All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[Tami]

Why is trump shitting on Reagans legacy ? I know his cult is strong but I thought Reagan was a bigger deal to them.

Trump is doing it to the legacy of nearly every former President, regardless of Party or Politics. Is his way of saying to his Base 'I am the Best President ever', even though the rest of know he's the worst. It's basically an ego trip.

[Tami]

For what it's worth, my preferences in certain elections.

Overall US Senate control= Republicans
Arizona Senate election= Martha McSally
Florida Senate election= Rick Scott
Indiana Senate election= Mike Braun
Missouri Senate election= Josh Hawley
Nevada Senate election= Dean Heller
New Jersey Senate election= Bob Hugin
North Dakota Senate election= Kevin Cramer
Tennessee Senate election= Phil Bredesen
Texas Senate election= Beto O'Rourke
Virginia Senate election= Tim Kaine (this is probably the least competitive of the elections, but Corey Stewart deserves a massive loss.)

Overall US House control= Republicans
Alaska's At-Large Congressional District= Alyse Galvin (incumbent Republican Don Young does not seem well)
Arizona's 2nd Congressional District= Lea Marquez Peterson
California's 48th Congressional District= Harley Rouda (Dana Rohrabacher deserves to lose)
California's 50th Congressional District= Ammar Campa-Najjar (incumbent Republican Duncan Hunter is running for reelection while indicted)
Florida's 27th Congressional District= Maria Elvira Salazar
New York's 27th Congressional District= Nate McMurray (incumbent Republican Chris Collins is running for reelection while indicted)
Texas' 23rd Congressional District= Will Hurd
Utah's 4th Congressional District= Mia Love
Washington's 5th Congressional District= Cathy McMorris Rodgers
Washington's 8th Congressional District= Dino Rossi

Arizona gubernatorial election= Doug Ducey
Florida gubernatorial election= Ron DeSantis
Georgia gubernatorial election= Brian Kemp
Iowa gubernatorial election= Kim Reynolds
Kansas gubernatorial election= Laura Kelly
Maine gubernatorial election= Shawn Moody
Nevada gubernatorial election= Adam Laxalt
Ohio gubernatorial election= Richard Cordray
Oregon gubernatorial election= Knute Beuller
Wisconsin gubernatorial election= Scott Walker
Some Republican Governors up for reelection are among the most popular executives in the country (Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, Vermont) so the elections aren't considered competitive.

I'm curious if anyone has any preferences that go beyond wanting their party to win every competitive election.

Allowing the Republicans to retain control means we lose control of everything, since the Republican refuse to do their job and be a check on the President. Which means that, if you vote to have the House and Senate be in Republican control, then you are voting for Trump. There isn't a single Republican running for public office who would stand up to to Trump, not one.

[Malvolio]

Why is trump shitting on Reagans legacy ? I know his cult is strong but I thought Reagan was a bigger deal to them.

It's just the name Reagan now. If a candidate came along today with the exact same policy proposals as Reagan, he could never get out of a Republican primary.

[Mister Mets]

No, they're just in the process of first making it a mental disorder again. THEN it'll be effectively illegal to be Trans as it leads to self-harm or some such excuse.

The proposal seems to be about how to define sex for the purposes of various policies.

For the last year, health and human services has privately argued that the term “sex” was never meant to include gender identity or even homosexuality, and that the lack of clarity allowed the Obama administration to wrongfully extend civil rights protections to people who should not have them.

But officials at the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that their push to limit the definition of sex for the purpose of federal civil rights laws resulted from their own reading of the laws and from a court decision.

Mr. Severino, while serving as the head of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, was among the conservatives who blanched at the Obama administration’s expansion of sex to include gender identity, which he called “radical gender ideology.”

Within the medical community, sex is seen as distinct from gender, and determined by biology. This is a view shared by Stanford, the American Psychological Association, the World Health Organization, and Planned Parenthood.

https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spr...ur-health.html

“We don’t know how to measure gender,” says Stefanick, director of the Stanford Women and Sex Differences in Medicine, or WSDM (pronounced “wisdom”), Center. “Sex is generally assigned at birth, based on external genitalia, after which a broad range of biological, particularly reproductive, sex differences are assumed. Individuals are then, usually, forced into a binary model of gender — with distinct masculine and feminine categories — when the possibilities are much broader and more expansive.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...im-so-confused

According to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, "Gender is cultural and is the term to use when referring to women and men as social groups. Sex is biological; use it when the biological distinction is predominant." And according to the World Health Organization, "Sex refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women. Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women."

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/le...ender-identity

It’s common for people to confuse sex, gender, and gender identity. But they’re actually all different things.

Sex is a label — male or female — that you’re assigned by a doctor at birth based on the genitals you’re born with and the chromosomes you have. It goes on your birth certificate.

Gender is much more complex: It’s a social and legal status, and set of expectations from society, about behaviors, characteristics, and thoughts. Each culture has standards about the way that people should behave based on their gender. This is also generally male or female. But instead of being about body parts, it’s more about how you’re expected to act, because of your sex.

Gender identity is how you feel inside and how you express your gender through clothing, behavior, and personal appearance. It’s a feeling that begins very early in life.

It appears that the Obama administration defined sex differently in order to extend protections and obligations, in which case the Trump administration is just going back to the more widely accepted definition. It is self-serving for conservatives at this point, although there is utility in clarity, and if you want the Trump administration to have less power in general, you shouldn't be in favor of presidential administrations changing definitions of terms from the commonly accepted meanings in order to achieve policy objectives.

[JCAll]

I've never understood this paranoid conspiracy bs the Republicans try to sell that Trans Women (M to F) are just sexual assaulters looking for an easy way to attack women. Because transitioning is neither cheap nor easy. You know what is ? Buying a hooker.

