Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Idiot MTG changes her useless mind while Kash Patel remains unworthy

Isaiah's  THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Trollop's Ready To Go Back To Work" went up tonight.


trollop




Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is already making life difficult for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).

Writing on X, Greene claimed that Republicans had accomplished practically nothing during their retreat at President Donald Trump's resort in Doral, Florida.

"After two days at our House Republican winter retreat, we still do not have a plan on budget reconciliation and our Speaker and his team have not offered one," Greene wrote. "Not even if we are in a one bill or two bill framework, even though President Trump (who prefers one big beautiful bill) literally told us here at the start of our conference that he now does not care if it’s one or two."

B-b-but just yesterday Marje was saying "everyone should be here."  Ahh, didn't turn out to be all that Large Marge wanted.  Guess there wasn't enough booze for her after all. 


Moving from crazy Marge to the untrustworthy Kash Patel, MSNBC's Jen Psaki notes a whistle blower blowing the whistle on Kash:


I can tell you from my time in government that there are very few U.S. intelligence operations as sensitive as those around negotiations involving Americans detained overseas. A very small group of people from the national security team and the closest advisers to the president are typically in the know. That’s it.

That’s for good reason. Any leak or reporting could prompt public pressure on those holding the Americans. It could make them ask for more or delay it altogether. Even the smallest misstep could cause those Americans to be held by their captors for months or years longer.

It’s why everyone in the know lets out a sigh of relief when the detained Americans are confirmed to be back in friendly territory.

Now, with that in mind, consider this headline from The Wall Street Journal from October 2020: “Two Americans Held Hostage by Iran-Backed Forces in Yemen Freed in Trade.”

In that report, published on the morning of Oct. 14, a little-known National Security Council staffer named Kash Patel publicly confirmed that the two American captives and the remains of a third were exchanged for 200 Houthi fighters who were being held in Saudi Arabia.

Patel is now President Donald Trump’s pick to be director of the FBI and, ahead of his confirmation hearing, that episode from 2020 is coming under some very intense scrutiny.

In a new letter released on Monday by the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, the Democrat alleges he received what he calls “highly credible information” about Patel’s role in breaking protocol during the “in-progress retrieval of two Americans held captive by Iranian-backed militants.”

That’s not just a rookie mistake. It could have been an incredibly costly mistake. One that could have prevented these Americans from coming home.

According to this whistleblower, Patel had no role in the planning, negotiations or execution of the hostage recovery mission. And yet, he allegedly confirmed the details of the exchange to The Wall Street Journal before the U.S. government knew the Americans were safe.

There's that and there's this from NEWSWEEK's Khaleda Rahman:

"We are former law enforcement officials who served in Republican administrations, Republican members of Congress, and other policymakers who are committed to the rule of law," they wrote in a letter to senators obtained by Newsweek. The Hill first reported its contents.

"We write to express our deep concerns about Kash Patel's nomination to serve as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Confirming Patel would be a grievous mistake that would endanger the FBI's integrity and compromise its critical mission."

The letter was signed by 23 people, including former acting attorneys general Stuart Gerson and Peter Keisler and others who served in the Justice Department during the Nixon, Reagan and both Bush administrations.

Several former representatives, including Barbara Comstock, Mickey Edwards, Claudine Schneider and Joe Walsh, and Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer during the first year of Trump's first term, also signed the letter.

The letter says Patel lacks the experience and temperament to lead the FBI and is "motivated by revenge."

It also says he has a history of "poor judgement that has reportedly endangered American lives," citing a report from The New York Times that said Patel endangered a SEAL Team Six operation in October 2020 by claiming the Nigerian government had been informed of the operation when it had not.

The letter said Patel "has repeatedly engaged with and courted the dangerous QAnon conspiracy" and has baselessly suggested the FBI planned the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol and produced and promoted the "J6 Prison Choir" song.


"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Wednesday, January 29, 2025.  The attacks on the LGBTQ+ community from MAGA are waived on by via the same 'left' idiots who put Chump back in the White House.




