You said there was no quid pro quo, we now know there was.
Lol based on what? I listened to the whole thing. He provides not a single shred of evidence such a thing exists. If i'm wrong, point me to it. He points the finger at Guiliani, sure, but he provides virtually nothing to substantiate it, nor anything that suggests Trump desired it. His word vs the word of someone else doesn't cut it, especially when there are plenty of communications to draw from including WhatsApp messages and all the rest.
I recall several other times in the past few years where explosive claims rested on the statements of a single or handful of individuals, and no other evidence. None of them ended up being particularly credible, nor damaging. I just don't take people at their word, or in this case what they presume, when it comes to criminal conduct.
Because just like the Russian Investigation, this administration is relying on Obstruction of Justice to prevent their crimes from coming to light, and before today, it was working.
They got to run on the narrative that this was all second hand accounts. Not anymore.
All documents related to the Ukraine, that is being held by the White House needs to be handed over to determine where exactly these orders were coming from.
Text messages to and from Trump and Giuliani will determine who the bigger idiot is, but I do not think Trump gets a pass if Giuliani was running rogue. Trump insisted Giuliani be a part of this and should be held accountable for his actions.
It's a little silly to say that Trump obstructed justice during the Russia investigation to "prevent his crimes coming to light". First off, because it assumes for a fact an underlying crime happened which is clearly not the case when it comes to Russia. Second because he didn't even do anything to earn the obstruction charge, it was all about what he either tried to do or said he wanted to do, little fuzzy on the details. Either way, it never happened, and so the idea that he was able to prevent crimes from coming to light by committing obstruction is just so far removed from the facts.
But this is why I said facts don't matter when it comes to these hot-button issues. The narrative is set, and facts just get in the way.
There are 10 instances of him obstructing Justice laid out in the Mueller report.
Mueller could not charge him because of DOJ protocol.
Congress were currently debating if they should open impeachment hearings on these obstructions before this Ukraine matter came to light.
Also see Roger Stone lying to Mueller and being found guilty of it relating to Wikileaks. And then read the report and realize Wikileaks = hacked DNC emails and then realize that it was coordinated and if Stone did not lie there would have been an established link.
Also keep in mind Don Jr wasn’t charged because Mueller thought he was too stupid.
So facts do matter. Busy because a person(s) prevents the facts from coming to light, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
We're building up a hell of a new standard for ourselves. One in which it's perfectly fine to hire a hitman to kill your wife as long as he doesn't complete the contract. One in which a group of guys can plan to rob a bank, even have a blueprint laid out on the kitchen table, but if one guy gets cold feet and goes to the cops, he saves everyone. One where if you make a drug bust and the heroin and cocaine are all meticulously seperated in colored baggies, there is no more "intent to distribute" because it has not actually taken place. Might as well get rid of the whole idea of anyone going undercover as well. I look forward to seeing where this leads.
I actually have some other sources besides the recent study of 38 sources. These do have a sourcing bias: I found them in a transgender community online.
METHODS: A total of 55 young transgender adults (22 transwomen and 33 transmen) who had received puberty suppression during adolescence were assessed 3 times: before the start of puberty suppression (mean age, 13.6 years), when cross-sex hormones were introduced (mean age, 16.7 years), and at least 1 year after gender reassignment surgery (mean age, 20.7 years). Psychological functioning (GD, body image, global functioning, depression, anxiety, emotional and behavioral problems) and objective (social and educational/professional functioning) and subjective (quality of life, satisfaction with life and happiness) well-being were investigated.
RESULTS: After gender reassignment, in young adulthood, the GD was alleviated and psychological functioning had steadily improved. Well-being was similar to or better than same-age young adults from the general population. Improvements in psychological functioning were positively correlated with postsurgical subjective well-being.
"Around 13% of the sample had not transitioned in any way and did not have any desire to transition. For the other participants however, transition was an issue which affected them in many ways, warranting a separate section here to explore this further. The findings from this report have demonstrated that for those who wish to undergo some form of transition or gender reassignment, being able to do so dramatically improves their outcomes. As demonstrated above: Transition was related to improved life satisfaction (Satisfaction with Life Scale scores being statistically significant when separated by stage of/desire to transition; F=18.506, df=5, p<0.005).★★Transition was related to improved body satisfaction in relation to gender.★★Transition led to less avoidance of public and social spaces, and changed the nature of those that are avoided.★★Transition was related to a decrease in mental health service use. Support is mainly needed before and during transition.★★Transition was related to reduced depression (with differences in CES-D scores being statistically significant; F=2.205, df=5, p= 0.05).★★Mental health was rated as being better post-transition that previously.★★Self-harm reduced following transition for the majority of those who had a history of self-harm.★★Suicidal ideation and attempts were more frequent pre-transition.★★Very few participants regretted the physical changes that they had undergone as part of transition. The regrets which they did have were related to surgical outcome – in particular, revisions, repairs, complications, and loss of sensation.★★Post-transition many people found that they had the same amount or more support socially than previously.★★Transition had many implications for parenting, most notably the possibility of it negatively impacting upon the participants’ relationships with, and particularly access to, their children.★★Most participants experienced improvements in the quality of their sex lives following transition.
Life is better across the board for trans people who choose to transition medically. It's particularly notable that even their sex lives improved--if nothing else, you'd expect that to be the thing least likely to improve.
I'm not just citing the personal experience of every transgender person I've ever met.
