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To All. You guys know better than i. Is this article on the mark, or is it somewhat
negatively hyperbole. My feeling is it could be the latter. You guys know better.
"Ad spending shows where the presidential campaign is really taking place
[...]The election is being fought most acutely in seven states: Arizona, Georgia,
Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin."
Dems in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden
One adviser to major Democratic donors keeps a running list of reasons Biden could lose.
There have been few moments in Joe Biden’s term as president that haven’t been second-guessed. | Susan Walsh/AP
By Christopher Cadelago, Sally Goldenberg and Elena Schneider
05/28/2024 05:00 AM EDT
A pervasive sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects, even among officeholders and strategists who had previously expressed confidence about the coming battle with Donald Trump.
All year, Democrats had been on a joyless and exhausting grind through the 2024 election. But now, nearly five months from the election, anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation, according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives. And the gap between what Democrats will say on TV or in print, and what they’ll text their friends, has only grown as worries have surged about Biden’s prospects.
“You don’t want to be that guy who is on the record saying we’re doomed, or the campaign’s bad or Biden’s making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy,” said a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House and granted anonymity to speak freely.
But Biden’s stubbornly poor polling and the stakes of the election “are creating the freakout,” he said.
VIDEO -- Biden: Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘not a genocide’
“This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end.’”
Despite everything, Trump is running ahead of Biden in most battleground states. He raised far more money in April, and the landscape may only become worse for Democrats, with Trump’s hush-money trial concluding and another — this one involving the president’s son — set to begin in Delaware.
The concern has metastasized in recent days as Trump jaunted to some of the country’s most liberal territories, including New Jersey and New York, to woo Hispanic and Black voters as he boasted, improbably, that he would win in those areas.
While he’s long lagged Biden in cash on hand, Trump’s fundraising outpaced the president’s by $25 million last month, and included a record-setting $50.5 million .. https://apnews.com/article/trump-republican-party-fundraising-fc057119f3bb5cb2a34a00ccd93fbb13 .. haul from an event in Palm Beach, Florida. One adviser to major Democratic Party donors provided a running list that has been shared with funders of nearly two dozen reasons why Biden could lose, ranging from immigration and high inflation to the president’s age, the unpopularity of Vice President Kamala Harris and the presence of third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Donors ask me on an hourly basis about what I think,” the adviser said, calling it “so much easier to show them, so while they read it, I can pour a drink.”
The adviser added, “The list of why we ‘could’ win is so small I don’t even need to keep the list on my phone.”
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey implored a room of high-dollar donors and local Democratic leaders to “think long and hard” about the stakes of the election. | Domenico Stinellis/AP
On the day after news broke that Biden had trailed Trump in fundraising last month, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey raised the pressure on donors as she introduced the president to a crowd of 300.
The cluster of fundraising events Biden attended in Boston that day were expected to bring in more than $6 million for his political operation. But Healey said that wasn’t good enough.
“To those of you who opened up your wallets, thank you,” said Healey, a Democrat in her first term. “We’d like you to open them up a little bit more and to find more patriots — more patriots who believe in this country, who recognize and understand the challenge presented at this time.”
Laughter rippled through the room. But Healey’s voice turned serious. With unusual urgency for Healey, the governor implored the room of high-dollar donors and local Democratic leaders to “think long and hard” about the stakes of the election.
There have been few moments in Biden’s term as president that haven’t been second-guessed, and his aides have made sport of sneering at grim predictions, compiling dossiers of headlines and clips in which the president was underestimated. Biden campaign aides and allies point to some positive polls, including in the battlegrounds, and Trump’s comparative lack of campaigning and infrastructure in the key states, including staff, organizing programs and advertising.
VIDEO -- Biden claims Trump is going after DEI nationwide
A Biden campaign adviser granted anonymity to speak freely stressed that the president’s team never made any indication that Trump’s hush-money trial would help — or hurt — him. Instead, the adviser contended that Trump will be forced to defend cutting back abortion rights, attacking democracy and advancing corporate interests as president.
“Trump’s photo-ops and PR stunts may get under the skin of some very serious D.C. people as compelling campaigning, but they will do nothing to win over the voters that will decide this election,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz told POLITICO. “The work we do every day on the ground and on the airwaves in our battleground states — to talk about how President Biden is fighting for the middle class against the corporate greed that’s keeping prices high, and highlight Donald Trump’s anti-American campaign for revenge and retribution and abortion bans — is the work that will again secure us the White House.”
Biden supporters who remain optimistic say they’d rather be him than Trump, before rallying around abortion and issues of reproductive rights, which Rep. Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat, called “a fundamental game-changer.”
“We have to run a campaign, where honestly, we drive home the message that Donald Trump takes us back to the 19th century. Biden takes us further into the 21st century,” Kildee said.
He did not remark on whether such a campaign is being run, or run to his satisfaction.
“A lot can happen between now and then,” acknowledged Rep. Ann Kuster, a Democrat from New Hampshire, who is retiring after the fall election. She, too, pointed to eroding abortion rights under the conservative-led Supreme Court remade by Trump. “I know a significant number of voters are going to be motivated by the Dobbs decision.”
Tracking Biden’s $1.6 trillion climate and infrastructure spending plans
Technology
‘I don’t know how this happened’: A $3B secret program undermining Biden’s tech policy
By CHRISTINE MUI
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/23/3-billion-secret-program-undermining-bidens-tech-policy-00158757
Investigation
Biden’s biggest challenge: How do you even spend $1.6 trillion?
By Jessie Blaeser, Benjamin Storrow, Kelsey Tamborrino, Zack Colman and David Ferris
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2024/biden-trillion-dollar-spending-tracker
More Coverage .. https://www.politico.com/news/biden-federal-funds-spending-tracking
But Democratic critics of the campaign’s approach — while agreeing that abortion should be a winning issue — said they’re challenged when pressed by friends to make the case for why Biden will win.
“There’s still a path to win this, but they don’t look like a campaign that’s embarking on that path right now,” said Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic strategist who’s worked on multiple presidential campaigns. “If the frame of this race is, ‘What was better, the 3.5 years under Biden or four years under Trump,’ we lose that every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”
In the swing state of Michigan, Democratic state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky suggested Biden’s standing is so tenuous that down-ballot Democrats can’t rely in November “on the top of the ticket to pull us along.”
“In 2020, there was enough energy to get Donald Trump out and there were other things on the ballot that brought young people out in subsequent elections.”
She said, “That’s not the case this time. I worry that because we’ve had four years with a stable White House, particularly young voters don’t feel that sense of urgency and might not remember how disastrous 2017 was right after the Trump administration took over.”
Whatever the Biden campaign has been doing over the past two months — and it’s a lot of activity, including $25 million in swing-state ad spending, according to AdImpact — it has had only a limited effect. According to FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s average job-approval rating .. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/joe-biden/?ex_cid=abcpromo .. on March 7, the date of his State of the Union Address, was 38.1 percent. As of Friday, it’s 38.4 percent.
And his standing against Trump has also changed little. On April 22, the day Trump’s criminal trial began, the presumptive GOP nominee held a 0.3-point lead in national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight .. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/ . Trump is up about a point since then, currently leading Biden by 1.4 points in the FiveThirtyEight average.
Asked about polling, Munoz said: “The only metric that will define the success of this campaign is Election Day.”
Trump, meanwhile, has already started his incursion into safe blue states. His campaign’s psychological warfare in New York, California and New Jersey — where House districts will determine control of Congress’ lower chamber — is spiking Democrats’ already-elevated blood pressure.
“New York Democrats need to wake up,” said Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. “The number of people in New York, including people of color that I come across who are saying positive things about Trump, is alarming.”
Biden’s weaker numbers bear that out. A Siena College poll .. https://scri.siena.edu/2024/05/22/72-of-nyers-support-peaceful-demonstrations-in-support-of-gaza-61-say-demonstrators-have-forgotten-hamas-started-war-it-now-feels-like-demonstrations-have-crossed-line-into-anti-semitism/ .. released Wednesday showed Biden leading Trump in New York by only 9 points — 47 to 38 percent among registered voters. Four years ago, Biden won the state by 23 points .. https://www.politico.com/2020-election/results/new-york/ . The president is under water with every demographic delineated in the poll — other than Black voters. Fifty-three percent of Latinos and 54 percent of whites reported having an unfavorable opinion of him. To that end, Biden released TV and radio ads in the Empire State on Thursday, ahead of Trump’s campaign rally in the Bronx.
Levine has been something of a Paul Revere in New York, sounding alarms two years ago when a Trump-aligned Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lee Zeldin, appeared to be gaining on Kathy Hochul, the moderate Democratic incumbent. Hochul narrowly held him off.
“I’m worried it’s going to be a 2022 situation, where everyone wakes up in the last seven weeks and has to scramble,” Levine said of his state, which hasn’t swung to the GOP since Ronald Reagan in 1980.
