1970

Man, I know it’s the classist in me speaking, but that lady, Kellyanne Conway and half of the people in this Administration (including the President) just scream arriviste to me.

1971

Because they’re still running on the same exact outrage: that Hillary continues to exist. Trump, on the other hand is continually coming up with new ways to be awful spread across his entire administration.

1972

So… Bornstein, who discussed a patient’s medical treatment without his consent making me wonder why they say may have violated HIPAA, and then gave them, sort to others, also without documented consent, is also one of the few physicians in the country that doesn’t have his records in digital form, like not backed up at all so it’s actually possible to steal the originals?

1973

He didn’t disclose Trump’s medical treatment. He disclosed that he didn’t write a report about Trump’s health that the White House itself released. That’s not covered by HIPAA.

I mean, if I invented a phony MRI report and put my doctor’s name on it, she would be perfectly free to deny writing it. That’s not a HIPAA violation. And if so, then to admit lying about authorship also isn’t a HIPAA violation.

1974

I believe he revealed Trump was taking a medication for… hair or a prostrate… some brand name drug.

1975

Oh. Missed that part.

1976

Propecia, I believe.

1977

LOL. Well, at least it’s an amusing HIPAA violation.

1978

Yeah that one.

Heh, maybe so but that’s still a violation. This physician is… well he’s unusual in more than one way and talking to press about his patient’s prescription, like how does that even come up and why isn’t Trump trying to sue him. It’s what he does right. Sue everyone?

1979

They built the Bigot Furnace wonder.

1980

It’s because they have found ways to get people enraged over things which do not impact them at all, or may not even be real.

It was gay marriage, despite the fact that gay people getting married doesn’t actually affect anyone else, in even the smallest way. It doesn’t make straight people less married. Yet this was still a major focal point of rage for years.

Once that speed being a useful source of rage, they turned to transgender people. No one ever talked about making laws against transgender people before. We don’t have now transgender people now by any appreciable number. But suddenly it became important to make laws against them, because… Reasons? The number of transgender people in our society is so small that the idea of making laws specifically to stop them from don’t things like using a bathroom is absurd.

And now you have purely fictional crap that they are enraged over, like pizza gate and that qa anon thing. They are able to just make up random crazy shit to motivate their base, because their base is fucking retarded.

1981

A++, still waiting…

1982

Turns out people want their kids to go to school. Who knew?

1983

Your implication that Democrats do not stoke irrational fear in their base is unfounded on its face, but it’s wrong even on this very issue. Per The Atlantic, Obama aggressively escalated the transgender bathroom fight in an arguably illegal way – perhaps to fire up his base of leftists? Quoting:

"The bathroom war was on. President Obama responded with a letter sent last week to every public school in the country, warning that federal money could be eliminated for any school that doesn’t allow transgender students to use the restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their chosen gender.

Even some supporters of the cause believe Obama overreached. Peter H. Schuck, an emeritus professor at the Yale Law School and the author of Why Government Fails, and How It Can Do Better, argues in the New York Times that Obama may have actually impeded his goal. … Under the administration’s novel reading of the law, this is not a suggestion but an unequivocal legal right." https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/democrats-republicans-transgender-rights/483330/

Regardless, the whole “our side is better than their side” argument is not particularly intellectually engaging, and it’s actually a bit ironic – given that this whole thread seems to exist to celebrate the individual failings of various members of Trump’s orbit in some sort of hate orgy.

1984

I feel the need to point out a difference here.

The folks who attempted to ban people from using certain bathrooms were acting to limit the rights of other people, for no tangible benefit to anyone. It doesn’t really impact you what bathroom someone else uses.

This isn’t really the same as standing up for the rights of those miniority groups.

On one hand, you have folks enraged over someone else’s bathroom choice. On the other, you have folks enraged over the oppression of a minority population in our society.

Those aren’t really equivalent.

How is it ironic? Even if one were to accept your categorization of the thread, the position that one side is better than the other wouldn’t actually be ironic at all, within that context.

1985

Note that “standing up for the rights of minority groups” in this case came at the expense of the rights of others – namely, the rights of the schools to determine who can use which bathrooms.

I understand that, in your view, schools’ interest in choosing who can use which bathroom is clearly trumped by the transgender students’ right to use whichever bathroom they want. However, keep in mind that in many conservatives’ views, unborn fetus’ right to live without being killed often should clearly trump the rights of the mother to mere ‘privacy’ or temporary ‘control’ over her body.

What is important is not which right is more valuable, but the process for responsibly allocating those rights. Obama decided to essentially enforce an overbroad executive order to get his way. This is what was inappropriate. It would be similar to Trump pulling funding from sanctuary states (which he has illegally threatened). Obama did not respect the process – he just wanted to fire up his base.