"few scholars have examined whether college institutional climate factors—such as being denied access to bathrooms or gender-appropriate campus housing—are significantly associated with detrimental psychological outcomes for transgender people. Using the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, this study analyzes whether being denied access to these spaces is associated with lifetime suicide attempts, after controlling for interpersonal victimization by students or teachers. Findings from sequential logistic regression (N = 2,316) indicate that denial of access to either space had a significant relationship to suicidality, even after controlling for interpersonal victimization."
Results: Overall, 42.3% of the sample reported a suicide attempt and 26.3% reported misusing drugs or alcohol to cope with transgender-related discrimination. After controlling for age, race/ethnicity, sex assigned at birth, binary gender identity, income, education, and employment status, family rejection was associated with increased odds of both behaviors. Odds increased significantly with increasing levels of family rejection.
Our findings provide evidence that social inclusion (social support, gender-specific support from parents, identity documents), protection from transphobia (interpersonal, violence), and undergoing medical transition have the potential for sizeable effects on the high rates of suicide ideation and attempts in trans communities. In contrast, we did not find statistically significant effects for social transition, gender support from sources other than parents, or religiosity/spirituality, other than an unexpected finding regarding strong gender support from leaders. Given that statistical power was not high, as evidenced by the width of our confidence intervals, a lack of statistical significance does not mean that these other factors should be dismissed, as smaller effects may exist below the threshold for detection.
Unsurprisingly, greater tolerance for trans identities means less suffering for trans people.
Your first source is dated more than 8 years ago. Your second source is dated more than 15 years ago. And the third source specifically points out that it was only addressing patients on Medicare, and only for the purposes of determining whether to pay for treatment (and it's not like government officials are generally the first people to support trans health care).
Sure, and within that time frame none of the methodological errors have been corrected. Recent studies that call themselves the first of their kind in terms of gaining new information are still incredibly limited. The germ theory of disease is at least a century and a half old and probably older depending on how you want to draw the line, that doesn't make it any less true. Time frame in and of itself means little if no new information has come to light.
I don't need to run defense for them, really. The prosecution has to prove their case, I don't need to prove their innocence. And I am sure Guiliani is a slimeball all by himself. It wouldn't surprise me if he *did* say those things, frankly, of his own will without consulting Trump, because that strikes me as a very Guiliani move. Soderland (sp?) himself stated he never heard any of this stuff from Trump, only Guilani, and everything we have heard elsewhere seems to corroborate that.
I would like to see him take the stand, because i'm sure there's something we don't know. But i'm not sure i'd even trust his testimony.
I find this quote fascinating. You're so convinced Trump cannot be guilty that you're fabricating an alternative set of events to try to explain it away. This is 100% how conspiracy theories work. (You even built in an "out" in which you wouldnt believe Guiliani's testimony. Think about that. Almost literally nothing would suffice).
Trump's personal lawyer went rogue in order to help the President, who referenced the Bidens purely by happenstance in a memo of a call (that was then itself hidden in the most top secret place the president can hide things).
Something else has occurred to me during all of this. Partisans dont have a credible idea of "Beyond a reasonable doubt" because their partisanship biases them. Defenders of the president seem to think the only actual valid evidence would be a tape or a recording of him saying, in explicit terms, something incriminating.
You dont need a tape. You dont need a recording. Evidence includes the sworn testimony of participants who have information. We have half a dozen of those now, and they're all largely lined up to agree with the whistleblower's account of the call. They're all largely saying the same thing.
I am not opposed to the possibility that Giuliani acted alone, yes, but it also should be noted that there isn't any evidence for that either, or for him doing much of anything really. You clearly want to paint this as some partisan need on my part to defend Trump, but this isn't so. It's simply based on what I see in the evidence itself. Virtually everyone including the person testifying today has claimed Trump never said anything about this, and denied it when asked. I find it hard to believe Giuliani, despite his flaws, is less subtle than Trump is, who strikes me as not subtle to a fault and too dumb to play political games and not get caught. It's probably more my negative ideas about Trump's character that lead me to believe he was not successfully scheming behind the scenes to the point where nobody can pin anything solid on him. If he wanted some sort of deal, we wouldn't be picking apart linguistic webs and trying to guess at motives, he would make it pretty clear. In fact I believe I said much the same thing when it came to Russia. Trump isn't mentally capable of enacting conspiracies, and it baffles me that the people who should know Trump's flaws better than anyone continue to paint him as some sort of mastermind where convenient.
Also, yes, testimony is evidence, but false or misleading testimony from witnesses is the number one cause of wrongful convictions. It is, by the numbers, the very worst sort of evidence. Relying on solely that from a couple of people is a terribly made case.
I am not opposed to the possibility that Giuliani acted alone, yes, but it also should be noted that there isn't any evidence for that either, or for him doing much of anything really. You clearly want to paint this as some partisan need on my part to defend Trump, but this isn't so. It's simply based on what I see in the evidence itself. Virtually everyone including the person testifying today has claimed Trump never said anything about this, and denied it when asked. I find it hard to believe Giuliani, despite his flaws, is less subtle than Trump is, who strikes me as not subtle to a fault and too dumb to play political games and not get caught. It's probably more my negative ideas about Trump's character that lead me to believe he was not successfully scheming behind the scenes to the point where nobody can pin anything solid on him. If he wanted some sort of deal, we wouldn't be picking apart linguistic webs and trying to guess at motives, he would make it pretty clear. In fact I believe I said much the same thing when it came to Russia. Trump isn't mentally capable of enacting conspiracies, and it baffles me that the people who should know Trump's flaws better than anyone continue to paint him as some sort of mastermind where convenient.
