***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[everysingletime]

Who the F does Donald Trump think he is

 

[jape]

Who the F does Donald Trump think he is

the president of the united states unfortunately 

 

[everysingletime]

Yes, he is the president of the United States. But somehow I feel like he thinks he's a God. Why else would he want these judges dancing for him on prime time TV. For what reason? He has to have made his decision already. He's doing this for the fanfare.

 

[jape]

Yes, he is the president of the United States. But somehow I feel like he thinks he's a God. Why else would he want these judges dancing for him on prime time TV. For what reason? He has to have made his decision already. He's doing this for the fanfare.

people who are born with that much wealth are used to getting whatever the hell they want.  

thats why drumph goes and cries on twitter so much..hes not used to the opposition. 

 

[RIP sleazyy]

Who the F does Donald Trump think he is

Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho

 

[rolaholic]

Who the F does Donald Trump think he is

Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho

On point

 

[EddieDoyers]

Tbh the only thing I can really only support Trump on is his fight with the GOP
He's eventually gonna cause a civil war within it

 

[tomdiginson]

Tbh the only thing I can really only support Trump on is his fight with the GOP
He's eventually gonna cause a civil war within it

He's the downfall of the GOP. I don't think they'll ever recover from this...then again voters have proved to be very dumb

 

[AEA18]

Yes, he is the president of the United States. But somehow I feel like he thinks he's a God. Why else would he want these judges dancing for him on prime time TV. For what reason? He has to have made his decision already. He's doing this for the fanfare.

He's trying to normalize this kind of stuff so that people become desensitized to it.

 

[RIP sleazyy]

Who the F does Donald Trump think he is

Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho

On point

I know not everybody is gonna get that reference

 

[Mark Antony]

Tbh the only thing I can really only support Trump on is his fight with the GOP
He's eventually gonna cause a civil war within it

I don't feel bad, they started this with the tea party and created Frankenstein's monster and thought they could control it.

 

[John Wick]

 

[EddieDoyers]

Tbh the only thing I can really only support Trump on is his fight with the GOP
He's eventually gonna cause a civil war within it

I don't feel bad, they started this with the tea party and created Frankenstein's monster and thought they could control it.

True. Just seeing the globalist conservatives starting to go crazy over the trade and immigration policies makes me want to wag my finger at them and be like "you could have stopped this."

 

[gry60]

 

[whywesteppin]

I would want the exact opposite to be true, I want more Visas for top level guys and fewer H1B Visas for lower and mid level jobs.

I want to see how sanguine business elites are about globalism when the world is "flat" on the top floor and in the board room.

Right now, the local tech and pharmaceutical companies look like the UN except for the top management at which point it looks like a Yale class reunion.


Broadly speaking any talk of a "shortage of x type workers" is a finesse job. They have run this scam on teachers, pharmacy techs, nurses and now computer programmers and welders. Employers need to raise wages first and help pay or Americans' training and if those option do not work, then and only then should they be able to tailor immigration policy to their needs.


Two more things:

while I think that we should issue fewer work visas, once you do get a work visa you should be allowed to change companies just like any other American worker can. Companies should not get to import workers whom they can control and deport on a whim. If you come from India or China or anywhere else, once you are in, you should have every right to move to a new company if that company is offering you a better deal.

Perhaps we could have a system where the proportion of your work force must be reflected in your top level positions. So if your executive "talent" is so untalented that it needed half of its workforce to be Indian, then half of the board and C level positions must also be Indian.

Good points by you and Rusty.

This is a multi-tiered problem and needs a smart solution. Any solution that is as simple as "let's punish the Indians stealing our jobs" is probably not a good one.

Like you're alluding to, there's a few things that should be addressed and incorporated. One is the inequality in the boardroom, which probably reflects a culture based on getting the cheapest labor possible.

Another is that the system is inefficient. Letting work visas be transferable would be a great benefit. Also, there should be an easier path for someone who goes through schooling here to stay as a legal resident if they have strong support. Right now, there is a path for this but it requires you to be superman.

And, like you're saying, ultimately the US needs to address why there is more talent overseas than here. This starts with K-12 education, making college more financially tenable for all Americans (not just undergraduate college but post-graduate schooling and training), and nurturing homegrown talent. And we need to address why many areas of higher education are basically known for being full of international students. On its own it's not a problem, but it's a symptom of a more deeply ingrained systemic effect.