“The number of people in New York, including people of color that I come across who are saying positive things about Trump, is alarming,” said Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. | Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images
This cycle, Democrats also have to contend with the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which has deeply divided their ranks and contributed to a sense of chaos. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat known for his ardent defense of Israel, was similarly concerned for his party, though he pointed to the higher cost of groceries and goods that started during the pandemic and has yet to abate.
“The greatest political challenge confronting the president starts with an “i,” but it’s not Israel, it’s inflation,” Torres said. “The cost of living is a challenge that we have to figure out how to manage.”
He said Biden should focus on issues around affordability and continue to tout his success in capping insulin costs in areas with high rates of diabetes .. https://apnews.com/article/biden-insulin-prices-cap-campaign-impact-f969191c3c5178c91cc973a1b89c2200 , like his Bronx district.
“The election is more competitive than it should be, given the wretchedness of who Donald Trump is,” he said. “In a properly functioning democracy, Donald Trump should have no viable path to the presidency. The fact of a competitive race is cause for concern.”
Trump has railed against blue-state officials, starting with the justice system in New York. In California, he dispatched his daughter-in-law, Lara, and one of his sons, Eric, to hold up the West Coast’s Democratic heavyweight as a cautionary tale.
“I’m sorry you have to live in communism,” Eric Trump said Wednesday at the Stampede, a country music venue in Temecula, an inland community between Los Angeles and San Diego. Trump casually dismissed California Democrat Gavin Newsom as the nation’s “worst governor.”
“Make no mistake,” Trump said, “there is a war happening in this country.”
The elder Trump is set to appear in early June at the San Francisco fundraiser hosted by tech investor David Sacks and his wife, Jacqueline, a clothing brand executive, along with venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.
Palihapitiya’s past political donations run the gamut, from Elizabeth Warren to a super PAC supporting Kennedy Jr. He also gave to the recall committee against Newsom in 2021 and briefly considered running for governor. Silicon Valley’s red pilling has brought even more unwanted national attention on issues of open-air drug use, homeless encampments and gangs of thieves who ransack retail stores across the Bay Area.
And as in New York, California Democrats are bracing for more incoming from Trump.
“San Francisco has changed with the taxpayers, the job creators, the tech CEOs who want to engage with the city and its politics,” said Harmeet Dhillon, the RNC committee member from California.
Dhillon was reflecting on her run-ins with Democrats in the city, where she spent years leading the local GOP before her law firm represented Trump in legal fights to remain on state ballots. Few Democrats are willing to confide in Dhillon about their fears, she conceded, but no one is sharing a sense of enthusiasm for Biden, either.
“The most diplomatic thing I hear from Democrats is, ‘Oh my God, are these the choices we have for president?’”
Lisa Kashinsky, Steven Shepard, Daniella Diaz and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/28/democrats-freakout-over-biden-00160047
Tell us about Christopher Rufo. Oh, you don't know who he is. Figures.
Yeah, obviously people see Trump as an outsider and their savior. They do because they believe
his lies. And they do so because of inflation today which they unbelievably blame on Biden.
Period.
I'd put Netanyahu on top. Trump's actions as you
"Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem... which previous administration wouldn't do while the city was disputed. He gave the green light to more settlements and the annexation of the Golan Heights. And he sent his corrupt and incompetent ghoul of a son-in-law to cut deals with the Gulf Arab states with no consideration of the Palestinian Arabs at all.
P - I cannot think of one person more responsible for the current round of hostilities, and the competition is pretty stiff."
put them gave Netanyahu and his far-right friends a real political boost.
brooklyn13, Unarguably it is Israel's refusal to concede an independent Palestinian state. Hamas was elected because the people of Gaza saw the PLO too compliant to Israel. It is Netanyahu's opposition to a two state solution which is at the root of the conflict. All you other comments are bye the bye when looking at the basic cause of the conflict.
B402, I would have thought it was clear i didn't say it was easy for you to appreciate anything.
Easy to appreciate i said. Nothing there about you. You say,
"People, dems, just don't understand the depth of how tired people are of politics as usual......"
i say how wrong you are on that also. People and dems do understand that. Dems are lagging because
so many believe Trump is the answer to inflation problems specifically. That is clearly misguided.
Echo the well dones, Hugh. Top week!
B402, It's easy to appreciate those Republicans, or those conservatives who weren't, who clearly were able years ago to see Trump for who he was. For who he is. Those who left Trump without having to create a scapegoat in the Dems, as you have found a need to do deserve credit.
Sure Biden is seen to be in trouble and one of the huge reasons is inflation, which in no way could be seen by any who care enough to look as Biden's fault. And Israel, well Palestinians would be much worse off under Trump, despite Biden's support for Israel, as it is. And Ukraine, we know which of the two is best for Ukraine. No doubt about that either.
So with Eric Trump going to California and saying he is sorry people there are living under communism, what does one do.
If you don't accept that is cheating then there is no hope for you there either.
B402, In what way exactly did Biden play the progressive dem too much for you. You didn't even consider giving examples, did
you. You likely could have with one simple search, but you didn't because hey, you know, and it's too late for you to do that now.
"He wasn't a uniter by any means, and he played progressive dem way too"
Yet again nothing more than far less than expert opinion from you
B402, You problem is they are all true.
Yep. LOL It's perfect. Almost like Trump ejaculated into a toilet, flushed it and contaminated some fish eggs.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4247132/Yellow-skinned-Cowfish-resembles-Donald-Trump-spotted.html
It's not often the Daily Mail comes up with something so honestly real
Has the prosecution made its case in the Trump hush money trial? Legal observers weigh in
"In the trial, like the election, Trump’s base is inoculated against loss"
Hung. Or guilty. It was always going to be.
Legal observers say prosecutors made a strong case for the jury.
By Nadine El-Bawab
Video byJessie DiMartino 4:59
May 29, 2024, 5:44 AM
With prosecutors and defense gearing up for the end of trial in former President Donald Trump's Manhattan hush money case, legal observers said, in their opinion, prosecutors appear to have made a strong case, but a lot is riding on closing arguments and jury instructions.
Both sides have rested their cases with the defense only calling two witnesses to the stand including Robert Costello .. https://abcnews.go.com/ABCNews/staring-fiery-moment-judge-defense-witness-trump-hush/story?id=110416555 -- an attorney and longtime Trump ally -- who sought to discredit one of the prosecution's key witnesses -- former Trump fixer Michael Cohen.
Both sides are delivering their closing arguments to the jury on Tuesday, and Judge Juan Merchan will instruct the jury on the law ahead of deliberations expected to begin on Wednesday.
Legal observers told ABC News they felt the prosecution did a good job of laying out a motive for why the charge of falsifying business records was allegedly committed as well as the underlying campaign finance or election interference crimes, which potentially bumps up the charges to felonies.
The prosecution laid out the investigation and connected Trump to Cohen's actions, but it is possible a jury may not be convinced, according to Brian Buckmire, trial counsel at Hamilton Clarke and ABC News legal contributor.
MORE: What are the potential outcomes of Trump's hush money trial?
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/potential-outcomes-trumps-hush-money-trial/story?id=110300120
Two "reasonable people" could look at the facts and evidence presented and have two opposite opinions. One person could see that Trump falsified business records and allegedly committed some of the crimes he has been charged with and that "it is reasonable that he intended to defraud the American people and the government by falsifying these documents," Buckmire said.
Robert Costello is cross examined by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger before Justice...Jane Rosenberg/Reuters
While another could see that "this case is built upon an individual that I don't believe that being Michael Cohen. And so I can't believe each and every element of this crime, because of the person that's giving me the information," he said.
"So, did they prove their case?" Buckmire said. "But it just specifically depends on the 12 that they selected."
"It really comes down to the closing arguments, whoever gives them, on either side, really has to button up this case in a way that says, 'my side is correct.' And the prosecutor having the last word of closing arguments -- that to me is a big advantage," Buckmire said.
Another expert said that he thought an acquittal is “out of reach” for Trump.
“This was a winnable case. It still is not a slam dunk, in my view, having been there every day for the prosecution,” CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen said in an interview with Jim Acosta on Monday. “I think the odds of conviction are somewhere upwards of 80%.”
“In part because of this scattershot approach, the defense is not really gunning for an acquittal. That’s out of reach here,” he opined. “What they are hoping for is one angry juror.”
Another legal observer who said the prosecution has made a strong case, said it is possible the judge may declare a mistrial if it takes the jury too long to deliberate.
"I'm curious to see how long the jury's out. That's always an interesting thing to see. Particularly, if they're having trouble reaching a decision, when does the judge then decide that there's been enough time for the jury to have been out that they declare a mistrial and a hung jury?" said Chris Timmons, a former prosecutor and ABC News legal contributor.
"I'd be concerned about the hung jury in this case," Timmons previously told ABC News.
"One of the jurors who made it onto the jury said that he got his news from two different sources, one of which being Trump's Truth Social. So I think he's going to be more likely to want to believe anything that the president says,” Timmons said, referring to what the juror had consumed prior to the trial beginning.
Jurors have been instructed to not read about or listen to discussions of the case in the media.
Did the prosecution prove their case?
Another expert told ABC News the prosecution has done a good job of arguing the facts in this case.
