The Political Discussion Thread

[Pharaoh Hamenthotep]

I was just referring directly to the following:

No one is talking about taking away gendered bathrooms.

You might be surprised to hear this.. But, and you might want to sit down..

Everyone has used a unisex bathroom.. You might, and this is the shocking part, you might even have one in your own home.

[Annoyed]

Again, I was responding directly to killman's comment about gender based restrooms being taken away; he didn't want to have to wait in longer lines.

My comment was a joke, based on one of the unpleasant facts of life that if a government gives someone something, it has to take it away from someone else first.
And it is likely that legislation will be required to mandate equal potty laws or something of the sort.

[Pharaoh Hamenthotep]

Equal rights for people to relieve their bladders? !! Shocking!!

....Doesn't that already exist? Why is that scary to you?

And again..

What have you been forced to give up so the government can give it to someone else?

When the slaves were freed, were you enslaved?

When they won the right to vote did you lose the right to have your say?

When people are allowed to urinate in peace, did someone steal your bladder?

What rights have you lost?!

[Annoyed]

I give up. It was a joke, and I'm sorry you can't see it.

[Pharaoh Hamenthotep]

It looks as serious as everything else posted here.

Is that how it works? Get called out on you ******** and suddenly "it's a joke" and "you didn't mean it?

The Trump is strong with this one..

*opens a window*

[aretood2]

It looks as serious as everything else posted here.

Is that how it works? Get called out on you ******** and suddenly "it's a joke" and "you didn't mean it?

The Trump is strong with this one..

*opens a window*

Um, not to interrupt your "righteous fury" of indignation here (BTW, the rant, while overboard, is on point and should have been said a few pages back a few times) but I did mention taking away gendered bathrooms...

But in your defense, I did make my post a little bit tongue in cheek mainly because I think having laws on the matter is utterly ridiculous. As a kid I would have never ever ever ever ever ever imagined that there would even be any laws regarding the bathrooms (other than cameras and such). I just thought it was simply a thing people did and respected because...it just was. That said, I am serious in asking how much do we really need gendered bathrooms anyway?

Now for the rest of you...if we are to keep gendered bathrooms and make laws about them, then who should go where? Should it only be transitioned/birth men in the men's room and transitioned women in the women's bathroom? Should it be based on self identification? If transitioned, how much down the road does one have to be before they go to the other gender's bathroom? How much of a burden do facilities have to face in creating a unisex bathroom if that's the solution? (Remodeling for an extra room with plumbing isn't cheap for smaller buildings while a bit more affordable for huge shopping malls).

Personally, this should be a social thing with no law making at all. I mean, you didn't need laws to make gendered public bathrooms in the first place...I mean they are on the books now in the way that it is illegal from me to stick a piece of wood in my back yard because old uncle Sam likes to micromanage everything >.>.

But the easiest solution is to just take away the "men's" and "Women's" signs. Low cost and everything.

[Pharaoh Hamenthotep]

(BTW, the rant, while overboard, is on point and should have been said a few pages back a few times) .

Are you serious? In this thread of "mature", "responsible" "adults" squabbling like toddlers over the last piece of dried-up play-doh you all need someone to point out the things I said?

No one in here fighting over other people's genitals and where they relieve their bladders is able to see that their opinions don't matter? That the only genitals and bladders they need to worry about are their own?

That there has never been a report of a trans person attacking anyone in a public restroom. Ever. Anywhere in the world.

But far too many have been abused and killed simply for existing.

If it needed to be said. If it was needed more than once several pages back as much as it was today then it didn't go far enough.

[Annoyed]

Ok, one more time.
If the LGBT lobbies are to get what they're after; the ability to use whichever gender room they want, government action of some sort will be required.
Government can't give anyone anything till it takes it away from someone else.
Killman didn't want to give up his short lines.

So the gag was that he would be giving up his short lines.

[Falcon Horus]

So if an LGBT or gay cake shop owner refuses to prepare a white wedding cake for a straight couple getting married, is that them just expressing their rightful opinion, or is it discrimination?

Exactly the same as the reverse... discrimination.

So the gag was that he would be giving up his short lines.

If I have to stand in line, hopping from one foot to the other cause it's urgent, then I want the men to suffer the same way.

[aretood2]

Exactly the same as the reverse... discrimination.



If I have to stand in line, hopping from one foot to the other cause it's urgent, then I want the men to suffer the same way.

There would still be urinals, of course.

[Annoyed]

Exactly the same as the reverse... discrimination.



If I have to stand in line, hopping from one foot to the other cause it's urgent, then I want the men to suffer the same way.

Never gonna happen. We can always water the plants.

[pookey]

Lets all carry those lil things about that you can pee in when you cant find a toilet, those plastic things, then empty them in big tanks, or save till you get home, problem solved

[Ian-S]

There would still be urinals, of course.