Lawrence O'Donnell covering the nomination of Robert Kennedy Junior to be the head of Health and Human Services -- a job he is not qualified for.  Lawrence notes Caroline Kennedy's letter to Senate members and includes the full video of her reading the letter.  You can also see Mike's "We all hate the dangerous and insane Junior" for more on the topic. 

We're going to zoom in on a big issue for today's snapshot but before that we're going to ease in.

Convicted Felon Donald Chump is now coming after Rachel Maddow.  No one is helped by the ridiculous Krystal Ball sneering at Rachel or others at MSNBC.  We get it, you couldn't deliver an audience and you got fired, Krystal.  Now you do the show created -- a homophobic, transphobic show.  

Ava and I will be addressing the nonsense that is BREAKING POINTS at THIRD this weekend.  

For those of us not embracing the ridiculous and the stupid, what can we do?

For me?  Watched MSNBC last night.  Had to figure out how to unblock it first.  Prior to last night, any MSNBC clip that's gone up here is all I've seen.  I don't watch TV believe it or not (Ava and I cover TV at THIRD).  I'd rather listen to KPFA in the evenings if I'm home.  
 

For two weeks now, I've been telling myself that I would unblock it but I had so much more to do -- a situation I think many of us are in.  But I am a Nielsen viewer so it's important that when Chump's going after a journalist, I support her.  

On the left, I think we should always be asking ourselves how we can help the left.

Was my first crime there to "think"?

This site started in 2004 after the presidential election.  A number of us donors got together to figure out what we could do differently next time, what worked, what didn't?

In that discussion, I noted that the DNC did a SURVIVOR thing -- on the island -- it was animated -- and that I kept hearing people talk about how they enjoyed it when I'd go somewhere to speak on behalf of the John Kerry campaign.  That led to other people talking about online connecting to voters.  At the end of the meeting, I grabbed CLAMOR (a great magazine for the left so of course it is no more) because they had an article on blogging that I hadn't read but needed to now since people were talking about blogging in the meeting and how we needed to up that.  Using CLAMOR as a guide, I started this site right then. I stressed throughout -- and still try to do so today -- that I'm not a blogger because I really didn't study blogging, don't much about it to this day.

Delilah Boyd was a female blogger.  She did A SCRIVNER'S LAMENT and she also posted at DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND.  She was a great blogger.  Covered politics.  More than that, she reached out to other female bloggers and her encouraging words certainly helped me.  

So I read her.  And I read her at her site and at DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND.

And then made the mistake of reading others at DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND one day.

The first post was just vapid and unimportant.

The second one was just a lie.

There is a point we're moving towards BLUESKY.

I'm reading the second one and I never read another one there.

I don't like stupidity.

And I don't like stupid people who apparently don't know they are stupid.

There are a lot of economic issues right now.  If you see them here, it's me excerpting someone.  I don't pretend an expert on economics, I don't even pretend to be able to speak to the basics beyond grocery shopping.  I'm smart enough -- and I'm not that smart -- to know what areas I can speak to and those that I can't.

So I see "Demi Moore" and think, "Oh, good.  I love Demi.  She's a great friend and a solid Democrat."  I click on the link.

And there are people trashing her because she's a Republican.

WTF?

Because she had been married to Bruce Willis (by 2005, they had been divorced for many, many years), the DU-er and the people leaving comments just knew -- JUST KNEW -- she was a Republican.

Demi was not a Republican.  Demi's never been a Republican.

I know her, I know her politics.  And they weren't hidden away.  We did many events for Campaign California (the successor to Campaign For Economic Democracy).

But there were these know it alls writing about things they did not know about and presenting it as fact.

I avoided going to sites like that.

I speak to concerned groups -- college students, labor groups, feminist groups, Civil Rights Groups.

And, until BLUESKY, I'd forgotten about The Middle Aged White Know It All.

Early on, I got very angry when I made the mistake of reading a thread on Cher.  I know Cher and have for years.

The BLUESKYER wanted to tell us who Cher was.  And didn't know a damn thing.

Now if that had been a fan telling a story or inflating something she did, fine.  

But, no, this was someone attacking her and attacking her for being right.

She had said, promoting her new best selling book, in some interview that Johnny Carson was a Republican -- this is according to what the BLUESKYer posted -- and it was dog pile on Cher.

