You Will Anyway: Removing the mask

Friday, December 9, 2022

Removing the mask

She never really was a Democrat, but maybe she should have done this before the midterms, just to let everyone know what's up. She's up for reelection in 2024, so it will be interesting to see what Arizonans do. And will she run as an Independent or a Republican? Or at all. Maybe she's going to Fox News.

Sinema declined to say whether she will caucus with Democrats, like Independent Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine) currently do, but the Arizona senator said she plans to continue in her committee assignments.

The Hill

Pretty sure she won't say because she won't caucus with the Dems. What she WILL do is leverage her position for publicity.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

That's because SHE doesn't get to decide if she keeps her committee assignments. They are "assignments".

“She asked me to keep her committee assignments and I agreed,” [Senate leader Chuck] Schumer said. “Kyrsten is independent; that’s how she’s always been. I believe she’s a good and effective Senator and am looking forward to a productive session in the new Democratic majority Senate.”

Schumer also outlined how he did not expect Sinema’s decision to impact Democrats’ plans for next year, saying in his statement, “We will maintain our new majority on committees, exercise our subpoena power, and be able to clear nominees without discharge votes.”

[...]

Sinema’s decision to become a political independent makes official what’s long been an independent streak for the Arizona senator, who began her political career as a member of the Green Party before being elected as a Democrat to the US House in 2012 and US Senate in 2018. Sinema has prided herself on being a thorn in the side of Democratic leaders, and her new nonpartisan affiliation will further free her to embrace an against-the-grain status in the Senate, though it raises new questions about how she – and Senate Democrats – will approach her reelection in 2024 with liberals already mulling a challenge.

[...]

iberals in Arizona are already floating potential challengers, including Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, who said earlier this year that some Democratic senators have urged him to run against Sinema [in 2024].

CNN

UPDATE:

Well, neutralize a primary challenge and split the Democratic vote in the general.

UPDATE: Tales from Sinema's early days.

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

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"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

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"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

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"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.