uncle bernard

It's called hyperbole. It's a rhetorical tool to demonstrate how stupid something is. In this case, the idea that the president can break the law because he's president.

Trump's lawyers explicitly argued that a political assassination is an "official act."

What's to stop Biden from ordering a drone strike on Trump now that he has immunity for all official acts? Just say we have "intelligence" that he was in the presence of a suspected Hamas militant.

"They are not an agent of the Israeli government." Incredibly misleading. AIPAC works in close coordination with the Israeli government. That's not a conspiracy or secret. It's a fact. Check out the history here: https://www.wrmea.org/north-america/aipac-election-role-raises-question-of-foreign-agent-registration.html "A strong advocate for registration is M.J. Rosenberg, who worked at AIPAC from 1974 to 1976 and from 1982 to 1986 and worked on Capitol Hill for 15 years. In an article published in The Forward in 2018, Rosenberg wrote: “It’s time for AIPAC to register as a foreign agent...it is a registered lobby on Capitol Hill and it’s AIPAC whose clout on matters relating to Israel exceeds the clout of the NRA on matters related to guns.” Rosenberg points out that AIPAC, which is heavily involved in the U.S. political system, funds candidates who are perceived to be pro-Israel and defunds incumbents who do not subscribe to Israel’s agenda. AIPAC gets away with it, Rosenberg says, “because its founder, I. L. Kenen, came up with a legal loophole by which AIPAC is defined not as a lobby for a foreign state but [as] Americans who support that state…I worked at AIPAC directly for Kenen back in the 1970s…he told me that he came up with the AIPAC formula…so that AIPAC would be legally permitted to engage in politics and not have to reveal its activities.” "Pro-Israel Americans have a right to stump for their cause without accusations of dual loyalty, nefarious Jewish control etc." Would you be okay with an identical organization on behalf of Chinese-Americans?

Chinese spy balloons? Be serious lol. You think they're gonna invade or something?

Yes, typically you'll see candidates from at least the Libertarian and Green party. Getting people to vote for them is another question when the overall system is schewed towards two parties. Most people view that as a throwaway vote. This is a consequence of our "First Past the Post" system where the winner takes all. Theoretically, one party can control every seat in government by winning every race 50.1-49.9 which gives you a government that is not close to representative of the people. The alternative system we mostly see around the world is Proportional Representation where the proportion of seats in government are allocated based on the proportion of votes received. I think this would fix a ton of issues with out system. It leads to multiple parties and encourages coalition building between parties instead of the two party gridlock we have now. There are downsides too. The big one is reps having stronger ties to the national party than the locale they represent, but I think that's largely true already anyway. If you've ever wondered why most European countries have more than two successful parties, this is why. In our system, a third party could gain significant support and still never come close to making it into the government.

That pretty much happens already.

the dems 100% deserve what they’re going to get in november and the “leadership” of the party should never live it down.

or maybe someone can answer this question: if puberty blockers are so barbaric and dangerous, why do all the GOP laws have exceptions allowing them to continue to be prescribed to non-trans kids? are non-trans kids not worth protecting from this evil?

@mspart 15,000 dead children in Gaza: "Keep bombing, not our responsibility to protect kids." 5,000 kids given a decades-old medication with no documented substantial side-effects: "BARBARISM"

The reason you know the hysteria about puberty blockers is BS is because they were invented decades ago for non-trans children and have been used safely for that entire time without documented substantial long-term effects. Now, when that same medicine is given to trans kids at the same doses for the same purposes, it's "barbaric?" @mspart didn't know this because his entire view on the issue is shaped by his ideological attitude towards transgenderism and the conservative outrage propaganda he consumes. https://www.vice.com/en/article/epnzjk/no-one-had-a-problem-with-puberty-blockers-when-only-cis-kids-took-them "Endocrinologists in the Netherlands were the first to study puberty blockers in trans children, and recently told the Scientific American that, out of about 1,500 teens who were treated, none experienced any major side effects. Those researchers further found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that trans and nonbinary adolescents who receive gender-affirming care have fewer suicide attempts than those who didn’t receive early care."

I told you I agreed with you on no surgery for minors. You are not representing what is actually happening. Penises are not being cut off minors. I know that's the image that conservative activists want to put in people's heads, but it's not happening. Surgery for minors is extremely rare. Puberty blockers are extremely rare. Hormones for minors are rare. All three are reversible. Straight kids also occasionally get cosmetic surgery as minors, including the same surgery that makes up 99% of the surgeries on trans minors. Straight kids also take hormones for medical issues as well. They also take medication that can impact fertility long-term. You weren't freaking out about that and I'm sure you'll defend it now. Why? Because it's not about that for you. It's about eliminating transgenderism. You think every trans kid has been groomed or is severely mentally ill and any action that validates transgenderism is wrong. You don't care about protecting kids. You care about people not living the way you want them to.

