Peyton's sister pardoned...

[IJ Reilly]

I suspect that her chosen sex (not gender) has helped her case, being part of the protected class nowadays. Imagine if she were just another run-of-the-mill traitor, without the backstory of a persecuted minority.

[Magnus]

At the time of the leaks, Manning was still identified as "he", not "she", so not sure what your issue is here, Alison. At the time I sat my school exams, I was a teenager, not a 64yo, but I don't insist that people refer to a 64yo's results. That's what I did as a teenager, as Manning did when identifying as a male. Manning will be released, and I hope she finds peace, and can live with the threat the leaks posed to US military personnel, some of whom might well have been fellow serving soldiers.

[IJ Reilly]

Yes and not only the threats to US military personnel but to friends, allies and their family members who were compromised, many of whom were killed as a result of her betrayal.

[500N]

Interesting considering the date. Chuks, better tell the lawyer that the rules have changed !!!

"On September 3, 2013, Manning's lawyer applied for a presidential pardon for his client. Coombs filed a Petition for Pardon/Commutation of Sentence to President Obama through the pardon attorney at the Department of Justice and Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh.[129] In the petition, which was filed with the legal name "Bradley Manning" and used male-gender pronouns, "

[Chuks]

Sure, 500N, and that's probably how Manning was legally identified at the time, back in 2013, hence the term "legal name." It would have been no use filing papers for "Chelsea Manning" and using female-gender pronouns if she was still legally a "he" at that time, I assume.

This whole business, still somewhat new, of changing gender or even just expressing some different sexual identity than "hetero" is difficult enough without people showing themselves to be very, very awkward about that, which is what you are doing. What you may take as a joke can be a very serious thing to some others.

Just in our little circle here in the village we have such things as a minister who ran off with someone's wife, except that was a woman minister; the kid from across the street who recently came out as gay; the only other American in the village, a fellow veteran who also married a German, except that he married a German man; a close friend whose daughter lives with her female partner; and so on.

Marlboro College ... I went to this dance one night, just dropping in on my way home from three hours in the darkroom making prints, just decompressing, when this kid, a genius as it happened, started flirting with me. In a previous life I would have at least shouted at him for that. As it was, playing by the new rules, I just took this as some sort of pervert compliment and laughed it off, because that was Marlboro, where I could get into far more trouble by acting very straight than he ever could by acting totally gay.

To get along with all this new stuff, I really, seriously have had to change my whole way of thinking! No more jokes about the boy who stuck his finger in the dyke, Har-har-har! That was then and this is now, so get with the program, 500N. The rules have changed.

I am with Mr Reilly in suspecting that Chelsea has played her cards well, taking advantage of the new rules to some extent. (I assume that the rest of you have heard of Shaun King, the white kid [white father, white mother, on his birth certificate] who claims to be an African-American and who bloviates greatly on matters to do with racism. Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren and Ward Churchill, two white academics who posed as Native Americans to their advantage in gaining tenure? This could be a little bit that way.)

[Capetonian]

I'm afraid being a bit old-school, I have a problem understanding this gender-change/sex-change thing. My first exposure to it was at least 20 years ago when I rang an old work mate, whom I used to see once or twice a year when I was back in UK. He was married, had 2 children, big chap, played football, not the sort of candidate you'd expect for a sex change, or gender re-assignment as I believe it is called now. He told me over the phone that he was having a sex-change, to which my reaction was ........... "f. off Mike it's not April Fools' " Anyway, decided I couldn't handle seeing him after that and never have, but by an odd coincidence he lives very close to friends of mine.

[500N]

Chuks

Rules might have changed, doesn't mean I have to like them or agree with them.

And I flatly refuse to be told what to say.

That's the start of the total state controlling you.


On a slight tangent, it's interesting to read who it was who first went to Army counter intel to report him.

[Chuks]

Try to get your mind around this one, 500N! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristin_Beck She might tell you what to say, when you might have to listen ... listen and obey.

Hey, if you really must carry on like a bull in a china shop, please do not let me argue you out of that. I live for taking the mickey out of guys such as yourself. Hunting dinosaurs with a fire-sharpened stick ....

[500N]

I don't like the "protected status" of these whatever you call them, minorities ?

Not sure manning is playing it because he seemed to have these identity issues way back.

Just lucky he has a President like Obama in who is so biased towards them.

God, just think if manning was black as well

[500N]

I read about her a while ago.

Why would I 'obey' her ????? Please explain that one.

No, not a dinosaur.

[Chuks]

500N, you can't "refuse to be told what to say." You were just told! Not that I am 100% correct in what I told you to say, but I did tell you.

You can refuse to heed what you are being told to say, but that is not the same thing.

Personally, 500N, you are far more useful to me when you do not heed what you are told to say, because then you are a perfect example of a dinosaur, some sort of living fossil. It would be a lot better for you personally if you woke up and did make some small adjustments in what you say, in how you form your opinions, but so what? You have the right to go straight to hell in whatever manner you choose to, even if that means getting slapped silly by some outraged trans-sexual you run your mouth in front of.

Do not let this news come as a shock, but society is changing. Stuff that was unthinkable when we were young, not so very long ago as all that, has now become commonplace, including the notion that gender is mutable. (Actually, it's that gender is immutable, that we are stuck with whatever our inner nature is, so that someone externally male, for instance, might be immutably, internally female, and never mind what the body form is!)

Other things that were once taken to be fixed in their importance, such as racial differences, are now often taken to be relatively trivial. Modern reality has become a crazy quilt, and we need to deal with this. I think that the victory of Trump might be one last try at resetting the clock to 1955 or so, restoring that American greatness from that time, if only by rejecting modern complication.