Also, yes, testimony is evidence, but false or misleading testimony from witnesses is the number one cause of wrongful convictions. It is, by the numbers, the very worst sort of evidence. Relying on solely that from a couple of people is a terribly made case.
A few things - no one is calling him a mastermind. I think asking Ukraine to investigate Biden within a day of the Mueller hearing is utterly idiotic.
Because some witnesses lie some of the time is an extremely bad reason to believe all witnesses are operating in bad faith. I daresay it would literally make a coherent system of justice impossible.
In this instance, the witnesses have all been credible (None of them have a history to being partisan, except one or two who are actually conservatives). They've mostly all been life long public servants of one kind or another (Diplomats, for example). So it would be foolish to think they all managed to give private depositions separately of each other, managed to get their stories to line up with a great deal of consistency, and then all lied about what they witnessed.
Also, it's been a hot minute since I busted it out, but you've also subscribed to the logical fallacy retorted by "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". The basic goal of Trump's defense is to set the bar impossibly high for evidence (Something like first hand audio or video recording of Trump explicitly incriminating himself), and having a built in network in the form of the office of the presidency to compel witnesses not to testify (See all the people who have refused subpoenas because Trump told them to).
A tape or audio recording wouldn't make a lick of difference. Many people were able to surmise what happened before the story even broke open because it has already been reported months earlier Giuliani was running around Ukraine. Need I remind everyone of the Access Hollywood Tape?? It's not that people don't think he did it. It's that they think the end justifies the means if it helps keep the left out of power, in all circumstances.
However, no one can really SAY that because it makes one look completely without any principles whatsoever. So the standards for admission of guilt are set so high as to be impossible to actually match, while providing plauisble deniability to those citing them. Though, in this case, what they think is an impossible bar to jump over actually DOES get jumped on a weekly basis, forcing a shell of cognitive dissonance to completely takeover.
As others have said Trump wasn't charged with crimes as a result of the Mueller investigation because of a DoJ policy - not because there was no evidence of crimes. A large proportion of his campaign team have now either plead guilty to crimes or been found guilty in a court of law - I'm not aware that any of the many charged to date have been found innocent despite the high bar required to convict in a criminal court. I don't think that it's credible to suggest those convictions were all the result of false or misleading evidence.
I find it noteworthy that everyone who's testified in the latest round of the impeachment investigation has provided testimony damaging to Trump - even those like Sondland that have supported Trump in the past and who, earlier this year, actively tried to hide the attempts to get Ukraine to announce an investigation. I suspect a large part of the reason why none of these people are now willing to lie for Trump is they have recent evidence about what happens to those that do lie to investigators ...
As for the evidence of Trump's direct involvement, I have no doubt that exists. Remember the 'transcript' of his phone call that he released at the start of this process as one of his attempts at damage control? That was pretty damning in itself, so I would be astonished if the real transcript is not absolutely damning - and I imagine there will be quite a lot of other documentary evidence as well that will surface eventually. It's possible Trump will continue to be able to suppress evidence while he's President, but that state of affairs won't last for ever.
In this case, yes, absence of evidence can be considered as good as evidence of absence. We rely on the presumption of innocence, so no evidence should be enough to presume innocence.
And not all faulty witness accounts are lies. Far from it. Many are perfectly sincere. The main issue is the unreliability of human memory, and our tendency to fill in or color events according to our own idea of what happened.
"Credible witnesses", man i'm getting some flashbacks here. That's just opinion so little need to say anything more. Lifelong public servants can be the most severe partisans, though. Have you ever read James Comey's twitter feed? There is nothing more partisan than that. I wouldn't say working in the government prevents you from having strong opinions about politics and the government.
I find this whole worship of the intelligence agencies really pernicious, to go off on a tangent here. The list of awful deeds and policies enacted by them reads like something out of a comic book villians Wikipedia page. I do not subscribe to any notions of inherent virtue or integrity to that class of people. When politicians parade them around as if they are paragons I see it as little more than propaganda.
I find this whole worship of the intelligence agencies really pernicious, to go off on a tangent here. The list of awful deeds and policies enacted by them reads like something out of a comic book villians Wikipedia page. I do not subscribe to any notions of inherent virtue or integrity to that class of people. When politicians parade them around as if they are paragons I see it as little more than propaganda.
It's not really a gray area, as there's no real dispute regarding the science of treating transgender kids.
There is, and I provided plenty of sources for that in the past few weeks. It's worth taking a look at. Better yet, find out for yourself what evidence exists for this treatment and how strong the evidence is. The only answer a rational person can come to is "not much, and very weak". Much of the most important information is virtually unknown. Only political ideology props this up as some sacred, untouchable ground.
This is the largest study of transgender children with comparisons to both their cisgender siblings and similar number of cisgender children they're not related to. Its findings contradict older studies with limited application to actually transgender people.
Also, as it relates to surgery, those who do get it have one of the lowest regret rates of any surgical procedure or body modification. People are significantly more likely to regret tattoos than a transgender person is to regret surgery.
Also, the Swedish study is frequently misrepresented as evidence against medical transition, when the study authors were not attempting to study that. Cecilia Dhejne, one of the study's authors, explains this at the start of her Reddit AMA. She then links to an interview she gave on the topic.
