Welcome to the forum, @gman1225. Thanks for actually discussing your viewpoint here, unlike a few idiots I could mention.

No, this is not a legitimate argument. You could potentially argue that individuals within that group have rights, but the “school” does not have a right like that. Some corporations can be viewed as a person in very specific limited cases. Regardless, if you want to shift to the argument that individuals within “the school” have had their rights violated, that’s fine.

However I do not believe you are going to be able to formulate a meaningful argument there either, as they haven’t really had any rights violated.

No, you specifically tried to formulate an argument about rights, suggesting that somehow Obama was somehow restricting someone’s rights in his protections of transgender students. It’s ok if you want to walk that back, but you can’t just say it didn’t happen.

Aristotelians also think that the world is comprised of 4 elements. I am not particularly impressed. Mere potential is not a meaningful metric, as a single unfertilized egg has “potential”. And you can’t even limit it to situations like being “left to its own devices”, as most of these organisms will not survive on their own without the mother.

I would suggest that his handling of Putin was naive, but the context was also entirely different. Putin was not poised in anything approaching the aggressive stance that he now holds. He hadn’t invaded the Ukraine and taken over Crimea, although Russia’s actions in Georgia were also problematic.

It absolutely has basis. All you did there was try to offer some weak whataboutism. That’s not an argument.
And no man, Trump’s actions in Syria have been exceptionally weak. He was essentially ready to just abandon the region, and leave it to Russia… when he attacked, the Russians (and by extension, the Syrians) were warned ahead of time, so the result was largely just military theater. Hell, after the first tomahawk strike, they destroyed virtually nothing on that airbase, no personnel were harmed, and the base was launching strikes again within like 48 hours. It was just a show. Trump dragged his feet on imposing sanctions that were virtually universally supported by Congress, and when finally implemented were watered down.

Trump is in Putin’s pocket, dude.

I mean the normal, dictionary definition of those terms.

Trump espouses authoritarian populism. He believes himself to be above the law, and constantly attacks the democratic institutions of our nation. He attacks truth itself, lying constantly. He attacks the free press because they report on the terrible things he does. He creates scapegoats, like transgender people and immigrants, to rile up his base just like all authoritarians have done throughout history.

The corruption we see with this immigration is unprecedented. Literally everything that so-called conservatives complained about Clinton doing is taking place at an absurdly magnified scale. We’re seeing his cabinet officials wasting our tax dollars like drunken sailors on ridiculously overt acts of excess. Pruitt has a new example of corruption showing up literally every day at this point.

You know how many times I voted for Obama? Zero. As I said, I was a Republican until last year. So I, unlike most folks still with the GOP, can answer the following question honestly:
What would you do if Obama (or really, any Democrat), did this stuff?

I can say, with absolute honesty, that I would FREAK THE FUCK OUT. Just like I’m freaking out now. Because it doesn’t matter that Trump has an R next to his name on the ballot. The stuff we’re seeing is horrific.

Literally every week, we are paying Trump to play fucking golf. Literally. He is golfing EVERY GOD DAMN WEEK, and it’s not on the government courses which would cost essentially nothing. He needs to fly down to his own fucking course to play golf. It costs us millions of dollars. That alone would be bad enough, but I am enraged even more by the fact that we are literally paying some large portion of that money to Trump himself. He is requiring that his entourage go to his courses in other states, and then while staying there, have the government pay his own companies for his stay.

The fact that anyone, much less someone who calls themselves a conservative, could look at that and NOT be enraged is mind blowing to me.

Thank you very much for your nice words. :) That helps my morning get off to a nice start actually. I messaged you just now that I found this site for its great boardgame reviews and the community seems really nice as well.

To be clear, I’m saying both students and school officials have asserted that they have a legal right to take certain actions (set bathroom policy, and enter a bathroom free of certain other genders). You might say those assertions of rights are illegitimate and have no legal foundation, but they are clearly good faith assertions of legal rights that should be litigated. My right to sleep in my bedroom without being observed is arguably a kind of right. Similarly, my right as a student to use a bathroom without being observed by a transgender person (or a person of the opposite sex) is arguably another formulation of a right. Similarly, a school officials’ ability to formulate policy without having to clear it with federal executive branch authorities is arguably another kind of right.

