statements have been razed and rewritten would be a start. I say that because, as a much older man dating a much younger guy arrested on Monday to protest the Biden White House's Haiti policy, I still talk to leftists of color who believe American can change if America allotted them power.

We're seeing the influence of those leftists now. That Charles Fucking Schumer's endorsing India Walton is as much a comment on how the times have changed thanks to the influence of, say, staffers and activists as any.

What of the need for him to endorse her at all because of the actions of the rest of the NY and Buffalo Democratic Party?

I too thought nicole was Nicole and was somewhat confused

I'm otherwise done with this debate

as a much older man dating a much younger guy arrested on Monday to protest the Biden White House's Haiti policy, I still talk to leftists of color

braggin 2021 triple points

;)

https://c.tenor.com/crbfB-oVLJEAAAAM/check-list-bj-novak.gif

New - “That’s a reach,” Biden says when asked if dental, vision and hearing will all be covered by Medicare. “Mr. Manchin is opposed.” Says he believes Sinema is too. Says they are talking about $800 voucher for dental. Adds on CNN Sinema open to hearing. Still negotiating vision

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 22, 2021

A single root canal is what, $1500ish on average?

Among other revelations, Manchin as governor directed his chief of staff to help push up electricity rates to bail out the company buying coal from him https://t.co/Q3cTZbEj0O

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 23, 2021

u.s. political discourse, "national conversations", florida

...In Brevard, the protests began with Moms for Liberty, a purported grass-roots organization founded after my election by the incumbent I had unseated. Supplied with matching blue T-shirts, pocket copies of the Constitution and a hazy notion of critical race theory — which is not taught in the public schools — its members began showing up at school board meetings. Their first battle, in March, was over bathrooms. Moms for Liberty had zeroed in on the county’s LGBTQ guidelines for administrators, a document outlining the rights of students as delineated in state and federal laws, including the right to dress and use bathrooms according to the gender they identify with. The group carried the torch for fears that their daughters would be exposed to sexual harassment and abuse by their male peers. A disinformation campaign spread through social media, leading the public to believe that this document was newly developed (it wasn’t) and being kept secret. Protesters became regulars outside school board meetings. Trump flags waved in the parking lot. Young children, accompanied by their parents, shouted into megaphones, “Don’t touch me, pedophiles!” LGBTQ students tried to speak while adults chanted “Shame!” Meetings were packed, and those who couldn’t get in banged on the windows and doors.

By April, protesters had begun to gather not just at board meetings but also in front of my house. A group of about 15 shouted “Pedophiles!” as my neighbors walked their dogs, pushing their infants in strollers. “We’re coming for you,” they yelled, mistaking friends standing on my porch for me and my husband. “We’re coming at you like a freight train! We are going to make you beg for mercy. If you thought January 6 was bad, wait until you see what we have for you!”

In July, the battle shifted to mandated masks for students. Brevard is one of 11 Florida school districts to institute mask mandates in defiance of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s executive order banning them. State Rep. Randy Fine, an anti-mask crusader, posted my cellphone number on his Facebook page and urged residents to call me. When my voice mailbox filled, he encouraged text messages. During televised board meetings, I still receive texts commenting on what I am saying and wearing.

After DeSantis removed me from the audience of a news conference promoting monoclonal antibody treatments and addressing concerns about mask mandates at the county Department of Health last month, more protesters arrived at my home. They claimed to have been sent by Fine, who had been standing beside the governor at the news conference. “Be careful, your mommy hurts little kids!” one shouted at my daughter. “You’re going to jail!” they chanted. As I read my daughter a bedtime story inside, they walked outside her bedroom window toward their parked cars. I went out to ensure that they were leaving. One coughed in my face while another shouted, “Give her covid!” A third swung a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag near my face. My neighbors told me they had seen protesters brandishing weapons in the church parking lot behind my house.

The next day, a large “FU” was burned into my lawn with weed killer. The bushes in front of my house were hacked down. That was the day the Department of Children and Families investigator showed up.

...Recently, a woman passed me in the lobby of the school board offices and yelled, “There’s the wicked witch!” Outside the building, as I was entering, the more restrained protesters had held posters labeling me a dictator and a Nazi. The vocal ones threatened me with jail — again. And now there was a king-size bedsheet affixed to two poles; it was printed with a blood-red hashtag demanding my recall. Sheriff’s deputies stood ready to escort me to the front doors.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/10/20/jennifer-jenkins-brevard-school-board-masks-threats/

what can be done

do you understand my desire to show up where these people show up and scream my guts out at them, maybe even just tackle some of them, get my ass kicked by older white men with sunglasses?

There is a special place in hell for the three @BrevardSchools Board Members who did this to seven year-old Sofia Steel. Please take two minutes and watch the comments I shared at the end of my committee meeting this week. pic.twitter.com/njVGWR9vAl

— Rep. Randy Fine (@VoteRandyFine) October 22, 2021

yeah I don't believe that story one bit

he's so Fine

I'm lucky I don't have to interact with these people IRL because I know I would do something extremely stupid if I did

I do believe these fascists in Florida made a pretty strong stand your ground law in their state, I believe they should consider using it against these lunatics. It would be fitting.