All purpose news and politics thread part VII: News & Politics Total Landscaping

[Tendrin]

It's really simple: if it's being spread by the right, at this point, you have to assume it's a lie.

[numberthirty]

My retirement account is meaningless compared to the 3.7% who are looking for work.

Meanwhile, out in actual reality...

https://www.fool.com/research/how-ma...ans-own-stock/

How Many Americans Own Stock? About 158 Million -- But the Wealthiest 1% Own More Than Half

Stock ownership by level of wealth

While more than half of U.S. adults own stock, most don't own much. The wealthiest 1% holds 53% of stocks, worth $19.16 trillion.

If you expand to the top 10%, that group holds 88.6% of stocks, which have a value of $28 trillion.

In comparison, the rest of the country has seen stock ownership dwindle. The bottom 50% of Americans in terms of net worth only owns 0.6% of stocks, which is worth $21 billion.

Trends in stock ownership reflect those in wealth inequality. Over the past two decades, the top 1% of Americans expanded their share of stocks owned, while all other economic segments saw their share of stocks owned decline.

Stock ownership by race

Stock ownership is dramatically split along racial lines, with white Americans owning 89% of stocks having a total value of $31.87 trillion.

The share of stocks owned by white Americans has gradually declined from 96.2% in 1989. But the breakdown of stock ownership by race is still far from reflecting the racial breakdown of the U.S. population.

Despite making up 13.8% of the U.S. population, Black Americans only own 1.1% of stocks, worth $300 billion. The percentage of Black Americans who own stocks has declined since 2012 while the value of stocks held by Black Americans has grown.

Hispanic Americans own a smaller share of stocks even though they make up 18.9% of the U.S. population. Hispanic Americans own 0.5% of stocks, worth $170 billion. The share of stocks owned by Hispanic Americans is lower now than it was in 1989.

[Tendrin]

A survey of over 90,000 trans people in 2022 found 94% reported being “very satisfied” with their transition-related medical care — a remarkable result, experts say, give that such a high satisfaction rate is rare for any medical treatment, much less one that has been the subject of so much political division over the years.

Even though the survey respondents were self selected, it’s still a remarkable result. Such a high satisfaction rate is rare for any medical treatment, much less one that has been the subject of so much political division over the years.

One possible reason for such a high satisfaction rate is that gender affirming care, especially surgical procedures, is still somewhat difficult to obtain for the average trans person. Insurance company practices and policies about these procedures can be difficult to decipher, there aren’t that many surgeons practicing in this area to begin with, and trans people still need to shell out hundreds of dollars to get therapists and a psychologist to sign off on the procedures.

Additionally, societal transphobia presents its own blockade to transitioning. Trans people are routinely trapped in the closet by the threat of familial or spousal abandonment if they decide to come out and seek transition care.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/oth...b94bcb782&ei=5

Gee. It's almost like trans people are already forced to jump through an enormous number of hoops to get access to care.

As such, critics were quick to jump at a chance to downplay the results of the survey, with some of the louder voices claiming that we should wholesale discard the data because detransitioners weren’t included in the sample. This is a silly argument for several reasons.

LOL.

First, the survey administrators were careful about drawing from the most diverse set of trans respondents as possible, going to great lengths to reach respondents who are Black, Indigenous, impoverished, people of color and other marginalized identities within the trans community.

Second, all indications point to the fact that there are only a tiny number of detransitioners to begin with. A similar survey of detransitioners by one of the leading anti-trans researchers was only able to find 100 respondents. Adding another hundred people to this 90,000 person survey wouldn’t move the needle in terms of satisfaction rates.

There are no hard numbers about the potential size of the detransitioner community, though anti-trans activists will have you believe that the number is growing quickly, sometimes citing the number of subscribers on a detransition Subreddit where anyone can sign up.

Besides the raw numbers, I don’t see why thousands of happily transitioned trans people should be considered with equal weight with a handful of regretful detransitioners.

The regret rates on other forms of medical care are significantly higher than that of transition care. For example, surveys have shown that knee surgeries have a regret rate of up to 33%, yet we don’t see an international campaign to ban knee surgeries in the name of those who regret it.

It’s important to always keep in mind that the anti-trans movement is not seeking to right some alleged wrongs of medical practice — it’s about opposition to trans lives altogether. We see this all the time, from British TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists) talking about reducing the number of trans people because we’re a “problem for the sane world,” to a Daily Wire contributor standing on stage at CPAC demanding we “eradicate transgenderism.”

