I'd prefer Trump get elected for the sole reason that the House and Senate might finally start to put the brakes on the imperial Presidency that has been in effect for far too long (through both D and R administrations).
I'm not too worried about the big stuff because almost every plan of Trumps has no real basis in reality so would never be able to get the backing of real legislators. The big problem is with all the little stuff the legislative branch has pretty much just conceded to the Executive. All the myriad of EO's and Presidential Memorandum which effectively create laws without any actual legislation passing. You can guarantee that once Trump has access to that type of power he'll try to use it and at some point he'll go too far and finally the D's and R's will unite to reign in those extra-legislative slight of hand tricks.
It might be a painful 4 years (or shorter with impeachment) but it might result in a stronger country on the other side.
Either way this is going to be a terrible election.
She could classify or declassify information that was initialized by the State Department but that's not what this whole mess is about.
There are relatively few State Dept. emails that the IGs sited as being a problem, there are however several dozens, if not hundreds, of emails from outside intelligence agencies as well as foreign governments which have been identified as being classified at various levels. As SoS she had no authority to modify the classifications of those emails.
The State Dept. itself has spent the last couple of years begging other agencies to change the classifications of data contained in her emails and not because they believed it was truly non-classified but purely out of a need to ass cover (both hers and theirs). It's the same reason they've been brought to task repeatedly by federal judges for dragging their feet and making blatantly false statements about how some data is irretrievable (which they later found could be retrieved by simply looking for it) or they simply don't have the ability to do something by court mandated deadlines (while at the same time doing complete reviews of former SoS emails in their 'spare' time).
It's the IRS all over again. "We lost all of Lois Lerner's emails and can't possibly retrieve them!!" Meanwhile years later it turns out they were just sitting on the back up server, exactly where they should be just no one bothered to look.
Of course 5 seconds of goggling the whole Plame fiasco would have given you that answer. You would also learn that the investigators knew that from almost day 1 but continued their investigation for, God knows what reason.
Libby was convicted of lying to the investigators based solely on a disagreement between him and Tim Russert about a phone conversation they had a year prior, not for outing Plame. Libby said Russert dropped Plames name and said it was common knowledge amongst reporters, Russert said he didn't (though apparently originally he simply claimed he didn't remember mentioning her).
Experts are very split on the mental health aspects of sexual reassignment surgery.
Some top hospitals have stopped performing them because most studies show that the actual surgery does not generally have a positive impact on the patients and instead suggest treatment for the underlying depression that often causes trans individuals to seek the operation in the first place.
To be more clear, the law only requires people to use a bathroom that matches the plumbing their birth certificate indicates in government owned facilities; everywhere else is up to the private property owner. So all businesses in NC are free to be as trans friendly as they want to be and trans supporters are also free to push for a State-wide law supporting their position.
The law essentially just overrides the smorgasbord or individual town/county laws and states that all laws concerning these type of special protections need to be passed at a State level.
The 'bathroom' law only affects public facilities and leaves the decision on what rules to implement about bathroom use on private property (i.e. businesses in NC) to the private property owner. So if Starbucks wants to have a trans friendly policy there is nothing in this law to prevent that.
If people are so outraged about not being able to use the bathroom of their choice while visiting city hall they can work within the normal system and build support for a State law.
Stripping in front of kids in an area specifically designated for removing clothing cannot be considered a violation of the law. The fact a law allows men to be in the same area as women/girls does not change that fact.
The "no shoes, no service" is just a saying with no legal backing. People CANNOT be asked to leave for just any reason when laws are created to specifically prevent that from happening. It the same reason you can have a guide dog in areas with "no dogs" signs.
When laws create protected classes that overrides your bumper sticker.
At this point, your inability to understand the very basics of how our legal framework works I can only assume you are trolling.
The fact that you are easily offended and don't understand how laws work is not my problem.
If a law is written to expressly permit a person to choose the changing room they want to use based on their feelings then public employees have no legal authority to act against that law unless they want to lose their jobs and face possible charges themselves. Private organizations have some more leeway but in this case, if the man involved was authorized to be there (a club member or paid to have a swim pass for the day) according to the law in Washington State, they also would not have been legally permitted to remove him.
