Matthew

Lying isn't lack of eloquence. Well by siding with Russia and conceding most of their demands even before the talks begin.

Seriously. I mean he paid someone to ghost write a whole book for him about the art of the deal. So you'd think he would be better at it.

Well most people everywhere prefer stability and adherence to the law vs chaos, economic uncertainty, etc. And you can't tell me that weakening NATO is anything but a long term decline for the entire western alliance, which very few Democrats or Republicans would have tolerated as a policy direction.

Yup. If you guys were in Poland in the late 30s you know CF would be wetting his tongue to lick some nazi boots.

Example of the current House using its power as a check against president trump?

Corporate lobbyists have been by far the dominant influence in American policymaking for decades and still are #1 most likely. Though the billionaire squad is probably a close #2 but the scale of their impact is ultimately going to be narrower towards just the policies and industries that they will benefit from.

The question is which one you think has the most right now. That's adorable. His agenda? Ok, interesting interpretation.

They could be, but then again that's why I specifically defined what i meant by governing.

By governing I am specifically referring to shaping government policy. Even on a good day this is not often clear in the US.

Really, where? Also who or what exactly IS the government right now? I can't tell which parts still exist or continue to have a function. Do we still have a Congress or did Elon get rid of that already?

Elon Musk made a spreadsheet with made up information on it? I'm shocked.

Yeah he proved your point. User stays quiet about the trump policies and actions he doesn't like. Hes a caged cheerleader. For example I know with foreign policy User is not a fan of the US siding with fascist dictators and weakening the our NATO alliance. But he keeps his head down and recites the slogans required by the Party.

A lot of the more normie trump voters have been in denial about exactly how much trump is willing to do the bidding of Russia's dictator.

It's fine for Russia and the US to have their own meetings about this. The real cripplingly stupid flaw of these trump goons is that they are conceding everything before the negotiations even begin. Their STARTING position is to give Russia everything it wants while Russia gives nothing. Now today trump is parroting Kremlin taking points about Ukraine starting the war and needing to have an election. There is simply no doubt that Trump is an unwitting Russian asset.

You keep trying to make me care about sports. I still do not. So you figure that these kinds of government actions cause a teenager to think they are transgender? Not necessarily. But as meaningless as anything in society based upon created shared meanings. Well for example firing someone, kicking someone out of housing, refusing someone service, denial of civil liberties. Are you in favor of protecting the civil rights of everyone including people who think they are transgender? I'm glad you agree your point is a logical fallacy. Gee, that was easy. This is your excuse for not knowing what name your kid goes by? Should protective services dealing with a possible abuse victim be required to inform the parents when a teenager under their care is asking to use different pronouns?

No you're saying that it's being pushed onto kids and implying that these three policies you've mentioned (vis-a-vis sports, bathrooms, and name used at school) are therefore going to help alleviate the issue. Seems a little simplistic. So asking who exactly is doing the "pushing" in your imagination will help see how these policy ideas may or may not connect. Being transgender is a different than identifying as such. I don't think anyone actually has a relationship with a god named Jesus Christ. But I certainly recognize that people believe they do and as such are an actual group of people. That is correct. I also don't care about laws made to exclude trans people from sports. It's true that my position would be only slightly less offensive than yours to those who believe in gender essentialism. Oh well. I'm not in favor of legal discrimination and that's a big difference to me. It's reductio ad absurdum pseudo-reasoning. Again, I agree that no law should require or allow teachers to hide information about a student from parents. But nor should a law mandating that they share personal info. The idea that parents should be tuned in to their own kids lives to know what's happening with them and what they care about is the actual solution to your problem, not a non sequitur. I am. Revealing potentially inflammatory unsolicited information about teenagers personal lives will put some students at risk of abuse. Again, if a parent asks, it is their right to know. But teachers have an interest in not maximizing the risk to students.

The federal bureaucracy is less than 1% political patronage positions. Most are merit-based. And one thing trump has never yet learned is that the great superpower of the exectuve branch vs Congress is in the depth of professional expertise housed within the hundreds of agencies he oversees. Congress does not have thousands of policy experts and must rely on the executive branch for many details of policy-making. And just because he's cutting people and ending agencies by exective action doesn't mean he's eliminating the laws that those agencies were charged with enforcing. Propaganda is so effective. Billionaires paying millionaires to convince lowly schlubs that the billionaires and corporations are the good guys and that poor people and immigrants are the bad guys. Seeing grown adults debase themselves parroting the propaganda is the saddest indictment of humanity's failed capacity to learn. Of course it is. The EOs were largely theatrics. There is only so much policymaking that trump can do by just f*cking around within the bureaucracy with Elon musk without actually changing the laws. Making a law is hard and requires deftness and collaborate leadership that trump shows no evidence of possessing. It's the president's de facto job to lead legislative initiatives. The clock is ticking. He's got two years to get some laws passed before republicans likely lose complete control of Congress. Riiight. Well your sophistry and wishful thinking notwithstanding, most people aren't going to find that believable. But I do notice how you're not disagreeing with my actual point. Well, for example his rhetoric about sealing the border, mass deportations, lowering food prices, tax cuts for workers, protect medicare and social security.

Well if he actually does mass deportation then that will greatly spike food prices. If he actually does tarrifs, those will get passed onto higher price of consumer goods. It's very possible that both of these are just lies he told yokels to get elected. Overall his approach to most policies looks like it's going to a brute force blunt instrument style that will lack nuance and expertise and will eventually have far-reaching destabilizing effects. His cabinet is stacked with billionaires and corporate interests who will be given free reign to deregulate everything for their own benefits. It will be a new guilded age for the wealthy and while they are making a big show for the culture war via powerless executive orders, the real test will be the legislative agenda. Last time the only big law they passed was a tax cut for the rich. So far the only legislative goal I've heard is extending that tax cut, and toying with the idea of cutting the child and education tax credits when they do. But really doubt any of the promises he's made to ordinary people will make it to the legislative agenda. Why would they?

