dasfoo
10mo ago
I think what you're talking about it more "optics" than "DEI," unless the intent is to remove DEI from the context that actually makes it negative.
A lot of VPs are picked to balance out the weaknesses of the main candidate. Trump picked Pence to give his ticket someone grounded in traditional GOP politics. He picked Vance to give his ticket some youth. Obama picked Biden to balance "inexperienced young black" with "seasoned journeyman white," etc. etc.
DEI is a subset of optics, and more cynical one. Not many people would argue with the generic values of "diversity, equity and inclusion" if defined broadly (well, "equity" is problematic unlike "equality") but the specific policy implications of brand-name DEI as practiced by its proponents is corrosive, and the acronym just becomes a shorthand for criticizing those implications.
Yeah, baring evidence not presented yet, Cheatle just seems at worst incompetent and at best woefully hands-off, rather than malicious.
I'm curious about her career. 20+ years in the Secret Service, with a majority of that on VP detail -- she reportedly escorted Cheney on 9/11 and later worked with the Biden family. A couple of years into Trump's admin, she quits and becomes a security bigwig for Pepsi. Biden pulls her back in about 18 months ago to head the SS.
One can guess that she hit it off with the Bidens during the Obama admin -- and who knows what crazy stuff she witnessed on that family's detail -- as they wanted her back last year. Did she move to Pepsi due to some issue with the Trump admin -- or Pence, if she was on his detail? Or did they have a problem with her if she was showing loyalties to the previous regime?
[EDIT: Answering my own question: "In 2016, she was appointed as the special agent in charge of the James J Rowley Training Center — the 202-acre Secret Service training academy." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-22/secret-service-director-kimberly-cheatle/104113980 Maybe she just didn't like the change from detail agent to a desk job?]
I noticed a few senators asking pointedly about her private communications with Jill Biden, and then saw some suggestions on X today that she may have been "involved" with Dr. Jill, so maybe that's a rumor swirling around DC and just starting to poke its head out for the rest of us.
It is intriguiging that someone who seems to display zero leadership or professional curiosity was gifted with the top job; but sometimes these figurehead roles can be handled with some quality delegation and run on autopilot -- until the shit hits the fan, leaving the detached leader looking like a deer in the headlights because they never really knew what was happening.
dasfoo
10mo ago
Is number 5 surprising? If it’s an ongoing investigation presumably she wouldn’t want to comment one way or the other.
While I don't fault Cheatle for deferring to the FBI on the investigation pertaining to Crooks' motives and movements, for a report on the Service's activities related to July 13, it seems like it would've been trivially easy for her to come prepared with:
- The Action Plan for the July 13 event
- The list of SS and other agency operatives working 7/13 and their assigned duties
- A detailed "what we know now" timeline (with the caveat that their investigation may add or alter it) culled from interviews of of the agents involved.
Seems like a professional org could produce those items within 2-3 days of an incident. It really seemed like she never cared to inquire about anything personally, delegated her oversight, and thought she could just wing it in front of Congress.
dasfoo
10mo ago
CBS news on the USSS saying their counter-snipers fired a single shot.
We can see the counter-snipers behind the stage on Trump's left take a few shots, but it's my understanding that it was the counter-snipers to the right of the stage that took the kill shot. I think the team on the left had their view partially obscured by a tree near the edge of the AGR building.
So, without indulging in conspiracies, the three different shot reports are easily accounted for: Crooks, and two counter-snipers.
If the counter-snipers to the left were local police and not SS, that would explain the discrepancy of the "single-shot" description coming from the SS.
dasfoo
10mo ago
Did the congressional hearings ever explain the "sloped roof" thing?
It was referred to several times. I think once she said something about it like, "I should have been clearer in my statement about that..." without really explaining what that meant. It was a truly abysmal and laughably uninvested performance by her. I couldn't tell if she was a professional time-waster, an incompetent of sociopathic proportions, or a malicious actor. It's bewildering how detached she was from her professional responsibilities.
dasfoo
11mo ago
Trump has successfully convinced people that he wasn't making the decisions and the Deep State is to blame for the screw-up.
