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Early estimate from Brookings report is that CBO will find 15 million people will lose coverage under the new Republican healthcare plan.
Just Tony wrote: And I showed you where it is a law regardless, and a legal precedent is a legal precedent. Schrodinger's Fetus, again.
And you're continuing to ignore the relevance of intent and purpose. If I have a 40 year old car and it is taken from the lawn in front of my house and crushed in to a little cube, the courts will actually treat that very differently depending on the surrounding circumstances. If it's just sat on my front yard for 5 years unregistered then I'll probably be charged money for council having to collect and dispose of it. But if I have just bought the car and am investing money in a new carport to store it, and have ordered parts to restore it to perfect working order, then someone is going to have pay me a lot of money for destroying it. The circumstances and the intent of the owner clearly matter.
Similarly, if a person is pregnant and is planning to keep their baby and is fitting out a nursery and is attacked and loses that baby, then yeah they're going to grieve for losing the child they thought they were gonna have. On the other hand if that person doesn't want to take their pregnancy to term, well you might not agree with their decision, you might quite reasonably believe it should be illegal for them to abort that fetus, but it is impossible to fail to understand how the circumstances will cause the courts to consider the two of the two cases are different.
Here's the thing: if you mix 5 gallons of ice cream with 5 gallons of gak, you get 10 gallons of gak. The ACA was precisely that. The replacement is, for some stupid reason, swapping some gak out for some ice cream, while taking some of the OTHER ice cream out to replace it with gak. NEITHER are good plans. I didn't think my verifying was necessary, I figure my lack of defense of said plan was understood, I obvously gave far too much credit.
There was absolutely no substance in there on what you don't like about either plan. Your grand total contribution is 'I don't like either plan for reasons I am not stating'.
And you've still missed the point about your effort to try and push the debate towards abortion. It wasn't that we were just sitting here desperately waiting to find out what Just Tony thought about the House Republican healthcare bill. If you never posted on the subject no-one would have noticed. But you didn't do that, instead you came here to try to spark up a new debate about abortion.
That you did this in a response to someone commenting that Republican policy disfunction didn't matter because the base would still get led along on issues like abortion was very ironic.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/10 05:43:07
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Just to keep everyone up to date on how flying rodent gak crazy Steve Bannon actually is, he's just appointed Jon Perdue to a special assistant position at Treasury. Jon Perdue describes himself as a guerilla warfare expert. He was on CNBC's "Make Me A Millionaire", where he was telling everyone about his Packbow, which is a bow that also has a compass, walking stick, spear fishing stick and also a container for water purification tablets. He invented this thing by studying how people survived in collapsing societies. And of course, Perdue once wrote for Breitbart. You might ask yourself what part of his resume would make him a good fit for Treasury, which tends to employ people with finance and economics backgrounds in order to deal with finance and economics. But there's a simple answer for that - Steve Bannon is absolutely fething bonkers.
In other hilarious news, Breitbart launched its own attack on the new healthcare bill. Alongside the complaint that Sean Spicer lied in complaing this fully repeals ACA, their concern is that illegal immigrants might get coverage by using false IDs. Be interesting to see how this plays out, because probably the only place you'll find anyone more crazy than Steve Bannon is among the staff of his former website. When Bannon requested Breitbart to stop publishing attack pieces on Reince Priebus, the Washington editor Matthew Boyle said the request was 'treason'.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/10 06:47:08
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
sebster wrote: Just to keep everyone up to date on how flying rodent gak crazy Steve Bannon actually is, he's just appointed Jon Perdue to a special assistant position at Treasury. Jon Perdue describes himself as a guerilla warfare expert. He was on CNBC's "Make Me A Millionaire", where he was telling everyone about his Packbow, which is a bow that also has a compass, walking stick, spear fishing stick and also a container for water purification tablets. He invented this thing by studying how people survived in collapsing societies. And of course, Perdue once wrote for Breitbart. You might ask yourself what part of his resume would make him a good fit for Treasury, which tends to employ people with finance and economics backgrounds in order to deal with finance and economics. But there's a simple answer for that - Steve Bannon is absolutely fething bonkers.
