In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
The executive committee of the Boy Scouts of America has unanimously approved a resolution that would drop the group’s ban on openly gay leaders, a key step that sends the resolution to the organization’s national board later this month.
If the national executive board ratifies the change when it meets on July 27, it would become official Scouts policy, a little more than two months after the organization’s president cast the ban as an existential threat to the group.
“Today’s announcement hopefully marks the beginning of the end of the Boy Scouts of America’s decades-old ban on gay leaders and parents like my two moms,” Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout and executive director of Scouts for Equality, said in a statement.
The resolution, approved Friday by the group’s executive committee, lets the groups pick “local units, chartered to organizations with similar beliefs, that best meet the needs of their families,” the Boy Scouts said in a statement Monday.
“This change would also respect the right of religious chartered organizations to continue to choose adult leaders whose beliefs are consistent with their own,” the statement said.
Under current policy, the Boy Scouts of America does not allow adult leaders “who are open or avowed homosexuals,” according to the group’s Web site.
It's interesting... I was a cub scout/ boy scout when I was younger, as were a bunch of my friends. One of my school friends in particular was literally the posterboy for our pack (his dad was the pack leader and this kid was just the nicest, most selfless, most respectful kid ever, and was featured on boy scout posters). He epitomizes everything positive that was taught in cub/ boy scouts.
On July 12 2015 12:25 KwarK wrote: Bernie would probably get the White House if he got the democratic nomination and Trump ran as a third party. A man can dream.
But once he's in the White House then what? Unless the Democrats manage to get supermajorities like they did back in 2008, the Republicans will fight tooth and nail to obstruct, obstruct and obstruct everything.
That being said, I hope that the next few years are the dying breath of the old Republican party. It's entirely obsolete, out-of-touch, and dying out. There are many fiscal conservatives in America, many of them younger Americans, but they find themselves utterly turned off by the anti-science, anti-minority, bible-thumping. The Republican party is holding America back
I heard a lot of caterwauling about the turnout in the most recent election, the 2014 midterm election just last year. It was a sad day to be a Democrat supporter. The Republicans gained the largest house majority since 1928. Now, before I entertain death notices (not made in jest), I'll hope Democrats can find their way to the polling station and themselves come back from obsolescence in the Legislature. You know all those people supposedly turned off by religion, or hatred of minorities, or hatred of science, might surprisingly speak with their own persons and reject the elite characterizations about how they're "supposed to think."
I've got no rose-colored glasses on; I know individual candidates will have to excel above their party's sad performance on Obamacare's defunding and whatever the hell the TPP is behind closed doors. I also entertain the opposite proposition from Bagration; namely that America has wanted in the past people that will "fight tooth and nail to obstruct, obstruct and obstruct everything" when they disagree with trends in lawmaking.
For the presidency, the Democrats have had the weakest field I've seen in my lifetime, and that includes Kerry/2004 primaries. The Democratic forerunner is the embodiment of out-of-touch, her dynastic control of her party is dying out, and she excites hardly anybody. Her heartthrob contender (not the shirtless one, I mean the smiling socialist) still has to pitch his progressive economic agenda & environmental agenda to more than just tired ex-Clinton (or ex-Obama) supporters. (I don't mean to say I haven't heard loud claims in this that America's ready to embrace his platform, that America has reason to believe he can lead--I just don't find them credible)
Your posts seem to get more and more obtuse and esoteric.
Anyway...
Allow Government to Negotiate Drug Prices (79%) Give Students the Same Low Interest Rates as Big Banks (78%) Universal Pre-Kindergarten (77%) Fair Trade that Protect Workers, the Environment, and Jobs (75%) End Tax Loopholes for Corporations that Ship Jobs Overseas (74%) End Gerrymandering (73%) Let Homeowners Pay Down Mortgage With 401k (72%) Debt-Free College at All Public Universities (Message A) (71%) Infrastructure Jobs Program — $400 Billion / Year (71%) Require NSA to Get Warrants (71%) Disclose Corporate Spending on Politics/Lobbying (71%) Medicare Buy-In for All (71%) Close Offshore Corporate Tax Loopholes (70%) Green New Deal — Millions Of Clean-Energy Jobs (70%) Full Employment Act (70%) Expand Social Security Benefits (70%)
Looks like people just need to figure out that's the kind of stuff Bernie stands for. He doesn't have to convince America they are good ideas, he has to convince them if they actually participate things will change.