 

[AEA18]

Tbh the only thing I can really only support Trump on is his fight with the GOP
He's eventually gonna cause a civil war within it

I don't feel bad, they started this with the tea party and created Frankenstein's monster and thought they could control it.

True. Just seeing the globalist conservatives starting to go crazy over the trade and immigration policies makes me want to wag my finger at them and be like "you could have stopped this."

 

[IATT]

 

[rexanglorum]

Good points by you and Rusty.

This is a multi-tiered problem and needs a smart solution. Any solution that is as simple as "let's punish the Indians stealing our jobs" is probably not a good one.

Like you're alluding to, there's a few things that should be addressed and incorporated. One is the inequality in the boardroom, which probably reflects a culture based on getting the cheapest labor possible.

Another is that the system is inefficient. Letting work visas be transferable would be a great benefit. Also, there should be an easier path for someone who goes through schooling here to stay as a legal resident if they have strong support. Right now, there is a path for this but it requires you to be superman.

And, like you're saying, ultimately the US needs to address why there is more talent overseas than here. This starts with K-12 education, making college more financially tenable for all Americans (not just undergraduate college but post-graduate schooling and training), and nurturing homegrown talent. And we need to address why many areas of higher education are basically known for being full of international students. On its own it's not a problem, but it's a symptom of a more deeply ingrained systemic effect.

I agree and if you set it up correctly the liberal goals of being pro immigrant and pro labor would not be in conflict.

Maybe we could require that programmers be unionized and when you get your skilled worker Visa you must join that Union, you are not attached to any one company and your Visa is for a fixed ten year term that cannot be revoked by your employer (with an option to to renew or become a citizen at the end of that time).

 

[ben roethlisberger]

No we are not doctors. But you do know that when we admit patients doctors have to issue an official diagnosis right.

Never admitted a patient with transgender disorder. Lmk when that's apart of the DSM fam.

So, your argument is hinged on it not being in the DSM.

Wasn't it in the DSM? Same with homosexuality being in the DSM in the 70's. And they removed both. Why? Because there was evidence to support that it wasn't in the DSM? No. There is zero evidence to support that transgenderism isn't a mental illness. Same with homosexuality. But that got removed in the 70's because the political landscape changed.

Usually, how the DSM determines these things is with holding board meetings where they go over the evidence. Since there is no evidence, this leads me to believe that this too is because of political pressure.

Actually the WHO does classify it as a mental illness, this was done back in 1990. But based on field studies and scientific research, they are going to declassify it.

So yes, the science is on one side of the argument.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...thats-about-to-change/?utm_term=.07c96dbe1eff

@RustyShackleford And this is where you should stay in your own lane, pop.

The "study" they link, which is what WHO is going off of, is this one right here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(16)30165-1/abstract

Just by reading the title, "Removing transgender identity from the classification of mental disorders: a Mexican field study for ICD-11", I can disprove it. (And no, Rusty, it's not because they studied Mexicans.)

Simply put, a field study is a general method of collecting data; interviews, questionnaires etc. That's not science. That's not how the DSM goes about classifying or declassifying mental illness's.

Side note: "Participants reported first awareness of transgender identity at a mean age of 5·6 years". lol this is like asking a child who is schizo about their schizophrenia disorder "i first noticed dragons talking to me at age 6".

 

[rolaholic]

‏@ForeignPolicy: Stephen Bannon is leading the Trump administration down a road of carnage, writes @MaxBoot. http://atfp.co/2kO8e1a
President Bannon’s Hugely Destructive First Week in Office

The puppet master is leading the Trump administration down a road of carnage.

BY MAX BOOT  JANUARY 30, 2017

Don’t worry about Donald Trump — his Republican supporters have been whispering to Never Trumpers like me for months. He doesn’t really mean all of his campaign rhetoric. In fact, he doesn’t have much interest in policy at all, they said. He’ll delegate governing to Mike Pence, Reince Priebus, and Paul Ryan while he plays a lot of golf. You’ll see that there’s nothing to be scared of.

After just one week in office — arguably the worst opening since The Adventures of Pluto Nash  premiered in 2002 — Trump has exposed such assurances for what they are: the kind of lies that supposedly smart people tell themselves to feel better about a catastrophe they know in their bones is looming.