In other hilarious news, Breitbart launched its own attack on the new healthcare bill. Alongside the complaint that Sean Spicer lied in complaing this fully repeals ACA, their concern is that illegal immigrants might get coverage by using false IDs. Be interesting to see how this plays out, because probably the only place you'll find anyone more crazy than Steve Bannon is among the staff of his former website. When Bannon requested Breitbart to stop publishing attack pieces on Reince Priebus, the Washington editor Matthew Boyle said the request was 'treason'.
Who knows, maybe Jon Perdue got a free credit score from creditkarma.com . . . Maybe he's never filed for bankruptcy, or, maybe he paid off his first car. I dunno... in the mind of Bannon any/all of those things may lead Bannon to believe that Perdue is the perfect fit for Treasury???
sebster wrote: Just to keep everyone up to date on how flying rodent gak crazy Steve Bannon actually is, he's just appointed Jon Perdue to a special assistant position at Treasury.
What does his position entail? Treasury has a big role in counter terror ops and policy. One of their big departments is the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
A doctor and his younger nurse fall in love. They continue their torrid affair even after his ex-wife tips off the nurse’s husband, a local politician, to the salacious goings-on. As the divorce moves forward, discovery turns up that the nurse is not just the doctor’s employee and his lover, but his patient, with a predilection for pain pills. And, oh, she’s his second cousin, too.
But this is not General Hospital, not Grey’s Anatomy. This is the town of Hohenwald (pop. 3,703) in Lewis County, where bitter divorce proceedings have brought to light possibly unethical behavior by Dr. Joey Hensley, a Republican state senator who also happens to be a family physician — and one who has run for office since 2002 on a platform of conservative Christian values.
Hensley, 61, was subpoenaed to appear last week in Williamson County Circuit Court to testify in the divorce proceedings of Hohenwald Vice Mayor Don Barber and his wife Lori. He refused to show up, citing legislative and medical privilege.
“I didn’t have time to do it,” Hensley said when contacted on Friday afternoon. “I had nothing to do with the court case, and any testimony I would have given wouldn’t have made any difference.”
But according to the sworn testimony of both Barbers, Hensley has been having an affair with Lori since 2014. Lori, 48, is a part-time nurse in Hensley’s medical practice in Lewis County; she is also his second cousin.
Hensley gained national notoriety in 2012 as a sponsor of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would have banned public school teachers from even mentioning that homosexuality exists. During one hearing that year, Hensley commented, “I don’t think Modern Family is appropriate for children to watch” — because it features a married gay couple raising children. This session, Hensley is sponsoring a bill from the Tennessee Family Action Council that would make children created using donor sperm illegitimate — an attempt to make it harder for gay and lesbian parents to establish paternity. He is also a sponsor of the so-called “Milo Bill,” aimed at liberal practices on college campuses.
The subpoena ordered Hensley to bring evidence of any gifts or monies spent by him on Lori Barber or by her on him. Hensley declined to testify under a statute of Tennessee law that exempts “a member of the general assembly while in session” and also “a practicing physician” from subpoena to trial. But he will still be deposed about the affair, and that deposition will then be entered into the court record. The deposition has not been scheduled but is expected to occur in the next week or two.
According to testimony during the trial, Lori Barber started working for Hensley in 2013 part time as a licensed practical nurse in his practice, at a salary of $15 an hour. She still makes that same salary and currently works one day a week in his office. She had previously worked for Hensley from 1987 to 1988, prior to both her marriage and the completion of her nursing degree.
Barber testified she and Hensley began confiding in each other about problems in their marriages shortly after she took the job, but she said the relationship did not become sexual until December 2014, after the divorce became final between Hensley and his fourth wife, Gina, who is also a nurse. Their first sexual encounter was at Hensley’s practice, and soon, Barber said, the pair were discussing marriage.
In a Divorce Trial, Serious Allegations About Sen. Joey Hensley
Hohenwald Republican is alleged to have had an affair with his nurse and prescribed her opioids
CARI WADE GERVIN MAR 8, 2017 2 PM 12 Tweet Share
Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald)
Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald)
The details sound straight out of a soap opera.