If/when Bernie wins, incumbents will be terrified at what those numbers would mean in a midterm. You'll see a very different congress with Bernie.
Not to mention, Republicans have a lot of seats coming up, and they have an atrocious message. "Vote for us or else!"
In my case I think the huge barrier between me and Bernie is a lingering doubt that he can actually push these kinds of reforms through congress. I have stated before that a lot of Bernie's policies make a ton of sense to me but when you start talking about a trillion dollars here and a trillion dollars there it freaks people out. Approval has never been the issue when it comes to ideas like, "lets expand this hugely successful program" or "lets do a better job maintaining our infrastructure". It always comes down to money.
In an hour long interview he did with Katie Couric for Yahoo News he stated that he would enact a 300 billion a year tax on speculation (revenue enhancement) and mobilize millions of Americans to march on Washington to demand policy votes (policy management). I would need to hear A LOT more on these two areas before I am convinced he could do even one of those common sense reforms. And I need specifics when we are talking about such a huge pie in the sky sum, none of this "good government" reducing inefficiency stuff.
Comes down to money ... also comes down to the details of the plan. Talking vaguely about policy goals brews support; Drafting them into specific new statutes brews dissension (and sometimes that is just the price tag). Dropping a tax on stocks, bonds, derivatives trading, that's specific. It'll anger Wall St brokers and plenty of others.
I think the issue is, frankly, it’s not just Hillary, Elizabeth, or Bernie Sanders, or anybody else. This country faces enormous problems. Our middle-class is disappearing. We more people living in poverty than at any time in the history of America. We’re the only major country without a national health care program guaranteeing health care for all people. What’s it all about? The question is this one basic question. How do take on a billionaire class, which has so much economic power, and with Citizens United, can now buy elections. Where we are moving in many ways towards an oligarchic form of society rather than our traditional democracy.
Who is prepared to do it? So let me just say this, no president, not Hillary, not Bernie Sanders, not anybody, will succeed unless there is a mass mobilization of millions of people who stand up and say, enough is enough. Koch brothers and billionaires can’t have it all.
Seems he has a soft spot in his heart for Harry Reid. I'll believe he can inspire millions to march on Washington a la Occupy Wall St when I see it.
If/when Sanders wins the primary he will have already mobilized millions. So let's say they do march, what would that change for you?
Just re-read the quote the good old political blowhard in today's limelight made. The disappearing middle class, no socialized health care, an empowered billionaire class with both economic means and Citizens United stealing elections. We need mobilization of the proletariat to take back society from the bourgeois! Fancy talk.
He makes an impotence claim once again ("no president ... will succeed unless ..."), which indicates he is not prophesying his coming victory (or the mobilization of votes for his election would be enough). He's looking for a vocal revolution to force measures curtailing this supposed malicious influence that is one step towards curing all the other ills he lists. Maybe he has GH in this projected popular uprising, but I doubt he'll find the millions he needs to counter the contrived oligarchy.
So your answer to the question of what it would change for you was...?
I took issue with the first sentence of your post; Sanders himself talked about another mobilization. Your hypothetical of the future I didn't find interesting enough to address. I qualified my doubts, if you read and understood them, that is all.
On July 12 2015 12:25 KwarK wrote: Bernie would probably get the White House if he got the democratic nomination and Trump ran as a third party. A man can dream.
But once he's in the White House then what? Unless the Democrats manage to get supermajorities like they did back in 2008, the Republicans will fight tooth and nail to obstruct, obstruct and obstruct everything.
That being said, I hope that the next few years are the dying breath of the old Republican party. It's entirely obsolete, out-of-touch, and dying out. There are many fiscal conservatives in America, many of them younger Americans, but they find themselves utterly turned off by the anti-science, anti-minority, bible-thumping. The Republican party is holding America back
I heard a lot of caterwauling about the turnout in the most recent election, the 2014 midterm election just last year. It was a sad day to be a Democrat supporter. The Republicans gained the largest house majority since 1928. Now, before I entertain death notices (not made in jest), I'll hope Democrats can find their way to the polling station and themselves come back from obsolescence in the Legislature. You know all those people supposedly turned off by religion, or hatred of minorities, or hatred of science, might surprisingly speak with their own persons and reject the elite characterizations about how they're "supposed to think."