Everything else — the overt focus on a small handful of detransitioners, to the constant downplay of pro-trans data — is in service to the ultimate goal of ridding society of trans people. This is why a transparent report like the U.S. Trans Survey is so important to have on record. And this is why you shouldn’t let the abundance of poorly sourced anti-trans rhetoric fool you.

Remember, one NYT article by Pamela Paul, an anti-trans bigot laundering anti-trans narratives for the Alliance Defending Freedom is 'helpful', but countless data points proving otherwise are apparently irrelevant. All that matters is detransition rates, of which even the most obnoxious anti-trans losers can't find a significant number of to bolster their arguments.

[Kirby101]

Meanwhile, out in ]

In reality, unemployment is at a 50 year low, wage growth is outpacing inflation and we have growth beating expectations.
But I am sure you can find people not happy with Biden.

[Tami]

I found this interesting

Why are Republicans more likely to suffer hearing loss?

About 12 percent of Americans have at least some hearing loss in both ears, the model found. And many of those people have something in common: age. Hearing trouble hounds 35 percent of folks in their late 60s and early 70s, and 73 percent of those age 75 or older.

If we set aside those groups and look only at people between the ages of 35 and 64 — people who have yet to experience most age-related hearing loss but are old enough to have been exposed to a lifetime of aural assault — we saw some new patterns. For example, hearing loss shows up most frequently in communities with more jobs in the natural resources, construction and maintenance industries, which makes sense given the exposure to workplace noise.

So, okay, hearing loss appears to be yet another manifestation of the urban-rural divide. At most, we figured these trends merited perhaps a brief mention in one of the Department’s voluminous reports on other fresher topics.

But then we read the paper again and noticed a line we hadn’t clocked before: “those living in rural areas experience higher rates of [hearing loss], perhaps due to potential noise exposure from outdoor work and recreation such as forestry, all-terrain vehicles, and recreational firearms.”

Could gun ownership help explain the partisan divide in hearing loss?

Americans who have fired 1,000 rounds or more face three times the rate of hearing loss as those who have never fired a weapon, according to an analysis of 2011 and 2012 observations from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It’s a bit lower once you adjust for age and other factors — probably closer to 1.8 times the rate. .

“If ever there was an epidemic in the hunting community, it’d be hearing loss,” begins former editor Sam Lungren in MeatEater, an outlet that embraces hunting but not the culture wars that often go with it. “When target practice is a way of life, it’s easy to become blasé about earmuffs. When that buck is about to get over the ridge, jamming in ear plugs is the last of our worries.”

That kind of heavy gun use ranked up there with diabetes, heavy smoking and prolonged exposure to very loud noise at work as one of the most significant risk factors for hearing loss in the 2011-2012 data. And it’s not a niche hobby. In 2011 and 2012, 13 percent of U.S. adults were heavy firearms users, meaning they’d fired more than 1,000 rounds, and nearly half said they were exposed to gun noise for their hobby or job.

And gun ownership tilts heavily rightward. As recently as the early 1990s, Democrats were almost as likely to own guns as Republicans, according to the long-running General Social Survey from NORC (an organization that began as the National Opinion Research Center just in time to measure U.S. attitudes toward entering World War II). But a partisan divide has emerged with alacrity. In 2022, 52 percent of Republicans had guns at home, compared with just 28 percent of Democrats.

[aja_christopher]

Meanwhile, out in actual reality...

https://www.fool.com/research/how-ma...ans-own-stock/

Everyone lives in “actual reality” and assuming that you do while others don’t — even when so often proven wrong by factual data — is nothing but blind arrogance.

For example — most Americans in “actual reality” have a 401k plan and many therefore benefit from record stock market gains: this may not be your reality but it is reality.

Objectively speaking, it is simple enough to say that America has had a comparatively excellent post pandemic economy but that not everyone has benefited — that has already been factually established.

Some people are doing well in this economy and others are not — but it says a lot that you would rather trash the accomplishments of Democrats by any means necessary than criticize Republicans for attacking black people, Latinos, and the LGBT community.

Even if one feels Biden hasn’t done enough there is absolutely no reason not to give him credit for what he has done — least of all defeating Trump and steering the American economy back on track.

You attacked Biden and Hillary over the Crime Bill that was co-sponsored by black leaders yet remain silent when Republicans do everything in their power to limit the power of black voters and now you do the same with the economy — this moral and ethical inconsistency makes it impossible to see any real foundation to the views being offered outside of attacking the Democratic Party.

But don't you understand that highlighting 1% of an already very small group is important to make Trans a political issue. It is really very simple.

I mean why would a Republican want to talk about their Party leader saying he would capitulate to Putin in Europe when they can attack the Trans community.

They wouldn’t.