A doctor and his younger nurse fall in love. They continue their torrid affair even after his ex-wife tips off the nurse’s husband, a local politician, to the salacious goings-on. As the divorce moves forward, discovery turns up that the nurse is not just the doctor’s employee and his lover, but his patient, with a predilection for pain pills. And, oh, she’s his second cousin, too.
But this is not General Hospital, not Grey’s Anatomy. This is the town of Hohenwald (pop. 3,703) in Lewis County, where bitter divorce proceedings have brought to light possibly unethical behavior by Dr. Joey Hensley, a Republican state senator who also happens to be a family physician — and one who has run for office since 2002 on a platform of conservative Christian values.
Hensley, 61, was subpoenaed to appear last week in Williamson County Circuit Court to testify in the divorce proceedings of Hohenwald Vice Mayor Don Barber and his wife Lori. He refused to show up, citing legislative and medical privilege.
“I didn’t have time to do it,” Hensley said when contacted on Friday afternoon. “I had nothing to do with the court case, and any testimony I would have given wouldn’t have made any difference.”
But according to the sworn testimony of both Barbers, Hensley has been having an affair with Lori since 2014. Lori, 48, is a part-time nurse in Hensley’s medical practice in Lewis County; she is also his second cousin.
Hensley gained national notoriety in 2012 as a sponsor of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would have banned public school teachers from even mentioning that homosexuality exists. During one hearing that year, Hensley commented, “I don’t think Modern Family is appropriate for children to watch” — because it features a married gay couple raising children. This session, Hensley is sponsoring a bill from the Tennessee Family Action Council that would make children created using donor sperm illegitimate — an attempt to make it harder for gay and lesbian parents to establish paternity. He is also a sponsor of the so-called “Milo Bill,” aimed at liberal practices on college campuses.
The subpoena ordered Hensley to bring evidence of any gifts or monies spent by him on Lori Barber or by her on him. Hensley declined to testify under a statute of Tennessee law that exempts “a member of the general assembly while in session” and also “a practicing physician” from subpoena to trial. But he will still be deposed about the affair, and that deposition will then be entered into the court record. The deposition has not been scheduled but is expected to occur in the next week or two.
According to testimony during the trial, Lori Barber started working for Hensley in 2013 part time as a licensed practical nurse in his practice, at a salary of $15 an hour. She still makes that same salary and currently works one day a week in his office. She had previously worked for Hensley from 1987 to 1988, prior to both her marriage and the completion of her nursing degree.
Barber testified she and Hensley began confiding in each other about problems in their marriages shortly after she took the job, but she said the relationship did not become sexual until December 2014, after the divorce became final between Hensley and his fourth wife, Gina, who is also a nurse. Their first sexual encounter was at Hensley’s practice, and soon, Barber said, the pair were discussing marriage.
This timeline is disputed by Don Barber. He found out about the affair in the spring of 2015, when Gina Hensley gave him a flash drive with evidence of her ex-husband’s affair, including recordings of phone calls and screenshots of sexually explicit text messages between Gina and Lori discussing Hensley’s sexual proclivities and detailing instances when he and Lori had sex. Court documents claim the files show that the affair began much earlier in 2014; proof of this was not shown in open court.
Around the same time that spring, Gina Hensley took out an order of protection from the senator, alleging he hit her with his car, twice. He denied it, and she eventually withdrew the claim. Sen. Hensley told Columbia’s Daily Herald at the time that Gina left him for another man, and he had “tried with all my heart to keep our family together.” He told the Scene something similar this week, saying, “I was devastated by my divorce.”
Lori Barber moved out in August 2015 and filed for divorce later that fall. She testified that she ended her affair with Hensley in April 2016, but that things started up again in June. She said the couple continue to discuss marriage as a future possibility. (It is legal in Tennessee for second cousins of any age to marry.)
Barber also testified that she spent the nights of Feb. 8 and and Feb. 14 this year with Hensley at a hotel in downtown Nashville while he was in town for legislative duties. Although those nights were presumably paid with a legislative per diem — i.e., state dollars — Legislative Administration director Connie Ridley said whether or not someone else stays with a legislator if he or she is in town on legitimate business “is not pertinent to the payment,” per state law.
