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U.S. Politics: Girthers Vs. Anti-Girthers


Martell Spy

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4 hours ago, mormont said:

Didn't Trump start using the 6ft3 claim during the campaign last year? 

Yup. Trump has always said that he’s 6’2 until that quack of a doctor of his released his report during the campaign.  

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Anyway, the whole thing about this is not whether he's technically overweight or obese. Either way, that's his business, and none of ours. The issue is that you have a guy who'll not only lie about something like this, but have people lie for him. That's worrying. It creates a culture where lying to massage the President's ego is normal. The issues with that are surely obvious. On the other hand, it isn't news: just a further example of how that culture is established. 

This is what I was getting at in the last thread about Trump and dominance. He’s exerting his ownership over these people by forcing them to go out in public and tell obvious lies. It’s an old Cosa Nostra technique. You make people complicit with your crimes so they’re forced to defend them and you.

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A medical doctor lying to the public about his patient is really low on the list.  That medical doctor probably has a duty to report an unfit president to the cabinet, but to the public there isn't such a duty.  The lies he has his other staff tell is more worrisome.  He started out his entire presidency forcing his press secretary to tell a verifiable lie about crowd size and the lies have just ballooned from there.  He even has a bunch of senators lying about a shithole comment.  When there's proof of all this other lying, the fat shaming route becomes more distasteful.  

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I personally have not been participating in what the Pony Queen is yelling about -- BUT -- a guy who fat and looks shames everyone, whose own unattractive appearance has been out-of-bounds due to 1) other people's decency and courtesy; 2) other people's fear of him because he has so much power over them personally due to being head of the family or financially due to him being their employer; 3) who has abused women, even raped them it appears on occasion and accuses other women of not being attractive enough to be raped -- he has earned all the comments on his own appearance that he receives since he made himself a public figure that claims to lead the nation. As the leader goes so goes the nation.  This nation is NOT kind, compassionate or generous, but mean and nasty, and even wantonly so, merely because it can.

As for Cuba being an unfit subject in a US politics forums -- only someone who thinks only what s/he thinks matters would say that.

Beyond that, however, being in Cuba for 2 weeks, off the internet by choice, one can go on if one wishes, but I was way out in the country and my head was cleared of the insanity that is the US and US politics -- and best of all, nobody talked about the orange demonfool, I never saw his face or heard his voice, which allows one to see things rather more clearly upon return to the land of the insane.

 

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Uh, wtf? HHS Announces New Conscience and Religious Freedom Division.

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The Conscience and Religious Freedom Division has been established to restore federal enforcement of our nation’s laws that protect the fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious freedom.  OCR is the law enforcement agency within HHS that enforces federal laws protecting civil rights and conscience in health and human services, and the security and privacy of people’s health information.  The creation of the new division will provide HHS with the focus it needs to more vigorously and effectively enforce existing laws protecting the rights of conscience and religious freedom, the first freedom protected in the Bill of Rights.

OCR already has enforcement authority over federal conscience protection statutes, such as the Church, Coats-Snowe, and Weldon Amendments; Section 1553 of the Affordable Care Act (on assisted suicide); and certain federal nondiscrimination laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion in a variety of HHS programs. 

OCR Director Severino said, “Laws protecting religious freedom and conscience rights are just empty words on paper if they aren’t enforced. No one should be forced to choose between helping sick people and living by one’s deepest moral or religious convictions, and the new division will help guarantee that victims of unlawful discrimination find justice. For too long, governments big and small have treated conscience claims with hostility instead of protection, but change is coming and it begins here and now.”

 

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1 minute ago, Zorral said:

he has earned all the comments on his own appearance that he receives

The problem with that is, it suggests that negative comments about your appearance can be deserved, and the reason we avoid them in general is because people haven't been nasty enough to deserve them, not because such comments are problematic in and of themselves. 

 

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Kalbear wrote in the last thread about Theodore Roosevelt:

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He hunted. There is no sign of torture or particular cruelty to animals or other people in any of his life, and point of fact he took a lot of absurd risks when facing animals - like hunting bear with a revolver with one bullet. 

 

Nor was there any other outward sign of psychopathy; he didn't lie particularly much, he didn't blame others for his issues, he had a firm grasp of reality, he had a stern moral code that appeared to largely be affected by others, etc. The idea that Roosevelt is a psychopath because he believed in waging war as policy is absurd on its face.