Very simple question: Would you feel the same way about an identical lobby PAC spending billions on behalf of the Chinese government? Or even the French or Germans? Why do you think it's normal to allow a foreign country to have such a profound influence on our elections?

No, you are citing extremely isolated incidents and numbers out of context to portray the image that these things are happening all the time, everywhere. They aren't. If you cared, you'd take the time to read baseline statistics on it and not your political hack websites. Have there been some doctors who acted too hastily or unwisely? Yes, undoubtedly, because that happens across every field of medicine. Is there an epidemic of trans teens undergoing irreversible and/or damaging medical treatment? No, absolutely not. Can we stop pretending this is about protecting kids? It's about you thinking being trans is wrong and 1 trans kid is too many. Anything that makes being trans easier or more pleasant is to be attacked. Every possible barrier to living safely and comfortably as a trans person is to be attacked.

This is such a straw man. Nobody is singling out AIPAC as a boogeyman. It's one bad lobby among many bad lobbies. The only difference is that AIPAC and its defenders use cynical accusations of anti-semitism to deflect from the reality of what it is - an organization that's spent billions lobbying on behalf of a foreign nation. And I don't know if you noticed, but our support for Israel is a huge political issue right now. So don't play dumb when their lobbying mechanism gets a lot of attention.

are you against minors taking birth control? thyroid treatments? where’s the line?

the discourse on this issue is completely divorced from reality. you are being sold a crisis that does not exist.

when multiple studies have returned results of 50% of trans youth considering suicide, it’s not just fear, it’s reasonable concern. and again, i can’t stress enough how few trans teens are actually receiving drugs and/or surgery. the vast majority do not. there are 300,000 trans minors in this country. only 5% of them have taken any sort of hormones, about 1% on puberty blockers. right wing media would have you believe that every kid who comes out as trans gets hormones within the week with little oversight. that just isn’t true.

The ultimate source of there being any gender-affirming care for minors is the extremely high suicide rate among trans teens. Doctors are very afraid if they don’t treat them quickly, they will kill themselves. That’s the reality they deal with. If you want to slow the process down, you should be focused on creating a more hospitable society for these kids to go through their own process.

It’s not nearly as black and white as you make it out to be. Denying gender-affirmation for minors across the board has consequences too. Suicide rates will rise. Many will suffer tremendous emotional damage. There’s a rational middle ground (and I think most doctors are already there). Gender confirming surgery for minors is extremely rare. It’s mostly chest masculinization, which is actually more common among teenage boys. I’d support limiting any sort of surgery for minors, but I think the risk of puberty blockers is acceptable and we need to trust the parents and doctors to make the best decision for the kid. What you’re essentially advocating for is the government telling families which medical care they’re allowed to seek for their children. And fwiw, very few minors are receiving gender-affirming care, be it puberty blockers or surgery. The vast majority of trans teens don’t start treatment until they’re older if at all and the rate of detransition is extremely low. Recent studies have it at 2-10%, with most of them having never started any sort of treatment. Family and social discrimination is the number one cited reason for detransitioning. Most of this social panic is ideologically driven and not about protecting kids. It’s about forcing other people to ascribe to your ideology.

Let me guess, you don’t actually live in “our” cities. If you actually did, you’d know they’re as safe now as they’ve ever been. Just a bunch of scared, old suburbanites telling ghost stories because they watch too much cable news.

do you think all the campaign finance reform legislation they advocate for just wouldn’t apply to him? by magic or something?

The biggest shame is that congress is losing its stoutest member. Moving 405 with ease at the local YMCA. 48, no arch, close grip. Freak stuff.

His position in his district was always tenuous because of this. He was specifically targeted by AIPAC for this reason. They are going all out on the squad and he was the weakest link. Most of his district is in Westchester, a majority white and wealthy county. The wealthy residents were presented with a more conservative candidate and were inundated by endless attack adds. It was the most expensive House race of all time and most of that was from Latimer. To demonstrate the divide, Bowman won the portion of his district in the Bronx by 70 points. No reason is isolated on its own and Bowman certainly made some dumb mistakes, but this is a far more competitive race without AIPAC's involvement. Do none of you think it's wrong that a lobbying group *for a foreign country* is targeting specific members of congress and flooding elections with millions of dollars? I suppose you'll be just fine if China starts buying elections right?