The president’s first seven days began on Jan. 20, when he delivered the bleakest and most divisive inaugural address  in U.S. history, presenting a dystopian picture of the country as a land of “carnage” that he blamed on America’s trade partners and disloyal American elites. It sounded just like one of his campaign rally speeches — not the kind of elevated addresses that we have gotten used to from his predecessors, Democratic and Republican alike.

Seven days later, on Jan. 27, the first week concluded with the release of an un-American decree temporarily barring our doors to refugees from all over the world and passport holders from seven Muslim countries selected seemingly at random. This ill-drafted and badly implemented order caused chaos at U.S. airports with border agents not knowing whom they were supposed to admit and federal judges stepping in to prevent the implementation of important parts of this draconian diktat until their constitutionality can be litigated. The ostensible justification for this move was to protect us from terrorists, but no terrorists from any of the seven banned Muslim countries — Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen — have ever killed anyone in America. It is hard to disagree with Benjamin Wittes’s conclusion  on the Lawfare blog that Trump is “elevating the symbolic politics of bashing Islam over any actual security interest.”

In between these lowlights, the nation was treated to risible claims from the thin-skinned president that the media had lied about the size of his inaugural crowd  and that he would have won the popular vote were it not for the “millions” of ballots cast illegally. To support the latter assertion, for which there is no actual evidence, Trump alternatively cited a third-hand anecdote  relayed to him by a friend of the German golfer Bernhard Langer (who is not a U.S. citizen) and a study, which no one has seen, supposedly conducted by a conspiracy theorist named Gregg Phillips. Phillips has also tweeted  that it was Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security, not the Russian intelligence services, that hacked the election and that “The UN is global fascism.”

Trump also repeated his defense of torture  and again doubled down on his claim that the United States should steal Iraq’s oil  — messages that, combined with his anti-Muslim immigration decree, put U.S. troops in the Middle East in greater danger.  As if offending Muslims wasn’t enough, Trump issued a Holocaust commemoration proclamation that, echoing the claims of Holocaust deniers, made no mention of the Jews  — the Nazis’ primary victims — with his spokesmen subsequently making clear  that this was no accidental oversight.

Making good on his protectionist rhetoric, meanwhile, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, thus empowering China and hurting the American economy, and then provoked a diplomatic crisis  with Mexico by signing an executive order to start building a border wall that he insists he will somehow make Mexico pay for. When the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, resolutely refused to ante up, the White House threatened to impose a 20 percent tariff on Mexican goods, leading him to cancel a planned summit. It is a mystery how America will benefit from aggravating relations with our third-largest trading partner and a vital ally in the battle against drug trafficking and illegal migration — but Trump is clearly intent on provoking just such a crisis because of the anti-Mexican animus he has long displayed. (Remember his racist remarks  about Judge Gonzalo Curiel or his rhetoric  about Mexican “rapists” and “criminals” with which he launched his campaign?)

The background music accompanying this horror show has been Trump’s nonstop taunts of the “lying” news media, culminating in this Sunday morning tweet: “Somebody with

aptitude and conviction should buy the FAKE NEWS and failing and either run it correctly or let it fold with dignity!” Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan couldn’t have put it better; this is exactly the strategy they have pursued to silence press criticism. To make sure that no one missed the message, Trump’s enforcer, Stephen Bannon, told  the press to “keep its mouth shut.”

There isn’t any new Trump, just as there was never a “new Nixon.” It’s the same old Trump that we saw all during the campaign and indeed during his previous 69 years on this Earth: offensive, divisive, prickly, bombastic, impetuous, conspiratorial, and resistant to any evidence that contradicts his idée fixe. And to the extent that anybody is calling the shots in this presidency besides the president himself, it isn’t Vice President Pence, Chief of Staff Priebus, or House Speaker Ryan. It’s Bannon, the former publisher of Breitbart, a website that he has proudly described as a “platform” for the racist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic “alt-right.”

This is looking very much like the Bannon Regency. It was Bannon and his sidekick Stephen Miller, a young former aide to senator-turned-attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions, who, according to the Wall Street Journal, wrote  Trump’s kick-them-in-the-teeth inaugural address. And it was the two Steves who, according to CNN, ran the rollout of the immigration executive order on Friday afternoon, doing an end run around the normal interagency process and overruling the Department of Homeland Security to insist that the entry ban apply to hundreds of thousands of permanent residents who happened to hail from one of the seven banned Muslim countries.

