DougH

Welcome back! I have friends who are still jumping into their 80's. They all jump nice large canopies that fly slow and land soft.

I also believe the scripture is very clear. If Jesus was to return he would be riding a magical unicorn flanked by the flying spaghetti monster. He would proceed to flay Johnson and all of the other hypocrites before sending them down to a fiery hell where they would wake each day to never ending suffering for acting like horrible human beings and perverting his teaching to justify their shitty ways.

What is it that they say about broken clocks, or blind squirrels?

The discussions that ADL was having with twitter started long before Elon decided to waste part of his fortune on buying it. The ADL's goals here aren't the opposition of free speech, they are against the amplification of hate speech that calls for violence. Sensible people understand that you can't scream fire in crowded movie theater, and that it would be unreasonable for the movie theater management to give a megaphone to the person who was actively doing that. If Elon doesn't want advertisers to run for their lives he should probably stop making X look like the digital version of a Mad Max dystopian hell scape.

Honestly I have been seriously disappointed with all of these sentences, but I am not a lawyer, and definitely not a federal prosecutor. https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title18/part1/chapter115&edition=prelim#:~:text=Whoever%2C owing allegiance to the,not less than %2410%2C000%3B and I think anyone who entered the capital buildings during the riot should have been charged with seditious conspiracy and the prosecution should have requested the maximum penalty. I think the high level Oath Keepers and Proud Boy organizers should have been charged with treason, and we should have been going for the death penalty. Article III, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."

No. Ten years ago most conservatives, liberals, and moderates supported being able to have rational discussions with people that had disagreements on policies. They could disagree on issues without needing to vilify the individual. There was some common understanding of the importance of facts. Back then I would have considered myself a conservative except for my positions on personal liberties like marriage equality and abortion rights. Lots of my skydiving friends were way more liberal than 10 year younger me. I didn't want to destroy any of them, and I could have polite constructive conversations with them where we actually could debate the reasons behind our positions. Ten years later I absolutely wouldn't consider myself a conservative. Not because my views have changed that drastically, but because the right has sprinted off towards extremism while I remained mostly sane. I don't want to destroy the GOP, I just would like them to return to reality. I would like for there to be a sanity check around personal liberties, I would like a return to some amount of civility, and I would like people to go back to respecting facts and intellectual honesty. There are currently over a million conservatives who actually believe in the validity of QAnon. There are people way too many people that genuinely believe all of Trump's election fraud falsehoods. Lets not forget all of the anti-science and insane quackery during the peak of covid. Horse dewormer anyone? I didn't willfully sign up to have that be a significant part of my nations political environment. I don't want to destroy them, but some mental healthcare would be a compassionate response.

Giving more than a second of your attention to an article shared on MSN.com is WRONG. Lots of different people believe and say lots of different things. From the article: "In 2021, KUTV states, A Black Lives Matter Utah (BLMU) had a post that was showing significant reactions, surpassing the impact of their street protests. The post claims that individuals who display the American flag are racist and referred to the flag as a symbol of hatred. " An unattributed "post" from 2021 is news worthy? Newsworthy enough to make it into a current "news story" in 2023? Relevant enough for you at actually read it and then think you should share it here for the rest of us, with bonus commentary from you? The real world relevance is overwhelming. This is A+ posting from you, and A+ journalism from The Independent News.

It is amazing that they have tricked families making 55k dollars a year that lived in random backwaters to cheer for tax cuts that benefit the ultra rich. These are the same people who are high fiving each other after their representatives cut their healthcare benefits.

Because skydivers never connect humor with tragic circumstances. You must have only come here to repress your sexual desires through hate speech!

Mud puddles, brilliant. If only we could become so unshackled from the tyranny of environmental protection that rivers could start catching fire again. That was awesome! Could you imagine the end zone dance from all the conservatives if we could get back to that Golden Era? "Nasty stuff in our ground water, wooohooo." "Cancer clusters, YESSSSSS, take that you snow flake cucks, that is true freedom" "Leave those Corporations alone, this is America we have freedom, let them fuck things up for our kids and grand kids".

Great effort responding to what I took the effort to write Bill. You have successfully channeled your inner Brent this time around. I have better thing to do than talk to myself, so I will see myself out.