I've got no rose-colored glasses on; I know individual candidates will have to excel above their party's sad performance on Obamacare's defunding and whatever the hell the TPP is behind closed doors. I also entertain the opposite proposition from Bagration; namely that America has wanted in the past people that will "fight tooth and nail to obstruct, obstruct and obstruct everything" when they disagree with trends in lawmaking.
For the presidency, the Democrats have had the weakest field I've seen in my lifetime, and that includes Kerry/2004 primaries. The Democratic forerunner is the embodiment of out-of-touch, her dynastic control of her party is dying out, and she excites hardly anybody. Her heartthrob contender (not the shirtless one, I mean the smiling socialist) still has to pitch his progressive economic agenda & environmental agenda to more than just tired ex-Clinton (or ex-Obama) supporters. (I don't mean to say I haven't heard loud claims in this that America's ready to embrace his platform, that America has reason to believe he can lead--I just don't find them credible)
Your posts seem to get more and more obtuse and esoteric.
Anyway...
Allow Government to Negotiate Drug Prices (79%) Give Students the Same Low Interest Rates as Big Banks (78%) Universal Pre-Kindergarten (77%) Fair Trade that Protect Workers, the Environment, and Jobs (75%) End Tax Loopholes for Corporations that Ship Jobs Overseas (74%) End Gerrymandering (73%) Let Homeowners Pay Down Mortgage With 401k (72%) Debt-Free College at All Public Universities (Message A) (71%) Infrastructure Jobs Program — $400 Billion / Year (71%) Require NSA to Get Warrants (71%) Disclose Corporate Spending on Politics/Lobbying (71%) Medicare Buy-In for All (71%) Close Offshore Corporate Tax Loopholes (70%) Green New Deal — Millions Of Clean-Energy Jobs (70%) Full Employment Act (70%) Expand Social Security Benefits (70%)
Looks like people just need to figure out that's the kind of stuff Bernie stands for. He doesn't have to convince America they are good ideas, he has to convince them if they actually participate things will change.
If/when Bernie wins, incumbents will be terrified at what those numbers would mean in a midterm. You'll see a very different congress with Bernie.
Not to mention, Republicans have a lot of seats coming up, and they have an atrocious message. "Vote for us or else!"
In my case I think the huge barrier between me and Bernie is a lingering doubt that he can actually push these kinds of reforms through congress. I have stated before that a lot of Bernie's policies make a ton of sense to me but when you start talking about a trillion dollars here and a trillion dollars there it freaks people out. Approval has never been the issue when it comes to ideas like, "lets expand this hugely successful program" or "lets do a better job maintaining our infrastructure". It always comes down to money.
In an hour long interview he did with Katie Couric for Yahoo News he stated that he would enact a 300 billion a year tax on speculation (revenue enhancement) and mobilize millions of Americans to march on Washington to demand policy votes (policy management). I would need to hear A LOT more on these two areas before I am convinced he could do even one of those common sense reforms. And I need specifics when we are talking about such a huge pie in the sky sum, none of this "good government" reducing inefficiency stuff.
Comes down to money ... also comes down to the details of the plan. Talking vaguely about policy goals brews support; Drafting them into specific new statutes brews dissension (and sometimes that is just the price tag). Dropping a tax on stocks, bonds, derivatives trading, that's specific. It'll anger Wall St brokers and plenty of others.
I think the issue is, frankly, it’s not just Hillary, Elizabeth, or Bernie Sanders, or anybody else. This country faces enormous problems. Our middle-class is disappearing. We more people living in poverty than at any time in the history of America. We’re the only major country without a national health care program guaranteeing health care for all people. What’s it all about? The question is this one basic question. How do take on a billionaire class, which has so much economic power, and with Citizens United, can now buy elections. Where we are moving in many ways towards an oligarchic form of society rather than our traditional democracy.