Bannon’s ascendancy was ratified with the release of an unprecedented presidential order appointing him to the National Security Council’s principals committee while kicking off the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence. Who needs to hear from intelligence or military professionals when you can hear from the publisher of Breitbart?

Imagine George W. Bush appointing Karl Rove to the principals committee. Or Barack Obama appointing David Axelrod. It would never have happened. And even if it had happened, it would have been far less disquieting than appointing Bannon, because Rove and Axelrod are far more mainstream figures than he is.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s lame justification for this shift was to say  that Bannon deserves to be on the NSC because he’s a “former naval officer.” Yes, it’s true, Bannon was a junior naval officer more than 30 years ago, without ever seeing combat. If that’s the standard to qualify for the nation’s most important security committee, then there are literally millions of veterans who are better qualified, having served more recently, seen more action, or attained

higher rank.

One wonders how Secretary of Defense James Mattis and soon-to-be Secretary of State Rex Tillerson feel about having a political hack with extremist views elevated to be their equals. Just as one wonders how Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly feels about having a hugely important immigration order issued without, apparently, any consultation with him. If they don’t push back now — and strongly — threatening to quit if necessary, they are tacitly accepting that they will be taking orders from Bannon for the rest of the administration.

As a Never Trumper, I sincerely wished that my fears about the Trump presidency would prove unfounded and overblown. But if anything I underestimated just how capriciously he would rule. If Trump continues the way he started, he will usher in Democratic congressional majorities in 2018, leading to impeachment proceedings, and a Democratic president in 2020 — likely on the present trajectory to be Elizabeth Warren. But there is an awful lot of damage that he can cause in the meantime. And he’s just getting started.

That last line 

 

[RustyShackleford]

No we are not doctors. But you do know that when we admit patients doctors have to issue an official diagnosis right.

Never admitted a patient with transgender disorder. Lmk when that's apart of the DSM fam.

So, your argument is hinged on it not being in the DSM.

Wasn't it in the DSM? Same with homosexuality being in the DSM in the 70's. And they removed both. Why? Because there was evidence to support that it wasn't in the DSM? No. There is zero evidence to support that transgenderism isn't a mental illness. Same with homosexuality. But that got removed in the 70's because the political landscape changed.

Usually, how the DSM determines these things is with holding board meetings where they go over the evidence. Since there is no evidence, this leads me to believe that this too is because of political pressure.

Actually the WHO does classify it as a mental illness, this was done back in 1990. But based on field studies and scientific research, they are going to declassify it.

So yes, the science is on one side of the argument.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...thats-about-to-change/?utm_term=.07c96dbe1eff

@RustyShackleford And this is where you should stay in your own lane, pop.

The "study" they link, which is what WHO is going off of, is this one right here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(16)30165-1/abstract

Just by reading the title, "Removing transgender identity from the classification of mental disorders: a Mexican field study for ICD-11", I can disprove it. (And no, Rusty, it's not because they studied Mexicans.)

Simply put, a field study is a general method of collecting data; interviews, questionnaires etc. That's not science. That's not how the DSM goes about classifying or declassifying mental illness's.

Side note: "Participants reported first awareness of transgender identity at a mean age of 5·6 years". lol this is like asking a child who is schizo about their schizophrenia disorder "i first noticed dragons talking to me at age 6".

I guess you didn't bother to read this part

In 2014, from April to August, Reed and his team interviewed 250 transgender adults who were receiving transgender-related health services at the Condesa Specialized Clinic in Mexico City. They asked them about their childhoods, when they knew they were transgender, and what kinds of reactions they had gotten from work, school or family.

Reed found that many of the people he interviewed experienced a lot of distress in their lives. Later, using mathematical modeling, he found a good way to predict who was suffering — but the most important determining factor was not being transgender, it was something else.

“We found distress and dysfunction were very powerfully predicted by the experiences of social rejection or violence that people had,” he said. “But they were not actually predicted by gender incongruence itself.”

Now explain to me how an econometric modeling is also not science.