"Even though Trump keeps arguing that the facts, that people are lying and so forth, I don't buy any of that and I don't think the jury is going to buy any of that," Gregory Germain, an attorney and Syracuse professor of law, told ABC News.
"The judge needs to do a good job on those jury instructions, or there's a likelihood, I think, that the case will get reversed on appeal if they get a conviction," Germain said.
Lawyers meet with Justice Juan Merchan during former President Donald Trump...Jane Rosenberg via Reuters
MORE: Timeline: Manhattan DA's Stormy Daniels hush money case against Donald Trump
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-manhattan-district-attorney-case-donald-trump/story?id=98389444
Buckmire said Merchan said he will stick closely to the model instructions set out by state criminal jury instructions, unless there is something the protection or defense want him to deviate from.
Other legal observers are unsure whether the prosecution has made its case to the jury.
"The pieces are all there. But is it there beyond a reasonable doubt?" former Brooklyn prosecutor Julie Rendelman told the BBC. "I don't know."
"It only takes one juror," she added.
[Insert: And that in spite of anything at all that B402 posts about us being shot down
is exactly what this board has being saying from the beginning. That it only takes one juror.]
Cohen’s testimony could also pose issues for the jury.
"You are relying on a witness who in many respects … comes with a larger load of baggage than others," Rendelman said. "It makes it a bit more difficult to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt."
For a conviction, the prosecution needs to prove to the jury that Trump knew he allegedly falsified the records and that it was being done for political reasons -- to keep the public from knowing that he made a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels – Timmons said.
"It's a little bit of a technical charge and so the jury may struggle with that," Timmons said.
Did the defense hurt their case by putting Costello on the stand?
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo makes opening arguments as former President T...Jane Rosenberg via Reuters
The defense has made two contradicting theories of defense in their case -- which could be a problem for them, Buckmire said.
"In the defense's own case, they argued that this is just democracy, this is just the way that things are done, that Donald Trump may have known about the ins and outs of this deal, but it's not a crime," Buckmire said.
Buckmire added that Bob Costello’s testimony could have harmed the defense case.
MORE: 'Are you staring me down?': Fiery moment between judge, defense witness in Trump hush money trial
https://abcnews.go.com/ABCNews/staring-fiery-moment-judge-defense-witness-trump-hush/story?id=110416555
"But, Bob Costello came on and said that Michael Cohen told him that Donald Trump knew nothing about this, didn't know the ins and outs of this. And so for the defense, what are they going to argue in summation? Because both things can't be true," Buckmire said. "That can backfire on them."
Cohen testified that he lied to Costello.
Costello’s testimony was a “disaster” for the defense, a legal observer told Courthouse News.
“If anything, I think it made the people’s case on this whole pressure campaign issue even stronger than it was,” retired New York judge George Grasso told Courthouse News.
Grasso said it is likely that Costello’s behavior on the stand, which Merchan to excuse the jury and press from the court room, was like that of a “mob lawyer” and likely didn’t help the defense.
“I think the jury saw enough of this. I think the jury probably, legitimately, has a lot of respect for the judge,” Grasso said, adding that Costello’s behavior “probably turns off the jury.”
Buckmire said he thinks the trial is likely to result in a hung jury or the jury could find Trump guilty.
"I don't think the defense gave anyone who believes their side enough ammunition to convince the other side," Buckmire said.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/prosecution-made-case-trump-hush-money-trial-legal/story?id=110548753
Yep. Hung. Or guilty. It was always going to be.
Yeah, that's bad for the country, no doubt about that. Like i said before, lucky your opinion
leaves even less of an impression than it may have for some when you first appeared here.
B402, He cheats by lying, for one. And clearly he has partisan supporters who believe all his lies.
For two, he says all those against him are dishonest. And he has people working to fix elections as best they can.
Obviously you don't see any of his duplicity as cheating. Which makes you the poseur you have been exposed as being.
B402, Thank goodness we have expert opinions, and no reason to listen to you.
It really is a Putin Russia-like scenario. Horrifying to watch.
Should, but won't. On one hand pathological liar, on the other
hand so partisan they believe anything Trump makes up.
"Trump needs to stop making shit up. And his pathetic followers need to stop believing it. "
In the trial, like the election, Trump’s base is inoculated against loss
"Fact-Checking Trump’s Remarks in the Hush Money Trial"
Related
The INDICTMENTS for stolen docs, 1/6, GA, signify the seiousnous of the charges against Trump, and they simply required more evidence gathering. The delay of trials are due to judicial foot dragging by Trump friendly judges, other wise at least two of them would have gone to trial months ago.
History will note all of that too.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174509259
Trump Turned Boilerplate FBI Language Into a Tall Tale of an Assassination Plot Against Him
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174481842
Trump's Hush-Money Trial Day 784: Judge Merchan Appears to Be at the End of His Rope
Defense witness Robert Costello put on a pretty impressive show, and the judge was not amused.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174472976
Read the Jury Instructions in the Trump Manhattan Criminal Trial May 29, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/29/nyregion/judge-trump-hush-money-trial-jury-instructions.html
Allies of the former president have consistently presented the New York trial as illegitimate and tainted — even as the jury began to deliberate.
Analysis by Philip Bump
National columnist
May 29, 2024 at 3:33 p.m. EDT
Former president Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Manhattan criminal court in April.
(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
All links
As New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan was providing jurors in Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial with instructions aimed at guiding their deliberations, his words — the last jurors will hear before the case is entirely in their hands — were shared with the world by journalists sitting in the courtroom. And one particular instruction quickly became the latest iteration of the pro-Trump right’s effort to cast the entire trial as inherently biased against the former president.
“Judge Merchan just told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict,” Fox News’s John Roberts wrote ..
.. on social media.” “4 could agree on one crime, 4 on a different one, and the other 4 on another. He said he would treat 4-4-4 as a unanimous verdict.”Judge Merchan just told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict. 4 could agree on one crime, 4 on a different one, and the other 4 on another. He said he would treat 4-4-4 as a unanimous verdict.
— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) May 29, 2024
Yep. It's the real deal.
LOL the Longhorn Cowfish works best
The 32-year-old dustman said he ‘couldn’t stop laughing’ when he saw the fish’s uncanny resemblance, which included protuberances from its forehead just like Mr Trump’s quiff, and a puckered expression similar to that often borne by the business mogul-turned politician.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4247132/Yellow-skinned-Cowfish-resembles-Donald-Trump-spotted.html
Maybe mine wasn't a puffer fish
https://imgur.com/gallery/new-hobby-putting-donald-trumps-mouth-on-puffer-fish-RQgZ4
That's pretty good though too.
Both toxic, for sure. i didn't get my way on on the McConnell elephant look
-a-like so won't chase up the Trump fish look-a-like. Not now anyway.
Good, Joe. Necessity speaks -- From Allies and Advisers, Pressure Grows on Biden to Allow Attacks on Russian Territory
"Why Bakhmut has taken center stage in war in Ukraine"
President Biden is weighing fears of escalation with a nuclear-armed adversary as he considers whether to let Ukraine shoot American weapons into Russia.
Heavy smoke from a strike on industrial buildings in Kharkiv, Ukraine, earlier this month. President Biden is under increasing pressure to
allow Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied arms to attack Russian territory. Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
By David E. Sanger
David E. Sanger has reported on superpower confrontations and strategy
for three decades as a national security correspondent in Washington.
May 29, 2024Updated 6:28 p.m. ET
President Biden is edging toward what may prove to be one of his most consequential decisions in the Ukraine war: whether to reverse his ban on shooting American weapons into Russian territory.
He has long resisted authorizing Ukraine to use U.S. weapons inside Russia because of concern it could escalate into a direct American confrontation with a nuclear-armed adversary.
Now, after months of complaints about the restrictions from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, the White House has begun a formal — and apparently rapid — reassessment of whether to take the risk. Approving further uses of U.S. weapons would give Kyiv a way to conduct counterattacks on artillery and missile sites that now enjoy something of a safe haven just inside Russia.
On Wednesday, in Moldova, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken became the first administration official to publicly leave open the possibility that the Biden administration might “adapt and adjust” its stance .. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/world/europe/blinken-ukraine-weapons-russia.html .. about attacking inside Russia with American weapons, based on changing battlefield conditions.
“We’re always making determinations about what’s necessary to make sure that Ukraine can effectively continue to defend itself,” Mr. Blinken said.
His statement was the latest amid a drumbeat of calls for a shift, from allies and from within Mr. Biden’s administration. Mr. Blinken, who returned from a sobering trip to Kyiv earlier this month, reported to the president that the Ukrainians might not be able to hold the territory between Kharkiv and the Russian border unless Mr. Biden reversed himself. That earlier warning was conveyed privately .. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/us/politics/white-house-ukraine-weapons-russia.html , in keeping with Mr. Biden’s deep aversion to letting debates among his inner circle leak out and create pressure on him to shift strategy.