Who is prepared to do it? So let me just say this, no president, not Hillary, not Bernie Sanders, not anybody, will succeed unless there is a mass mobilization of millions of people who stand up and say, enough is enough. Koch brothers and billionaires can’t have it all.
Seems he has a soft spot in his heart for Harry Reid. I'll believe he can inspire millions to march on Washington a la Occupy Wall St when I see it.
If/when Sanders wins the primary he will have already mobilized millions. So let's say they do march, what would that change for you?
Just re-read the quote the good old political blowhard in today's limelight made. The disappearing middle class, no socialized health care, an empowered billionaire class with both economic means and Citizens United stealing elections. We need mobilization of the proletariat to take back society from the bourgeois! Fancy talk.
He makes an impotence claim once again ("no president ... will succeed unless ..."), which indicates he is not prophesying his coming victory (or the mobilization of votes for his election would be enough). He's looking for a vocal revolution to force measures curtailing this supposed malicious influence that is one step towards curing all the other ills he lists. Maybe he has GH in this projected popular uprising, but I doubt he'll find the millions he needs to counter the contrived oligarchy.
So your answer to the question of what it would change for you was...?
I took issue with the first sentence of your post; Sanders himself talked about another mobilization. Your hypothetical of the future I didn't find interesting enough to address. I qualified my doubts, if you read and understood them, that is all.
Well I look forward to proving you wrong. I'll save this for later
The Pentagon is examining the implications of allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said today.
"At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they're able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite," Carter said in a statement. "Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that's contrary to our value of service and individual merit."
A Defense Department working group will over the next six months study the policy and readiness implications of the move. The panel will start with the presumption that transgender people can serve openly without adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness, Carter said, "unless and except where objective, practical impediments are identified."
Carter also directed that administrative discharges for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who identify themselves as transgender be sent to Brad Carson, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Carson will also lead the working group.
The Pentagon is examining the implications of allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said today.
"At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they're able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite," Carter said in a statement. "Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that's contrary to our value of service and individual merit."
A Defense Department working group will over the next six months study the policy and readiness implications of the move. The panel will start with the presumption that transgender people can serve openly without adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness, Carter said, "unless and except where objective, practical impediments are identified."
Carter also directed that administrative discharges for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who identify themselves as transgender be sent to Brad Carson, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Carson will also lead the working group.
Whenever changes to the military are being considered... be it blacks entering, women entering, gays entering, or transgendered people entering, we consistently hear about "adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness", or in other words, how The West Wing would say "disrupting the unit"... and how the unit should get over it:
The National Park Service thought it had a good strategy for reining in the discarded water bottles that clog the trash cans and waste stream of the national parks: stop selling disposable bottles and let visitors refill reusable ones with public drinking water.
But Big Water has stepped in to block the parks from banning the plastic pollutants — and the industry found an ally on Capitol Hill to add a little-noticed amendment to a House spending bill that would kill the policy.
As environmental groups and local officials campaign for a sales ban to reduce park waste and carbon emissions, the titans that manufacture Deer Park, Fiji, Evian and 200 other brands of water packaged in disposable plastic have mounted a full-court lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill to stop the Park Service’s latest effort at sustainability.
“This is a prominent, misleading attack on bottled water that has no justification,” said Chris Hogan, vice president of communications for the International Bottled Water Association, which represents 200 bottlers from Glacier Springs to Evian and is leading the charge against bottled-water restrictions.
Beyond the threat to its bottom line, the industry is warning the Park Service that its “misguided” attempt to help the environment is actually helping Coke and other “unhealthy” packaged beverages by forcing park visitors needing to hydrate on hot summer day to guzzle them instead of water.
The executive committee of the Boy Scouts of America has unanimously approved a resolution that would drop the group’s ban on openly gay leaders, a key step that sends the resolution to the organization’s national board later this month.
If the national executive board ratifies the change when it meets on July 27, it would become official Scouts policy, a little more than two months after the organization’s president cast the ban as an existential threat to the group.
“Today’s announcement hopefully marks the beginning of the end of the Boy Scouts of America’s decades-old ban on gay leaders and parents like my two moms,” Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout and executive director of Scouts for Equality, said in a statement.