Johnny Carson was a Democrat!  This was a lie!

Uh, no.

Johnny voted twice for Richard Nixon.  After Watergate, he turned on Nixon and that was in part because his act would have been over if he didn't.  He would look like an out of touch moron.

There they were attacking Cher to defend dead Johnny Carson who was an awful person.  Loathed by not just his ex-wives but by his family.  I think the only one I've ever known who knew -- or 'knew' -- Johnny that liked him was Morgan Fairchild and I always just wrote that off  to her desperate need for sex. 

If that seems harsh to someone, Tom Hayden came on to many of us including me.  We kept our mouths shut because Jane didn't want to know -- she was committed to that marriage and in denial.  Others, MF, went around telling everyone that Tom came on to her and she thought about it but she feared it would upset Jane (Jane Fonda, then his wife) so she said no and she just hoped it never got back to Jane.  

Do you know how many people called me in a two week period who Morgan -- who didn't want anyone to know because she insisted she didn't want to hurt Jane -- told that story to?  Easily 20 women.  And that's just the ones that we both knew.

I don't like fake asses.

But Johnny Carson was a sleaze and he was also a Republican.

But here we are with me on BLUESKY reading this ridiculous thread attacking Cher and defending the vile Johnny Carson.  

I am on BLUESKY because of the political and only because of the political.  I did not Tweet on TWITTER, I was not on FACEBOOK, etc etc.  And I wouldn't be on BLUESKY except for the fact that racist Elon Musk tried to stick his nose into our elections.  (I don't believe in dual citizenship and I certain don't believe in triple citizenship -- he was born and raised in apartheid South Africa and that's where he learned his racism.)  So that's the only reason I'm on BLUESKY.

And I see a lot of great work.  I try to give it an hour at least four days a week where I go through and respot something good and give it a like.

Lot of great people on there.

Lot of idiots too.  On the recommendation of a friend, I started blocking certain people because they're honestly just too damn stupid.

And, if you're new to this site, I don't consider myself that smart.  I walk into a room, as I've noted here many times before, assuming I'm the stupidest in the room.

Due to a trauma, I lost my memory.  I had to relearn a ton of things.  That's why you don't see me making allusions to the Revolutionary War, for example, because whatever I was taught about that was lost.  Same with regards to Nazis.  I've had to relearn what most people take for granted.

And some argue that's why I really can't take stupidity -- because I relearned so much and can't take the idiots who don't even bother.  

So the point here is, you may be White and you may be on BLUESKY but that doesn't mean you have anything to share.

The Amy Goodman groupies.  You don't know Lewis Hill, you don't know PACIFICA RADIO, you don't know a damn thing so don't come at me with "Amy Goodman's only worth three million! I found that online!"  I don't know what she does with her money but she's taken in much more than that.

And PACIFICA is public radio.  So do your own work and find out how much she's paid.  

She did not create DEMOCRACY NOW! -- PACIFICA did.  She did not come up with the idea.  She was one of many hosts at the beginning -- a detail you won't find at the DN! website even if you click on "about."  Do you not know Salim Muwakkil?  He's only one of the original hosts.

And, no, you idiots, Amy should not be making millions because Rachel Maddow does.  Rachel works for a corporation  PACIFICA RADIO is not a corporation.  

And her heavy handed ways have put the radio network at risk.

WBAI should be sold off immediately -- the channel it's on and they should have to get a cheaper station.  

I hate to say that but that is reality.   PACIFICA is more important than Amy or WBAI.  Equally true, if it's not sold off to pay the debt soon, it probably won't be worth as much as it was because of the move towards internet and satellite radio.  

I'm a KPFA listener and I'm damn tired of PACIFICA RADIO suffering -- KPFA and the Los Angeles station having to share content when in the past each of them broadcast their own unique programs. 

The minute PACIFICA lost FREE SPEECH RADIO NEWS, there should have been a come to Jesus moment where people got real about the spending and about the huge debt that WBAI incurs and about the huge amount of money being wasted on DEMOCRACY NOW! when PACIFICA doesn't even own the archives of the program.

That's a whole other story.  But my point here is, stupid people need to shut their mouths.

I'm not wasting anytime trying to kindly correct these idiots anymore.