And you can't really use a 2004 paper to extend the claim that most of the research was weak prior to 2004 to "all of the research in favor of transition is week up until the current day." That's not a good argument and it doesn't really lead to any understanding.
Regarding the third link you gave, it doesn't make a statement as to whether surgery itself is beneficial or not, but rather that there's not a lot of research in that area. What it does not do is ban Medicare and Medicaid from covering such surgery.
So your three links are: A misused study that doesn't say what you think it says, a bad faith 2004 Guardian article written by someone with an agenda, and a recommendation that Medicare and Medicaid maintain a gatekeeping stance on covering surgery for those who need and seek it. That is, this is more a money argument than a health care argument on their part.
But that's all beside the point. There are multiple elements to transition - social transition, hormone replacement therapy, and surgery. What is established is that social transition and eventually HRT for minors results in mental health outcomes similar to their cisgender peers. Also well established is that mental health outcomes for adults who transition do in fact improve.
* SemiticGod linked the studies so I don't have to
Sure, and within that time frame none of the methodological errors have been corrected. Recent studies that call themselves the first of their kind in terms of gaining new information are still incredibly limited. The germ theory of disease is at least a century and a half old and probably older depending on how you want to draw the line, that doesn't make it any less true. Time frame in and of itself means little if no new information has come to light.
This is not true, but it's what you're likely to hear from the right wing echo chamber. The germ theory of disease also did not have to fight institutional bias against properly treating illness, whereas providing useful health care to support medical transition is constantly under fire and faces constant opposition from people whose arguments boil down to "trans people are icky and we shouldn't help them." Numerous professionals and activists have worked hard for decades to poison the well against effective health care in this field. The number of people who retransition to their assigned gender because they made a mistake and transition was wrong for them is a fraction of a single percent of transitioning people overall, but people like Batty and others promote the idea that they represent a much larger group of people whose needs must necessarily outweigh the needs of thousands of transgender people who do need transition for every one of those regretters.
A lot of new information has come to light over the years, hence the evolution of WPATH standards of care, the shift in the US toward at least some insurance covering transition, the unambiguous research showing that transition improves mental health outcomes, the research showing that transgender and cisgender children of the same gender show similar development trajectories with regards to their gender and understanding of it, that "gender identity disorder" was removed from the DSM and replaced with "gender dysphoria," making it clear that being transgender is a not a mental illness, and the fact that despite you pointing to a few studies that allegedly show surgery is bad, thousands of trans people seek it every year at the minimum. If transition were as lacking in obvious benefit as you seem to think research shows (it doesn't), then the AAP wouldn't endorse allowing trans children to socially transition and later go on blockers and HRT.
Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld did a significant amount of work in the early 20th century and the LGBT scene in Germany prior to the Nazis was thriving. Transgender people were socially and medically transitioning throughout the 20s, and people came from other countries to do this. Unfortunately, the Nazis deliberately targeted Hirschfeld's clinic and burned all of his research. They did keep the list of patients, however, so they could round them up and send them to concentration camps. Those pictures of Nazis burning books? Those were of Nazis burning the books taken from Hirschfeld's institute. That's decades of research of transgender people going up in smoke.
I don't recall Nazis burning all research on the germ theory of disease. Or the Pope comparing germ theory to nuclear weapons. Comparing the two like this is deeply misleading.
In this case, yes, absence of evidence can be considered as good as evidence of absence. We rely on the presumption of innocence, so no evidence should be enough to presume innocence.
And not all faulty witness accounts are lies. Far from it. Many are perfectly sincere. The main issue is the unreliability of human memory, and our tendency to fill in or color events according to our own idea of what happened.
"Credible witnesses", man i'm getting some flashbacks here. That's just opinion so little need to say anything more. Lifelong public servants can be the most severe partisans, though. Have you ever read James Comey's twitter feed? There is nothing more partisan than that. I wouldn't say working in the government prevents you from having strong opinions about politics and the government.
I find this whole worship of the intelligence agencies really pernicious, to go off on a tangent here. The list of awful deeds and policies enacted by them reads like something out of a comic book villians Wikipedia page. I do not subscribe to any notions of inherent virtue or integrity to that class of people. When politicians parade them around as if they are paragons I see it as little more than propaganda.
Oh. Good - so you have evidence that all of the witnesses havent been credible?
Edit - Actually wait. I see. You've decided credibility is simply an opinion. If it doesnt fit your priors, you just reject it. Interesting.
If this guy is lying or making this up with the kind of details he remembers here, I'll eat the phone I'm typing this on:
https://youtu.be/P1Le5ZYMNbE
Everything about this call jives. Trump WAS trying to convince Sweden to let an American rapper off the hook for an assault charge at this time, and Kim Kardashian HAS had influence on him in regards to at least one pardon he has given while in office. The phone call takes place on July 26th. Here is a Reuters story from 4 days later on August 1st, about him being released:
Point being, these are not details a serious professional diplomat would think to throw into the story to add flavor or color. He mentions them because this is what took place. 100%. I'd bet everything I own on it.
Indeed. Sondland confirmed in his testimony the call took place - although he had not previously mentioned it before this latest statement. As I noted before, Sondland appeared earlier in this process to have been trying to protect the President and disguise the fact there was an illegal conspiracy. I think the reason he's no longer attempting that is because the evidence is overwhelming. That's by no means limited to eye-witness testimony, there's plenty of documentary evidence as well. If Sondland had attempted to cover things up at this stage he would just have been drawing criminal charges onto himself - and it appears he didn't fancy that prospect ...