Again, my issue is with the way the president chose to avoid litigating these alleged rights, by simply using the power of the federal government in an unconstitutional manner. Specifically, he threatened to withhold funds unless he got his way from the schools. This the president simply cannot do – it is a circumvention of Congress’ authority. If he wants to prohibit any form of discrimination in bathrooms against transgender individuals (and thus overrule the supposed ‘rights’), the process for that is a federal law that he can sign after its approval in Congress.

Ah, but you can specify “left to its own devices in the absence of gross negligence or active attempt to harm.” For example, an individual in a coma cannot survive on his own devices, either. But if he would likely pull out of the coma and be fine in just 9 months, I could see an argument that pulling the plug would be murder. Couldn’t you?

I strongly disagree that the context was significantly different. Putin was suspected of bombing his own people to instigate war, and killing journalists, etc. This just seems like a fairly weak attack on Trump at this point, and I’m not sure you need to bring up Russia to make your original point regardless.

Certainly Trump’s Syria policy has not been particularly aggressive, although it’s unclear what he can do without risking a disastrous full-on war with Russia. What would you have suggested, given that the military situation is so precarious? Also, was Obama’s red line also a “show” and if so, why was that not an indication he was in Putin’s pocket?

I think as you said, it’s important to divorce Trump from policies he has enacted. A conservative can revile Trump morally and detest his rhetoric and cronyism, but appreciate his foreign policy results in Korea, his tax bill, and Gorsuch, who has turned out to be rather fair-minded so far.

So basically, “doesn’t matter, got tax cuts.”

Literally you’re saying that him breaking laws doesn’t matter as long as he signs a tax cut bill and nominates a conservative Supreme Court justice.

In fact, this is literally not what I’m saying – only that there are arguably good aspects to his presidency, which has several bad aspects as well.

Yeah, Nixon went to China, too. Good people on both sides!

We’re still waiting on the results and aftermath of Korea, so too early to say anything there. The tax bill is a complete disaster for most americans, albeit in sheep’s clothing since they won’t notice it until their taxes shoot through the roof in 10 years. And no, the corporations who do benefit greatly from the tax cuts are not going to give that money back to the people in any meaningful way (see the recent stock buybacks for support). And no, a rising tide raising all ships (ie. trickle down) is not happening, is not going to happen, and has pretty much never happened.

Obama made a mistake with his red line and then not backing it up. He was a great president, the best in my lifetime, but he did make mistakes.

I also say that the treatment by the GOP of Merrick Garland was a travesty and flouting of our laws and process. Deny him through the process, if you want to, but don’t block the process itself. Un-American, disgraceful behavior by the GOP.

And then it will be the fault of the Democrats. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how the tax cuts for the rich were made permanent but the cuts for the middle class on down will expire.

I have to defer to you on the tax bill, although if you have more insight into it, or places I could read more about it, I’d love to hear any more thoughts you have. Specifically, I am interested in whether you think the tax cut in principle is a good idea, minus the hike that is scheduled to occur in the future (but can be reversed in future legislation).

Sunsetting the cuts for the middle class is a transparent method to get the bill past the CBO so they can say it doesn’t blow up the budget because the CBO evaluates projections of what the annual budget will look like in ten years.

And even so, the tax cut to the middle and lower class is minimal. My take-home didn’t change, and I’m solidly middle-class. Foolish me for living in a high-ish tax state that actually provides services for its citizens, I guess.

Obviously you weren’t asking me specifically, but my take on this is that the US tax code would be greatly improved by removing carve-outs that almost exclusively benefit capital at the expense of labor. Yes, including the mortgage interest deduction, though that probably has to be staged out to not completely screw homeowners in high-cost-high-pay areas. Along with that, you bring back extreme taxation for extreme income, tax capital gains as income, and otherwise capture the portions of the economy that operate essentially tax-free for the benefit of the very rich.

