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Trump's Second Term

Blue Mountain said:
I have read the article.

To start, Saivikram Madireddy is no intellectual lightweight. According to the piece, he scored in the 90th percentile on the Medical College Admission Test, “with a near-perfect score in each of the three science sections — biology, chemistry and physics, and psychology and sociology.” He's made it though pre-med and medical school, and has conducted research in neurology. His name appears on a paper titled “The Interplay between Neurotransmitters and Calcium Dynamics in Retinal Synapses during Development, Health, and Disease.”

In the article he blames DEI for several things in his education and early career:
  • He applied to 75 medical schools but was accepted only by one of them. I have no idea if this is normal or not.
  • He writes, “Only three other schools even offered to interview me, almost certainly reflecting the unfair standard to which Asians are held thanks to DEI.” (Bolding mine; Madireddy is the son of immigrants from India.) This appears to be speculation.
  • He completed the Step 1 test for US Medical Licensing in 2022. But instead of receiving a numerical score, candidates are told only that they passed or failed. So not even the candidate knows if he hit the top ranks or barely squeaked by, a situation he blames on DEI “activists.”
  • He took the Step 2 test in 2023. He didn't do as well as he would have liked, but feels it put him into an excellent position to get a residency. Yet he received very few responses to the 50-plus positions he applied to. Again, I have no idea if this is normal or not.
  • He passed over two residency offers from the University of Tennessee, where he had studied medicine, as he felt future employers would think he “couldn't succeed without home field advantage.”
  • He writes, “I spoke with numerous students of different races who had scored lower than me but got better residencies. That’s exactly what’s supposed to happen under DEI.”
  • He was offered a residency at the University of Tokyo School of Medicine after presenting a research paper in Germany, for which he won an award, and later presenting a paper (the same one?) in Osaka.
Reading between the lines, he comes across to me as someone with an ego that is perhaps too large compared to his academic achievements. What he blames on diversity, equity, and inclusion could be merely be that he's not as good as he thinks he is.

Curiously, I see DEI as a program that's supposed to be helping him, given that he's a from a visible minority. But it could well be that he's correct. He's a researcher and doctor just starting his career, but medical schools are giving preference to people other than white people and Asians/East Indians.
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It's not normal. I know of someone who is of African descent that got several offers for medical school from I believe ivy league colleges despite not being ready to go to college. There are two things he is leaving out. One that he is working class. The other is that he only wanted to go to top rate ivy league schools. Being working class works against you in this case. I have believed I have observed people of African descent milling though jobs and offers and getting accepted for almost anything. Personally, I have put out dozens of applications recently and did not even get a response for similar jobs. Don't ask me to prove it. Kind of makes sense though. You say you aren't going to hire a certain group of people unless you have too, and those people don't get hired. Of course you aren't going to tell them that. About the writer, he identifies as Asian and there would be no reason to do that if he wasn't Asian. I personally have benefitted from DEI but I am wondering of the standards are tightening into just BIPOC. Hard to know.
 
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Norman Alexander said:
I'm of the feeling this one is far more likely to be Trump personally, not AI. Poor grammar and punctuation (and I wonder if he actually agreed with the spellchecker on his phone), and a bunch of shouty all-caps. And most telling, it was short, so within his crapping-time attention-span.
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Yeah, it's real.

U.S. President Donald Trump has put a price tag on Canada joining his proposed Golden Dome missile defence system — and renewed his annexation threat in the process.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday that it will cost Canada $61 billion US to join the Golden Dome "if they remain a separate, but unequal, Nation," but will cost nothing "if they become our cherished 51st State."

He claimed Canada is "considering" the offer.
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Tero said:
"Devoting a 352-page book to unmasking a president who is no longer in office instead of the one currently sowing global chaos indicates serious mental impairment, the experts asserted."
www.borowitzreport.com

Man Feared to Be Cognitively Slipping After Writing Book About Wrong President

Devoting a 352-page book to unmasking a president who is no longer in office instead of the one currently creating global chaos indicates serious mental impairment, the experts asserted.
www.borowitzreport.com www.borowitzreport.com
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I predict historians will be writing books unmasking the current president for centuries to come.
 
dudalb said:
Reports that Trump is getting angry on Putin. Maybe it finally dawned on Trump Putin has been playing him for a fool.
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That's Main Character Fallacy at work: the US always had a bad democratic system because it was build patchwork from a Rule by Landowners and Police for the Rich and Slaveowners.
It was never a good democracy, but it was a good first try.


Many countries have newer systems that have learned from the past and are much more resilient. And the idea that the US is intervening globally on behalf of democracy is empirically false.

Other democracy will do fine if the US would just stop trying to topple them.
 
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Resume said:
He's really nuts, isn't he?

Truth Details​

1449 replies

@realDonaldTrump



I told Canada, which very much wants to be part of our fabulous Golden Dome System, that it will cost $61 Billion Dollars if they remain a separate, but unequal, Nation, but will cost ZERO DOLLARS if they become our cherished 51st State. They are considering the offer!
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Yes, I suspect Canada considered the offer. Carney and his cabinet are probably still laughing at it.
 
Blue Mountain said:
I have read the article.

To start, Saivikram Madireddy is no intellectual lightweight. According to the piece, he scored in the 90th percentile on the Medical College Admission Test, “with a near-perfect score in each of the three science sections — biology, chemistry and physics, and psychology and sociology.” He's made it though pre-med and medical school, and has conducted research in neurology. His name appears on a paper titled “The Interplay between Neurotransmitters and Calcium Dynamics in Retinal Synapses during Development, Health, and Disease.”