No that isn't the only problem, but it is the only problem that you seem willing to acknowledge. Crystal clear descriptions fail to address the problem of situations with unfair competitive advantages that can arise where there are no alternatives for the competitors to select outside of your approach of letting them eat cake. My Connecticut example clearly illustrates this. The qualification description is crystal clear in CT for HS athletes, choice of gender identification is the qualification to play on a "female" high school sports team. There is no alternative option for a CT biological female high school students to compete in HS track events that have a level playing field where they don't have to compete against trans gendered athletes that posses physical characteristics that are outside of the potential range of potential variability for a biological female. Who is making that sideline argument? Not once have I referred to inherent athletic skill or females being "good or bad" at a sport as the reason for justifying letting females playing male league. It doesn't matter if they are "good or bad", it matters if they have unattainable physiological characteristics that give them an unfair competitive advantage. Care to explain how situations of unfair competitive advantage are addressed by bettering the qualification description?

You are being obtuse, and you know it. Is it a male ballet league or is it an open league that takes all comers? If it an open league then they knowingly chose their pool of competitors. The females in the open league compete against other cis females as well as the cis men, they can compete against trans men trans women, non binary. The best athlete giving the best performance wins. If it is a "male" only league then I would say that it would be unfair to the biological males. The males have joined under the knowledge that they would be competing against individuals that fall somewhere on the spectrum of potential male physiological. They are at an insurmountable disadvantage if they have to dance against 95 pound Mike who identifies as female who has unattainable bone structure (pelvis hips etc.), stature, and flexibility due to having been exposed to less testosterone, and more estrogen. The female winners of your ballet competitions aren't 175lbs and playing catcher on their HS "girls" softball team in the off season, if there was an off season for ballet. Women of that physical stature could potentially still have an advantage over some of the men, but at least they would overlap more with the spectrum is what is normally attainable for a biological male.

Bill this is the kind of let them eat cake response that frankly legitimizes some of the Alt-Right backlash. If the state rule states that the criteria is the students chosen gender identification, then the female cis athlete has the following choices, compete against transgendered women who have physiological characteristics that are outside of the range of physical variability for biological females, or don't compete. Here is the CT policy. https://www.casciac.org/pdfs/Principal_Transgender_Discussion_Quick_Reference_Guide.pdf And here is an athletes account of the resulting unfairness to cis gendered female athletes from that policy who participate in individual sports like sprinting. https://adflegal.org/article/i-was-fastest-girl-connecticut-transgender-athletes-made-it-unfair-fight You are dancing around one of the real issues here with this cute story, unfair competitive advantage. No one has a problem with Kam playing with the "boys" because there isn't an unfair advantage held by Kam. Kam is likely at a physical disadvantage in terms of explosiveness and size. If she can overcome that with skill and athleticism then good on her. In football there have been high school and college female kickers going all the way back to the 1990's, little to no complaint there. If you find me a competitive female offensive lineman at the collegiate level I will go to the games to cheer because that will be impressive! There are female wrestlers competing against men below the collegiate level. Any complaint would be about having to wrestle a girl, not that the girl has some sort of an uncompetitive advantage, or not wanting to "hurt" a girl or get beat by a girl. Tough cookies for those male athletes in my opinion. The real issue is if Kam was originally a Kurt and could chose to play on the "all girls" water polo team, and Kam weighs 60lbs more than the other players, and routinely contributes to wins for her school because of her excess size compared to her competitors. I guess those athletes should eat cake to make up for the difference in stature, muscle fiber motor units, measured explosiveness, etc.

A casual reading of the science suggests that differences in androgen exposure exist as far back as in utero, 8 weeks after conception, and exist through early childhood. I have heard it claimed that this has a meaningful influence on performance and physical characteristics, but I don't know what the science actually supports. I know that science supports that individuals who are exposed to supernormal levels of androgens through taking steroids experience physiological changes that are long lasting, years after the steroids are discontinued, and potentially for life. Setting aside the science I think both sides are crazy here. The Alt-Right ignores the importance of inclusion, is often viewing this through a lens of bigotry and hate, and I think is distorting the scale of the problem. The Left on this issue is promoting societal and moral arguments as if they are science, and refuses to consider situations where the inclusion of trans athletes is potentially unfair to cis female athletes. Bill how does that apply to high school athletes who are competing in individual sports like track and field? It isn't a team sport. There isn't a second league to chose from.