It's a prediction of the future, not a claim about current facts. We posted our recession predictions back in November. So its a shout-out to what Im still believing will happen once trumps policies fully take effect.

We'll have the next 4 years to find out.

Riiight. Enjoy your trumpflation and trumpcession.

No, trump and his people did this so shamelessly and dishonestly that the only right thing to do is return the favor.

Who do you propose is "pushing it onto kids?" The policies you've mentioned don't seem to be strongly related to the process by which these ideas would be obtained and internalized. Well duh, I am a leftist. I also have no reason to believe that anyone is inherently transgender. There is no contradiction here. People who identify as transgender exist and are actively discriminated against, which I oppose. A. I don't even have an opinion about trans people in sports, that's what i mean about not caring. The other policies we've mentioned I do have some opinions on but even those are mostly superficial issues. B. I have yet to ever see a political proposal that is based upon gender nonconformity being inherent to a person and if i did I would not support that. Mostly I see movements to support people who feel as though they are under asssult by the far right, which I agree they are. I have explained several times the one specific core thing that I agree with you on here in this topic. An imaginary thing that is important to someone's identity means that if i care about them I will show it by calling them what they wish to be called. Basic human reciprocity. A good parent should know about what is important to their kid. Why is the kid afraid to tell them? Really? What do you think is more important than the safety of a teachers students?

It says "for beverage or medicinal purposes" Yup, exactly. It was part of a package of anti trans laws, which really is a vulnerability for republicans to do stupid things. Diagnoses and treatment decisions are by default a private decision, naturally within a context of professional standards and government safety requirements. Obviously the government CAN step in and say that a certain treatment is illegal for non-medical political or moral reasons of those in power. But when doing so is purely just targeting a certain disliked population, it's unlikely to be a longstanding policy. Nah I do not care about these laws, or really most of the anti-trans laws. Reasonable people could conclude either direction and it will all be a topic of shifting winds. Older people who are more triggered by the whole transgender thing will die off and eventually these alternate gender ideas will gradually be normalized. Laws like this are more likely to speed up that process and a whole generation or two of right wing policy making will be wasted fixated on a cultural trend on which they can't actually affect long-term change. I agree. The thing about bathrooms is it needs to be simple. It's extremely difficult to make a simple policy on this. So unless an actual problem emerges, it's probably best to just let people pee wherever they feel comfortable and focus on ways making the public bathroom designs safe and private. "This stuff?" Sloppy thinking. Also what kind of dork asks someone's opinion and then when they answer accuses them of pushing a belief? If a student (or any person) asks to go by a certain name or pronoun, then the simple and normal human thing to do is to do that. If a student asks to not tell their parents, that's not a promise a teacher can make should the issue of their name arise. But there is no reason to actively betray a student's trust. A teacher has a higher responsibility for protecting their student than they do for informing the parent of non-academic insights they have about the student's personal life.

I don't know where you're from, but here in Iowa the law says parents are allowed to let their children drink alcohol for beverage purposes so long as the parents are present and give their consent (see Iowa Code §123.47 subsection 3). There is no differentiation on alcohol content. I'm sure there are stricter states out there but it would not be unusual for a teenager at a party here with their parents to get drunk. That's a fair point, though medical decisions are by default a private matter. State interventions where the government decides what health decisions you and your doctor can and cannot make ARE authoritarian and are sometimes justified if the intervention will substantially impact public health, which I don't think can be said if this since a gender treatment isn't going to directly impact the health of anyone else beyond the person choosing to do it. I am opposed to the idea that anyone is inherently transgender. I'm also opposed to people being picked on for their beliefs by those in power, unless their beliefs are directly doing harm to others in society. I think the transgender subculture comes pretty close to that line and sometimes crosses it. But mostly this is a story about teenagers and their parents making life choices which are theirs to make. Well for example at the beginning of the school year parents can consent or deny consent to many things up front during registration. In this way almost all parents are asked. But in this case republicans have decided that mental health screening can't be asked up front during registration and has to be a letter mailed home and then replied to in writing. So this, perhaps by design, vastly cuts the percentage of students screened. So yes, parental consent is great. But doing it in a way to most dramatically minimize participation is harmful. I don't care about that at all, either way. I oppose any taxpayer money going towards sports. So how they do their sports is up to them. Mainly I think it should default to one's current primary sex characteristics / external reproductive organs. I think this is relevant for schools. But realistically an alternate changing/restroom area is going to be necessary in a high school changing situation. But overall i don't see the bathroom / locker room thing as a significant policy issue because public policy is meant to fix problems and there is no noteworthy problem with women being assaulted by transgender men in bathrooms. Women are sexually assaulted by regular straight / non-trans guys in bathrooms and elsewhere all the time for centuries (90% of the time it's by family members). So if safety for women in bathrooms is an actual concern, these bathroom laws seem rather useless at confronting it. A law saying parents have no right to know? Nope i don't support that nor laws that try to mandate certain ponoun. On the flip side, a law requiring teachers to out students to parents if they ask to be called by a different name/pronoun? I don't support that either. I do think teenagers ought to have some minimal right to informally go by a different name. Teachers shouldn't be compelled hide this, nor be compelled to inform. If the kid doesn't trust their parent enough to let them in on it, that's the parent's fault. If the parent outright objects to an alternate name being used, teachers should respect the parents wish. But I think the general principle should default to maximum freedom for self determination. If any person in my life asks me to call them by a certain name or to use a certain ponoun, basic human politeness would compel me to do that regardless of my opinion about their ideas.