Indeed. Sondland confirmed in his testimony the call took place - although he had not previously mentioned it before this latest statement. As I noted before, Sondland appeared earlier in this process to have been trying to protect the President and disguise the fact there was an illegal conspiracy. I think the reason he's no longer attempting that is because the evidence is overwhelming. That's by no means limited to eye-witness testimony, there's plenty of documentary evidence as well. If Sondland had attempted to cover things up at this stage he would just have been drawing criminal charges onto himself - and it appears he didn't fancy that prospect ...
What was also amazing yesterday was when Republicans said, essentially "this would be more compelling if you had documents to back it up", while neglecting to mention that it is the White House themselves who are refusing to produce and allow the House access to those documents. Their bad faith knows no bounds. But if you want to know why Republicans are acting like they are in the hearings, this article explains it. And it's exactly what I surmised days ago. Facebook is a plague. But, once again, for the exact opposite reasons the right believes it is:
Trump is now firing Navy Commanders who cannot abide letting a murderous war criminal remain actively serving in a unit. And I remember a time when gays serving openly was going to ruin morale. If any Democrat every did anything like this......ah, screw it, what's the point......
A reminder again that Trump pardoned three cold-blooded murderers just a couple weeks ago and not only did no one bat an eyelash, they are conquering heroes on FOX News. If you think the Iraq War got the bloodlust for killing brown people in Arab countries out of the Republican base's system, you are sadly mistaken. That train is never late.
Here is who Eddie Gallagher is. He's a unit commander who knifed a boy in the throat and then posed for pictures with his corpse:
Trump is now firing Navy Commanders who cannot abide letting a murderous war criminal remain actively serving in a unit. And I remember a time when gays serving openly was going to ruin morale. If any Democrat every did anything like this......ah, screw it, what's the point......
A reminder again that Trump pardoned three cold-blooded murderers just a couple weeks ago and not only did no one bat an eyelash, they are conquering heroes on FOX News. If you think the Iraq War got the bloodlust for killing brown people in Arab countries out of the Republican base's system, you are sadly mistaken. That train is never late.
Here is who Eddie Gallagher is. He's a unit commander who knifed a boy in the throat and then posed for pictures with his corpse:
Fascinating article but long on suppositions and light on evidence. Posing with the body is despicable but that's not by itself evidence of murder. I agree that he should be discharged from military service though...
Trump is now firing Navy Commanders who cannot abide letting a murderous war criminal remain actively serving in a unit. And I remember a time when gays serving openly was going to ruin morale. If any Democrat every did anything like this......ah, screw it, what's the point......
A reminder again that Trump pardoned three cold-blooded murderers just a couple weeks ago and not only did no one bat an eyelash, they are conquering heroes on FOX News. If you think the Iraq War got the bloodlust for killing brown people in Arab countries out of the Republican base's system, you are sadly mistaken. That train is never late.
Here is who Eddie Gallagher is. He's a unit commander who knifed a boy in the throat and then posed for pictures with his corpse:
Fascinating article but long on suppositions and light on evidence. Posing with the body is despicable but that's not by itself evidence of murder. I agree that he should be discharged from military service though...
There's some evidence. The defense accepted that Gallagher used his knife to cut the boy's throat - perhaps not altogether a surprising admission given the witness evidence and the photo sent to friends with the accompanying statement "Got him with my hunting knife."
This reminds me of the Kavanaugh situation, where his testimony contained numerous problematic statements. While proving to a criminal standard those were lies would be difficult, that doesn't mean administrative action would not have been justified against him (such as not accepting him onto the Supreme Court). In Gallagher's case the intervention of another witness saying he killed the boy provides enough element of doubt to justify a not guilty verdict in a criminal court. That does not mean though that no action should be taken against him ...
Local council elections in Hong Kong have provided an opportunity to assess the mood of the populace after months of increasingly violent protests. The protesters had successfully called for calm ahead of the elections and the turnout of 2.9m was about double that for the previous elections in 2015. Though the councillors have little power, the election was effectively turned into a referendum by the pro-democracy protesters - and the 57% of the overall vote taken by their candidates gives them control of 17 of the 18 councils.
This result will make it more difficult for the pro-Beijing parties to continue with their narrative that there is a 'silent majority' in Hong Kong for their policies. It would be nice to think that would result in compromise and a strengthening of the "one country, two systems" approach, but it's quite possible it will instead result in increased pressure from the mainland for a crackdown on protesters.
Trump is now firing Navy Commanders who cannot abide letting a murderous war criminal remain actively serving in a unit. And I remember a time when gays serving openly was going to ruin morale. If any Democrat every did anything like this......ah, screw it, what's the point......
A reminder again that Trump pardoned three cold-blooded murderers just a couple weeks ago and not only did no one bat an eyelash, they are conquering heroes on FOX News. If you think the Iraq War got the bloodlust for killing brown people in Arab countries out of the Republican base's system, you are sadly mistaken. That train is never late.
Here is who Eddie Gallagher is. He's a unit commander who knifed a boy in the throat and then posed for pictures with his corpse:
Fascinating article but long on suppositions and light on evidence. Posing with the body is despicable but that's not by itself evidence of murder. I agree that he should be discharged from military service though...
There's some evidence. The defense accepted that Gallagher used his knife to cut the boy's throat - perhaps not altogether a surprising admission given the witness evidence and the photo sent to friends with the accompanying statement "Got him with my hunting knife."
