USA Politics

Travis The Dragon said:
It is absolutely disgusting how Biden responded to the shootings in Nashville.
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Context matters. Biden was hosting a Small Business Association Women’s Business Summit, and he was the last speaker after a few others. He started with the same warmer tone as the other speakers, then shifted gears when talking about the shooting. This was not a press conference specifically to address the shooting, but an unrelated event where he took some time to talk about it. Yet you wouldn’t know that if you only watched right-wing media.

Here’s the unedited video:
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MrKnickerbocker said:
A child walked into a school and killed other children.
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I'm not sure you still count as a child at the age of 28.

The situation is a tragedy, of course. But horrors aside, it's also a very interesting intersection of politically charged topics that neither political wing is willing to talk about openly and honestly.

What do we currently know?
  • The shooter was a 28-year-old trans male (biologically female, identifies as male)
  • The shooter attended the targeted school as a child
  • The school is a small, private Christian school
  • The police have suggested that the shooter may have had other locations identified as potential targets as well
  • Biologically female mass shooters are exceedingly rare, <4% of all such shooters in the U.S.A. since the year 2000
The obvious questions one might want to ask are:
  • Was the shooter sexually abused while they were a student at the school?
  • Did people associated with the school torment the shooter in any way for their gender identity?
  • What set of mental health issues did the shooter have? Which ones had relationships to their upbringing, which ones had relationships to their gender dysphoria, and which ones should have been red flags for gun ownership, if any?
  • Was the shooter on hormone therapy, and if so, is there any relationship between that therapy and violent ideation, or a reduced inhibition to engaging in violent acts?
If you ask questions about sexual abuse or the school's attitude toward trans people, then one side will shut you down and label you an anti-Christian bigot. If you ask questions about mental health and hormone therapy, then the other side will shut you down and label you a transphobe. But situations like this require clear-headed analysis and a willingness to poke those sacred cows if you want to actually understand what happened and what it might tell you about the impact of larger social trends within the country.

What would the reaction be if it were eventually concluded through statistical analysis that people actively undergoing testosterone therapy should not be allowed to bear firearms because of the heightened risk of a violent outburst? That might create a pretty interesting coalition of NRA and trans folks to oppose it.
 
Jer said:
Was the shooter on hormone therapy, and if so, is there any relationship between that therapy and violent ideation, or a reduced inhibition to engaging in violent acts?
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There isn't. Trans people are underrepresented, just like biological women, as a subset of mass shooters, who remain overwhelmingly cisgender male. In my opinion, the fact that this shooter was trans is being seized on as part of the culture wars rather than any sort of real concern for gender therapy. Testosterone therapy has been used for decades for medical care, both for gender affirmation medication and for other medical concerns and there isn't any reliable link to violence concerns. Some transgender report feeling more violent in some studies, but the biases in the studies are highly suspect (source).
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
Wow. I literally read/saw 4 different sources on this and not a single one mentioned that.
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www.bbc.com

Nashville school shooter hid guns in parents' house

Police say the parents felt the suspect should not own weapons, but did not realise guns were in the house.
www.bbc.com
This newer article also mentions that the police found a manifesto from the shooter, so that should tell us a lot once it's made public. The shooter was also apparently under a doctor's care for an "emotional disorder".

Also:
www.nbcnews.com

Fear pervades trans community amid focus on Nashville shooter's gender identity

“We were already fearing for our lives. Now, it’s even worse,” one transgender advocate in the state said.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
What a waste of breath all of this is.

A child walked into a school and killed other children.

But let’s keep arguing about Trump vs. Biden instead of gun control.

Fucking despicable humans in this country.
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This place was sure keeping it Trump when he was in office. But you and others are right. There are much more important things to worry about than how the president acts. (Unless it's Trump :lol:)
 
The US has only ever once had a President who is a criminal, seditionist, traitor, narcissist, authoritarian, racist, possibly a rapist, misogynist, anti-science, conspiracy theorist and a lunatic hell bent on dragging the country into the dirt with him. You are right; he stands apart from the rest. One or two criteria might apply to a previous president or two, but this is a long list. Did he enact the occassional good policy? Sure, a broken analogue clock is right twice a day, but the Republicans can do so much better. Or could, they have radicalized to the extent that Ronald Reagan wouldn't remotely recognize it had he travelled into the future in the 80's.

It's laughable how the right wing claim to be "pro-life" while at the same time wants millions upon millions assault weapons floating around freely. Watch this GOP state senator get annihilated in a face-to-face debate with Jon Stewart.

 
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If elections were to happen now, Biden would win no matter who's GOP's nominee.

The Keys to the White House is a checklist of thirteen true/false statements that pertain to the circumstances surrounding a presidential election. When five or fewer of the following statements are false, the incumbent party candidate is predicted to win the election. When six or more are false, the incumbent party is predicted to lose.
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  1. Midterm gains: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. FALSE
  2. No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. TRUE
  3. Incumbent seeking re-election: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. TRUE
  4. No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. TRUE
  5. Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. TRUE
  6. Strong long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. ???
  7. Major policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. FALSE
  8. No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. TRUE
  9. No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. TRUE
  10. No foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. TRUE
  11. Major foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. FALSE
  12. Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. FALSE
  13. Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. TRUE
 
These "I can predict the president using several arbitrary metrics" that crop up every election season (and now a year in advance apparently) are so useless. We have a ridiculously small sample size of presidential elections, even smaller if you just count the modern era of polling. We don't even know who Biden's opponent is going to be and there isn't an active campaign happening right now.
 