What, urinals in a unisex toilet? Isn't that a little bit sexist seeing as the women can close the cubical door?

No way, if men have to stand at urinals in unisex toilets then there's no dam doors for women to hide behind....

[Womble]

Seeking to avert attack, Europe finds terror ‘supercell’ in its midst

PARIS (AP) — The number of people linked to the Islamic State network that attacked Paris and Brussels reaches easily into the dozens, with a series of new arrests over the weekend that confirmed the cell’s toxic reach and ability to move around unnoticed in Europe’s criminal underworld.

From Belgium’s Molenbeek to Sweden’s Malmo, new names are added nearly daily to the list of hardened attackers, hangers-on, and tacit supporters of the cell that killed 130 people in Paris and 32 in Brussels.

A computer abandoned by one of the Brussels suicide bombers in a trash can contained not only his will, but is beginning to give up other information as well, including an audio file indicating the cell was getting its orders directly from a French-speaking extremist in Syria, according to a police official with knowledge of the investigation.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.

Ten men are known to be directly involved in the November 13 attacks in Paris; others with key logistical roles then — including the bomber, a logistics handler, and a hideout scout — went on to plot the attack March 22 in Brussels.

But unlike Paris, at least two people who survived the attack have been taken into custody alive, including Mohamed Abrini, the Molenbeek native who walked away from the Brussels international airport after his explosives failed to detonate.

But investigators fear it may not be enough to stave off another attack. Abdelhamid Abaaoud, another Molenbeek native whose charisma made him a natural draw to many in the Brussels neighborhood after he joined IS extremists in Syria, said before his death that he returned to Europe among a group of 90 fighters from Europe and the Mideast, according to testimony from a woman who tipped police to his location.

Patrick Skinner, a former CIA case officer who is now with the Soufan Group security consultancy, described the Brussels-Paris network as a “supercell.”

“The hope was that they had died out in the Paris attacks, and obviously that’s not true,” Skinner said in an earlier interview with The Associated Press. “They (authorities) knew who these people were. And they still managed to pull off the first Paris attack, which was the worst attack in France since WWII, and then under incredible scrutiny, they still pulled off the worse attack in Belgium since WWII. So this is a highly functioning cell.”

Normally, Skinner said, an extremist cell has six to 10 people linked by pre-existing ties.

“It makes it very difficult to crack. You’re not sending an informant into this group, because they know each other. So no one new is just walking into this,” he said. “It’s so big, look at the people on the periphery, logistics, the people that are suspected. You’re looking at 50 people. That’s not a cell; that’s a terrorist group.”

It was a group already intimately familiar with European law enforcement. Abrini was a petty criminal long before his younger brother was killed in Syria in 2014. Both Abdeslam brothers had brushes with the law, and Brahim spent time in prison for stealing Belgian ID cards — background that took on new importance amid revelations that many people in the IS cell had forged passports.

And Abaaoud’s female cousin, Hasna Ait Boulhacen, who died with him on November 18 after finding a hideout for him, was under surveillance in a narcotics operation at the time, although her ties to the man already wanted on terrorism offenses were unknown to French investigators. The man arrested for renting that fly-by-night flat in Saint Denis, Jawad Bendaoud, had been sentenced to eight years in prison for the accidental killing of a man he described as his “best friend” over a cellphone.

The Belgian brothers who blew themselves up on March 22 had ties to violent crime, as did two suspects with ties to Sweden, one dead and one captured this weekend.

The latest name to emerge, Osama Krayem, was a delinquent in Malmo, Sweden, before leaving for Syria. Krayem “was the perfect target for radicalization — no job, no future, no money,” said Muhammad Khorshid, who runs a program in the neighborhood of Rosengard to help immigrants integrate into Swedish society. It’s a neighborhood with its own parallels to Molenbeek, and has proven to be fertile recruiting ground for Muslim extremists.

Krayem, who like Abrini is suspected of accompanying a suicide attacker on March 22, was detained on Friday. He traveled with Salah Abdeslam through Ulm, Germany, on one of Abdeslam’s many journeys putting extremists into place for attacks, authorities said.

Stephane Berthomet, a former French counterterrorism officer who now works as a writer and security consultant in Canada, said the arrest of multiple key suspects will prove crucial.

“When there are declarations made by an accomplice, you can confront them and make progress in the discussions with the other suspects,” he said in an interview just ahead of the news of Abrini’s arrest Friday. The hope, of course, is that anything the suspects say will crack open a network that seems to grow by the day.

“There is not a single person at large — there are dozens of people at large. That’s the reality,” Berthomet said. “The reality is that we are dealing with groups that are badly identified, whose organization and evolution we have not analyzed because we focused on repression for years. Information was collected voraciously, but without real analysis.”

I told you so...

[Falcon Horus]

Never gonna happen. We can always water the plants.

LOL!

I told you so...

Remind us again what it was?