This reminds me of the Kavanaugh situation, where his testimony contained numerous problematic statements. While proving to a criminal standard those were lies would be difficult, that doesn't mean administrative action would not have been justified against him (such as not accepting him onto the Supreme Court). In Gallagher's case the intervention of another witness saying he killed the boy provides enough element of doubt to justify a not guilty verdict in a criminal court. That does not mean though that no action should be taken against him ...
What happened here was two-fold. First and foremost was that Trump made him a cause celebre. He was making it known before the military trial even started that he wanted him to get off, thus tainting the entire process (this is EXACTLY WHY Presidents are not supposed to comment on trial proceedings). But the other is the one the article mentions, where (and yes, this is just like Kavanaugh) the righteous indignation and defiance in the face of being confronted with obvious lies and misdeeds gets turned into a weapon. But let's just say that most people who are attempting to perform triage on someone to PREVENT them from dying as Gallagher claims don't usually then take a picture with that person's dead body after it was unsuccessful.
This was a case just like the thin blue line with cops. His unit told the truth about his psychopathic behavior on duty in Iraq. But when push came to shove, the institution, like always, protects it's own. What is most nauseating about this entire set of pardons is that it is well established those granted them killed people. They were put on trial by the military for committing war crimes. Now that Trump has pardoned them, they aren't just going home, they are now seen as conquering heroes on the right. They've been all over FOX News already. One of them was attacking Lt. Colonel Vindman on TV less than 48 hrs after being released.
@Balrog99 "No your honor, I didn't kill him. He was just killed with my knife! and I posed with the corpse! Uh, and my own unit said I did it....uh.... I'm innoncent?"
@Balrog99 "No your honor, I didn't kill him. He was just killed with my knife! and I posed with the corpse! Uh, and my own unit said I did it....uh.... I'm innoncent?"
Apparently you were there when the alleged murder happened? Why didnt you testify?
Does Trump have the inherent power to do this?? Of course. But as I said, if Obama or Clinton had EVER interfered with the chain of command like this in a case of military justice, we'd still be talking about it today. Trump pardoned him, there was nothing to be done about that. The head of the Navy was saying we simply cannot have this guy reinstated actively to his previous rank and expect to maintain unit discipline going forward. It's not that Trump is just letting the guy go home. It's that he is practically deifying him in the process. But I mean, this is the guy who said in the campaign it's not only ok to kill the families of suspected terrorists, but that you should ACTIVELY TARGET them. But I mean, this is the country that shrugged it's shoulders when we ran a full-scale torture program for an entire Administration, because Dipshit the 2nd didn't listen to one of the half a dozen warnings he got in the summer of '01.
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There are 10 instances of him obstructing Justice laid out in the Mueller report.
Mueller could not charge him because of DOJ protocol.
Congress were currently debating if they should open impeachment hearings on these obstructions before this Ukraine matter came to light.
Also see Roger Stone lying to Mueller and being found guilty of it relating to Wikileaks. And then read the report and realize Wikileaks = hacked DNC emails and then realize that it was coordinated and if Stone did not lie there would have been an established link.
Also keep in mind Don Jr wasn’t charged because Mueller thought he was too stupid.
So facts do matter. Busy because a person(s) prevents the facts from coming to light, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Post surgery regret is rare: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6212091/
On transitioning for young adults:
Young Adult Psychological Outcome After Puberty Suppression and Gender Reassignment
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/09/02/peds.2013-2958
A trans mental health study in 2012: https://www.gires.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/trans_mh_study.pdf
Life is better across the board for trans people who choose to transition medically. It's particularly notable that even their sex lives improved--if nothing else, you'd expect that to be the thing least likely to improve.
I'm not just citing the personal experience of every transgender person I've ever met.
Transgender Adults’ Access to College Bathrooms and Housing and the Relationship to Suicidality: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918369.2016.1157998
Family Rejection as a Predictor of Suicide Attempts and Substance Misuse Among Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Adults
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/lgbt.2015.0111
Intervenable factors associated with suicide risk in transgender persons: a respondent driven sampling study in Ontario, Canada
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-015-1867-2 Unsurprisingly, greater tolerance for trans identities means less suffering for trans people.
Sure, and within that time frame none of the methodological errors have been corrected. Recent studies that call themselves the first of their kind in terms of gaining new information are still incredibly limited. The germ theory of disease is at least a century and a half old and probably older depending on how you want to draw the line, that doesn't make it any less true. Time frame in and of itself means little if no new information has come to light.
I find this quote fascinating. You're so convinced Trump cannot be guilty that you're fabricating an alternative set of events to try to explain it away. This is 100% how conspiracy theories work. (You even built in an "out" in which you wouldnt believe Guiliani's testimony. Think about that. Almost literally nothing would suffice).
Trump's personal lawyer went rogue in order to help the President, who referenced the Bidens purely by happenstance in a memo of a call (that was then itself hidden in the most top secret place the president can hide things).
Something else has occurred to me during all of this. Partisans dont have a credible idea of "Beyond a reasonable doubt" because their partisanship biases them. Defenders of the president seem to think the only actual valid evidence would be a tape or a recording of him saying, in explicit terms, something incriminating.
You dont need a tape. You dont need a recording. Evidence includes the sworn testimony of participants who have information. We have half a dozen of those now, and they're all largely lined up to agree with the whistleblower's account of the call. They're all largely saying the same thing.