I don’t think the middle class particularly needs a tax cut; by definition the middle class is doing all right. Marginal increases in take-home pay aren’t what we need; we need healthcare costs to be reasonable, transit (and therefore transportation costs) to improve, and education to not be punishable by a lifetime of penury.

Also a unicorn would be great.

This is the best summary I’ve seen for what the government priorities should be. If you want to be president, I’ll vote for you :)

Housing also needs to be the list. The generation in the 1920s spent approximately 10% of their income on their house. Today’s generation is looking at 25% or higher just for a house. The trend is untenable.

@inactive_user I agree with you entirely apart from this part. Ideally I would want to carve out people who sell their own business to still enjoy a reduced tax burden. My clients would not like this though.

Effectively what you are suggesting is moving towards a Canadian or European model where education and healthcare is subsidised but everyone, especially the higher earners, pay a higher tax rate.

How much of that is people wanting bigger houses, though? I grew up sharing a room with my brother. That was fine. Now the expectation is that each child gets his own bedroom.

Why is that? I could see some kind of amortization over years to avoid a one-time payout bumping you into punitive tax brackets when really you’re realizing the investment you’ve made over years into that asset (actually, that’s good. Treat it like income over the time you’ve had the business and tax accordingly, I like that).

That’s the general idea, yes.

It is a very complicated thing, for sure. And house size is a part of that.

But also part of it is a decline of those traditional ‘starter homes’ in many areas, and an increase in rental costs. Two bedroom apartments in my area basically start at $1000 a month, or more. If you want to be in a half decent neighborhood, it’s far higher.

I honestly don’t believe that the school’s “right” here is a good faith assertion. The assertion is that they have some need to tell kids what bathroom to use. Why?

Bear in mind here, that part of my perspective here hinges on the fact that this entire argument regarding transgender people is purely a political talking point of the right. And yes, it’s a point of the right, not both sides as you suggested. Because up until recently, no one tried to legislate this stuff. The attempts to legislate this arose ONLY after gays fell out of favor as the number one scapegoat. Thus, I don’t recognize that there is any legitimate need for such legislation, other than as a political football. In contrast, protecting the right of the individuals who are being told what bathroom to use is in fact a legitimate thing, since you are restricting their rights in a manner which was not restricted previously.

This is absurd, because you aren’t observed while using the bathroom. Bathrooms aren’t just big rooms with holes in the floor that we all relieve ourselves into.

Was there a specific ruling declaring his actions in that case to be unconstitutional?

You’re creating a circular argument here. In order to justify the personhood of a fertilized egg, you are using the argument that it has potential. In order to justify potential as metric of personhood, you are using an example of an organism which is already fully established as a person. So that argument is not valid, from a purely logical perspective.

The same counter exists that existed before. An embryo is not a person. The coma victim is. You have not established an equivalence between them.

Oh, without question Putin has always been bad, you will get no argument from me. And I was not a proponent of Obama’s foreign policy. That’s all largely immaterial, since Obama’s actions do not justify Trump’s.

Now you’re changing your argument. It’s fine for you to say that we shouldn’t intervene in Syria, but you were using Syria as an example of Trump being tough on Russia. You can’t say, “Trump opposed Russian actions in Syria!” and then when that’s shown to be the case, just shift to “We shouldn’t intervene in Syria anyway!”

Again dude, whataboutism with Obama doesn’t work on me. Hopefully your quiver’s got other arrows in it.

That being said, this argument is silly on its face, because no one would suggest that Obama’s failure to act in Syria was due to a desire to not piss off Putin. He just didn’t want to get involved in another ground war.

And as I posted above, you can say the same thing about Trump if you want, but then you can’t use it as an example of him being tough on Russia.

No, that’s bullshit, especially from a conservative perspective. That’s just used as a figleaf to handwave away the fact that his actions are indefensible.

