President Obama has commuted the 35-year sentence of former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning for leaking classified information in 2010 to WikiLeaks.
What it tells you is Manning never actually sacrificed any information damaging to the Deep State. Had he, the Deep State would never have allowed this, and Obama would have followed their orders.
You also have to wonder if this is strategic, as there was an indication that Obama may have used an unsecure email for some communications, if I recall correctly. By pardoning Manning, he lowers the bar on what is deemed worthy of punishment. That could, in theory, help both him and Hillary if Trump were to allow any investigation of such things in the next eight years.
What it also indicates is that Obama’s more criminal pardons, done at the very end of his term, will probably be ultra-shocking.
I wouldn’t rule the Deep State out, it’s harder to arrange a “suicide” of a high profile person in custody than out of custody. With someone with gender dysmorphia, suicide is more expected than shocking.
It’s possible that this is simply Obama accepting Assange’s deal.
Hmmn. Very true.
[…] Obama Commutes Sentence of Chelsea Manning […]
Nah, he’s trying to be remembered for something other than destroying the Democratic party..!
XD
Of interest: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-17/liberal-preppers-stock-guns-food-trumpocalypse-looms
Ha! The rabbits sense the start of K-selection, and just that initial tremor is freaking them out. Wait until the economy tanks, EBT disappears, and the vibrants are rioting.
AC you think those are rabbits in transition to K? My impression is that firearms K-ify better than anything. But if not maybe I don’t want to play a role helping rabbits with the basics if you know what I mean.
Thoughts on that?
I think it depends on the individual. Some people are naturally prone to go K, and for them firearms are a way of meeting a threat. Others are always looking for the easy way, and firearms will be an easy way to get over on others. And then there are the mentally ill, who are disproportionally distributed on the left, and who will break down and go mass-shooter.
You’ve got to make each call on its own merits, I think.
There are also K strategists just finishing out their gun collections. Guns can break, when you practice alot. And food restocking is a periodical and constant exercise. I suspect liberals/rabbits are just hyping that they’re prepping, really doing it is just too tough for them.
I think it depends on how you use the firearms. Training with firearms K-ifys better than anything (except for maybe lifting weights.)
Guns get used two ways, and the best example is criminals vs hunters. A hunter uses a gun as a tool. They care for it, train specifically how to use it, practice with it, and fire it regularly.
A criminal uses a gun as a talisman. They don’t care for it, they don’t clean it, they’ve likely never fired it, unless they fired it a few times when they first acquired it to “test it” and then crank off a few shots at New Years Eve (again, a magical, superstitious act.) A gun isn’t a tool for a criminal, but rather a magical item to wave at victims to ensure compliance. That’s why drive-bys are so ineffective at hitting the people they are targeted at — there’s no practice or training (and it’s not an easy shot to start with.)
Massad Ayoob has a rule of thumb he developed as a cop on the streets that never failed him. He said that when you find someone with a gun, you can usually suss them out in a single glance. Is the gun in a holster? If it is in a holster, then this is a person who cares for the gun, protects it, and carries it in a deliberately safe way. This is a Good Guy (K). If the gun is shoved into a waistband, this is someone who carries the gun carelessly in a way that abuses and damages the gun over time. This is a Bad Guy (r).
OT, but i’ve found an interesting piece by the Dissenting Sociologist.
https://dissentingsociologist.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/inside-the-mind-of-the-cathedral-how-the-left-thinks/
He basically states that the reason the Left is so fanatical and unwilling to brook any dissent is because it needs to have everyone in a society on board with believing in their system in order to “make it real”. They believe reality itself can be shaped by belief. This seems to jive with what I’ve heard from leftists I’ve come across online (one of whom actually believes that FPS games caused 911 by making the world more warlike and that if human beings have enough collective will, we’ll someday grow wheat on the moon.) I wonder how this fits in with r/K Selection theory – does the rabbit mind need to believe that it has this level of control over the environment? Could this explain their totalitarian behavior?
It is a need to assuage anxiety over facing a world they are not designed for. They need to believe they can remake a K world more r, or their amygdala will drive them nuts. It is a mix of their instinctual drive to avoid K at all cost, and assume it is avoidable so they don’t even try to adapt to it, and their inability to face adversity, even when that adversity is truth.
It is tough to explain how stress can make someone recalibrate their view of reality to a fantasy, but it can. And once that become a cognitive hack, it operates everywhere.
That certainly seems to apply to Manning. Here’s a first hand observation of Manning in boot camp. Here’s a fascinating account of a rabbit’s “need to believe they can remake a K world more r,” and their “instinctual drive to avoid K at all cost.”
https://huwieler.net/2017/01/18/chelsea-manning-in-basic-combat-training/
It also raises troubling questions in my mind about the overall state of our armed forces personnel and their fitness to serve..
Fascinating, thanks!
It’s funny, because I was reading the same thing and about to shoot it to AC. I hope that the Army studies that case a lot, because it is a textbook example of someone who should have been washed out. Trying to figure out why he didn’t, the best explanation I can come up with is the drill instructors thinking, “well, he isn’t going into infantry or any combat positions, he’s going to be a desk jockey anyways, so he just needs to get through this.” They’ve focussed so much on the martial aspects that they missed the need to transmit a culture of loyalty.