They're middle aged White people who don't do any work because they think they know it all.  How stupid are they?  One wrote she's "an independent."  No, dummy, you're a swing voter.  The media misled you years ago -- when it failed to use the term swing voter.  There are actual independent voters, it's not my job to educate you on it. 

Some idiot got into a serious discussion that I was having with a very smart BLUESKY-er to pick apart my comment on Bernie Sanders, as chair of the VA Senate Committee -- on the morning a scandal broke insisting that the focus of the hearing that day would be on holistic medicine and urging everyone to ignore the scandal for the hearing.  Fortunately, no Democrat took him seriously. 

So idiot barges in with something about "pain pills" causing suicides.

Idiot, we weren't talking to you.  And you're not contributing anything.

As I had said before she barged in, this was when the scandal about the VA keeping two sets of books.  Barack and Congress had called out the VA on the long wait time veterans were having to see doctors at the VA.  The VA responded by keeping a real book on wait time and a fake one and presenting the fake one as real.

This was a huge scandal and it went on for years.  It got immense press coverage.

Idiot, who said one damn thing about pain pills?

Stupidity stresses me out.  

If you've followed me my plan is to follow you back.  But right now, I just don't have time.  I can't get sucked into the stupid.  That's time I could be using elsewhere.

There are many great people on BLUESKY but there are also a bunch of lazy middle aged idiots who do not follow the news and who did not follow the news but want to pass of their Blue MAGA fantasies as facts.

I don't have time for that.

There are serious issues and these are serious times.  I don't have time for your hero worship of Amy Goodman or Bernie Sanders that leads you to either lie or present fantasies as fact.  

Serious issues?  We focused on immigration yesterday and today we're focusing on the attacks on the LGBTQ+ community after this first point about MAGA's attack on children.  Rebecca Shabad (NBC NEWS) reports:


Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., on Tuesday defended the impacts of the White House's federal aid freeze on school lunch programs by suggesting that some children should be working instead of receiving free lunch.

During an interview on CNN, McCormick praised the move as a way to broadly re-evaluate how the government allocates funding. CNN Anchor Pamela Brown noted that Head Start, which helps provide nutritional assistance to low-income children and families, is one of the programs that could be affected. She pressed McCormick on whether he would support cutting funding for free breakfast and lunches.

"Before I was even 13 years old, I was picking berries in the field, before child labor laws that precluded that. I was a paper boy, and when I was in high school, I worked my entire way through," McCormick said. "You’re telling me that kids who stay at home instead of going to work at Burger King, McDonald’s, during the summer, should stay at home and get their free lunch instead of going to work? I think we need to have a top-down review."


The only possible response to Rich McCormick is, "Rot in hell."  And he surely will.  

He was on marriage number two last year when he ended up leaving his wife for US House Rep Beth Van Duyne.  That's what the seventh Congressional district in Georgia believes in -- non-family values.  Sluts for representatives.  Once upon a time, character was important.  Not anymore obviously.  You've got thrice married Chump in the Oval Office despite the fact that he's cheated on every wife he's had and despite his multiple bankruptcies and despite his being a convicted felon.  Again, it just doesn't matter to voters.  Did 'reality' TV really corrupt the nation this badly?

MAGA is as hateful as their leader Chump.  They're hateful and they're bitter.  What's really sad is right now, this moment, they will never have it better.  But they're still bitter and they're still pathetic. 


After running a campaign that spent millions on transphobic ads and declaring his desire to rid schools of “transgender insanity," President Donald Trump is acting on the threats he made.

Shortly after being sworn in as president, Trump signed an executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” declaring that the United States government would only recognize two sexes, male and female.
With a single measure, Trump and the rest of the Republican Party signaled to transgender people across the country that they are not welcome in the United States.

There are so many other things that the government could focus on right now. They could have started off the administration by implementing a plan to improve the economy. Egg prices hit new highs in December, and there are signs the price will keep going up. Where’s the plan to help Americans with ever rising costs?  

Instead, the new Republican administration would rather use time and resources to attack the rights of less than 1% of the U.S. population. They're seemingly more interested in targeting Americans than they are in helping us. So I wanted to figure out what that target means for transgender people.