The GOP used to at least PRETEND to care about things like character and principles. The idea that you will build half of your policy platform on so-called christian values, while promoting such overtly offensive people such as Trump and Roy Moore (or the other multitudes of GOP candidates who are constantly embroiled in ridiculous scandals of marital infidelity, sexual harrassment, secret gay sex, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Even up until the 2016 election, the primary attacks upon Clinton, even laughably waged BY TRUMP, were essentially ALL character assassination attempts. It was based entirely upon shit that Trump’s administration has now done to a far greater extent. There are already so many cases of various members of this administration getting various personal benefits in exchange to preferential handling of various lobbyists. I guess the shouts of “Pay to play!” only matter prior to election… Or the accusations of corruption within the Clinton foundation, which have actually been demontrably proven, in court now, as being done by the Trump organization. I mean, jesus christ, I could go on for ages with this crap. The list is seemingly never ending. The hypocrisy is unparalleled.

Trump has yet to actually do anything in North Korea. It is possible that these 3 prisoners being released could actually be a positive action, albeit a trivial one from the perspective of actual international policy… but they’re still in NK being conditioned, and until they’re free, I’m not going to count my chickens.

In terms of actual progress with NK? Yeah, forgive me for being supremely skeptical, and thinking that the idea of the US president meeting with the leader of NK, directly, is a bad idea.

What’s funny is that, up until this year, my position was that of the GOP and conservatives. That’s why we criticized Clinton’s actions in NK in the 90’s… and hell, he didn’t even meet with KJU directly. We criticized him for merely having his SecState meet with him. Because it legitimized a meglomaniacal dictator, and it achieved nothing.

If somehow NK actually abandons its crazy leader deification, and becomes a good actor on the international stage? Then I’ll absolutely give Trump credit, although I will certainly be amazed that such random ass actions led to it. But I’m thinking that this is just gonna end the same way that all prior actions with NK have ended. NK gets legitimization, a removal of sanctions, more money and bribes from the international community… and then after a while, just starts acting up again.

In terms of a tax bill, this most recent tax bill is a travesty from the perspective of fiscal conservatism. It totally exploded the deficit, and it has essentially no real benefit. The vast majority of the cut went to people and corporations that simply didn’t need it. The economy was already doing well, so you aren’t going to see any real stimulative effect. And we’re already seeing that most of those corporate gains were simply used to facilitate share buybacks, instead of investment into the workforce.

If corporations were struggling under a tax burden, then such a thing would make sense. But they had massive cash reserves already. They weren’t short on capital to invest. So from a purely economic perspective, the idea that changing their taxes would result in any kind of short term stimulative effect just makes no sense.

But that’s not really the most offensive part… the tax cuts on the ultra wealthy were, again, not useful. Such changes will have no stimulative impact at all. They’re just giving money to folks who already have tons. But the tax cuts on normal people are all going to sunset out of existence later… but the tax cuts on groups that don’t really need them are permanent. So yay?

I would have structured such tax cuts to focus the benefit squarely on middle class people, without the upper class changes, because you could then have cut taxes (more) on folks who would then spend that money on goods, without exploding the national debt. THAT would have been the fiscally conservative move. But that’s not what we got. We got a tax bill that, laughably, specifically targeted the donors and in many cases politicians themselves. And no one cared about paying for it.

As for “gorsuch”, jesus christ dude. This is such a hilariously weak “accomplishment” that the fact that it’s always listed just highlights how non-existent the list of Trump’s accomplishments is. Further, despite being a Republican at the time, intellectual honesty and a sense of fair play forced me to acknowledge that the GOP’s refusal to even perform their constitutional duties and hold confirmation hearings for Obama’s nomination to fill an open seat on the court, was APPALLING. They straight up cheated, and their arguments to try and justify it were mealy-mouthed, hypocritical, and ultimately baseless. And bear in mind here, I’ve defended Gorsuch on these forums, but I will not defend the way that McConnell disgraced himself and the Senate.

Again, cheating used to be something that conservatives opposed. But I guess not any more.

Fuck, I don’t want anyone observing me when I’m in the bathroom. Why are conservatives so concerned with what gender those people happen to identify?

https://m.popkey.co/7127e5/8qvrO.gif

If they want a “traditional” society they should go shit in the woods