The resolution, approved Friday by the group’s executive committee, lets the groups pick “local units, chartered to organizations with similar beliefs, that best meet the needs of their families,” the Boy Scouts said in a statement Monday.
“This change would also respect the right of religious chartered organizations to continue to choose adult leaders whose beliefs are consistent with their own,” the statement said.
Under current policy, the Boy Scouts of America does not allow adult leaders “who are open or avowed homosexuals,” according to the group’s Web site.
It's interesting... I was a cub scout/ boy scout when I was younger, as were a bunch of my friends. One of my school friends in particular was literally the posterboy for our pack (his dad was the pack leader and this kid was just the nicest, most selfless, most respectful kid ever, and was featured on boy scout posters). He epitomizes everything positive that was taught in cub/ boy scouts.
And he's gay.
Yeah, it's been widely ignored. My troop had gay kids (no adults to my knowledge) and atheist kids and adults. Didn't really bother anybody, and we definitely didn't give a shit what the Mormon-dominated national leadership thought.
Minor pet peave about this kind of story: referring to adult volunteers with the boy scouts as being synonymous with "leaders." There are undoubtedly troops where the adults are the leaders and do run things, but any well-run troop puts almost all power over non-financial or safety concerns in the hands of the youth leadership; Senior Patrol Leaders, Patrol Leaders, and the like. Just saying.
The Pentagon is examining the implications of allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said today.
"At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they're able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite," Carter said in a statement. "Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that's contrary to our value of service and individual merit."
A Defense Department working group will over the next six months study the policy and readiness implications of the move. The panel will start with the presumption that transgender people can serve openly without adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness, Carter said, "unless and except where objective, practical impediments are identified."
Carter also directed that administrative discharges for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who identify themselves as transgender be sent to Brad Carson, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Carson will also lead the working group.
Whenever changes to the military are being considered... be it blacks entering, women entering, gays entering, or transgendered people entering, we consistently hear about "adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness", or in other words, how The West Wing would say "disrupting the unit"... and how the unit should get over it:
Its not fair, or sane to lump incorporating women with those other things. They do have altered performance standards, and for special forces tryouts have huge washout rates despite women getting survival time off of active duty to train beforehand, etc.
Also, El Chapo v. Trump: Who wins, and does Trump get Secret Service protection?
The Pentagon is examining the implications of allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said today.
"At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they're able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite," Carter said in a statement. "Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that's contrary to our value of service and individual merit."
A Defense Department working group will over the next six months study the policy and readiness implications of the move. The panel will start with the presumption that transgender people can serve openly without adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness, Carter said, "unless and except where objective, practical impediments are identified."
Carter also directed that administrative discharges for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who identify themselves as transgender be sent to Brad Carson, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Carson will also lead the working group.
Whenever changes to the military are being considered... be it blacks entering, women entering, gays entering, or transgendered people entering, we consistently hear about "adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness", or in other words, how The West Wing would say "disrupting the unit"... and how the unit should get over it:
Its not fair, our sane to lump incorporating women with those other things. They do have altered performance standards, and for special forces tryouts have huge washout rates despite women getting survival time off of active duty to train beforehand, etc.
Also, El Chapo v. Trump: Who wins, and does Trump get Secret Service protection?
Secret Service is having a hard enough time with the job they already have. If anyone should hire private security it should be Trump.
The Pentagon is examining the implications of allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said today.
"At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they're able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite," Carter said in a statement. "Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that's contrary to our value of service and individual merit."
A Defense Department working group will over the next six months study the policy and readiness implications of the move. The panel will start with the presumption that transgender people can serve openly without adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness, Carter said, "unless and except where objective, practical impediments are identified."
Carter also directed that administrative discharges for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who identify themselves as transgender be sent to Brad Carson, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Carson will also lead the working group.
Whenever changes to the military are being considered... be it blacks entering, women entering, gays entering, or transgendered people entering, we consistently hear about "adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness", or in other words, how The West Wing would say "disrupting the unit"... and how the unit should get over it:
Its not fair, or sane to lump incorporating women with those other things. They do have altered performance standards, and for special forces tryouts have huge washout rates despite women getting survival time off of active duty to train beforehand, etc.