He doesn’t believe the Republicans are acting on values but are trying to score political points. Despite this tactic, trans issues are not motivating to voters. In an October Gallup poll, “transgender rights” ranked last in importance among 22 issues voters were polled on.

“Real people are being harmed, and it’s only going to get worse,” Jennings said.

The No. 1 issue in that poll was the economy, which the Trump administration has largely ignored in a tsunami of executive orders.
The executive order itself does several things. It mandates that the government will define people using the terms “biologically male” and “biologically female,” leaving intersex people and those outside the gender binary without accurate labels on government documents. It also stops the government's use of "X" as a gender marker on passports.

Intersex.  I mean no disrespect or harm to anyone when we discuss this and I use the term "hermaphrodite."  That was the term used for most of English history.  I use "intersex" when referring to today but to explain the scope I do use that term when going into history.  Because that term goes back to the 12 century.  Intersex people have always been with us -- even before the h-term.  But English speaking communities have been aware of this grouping.  Trump has rendered that grouping invisible and pretends they don't exist.  Native Americans have had many terms for intersex people.  Intersex people have existed as long as people have existed. 

In the 20th century, parents in the US often made the decision of whether to raise the child as a boy or as a girl.  Surgery took place in many cases.

That's why this screaming and horror from MTG and other historical idiots has always been so telling.  How did they grow up in the US without ever hearing of this?

They heard about it, they just chose to ignore the history because they want to demonize.
Surgery took place in many cases in the US in the past.  There is now a movement that argues that the surgery shouldn't take place -- I'm not referring to the idiots like MAGA -- I'm referring to people who have experienced it themselves of within their family.  

MAGA wants to erase lived experience because lived experience -- on every issue -- gender, race, labor, et al.  They can only trick people if they can render history invisible.  


In the hall of prejudice, MAGA has many helpers. 

Never forget that part of the reason Uncommitted worked so well in Michigan was their ties to homophobia and transphobia.  The hope that an immigrant community welcomed to the US and greeted in the state with tolerance would show tolerance to others was revealed to be bulls**t by the actions taken in Dearborn and Hamtramck where Muslims who took over the city government immediately began attacking the LGBTQ+ communities and trying to attack libraries as well.  Remember that.  And maybe next time remember that no fundamentalist is anyone's friend -- be they Christian fundamentalists, Muslim fundamentalists, Jewish fundamentalists, what have you.  The key trait they all share is hatred for freedom.  That's why citizens of Dearborn and Hamtramck were able to bond with MAGA  over hating transgender people.   Adrianna Rodriguez (USA TODAY) reports:

Despite public uproar over teenagers and children changing their genders, transgender teenagers and children rarely get prescribed gender-affirming medications, according to a new study.

Just .1% of children ages 8 to 17 who identify as transgender or gender-diverse were prescribed gender-affirming hormones or puberty blockers, according to a study by researchers at Harvard University and FOLX Health, a healthcare provider for the LGBTQ+ community.

The report, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, looked at five million private insurance claims filed between 2018 and 2022.

"The politicization of gender-affirming care for transgender youth has been driven by a narrative that millions of children are using hormones and that this type of care is too freely given. Our findings reveal that is not the case,” said the Harvard study’s lead author Landon Hughes, a postdoctoral fellow at the university’s school of public health.
The findings also showed that no patients under 12 received gender-affirming hormones and higher rates of puberty blockers were prescribed for patients assigned female at birth, whom study authors note typically experience an earlier onset of puberty than patients assigned male at birth.  


As I stated here after the election, certain people are on their own due to how they voted.  I have limited time.  I noted that I would use my time to defend the LGBTQ+ community.  They, of course, showed up for Kamala and our country on election day.  Imagine if, for just one day, every BLUESKY defender or Rashida Tlaib or Amy Goodman made time to do just one Tweet supporting transgender people?  It would be time better served and it would also make clear that they themselves weren't transphobes and homophobes.

