And so it begins...

[Long Run]

And yet, Econo's quote would still be accurate.

[BoSoxGal]

What's that Betty White quote?

"Why do people say 'grow some balls'? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding."





Except Snopes says she never said that . . .

[RayThom]

And yet, Econo's quote would still be accurate.

I guess this is where the literal and figurative transect.

Just like saying President Donald J. Trump is an asshole.

[Joe Guy]

Maybe she is a tennis player?

[Scooter]

Now that McCain is back in town after receiving his Cadillac health care courtesy of the American taxpayer, why isn't he commenting on this? The entirety of his argument in opposing gays serving openly in the military in the 1990s was "the Joint Chiefs are against it, and we shouldn't second guess them." So now that the Joint Chiefs have said that this is a policy change they neither want nor need, where is McCain denouncing the president for this latest bout of cisgenderism? Nowhere to be found, par for the course for gay-hating, transphobic, cowardly bigot.

[BoSoxGal]

McCain says White House made a mistake

McCain's comments follow his rebuke of the new policy in a statement Wednesday. "There is no reason to force service members who are able to fight, train, and deploy to leave the military -- regardless of their gender identity," McCain said. "We should all be guided by the principle that any American who wants to serve our country and is able to meet the standards should have the opportunity to do so."

[Scooter]

Whoa, then I take it all back. Damascus road conversions are a thing after all.

[BoSoxGal]

I was pleasantly surprised by that statement as well.

[Scooter]

Meanwhile...

[BoSoxGal]

I miss them SO much!

[Scooter]

The military spends five times as much on Viagra as it would on transgender troops’ medical care

On Twitter this morning, President Trump announced a ban on transgender people serving in the military, citing “medical costs” as the primary driver of the decision.

“Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” the president wrote.

While Trump didn't offer any numbers to support this claim, a Defense Department-commissioned study published last year by the Rand Corp. provides exhaustive estimates of transgender servicemembers' potential medical costs.

Considering the prevalence of transgender servicemembers among the active duty military and the typical health-care costs for gender-transition-related medical treatment, the Rand study estimated that these treatments would cost the military between $2.4 million and $8.4 million annually.

The study didn't include estimates of these costs for reservists, because of their “highly limited military health care eligibility.” It also didn't include estimates for retirees or military family members, because many of those individuals may also have “limited eligibility” for care via military treatment facilities.

“The implication is that even in the most extreme scenario that we were able to identify … we expect only a 0.13-percent ($8.4 million out of $6.2 billion) increase in health care spending,” Rand's authors concluded.

By contrast, total military spending on erectile dysfunction medicines amounts to $84 million annually, according to an analysis by the Military Times — 10 times the cost of annual transition-related medical care for active duty transgender servicemembers.

The military spends $41.6 million annually on Viagra alone, according to the Military Times analysis — roughly five times the estimated spending on transition-related medical care for transgender troops.

Looked at another way, the upper estimate for annual transgender medical costs in the military amounts to less than a tenth of the price of a new F-35 fighter jet. Or a thousandth of 1 percent of the Defense Department's annual budget.

The cost of providing medical care to transgender servicemembers, in other words, is negligible, and hardly “tremendous,” as the president put it.

[RayThom]

McCain's comments follow his rebuke of the new policy in a statement Wednesday. "There is no reason to force service members who are able to fight, train, and deploy to leave the military -- regardless of their gender identity," McCain said. "We should all be guided by the principle that any American who wants to serve our country and is able to meet the standards should have the opportunity to do so."

I see this as McCain's pre-op play for redemption. He's praying it will cancel out Tuesday's heartless, boneheaded move to advance the ACA debate, in case he doesn't pull through. Sorry, but I feel he's beyond redemption at this point.

As McCain said earlier about how long he would be hospitalized for the brain surgery: "If all goes well, about a week. If not, about three and a half hours."

[Scooter]

Ah, so this explains what motivated it:

Donald Trump’s snap decision to ban transgender people from the military was because funding for his precious Mexican border wall was threatened, according to a report in Politico:

House Republicans were planning to pass a spending bill stacked with his campaign promises, including money to build his border wall with Mexico.

But an internal House Republican fight over transgender troops was threatening to blow up the bill. And House GOP insiders feared they might not have the votes to pass the legislation because defense hawks wanted a ban on Pentagon-funded sex reassignment operations — something GOP leaders wouldn’t give them.

They turned to Trump, who didn’t hesitate. In the flash of a tweet, he announced that transgender troops would be banned altogether.

Trump’s sudden decision was, in part, a last-ditch attempt to save a House proposal full of his campaign promises that was on the verge of defeat, numerous congressional and White House sources said.

Said one GOP aide to Politico: “This is like someone told the White House to light a candle on the table and the WH set the whole table on fire.”

[rubato]

Since he cast the deciding vote to kill a horrifically bad (but 100% authentically Republican) bill I will give McCain credit for it. He has not shown this kind of willingness to buck orthodoxy since the first Bush the Stupider administration.



yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

In a related story...

LGBT soldiers are going after ISIS in Syria



A group of volunteer soldiers announced this week the first ever LGBT unit formed to kick ISIS butt.

The Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army, or TQILA (pronounced “Tequila” ), is now fighting alongside Kurdish forces in Syria, the group announced Monday, according to Newsweek.

“TQILA’s members have watched in horror as fascist and extremist forces around the world have attacked the Queer community and murdered countless of our community members citing that they are ‘ill,’ ‘sick’ and ‘unatural,’” the volunteer fighters group, International Revolution People’s Guerilla Forces (IRPGF), wrote on Twitter when announcing the formation of the new unit.

The IRPGF is a group of foreign fighters who traveled to northern Syria to fight ISIS alongside the Kurdish militia, People’s Protection Unit, known as YPG.

The new LGBT unit said it was driven to battle after seeing how ISIS targeted their community.

The images of gay men being thrown off roofs and stoned to death by Daesh was something we could not idly watch,” they said.

The group also posted an image of two soldiers brandishing a banner reading, “These f——s kill fascists,” in front their logo, a pink flag with a black AK-47 machine gun, and a rainbow flag in Raqqa, with the caption “#Queers smashing the caliphate.”

ISIS courts have declared homosexuality a capital offense punishable by death. Since its rise in Iraq in 2014, the terrorist group has released anti-gay propaganda showing men accused of homosexuality blindfolded and being thrown off roofs in front of large crowds, and then stoned if they survived the fall.

ISIS also claimed responsibility for the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting last year, in which gunman Omar Mateen murdered 49 people.

http://nypost.com/2017/07/25/lgbt-soldi ... -in-syria/

Good for them...

[BoSoxGal]

[BoSoxGal]

[Bicycle Bill]

You know, I think Trump's use of Twitter to make his declarations, pronouncements, and policy statements like the one alluded to above is just slightly more dignified and acceptable than writing the same things on the walls of bathroom stalls.

-"BB"-

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[Scooter]