Trump bans transgenders from military service

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

People who are mentally unstable should probably not be serving on the front lines. But just because someone is transgendered doesn't mean they're mentally unstable.

The GOP seems just fine with having someone who's mentally unstable as Commander-in_Chief, so the claim is irrelevant hypocrisy even if they were right.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Other countries laugh at us for fighting over things like this. This is <1% of the population we're talking about here.

So what? 0.001% of our population died on 9/11 and it dominated our national discussion for years. <1% of the population matters.

That was an attack on civilians by terrorists, not government policy that affects a tiny minority of people.

So we shouldn't care that a minority is being discriminated against?

Apparently only the majorities, the so-called "regular people," matter.

See this is the problem though. Why we absolutely should accommodate transpeople in the military, there are people who are discomforted by it. They are soldiers too. Why can't their concerns for once be heard instead of being dismissed? There are far more of them than trans. Being trans doesn't make you special. You shouldn't get a medal for it. And it definitely shouldn't be grounds for a ban.

If that makes you uncomfortable, how could you possibly make a tough decision under fire?

How many transpeople are actually physically and mentally fit? Serious question. Is the ban justified overall? No, but this has more to do with the professional whiners than the professional soldiers it effects.

I'm positively astounded by the fact that you explicitly state you do not support this move, but can't bring yourself to criticize Trump, ever.

You think Rubio or Cruz wouldn't have done this?

Were Rubio and Cruz posting stuff like this:

That Trump is lying pond scum excrement residue  isn't really news. The important things are to not let his individual acts of malevolence and destruction be blurred out by the overwhelming totality of his incompetence and malignity, and to make absolutely certain that everyone understands that the only reason we have Trump is because of the Republican Party.

I can't repeat that last one enough. The GOP should never be allowed to escape their responsibility for Trump, which in time will put them in the political equivalent of a potter's field.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Folks at the Pentagon thought Trump was going to announce strikes against North Korea.

It's like Reagan's joke about bombing Russia. Only, you know, not a joke and not funny.

Whenever you wonder who gave the keys to Armageddon to this infantile maniac, remember: it was the Republican Party.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Everyone, read this Politico story now for back story.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/26/trump-transgender-military-ban-behind-the-scenes-240990

A band of House Republicans were upset that their ban on gender-reassignment surgery for the military was getting blocked in Congress, and also that Mattis didn't take their side. So they went directly to Trump and threatened to blow up funding for The Wall and the military if he didn't take their side. He went one further and announced he wanted to kick all trans people out of the military, which they weren't asking for.

Now there's more confusion in the deal, Mattis is pissed off, no one knows what to do next.

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Military service is an obligation. It's not a holiday with guns or welfare for people who like the military.


And I'm sure she'll be down with cutting military Viagra expenditures too, rather than wasting "precious defense dollars" on those, right? Where exactly do these "precious defense dollars" come from, anyway? Are they printed in a secret mint under the Pentagon? Do they have pictures of guns, warships and rockets on one side, with freezing and starving people on the other?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Surely there is a better way to make and announce policy than via Twitter.

What is better than going straight to the masses??

Putting aside Twitter's tiny character limit and unprofessional nature, Trump has a worrying tendency to shoot from the hip, leaving tons of people in Congress, from his own party and even his own administration completely blindsided by sudden, new changes. This is completely unnecessary. There is no reason for it. Trump is trying to run the country like his tiny company, where spur-the-moment decisions that no one is clued into are fine if not still sloppy. That doesn't work for a country with 320+ million people and a federal government with a workforce of over 2 million people.

Say what you will about what Trump is trying to do, his policies, whatever, but he is absolutely incompetent when it comes to running large organizations, and arguably any organization.

He's a troll, and for reasons unknown to me, it continues to work over two years after his foray into electoral politics. For instance, the Washington Post headline right now is "Trump announces ban on transgender people in U.S. military," when the real story, as Britain33 posted, is a lot murkier. Instead, the truth is not that he announced a ban, the headline should be "Trump tweets transgender people should not serve in the U.S. military." That accurately describes his tweet not as an official announcement (which it isn't), but as an off-the-cuff opinion. The media continues to enable Trump's trolling by taking him over-literally, which is precisely what makes trolls effective. Nor are the media's takes even accurate.

I've always said the corporate media made and continues a symbiotic relationship with Trump, and the mutual animosity of the two is all for show. Liberals have to stop buying into this nonsense and realize that both the media and Trump are the enemy.

If our journalists, media and reporting -  in aggregate - were any good, Trump would have been laughed out of the campaign soon after he entered. And he would still be met with nothing but detailed and well-earned derision, scorn and mockery. The GOP bears ultimate responsibility for the petty horror that is President Trump, but the media collectively helped and is still helping him.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Joint Chiefs had no idea this was coming, including Gen Dunford. They are asking the WH for guidance on what to do next (admin seps, keep them in, etc.) http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/27/politics/trump-military-transgender-ban-joint-chiefs/index.html

So Trump tweeting this out to only score political points with the religious right members of Congress that wanted the Ash Carter guidance tweaked makes sense.

Or to put it another way, Trump is so stupid and such an incompetent that he can't even successfully conduct bigotry.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This isn't even happening:

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I think Trump will go off now. "What?! They won't comply and MAGA? Well let me see about that." and asks for JCS resignations.

And then North Korea will launch a missile. And without anyone prompting, every single American citizen, and all our allies and rivals, can think about what  it means that the President of the United States is more concerned about trolling liberals over who uses what bathroom than he is about the defense of the nation.