In both cases, public or private, the workers at the facility would be in direct violation of the law preventing discrimination based on gender identity. IT'S WHY THE LAW WAS PASSED. If the law allowed them to remove him because they didn't like it then it wouldn't be much of a law would it. The law creates a protected class and the fact the law doesn't properly define who can or cannot be considered members of that class and make use of it's provisions is why I don't like those types of laws.
Just look at the cases brought against bakers, florists and reception rentals in the last couple of years. When a class or action is given a protected status under the law a persons ability to deny service to the class or to not provide that service is greatly restricted and subject to extreme penalties even in cases where denial of that service puts absolutely no undue hardship on the protected class member.
And despite your ridiculous claims, if he was yelling or screaming, in either case, public or private, the employees could have legally acted to have him removed for disturbing the peace.
This wasn't a commercial pool, it was a public facility and as such the workers are not able to refuse service to anyone if a law specifically states they have a right to choose which room they wish to use.
As for commercial premises, under this law they also wouldn't have the right to remove the man from the women's change room merely for being a man; it's kind of the point of the law to make that type of action illegal. In fact the law requires the business to first attempt to remove any woman who complains and give them an alternate change room.
Seattle, a couple weeks after a similar law was passed there a man, dressed in standard men's clothing, entered a women's changing room at a pool and proceeded to get changed in front of young girls (I do not believe he got completely naked). When asked to leave he simply stated the law says he could choose to use the women's room and the staff at the pool were unable to prove otherwise so he was allowed to remain and even return for a later swim.
In Toronto, a man was charged with sexual assault and jailed as a dangerous offender after using the transgender claim to gain access to a women's shelter. While this happened just prior to the law in Ontario passing, shelter's in the Toronto region used similar standards at the time when permitting men access to female areas. His word was enough.
Those were two semi-high profile cases but most cases of abuse of these types of laws wouldn't be reported since police wouldn't be involved. You can't be charged with a crime when they only evidence you're guilty is you own feelings on the issue. There's also the fact that in many cases victims wouldn't even know they were victimized if all the person wanted to do was peep.
I have no problem with gender neutral washrooms and if legislation is required would prefer that to these types of "do what you feel" type laws. Laws that are intentionally written to be gray are, in general, just bad legislation.
Inn Seattle, just after a LGBT friendly law was passed a man walked into a women's changing room at a pool and undressed in front of young girls. He was wearing standard men's clothing and after swimming he returned to the dressing room and repeated the process. At no point were any police called because he said he 'identified' as female and the staff were unable to prove otherwise. He was told he could use a separate room but he refused and they were not legally allowed to force him.
It's not going to happen everywhere but with 'feelings' based laws there is little anyone can do about it unless the person has prior sexual convictions and then they would most likely be in violation of something else besides these laws.
Laws allowing people to decide which bathroom to use based on their feelings are just asking for trouble since they are impossible to judge. Pervert or true trans, who knows and since it's feelings based there is really no way (barring previous convictions) to stop one without also stopping the other. Passing a law requiring gender neutral facilities (but also allowing for gender specific where gender neutral are also present) is much better.
Forewarned is forearmed. As a parent if you know men and woman are sharing the same bathroom you may act differently when your small child has to go than if they are gender specific.
I don't believe any law requires that they be "living as a woman" just identifies as one; they don't even have to be wearing a dress or other woman's clothing. You'd be hard pressed to arrest anyone, no matter how obvious their intentions, in any place with the "use the bathroom you identify with" law in place.
Being locked inside a service is pretty much the same as being locked into a format. Whens the last time you were able to play your VHS copy of Highlander on your Blu-Ray drive?
Just because you have to use one of their players (which for ultraviolet includes several apps on almost any app capable device) doesn't mean you don't own it.
This isn't a rental service, in fact the article goes out of it's way to stress Sony will not be offering rental rates for the time being. Sony is simply saying they will be offering 4k versions of their movies for purchase through their new service, Ultra.
Once purchased you can stream then through Ultra or any other 4k capable UltraViolet service or just dl them to watch later or on some non-connected device. Regardless, that movie is a permanent addition to your UV locker and you can watch it any time.
It's not single watch, it's just Sony announcing they will be offering their movies in 4k format through their own service connected to UltraViolet.
You won't even have to use their service to watch them as long as your preferred UV provider offers 4k playback. Most UV services also allow you to just dl your movies for later viewing if buffering is an issue.