Furthermore, the DSM updated their stance on transgender people in 2012:

Until now, the term “gender identity disorder” has been used to diagnose people who are transgender. For conservatives, this has provided rhetorical carte blanche to describe the entire trans committee as disordered, delusional, and mentally ill. In some cases, this diagnosis has even been used to discriminate against trans people, with claims that they are unfit parents or employees, as examples. On the other hand, insurance companies have been more willing to cover the expenses associated with transition under this language, because treatment for a disorder is considered medically necessary, rather than cosmetic.

The new manual will diagnose transgender people with “Gender Dysphoria,” which communicates the emotional distress that can result from “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender.” This will allow for affirmative treatment and transition care without the stigma of disorder. Earlier this year, the APA also released new health guidelines for transgender patients, as well as a position statement affirming transgender care and civil rights. Both documents align with a new standard for respecting trans people in the medical community.

The the transgender community, and the Mexico study are arguing that the distress is not the feelings of being assigned the wrong gender, but from the environment in which the person has to grow up in. It is research building on research (that tends to happen in scientific research)

Sidenote: Maybe you should take a side job as a researcher. Because you child example is rather, well, childish. The survey are usually detailed and designed in a way to control for measurement error that would add Endogeneity to their model.

So maybe instead of telling me to stay in my lane, your *** you stay off the road. Pop

 

[Belgium]

@Ben Roethlisberger

The American Psychology Association does not define gender non-conformity as inherently a mental disorder. What used to be known in psychology as gender identity disorder has been reclassified in the DSM-5 to "gender dysphoria" because its previous denomination was deemed stigmatizing. Gender dysphoria is strong clinical symptoms of stress, anxiety, ... associated with feeling like you were born in the wrong body. There are a number of problems with blanket classifications of transgenders as mentally ill. First is the stigmatization of mental illness, hence why it has been reclassified in the DSM-5 to not be referred to as such.

Homosexuality used to be in the DSM as well, it was removed for similar reasons and should remain that way because more recent studies indicate biological causes, as do studies on gender dysphoria. Homosexuality has been observed in a number of animals as well, which further supports that theory.

The "choice" or nurture argument for both homosexuals and transgenders is flawed.

 The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) conducted a consensus process in order to make recommendations for revision of the DSM diagnoses of Gender Identity Disorders. This is a report from the work group proposing new diagnostic criteria for Gender Identity Disorders for adults if the diagnosis were to be retained in the next revision of the DSM. The group recommended changing the diagnosis to one based on distress rather than on identity, on which the current diagnosis is based. Hence, they proposed changing the name of the diagnosis from Gender Identity Disorder to the more accurate and less pathologizing Gender Dysphoria, a name familiar to the field, used before, and describing the condition of distress. They proposed the following criteria for a diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria in Adults: (a) strong and persistent distress with physical sex characteristics or ascribed social gender role that is incongruent with persistent gender identity, and (b) the distress is clinically significant or causes impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning and this distress or impairment is not solely due to external prejudice or discrimination. There was consensus that a transgender identity is not pathology. Gender variant individuals are not inherently disordered; rather, the distress of gender dysphoria is the psychological problem.

Those who suffer from gender dysphoria have a very hard time in life and it's no surprise their suicide rates are far above average. Referring to them as mentally ill is not only conflicting with standard psychology guidelines, it can also increase the level of clinical stress and anxiety they endure as a result of their condition. They have to deal with both the constant feeling of being born in the wrong body and stigmatization from society.

Thus, referring to them as mentally ill comes off as demeaning and ignorant regardless of the intent of such remarks. Whether it is meant offensively or not, that's the impression it gives. People who are not qualified to judge mental health or lack the education on a specific condition or even what constitutes as mental illness have no place in making such comments.

Furthermore "I don't want to encourage mental illness" is by all means ignorant because studies have also indicated biological factors such as genetic predisposition/abnormalities, hormone exposure during pregnancy, ...

"Encourage mental illness" in reference to transgenders suggests that many of them choose to inflict severe emotional distress on themselves and a life of stigmatization. And that couldn't be any more ignorant.

 

[deleted]

Field research doesn't count as science now?

 

[RustyShackleford]

Field research doesn't count as science now?

Someone should tell the Census Bureau and all the social scienctist that rely on their data this.

 

[rolaholic]

Field research doesn't count as science now?

Alternative science/research >