My point is simply that, in looking over this thread and one other one I’ve looked at in this forum, there is a lot of raw hatred and anger directed at conservatives and the current administration. Some of it, in retrospect, borders on laughable, such as numerous claims that Trump would cause nuclear war with Korea. One poster has repeatedly said that conservatives are basically all evil and should never be talked to, and no one seems to have had issue with that. Another poster upthread who defended Trump and opposed Ben Rhoads got this response:

This would suggest to me that liberals, even smart ones like the people who seem to populate this forum, are likely responsive to being baited by irrational emotion just like the conservative base.

1986

I think it best not to get into the specifics of who said what that may or may not have been irrational…that way lies only a devolution into name-calling. However, I did want to say that this…

…is certainly true because we’re all human. We’ve all got emotions and they affect how we think, act, and communicate. The question for me is whether you make an attempt to understand the other side, and accommodate or compromise with their point of view. I do my best, and I think the majority here on QT3 do as well, but there are certainly exceptions (who may be more vocal than the mainly-silent majority).

Sadly, in our politics these days, there is very little attempt at understanding and compromise. We’re stuck in a prisoner’s dilemma with both sides defecting. It’s been a long time since either side has cooperated in a significant manner, and emotional responses are a big part of that. The politicians have made careers out of fanning those flames and there’s no incentive for them to stop now.

1987

That’s not really an important “right” though. I mean, the school isn’t actually a person whose rights are being limited. The only limitation in this case is a limit on their ability to limit the rights of minority groups.

All rights essentially involve limiting the ability of others to violate those rights. That is not a legitimate argument against defending those rights. You have the right to be alive, and that inherently limits my “right” to murder you. But that is not a legitimate argument against having laws prohibiting homicide.

So your argument here fails on two fronts:

  1. The school is not a person with rights.
  2. Defense of one person’s rights is not automatically a meaningful violation of rights, simply because it implies restrictions on one’s ability to limit others.

This is a separate issue, but generally this hinges upon the fact that an unborn fetus is not considered a person from a legal perspective.

That being said, in many states, abortions aren’t even legal after 20 weeks, and this has been held as constitutional. Prior to 20 weeks, it’s very difficult to make a logical argument that a fetus, or earlier, an embryo, is a person. Most abortions happen much earlier, when the embryo is little more than a collection of cells.

All that being said, the number of abortions is at a historical low. Generally, if you want to prevent abortions, it’s better to actually provide education and birth control for kids so that they don’t get pregnant.

Not against all conservatives, although certainly against Trump’s administration. And that’s deserved. He’s an objectively terrible president. He lies literally every day. He is an immoral, unethical man.

Bear in mind here, right now you’re talking to one of the conservative voices in this forum. Certainly, I have become less so over the past year or so, largely due to being forced to recognize the utter hypocrisy of the GOP at this point, folks here will tell you that I was generally the guy arguing the other side in this forum for years. Up until 2017, I was a registered Republican for literally my entire adult life. At this point, I am perhaps best described as a progressive libertarian. I embrace change of our society, and generally want to maximize liberty for individuals, although I am pragmatic in my approach to this.

But Trump is not a conservative. He does not represent conservative values. The GOP no longer stands for anything that it used to. They do not stand for family values, or ethical principles, or limited government, or fiscal responsibility. Trump is, by all accounts, an authoritarian. He embraces dictators like Putin. He is the antithesis of what the GOP was under the leadership of men like Reagan.

So do not conflate a rejection of Trumpism for a rejection of conservatism. They are not the same. Trumpism is authoritarian populism, blended with overt corruption and gross incompetence.

1988

These two sentences seem contradictory. A collective is made up of individuals, in this case school officials. Their rights are restricted by Obama’s actions. Additionally, students’ right to a bathroom of a certain singular gender is supposedly being infringed.

My argument is about process, not the substantive rights. I think in our legal framework, even if abortion is murder and transgender bathroom discrimination is wrong, it is inappropriate to circumvent the constitution to score political points on those issues. Conservatives try all the time to pass arguably illegal restrictions on abortion, to see what they can get away with. Obama, rather than opening a dialogue or seeking a federal law, decided to arbitrarily threaten to withhold federal funds from anyone who disagreed with his novel interpretation of discrimination laws that never explicitly encompassed transgender folks. That was an overreach – he exceeded his enforcement authority by effectively trying to pass a law using the withholding of federal funds. Trump has tried something similar in an unrelated matter.

Without getting into a philosophical discussion of personhood, I would just say that the Aristotelians would disagree with you. Personhood can be defined as a certain kind of potential, although it takes effort to avoid overbroadness concerns.

Could this criticism not apply to Obama, who literally sent his secretary of state with a ‘reset’ button (misspelled) to trot around Russia? Obama also mocked Mitt Romney for saying Putin is a grave geopoltitcal threat, saying ‘the cold war called, they want their diplomacy back!’ Hasn’t Trump butted heads numerous times with Putin in Syria? I’m just not sure this criticism has much basis.

This is a fair point, although it does depend what exactly you mean by those terms.

1989

I really appreciate this post and I think it is very accurate , it sums up what I have been thinking lately.