UV movies have no specific date of expiry; in fact their faq quite specifically states that your rights to a movie do not expire. The only expiry date mentioned by UV is the redemption date of the code included with a disc purchase.
So you may have only 1-3 years to redeem a UV code but once redeemed it's in your locker for life (with the exception that if it turns out the original provider did not in fact have legal rights to that movie in your jurisdiction).
UV movies are one time purchases. The upgrade feature is only if you bought a lower quality license and decide to upgrade quality afterwards. For example, I converted a bunch of DVD's to SD UV for $2/disc (instead of paying for HD at $5/disc). If I later decide to convert my $2 SD license to a 4K license I can pay $15 or just not and keep watching in SD. Note: buying the higher quality license gives you access to all the lower levels. Since SD is fine for those older movies than I will continue to be able to watch them in perpetuity for exactly $0.
You can also DL UV movies to whatever device you want for later offline watching. I do this routinely to load up my SD cards for trips.
You can enter pretty much every UV code at either Vudu or Flixster and never go near any Studio site or service.
The biggest difference between UV and Apple is that while on Apple you are locked to getting your playback service and your locker storage from the same provider (iTunes) on UV you can choose whichever playback service you prefer. This is especially helpful when you deal with different playback devices. If you're preferred provider doesn't make an app for the device you're currently on you just have to install one of the other providers apps. Try doing that with iTunes.
So don't bitch about how a service provider killed a movie format for you when you apparently have absolutely no understanding on how that service works.
There are legitimate gripes about UV (and I personally have many more concerning iTunes) but almost nothing in your post hits on any of them.
I've never damaged any of my discs beyond the ability to use them but I'm also an uncle with 5 nephews and nieces and since I didn't run my living room like a prison, whenever they were over they were free to take any disc they wanted and load it into the blu-ray player. Most of the times everything was fine but every once and a while something would get scuffed up.
The right to an UltraViolet movie is perpetual and remains in your Library unless you delete it. UltraViolet rights never expire.
They also go into what happens when the service provider you were using goes out of business:
If an UltraViolet retailer goes out of business, your UltraViolet Library will be available from other UltraViolet services.
Australia had this happen recently when their UV provider went under. While all non-UV movies and shows were lost all the UV purchases are still retained in their UV lockers. Of course Australia has other UV problems because for some reason no one wants to make their streaming apps available to them so they have to dl their movies if they want to watch them but they still have full rights to them.
Some codes have an expiration date to use but once added to your library they are there pretty much until you delete them. I believe the 3 year fallacy came from one of the original terms of use documents that were either included with the discs or on the website when the service originally launched.
UV is a joint venture made up of 85 companies that range from film studios to software companies. There is little chance of them shutting down anytime soon. As for Sony, well I'm pretty sure they'll be around for a bit but even if they go bankrupt tomorrow the UV agreement means they have to transfer all their licenses to another UV provider so that existing sales are honored.
And what makes you think it will disappear anytime soon? Is Ultraviolet going away? Is Sony going out of business? Both would have to be true for your digital copy to really have any chance of disappearing.
I have about 350 UV movies bought from multiple UV providers and have yet to see any of them 'disappear'.
I also have about 600 physical discs and besides the restrictions of only being able to watch those movies when I'm at home (or have planned in advance when I'm going to be in the mood to watch one while on vacation) I know at least a few of them are damaged to the point of requiring repair to be playable so they are effectively gone.
Nothing is permanent but UV is at least as good or better than owning a physical copy.
The point is, lose the charging cable to your other phone there's a very high chance you already have 3 or 4 identical cables sitting around your house that are just as usable with your phone but happened to come with almost any other USB device you may own. No need to go out and buy a new one.
With a 95% failure rate they are worse than useless (including missing things like ACME level fake bombs) ; they are an added expense and cause of frustration with no provable positive results. Most of the big cases of prevented airplane attacks (in the US) in the past decade were from external agency investigations (FBI/Police/etc..) or from observant fellow passengers.
Some level of security screening is required but the TSA just takes away monies that could be spent on effective security measures and instead puts it towards ineffective personnel and even more ineffective fancy equipment.
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I'd prefer Trump get elected for the sole reason that the House and Senate might finally start to put the brakes on the imperial Presidency that has been in effect for far too long (through both D and R administrations).