Hensley denied that he is still romantically involved with Barber.
“No, I’m divorced, I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Hensley said when asked if they were still discussing marriage. He also denied that Barber had spent either night in February in his hotel room. When asked if this is what he would testify to under oath during his deposition, Hensley said he had no further comment.
In a second conversation three days later, Hensley said the affair lasted only “a few months.”
“It’s not still ongoing,” Hensley said Monday night. “That was several months ago, years ago. I didn’t break any laws. I’m not married, I’m divorced. … And nothing happened while I was married. … She didn’t leave because of me, it wasn’t because of me. We’ve been friends for 30 years or more. She’s related to me, but she’s been a friend too.”
But Lori Barber is not just a friend or a cousin or a lover — she is also Hensley’s patient. Barber testified in court that Hensley is her only doctor other than a cardiologist, and that she relies on him for recurrent Botox injections. She also said he has regularly prescribed her the hydrocodone-acetaminophen pill Lortab — a Schedule II controlled substance — for “chronic back pain,” which she said Hensley first diagnosed after she hurt her neck.
Court testimony and documents filed imply that Barber has possibly abused both alcohol and opioids; she testified that she has no problem with either and any uptick in consumption was due to the stress of the divorce. But in her deposition, Barber was asked by her husband’s lawyer, Rose Palermo, “And didn’t your parents come to you and say that this situation with the Lortab had to be reined in, because you were taking too many Lortabs?” Barber replied, “I was taking too many according to them, but I was taking exactly what I was prescribed.” Palermo followed up, “By Dr. Hensley?” Barber answered, “Yes.”
When asked last week if he often provides his nurses with opioid prescriptions, Hensley said he treats all his patients “the same” and declined further comment. On Monday, when asked if it concerned him that a nurse in his employ had been somewhat frequently taking hydrocodone, Hensley replied, “She’s a patient of mine, and anything I treat a patient with is [protected by] HIPAA.” She’s a patient, but she’s also an employee, the Scene said. “Well, it’s a small town. People don’t have an option for some things,” Hensley said.
It is a clear violation of the American Medical Association’s code of ethics — to which the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners subscribes — for a doctor to become romantically involved with a patient. It is also in violation of the state board’s guidelines to regularly treat immediate family members or prescribe them drugs. The policy states, in part, “Treatment of immediate family members should be reserved only for minor illnesses or emergency situations. … No schedule II, III or IV controlled substances should be dispensed or prescribed except in emergency situations.” But there are no AMA or state guidelines that specifically prohibit doctors from treating employees.
Yet an examination of recent disciplinary actions by the Board of Medical Examiners suggests Hensley’s actions with Barber could certainly border on the unethical. In the past year, from January 2016 to January 2017 (the latest month for which data was available), the board has taken action against at least 13 doctors for, in part, prescribing controlled substances to an employee, a family member or a patient with whom the doctor was in a romantic relationship. The actions ranged from a reprimand to license revocation or forced retirement, with an additional wide range of fines.
It’s important to note that no action was taken solely based on one instance of prescribing drugs to a family member or employee alone — all of the instances above include multiple and varied violations of state rules and regulations. And Hensley said his treatment of Barber is in no way a violation of the code of ethics, because he regularly treats a lot of family members.
“I’ve been practicing 30 years,” says Hensley. “I have thousands of patients. It’s a small town, and I have a lot of family. A lot of family. Cousins, uncles, aunts. … And I don’t treat anyone any different.”
Lt. Gov. Randy McNally says it is unlikely the state Senate will address the situation unless the Board of Medical Examiners does go forward with an investigation.
“If it were a violation of the Board of Medical Examiners’ ethics, and certainly if it rose to the level of anything more serious, then I think the Senate Ethics Committee could look at it,” McNally says. “But if it’s just a simple disciplinary-type issue that is not serious, then I don’t think the Ethics Committee … they probably wouldn’t take it up.”