Even before Mr. Blinken spoke publicly on Wednesday, Mr. Biden was coming under enormous pressure from his allies. The usually cautious outgoing leader of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, told The Economist in an interview .. https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/05/24/natos-boss-wants-to-free-ukraine-to-strike-hard-inside-russia .. published late last week that Ukraine’s losses of territory near Kharkiv could only be countered if Ukraine was free to take out artillery and missile launchers and command posts on the Russian side of the border.
“To deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. On Tuesday, the leaders of France and Germany joined that chorus. Britain already allows its weapons to be fired at military targets inside Russia.
So far Mr. Biden himself has remained silent, as he often does when faced with a major policy decision that is the subject of complex debate within the White House. His national security aides are running what one called “a very brisk process” to make a formal recommendation to the president, knowing that momentum in the war has been shifting to Russia .. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/us/politics/russia-momentum-ukraine-war.html .
Some of his advisers — refusing to speak on the record about a debate inside the White House — say they believe a reversal of his position is inevitable. But if the president does change his view, it will most likely come with severe restrictions on how the Ukrainians could use American-provided arms, limiting them to military targets, just inside Russia’s borders, that are involved in attacks on Ukraine.
Mr. Biden would likely retain the ban on using U.S. weapons to strike deep inside Russian territory, or at critical infrastructure. On that point he has some allied support: Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany has refused to provide Ukraine with the German “Taurus” long-range missile system, for fear it could reach Moscow.
Mr. Biden does not have much time. In two weeks, he begins a month of intensive face-to-face meetings with his key allies, first at the 80th anniversary of D-Day, then at a meeting of the G7 nations and finally at a celebration, in Washington, of the creation of NATO 75 years ago. At all of these appearances, projecting unity will be critical.
But if Mr. Biden reverses course, officials concede he most likely will never announce it: Instead, American artillery shells and missiles will just start landing on Russian military targets.
Mr. Biden’s two mandates in the war — don’t let Russia win and don’t risk starting World War III — have always been in tension with each other. But in the 27 months since Russia’s invasion, the need to choose between the possibility of Ukrainian defeat and direct involvement on attacks on the territory of a nuclear superpower have never been as stark.
The Kremlin, eager to make the choice harder, has leaned heavily into the narrative that the president is risking escalation. Last week, it ran a series of exercises .. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-it-starts-nuclear-military-drills-2024-05-21/ .. over how to move and use its large arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons.
After Mr. Stoltenberg’s statement to The Economist, the Kremlin’s top spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that “NATO is flirting with military rhetoric and falling into military ecstasy,” and that the Russian military knew how to respond. Asked if the Western alliance was nearing a direct confrontation with Russia, he said: “They are not getting close; they are in it.”
American officials are increasingly dismissing such warnings as empty. Russia, they note, has never taken the risk of attacking the supply of weapons to Ukraine in Poland or elsewhere in NATO territory. President Vladimir V. Putin has done everything he could to avoid direct conflict with the Western alliance, even while showing off his nuclear capabilities or warning, as Mr. Peskov does regularly, that the West was risking turning a regional conflict into World War III.
“Putin is rattling the nuclear saber to keep Biden from letting U.S. weapons be used to counterattack,” Joseph S. Nye, a former American military official and leader of the National Intelligence Council, said on Tuesday. Mr. Nye, an emeritus professor at Harvard, noted that “what you have happening is a nuclear bargaining game, and a credibility game.”
“Putin has higher stakes in this one, and he will push hard to make Biden swerve first,” he added.
That has been true since the first days of the war, when Mr. Putin ordered nuclear forces to be placed on alert, in an effort to keep NATO from helping Ukraine after the invasion. But after repeated threats from Mr. Putin that he might make use of nuclear weapons, Mr. Biden’s aides seem less and less impressed by the Russian president’s declarations.
Seth G. Jones, a former U.S. military official who leads the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that after a recent trip to Kyiv he concluded that “worries about Ukraine using U.S. weapons to strike war-related targets on Russian territory are misplaced.”
“Ukraine has a legitimate military need to weaken Russia’s ability to wage war,” he said, including striking its oil production facilities and power plants. “The United States did the same thing in Germany and Japan during World War II.”
Mr. Jones added that fears about Russian escalation were “overblown.”
“There has not been blowback against other NATO countries, such as the U.K., whose weapons Ukraine is using to strike targets in Russia,” he said. “And Putin’s threats of escalations since the war began have been hollow.”
But there remains considerable unease inside the Biden administration over the possibility of nuclear escalation. One senior administration official said that Washington had conveyed concern to Mr. Zelensky’s government about strikes against nuclear early-warning radar systems inside Russia in recent weeks.
To conduct the attacks, the Ukrainians used locally produced drones and missiles. But American officials voiced concerns that Moscow could misperceive Western intentions, and told Ukraine they consider the maintenance of early-warning systems to be critical to nuclear stability.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from California.
David E. Sanger covers the Biden administration and national security. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written several books on challenges to American national security. More about David E. Sanger
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/us/politics/biden-ukraine-russia-weapons.html
You'd be right there, i don't know anything of her. That's why i added on at least when it comes
to the flying of flags. I tried to fit pants in, but flying of pants didn't fit, so was stuck with flags.
Yep, there are others too. I remember long time ago posting a picture of one
that i thought looked like Trump. Think it was a puffer fish. Which fits him too.
LOLOL And who is the most honest one of the pair. Or at least the most honest when it comes to the flying of flags.
100%!!! That's the best. Thanks for the reminder, and a more recent
mention of the intelligence of that one, and of it's fellow wrasse
Underwater and underrated: the truth behind fish intelligence
[...] A cleaner wrasse can remember and recognise more than 100 individual clients and prioritise them according to residential status, dealing with outsiders first because it knows that locals will stick around but outsiders may seek another station if service isn’t fast enough.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174503754
I have the evidence presented in the case. 99% of all your posts are simply rhetoric, so there you go again - projection.
B402, To every impartial observer in the world Trump is guilty as charged. You have nothing but partisan and super jaundiced blah blah.
Are you really still claiming Alito and Thomas are not bent?
Alito says the Supreme Court’s fake ethics code allows him to be unethical
"The Impartial Jurist - Tom Tomorrow"
The Supreme Court's new ethics code is worse than nothing — Alito just proved it.
by Ian Millhiser
May 30, 2024, 6:00 AM GMT+10
Justice Samuel Alito Alex Wong/Getty Images
Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution,
and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke
University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court.
In a development that should surprise absolutely no one, Justice Samuel Alito announced in a brief letter on Wednesday that he will not recuse .. https://fixthecourt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Alito-letter-to-House-5.29.24.pdf .. himself from two cases involving the January 6 insurrection and former President Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election.
Alito faced widespread calls for his recusal, including from many Democratic members of Congress, after the New York Times reported that flags associated with the movement to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory .. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/us/justice-alito-neighbors-stop-steal-flag.html .. flew outside his Virginia home and his New Jersey vacation home. His letter announcing that he will not recuse is addressed to many members of the US House who called for him to withdraw from the two cases.
Alito is the Court’s most reliable Republican partisan .. https://www.vox.com/scotus/350339/samuel-alito-republican-party-scotus , and he routinely makes statements from the bench and in his published opinions that are far less ambiguously partisan than, say, the upside-down American flag that flew outside his house in Virginia.
Two things are still notable about the letter, however. One is that Alito blames both flags on his wife, Martha-Ann, (“My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not,” he wrote) and claims that he asked his wife to take down the upside-down flag, “but for several days, she refused .. https://fixthecourt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Alito-letter-to-House-5.29.24.pdf .”
The second is that Alito rests his legal argument on an almost entirely unenforceable code of ethics that the Supreme Court released in 2023 .. https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/11/14/23960027/supreme-court-new-ethics-code-clarence-thomas-unenforceable . The recusal rules in that effectively nonbinding ethics code are far less stringent than a federal law governing judicial recusals, which applies to the Supreme Court .. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/455 .
Last November, when the Court released this ethics code, I described it as “worse than nothing .. https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/11/14/23960027/supreme-court-new-ethics-code-clarence-thomas-unenforceable .” The code is almost entirely unenforceable, and it codifies weak restrictions on justices accepting gifts.
Yet it turns out that I was not cynical enough. I did not anticipate that a justice would cite unenforceable provisions of the Court’s internal ethics code to effectively nullify the justices’ obligations under a more stringent federal law. But that’s exactly what Alito did.
How the Court’s fake ethics code differs from the federal recusal law
The federal statute governing judicial recusals begins with a fairly straightforward declarative sentence: “Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned .. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/455 .” Notably, this statute applies not just to lower court judges — who actually are bound by a separate ethics code .. https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/11/14/23960027/supreme-court-new-ethics-code-clarence-thomas-unenforceable — but also to “any justice.” Justice Alito is a justice.
In his letter refusing to recuse, however, Alito does not even mention this federal statute. Instead, he spends nearly the entire letter explaining why he is not required to recuse himself under the much weaker standard announced in the Court’s own unenforceable ethics code.
