Let me just correct you right now.

Your argument is that homosexuality is an internal choice. You do not need someone else to recognize you as a homosexual, to be homosexual. It is entirely internal.

Your second argument appears to be that Transgenderism requires an external force -- that transgendered people require a second party to perform a surgery upon them to be transgendered.

This is incorrect. What you are describing is a process some transgendered people go through called "Transitioning." It is not something that is taken lightly (not "deciding one day to chop their dick off" as one particularly vile comment upstream said) -- but rather the result of years of therapy. I don't know the rate of transgendered people who do go through transitioning, but it's certainly not 100%.

Much like a Homosexual person "just knows" they are homosexual, a transgendered person "just knows" they are in the wrong body, that they are the wrong gender. They do not need recognition of this fact from an outside source for it to be true.

It's actually been found that some Transgendered people have different brain chemistry than "typical" gendered people. There's also theories that certain hormones or conditions in the womb can cause a predisposition towards transgenderism.

There's a whole lot of anti-LGBI bigotry in this mess here on /., but this is the one that keeps coming up. "Transwomen don't get to be women because we decide they're men." This is like the 10th fucking comment that's said that or something similar.

Well, who the fuck are you guys to decide someone else's identity for them!?

"You don't get to spend money on a car, what the fuck do you think you're doing, you're a Jew, you pinch every pinny you get mister! A spade's a spade, har har!"

"College? Boy, you're black, what makes you think you belong at MIT?! Hey now, I'm just saying, a Spade's a Spade. Now you go put on that KFC uniform and know your place, there aren't any black engineers out there."

"Honey, a doctor? You're a woman. You should be a nurse, don't you want to wear a pretty dress? A Spade's a Spade, after all, and you should know your place."

What utter arrogance.

Being Transgendered is not just a choice a Transgendered person makes out of the fucking blue one day. They don't just wake up and go "Well, I feel like a skirt today, and my Kilt is in the wash, guess I'll wear that red satin number."

Transmen and Transwomen spend years if not decades dealing with the knowledge -- not feeling, knowledge -- that they're the wrong gender. When available, they go through therapy that confirms this -- which is often the first time many Transmen and Transwomen realize just what is going on.

That's assuming they don't kill themselves first -- the suicide rate for transgendered people, especially transgender teenagers, is utterly horrifying. Partially because of people saying ignorant anti-LGBI crap like the stuff that's been thrown about in this thread.

And it's not even fucking binary. There's a thing called being "Genderqueer" or "Non-Binary" where people don't associate with either man or woman, at least not 100%.

I know it's a stretch, but I expect less ignorance on /., even though "lol trannies" is still a hiiiilarious joke in the gamer and geek communities. Hell, even Reddit is less of a cesspool than this mess has been.

For further reading I'd suggest starting with these two FAQs about Transgenderism, just as a start.

http://transequality.org/Resources/NCTE_UnderstandingTrans.pdf
http://pub11.bravenet.com/faq/show.php?usernum=940797647&catid=5020

Well, we did have 8 years of President Bush as a result of a third party candidate bleeding votes away from Gore...

(Granted, Bush was more the GOP members of the Supreme Court being corrupt and helping Bush out, and Gore did win the eventual recount, long after the narrative was set, but, still.)

Ok, I'll bite.

What part of the constitution prohibits this particular act? Especially given that we now know that the NSA spying story was mostly and overstated hoax but even if it were as bad as it sounds (it's not)... it's both constitutional and perfectly legal.

Or are you speaking of the IRS scandal, the real scandal being that the IRS somehow investigated 11 illegal Koch brothers front groups and somehow didn't find ANYTHING wrong. (The "IRS Scandal" is a preemptive faux scandal, much like the NSA faux scandal and the Benghazi fake scandal, designed to attack Obama and to make the IRS less likely to investigate future Koch brothers front groups.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/05/24/edmonton-police-brutality-video_n_3332668.html

You can see them turn the camera back on in the video when they discover they are being filmed.

You can also watch as they sit on top of a prone man -- who was only guilty of littering (and presumably only if he left the scene after missing the garbage can) -- while restraining him on the ground, punching him repeatedly in the face.

While doing so, with the video off but audio recording enabled, the police officer repeatedly shouts to stop resisting and to turn over -- which the victim obviously cannot do because he's, you know, being restrained against the ground.

However, an audit of the audio would collaborate a "I was trying to get him to stop fighting me and lay down and he wouldn't" defense.