..still least it being his cousin makes a change from it being a male prostitute or something similar eh ?
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Apparently a Russian bank server had an unusually high number of lookups of a Trump server (80%). No. 2? Spectrum, a medical facility chain led by Dick DeVos, the husband of Betsy DeVos, who was appointed by Trump as U.S. education secretary. Together, they make up 99% 0f the lookups.
It is also interesting that the original computer scientists looking into the data are now terrified and hiding from the media.
I think this is far less an indictment of Trump than it is a clear indicator of Russian intent. Namely, their attempts to destabilize and undermine US governance. Which has been working remarkably well.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/10 14:17:41
Nigel Farage visited the Ecuadorian embassy in west London on Thursday, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been living since he claimed asylum in 2012.
The former UKIP leader spent around 40 minutes in the building and left at noon, accompanied by Christian Mitchell, the head of operations at radio station LBC, where Farage hosts a regular show.
Approached by BuzzFeed News as he left to get into a car waiting round the corner, Farage said he couldn’t remember what he had been doing in the building.
Asked specifically if he had gone to the Knightsbridge building to meet with Assange, Farage said: “I never discuss where I go or who I see.”
Ecuador granted Assange asylum almost five years ago to prevent him being deported to Sweden to be questioned over sexual assault allegations. He has been stranded there ever since, with British police keeping the building under close surveillance.
There are no known links between Farage and Assange. However, Assange was seen as pro-Donald Trump during and after the US election, and Farage has grown close to the American president and visited the White House last month.
The Ecuadorian embassy refused to comment.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
The Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, has a magnificent course. Just ask its namesake, U.S. President Donald Trump, who until recently was quoted on its website saying the club "provides more than a membership – it's a true luxury lifestyle."
The business is worth more than $50 million and yielded more than $10 million from 2015 to early 2016, according to the financial disclosure form Trump filed last May. But seven months earlier, an attorney for Trump filed a lawsuit against the town of Ossining, New York, seeking lower taxes, claiming the course was worth only $1.4 million.
The lawsuit, which remains pending, has left at least one local official worried that taking a tough negotiating stance against a business owned by the world's most powerful political figure puts her town of 25,000 residents at risk of retribution.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
If there were anything that incriminates Trump... wouldn't we see it by now?
I mean, you know its getting serious if even buzzfeed is running the story
On the incrimination front, not necessarily. Remember, this is a guy who's been playing legal games for decades. If he's learned one thing, its going to be appearances. This is also why we have investigations.
Hey... Buzzfeed is like the TMZ of politics. They find good nuggets, but it's their column writers often times take it to eleven.
I was convinced that Trump was some sort of Russian stooge... or, at least someone who has taken some sort of unhealthy fatuation over Russia/Putin (I still think so).
But, it's almost been 3 months, and his actions hasn't been anything of that sort:
NO PUPPET
Still Waiting for Trump’s Russia Reset
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with his Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Klimkin on Tuesday, and according to the readout, the new administration intends to toe the line on Ukraine and uphold sanctions against Russia. RFE/RL:
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement after the meeting that Tillerson told Klimkin the U.S. sanctions against Russia would remain in place until “aggression is ceased,” until the Minsk peace deal to end fighting between Kyiv’s forces and Russia-backed separatists is implemented, and until Moscow returns to Kyiv control of Crimea and separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner largely confirmed the ministry’s characterization of the two diplomats’ discussions of sanctions.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has officially rebuked the Russians for their recent missile launch in violation of the INF treaty:
Russia has deployed a land-based cruise missile that violates the “spirit and intent” of an arms control treaty and poses a threat to NATO, Vice Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff General Paul Selva said on Wednesday. […]
“The system itself presents a risk to most of our facilities in Europe and we believe that the Russians have deliberately deployed it in order to pose a threat to NATO and to facilities within the NATO area of responsibility,” Selva said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.