I'm not too worried about the big stuff because almost every plan of Trumps has no real basis in reality so would never be able to get the backing of real legislators. The big problem is with all the little stuff the legislative branch has pretty much just conceded to the Executive. All the myriad of EO's and Presidential Memorandum which effectively create laws without any actual legislation passing. You can guarantee that once Trump has access to that type of power he'll try to use it and at some point he'll go too far and finally the D's and R's will unite to reign in those extra-legislative slight of hand tricks.
It might be a painful 4 years (or shorter with impeachment) but it might result in a stronger country on the other side.
Either way this is going to be a terrible election.
She could classify or declassify information that was initialized by the State Department but that's not what this whole mess is about.
There are relatively few State Dept. emails that the IGs sited as being a problem, there are however several dozens, if not hundreds, of emails from outside intelligence agencies as well as foreign governments which have been identified as being classified at various levels. As SoS she had no authority to modify the classifications of those emails.
The State Dept. itself has spent the last couple of years begging other agencies to change the classifications of data contained in her emails and not because they believed it was truly non-classified but purely out of a need to ass cover (both hers and theirs). It's the same reason they've been brought to task repeatedly by federal judges for dragging their feet and making blatantly false statements about how some data is irretrievable (which they later found could be retrieved by simply looking for it) or they simply don't have the ability to do something by court mandated deadlines (while at the same time doing complete reviews of former SoS emails in their 'spare' time).
It's the IRS all over again. "We lost all of Lois Lerner's emails and can't possibly retrieve them!!" Meanwhile years later it turns out they were just sitting on the back up server, exactly where they should be just no one bothered to look.
Who released her name?
Richard Armitage.
Of course 5 seconds of goggling the whole Plame fiasco would have given you that answer. You would also learn that the investigators knew that from almost day 1 but continued their investigation for, God knows what reason.
Libby was convicted of lying to the investigators based solely on a disagreement between him and Tim Russert about a phone conversation they had a year prior, not for outing Plame. Libby said Russert dropped Plames name and said it was common knowledge amongst reporters, Russert said he didn't (though apparently originally he simply claimed he didn't remember mentioning her).
Experts are very split on the mental health aspects of sexual reassignment surgery.
Some top hospitals have stopped performing them because most studies show that the actual surgery does not generally have a positive impact on the patients and instead suggest treatment for the underlying depression that often causes trans individuals to seek the operation in the first place.
To be more clear, the law only requires people to use a bathroom that matches the plumbing their birth certificate indicates in government owned facilities; everywhere else is up to the private property owner. So all businesses in NC are free to be as trans friendly as they want to be and trans supporters are also free to push for a State-wide law supporting their position.
The law essentially just overrides the smorgasbord or individual town/county laws and states that all laws concerning these type of special protections need to be passed at a State level.
The NC law has no impact on businesses in NC.
The 'bathroom' law only affects public facilities and leaves the decision on what rules to implement about bathroom use on private property (i.e. businesses in NC) to the private property owner. So if Starbucks wants to have a trans friendly policy there is nothing in this law to prevent that.
If people are so outraged about not being able to use the bathroom of their choice while visiting city hall they can work within the normal system and build support for a State law.
Stripping in front of kids in an area specifically designated for removing clothing cannot be considered a violation of the law. The fact a law allows men to be in the same area as women/girls does not change that fact.
The "no shoes, no service" is just a saying with no legal backing. People CANNOT be asked to leave for just any reason when laws are created to specifically prevent that from happening. It the same reason you can have a guide dog in areas with "no dogs" signs.
When laws create protected classes that overrides your bumper sticker.
At this point, your inability to understand the very basics of how our legal framework works I can only assume you are trolling.
The fact that you are easily offended and don't understand how laws work is not my problem.
If a law is written to expressly permit a person to choose the changing room they want to use based on their feelings then public employees have no legal authority to act against that law unless they want to lose their jobs and face possible charges themselves. Private organizations have some more leeway but in this case, if the man involved was authorized to be there (a club member or paid to have a swim pass for the day) according to the law in Washington State, they also would not have been legally permitted to remove him.
In both cases, public or private, the workers at the facility would be in direct violation of the law preventing discrimination based on gender identity. IT'S WHY THE LAW WAS PASSED. If the law allowed them to remove him because they didn't like it then it wouldn't be much of a law would it. The law creates a protected class and the fact the law doesn't properly define who can or cannot be considered members of that class and make use of it's provisions is why I don't like those types of laws.