Remember when we all had to stand for Gaza.  And the LGBTQ+ community was there.  Even though some Muslims -- even some in Gaza -- were online trashing them and posting things about how they better not expect that when the ceasefire came that they'd welcome gay people?  And LGBTQ+ people sucked it up and kept fighting for Gaza.  Rashida's biggest supporters don't support the LGBTQ+ community.   Let's note Raquel Willis (TEEN VOGUE): 

Dear trans and nonbinary youth,

With the inauguration of Donald Trump, our community has witnessed the culmination of a years-long attack on our truths and our lives. We are forced to reckon with the fact that millions of Americans elected a xenophobic leader with seemingly autocratic ambitions, one who seems hell-bent on making people on the margins disappear. There are many lessons to glean from this political moment, but one stands out. When hate is allowed to stand with inadequate resistance, it festers and grows.

I want to apologize to you for all of the ways that this country has failed you. Beyond Trump, there are bigoted politicians, billionaires, and public figures who have decided to sell your future away to accrue more capital and power. I also want to validate how you must be feeling. You may be mourning the life you thought you’d be living at this point. You may feel fearful about the uncertainty of your future. And you aren’t alone. Many of us adults have felt those things, too.

On election night, after it became clear that the Far Right would have control of nearly every level of our government, a few friends and I collapsed into each others’ arms. We soaked each other's shirts in tears as we tried to brace for the American nightmare heading our way. The next morning, I wondered if I should relinquish so many dreams I had for myself. I still haven’t grasped them back. I worried about my aging mother and what the toll of another potential Trump pandemic in the style of COVID-19 might mean for the years I had with her. And what about my nibblings, ranging from ages 7 to 14? How much smaller would this restrictive era threaten to make them? And then, I started to think about the changes I’d need to make out of safety. After nearly 20 years of being some kind of openly queer, would I have to run back to the closet? What kind of new targets would be placed on my back as an activist and writer? Would I lose access to the hormones I’ve been on for nearly 15 years?

Then, a familiar sense of resolve took over me. I remembered that I am just a bridge between our transcestors and you. Regardless of how impossible the obstacles feel right now, I am committed to building that freer, brighter future that you deserve.



What's Rashida doing for this community?  What are any Americans who supported Rashida's b.s. Uncommitted "movement" doing?  They are the people with targets on their backs and that would never have happened under a Kamala Harris presidency.  So what the hell are you useless idiots doing now to atone for your stupidity that put Chump back in the White House?  Oh, that's right.  You're all over BLUESKY promoting Rashida and the laughable notion that she could be the next senator out of Michigan. 

Remember that Rashida's cult put Gaza above everything else in an American election.  Immigrants didn't matter, reproductive rights didn't matter, diversity didn't matter, Civil Rights did not matter, Black history didn't matter, LGBTQ+ people didn't matter, women didn't matter, the Constitution didn't matter, democracy didn't matter . . .  They were the true single issue voters.  And they were stupid enough to think that Chump would be better for Palestinians than Kamala.  They were just that stupid.  Deeply, deeply stupid.  Unless, of course, they were never really trying to help the Palestinian people.  Again, they can try to atone for the damage they've done -- and include Jill Stein and her mini-me 'Butch' in this -- by finding their voices and defending at risk communities.   Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz (SLATE) reports:


An opinion piece recently came out in the New York Times looking at the ongoing debate on transgender youth. If you’ve read the piece, you might be forgiven for thinking that huge swaths of children are receiving surgery for gender dysphoria, and that many or even most of them regret their transitions. “I realized that I had lived a lie for over five years,” one destransitioning teen told the Times. Members of the trans community who track legislation and critique media coverage called the piece misleading, and even suggested it followed the “climate denier playbook.”

Now, I have no particular stake here. I’m not trans, I don’t work in that area of health care, and I’m a cis man. I am, however, an epidemiologist, and I spend a lot of my time checking scientific facts that are online with the goal of helping people better understand health, science, and how the media covers those things. In this case, one key question arose from the New York Times piece that author Pamela Paul did not really answer: What proportion of people who access medical care to transition genders regret doing so?

You might answer, “Why does anyone care?,” which is, to be honest, not unreasonable. Some proportion of people experience regret for any medical procedure, from chemotherapy to orthopedic surgery. Nonetheless, we don’t see op-eds about the awful risks of hip replacements. It’s inevitable that some percentage of teens who transition will regret it; the real question is whether the medical care is beneficial on the whole—not whether the occasional person later regrets a medical choice they made in their youth.