Under normal circumstances, neither item would be particularly newsworthy; reaffirming commitments and calling out rivals for treaty violations are rudimentary elements of statecraft. But in a charged media landscape fixated on Trump’s Russia ties, it is worth noting once again that the administration has so far done nothing to tilt foreign policy in Russia’s favor. If Tillerson sticks to the commitment expressed to Klimkin, then sanctions are here to stay, and if advisors like General Selva hold sway in Trump’s security team, we can expect a conventionally hawkish policy toward Russia. This is hardly good news for Moscow, but it does cast further doubt on the dubious Manchurian candidate thesis.
If you were in collusion with a foreign government and wanted to not be the first president to be executed for treason, I would think you would lay low on the obvious stuff for a little while.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: In spite of the various political opinions on Dakka I think there is one aspect of the travel ban which should be universal
Spoiler:
I'd be careful posting jokes like that here. I tried it with Steakgate and some people really couldn't see the joke.
Are there really people out there that disagree with the sentiment that President Trump would unilaterally benefit from taking a tiny step back from Twitter?
-------------------------------------------------------
"He died because he had no honor. He had no honor and the Emperor was watching."
Dreadclaw69 wrote: In spite of the various political opinions on Dakka I think there is one aspect of the travel ban which should be universal
Spoiler:
I'd be careful posting jokes like that here. I tried it with Steakgate and some people really couldn't see the joke.
Are there really people out there that disagree with the sentiment that President Trump would unilaterally benefit from taking a tiny step back from Twitter?
Two kinds of people enjoy his twitterings. Those who want to watch the world burn, and deplorables.
We were once so close to heaven, St. Peter came out and gave us medals; declaring us "The nicest of the damned".
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
A restaging of the presidential debates with an actress playing Trump and an actor playing Clinton yielded surprising results.
After watching the second televised debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in October 2016—a battle between the first female candidate nominated by a major party and an opponent who’d just been caught on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women—Maria Guadalupe, an associate professor of economics and political science at INSEAD, had an idea. Millions had tuned in to watch a man face off against a woman for the first set of co-ed presidential debates in American history. But how would their perceptions change, she wondered, if the genders of the candidates were switched? She pictured an actress playing Trump, replicating his words, gestures, body language, and tone verbatim, while an actor took on Clinton’s role in the same way. What would the experiment reveal about male and female communication styles, and the differing standards by which we unconsciously judge them?
Guadalupe reached out to Joe Salvatore, a Steinhardt clinical associate professor of educational theatre who specializes in ethnodrama—a method of adapting interviews, field notes, journal entries, and other print and media artifacts into a script to be performed as a play. Together, they developed Her Opponent, a production featuring actors performing excerpts from each of the three debates exactly as they happened—but with the genders switched. Salvatore cast fellow educational theatre faculty Rachel Whorton to play “Brenda King,” a female version of Trump, and Daryl Embry to play “Jonathan Gordon,” a male version of Hillary Clinton, and coached them as they learned the candidates’ words and gestures. A third actor, Andy Wagner, would play the moderator in all three debates, with the performances livestreamed. Andrew Freiband, a professor in the Department of Film/Animation/Video at the Rhode Island School of Design, provided the video design. (Watch footage from a Her Opponent rehearsal below.)
Salvatore says he and Guadalupe began the project assuming that the gender inversion would confirm what they’d each suspected watching the real-life debates: that Trump’s aggression—his tendency to interrupt and attack—would never be tolerated in a woman, and that Clinton’s competence and preparedness would seem even more convincing coming from a man.
But the lessons about gender that emerged in rehearsal turned out to be much less tidy. What was Jonathan Gordon smiling about all the time? And didn’t he seem a little stiff, tethered to rehearsed statements at the podium, while Brenda King, plainspoken and confident, freely roamed the stage? Which one would audiences find more likeable?
The two sold-out performances of Her Opponent took place on the night of Saturday, January 28, just a week after President Trump’s inauguration and the ensuing Women’s March on Washington. “The atmosphere among the standing-room-only crowd, which appeared mostly drawn from academic circles, was convivial, but also a little anxious,” Alexis Soloski, a New York Times reporter who attended the first performance, observed. “Most of the people there had watched the debates assuming that Ms. Clinton couldn’t lose. This time they watched trying to figure out how Mr. Trump could have won.”