That standard begins with a presumption against recusal: “A justice is presumed impartial and has an obligation to sit unless disqualified .. https://fixthecourt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Alito-letter-to-House-5.29.24.pdf .” It uses weaker language to describe when justices should recuse themselves — stating that a justice “should” recuse when their impartiality reasonably can be questioned, not that a justice “shall” recuse. And it qualifies the obligation to recuse by stating that the duty to recuse is only triggered when a “reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.”
So, while the federal statute begins with a declarative statement that justices are sometimes required to remove themselves from certain cases, the Court’s own code begins with a statement that justices typically have an “obligation” not to recuse themselves. And the Court’s unenforceable code also states that a justice can be relieved of his duty to recuse if there are “relevant circumstances” that the public may not be aware of.
And so Alito spends much of his letter laying out what he claims these relevant circumstances are. Among other things, he points to the fact that he and his wife “own our Virginia home jointly,” giving her a “legal right to use the property as she sees fit.” He also mentions that Martha-Ann purchased the New Jersey home “with money she inherited from her parents” and that the house is “titled in her name.”
Regardless of whether anyone is likely to find this explanation persuasive, Alito mentions these facts solely to argue that he is not bound to recuse under the Court’s weak internal ethics code. Because the federal statute is also binding on “any justice,” he also had an obligation to, at the very least, explain why he was not bound to recuse himself under this more stringent law.
Alito’s letter also exposes another weakness in the Court’s internal code. Suppose that a news outlet had discovered that a lower court judge flew an inappropriately political flag outside of their home, and the judge tried to dodge a request for recusal by pointing out that the flag was flown by their spouse. A federal trial judge’s decision not to recuse could be appealed .. https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/11/14/23960027/supreme-court-new-ethics-code-clarence-thomas-unenforceable .. to a federal circuit court, and a circuit judge’s decision not to recuse could be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Thus, the rules governing federal judges who do not serve on the Supreme Court ensure that a judge asked to recuse from a matter will not have the final decision-making authority in their own case.
An official commentary attached to the Court’s internal code, by contrast, states that “individual Justices, rather than the Court, decide recusal issues .. https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/Code-of-Conduct-for-Justices_November_13_2023.pdf .” So Alito has the final word on whether Alito has behaved ethically, and on whether he is relieved of his obligation to recuse because his wife bought their vacation home with her inheritance.
It was clear the day that the Court released its internal code that it wouldn’t have much impact on the justices’ behavior, in large part because most of the provisions of this code have no enforcement mechanism. But Alito’s letter reveals something much more worrisome about the code: It apparently will be used by the justices to justify ignoring their obligations under federal law.
https://www.vox.com/scotus/352380/supreme-court-alito-ethics-recusal-insurrection-flags
B402, Still supporting the lawbreaker and bent judges. Seems you are incapable of change.
And gangsterish .. lol this is good .. SHARK TALE Clips - "Gangster Shark" (2004)
Ponyo
Their lives could be more interesting to them than we think. It would be even more
interesting to learn whether or not, in any way, they understand their sex change.
"Good to know that some fish have sex changes to keep their lives interesting..."
Underwater and underrated: the truth behind fish intelligence
Scientists are finding plenty of clues that fish are more intelligent than anyone imagined.
By Peter Meredith • 8 January 2020
[...]
Fish diversity is mind-boggling. There are thought to be at least 65,000 vertebrate species alive today and of these more than half – 33,000 – are fish. They inhabit every conceivable aquatic niche, with total numbers of individuals in the trillions.
But despite their pedigree and evolutionary success, fish have an image problem. Humans tend to equate ancient with primitive, clinging to an obsolete view of evolution as a steady progression from inferior to advanced, with highly intelligent humans at the pinnacle. But that’s turning out to be a highly simplistic reading of the facts.
The similarities between fish and humans
[...]
“The hormones are the same; the neurons are the same; brain structure is very similar. People tend to focus on how different we are, but the scientific reality is that we’re actually very, very similar. The idea of higher and lower, primitive and advanced, doesn’t exist in evolutionary terms – we’re just another animal among the diversity. I fundamentally disagree with the idea that humans are the best and that you can only be intelligent if you’re similar to a human.”
Fish may seem dumb to us because their expressionless faces make them look dumb and uncommunicative. But that’s partly because we don’t understand the signals they give out. It takes much watching to become familiar with those signals, as scuba divers and owners of pet fish can testify.
We also seem to be unduly influenced by a perception that small brains must be primitive. On a scientific level, it’s a misconception that because the fish brain lacks a cortex – which in humans is responsible for perceiving, producing and understanding language – it must necessarily be incapable of performing many of the tasks of a human cortex. But Culum argues that the human cortex has taken on a huge number of roles that were once the domain of other brain regions. After all, a small brain and lack of a cortex hasn’t prevented many birds from becoming super-smart. Why should fish be any different?
Then there’s brain lateralisation,...
[...]
An aspect of intelligence that has long interested Culum has been the way fish learn and remember. One experiment he did on rainbowfish, a popular aquarium species endemic to Australia and Papua New Guinea, involved a net that moved from one end of a fish tank to the other. The net had a single hole in it; to avoid getting trapped, the fish needed to find the hole quickly.
It took them only five goes to master the test. Furthermore, larger groups did better than smaller ones, suggesting they learn from each other via a process known as social learning. And, even though rainbowfish live for only two years, the test fish still remembered the skill 11 months later.
Social learning and memory are essential for any creature living in a large, complex-social group. Fish can spend most of their lives in shoals or schools. They must learn and memorise their shoal’s structure, remember their status within it and be able to recognise kin and familiars.
Having social learning allows the potential for transferring information between individuals and also between generations, leading to the development of ‘cultural traits’ or ‘traditions’ that can persist over time, Culum says. Regular migration routes are examples. Northern Hemisphere cod have been moving to new spawning grounds in recent years, perhaps because commercial fishing has removed older individuals that remember traditional routes, depleting the species’ cultural knowledge.
Most fish activity involves moving through the environment. Long return journeys demand finely tuned spatial learning and memory that can generate mental maps featuring recognisable features in the environment. Without them fish wouldn’t be able to find their way around.
Fish also display some of the most remarkable examples of cooperation between species in the animal kingdom. One of the best examples involves cleaner wrasse. These fish, typically less than 20cm long, make a meal of parasites and bits of dead skin on the bodies of larger, often predatory, ‘client’ fishes. Cleaners operate at fixed ‘cleaning stations’ on coral outcrops. Clients that gather there are of varying species. A cleaner wrasse can remember and recognise more than 100 individual clients and prioritise them according to residential status, dealing with outsiders first because it knows that locals will stick around but outsiders may seek another station if service isn’t fast enough.
Occasionally a cleaner is tempted to ignore the usual menu items and instead bites off a mouthful of tasty and nutritional mucus from a client. The client may flinch at this and swim off ‘in a huff’ while the cleaner, anxious not to lose a customer, swims after it and placates it with a soothing back rub delivered with its pelvic and pectoral fins, in what Culum describes as a striking example of social intelligence.
Another example of cooperation between species involves groupers and giant moray eels, which team up for hunting expeditions. A grouper seeking a hunting partner will entice a moray out of its cavity with specific ‘come hunt with me’ signals. Then the pair sets off, the eel flushing prey from crevices, while the grouper uses its speed to snap up the meals that they share.
A moray and a grouper prepare to hunt together. A grouper can invite a moray to hunt by using either a distinctive ‘hunt with me’ body shimmy or a headstand signal that points towards hidden prey. . Image: Reinhard Dirscherl/Getty
All this involves cognitive complexity on several levels: the deliberate communication between the two to set up the hunt; the different roles they play; and the subsequent sharing of food.
With many scientific studies now pointing to fish being highly intelligent, we face awkward ethical and moral questions about our treatment of them. Remember, they are our among our most numerous food sources and commonly used as pets and laboratory test subjects. Do they suffer and feel pain in these interactions with us? If so, shouldn’t we try to minimise their suffering by granting them the same animal welfare rights we grant other creatures such as livestock, dogs and cats?
In a 2015 paper in the journal Animal Cognition, Culum argued that there is no doubt fish have the ability to perceive pain.
“It would be impossible for fish to survive as cognitively and behaviourally complex animals without a capacity to feel pain,” he wrote. “Feeling pain and responding appropriately…are clearly critical to survival.”
The incredible collective behaviour of fish
[...]
“The collective behaviour of fish is mathematically very similar to the collective behaviour of certainly birds, certainly krill, certainly sheep, and perhaps humans too,” he says.
Collective decision-making within a group – for instance, about the direction a shoal should turn – is something else Ashley has studied. He’s found that the bigger the group, the faster and better its decision-making.
There’s safety in numbers for this shoal of bigeye trevally. Scientists have found that the bigger a shoal,
the more it confuses predators and therefore the safer it is for individual fish. As well, collective
decision-making is faster. Image: Reinhard Dirscherl / Alamy Stock Photo
“I’ve attended endless tedious academic meetings, and inevitably the larger the meeting, the longer it takes to get resolution. If group-living animals were paralysed by increasing group size, group-living simply wouldn’t work,” he says.