 

This thread is moving so quickly I can't keep up --but I wanted to affirm this as a psychologist. It is not "killing animals" that is a sign of incipient psychopathy -- it's torturing animals. If there is no evidence that TR killed household pets as a child, or that while he was hunting he deliberately killed animals in a cruel torturous way unusual for his culture and historical time period, there simply is no evidence for anti-social tendencies there. 

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Trump yet again participates in some friendly-fire casualties, throwing a bomb into Republicans' attempts to whip votes on the CR by coming out against long-term CHIP funding as a component of the CR.

“CHIP should be part of a long term solution, not a 30 Day, or short term, extension!,” Trump said, referring to the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Re: the "girther" movement, I can't see it as fat-shaming. It's a play on Trump's birther conspiracy by pointing out a conspiracy of his own making about something that is really insignificant. BMI is a poorly designed measurement in the first place. To use myself as an example, my BMI is about 35.5 right now, making me obese. I'm certainly overweight, but the top-end of my "normal" weight according to BMI is like 173 lbs. At 6'0, I look like a beanpole at 173 lbs, as my freshman high school photos can attest. 

He's not being shamed for being obese; he's being shamed for literally creating a conspiracy and forcing other people to lie for him to protect his vanity.

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46 minutes ago, Mexal said:

The link didn't work for me....but, yeah, that just seems, um what?E

ETA:  I am curious to see how they handle a Muslim worker concerned about some religious observance and find themselves defending that worker.

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46 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Kalbear wrote in the last thread about Theodore Roosevelt:

This thread is moving so quickly I can't keep up --but I wanted to affirm this as a psychologist. It is not "killing animals" that is a sign of incipient psychopathy -- it's torturing animals. If there is no evidence that TR killed household pets as a child, or that while he was hunting he deliberately killed animals in a cruel torturous way unusual for his culture and historical time period, there simply is no evidence for anti-social tendencies there. 

I found some stuff that indicated he wanted to hunt for sport at a young age, but nothing that would lead you to believe that he was torturing animals.

Unrelated to what we were discussing about TR, I was doing some research about him last night and man was he an adrenal junkie. I can totally picture him jumping off of a cliff in one of those squirrel suits if he was alive today.

30 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

The link didn't work for me....but, yeah, that just seems, um what?E

ETA:  I am curious to see how they handle a Muslim worker concerned about some religious observance and find themselves defending that worker.

That only applies to Christians, silly. Though once in a while us Jews get grandfathered in.

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This is why they really shouldn't allow people who defer entirely to their imaginary friends to be in position of treating people.  What's going to be done for those patients who want to feel safe and so need to have an atheist provider?  I once encountered a faith healer who masqueraded as a medical doctor.  She literally prayed over my injured foot as though that would make it better.  I of course left quickly, but my insurance made a huge deal about providing me with an actual doctor.  Am I to be subjected to these types of people even if they are free to refuse service based on their own silly whims?

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8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I found some stuff that indicated he wanted to hunt for sport at a young age, but nothing that would lead you to believe that he was torturing animals.

Unrelated to what we were discussing about TR, I was doing some research about him last night and man was he an adrenal junkie. I can totally picture him jumping off of a cliff in one of those squirrel suits if he was alive today.

That only applies to Christians, silly. Though once in a while us Jews get grandfathered in.

He had to be. He was a sickly kid and had to build himself up into a strong, healthy person. That's gonna have psychological effects on a kid.

Im more surprised he lived to be as old as he did, considering the medical problems he had as a kid.

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2 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Yeah, sure, cool pun dude bro.  But that's not all it is.  It's still actually fat shaming.  It serves to remove the questions about the accuracy of his overall health report and instead focus entirely on the weight issue.  

Sorry, I have no sympathy. If you don't want people to talk about his weight, take it up with the guy lying on national television about his weight. The guy is thisclose to a massive heart attack. It matters.

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Just now, Inigima said:

Sorry, I have no sympathy. If you don't want people to talk about his weight, take it up with the guy lying on national television about his weight. The guy is thisclose to a massive heart attack. It matters.

Talking about weight is one thing.  Mocking it is quite different.  I've mentioned multiple times that lying about his health matters, but the mockery of the weight goes heavy into shaming and isn't relevant to discussion about lies told about his health.  You're just being harmful to those who are fat and have to live in a world where mocking fat people is still widely condoned.  

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2 hours ago, Zorral said:

 

As for Cuba being an unfit subject in a US politics forums -- only someone who thinks only what s/he thinks matters would say that.