Just look at the cases brought against bakers, florists and reception rentals in the last couple of years. When a class or action is given a protected status under the law a persons ability to deny service to the class or to not provide that service is greatly restricted and subject to extreme penalties even in cases where denial of that service puts absolutely no undue hardship on the protected class member.
And despite your ridiculous claims, if he was yelling or screaming, in either case, public or private, the employees could have legally acted to have him removed for disturbing the peace.
This wasn't a commercial pool, it was a public facility and as such the workers are not able to refuse service to anyone if a law specifically states they have a right to choose which room they wish to use.
As for commercial premises, under this law they also wouldn't have the right to remove the man from the women's change room merely for being a man; it's kind of the point of the law to make that type of action illegal. In fact the law requires the business to first attempt to remove any woman who complains and give them an alternate change room.
Seattle, a couple weeks after a similar law was passed there a man, dressed in standard men's clothing, entered a women's changing room at a pool and proceeded to get changed in front of young girls (I do not believe he got completely naked). When asked to leave he simply stated the law says he could choose to use the women's room and the staff at the pool were unable to prove otherwise so he was allowed to remain and even return for a later swim.
In Toronto, a man was charged with sexual assault and jailed as a dangerous offender after using the transgender claim to gain access to a women's shelter. While this happened just prior to the law in Ontario passing, shelter's in the Toronto region used similar standards at the time when permitting men access to female areas. His word was enough.
Those were two semi-high profile cases but most cases of abuse of these types of laws wouldn't be reported since police wouldn't be involved. You can't be charged with a crime when they only evidence you're guilty is you own feelings on the issue. There's also the fact that in many cases victims wouldn't even know they were victimized if all the person wanted to do was peep.
I have no problem with gender neutral washrooms and if legislation is required would prefer that to these types of "do what you feel" type laws. Laws that are intentionally written to be gray are, in general, just bad legislation.
Inn Seattle, just after a LGBT friendly law was passed a man walked into a women's changing room at a pool and undressed in front of young girls. He was wearing standard men's clothing and after swimming he returned to the dressing room and repeated the process. At no point were any police called because he said he 'identified' as female and the staff were unable to prove otherwise. He was told he could use a separate room but he refused and they were not legally allowed to force him.
It's not going to happen everywhere but with 'feelings' based laws there is little anyone can do about it unless the person has prior sexual convictions and then they would most likely be in violation of something else besides these laws.
That is the better way to handle things.
Laws allowing people to decide which bathroom to use based on their feelings are just asking for trouble since they are impossible to judge. Pervert or true trans, who knows and since it's feelings based there is really no way (barring previous convictions) to stop one without also stopping the other. Passing a law requiring gender neutral facilities (but also allowing for gender specific where gender neutral are also present) is much better.
Forewarned is forearmed. As a parent if you know men and woman are sharing the same bathroom you may act differently when your small child has to go than if they are gender specific.
I don't believe any law requires that they be "living as a woman" just identifies as one; they don't even have to be wearing a dress or other woman's clothing. You'd be hard pressed to arrest anyone, no matter how obvious their intentions, in any place with the "use the bathroom you identify with" law in place.
Being locked inside a service is pretty much the same as being locked into a format. Whens the last time you were able to play your VHS copy of Highlander on your Blu-Ray drive?
Just because you have to use one of their players (which for ultraviolet includes several apps on almost any app capable device) doesn't mean you don't own it.
This isn't a rental service, in fact the article goes out of it's way to stress Sony will not be offering rental rates for the time being. Sony is simply saying they will be offering 4k versions of their movies for purchase through their new service, Ultra.
Once purchased you can stream then through Ultra or any other 4k capable UltraViolet service or just dl them to watch later or on some non-connected device. Regardless, that movie is a permanent addition to your UV locker and you can watch it any time.
It's not single watch, it's just Sony announcing they will be offering their movies in 4k format through their own service connected to UltraViolet.
You won't even have to use their service to watch them as long as your preferred UV provider offers 4k playback. Most UV services also allow you to just dl your movies for later viewing if buffering is an issue.
UV movies have no specific date of expiry; in fact their faq quite specifically states that your rights to a movie do not expire. The only expiry date mentioned by UV is the redemption date of the code included with a disc purchase.