It’s also important to note that we don’t really care about the crude number of people who regret transition, we care about the rate. If more people choose to transition, then more people, in total, will regret it. If the number of people transitioning goes from (to use arbitrary numbers) 1,000 to 100,000, but the number of people regretting it goes from 50 to 100, then the rate has dropped massively and it’s a very good thing, even though the crude number has doubled.

A good place to start when looking at the rate of regret for people transitioning in modern medical settings is to think about the upper and lower bounds. The highest estimate that I’ve come across is this recent study of people using the U.S. military health care system. It doesn’t deal with regret head-on, though. The authors looked at transgender or gender-diverse people who were using their parent’s or spouse’s military health care to access hormones for gender-related care, and looked at how many of them stopped getting these drugs over a four-year period. At the end of the study, about 30 percent of the people who started accessing hormones through this system stopped, with a lower rate for kids and higher rate for adults.

(They may have gone elsewhere for hormones, though.)

The lowest estimate I’ve seen for regret after gender-related care is based primarily on people who have had gender-affirming surgery. A recent systematic review and meta-analysis—a type of study where the authors aggregate lots of papers into one big estimate—that combined such studies found an overall rate of 1 percent for regret after surgery for both transmasculine and transfeminine surgeries. This echoes other large cohorts which have found that only a tiny proportion of the people who have these surgeries eventually report regretting the procedure.




By the way, the easiest way to spot a transphobe?  And generally a homophobe in the last four years has been to look at the American claiming to be left that was screaming their loud mouths about Gaza.  They were the same ones -- like Max Blumenthal's grossly unattractive bride (there's a lot of laughter at her in the Blumenthal family).  Or, for that matter, Katie Halper.

Hey, Katie, you know that mutual gay friend we have?  We no longer share him.  He finds you repugnant.  He can't believe the way you've sucked up to the right and how you no longer bring gay people onto your show.  

Again, there's a reason we called these people Gaza Freaks.  They lived somewhere other than the real world.  They thought they could stamp their feet and get their way when, in fact, where we were at in May of 2024 was the furthest the issue had ever gotten in America.  And instead of working on that issue and expanding it, the Gaza Freaks ensured that the issue would fade by their attempt to bully the Democratic Party into doing what they wanted it to.  It was always stupid, deeply stupid.  First, you have another segment of Democrats who don't agree with you on Palestine.  That's a discussion/battle/fight you have to take care of outside of a presidential election.  Some of that disagreement is due to where loyalties are and some is due to decades of media coverage or miscoverage.  The notion that you were ever going to make the party or a presidential candidate say in a 2024 election that you were right and Israel was wrong wasn't going to happen.  There's also the reality that so many of you Gaza Freaks couldn't face which was a terrorist attack took place.  No that is not the starting point of history.  We noted that here repeatedly.  We also noted here repeatedly that collective punishment is illegal.  We defended the Palestinians.  We did not defend the terrorists.

B-b-but brick! Stone! Backed into a corner!

You know I can hear that and I can sympathize but I also know the law.  And when you target civilians, that is terrorism.  They didn't go after the Israeli forces -- that might happen in an action that was part of a rebellion.  They attacked a music festival.

And a musical festival.  Gaza Freaks (Americans without a clue) never really grasped that.  A long with every thing else that had to be overcome to win people to your side there was the issue of a music festival.

People who didn't even have a horse in the race heard attack on a musical festival and frowned. Because most of us like music.  Most of us can picture ourselves at a music festival in the future or in the past.

It was a terrorist attack on a musical festival.

Now I was part of the group advocating for a cease-fire (and realizing that would change very little due to the history in the area and the continued abuse of Palestinians).  I did so every day for over a year here.  I advocated for the innocents that were being slaughtered.  I used "genocide" before most people were comfortable with it.  

But I wasn't stupid enough to think that peace was coming in 2025.  