It astounds me that this and the stolen election narrative have somehow redounded to Trump's benefit among his supporters. To me, they sound like the plight of someone who is grossly incompetent at understanding and exercising the power he holds as President.
dasfoo
11mo ago
Michelle Obama is particularly popular
Maybe she is, but is she actually popular outside of Democrats who already hero-worship the Obamas? It doesn't seem to me to be a crossover popularity that would bring in another cohort that isn't already on the "likely voter" table.
dasfoo
11mo ago
Don't they deploy updates like this in a development evironment first to test for exactly this kind of thing? I work in very low-level, mostly unimportant IT and I sweat breaking a single website that gets 100 visitors per month. How does something as big as this not get tested first?
dasfoo
11mo ago
the real target is the companies that feel safe hiring such people
Please, no. We don't want it normalized for employers to scrutinize their employees' politics, regardless of ideology.
dasfoo
11mo ago
Realistically I feel like most hardcore progressives are just concerned about optics on this, not that they actually understand the deeper underlying morality in any real way. By the deeper underlying morality I mean stuff like "how you behave in a conflict is just as important as what side of the conflict you're on".
As someone who is concerned with the degradation of civics, worrying about optics is super-fucking-important and more people should do it. We teach our kids that having bad feelings is normal, but we need to regulate how and where and when we express these feelings. Jack Black can have wet dreams every night about Trump dying, but as long as he knows that for some reason it's important to not say it out loud is crucial to our ability to function as a society.
That, to jump into another discussion upthread, is the toxicity of Trump: he doesn't care about maintaining civility. It may be refreshing to hear someone say all the dirty things we sometimes think in our worst moments but would never dare say -- but it's important not to take that as a license to just say whatever and not worry about its repercussions. (IMO, Trump and a lot of the media/Democrats who hate him are mirror images of each other on this, he's just a sharper, brighter reflection, so it's not a complaint isolated at him.)
dasfoo
11mo ago
My understanding is that the shooter openly carried a rifle, climbed up the side of a building in full view of security and the audience, from a range of a little over a hundred yards, posted up and fired shots without intervention on the part of Secret Service or the on-site security.
Sort of. From what I've seen, he was in-view to a crowd outside the event, watching through a fence, and at the side of the building on which Crooks was positioned. There were local cops in this area, one of whom was along the wall of this building and so could not see the roof at all, unlike the bystanders who were some distance away. The angle of the roof was sloped so that he would not have been visible to the security/snipers in the event until he reached the roof's apex. There were also some trees in the area, which may have made him harder to spot from the event, but it's hard to tell.
dasfoo
11mo ago
The flying bullet has been captured in a picture just before it hit trump.
I think that photo captured the first shot, which missed Trump, just after it passed behind his head. Trump also said he heard a whizzing sound right before he was hit. It may have been his reaction to that first miss which saved him from a clean head shot on the second attempt.
dasfoo
11mo ago
video link, just before the shots
The woman in the right corner at just after 9 minutes who transitions from shouting "USA! USA! USA!" to "FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!" is a perfect ecapsulation of the ugliness of the current American body politic.
dasfoo
11mo ago
There may be an issue with drones that, if you have several of your own drones flying around for security, it's much harder to spot an unauthorized drone that may be up to no good.
From some of the pics, it looks like some of the security detail was from local police, so maybe a core SS detail coordinates with local law enforcement for events like these, which means using teams that are not necessarily accustomed to the scope of sweep needed for events like this?
dasfoo
11mo ago
I watched that and his disbelief that Secret Service didn't have those roofs covered. I'm assuming Trump has a much smaller SS detail than he would have had while he was president, right? I understand that former presidents and presidential campaigners get some degree of SS coverage, but is their detail really big enough to station agents on all of the roofs in a small town, like this guy seems to have expected?
dasfoo
11mo ago
I live in a red tribe crank bubble- 0% of the people I know well enough to have talked about it with will vote RFK. The like two red tribe leftists will vote Biden and everyone else will vote Trump.
I'm in a similar bubble in a blue state, but at least half of the red tribers close to me are voting RFK as a protest vote. My wife -- who campaigned against state vaxx laws a few years ago -- has an RFK sign and is putting it in our lawn.
I try to tell them that absent vaccines they would loathe RFK, but it's hard to draw that distinction when the other options are so revolting.
dasfoo
11mo ago
At the end of the day in politics, the rules are more like guidelines, unless there's an army enforcing them.
In 2002 the NJ Senate race had passed the nomination deadline, when incumbent Senator Torricelli was headed for a certain loss following corruption charges. The Democrats asked the New Jersey Supreme Court if they could pretty please have an exception made and the court declared an "emergency resignation exception." The Democrats replaced Torricelli on the ballot with the recently retired Senator Frank Lautenberg, who won by almost 10%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lautenberg#2002_election
dasfoo
11mo ago
Where I think a lot of other solutions fail is that they are only aimed at 1 type of homeless person and there is no coordination with the services that address the other types of homeless people. In my model, there is coordination so that misidentifications of type can be transferred to the appropriate wing within the all-encompassing system.
