EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4hr ago
The fact this doesn’t strongly happen is more to with how social conservatism in the US picked up an emphasis on the nuclear family, which sort of intrinsically shuts out grandparents in a way other conservatives don’t.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5hr ago
I said at the time and look to have been validated, that people have this idea of the USSS as a super competent organization. But at the end of the day they are still an organization, and are thus not immune to the common failure modes of organizations. As I understand the facts that we have, the communication failures (separate radio networks for the main detail and local support), the “good enough” problem (they had someone in the building, just not covering the roof), and “someone else’s problem” (bad or incomplete assignments during the planning phase) are absolutely classic organizational problems that crop up just as easily and pervasively in the USSS as they do in a large for-profit corporation. If anything, there’s less will to shake things up like a CEO might.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5hr ago
Just today I took note of this article in n case people are still on the conspiracy train: WaPo: The lingering mystery of the Trump shooting: Why did this young man do it?
After Trump took office again in January, his new picks to lead the FBI — Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino — asked to be briefed on the investigative steps that had been taken before they arrived, they said in a televised interview. They personally visited the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, to view the evidence, including laboratory and ballistics evidence, and examined Crooks’s rifle.
Bongino, who in August had complained on his podcast that he didn’t entirely trust the FBI’s claim that Crooks had no political ideology, had a professional reason to be obsessive as he poked and prodded his briefers with questions.
He had served as a Secret Service agent for 12 years, including on threat investigations and on the protective details for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Bongino had a deep knowledge of the Secret Service’s landmark Exceptional Case Study Project, which documented striking similarities among people who had tried to kill presidents and prominent political figures.
In studying and interviewing 83 people known to have attempted or plotted such an assassination from 1949 to 1996, the research found they were overwhelmingly White males who were relatively well educated. They were also deeply isolated, often friendless and suffering from a mental health disorder. Often, after a personal crisis or break, they began to fixate on assassinating a high-profile figure as a route to fame or affirmation.
After reviewing the evidence, Bongino firmly agreed with the conclusion of his FBI predecessors. Crooks was just “a lost soul” akin to the many would-be assassins interviewed for the Exceptional Case Study Project, he told colleagues. There was “no there there” to the conspiracy theories about an inside job or Iran.
In a Fox News interview on May 18, Maria Bartiromo asked Patel and Bongino why the public had almost no information about what led to the shooting in Butler as well as an apparent attempted assassination of Trump on a golf course in Florida. Bongino stressed that there was no “big explosive” evidence tying Crooks to an international conspiracy or any larger plot.
“I’m not going to tell people what they want to hear. I’m going to tell you the truth. And whether you like it or not is up to you,” Bongino told Bartiromo. “The there you are looking for is not there. … It’s not there. If it was there, we would have told you.”
Basically you have a total expert, Trump supporter, and skeptic get full access and found nothing. Can’t ask for much more than that. Shockingly, the article claims that a lot of people were working on it:
It consumed FBI agents and analysts from half of the bureau’s field offices, nearly every headquarters division and some international offices.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
7hr ago
No, this is just the Rotten Tomatoes problem all over again. Up/down works fine but not stellar because a movie everyone universally finds to be on the good side of fine, gets near-100 ratings while movies with higher highs and lower lows, that are on the whole “better” movies, get lower ratings.
I rate movies about how far they are above or below replacement, reflecting the fact that that’s how most people actually decide what to watch. A 3.5 is fine: you can watch it, it will be a movie with average enjoyment. A 4 is better than its peers: prefer it in any head to head comparison. A 4.5 is one to go out of your way to watch. A 5 is a 4.5 but one that had an especially memorable impact on me personally. A 3 is worse than replacement - it’s a below average movie. And ratings from 2.5 and down are various degrees of how aggressively you should avoid them, with a 1 star creating a negative memory you’d rather have lived your life without, ie actively harmful.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
7hr ago
Starting to dip my toes into Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, to be followed up in the case I don’t lose interest by another book that extends reconstruction through the Gilded Age. The most interesting part of American history I know the least about, in my eyes!
Though I also have this Ben Franklin autobiography hanging around that sounds interesting and of course my regular diet of fantasy stuff.
Speaking of, I’m going to throw out a recommendation for Guild Mage: Apprentice, which is free to read (serialized) for another month or so. Has that classic fantasy feel, with good writing and with an interesting world and magic. Very enjoyable read.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
8hr ago
My memory is that the Federalists were very pro-national banking (and pro centralization more loosely), which led to pro-international finance and trade links, which at the time in America was a big, big deal and created a lot of dissent, not only between the “rural” vs “urban” areas but led to some foreign policy disagreements. Some New Englanders almost became pro-British, not super popular between Revolutionary aftermath and the later war of 1812. But more of it was the original rural-urban split, and Federalists were seen a bit as elitist. Doubly so when some states started expanding suffrage to non land owners. Circling back to “money” of course - at this time there was no centralized currency, and attempts to do so were seen as promoting corruption and stiffing farmers. After all if you’re a farmer at the time, how can you tell you’re not getting ripped off by exchange rates and early financial instruments? So Federalists being hated doesn’t surprise me at all. These banking issues by the way would persist as very potent forces in elections for at least another 50 years. And understandably so! You needed a catalyst like the Civil War to fully get on the nationalized paper money train, and even then gold and silver standard stuff would persist as issues.
Fun fact: I read yesterday that from the start to the end of the civil war, the federal budget went from 60 million a year to 1.3 billion per year. Not to mention the debt load created by the war and pension plans. But before that, it’s a totally different era.
I think maybe a good smell test would be: am I discussing the culture war, or waging it? No one is ever not guilty of breaking this from time to time but the ratio of “waging” posts to “discussing” posts is outta whack
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