Also, yes, testimony is evidence, but false or misleading testimony from witnesses is the number one cause of wrongful convictions. It is, by the numbers, the very worst sort of evidence. Relying on solely that from a couple of people is a terribly made case.
https://www.law.umich.edu/clinical/innocenceclinic/Pages/wrongfulconvictions.aspx
A few things - no one is calling him a mastermind. I think asking Ukraine to investigate Biden within a day of the Mueller hearing is utterly idiotic.
Because some witnesses lie some of the time is an extremely bad reason to believe all witnesses are operating in bad faith. I daresay it would literally make a coherent system of justice impossible.
In this instance, the witnesses have all been credible (None of them have a history to being partisan, except one or two who are actually conservatives). They've mostly all been life long public servants of one kind or another (Diplomats, for example). So it would be foolish to think they all managed to give private depositions separately of each other, managed to get their stories to line up with a great deal of consistency, and then all lied about what they witnessed.
Also, it's been a hot minute since I busted it out, but you've also subscribed to the logical fallacy retorted by "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". The basic goal of Trump's defense is to set the bar impossibly high for evidence (Something like first hand audio or video recording of Trump explicitly incriminating himself), and having a built in network in the form of the office of the presidency to compel witnesses not to testify (See all the people who have refused subpoenas because Trump told them to).
However, no one can really SAY that because it makes one look completely without any principles whatsoever. So the standards for admission of guilt are set so high as to be impossible to actually match, while providing plauisble deniability to those citing them. Though, in this case, what they think is an impossible bar to jump over actually DOES get jumped on a weekly basis, forcing a shell of cognitive dissonance to completely takeover.
I find it noteworthy that everyone who's testified in the latest round of the impeachment investigation has provided testimony damaging to Trump - even those like Sondland that have supported Trump in the past and who, earlier this year, actively tried to hide the attempts to get Ukraine to announce an investigation. I suspect a large part of the reason why none of these people are now willing to lie for Trump is they have recent evidence about what happens to those that do lie to investigators ...
As for the evidence of Trump's direct involvement, I have no doubt that exists. Remember the 'transcript' of his phone call that he released at the start of this process as one of his attempts at damage control? That was pretty damning in itself, so I would be astonished if the real transcript is not absolutely damning - and I imagine there will be quite a lot of other documentary evidence as well that will surface eventually. It's possible Trump will continue to be able to suppress evidence while he's President, but that state of affairs won't last for ever.
And not all faulty witness accounts are lies. Far from it. Many are perfectly sincere. The main issue is the unreliability of human memory, and our tendency to fill in or color events according to our own idea of what happened.
"Credible witnesses", man i'm getting some flashbacks here. That's just opinion so little need to say anything more. Lifelong public servants can be the most severe partisans, though. Have you ever read James Comey's twitter feed? There is nothing more partisan than that. I wouldn't say working in the government prevents you from having strong opinions about politics and the government.
I find this whole worship of the intelligence agencies really pernicious, to go off on a tangent here. The list of awful deeds and policies enacted by them reads like something out of a comic book villians Wikipedia page. I do not subscribe to any notions of inherent virtue or integrity to that class of people. When politicians parade them around as if they are paragons I see it as little more than propaganda.
We can agree on that one
This is the largest study of transgender children with comparisons to both their cisgender siblings and similar number of cisgender children they're not related to. Its findings contradict older studies with limited application to actually transgender people.
Also, as it relates to surgery, those who do get it have one of the lowest regret rates of any surgical procedure or body modification. People are significantly more likely to regret tattoos than a transgender person is to regret surgery.
Also, the Swedish study is frequently misrepresented as evidence against medical transition, when the study authors were not attempting to study that. Cecilia Dhejne, one of the study's authors, explains this at the start of her Reddit AMA. She then links to an interview she gave on the topic.
The 2004 Guardian article was written by David Batty, who himself had an agenda to prove that transition was bad, and using an article to explain the relevant science is probably bad anyway, as science reporting is garbage. There's no study that finds such high regret rates as he claims. This commentary on Batty's article refutes his extreme claims and explains what the study actually says.
And you can't really use a 2004 paper to extend the claim that most of the research was weak prior to 2004 to "all of the research in favor of transition is week up until the current day." That's not a good argument and it doesn't really lead to any understanding.
Regarding the third link you gave, it doesn't make a statement as to whether surgery itself is beneficial or not, but rather that there's not a lot of research in that area. What it does not do is ban Medicare and Medicaid from covering such surgery.
So your three links are: A misused study that doesn't say what you think it says, a bad faith 2004 Guardian article written by someone with an agenda, and a recommendation that Medicare and Medicaid maintain a gatekeeping stance on covering surgery for those who need and seek it. That is, this is more a money argument than a health care argument on their part.
But that's all beside the point. There are multiple elements to transition - social transition, hormone replacement therapy, and surgery. What is established is that social transition and eventually HRT for minors results in mental health outcomes similar to their cisgender peers. Also well established is that mental health outcomes for adults who transition do in fact improve.
* SemiticGod linked the studies so I don't have to
This is not true, but it's what you're likely to hear from the right wing echo chamber. The germ theory of disease also did not have to fight institutional bias against properly treating illness, whereas providing useful health care to support medical transition is constantly under fire and faces constant opposition from people whose arguments boil down to "trans people are icky and we shouldn't help them." Numerous professionals and activists have worked hard for decades to poison the well against effective health care in this field. The number of people who retransition to their assigned gender because they made a mistake and transition was wrong for them is a fraction of a single percent of transitioning people overall, but people like Batty and others promote the idea that they represent a much larger group of people whose needs must necessarily outweigh the needs of thousands of transgender people who do need transition for every one of those regretters.