It also, importantly, removes all of the homeless individuals from mainstream society until they are fit to rejoin it. For the Cat-1s, it would be voluntary, but presumably if they are genuinely Cat-1 this is exactly the absent support that they are looking for.
dasfoo
11mo ago
Think of it like one of those towns around a prison, but the prison itself has stronger drug treatment and mental health wings that are all part of the same system with the goal of rehabbing from one category to another.
dasfoo
11mo ago
Putting them in these communities would harm them a great deal
Not if it's designed to let the Cat-1s live a facsimile of normal life but with the support system they lack on the outside. AIUI, the primary problem Cat-1s experience is a loop of helplessness: without a home, they can't find work; without work they can't find a home. You need a city-like environment in which they can operate freely with support long enough to get back on their feet and/or develop work skills if they lack them. They would not be incarcerated like or with the more dysfunctional levels. They would live amongst the professionals who operate the carcereal parts of the system.
dasfoo
11mo ago
My idea for dealing with homelessness is to create a series of remote contained cities -- using BLM land -- that are essentially economies built around a hospital-prison-treatment-community college complex.
Let's say there are 4 categories of homeless:
- Economic
- Addiction
- Criminal
- Psychotic
The Cat-1 Homeless can live in apartments or housing and get jobs in the cities that serve the complex staff. There will be restaurants, groceries, everything a normal small city might have, as well as job in the complex. So there is plenty of opportunity for employment. They will also be enrolled in the college to develop other skills -- maybe with a focus on addiction treatment and social work. When they are on better financial and educational ground, they can "graduate" back to the real world.
The Cat-2 Homeless go to the addiction treatment center. They can "graduate" to Cat-1 or fail to Cat-2.
The Cat-3 Homeless are repeat offenders who have either failed Cat-2 or have been deemed mentally well enough to not belong to Cat-4. Through good behavior, they can graduate to Cat-1.
The Cat-4 Homeless are for the serially mentally unfit. these would need drastic oversight so as not to repeat the failure mode of the old state mental hospitals that turned into hellholes.
These cities would need to be far enough away from other cities to discourage foot traffic and have some kind of low-security system that checks people in and out. They are essentially halfway houses on a larger scale.
Maybe there can also be a wilderness area on the outskirts of these town for those homeless who aren't Cat 2-4 but who just wish to live in outdoor camps off the grid of normal society.
dasfoo
11mo ago
Everyone? This list looks very short considering how much cash is involved and the kind of person attracted to a career in politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_people_convicted_of_campaign_finance_violations
It looks like campaign money can also go into charities/foundations and PACs. You seem more confident in the sanctity of these funds than I am, especially when it's in the hands of a family associated with over 20 shell companies. Maybe the Clintons can tutor them on how to run a completely above-board Foundation.
dasfoo
11mo ago
I agree that people here discount the possibility of her winning if she becomes the nominee. It’s not above or even close to 50%, but she probably has a 20-30% chance of winning. A lot of people dislike Trump and will be willing to come out to vote against him, just like last time.
Yeah, while I don't think she would be ideal, people forget that Biden in 2020 had only two arguments in his favor:
- He wasn't Trump
- He was "safe"
Now that he's apparently mentally unfit, and therefore unsafe, the only argument for him is one he shares with literally every other Democrat, including Harris.
There's little Democrats love more than a historic DEI accomplishment and if Harris becomes the nominee we won't hear the end of all of the exciting potential "firsts" she represents and the enthusiasm for smashing that glass ceiling will become deafening.
dasfoo
11mo ago
With what endgame?
What happens to unspent campaign cash after an election? Let's say Biden is tanking but has healthy coffers. Would it benefit a candidate to quietly accept an early loss and become thrifty in the final months, setting aside a surplus of funds as a nice consolation prize?
The comms failure is, to use a popular parlance, "weird." If the Secret Service is in charge of security for an event, and commonly enlists local LEO as support for their mission, it's baffling to me that it's common practice to silo local LEO's ability to communicate with the SS. If it's not common practice, then it's doubly "weird" that it happened to coincide with here with so many other seemingly obvious breeches in protocol.
In security, in the event of a breach, speed of communication between different layers of the responding force is crucial, and this system seems to have been designed to prevent responder communication from the bottom to the top.
It does call to mind the comical depiction of the FBI in the movie Die Hard, which suggests a derisive elitist attitude from the Feds toward the locals, but it's shocking to see it play out in real life like this.
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