So you may have only 1-3 years to redeem a UV code but once redeemed it's in your locker for life (with the exception that if it turns out the original provider did not in fact have legal rights to that movie in your jurisdiction).
Have you even used Ultraviolet?
UV movies are one time purchases. The upgrade feature is only if you bought a lower quality license and decide to upgrade quality afterwards. For example, I converted a bunch of DVD's to SD UV for $2/disc (instead of paying for HD at $5/disc). If I later decide to convert my $2 SD license to a 4K license I can pay $15 or just not and keep watching in SD. Note: buying the higher quality license gives you access to all the lower levels. Since SD is fine for those older movies than I will continue to be able to watch them in perpetuity for exactly $0.
You can also DL UV movies to whatever device you want for later offline watching. I do this routinely to load up my SD cards for trips.
You can enter pretty much every UV code at either Vudu or Flixster and never go near any Studio site or service.
The biggest difference between UV and Apple is that while on Apple you are locked to getting your playback service and your locker storage from the same provider (iTunes) on UV you can choose whichever playback service you prefer. This is especially helpful when you deal with different playback devices. If you're preferred provider doesn't make an app for the device you're currently on you just have to install one of the other providers apps. Try doing that with iTunes.
So don't bitch about how a service provider killed a movie format for you when you apparently have absolutely no understanding on how that service works.
There are legitimate gripes about UV (and I personally have many more concerning iTunes) but almost nothing in your post hits on any of them.
I've never damaged any of my discs beyond the ability to use them but I'm also an uncle with 5 nephews and nieces and since I didn't run my living room like a prison, whenever they were over they were free to take any disc they wanted and load it into the blu-ray player. Most of the times everything was fine but every once and a while something would get scuffed up.
According to UltraViolet's site on their faq:
The right to an UltraViolet movie is perpetual and remains in your Library unless you delete it. UltraViolet rights never expire.
They also go into what happens when the service provider you were using goes out of business:
If an UltraViolet retailer goes out of business, your UltraViolet Library will be available from other UltraViolet services.
Australia had this happen recently when their UV provider went under. While all non-UV movies and shows were lost all the UV purchases are still retained in their UV lockers. Of course Australia has other UV problems because for some reason no one wants to make their streaming apps available to them so they have to dl their movies if they want to watch them but they still have full rights to them.
Some codes have an expiration date to use but once added to your library they are there pretty much until you delete them. I believe the 3 year fallacy came from one of the original terms of use documents that were either included with the discs or on the website when the service originally launched.
You can also dl UltraViolet movies for later playback; it doesn't not require streaming.
4K UV movies have been available for a while now on Vudu so I'm not sure exactly why Sony's announcement is even worthy of a /. post.
UV is a joint venture made up of 85 companies that range from film studios to software companies. There is little chance of them shutting down anytime soon. As for Sony, well I'm pretty sure they'll be around for a bit but even if they go bankrupt tomorrow the UV agreement means they have to transfer all their licenses to another UV provider so that existing sales are honored.
And what makes you think it will disappear anytime soon? Is Ultraviolet going away? Is Sony going out of business? Both would have to be true for your digital copy to really have any chance of disappearing.
I have about 350 UV movies bought from multiple UV providers and have yet to see any of them 'disappear'.
I also have about 600 physical discs and besides the restrictions of only being able to watch those movies when I'm at home (or have planned in advance when I'm going to be in the mood to watch one while on vacation) I know at least a few of them are damaged to the point of requiring repair to be playable so they are effectively gone.
Nothing is permanent but UV is at least as good or better than owning a physical copy.
The point is, lose the charging cable to your other phone there's a very high chance you already have 3 or 4 identical cables sitting around your house that are just as usable with your phone but happened to come with almost any other USB device you may own. No need to go out and buy a new one.
With a 95% failure rate they are worse than useless (including missing things like ACME level fake bombs) ; they are an added expense and cause of frustration with no provable positive results. Most of the big cases of prevented airplane attacks (in the US) in the past decade were from external agency investigations (FBI/Police/etc..) or from observant fellow passengers.
Some level of security screening is required but the TSA just takes away monies that could be spent on effective security measures and instead puts it towards ineffective personnel and even more ineffective fancy equipment.