Nor would they discuss the hatred and bigotry aimed at said communities by Republican leaders.

[numberthirty]

Everyone lives in “actual reality” and assuming that you do while others don’t — even when so often proven wrong by factual data — is nothing but blind arrogance.

Objectively speaking, it is simple enough to say that America has had a comparatively excellent post pandemic economy but that not everyone has benefited — that has already been factually established.

Some people are doing well in this economy and others are not — but it says a lot that you would rather trash the accomplishments of Democrats by any means necessary than criticize Republicans for attacking black people, Latinos, and the LGBT community.

Even if one feels Biden hasn’t done enough there is absolutely no reason not to give him credit for what he has done — least of all defeating Trump and steering the American economy back on track.

You attacked Biden and Hillary over the Crime Bill that was co-sponsored by black leaders yet remain silent when Republicans do everything in their power to limit the power of black voters and now you do the same with the economy — this moral and ethical inconsistency makes it impossible to see any real foundation to the views being offered outside of attacking the Democratic Party.

...

Just to point out the obvious...

If someone looks at the market doing well and sees that as an accomplishment of any political party?

There probably ain't much of a point in even attempting to explain to them exactly how poor their vision is when it comes to this one.

The market?

It buys politicians. Not Democrats or Republicans, but politicians. There's a perfectly good reason that neither Democrats or Republicans have even so much as attempted to do away with members of Congress being able to buy and own stocks during the time that they serve in Congress.

The market does what it does under it's own steam. Attempting to give either one of the big two any credit for that the market is essentially going to do exactly what it does no matter what?

It's incredibly foolish, at best.

Someone could go into "Regular Folks..." versus the market further, but if someone is intent on turning this thing into a win for a political party no matter what?

Probably not much of a point.

[aja_christopher]

Just to point out the obvious...

If someone looks at the market doing well and sees that as an accomplishment of any political party?

There probably ain't much of a point in even attempting to explain to them exactly how poor their vision is when it comes to this one.

The market?

It buys politicians. Not Democrats or Republicans, but politicians. There's a perfectly good reason that neither Democrats or Republicans have even so much as attempted to do away with members of Congress being able to buy and own stocks during the time that they serve in Congress.

The market does what it does under it's own steam. Attempting to give either one of the big two any credit for that the market is essentially going to do exactly what it does no matter what?

It's incredibly foolish, at best.

Someone could go into "Regular Folks..." versus the market further, but if someone is intent on turning this thing into a win for a political party no matter what?

Probably not much of a point.

Many other relevant issues were mentioned other than the stock market — apparently some “folks” talk a good game about “actual reality” but then try to pretend they don’t see it when it’s right in front of them.

[numberthirty]

Many other relevant issues were mentioned other than the stock market — apparently some “folks” talk a good game about “actual reality” but then try to pretend they don’t see it when it’s right in front of them.

Someone was literally just talking about their retirement account after the market breaking a record again came up.

That is what was mentioned.

[aja_christopher]

Someone was literally just talking about their retirement account after the market breaking a record again came up.

That is what was mentioned.

They were mentioned in the post you replied to — you saw them.

[aja_christopher]

[aja_christopher]

That's a bit of a motte and bailey from the initial goal post of whether we should expect there to be no open election in 2028 if Trump wins again, since we're not talking about whether they're expected to succeed, but whether they'll make the effort.

But here's what I think...
I predict that if Trump wins in the next presidential election, there will be no serious or semi-serious effort to cancel future elections and keep him in the White House longer, or to allow him to run again in 2028 when he will be 82 (Biden is 82, but legally able to run for another term; if he loses, a big part of it will be his age.)

There has already been a “serious/semi-serious” attempt to overturn the election by the Republicans led by Trump on Jan 6.



Which is still ongoing under Republicans led by Trump who has yet to admit he lost the election.

What prevents them isn’t lack of desire but incompetence.

[lilyrose]

I don't think we can afford this both sides **** this year.

[aja_christopher]

I don't think we can afford this both sides **** this year.

Agreed — posted more for nostalgia value than anything else.

If anything there is a lesson in the fact that Biden moves slowly but very effectively.



A more serious take on the matter at hand.

[Malvolio]

I don't think we can afford this both sides **** this year.

I don't think Jon Stewart is saying that both sides suck. He's just saying that you shouldn't assume Biden is perfect because he's not Trump and then act all disappointed when you realize Biden isn't perfect. I will vote for Biden, but I reserve the right to criticize him when I disagree with him. And I think Biden is okay with the occasional criticism. He knows he's not perfect and can take some constructive criticism, unlike Trump, who, if you criticize him in even the smallest way, you automatically become his enemy.