Inside the evening’s program were two surveys for each audience member to fill out—one for before the show, with questions about their impressions of the real-life Trump–Clinton debates, and another for afterward, asking about their reactions to the King–Gordon restaging. Each performance was also followed by a discussion, with Salvatore bringing a microphone around to those eager to comment on what they had seen.
“I’ve never had an audience be so articulate about something so immediately after the performance,” Salvatore says of the cathartic discussions. “For me, watching people watch it was so informative. People across the board were surprised that their expectations about what they were going to experience were upended.”
Many were shocked to find that they couldn’t seem to find in Jonathan Gordon what they had admired in Hillary Clinton—or that Brenda King’s clever tactics seemed to shine in moments where they’d remembered Donald Trump flailing or lashing out. For those Clinton voters trying to make sense of the loss, it was by turns bewildering and instructive, raising as many questions about gender performance and effects of sexism as it answered.
And this was just the first phase of the project: Her Opponent’s creators envision adapting the recording as a classroom teaching tool to explore the complex ways our personal biases influence how we receive messages. The gender-swapping technique, Salvatore suggests, could also be used to explore the communication styles of different political figures in other charged confrontations.
NYU News talked with Salvatore about the painstaking process of re-gendering the presidential candidates, and about why the Gordon–King debates seem to have struck a nerve.
How were the excerpts chosen?
Maria Guadalupe chose them. The excerpts covered a variety of different issues, and they also had to be possible to do in the gender inversion. For example, we talked about doing a section at the top of debate two, where Trump had paraded out three women who had accused Bill Clinton [of sexual assault], because there were some interesting things going on with gender there. But when Maria listened to it, she anticipated that trying to do the inversion would become really complicated. There was another moment in that same debate where Clinton says, “When I was First Lady, I had to work with Democrats and Republicans,” and we ended up having to cut the “When I was First Lady” because when we tried it as “When I was First Man,” it just made no sense. The other thing is that the sections she chose featured both solo speaking and cross-talk. We felt like that was an important element because Trump’s aggression—the way he uses the microphone—is present in the cross-talk and not as much in the other sections.
What was the rehearsal process like?
It was really challenging on a number of levels—technically, but mentally and emotionally as well. Especially for Rachel, who played the female version of Trump, it was emotionally challenging because of the things she had to say. We started with audio first, so that the actors could listen to it and learn it without the visuals. Then we went back into the room with screens to watch, and they took notes on the gestures to link to the audio that they had already learned.
At some point they were able to do it from memory with the video of Trump and Clinton playing along behind them on a TV, so their level of accuracy was pretty amazing. Once we got into rehearsal and started experiencing Clinton in a man’s voice and body, Maria and I started to think that maybe Daryl had the harder job. We both thought that the inversion would confirm our liberal assumption—that no one would have accepted Trump’s behavior from a woman, and that the male Clinton would seem like the much stronger candidate. But we kept checking in with each other and realized that this disruption—a major change in perception—was happening. I had an unsettled feeling the whole way through.
Based on the conversations after the performances, it sounded like audience members had their beliefs rattled in a similar way. What were some themes that emerged from their responses? We heard a lot of “now I understand how this happened”—meaning how Trump won the election. People got upset. There was a guy two rows in front of me who was literally holding his head in his hands, and the person with him was rubbing his back. The simplicity of Trump’s message became easier for people to hear when it was coming from a woman—that was a theme. One person said, “I’m just so struck by how precise Trump’s technique is.” Another—a musical theater composer, actually—said that Trump created “hummable lyrics,” while Clinton talked a lot, and everything she was was true and factual, but there was no “hook” to it. Another theme was about not liking either candidate—you know, “I wouldn’t vote for either one.” Someone said that Jonathan Gordon [the male Hillary Clinton] was “really punchable” because of all the smiling. And a lot of people were just very surprised by the way it upended their expectations about what they thought they would feel or experience. There was someone who described Brenda King [the female Donald Trump] as his Jewish aunt who would take care of him, even though he might not like his aunt. Someone else described her as the middle school principal who you don’t like, but you know is doing good things for you.