In the article he blames DEI for several things in his education and early career:
  • He applied to 75 medical schools but was accepted only by one of them. I have no idea if this is normal or not.
  • He writes, “Only three other schools even offered to interview me, almost certainly reflecting the unfair standard to which Asians are held thanks to DEI.” (Bolding mine; Madireddy is the son of immigrants from India.) This appears to be speculation.
  • He completed the Step 1 test for US Medical Licensing in 2022. But instead of receiving a numerical score, candidates are told only that they passed or failed. So not even the candidate knows if he hit the top ranks or barely squeaked by, a situation he blames on DEI “activists.”
  • He took the Step 2 test in 2023. He didn't do as well as he would have liked, but feels it put him into an excellent position to get a residency. Yet he received very few responses to the 50-plus positions he applied to. Again, I have no idea if this is normal or not.
  • He passed over two residency offers from the University of Tennessee, where he had studied medicine, as he felt future employers would think he “couldn't succeed without home field advantage.”
  • He writes, “I spoke with numerous students of different races who had scored lower than me but got better residencies. That’s exactly what’s supposed to happen under DEI.”
  • He was offered a residency at the University of Tokyo School of Medicine after presenting a research paper in Germany, for which he won an award, and later presenting a paper (the same one?) in Osaka.
Reading between the lines, he comes across to me as someone with an ego that is perhaps too large compared to his academic achievements. What he blames on diversity, equity, and inclusion could be merely be that he's not as good as he thinks he is.

Curiously, I see DEI as a program that's supposed to be helping him, given that he's a from a visible minority. But it could well be that he's correct. He's a researcher and doctor just starting his career, but medical schools are giving preference to people other than white people and Asians/East Indians.
Click to expand...
Whilst I can't speak for the US system, this would happen elsewhere. Whilst scoring poorly might rule you out, scoring well is no guarantee of a placement. Of note he says he scored well on the science sections, which means he probably dropped on the reasoning section. The AMA say,
Medical school admissions is a holistic process and the AAMC provides recommendations on how MCAT scores should be used in admissions, specifically recommending that MCAT scores should not outweigh an applicant's other materials
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We don't know anything about his extracurriculars.
The Step 1 test is the science and the step 2 test is the clinical exam. Not doing well in the clinical exam is not good if you want to be a clinician! Whilst you must pass Step 1 and 2 to be able to apply for residency, the residency will choose based on interviews, medical school transcripts etc. Again perhaps we see someone who is a bit narrow, perhaps lacking extracurriculars, or who isn't as good as he thinks.

Neurology is a highly competitive speciality, if he wanted to be a neurologist he should have accepted the residency offered. Most doctors are clinicians, they like seeing and treating people. This is not the feeling I get here, he wants a program to allow him to do research, if so he needs to line up a PhD. I have real doubts about the utility of doing a neurology residency in a country where you don't speak the language. Medical students being given prizes for a paper they present means very little, the paper represents the work of the mentor, medical students rarely innovate, they are slotted into pre-existing research programs as a pair of hands, and rewarded by a name on a paper for doing unpaid work.
 
Can we have Microtransaction system for the Golden Dome?
Like if Canada wants to attack North Korea, and buys the protection for a month or so?
Maybe a "buy 10 missile shootdowns, get one free!" ?
 
Resume said:
U.S. President Donald Trump has put a price tag on Canada joining his proposed Golden Dome missile defence system — and renewed his annexation threat in the process.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday that it will cost Canada $61 billion US to join the Golden Dome "if they remain a separate, but unequal, Nation," but will cost nothing "if they become our cherished 51st State."
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One of the dumbest things about this is that, last I heard, the "Golden Dome" won't even be able to protect all of the U.S. (probably just key population centers and strategic centers.)

So what exactly would the "golden Dome" be covering in Canada? With our smaller population, lower overall population density, and general low strategic value, I can't see it really protecting much of anything in Canada. Maybe Toronto and Montreal?
 
a_unique_person said:
Iron Dome is a protection system from small local and larger regional missiles. There are no such threats against the USA. It's got oceans and kind of allies all around it.
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Golden Dome is yet another Trump Enterprises grifty grift payback for sponsors. Billions will be allocated to "friends" for assorted useless military contracts.
 
This one is very worrying:

www.theguardian.com

A hidden measure in the Republican budget bill would crown Trump king | Robert Reich

The bill could stop federal courts from enforcing their rulings, eliminating any restraint on Trump
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

Robert Reich in The Guardian said:
... So what’s the next step? Will the supreme court and lower courts hold the administration in contempt and enforce the contempt citations?

Trump and his Republican stooges in Congress apparently anticipated this. Hidden inside their Big Ugly Bill is a provision intended to block the courts from using contempt to enforce its orders. It reads:

“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued …”

Translated: no federal court may enforce a contempt citation.

The measure would make most existing injunctions – in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases and others – unenforceable.
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Segnosaur said:
So what exactly would the "golden Dome" be covering in Canada? With our smaller population, lower overall population density, and general low strategic value, I can't see it really protecting much of anything in Canada. Maybe Toronto and Montreal?
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Canada needs to be in the system so its radar can track ICBMs coming over the north pole. It's not to protect Canada, per se, but to give the Americans a much needed heads-up that something's on its way.
 
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