Ashley has found the same phenomenon across a range of fish. Collecting, integrating and acting on information doesn’t require each individual to have its own say or to object. The process is achieved in a smooth, non-vocal way and the result is dramatic to watch.
“Where that talks to fish intelligence is in the ability of each individual in the group to act as a part of the whole, to integrate into the group, perform a function and rely on others to perform other functions, but still do it effectively,” Ashley explains.
He has no doubt fish are intelligent and capable of highly sophisticated behaviour, but he keeps an open mind on whether they feel pain or suffer in the sense we understand. Even so, he’s in favour of an animal welfare approach, especially with commercial fishing, laboratory animals and pets. He adds that there can be few things worse for a shoaling fish than being alone in a small, featureless container: “If you put a single herring in a tub, it dies of loneliness, of the sheer stress of the situation.”
Do fish feel pain?
https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2020/01/underwater-and-underrated-the-truth-behind-fish-intelligence/
Why Don't Unauthorized Migrants Come Here Legally?
"Who Seeks Asylum in the United States and Why? Some Preliminary Answers from a Boston-Based Study
"ALDRADJKD123, Trump’s Border Policies Let More Immigrants Sneak In"
United States Conference of Catholic BishopsMigration and Refugee Services Migration Policy and Public Affairs
Issue Briefing Series, Issue #1
Why Don't They Come Here Legally?
In the fractious debate surrounding both legal and illegal immigration to the United States, politicians, the public, and pundits alike eventually cycle back to one fundamental question – why don't they come here legally? Why don't the estimated 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants presently in the United States stand in line with the rest of the immigrants seeking to enter lawfully? If our ancestors did it, why can't they?
In the United States today, there are an estimated 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants.(i) Sixty percent of these immigrants are from Mexico.(ii) Another 20 percent are from other Latin American countries.(iii) Eleven percent comes from South and East Asia.(iv) Combined, unauthorized workers comprise more than five percent of the U.S. workforce.(v)
Many understandably ask why these millions of unauthorized immigrants did not seek to come to the United States lawfully. Some argue that if their ancestors could do it, so should the unauthorized immigrants in our country today.
Many of our ancestors didn't actually come here through federal "legal" channels – there weren't restrictive federal immigration laws in place at the time
Yet, until the 1870's, the federal government did virtually nothing to restrict immigration to the United States. In most cases, immigrants who arrived to the United States in search of work or a new life simply settled in the country and became citizens after a period of time.vi In 1875, Congress passed the Page Law, restricting immigration of women engaged in polygamy and prostitution, with enforcement provisions particularly focused on Chinese women.(vii) Seven years later, in 1882, Congress promulgated the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, restricting immigration of Chinese laborers.(viii) Congress eventually expanded these restrictions on Chinese immigration to exclude Asian immigrants generally.(ix) However, immigration by those arriving from non-Asian countries was not significantly restricted until the 1920's, by which time many of our immigrant ancestors had already arrived. Indeed, during that period immigration from various parts of the world to the United States was widespread; by 1870, forty percent of the residents of New York, Chicago, and other major metropolitan areas, were foreign-born.(x)
In 1921, beginning with the Emergency Quota Act, the United States began to restrict immigration through the use of national origins quotas.(xi) The quota system was restructured multiple times in subsequent years, leaving some regions of the world at a disadvantage at certain points.(xii) In 1965, amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 abolished the quota system, prioritizing instead family-based immigration.xiii Subsequent immigration laws have been increasingly restrictive. For instance, in 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed to control and deter unlawful immigration to the United States, making it unlawful to knowingly hire unauthorized immigrants and increasing border enforcement.(xiv) Ten years later, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) created penalties for those who had been "unlawfully present" in the country, establishing three and ten year bars to lawful reentry.(xv)
Today's unauthorized immigrants would prefer to live and work lawfully in the United States if they could.
Moreover, according to two well-regarded opinion surveys of unauthorized immigrants in the United States, the large majority of those unauthorized in the country today would have preferred to enter lawfully if they could have. In fact, some 98 percent of those surveyed indicated that they would prefer to live and work lawfully, rather than in unauthorized status.(xvi)
Under current laws, no "line" for lawful immigration to the United States actually exists for the majority of our immigrants.
So, why didn't they just "stand in line" to do so? For the large majority of unauthorized immigrants, no such "line" exists. Under the current immigration legal framework, lawful immigration to the United States is restricted to only a few narrow categories of persons.xvii Most current unauthorized immigrants residing in the United States are ineligible to enter legally with a "green card" as a lawful permanent resident for the purpose of living and working in the country. This is because most do not have the family relationships required to apply for lawful entry; they do not qualify as asylees because of economic hardship as such status is available only to those who are fleeing persecution; and the majority of the unauthorized do not hold advanced degrees and work in the high-skilled professions that would qualify them for work-sponsored lawful permanent residency.
U.S. immigration laws provide three core means by which an immigrant may obtain lawful permanent residency.(xviii) First, a qualified family member in the United States may petition to bring a foreign-born family member to the country lawfully. U.S. Citizens may petition for lawful permanent residency for their spouses, parents, children or siblings. Lawful Permanent Residents in the country may petition for their foreign-born spouses and unmarried children. To do so, sponsors must demonstrate an income level above poverty line and must commit to financially support the sponsored, foreign-born family member so that they do not become a public charge. The foreign-born immigrant, in turn, must meet all other eligibility requirements.(xix) However, there are numeric limitations on most of these family-based categories, resulting in backlogs for entry that often range anywhere from five years to nearly 20 years.
Second, immigrants fleeing political persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution on account of their race, religion, membership in a particular social group, political opinion or national origin may seek political asylum in the United States or qualify for refugee status. To do so, they must meet a high evidentiary burden. Even if they do qualify for refugee status, there is an annual cap on the number of refugee admissions to the United States, which is set annually and is typically between 70,000 and 80,000.(xx) Most of today's unauthorized immigrants are fleeing poverty in their home countries, not political persecution. As a result, they do not qualify for asylum.
Third, and significantly, there are various immigration categories for workers to be sponsored by a U.S.-based employer to come to the United States to work and live lawfully. However, these categories are limited to multinational executives and professors; those with advance degrees, the exceptional in the arts, sciences or business; and narrowly-defined, specialized workers.xxi Today's unauthorized immigrants are largely low-skilled workers who come to the United States for work to support their families. They work in the agricultural, meatpacking, landscaping, services, and construction industries in the United States. They fill the ranks of U.S. businesses, large and small throughout the country. Over the past several decades, the demand by U.S. businesses for low-skilled workers has grown exponentially, while the supply of available workers for low-skilled jobs in the United States has diminished.(xxii) Yet, there are only 5,000 green cards available annually for low-skilled workers to enter the United States lawfully.(xxiii) This number stands in stark contrast to the estimated 300,000 immigrants who enter the United States unlawfully each year, most of whom are looking for work.(xxiv) The only alternative to this is to secure a temporary work visa through the H-2A (seasonal agricultural) or H2B (seasonal non-agricultural) visa programs which provide temporary status to low-skilled workers seeking to enter the country lawfully. While H-2A visas are not numerically capped, the requirements are onerous. H-2B visas are capped at 66,000 annually. Both only provide temporary status to work for a U.S. employer for one year.(xxv) At their current numbers, these are woefully insufficient to provide legal means for the foreign-born to enter the United States to live and work, and thereby meet our demand for foreign-born labor.
The Catholic Church believes that current immigration laws must be reformed to meet our country's need for low-skilled labor and facilitate the reunification of families.
The Catholic Church believes that immigrants should come to the United States lawfully, but it also understands that the current immigration legal framework does not adequately reunify families and is non-responsive to our country's need for labor. Our country must pass immigration reform laws to ensure the rule of law in the United States, while simultaneously ensuring that the laws that rule are responsive to our economy's demand for labor, rooted in the reunification of family, and respectful of the humanity of the immigrants in our midst. The Church supports immigration reform that would increase the number of visas available for low-skilled workers and facilitate family reunification.