The Indiana House of Representatives once passed a bill that effectively redefined pi as 3.2 instead of 3.14159.... They were going to sort this complicated mess out for once and all, but then the Indiana Senate took some advice from a professor from Purdue and refused to put the bill into law, just because 3.2 is not a useful expression of pi. Now we have Donald Trump, who really is going to be allowed to try something similar, to slap unworkable simplifications onto complicated realities, and on the national and international levels.

Reality can seem perverse for being complicated, but it's just that reality simply can be complicated. Either way, complicated or simple, we need to engage with reality, not refuse to heed it. For now it's Chelsea Manning and 3.14159....

[ExSp33db1rd]

World's Gone Mad.

( and getting worse )

[IJ Reilly]

Speaking of dinosaurs, that Indiana law was introduced in the late 1800's, although I'm sure the story reads better to leave out that small fact (implying the writer's superiority over modern-day Midwestern hicks, dontcha know).

It is a strange world. I remember when my older brother got his first divorce (one of three, he being a modern sort), it so traumatized my parents that we had a family meeting to break the terrible news to the rest of us. Fast forward just 50 years and we've now got much of what Chuks describes in our own family circle.

The amazing thing is that this social revolution happened so quickly and without much debate. Now the bizarre circumstance occurs where elected officials feel obliged to lecture people on tolerance and understanding, when just four years earlier their stated positions were exactly those of the people they are now lecturing.

That's why I have some sympathy for those dinosaurs among us. Much of this modern tolerance is nothing more than sanctimonious virtue signaling. A way for one group to look down upon another, the oldest trick in the human book of miseries. Except this time it's gussied up to appear so caring and enlightened, a phony-baloney ticket to the Hypocrite's Ball.

[500N]

Dinosaur lol

As much as it may suprise you Chuks, I've been tolerant of gays for my whole life.
I just had one easy rule I went by, you can be what you like, just don't shove it in my face.
Having had gay hairdressers who I have spoken about it, they are often the same.

[Chuks]

I was amused, reading Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography, to be told that he had "no problem with the fag." Here it's good to know that you, 500N, have no problem with "gay hairdressers." (They know their place, those gay hairdressers. If they "shove it in your face," 500N, that is only after you ask nicely, right?)

Mr Reilly, you tell your stories as you please, and I will tell mine as I please. Yes, of course it "reads better" to leave out the date, 1897! (There is no fooling you, is there, Mr Reilly!) As to my implying superiority over Midwestern hicks, I suppose that you missed the part in my story about the Indiana Senate and the professor from Purdue, who obviously also were from the Midwest. Did I really try to show there that I am probably superior in knowledge to a professor from Purdue University, or is this just your "phony-baloney ticket to the Hypocrite's Ball," your wanting to play Witch-finder General?

it's only reasonable to keep watch for faking it, since there is a lot of that going around. Ward Churchill and Shaun King are two outstanding fakers of our time, closely followed by Elizabeth Warren, two who posed as Native American, Churchill to the max, Warren just enough to catch a break, and King who continues to pose as African-American, when none of them shows one particle of shame. Just don't get carried away by spotting those fakers; not everyone who engages with this modern state of confusion and flux is necessarily doing "sanctimonious virtue signaling" by going for more modern values.

If Bradley Manning had decided to fake his way out of Fort Leavenworth by changing his sex, becoming Chelsea Manning, and by twice attempting suicide then that is one hell of a job of faking it! That beats airmailing yourself out of the Château d'If as a way of getting out of prison! It might be simpler to just take this one at face value while we wait for her book to come out, the book that shall tell all ....

[Cacophonix]

As to my implying superiority over Midwestern hicks

Unless you are persistently chewing chiclets and being importuned by UFO landing aliens intent on studying your back to front cap or your posterior (why does the latter event seem only to occur in the Midwest to some hick and never in downtown Manhattan) then you clearly have no provenance as a Midwestern hick Chuks!

Caco

[Chuks]

I know more about the moon than I do about the Midwest. (Relax, Mr Reilly. I am not trying to pose as an expert on the moon with that comment.)

I have been to Wichita several times, but just to FlightSafety and a hotel at the airport. I never even bothered to go any further than the hotel courtesy bus would take me for free, to a big shopping mall nearby. I guess that, like Oakland, the trouble with Wichita "is that when you get there, there isn't any there there," but I really could not say because I never bothered to find out.

[Cacophonix]

I am always amused but also amazed to read about Ward Churchill, the faux Native American untenured academic and Vietnam veteran projectionist (in more ways than one) who got himself into such hot water over his Eichmann comments. It seems that if such a charlatan can exist then even the odious naartjie might continue to prosper too what with his canards about himself and pretty much everything else as well.

Personally you have to give Churchill something for his brazen ***** based upon his having worn pair of Algonquin underpants (or whatever) at some time in his colourful feather filled life.

For those who have not tuned in or dropped out to the Churchill saga then read more here. Tis a rollercoaster ride!

Ward or Minnehaha

Caco

[BenThere]

there isn't any there there

Wasn't Stepford in Connecticut? Is there a there, there? (Wasn't it the same guy who wrote Stepford Wives also the author of Rosemary's Baby? Think about that.)

As for Churchill and Warren, while I have no respect for either, they were just capitalizing on society's decision to reward ethnicity over objective merit, and figured out how to scam the system. Who is to blame for that? We are, for collectively allowing it to happen, pervasively.

[Cacophonix]

Methinks Churchill's perverse will to being a Native American is more than just mere capitalisation on 'ethnic empowerment' alone and is also akin to the pathological impetus that drove an old South African colleague of mine to begin to believe he was a Native American (he had never been to America let it be said) and ultimately he lived in his insane persona plagued by beads, feathers, bangles and the like until the unhappy soul drank himself to death some years ago. His death, unfortunately, echoing the demise of so many modern Native Americans.

But I digress...

Caco