A lot of new information has come to light over the years, hence the evolution of WPATH standards of care, the shift in the US toward at least some insurance covering transition, the unambiguous research showing that transition improves mental health outcomes, the research showing that transgender and cisgender children of the same gender show similar development trajectories with regards to their gender and understanding of it, that "gender identity disorder" was removed from the DSM and replaced with "gender dysphoria," making it clear that being transgender is a not a mental illness, and the fact that despite you pointing to a few studies that allegedly show surgery is bad, thousands of trans people seek it every year at the minimum. If transition were as lacking in obvious benefit as you seem to think research shows (it doesn't), then the AAP wouldn't endorse allowing trans children to socially transition and later go on blockers and HRT.
Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld did a significant amount of work in the early 20th century and the LGBT scene in Germany prior to the Nazis was thriving. Transgender people were socially and medically transitioning throughout the 20s, and people came from other countries to do this. Unfortunately, the Nazis deliberately targeted Hirschfeld's clinic and burned all of his research. They did keep the list of patients, however, so they could round them up and send them to concentration camps. Those pictures of Nazis burning books? Those were of Nazis burning the books taken from Hirschfeld's institute. That's decades of research of transgender people going up in smoke.
I don't recall Nazis burning all research on the germ theory of disease. Or the Pope comparing germ theory to nuclear weapons. Comparing the two like this is deeply misleading.
Oh. Good - so you have evidence that all of the witnesses havent been credible?
Edit - Actually wait. I see. You've decided credibility is simply an opinion. If it doesnt fit your priors, you just reject it. Interesting.
Everything about this call jives. Trump WAS trying to convince Sweden to let an American rapper off the hook for an assault charge at this time, and Kim Kardashian HAS had influence on him in regards to at least one pardon he has given while in office. The phone call takes place on July 26th. Here is a Reuters story from 4 days later on August 1st, about him being released:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-sweden-rapper/trump-cheers-as-rapper-aap-rocky-freed-in-swedish-assault-case-idUSKCN1UR5UO
Point being, these are not details a serious professional diplomat would think to throw into the story to add flavor or color. He mentions them because this is what took place. 100%. I'd bet everything I own on it.
What was also amazing yesterday was when Republicans said, essentially "this would be more compelling if you had documents to back it up", while neglecting to mention that it is the White House themselves who are refusing to produce and allow the House access to those documents. Their bad faith knows no bounds. But if you want to know why Republicans are acting like they are in the hearings, this article explains it. And it's exactly what I surmised days ago. Facebook is a plague. But, once again, for the exact opposite reasons the right believes it is:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/republican-conspiracy-theory-counterprogramming
A reminder again that Trump pardoned three cold-blooded murderers just a couple weeks ago and not only did no one bat an eyelash, they are conquering heroes on FOX News. If you think the Iraq War got the bloodlust for killing brown people in Arab countries out of the Republican base's system, you are sadly mistaken. That train is never late.
Here is who Eddie Gallagher is. He's a unit commander who knifed a boy in the throat and then posed for pictures with his corpse:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48536760
Fascinating article but long on suppositions and light on evidence. Posing with the body is despicable but that's not by itself evidence of murder. I agree that he should be discharged from military service though...
There's some evidence. The defense accepted that Gallagher used his knife to cut the boy's throat - perhaps not altogether a surprising admission given the witness evidence and the photo sent to friends with the accompanying statement "Got him with my hunting knife."
This reminds me of the Kavanaugh situation, where his testimony contained numerous problematic statements. While proving to a criminal standard those were lies would be difficult, that doesn't mean administrative action would not have been justified against him (such as not accepting him onto the Supreme Court). In Gallagher's case the intervention of another witness saying he killed the boy provides enough element of doubt to justify a not guilty verdict in a criminal court. That does not mean though that no action should be taken against him ...
This result will make it more difficult for the pro-Beijing parties to continue with their narrative that there is a 'silent majority' in Hong Kong for their policies. It would be nice to think that would result in compromise and a strengthening of the "one country, two systems" approach, but it's quite possible it will instead result in increased pressure from the mainland for a crackdown on protesters.
What happened here was two-fold. First and foremost was that Trump made him a cause celebre. He was making it known before the military trial even started that he wanted him to get off, thus tainting the entire process (this is EXACTLY WHY Presidents are not supposed to comment on trial proceedings). But the other is the one the article mentions, where (and yes, this is just like Kavanaugh) the righteous indignation and defiance in the face of being confronted with obvious lies and misdeeds gets turned into a weapon. But let's just say that most people who are attempting to perform triage on someone to PREVENT them from dying as Gallagher claims don't usually then take a picture with that person's dead body after it was unsuccessful.
This was a case just like the thin blue line with cops. His unit told the truth about his psychopathic behavior on duty in Iraq. But when push came to shove, the institution, like always, protects it's own. What is most nauseating about this entire set of pardons is that it is well established those granted them killed people. They were put on trial by the military for committing war crimes. Now that Trump has pardoned them, they aren't just going home, they are now seen as conquering heroes on the right. They've been all over FOX News already. One of them was attacking Lt. Colonel Vindman on TV less than 48 hrs after being released.
Apparently you were there when the alleged murder happened? Why didnt you testify?