Also, El Chapo v. Trump: Who wins, and does Trump get Secret Service protection?
I support giving women the ability, just as any other group should have the ability, to try out for these forces. If they wash out (after being given a FAIR TEST of ability) then fine. The military is NOT an instrument of social change, I agree with that. However, there will be women who will have enough natural ability to make that cut, I'm sure of it, so holding any artificial barrier just because they haven't yet is disingenuous and ultimately deleterious to future success.
The Pentagon is examining the implications of allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said today.
"At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they're able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite," Carter said in a statement. "Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that's contrary to our value of service and individual merit."
A Defense Department working group will over the next six months study the policy and readiness implications of the move. The panel will start with the presumption that transgender people can serve openly without adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness, Carter said, "unless and except where objective, practical impediments are identified."
Carter also directed that administrative discharges for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who identify themselves as transgender be sent to Brad Carson, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Carson will also lead the working group.
Whenever changes to the military are being considered... be it blacks entering, women entering, gays entering, or transgendered people entering, we consistently hear about "adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness", or in other words, how The West Wing would say "disrupting the unit"... and how the unit should get over it:
Its not fair, or sane to lump incorporating women with those other things. They do have altered performance standards, and for special forces tryouts have huge washout rates despite women getting survival time off of active duty to train beforehand, etc.
I don't mean it in terms of physical capacity; I mean it in terms of emotional/ taboo disruption. If a woman can successfully get through training, then she deserves to be there and not jeered at. Same with any man, regardless of race, sexual orientation, or sexual identity. I'm not referring to lowering standards or anything.
The Pentagon is examining the implications of allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said today.
"At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they're able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite," Carter said in a statement. "Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that's contrary to our value of service and individual merit."
A Defense Department working group will over the next six months study the policy and readiness implications of the move. The panel will start with the presumption that transgender people can serve openly without adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness, Carter said, "unless and except where objective, practical impediments are identified."
Carter also directed that administrative discharges for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who identify themselves as transgender be sent to Brad Carson, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Carson will also lead the working group.
Whenever changes to the military are being considered... be it blacks entering, women entering, gays entering, or transgendered people entering, we consistently hear about "adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness", or in other words, how The West Wing would say "disrupting the unit"... and how the unit should get over it:
Its not fair, or sane to lump incorporating women with those other things. They do have altered performance standards, and for special forces tryouts have huge washout rates despite women getting survival time off of active duty to train beforehand, etc.
Also, El Chapo v. Trump: Who wins, and does Trump get Secret Service protection?
I support giving women the ability, just as any other group should have the ability, to try out for these forces. If they wash out (after being given a FAIR TEST of ability) then fine. The military is NOT an instrument of social change, I agree with that. However, there will be women who will have enough natural ability to make that cut, I'm sure of it, so holding any artificial barrier just because they haven't yet is disingenuous and ultimately deleterious to future success.
Well, the problem is that is not (and almost never is) the practice in our government. Many people within the higher ranks are using it as an instrument for social change. Pondering lowering standards if women continue to fail. Several women who were initially selected for Rangers school were given extensive training and excused from regular duties prior to testing so as to try and get them through. And, in general, the Feds have been very much about Affirmative Action in the military for many years, which is not prioritizing combat effectiveness.
These institutions can't really be trusted to do as you say.
The Pentagon is examining the implications of allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said today.
"At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they're able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite," Carter said in a statement. "Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that's contrary to our value of service and individual merit."
A Defense Department working group will over the next six months study the policy and readiness implications of the move. The panel will start with the presumption that transgender people can serve openly without adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness, Carter said, "unless and except where objective, practical impediments are identified."
Carter also directed that administrative discharges for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who identify themselves as transgender be sent to Brad Carson, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Carson will also lead the working group.
Whenever changes to the military are being considered... be it blacks entering, women entering, gays entering, or transgendered people entering, we consistently hear about "adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness", or in other words, how The West Wing would say "disrupting the unit"... and how the unit should get over it:
Its not fair, our sane to lump incorporating women with those other things. They do have altered performance standards, and for special forces tryouts have huge washout rates despite women getting survival time off of active duty to train beforehand, etc.