 

 

Fair, I let my words fly too lose. However, I do believe that everything that isn't this pivotal moment that I think is going to decide the balance of power for the next twelve years is a distraction. Including CNN devoting airtime to blathering about Trump's imaginary relationship to Kim (that's the surname right?) or this idiotic motion to censure Trump from Dems.

It's all just noise, and we need to cut through it to the real issue.

I do think that.

I should not have left possible the interpretation that I do not value other peoples' positions. I got animated and did not properly judge my response. I am sorry, I need to practice what I preach.

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37 minutes ago, Red Tiger said:

He had to be. He was a sickly kid and had to build himself up into a strong, healthy person. That's gonna have psychological effects on a kid.

Im more surprised he lived to be as old as he did, considering the medical problems he had as a kid.

It also helped him with his depression and some of the other issues he was dealing with throughout his life. Interestingly, I was listening to a NPR podcast a few weeks ago and they were discussing geniuses and what makes them successful, and one of the things that they said was common is a childhood trauma, usually being a medical issue(s) and/or the death of a parent(s).

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3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It also helped him with his depression and some of the other issues he was dealing with throughout his life. Interestingly, I was listening to a NPR podcast a few weeks ago and they were discussing geniuses and what makes them successful, and one of the things that they said was common is a childhood trauma, usually being a medical issue(s) and/or the death of a parent(s).

Oh I absolutely agree. If you already lived through horrible circumstances, chances are you will develop strong problem-solving instincts.

On the first sentence, well, to an extent. His health took a nosedive when one of his sons died.

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1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Fair, I let my words fly too lose. However, I do believe that everything that isn't this pivotal moment that I think is going to decide the balance of power for the next twelve years is a distraction. Including CNN devoting airtime to blathering about Trump's imaginary relationship to Kim (that's the surname right?) or this idiotic motion to censure Trump from Dems.

It's all just noise, and we need to cut through it to the real issue.

I do think that.

I should not have left possible the interpretation that I do not value other peoples' positions. I got animated and did not properly judge my response. I am sorry, I need to practice what I preach.

Got it, it's ok. 

Further, however, it IS equally important in these times to have space and places to escape from the unending bombardment of ugliness and stupid and danger that we are all in due to this current condition of the United States.  Cuba, in terms of people, culture -- just hearing the music, even just being in an audience listening to Cuban music here in the US -- and the geography of Cuba too, allows us an escape from the pressure, in which to get an equilibrium, a perspective, and an opportunity to see how other nations have done things successfully.  Not perfectly, of course -- as no person is perfect, neither is any institution or government or nation.  But still, it gives one terrific spiritual and intellectual space, that space that has been nearly squeezed shut by the non-stop, ever increasing crazy that this nation has been since the 1980's.

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1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Fair, I let my words fly too lose. However, I do believe that everything that isn't this pivotal moment that I think is going to decide the balance of power for the next twelve years is a distraction. Including CNN devoting airtime to blathering about Trump's imaginary relationship to Kim (that's the surname right?) or this idiotic motion to censure Trump from Dems.

It's all just noise, and we need to cut through it to the real issue.

I do think that.

I should not have left possible the interpretation that I do not value other peoples' positions. I got animated and did not properly judge my response. I am sorry, I need to practice what I preach.

Lol, people get into tangents of their own, and when that happens I skip over those posts because they are responding to each other. I just skimmed the last few posts in your lengthy discussions in the last thread, tbh. Just like I'm sure people skimmed the posts on Cuba.

 

43 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Honest to goodness, it's really, really easy to quote from an article instead of just posting a link. At least give people a taste of what you are linking. You always just post links!

 

1 hour ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Talking about weight is one thing.  Mocking it is quite different.  I've mentioned multiple times that lying about his health matters, but the mockery of the weight goes heavy into shaming and isn't relevant to discussion about lies told about his health.  You're just being harmful to those who are fat and have to live in a world where mocking fat people is still widely condoned.  

For the vast majority of people it's all about his lies about Obama. Some people will always make personal comments, and this is the guy who told women to lose weight or they wouldn't appear in his shows. His vanity is more the point, his self-delusion. It demonstrates how he lies about everything.

I mean, wtf, he lies about the number of stories in Trump Tower!

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1 hour ago, Red Tiger said:

Oh I absolutely agree. If you already lived through horrible circumstances, chances are you will develop strong problem-solving instincts.

On the first sentence, well, to an extent. His health took a nosedive when one of his sons died.

Basically TR was Batman if Batman actually did the smart thing and used his money and influence to change the country and fix things instead of punch bad guys. 

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