But you Gaza Freaks thought you knew best.  And all you did was elect Chump (who's going to destroy Gaza) and run off the support you did have from the American people.  It's really time for you to stop your bulls**t of "Rashida was defending her people!"  Her people are the American people.  That's the country she lives in.  That's the country she was born in.  That's the country whose Congress she serves in.  If Chump was so awful that she voted for him to be impeached -- TWICE! -- it is her responsibility to do everything in her power to see that he does not get back in the White House.

Instead, she took Democratic Party money and used their resources to fun her campaign but did not endorse the Democratic Party nominee.  

Rashida groupies try to pretend that those of us refusing to ignore what went down are holding her to a different standard.  They're ignorant liars who apparently are unaware of 2004 and our anger at Democrat Zell Miller and his refusal to support John Kerry for president.  


I get it, most of you Gaza Freaks aren't even Democrats.  You're Socialists ("independents" you love to pretend).  So you don't give a damn that Rashida stabbed the Democratic Party in the back.  But those of us who are Democrats -- and we outnumber you -- do a give a damn and we will continue to hold the backstabber accountable.

You can always go form your own party.  Maybe with Jill Stein!!!! But that would require real work and, as you made obvious in 2024, real work is too much work for you.

On Sunday, Wally, Cedric, Betty, Ann, Isaiah and I did a group post:



There are real issues and if you're on the left and helped put Donald Chump back in the White House, you damn well should be working to address real issues and not fan-boying online about Bernie or Rashida or Amy Goodman or anyone else.  I will support Rachel Maddow, she is under attack.  But I'm not fan-girling her.  At a certain age, you should damn well grow up.  Alex Bollinger (LGBTQ NATION) reports:

Prosecutors believe that Haim had access to Texas Children’s Hospital records even though he didn’t work there because he had previously done part of his residency there. He asked the hospital to reactivate his login and accessed the medical records of children not under his care. This happened after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declared gender-affirming care a form of child abuse in a nonbinding opinion.

Haim insisted that he anonymized the identities of the patients whose records he gave to Rufo, but there is dispute over whether he really did that. Assistant Clinical Professor Carmel Shachar of Harvard Law School told Assigned Media that the records Haim leaked were not de-identified in compliance with HIPAA, meaning that people could figure out who the records originally belonged to. This could potentially make the children whose records Haim leaked targets for harassment and bullying.

He also claimed that he had to make the records public because he is a mandatory reporter of child abuse, but Texas’ mandatory reporting law requires reporters to go to state authorities like the Texas Medical Board, not the media.


I can understand families might want to put this behind them.  But they do have the law on their side.  A medical professional illegally accessed their records.  A facility allowed that to happen.  There are strong grounds for suing both the doctor and Texas Children's Hospital.  He no longer worked there and did not need access.  He was granted access and that was a mistake but once giving this doctor who did not practice at the hospital computer access, it was their job to audit his computer access and to determine what he was doing.  Both the doctor and the hospital are legally liable.  In addition, by breaking HIPAA, he could be disbarred.

He did not follow whistle-blower guidelines but, more to the point, he was not a whistle-blower.  Chelsea Manning comes across documents and exposes them?  Whistle-blower.  Someone going on an illegal hunt into a person's medical records is not a whistle-blower.  As a doctor he understood the importance of medical privacy and he elected to shred the legal rights of people who were not even his patients.  I'd sue his ass and the hospitals and walk away with everything they had.


Where are the Rashida groupies defending trans people?  Or marriage equality (Khaleda Rahman of NEWSWEEK reports on Idaho state asking for the Supreme Court to overturn OBERGEFELL V HODGES)?   You're good at worshiping your false god Rashida, but you're very poor about defending any at risk communities.  But let's remember a trueism of Socialism: They don't defend gays, they didn't in the past.  As many left gay journalists would note, their Socialist peers just didn't care.  And they didn't care about the rights of those of us who are Black until they saw that we could -- and did -- build a movement without them.  Then, as usual, they came sniffing around and trying to be our friend.  They're not concerned with "identity politics" -- that's what the non-White, non-straight people recognize as basic rights. 



If you're looking for fan fiction, you've come to the wrong site.  There's work to be done -- real work.  Those of you on the 'left' who put Chump back in the White House?  You've played around enough and need to get to work or admit that you're useless and stupid.


The following sites updated:


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