Footnotes
https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/immigration/whydonttheycomeherelegally
Who Seeks Asylum in the United States and Why? Some Preliminary Answers from a Boston-Based Study
"ALDRADJKD123, Trump’s Border Policies Let More Immigrants Sneak In"
Nina Sreshta, Nikhil “Sunny” A. Patel, Robert P. Marlin, and J. Wesley Boyd
April 1, 2021 Social Justice
Introduction
The world is in the midst of a crisis of displacement; last year 44,000 people worldwide were forcibly displaced from their homes on a daily basis and, by the end of 2017, the total number of displaced individuals was almost 68.5 million. [1]
[insert: The 2024 budget of $10.622 billion is designed to enable UNHCR and its partners to provide life-saving protection, assistance and solutions in new and existing displacement situations to a projected planning figure of 130.8 million forcibly displaced and stateless people.
https://reporting.unhcr.org/global-appeal-2024
So that's roughly double the number of 7 years ago. And it's clear that anyone not expecting more at all borders of 'most attractive countries' is living in la la land. Clearly Boebert, MTG, and others of similar silly 'open border' comment (yeah like conix and our other trolls) , are already there.]/i]
Refugees are defined as persons who are “unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” [2] Refugees receive this status prior to entering the US and, by contrast, asylum seekers apply for this designation after arrival in the US, no matter the means by which they entered the country. Seeking asylum is both completely legal in the US and also accepted internationally as one of the fundamental rights owed to all human beings irrespective of religion, country of origin, race, gender, or any other quality. [3]
With these realities as a backdrop, the current presidential administration has been engaged in a war against immigrants and asylum seekers. Trump has famously and repeatedly promised to build a wall on the southern border of the US and has vowed to sharply reduce legal immigration. He has sought to prevent immigrants from requesting asylum and to prevent the children of immigrants who are born in the US from becoming citizens. Many children have been separated from their families at the border, and in some instances future reunification of families might be impossible. [4]
[Australia has it's "stolen Generation" See [Tearex, RON WITTON. Zionism and Terra Nullius: a haunting parallel between Israel and Australia
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=148791991]
Also inserted in this of 2018 and worth reading again
In China’s Crackdown on Muslims, Children Have Not Been Spared
"‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims
"China’s Retort Over Its Mass Detentions: Praise From Russia and Saudi Arabia
"Searching for truth in China's Uighur 're-education' camps"""
December 2019 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=153023018]
America too, i guess, Indian children in days gone. And it appears you could have a few more from the Trump program"
Some of these children who are separated from their families have been forcibly medicated with powerful psychiatric drugs. [5] Additionally, against decades of legal precedent, last year then Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled that fleeing domestic or gang violence would no longer constitute reasons to qualify someone to receive asylum here. [6]
In defending these and similar actions, Trump has stated that, “American families deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first.” [7] Inherent in this statement is the notion that immigrants pose a threat to the safety and economic security of American citizens. Additionally, there is often an underlying assumption that conditions in their home countries really aren’t so bad and that sending them home is innocuous for these individuals.
But are these feelings and assumptions correct? In what follows, we undertake to answer these questions in two ways. First, we will examine the characteristics of individuals seen in one faculty-led asylum clinic within a community-based, academic psychiatry department in the greater Boston area who are seeking legal status here in the US. That analysis will provide some preliminary data about a subset of asylum seekers. We will then also examine what is known broadly about asylum seekers and then argue that for humanitarian reasons as well as utilitarian ones, the US has an obligation to ensure asylum seekers are treated fairly and legally.
Methods and Results:
Data were extracted from the written reports of evaluations written by one of the authors (JWB) from asylum seekers who had a psychiatric evaluation through the authors’ hospital’s asylum clinic between 2009 and 2017. A variety of demographic were abstracted from evaluation review, including comprehensive data regarding individuals’ motivations for fleeing their country of origin and fears for persecution and/or death if individuals were forced to return. These data were tabulated and analyzed using Microsoft Excel ® software. Data were presented as mean ± standard deviation and as percentages. The study was approved by the Cambridge Health Alliance Institutional Review Board.
The number of male and female asylum seekers was approximately equal. (See Table 1.) The ages of asylum seekers ranged from the youngest, who was 8 years of age, to the oldest, who was 54 years of age, and the average of the entire cohort was 30 ± 10 years of age. The median amount of time that individuals had been in the US prior to their evaluations was 3 years. Nine individuals had resided in the US for a decade or longer before they received their evaluations, including one extreme outlier who had lived in the US for 30 years prior to his evaluation. The majority of the individuals who were evaluated had limited formal education, with an average of 9 ± 4 years. Most individuals hailed from Latin America, including 13 (22 percent) from El Salvador, 9 (14 percent) from Guatemala, and 5 (8 percent) from Haiti. Seventeen percent were from Sub-Saharan African Countries, 4 percent were from the Middle East-North Africa region and 6 percent from Asia.
Two-thirds of individuals had family who remained behind in their home country. These individuals described many reasons for seeking asylum here in the US, including escaping persecution for political activities, sexual orientation, religious belief, or because they feared intrafamily or gang violence. All told, 34 percent of those evaluated reported being victims of intrafamily violence, including intimate partner violence.
Most of the individuals fleeing gang violence were from Central America, with El Salvador and Guatemala being the countries most frequently fled. Many of these individuals had family members who were killed by gangs and were repeatedly threatened with death themselves. Twenty-five percent of individuals (many who hailed from sub-Saharan African countries) were fleeing violence because of their political activism. Thirteen percent were fleeing their countries because of religious persecution.
Seven individuals (11 percent) had committed crimes while here in the US. None of these individuals were recent emigres and most of them had lived in the US from early in their lives and had been arrested for drug related charges. Only one was arrested for a violent crime, and that occurred when the individual was in the middle of a psychotic episode and assaulted a hospital worker. No individual had plotted, attempted, or committed murder.
All individuals were deemed to be credible and none of them were thought to be malingering. (See Table 2.) Eighty-eight percent of individuals met diagnostic criteria for PTSD, while 34 percent met criteria for major depressive disorder. Approximately half of the clients in this cohort reported previously receiving some form of psychiatric care, although many of these individuals reported only receiving emergency department care and were not meaningfully engaged in the mental health system.
Ninety percent of participants believed they might, or would be, killed if they were forced to return to their countries of origin, and 95 percent of participants believed that they would face violence if they were forced to return. One-hundred percent stated they believed their symptoms of mental distress would increase if they had to return to their country of origin.
Discussion:
Asylum seekers in our sample had significant rates of both major depression and PTSD. These data are in line with national estimates of these disorders among asylum seekers. [8], [9], [10] Additionally, every individual’s story was deemed credible; almost every one would experience a worsening of their symptoms or would be killed if they were returned to their countries of origin.
Some of the individuals in our study had committed crimes, but given that approximately 1 in 3 Americans will have been arrested by age 23, [11] our cohort had far lower rates of arrests than that of Americans generally. Our data are in line with national data that show immigrants are much less likely than native born Americans to commit crimes or be incarcerated. [12]
Given that data show asylum seekers have significant psychological trauma, and also don’t pose risks to the US, the US ought to ease the path to asylum for both utilitarian and deontological reasons. Some would argue otherwise, claiming that asylum seekers are really coming to the US for economic and lifestyle reasons and, as a result, there is no compelling moral argument to promote immigration. They might also argue that the US first and foremost ought to concern itself with the well-being of its own citizens and not residents of other countries. In this same vein, they might further argue that foreigners utilize resources here in the US that should be reserved for US citizens and legal residents.
Even though these sentiments are widely expressed across the US, these arguments are wrong. Overwhelmingly, asylum seekers face death if they go back to their countries of origin. We have seen many individuals who fled when family members were killed after refusing gang demands, lesbian women who fled after being repeatedly raped because of their sexual orientation, and members of opposition political parties who fled after being threatened with death themselves and watching their compatriots be murdered. In each of these instances, the government was either indifferent to their fate or else actively encouraged the behaviors. We strongly argue that these individuals are not fleeing for economic or “lifestyle” reasons.
Deporting individuals back to their countries of origin under these circumstances seems cruel, to put it mildly. The 8th Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment and the United Nations Convention against Torture forbids countries from transporting individuals to any country where there is reason to believe they will be tortured. The individuals we have seen would experience a worsening of their psychiatric symptoms and face either harm or death upon arrival in their home countries. Deporting these individuals would appear to be not only unethical, but illegal as well.
Some might argue that immigrants in general, and asylum seekers in particular, take away jobs from Americans or sap resources here in the US. In fact, immigrants do not cause wages to be lower in the US, or employment rates to decrease. [13] The reality is that immigrants—including undocumented ones—are vital for a number of US industries, including the farming industry, the construction industry, the restaurant industry, cleaning services as well as many others. [14]
[ALDRADJKD123, Net Positive: New Government Study Finds Refugees and Asylees Contributed $123.8 Billion to the US Economy From 2005-2019
[...]1. Government spending on refugees and asylees totaled around $457.2 billion, while refugees and asylees contributed approximately $581 billion in revenue. This shows the initial cost of resettling refugees and processing asylees is offset the longer this population stays longer in the US.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174502542]
With respect to crime and safety, immigrants are also far less likely than native born Americans to commit crimes—including murder—or be incarcerated. [15] When it comes to health care, expenditures for immigrants are far lower than for U.S. born individuals. Health care expenditures for undocumented immigrants are lower still. Immigrants actually subsidize the American private insurance market, being generally younger and healthier than native born Americans. [16] Immigrants also subsidize Medicare in that they contribute far more into Medicare than they ever receive in terms of services. [17]
Given these realities, there are multiple utilitarian arguments that can be made to support assisting asylum seekers’ efforts to gain legal status in the US. In addition to appeals to morality and conscience given the horrors many asylum seekers are fleeing, the strong utilitarian argument demonstrates that immigrants make a net positive contribution to the US. Indeed, a report by the Department of Health and Human Services that was suppressed by the Trump administration found that “refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenues over the past decade than they cost.” [18] For all of these reasons, we believe that health care professionals everywhere ought to call for humane approaches to those seeking asylum.