It makes more sense if you start to think that they don't actually believe the lie they're selling. A lame excuse is just a lame excuse to justify what they wanted to to anyway.
Like how Saudi Arabia doesn't actually expect people to believe they're story about the reporter whose arms and legs mysteriously fell off.

[ed2962]

I've never understood this paranoid conspiracy bs the Republicans try to sell that Trans Women (M to F) are just sexual assaulters looking for an easy way to attack women. Because transitioning is neither cheap nor easy. You know what is ? Buying a hooker.

Male sexual predators rarely ( almost never?) pretend to be trans in order to prey on females. Some conservatives try to disguise the issue as some sort of safety for women issue, but I think it's really about trying to control LGBT people.

[Tendrin]

Hey, look. 'Nuance'.

[Kirby101]

Hey, look. 'Nuance'.

Ron Desantis and Brian Kemp are both openly racist. Kemp is overtly disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters to steal the election. DeSantis spoke at a White Supremacist rally.
Both are among the Trumpieast Trumsters running.
Shows Met's true leanings, not really a centrist Republican after all, just another GOP Trump supporter.

[Panfoot]

It appears that the Obama administration defined sex differently in order to extend protections and obligations, in which case the Trump administration is just going back to the more widely accepted definition. It is self-serving for conservatives at this point, although there is utility in clarity, and if you want the Trump administration to have less power in general, you shouldn't be in favor of presidential administrations changing definitions of terms from the commonly accepted meanings in order to achieve policy objectives.

That you can just justify this away as righting the ship over the previous administration just "achieving policy objectives", well then that just shows what a complete lack of empathy you have for other people, especially an already HEAVILY discriminated against minority.

[Gray Lensman]

That you can just justify this away as righting the ship over the previous administration just "achieving policy objectives", well then that just shows what a complete lack of empathy you have for other people, especially an already HEAVILY discriminated against minority.

Especially when seen in the light of everything else Trump has done against them. Alone, it could possibly be dismissed. As part of the greater whole, the intention is obvious.

[Dalak]

The proposal seems to be about how to define sex for the purposes of various policies.

And it will be abused like every redefinition made by this administration, or in other words:

I mean, if you define it out of existence, then they're a man in a woman's restroom and can be arrested.

So I'm joining in the call to stow the BS nuance on this subject.

[PaulBullion]

Ron Desantis and Brian Kemp are both openly racist. Kemp is overtly disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters to steal the election. DeSantis spoke at a White Supremacist rally.
Both are among the Trumpieast Trumsters running.
Shows Met's true leanings, not really a centrist Republican after all, just another GOP Trump supporter.

The fact that DeSantis is 12% behind in the most recent FL poll by CNN shows that now that people got to know him, only extremists who are ok with racism would still vote for him.

[Mister Mets]

That you can just justify this away as righting the ship over the previous administration just "achieving policy objectives", well then that just shows what a complete lack of empathy you have for other people, especially an already HEAVILY discriminated against minority.

Am I mistaken on anything I've said regarding the policy, or the definition of sex?

Ron Desantis and Brian Kemp are both openly racist. Kemp is overtly disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters to steal the election. DeSantis spoke at a White Supremacist rally.
Both are among the Trumpieast Trumsters running.
Shows Met's true leanings, not really a centrist Republican after all, just another GOP Trump supporter.

I disagree with the notion that Kemp and DeSantis are openly racist, although both are flawed candidates.

However, why should a centrist Republican embrace Abrams and Gillum?

Hey, look. 'Nuance'.

The pushback against facts worries me.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump's approval rating is improving.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...oval-6179.html

Who knew people in the Rust Belt would be so forgiving about covering up a grisly murder committed by Ay-rabs.

What do Midwesterners care about Ay-rabs? Some of them probably thought the poor guy had it coming for whatever reason. Meanwhile, speaking of the late Mr. Khashoggi:

Conservatives mount a whisper campaign smearing Khashoggi in defense of Trump

Hard-line Republicans and conservative commentators are mounting a whispering campaign against Jamal Khashoggi that is designed to protect President Trump from criticism of his handling of the dissident journalist’s alleged murder by operatives of Saudi Arabia — and support Trump’s continued aversion to a forceful response to the oil-rich desert kingdom.

In recent days, a cadre of conservative House Republicans allied with Trump has been privately exchanging articles from right-wing outlets that fuel suspicion of Khashoggi, highlighting his association with the Muslim Brotherhood in his youth and raising conspiratorial questions about his work decades ago as an embedded reporter covering Osama bin Laden, according to four GOP officials involved in the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Those aspersions — which many lawmakers have been wary of stating publicly because of the political risks of doing so — have begun to flare into public view as conservative media outlets have amplified the claims, which are aimed in part at protecting Trump as he works to preserve the U.S.-Saudi relationship and avoid confronting the Saudis on human rights.

Why am I not surprised this has happened? Gutless, cowardly, despicable Republicans willing to do ANYTHING to protect Trump, even going so far as to smear the name of a man who was brutally murdered, allegedly by agents of his own government. I’d love to hear our resident Republican enablers defend this vile ****.

[PaulBullion]

Checking in with the leader of the free world:

Germany will not export arms to Saudi Arabia while the current uncertainty over the fate of journalist Jamal Khashoggi persists, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday.

Campaigning for her party in a regional election, Merkel repeated to a news conference her earlier condemnation of Khashoggi’s killing, which Saudi Arabia admitted had taken place inside its consulate in Istanbul.

“First, we condemn this act in the strongest terms,” she said. “Second, there is an urgent need to clarify what happened - we are far from this having been cleared up and those responsible held to account ... As far as arms exports are concerned, those can’t take place in the current circumstances.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/saud...-idUSS8N1TF01R