What did you find most surprising? I was particularly struck by the post-performance discussions about effeminacy. People felt that the male version of Clinton was feminine, and that that was bad. As a gay man who worked really hard, especially when I was younger, to erase femininity from my body—for better or worse—I found myself feeling really upset hearing those things. Daryl [the actor playing Jonathan Gordon, the male Clinton] and I have talked about this multiple times since the performances. Never once in rehearsal did we say, “play this more feminine.” So I think it was mostly the smiling piece—so many women have told me that they’re taught to smile through things that are uncomfortable. It’s been really powerful to hear women talk about that, and a learning experience for me. I was surprised by how critical I was seeing [Clinton] on a man’s body, and also by the fact that I didn’t find Trump’s behavior on a woman to be off-putting. I remember turning to Maria at one point in the rehearsals and saying, "I kind of want to have a beer with her!" The majority of my extended family voted for Trump. In some ways, I developed empathy for people who voted for him by doing this project, which is not what I was expecting. I expected it to make me more angry at them, but it gave me an understanding of what they might have heard or experienced when he spoke.
What’s next for this project? The plan is to go into a studio and film these debate excerpts, shot for shot, as they were televised on TV. My colleague Andrew Freiband from the Rhode Island School of Design is especially interested in non-vebal cues—all the unconscious information that gets thrown at us based on physicality, tone of voice, and gestures, but also camera angles, shot length, and the size of the lens. He’s hoping that out of the film version we can create an interface online where a person will be able to click on both the original debate and our version of it, with an annotated description running underneath. That way we can start to get at how all of these nonverbal elements, which are undetectable in real time, contribute to the message that we receive when we watch these things. This has really emerged for us as a tool that could be quite powerful, and I would love for people beyond the liberal, academic audience to get to experience it too.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Yeah, it's easy to pay off loans when someone gifts you high value assets and gets sweet jobs handed to them by their parents, why doesn't everyone just do that?
On the female trump/male Hillary thing, I'll have to get around to watching that at some point.
In other news.
U.S. Ethics Official To White House: No, These Rules Definitely Apply To You
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
Ustrello wrote: One good way is to go to a community college for your associates degree, it saves you a gak ton of money
Yes, but it won't help you to get into a Tier 1 school.
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
So how plausible is it then that, apparently, no one in the Trump electoral campaign or his actual Govt. administration had any idea that Flynn was acting as a "foreign agent" when he was appointed to be national security adviser.
Surely even a fairly basic vetting would or should have shown this ?
Or do people in his position regularly receive and forget about $500K + payments ?
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/03/10 19:26:43
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Ustrello wrote: One good way is to go to a community college for your associates degree, it saves you a gak ton of money
Yes, but it won't help you to get into a Tier 1 school.
If you are having trouble paying for college, going to a tier 1 school will not exactly be on your priorities (especially when the education really isn't that much better if you are dedicated).
Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
kronk wrote: Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
sebster wrote: Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
BaronIveagh wrote: Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
Ustrello wrote: One good way is to go to a community college for your associates degree, it saves you a gak ton of money
Yes, but it won't help you to get into a Tier 1 school.
If you are having trouble paying for college, going to a tier 1 school will not exactly be on your priorities (especially when the education really isn't that much better if you are dedicated).
Sorry. Let me be clear.
I think its a great way to bootstrap into a four year degree less expensively. After all I did it. So did my dad.*
*At the same schools. *At the same time. *with some of the same professors. Yea thats right.
Another method is accelerated classes: take college level courses in high school. My boy did this and along with placing out effectively got rid of two years of school before he graduated high school (then the little bastard turned around and spent my money on two majors and a minor. Eating my porkchops, drinking my margaritas...
Ustrello wrote: One good way is to go to a community college for your associates degree, it saves you a gak ton of money
^This. Just make sure that the credits are transferable to the university where you're completing your degree.
Wisdom here.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/03/10 19:52:25
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
Define state university. The flagship university, it will be the opposite of help.
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
3.500 
8.200 
3.300 
3.100 
5.500 
2.500 
3.200 
3.000