While many on the right have demonized asylum seekers and perpetrated lies about them, those who care about health and about truth, including health care workers, ethicists and others, have a responsibility to promote beneficence and minimize harm whenever possible. Supporting the rights of asylum seekers is an obvious way to promote these ideals. In this current political climate, we believe that taking a lead in advocating for the rights of asylum seekers and teaching others about the pain and suffering of asylum seekers across the country is more important than ever.
Table 1: Demographics of Asylum Seekers (n =64)
Male 33 (52 percent)
Female 31 (48 percent)
Age at evaluation (n= 60) 30 ± 10 years
Detention at time of evaluation 6 (9 percent)
Years of Formal Education (n=52) 9 ± 4 years
Median years in the United States (25th-75th percentile) 3 (2–10) years
Family remaining in home country 41 (64 percent)
Engaged in Political activities 13 (25 percent)
Experienced ethnic violence 3 (5 percent)
Persecuted for religious belief 8 (13 percent)
Persecuted for identifying as LGBT 6 (10 percent)
Victim of FGM 3 (5 percent)
Committed Crimes 7 (11 percent)
Victim of gang violence/ political unrest 15 (23 percent)
Victim of intrafamily violence 22 (34 percent)
Table 2: Asylum Evaluation Outcomes
Interpreter used 40 (63 percent)
Appeared credible 64 (100 percent)
Deemed to be Malingering 0 (0 percent)
Previously received psychiatric care 36 (56 percent)
Diagnosed with Post-traumatic stress disorder 56 (88 percent)
Diagnosed with Major depressive disorder 22 (34 percent)
Fears death if forced to return home 58 (90 percent)
Fears violence if forced to return home 61 (95 percent)
Increase in symptoms if returned to country of origin 64 (100 percent)
Granted asylum 12 (19 percent)
Not Granted Asylum 2 (3 percent)
Unknown/not yet adjudicated 50 (78 percent)
Trainee present at time of evaluation 54 (84 percent)
Compliance with Ethical Standards/Ethical Considerations: The research
in this paper was approved by the Cambridge Health Alliance IRB
Corresponding Author:
J. Wesley Boyd, MD, PhD
1493 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
jwboyd@cha.harvard.edu
Conflict of interest: None of the authors has any financial conflicts or disclosures related to this paper.
References:
[1] UNHCR. Global Trends Forced Displacement in 2017. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2017. http://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2017/
[2] United Nations. "Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees." United Nations, Treaty Series, vol 189 in accordance with article 43 (Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations, 1951). https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetailsII.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=V-2&chapter=5&Temp=mtdsg2&clang=_en
[3] Draft Committee. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Paris, France: United Nations, 1948. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.
[4] Sieff, Kevin. "The chaotic effort to reunite immigrant parents with their separated kids." The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.) June 21, 2018.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-chaotic-effort-to-reunite-immigrant-parents-with-their-separated-kids/2018/06/21/325cceb2-7563-11e8-bda1-18e53a448a14_story.html?utm_term=.79d2a054b9fc.
[5] Reuters Staff. "U.S. centers force migrant children to take drugs: lawsuit." Reuters (London, U.K.) June 20, 2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-medication/u-s-centers-force-migrant-children-to-take-drugs-lawsuit-idUSKBN1JH076.
[6] Benner, Katie and Caitlin Dickerson. "Sessions Says Domestic and Gang Violence Are Not Grounds for Asylum." New York Times (New York, NY) June 11, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/us/politics/sessions-domestic-violence-asylum.html.
[7] Simendinger, Alexis and James Arkin. "Trump, Senators Push Plan to Cut Legal Immigration." RealClearPolitics (Washington, D.C.) August 2, 2017. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/08/02/trump_backs_senators_bill_to_curb_legal_immigration_134655.html.
[8] Richter, Kneginja., Lukas Peter, Hartmut Lehfeld, Harald Zäske, Salina Brar-Reissinger, and Günter Niklewski. "Prevalence of psychiatric diagnoses in asylum seekers with follow-up." BMC psychiatry 18, no. 1 (2018): 206. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-018-1783-y.
[9] Hameed, Sameena, Asad Sadiq, and Amad U. Din. "The increased vulnerability of refugee population to mental health disorders." Kansas Journal of Medicine 11, no. 1 (2018): 20. https://doi.org/10.17161/kjm.v11i1.8680.
[10] American Psychiatric Association. Mental Health Facts on Refugees, Asylum-seekers, & Survivors of Forced Displacement. Virginia: American Psychiatric Association. file:///Users/wesboyd/Downloads/Mental-Health-Facts-for-Refugees.pdf.
[11] Friedman, Matthew. "Just Facts: As Many Americans Have Criminal Records As College Diplomas." Brennan Center for Justice (New York, NY) November 17, 2015. https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/just-facts-many-americans-have-criminal-records-college-diplomas.
[12] Riley, Jason L. "The Mythical Connection Between Immigrants and Crime." The Wall Street Journal (New York, NY) July 14, 2015. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mythical-connection-between-immigrants-and-crime-1436916798.
[13] Preston, Julia. "Immigrants Aren’t Taking Americans’ Jobs, New Study Finds" The New York Times (New York, NY) September 21, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/us/immigrants-arent-taking-americans-jobs-new-study-finds.html.
[14] Dudley, Mary Jo. "These US Industries can’t work without illegal immigrants." CBS News (New York, NY) January 10, 2019. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-immigrants-us-jobs-economy-farm-workers-taxes/.
[15] Riley, Jason L. "The Mythical Connection Between Immigrants and Crime." The Wall Street Journal (New York, NY) July 14, 2015. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mythical-connection-between-immigrants-and-crime-1436916798.
[16] Rodriguez, Carmen Heredia. "Immigrants pay more into the healthcare system than they get out of it, study shows." Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California) October 2, 2018. https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-immigrant-healthcare-20181002-story.html.
[17] Zallman, Leah, Steffie Woolhandler, David Himmelstein, David Bor, and Danny McCormick. "Immigrants contributed an estimated $115.2 billion more to the Medicare Trust Fund than they took out in 2002–09." Health Affairs 32, no. 6 (2013): 1153-1160. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2012.1223.
[18] Davis, Julia Hirschfeld and Somini Sengupta. "Trump Administration Rejects Study Showing Positive Impact of Refugees." The New York Times (New York, NY) September 18, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/refugees-revenue-cost-report-trump.html.
https://bioethics.hms.harvard.edu/journal/displacement-crisis
Yours ran into -- Classical Morning With Frederic Chopin | Classical Music Playlist For Relaxation | Calm Music
Timeless Classical Music
ALDRADJKD123, Seriously, your, "Lame but then again people expect that from Democrats and Liberals." is among the lamest of any. Read it again. And look around. Would you really expect less from every Democrat than you would from every Republican. That of yours really is a dumb comment, eh.
In reading your posts for the first time today to date it looks you have very little if anything to contribute to any discussion about anything. I'm happy to change that opinion if i see anything of worth from you in the future.
Ya got me again. I meant generally, still should have said most all of us.... Yet again we see that some of us were
luckier than most all of us in their educational experiences. Even if that education was gained by heh, listening in.
"There've always been hermaphrodites. Most people just weren't told about them. And if one was born in the family, it was "fixed", at least in this country.
That's just one possibility. I'm sure not all trans people are hermaphrodites. Complex subject."
Complex indeed.
This to your hermaphrodite mention: Magaverse: Male. Female. That's it. It's like the good old days of black and white. The world changes. Science changes. We don't. Our certainty is our strength. Black, white, brown, brindle. Too much complication. Male female. Black white. We aren't fish:
Abstract
Sexual fate is no longer seen as an irreversible deterministic switch set during early embryonic development but as an ongoing battle for primacy between male and female developmental trajectories. That sexual fate is not final and must be actively maintained via continuous suppression of the opposing sexual network creates the potential for flexibility into adulthood. In many fishes, sexuality is not only extremely plastic, but sex change is a usual and adaptive part of the life cycle. Sequential hermaphrodites begin life as one sex, changing sometime later to the other, and include species capable of protandrous (male-to-female), protogynous (female-to-male), or serial (bidirectional) sex change. Natural sex change involves coordinated transformations across multiple biological systems, including behavioural, anatomical, neuroendocrine, and molecular axes. We here review the biological processes underlying this amazing transformation, focussing particularly on its molecular basis, which remains poorly understood, but where new genomic technologies are significantly advancing our understanding of how sex change is initiated and progressed at the molecular level. Knowledge of how a usually committed developmental process remains plastic in sequentially hermaphroditic fishes is relevant to understanding the evolution and functioning of sexual developmental systems in vertebrates generally, as well as pathologies of sexual development in humans.
https://karger.com/sxd/article/10/5-6/223/296444/Bending-Genders-The-Biology-of-Natural-Sex-Change
Imagine an artist painting with only primary colors.
Medicine’s Fixation on the Sex Binary Harms Intersex People | A Question of Sex, Episode 2
Yup.