Personally, I feel the officers should not be able to turn off their cameras on their own, instead requiring dispatch to send a signal to do so. I do not believe police officers should have an expectation of privacy while on duty, especially given the special authority we allot them as officers of the peace.

There is a second, very similar, instance of this happening in Canada recently, which I believe is the reason this bill was proposed. Apparently the Edmonton police have a reputation not dissimilar to our own LAPD for corruption.

Yup, and the audio... well, the video we saw showed them sitting on one of the guy's chest (so he was forced to the ground, back first) while the officer beat the shit out of him, shouting "stop resisting" and "turn on your stomach." Which is impossible considering he was, you know, sitting on his chest restraining him.

The audio would collaborate a "I was just trying to defend myself" claim.

In the two recent Canadian Police Brutality events, the police DID have cameras on their uniforms.

They turned them off until after the attack was over.

Well, here's a screenshot of his facebook page dating back to July. Lets see:

9/11 Trutherism (Both of the "the Pentagon was hit by a missile" and "the towers were professionally detonated" type)
"Prepper" crap (posts talking about the upcoming civil war he sees coming)
Contrails conspiracy ("Airplanes are secretly dropping chemicals on us!")
"The government is evil" style posts calling for the murder of American politicians, police officers, soldiers, and other elements of Government
Still more 9/11 Trutherism
Yet more "New American Civil War" Prepper crap, including his declaration that he's "starting the revolution" and "sharpening his axe."
Yet MORE "I'm commin' for you" style postings
More "9/11 was an inside job" crap
"Shadow Government" 9/11 trutherism stuff.

The only scandal is that this poor vet has not, as of yet, been committed to receive the psychiatric care he so desperately and obviously needs.

Now, as for mention of Muslims, I do apologize. I thought we were dealing with your standard run of the mill ultra-right nutjob in the US -- racist, ignorant, et cetera -- who tends to freak out when they have even the slightest light shined upon them by the Government (but demands the Government hold a spotlight to every Muslin and Arabic American 24x7... in the name of freedom, of course).

I didn't realize we were dealing with a frankly terrifying 9/11, "we gotta kill our government before they kill us," style Prepper sociopath.

You have my sincere apologies.

Now will someone please, please place Brandon J. Raub into psychiatric care before he hurts himself or others?

Which one is the one of the three that allows used game sales? (To the point of EA refusing to work with them when they refused to let EA block used game sales on their own?)

Wii U? ... Yeah, ok. Good luck with your XBox One ("Now with less games"(tm) ) and Playstation 4 ("Oh god we forgot the games.") purchases.

No, I don't remember that notion, because I don't spare brain cycles on loony crackpot bullshit that was debunked literally decades ago.

Nor do I have an explanation for the "immediate removal of the debris from the site" because IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. Why would I bother researching explanations for situations that exist only in the paranoid delusions of a bunch of ignorant America-hating clowns?

But don't let me interrupt your frothy conspiracy theory filled rant.

This would be the same type of ultra-far right nutjob (Seriously, "The Illuminati caused 9/11?" Get bent.) that called for the mass incarceration / murder of anyone of middle eastern decent or membership of the second most popular religion in the world, right?

Ah, Irony. :)

Except that there is no "cult of Climate Change" like deniers are trying to project.

Which is what this is: Projection. Climate Denialists, especially Climate Change Denying Scientists -- the 3% -- are almost exclusively being paid by or receiving information from the very companies that have a vested financial interest in continued lack of sane and reasonable regulation.

This would be the same NSF that the GOP is trying to sabotage and politicize?

No. And they don't claim to. What they do claim is that it's happening, it's man made. A very nice pivot argument there, though, very nice.

OTHER studies have shown that we're basically fucked if it's even half as bad as it seems like it's going to be. But we're still at the early "it actually exists" part of the discussion with the morons in the world -- case exhibit A being, well, you.

Holy SHIT there are a lot of ACs, all of which have the same talking points and same writing style. I'd love to see ACs get a "hash" of their IP address or something so we can detect AC sockpuppetry.

Anyway. ClimateDepot is a global warming denier website ran by Marc Morano, a GOP operative working for Republican Sen. James Inhofe, and is funded by... wait for it... wait for it...

ExxonMobil, to the shock of absolutely noone.

In short, ClimateDepot is Astroturfing BULLSHIT designed to give GOP and Oil Industry Shills a place to link to to try and continue climate change denialism. It's not a valid source and by linking to it you show you're less than worthless -- you are actively harming the discussion by participating. Negative value.