Mosh said:
These "I can predict the president using several arbitrary metrics" that crop up every election season (and now a year in advance apparently) are so useless. We have a ridiculously small sample size of presidential elections, even smaller if you just count the modern era of polling. We don't even know who Biden's opponent is going to be and there isn't an active campaign happening right now.
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Right, and some of these questions could be either true or false depending on how you look at it. But the guy who came up with them has never been wrong in predicting the next president (aside from the clusterfuck of Bush v Gore). So it’s always interesting to see if his prediction comes true again.
 
Mosh said:
These "I can predict the president using several arbitrary metrics" that crop up every election season (and now a year in advance apparently) are so useless. We have a ridiculously small sample size of presidential elections, even smaller if you just count the modern era of polling. We don't even know who Biden's opponent is going to be and there isn't an active campaign happening right now.
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It's basically one step from asking an octopus.
 
Mosh said:
These "I can predict the president using several arbitrary metrics" that crop up every election season (and now a year in advance apparently) are so useless. We have a ridiculously small sample size of presidential elections, even smaller if you just count the modern era of polling. We don't even know who Biden's opponent is going to be and there isn't an active campaign happening right now.
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Perun said:
It's basically one step from asking an octopus.
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Nope. Above it's based on a serious study on electorate's voting behaviour on all pre 81s elections and revealed a specific pattern which is based on incumbent parties performances instead of Campaigns. This model always predicted right since 1984 with the exception of 2000 when it predicted Gore will be elected and in all fairness some claim he did. And I don't mean popular vote.

The Keys to the White House - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Jer said:
I think it’s part of a larger cycle in capitalistic democracies. The U.S. had escalating economic class disparity through the robber baron period, culminating in the Great Depression in the 1920s. Then the WWII war economy and a raft of new social programs made things a lot better for a few decades before disparity started getting out of control again. Maybe it will take another massive economic calamity to reset things, or maybe we’ll surprise ourselves and decide to make smaller adjustments in response to smaller calamities instead. But this is the European Politics thread, so I shouldn’t get into all this U.S-specific stuff here…
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Hey Jer, regarding our conversation the other day, I found below nice video. You can start from the Chapter What Every Community Does at 53:35 where it starts explaining the concept of surplus. I did that for you, it starts from there already.

Then at around 1:02:20 he starts explaining the coops, then at 1:03:36 he explains how people in US are grown to be afraid of the word Communism with the ultimate example at 1:03:44 where some engineers in California self described as Republicans!! that quit everything and applied collective values in their life, pretty much in line with the concept of the community democratically deciding what to do with the surplus that they are producing (Communism) but of course when the speaker told them that they were frightened and called this entrepreneurial innovation!

Later speaker explains that the workplace is where those things should be applied, which is in line with my idea of more collectivity in the business, which is happening here and there by the way.

____no5 said:
One idea; I'd like to see more collective ventures in the blend, without this being the only and absolute truth as in Soviet times. For instance factories where the workers would be the share holders.
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Diesel 11 said:
Right, and some of these questions could be either true or false depending on how you look at it. But the guy who came up with them has never been wrong in predicting the next president (aside from the clusterfuck of Bush v Gore). So it’s always interesting to see if his prediction comes true again.
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The subjectivity of the questions definitely doesn’t help and some of them are just arbitrary. Foreign policy isn’t really a driver for voters, while the economy is. Another thing is that there aren’t a lot of major upsets/shock results in presidential elections. Trump’s win in 2016 was surprising but statistically not improbable. It’s not hard to predict a lot of these outcomes. Ultimately it depends on what issues drive the election and we won’t know until next year.

Again it comes down to a small sample size. Why not apply this test to the thousands of house races that have taken place since 1984? I bet that you would quickly start to see the correlation between these “keys” and election outcomes fall apart.
 

Wow. The extent of kindness Biden demonstrates here is deeply touching. I have a bit of a stutter myself, so this resonates with me personal level; it really touched my heart. Of course, the despicable shit stain Marjorie Taylor Greene edited this and added a caption about the Predator President... Let's say she does a great job of... contrasting this profound display of humanity. The guy personally keeps in touch with 25 stutterers to motivate and help them.
 
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It is (or should be) obvious that even if something is not illegal in the letter that doesn't make it right. Especially when you are US SC Justice. What the fuck. I was miles lower than him and working in private sector and knew I could not never accept such presents.

And it doesn't need to be illegal, use your f- sense of moral, just some common sense would suffice really. You are SC Justice, people have huge expectations from you.

www.politico.com

Justice Clarence Thomas defends 'family trips' with GOP donor

Thomas said he “was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”
www.politico.com www.politico.com
 
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