Also, El Chapo v. Trump: Who wins, and does Trump get Secret Service protection?
Secret Service is having a hard enough time with the job they already have. If anyone should hire private security it should be Trump.
I'd be very surprised if Trump wouldn't already have a bunch of large, muscular and armed to their teeth ex navy seals as bodyguards.
The United States, Iran, and other world powers have finally concluded negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, reaching a final agreement on Tuesday that was over two years in the making.
The United States, Iran, and other world powers have finally concluded negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, reaching a final agreement on Tuesday that was over two years in the making.
Sounds like a pretty decent deal. Better than no deal for sure.
EDIT: Obama will veto anything from congress stopping the deal, so anything less than a 2/3's majority vote is basically political theater.
Just trying to get my politics straight... is this the same situation that was being worked on when 47 Republican Senators sent that ignorant (and technically treasonous?) letter to Iran about how they weren't going to honor any deal forged between Obama and Iran?
The Pentagon is examining the implications of allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said today.
"At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they're able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite," Carter said in a statement. "Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that's contrary to our value of service and individual merit."
A Defense Department working group will over the next six months study the policy and readiness implications of the move. The panel will start with the presumption that transgender people can serve openly without adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness, Carter said, "unless and except where objective, practical impediments are identified."
Carter also directed that administrative discharges for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who identify themselves as transgender be sent to Brad Carson, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Carson will also lead the working group.
Whenever changes to the military are being considered... be it blacks entering, women entering, gays entering, or transgendered people entering, we consistently hear about "adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness", or in other words, how The West Wing would say "disrupting the unit"... and how the unit should get over it:
Its not fair, or sane to lump incorporating women with those other things. They do have altered performance standards, and for special forces tryouts have huge washout rates despite women getting survival time off of active duty to train beforehand, etc.
Also, El Chapo v. Trump: Who wins, and does Trump get Secret Service protection?
I support giving women the ability, just as any other group should have the ability, to try out for these forces. If they wash out (after being given a FAIR TEST of ability) then fine. The military is NOT an instrument of social change, I agree with that. However, there will be women who will have enough natural ability to make that cut, I'm sure of it, so holding any artificial barrier just because they haven't yet is disingenuous and ultimately deleterious to future success.
Well, the problem is that is not (and almost never is) the practice in our government. Many people within the higher ranks are using it as an instrument for social change. Pondering lowering standards if women continue to fail. Several women who were initially selected for Rangers school were given extensive training and excused from regular duties prior to testing so as to try and get them through. And, in general, the Feds have been very much about Affirmative Action in the military for many years, which is not prioritizing combat effectiveness.
These institutions can't really be trusted to do as you say.
Uh, no. The military has lagged behind society on most social issues. The excuse of "mission efficiency" or "not a social experiment" is a load of crap, and I say this as a former sailor (4th generation).
There is no real movement to lower standards. Female physical standards have always been lower in all branches for obvious reasons, but everyone has to pass the same courses or tests to qualify. The number of sit ups a woman can do doesn't really matter. If she can pass the course, there's no legitimate reason to bar her from serving in a position.
The United States, Iran, and other world powers have finally concluded negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, reaching a final agreement on Tuesday that was over two years in the making.
Sounds like a pretty decent deal. Better than no deal for sure.
EDIT: Obama will veto anything from congress stopping the deal, so anything less than a 2/3's majority vote is basically political theater.
Just trying to get my politics straight... is this the same situation that was being worked on when 47 Republican Senators sent that ignorant (and technically treasonous?) letter to Iran about how they weren't going to honor any deal forged between Obama and Iran?
I am slightly curious what the game plan here is. As I understand it if a country does something you don't like but it's not realistic to go in there and force them to do what you want then you use sanctions to make them uncomfortable until they decide to negotiate with you. The US decided against direct military intervention, which was a very good choice given how that's played out in recent years, and went with sanctions. Iran then suffered under the sanctions and came to the negotiating table and offered us what we wanted.
Isn't this literally the plan working? Like isn't calling off the sanctions in exchange for them doing what we wanted the entire point of creating the sanctions in the first place?
EPT
