Well worth the click! Well worth the subsequent clicks, too!
What Tengrain says:
Well worth the click! Well worth the subsequent clicks, too!
Well worth the click! Well worth the subsequent clicks, too!
Grenell Vows To Sue Musician For $1M For Canceling Kennedy Center Show Due To Dear Leader’s Renaming
tRump wants total power to rule /
Trump has retaliated against Colorado Gov. Jared Polis by denying FEMA reliefs for floods and wildfires and by ordering the dismantling of the nation’s premiere climate research facility.
Mr. Trump has privately said Larry Ellison assured him that he would turn CBS News, which the Ellisons took over when they bought Paramount, into a more conservative outlet, two people with knowledge of the president’s comments said.
As you can see above, Wright has adopted Trump’s stupid lies that solar and wind power simply turns off due to the weather at the moment.
What Trump means is that he has to confer with his master in Moscow first.
Earlier this month it was reported that Mahmoud, who remains jailed without bond, may present a “gay panic” defense, which is legal in Florida but banned in 20 states and Washington DC.
Government officials have traditionally steered clear of such overtly religious language, as the Constitution bans an official state religion. The First Amendment’s establishment clause prohibits the government from establishing a religion or favoring one religion over another, while the free exercise clause protects the religious expression of all faiths.
Earlier this month, members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee — whom Kennedy selected after firing the previous group — suggested digging into concerns about aluminum salts, though large studies have found them to be safe.
Sharing because I needed Abhijit Naskar’s gently assertive kick in the butt to remember humility with my service today.

Hello all. I hope you are all having a grand Christmas. I did. I am … yet now I am struggling.
See Ron’s sister has been with us for two weeks and she had been a great grand help. She took over ever duty I had and helped me get back to the blog. Plus she gave Ron a connection to his childhood and his youth. Plus she gave me all her husband’s clothing and we are the same size. So for Christmas I got a complete new wardrobe of shorts / pants / shirts / and dress stuff. I was down to only two ill-fitting pair of old pants that hung off me. So it was a timeless gift. But her help was not done.
She brought big sister energy so while I have tried hard to get Ron to throw out old construction debris that he had piled in several rooms I never could get him to do so. She did. Then she got him to organize and pack away a lot of stuff he was just piling up. I was so happy we got back to a having two rooms that we had lost to just Ron piling things in them. But it gets even better.
She and Ron spent the time looking at places here that might fit her needs so she could be here in the winters instead of being up north and she has found what she wanted, she put in an offer and the people accepted. So she will come stay with us on and off this winter and then next year be here full-time. I love it.
Please understand I never had a caring sibling. I met my wonderful “brother” Randy well into adulthood and Randy is everything an abused kid like myself could every hope for in a supportive sibling. He has been the brother I always wanted … yet never had until a decade ago. But Ron had a tight knit large family who cares for each other and really they do care and love each other. Watching him and Diane this last two weeks has been amazing. In a way I am jealous because no matter how hard they try to include me … they are in a world of their own past. Having Ron’s sister as a part of our lives is going to be grand.
So the adventure begins again. She has already given me ideas on ways she can help if I wish. But I love her ideas.
Now the ugly and bad. Off and on I have been struggling and doing everything to hide it from them. Several times at night both the cat and Ron tried to wake me as I started to yell or scream out. My nightmares have gotten much worse. During the day while they were in the house I would come into my office, shut the door, and breakdown sobbing in tears. I am trying so hard to hold it all together but the memories hurt so bad, they are there always now pushing at the walls I try to build up in my mind. It used to be they were contained but now they are simply there, looking over the wall, shouting at me constantly trying to get my attention.
I did what so many advised and I admitted to my primary care I needed help. He was the first primary care I ever told of my abuse and he impressed me with how he handled the news and me after I told him. But h e sent me to their therapist on staff. But she is a very young woman and she is a behavior therapist and I need a trauma therapist. She is all about how to feel good, such as walk more each day, but I need someone to tell and get help for being a 3-year-old tied to the stair banisters with my arms strung up while I could barely touch the floor. I was nude and sometimes I was blindfolded. Either way I was hit or raped in this position. I need someone to tell these memories to. And it won’t be this 20 year old woman who wants me to think of how I can make my days happier by thinking of sunshine.
So I have tried to do the best I can. Tomorrow Ron will take his sister to the airport and on the way home get the supplies for me to make a tomato spaghetti meal for Randy. Ron will make the meat balls while I make the sauce. I will pretend I am OK and everything is great. Yet inside I will hear the screams of a beaten raped little boy, I will ignore it while I make good for everyone around. And when I lay my head down on the pillow after trying so hard to stop from doing so … the nightmares will come, the memories, the feelings, the screams trying so hard to burst out. And I will control what I can, the cat or Ron will wake me if the noise from my mouth gets too loud. A night of hopefully a bit of rest. Only to wake early in the morning and get up to do it all again. My life, over and over again. Thank you for reading / listening. It is hard to describe what my life is, but maybe this is the best example.
Ron just went to bed. He tried hard to get me to go with him. He knows how hard it is for me and how it is getting harder. The saddest point is he tries to help but doesn’t know how. When I scream out at night he asks if he can hold me knowing that to just grab me or pull me to him will induce more trauma. Having written this with the memories fresh in my mind I am scared to join him in the bedroom. Yet I must. How to finish this post? I never wanted people to feel sorry for me, my life is what it is and what I have tried to make it. Yet the idea of going to bed scares me.
Yes I have a way to end this post. As a kid from 8 to my teen years I would leave the local school and bike to the local town library in our little cow town. I would stay there in safety instead of going home to be abused. The local librarians must have known of my abuse because one of them gave me a book that described what abused boys could do to get help. But like me they were afraid of the big bruiser gorilla that lived in my home that I had to return to. So while I was not allowed to have books at home because that was not what a real boy did, they kept my books behind their desk for me … and every day I was beaten and every night I was raped. But the next day I could go to that town library after school and lose my sore body in the books. But no adult ever became my hero. That was little Scotties life. Good night. Best wishes and hugs.
It has nothing to do with US national security and all the minerals / traffic rights to make ships pay / and the “rare earth” metals that tRump wants a piece of. It is about profit. Hugs
The paying tribute and bribes to tRump and his slush funds is so anti what the US should and used to stand for. It is the very thing the founding fathers were most against. The courts have gutted the holding of tRump to account but the emoluments cause is what this was designed to stop. Ask yourself if Biden / Obama / Clinton had been so blatant in demanding bribes would you tRump cult supporters be OK with it still? Hugs
tRump’s handpicked legal lapdogs / tRump legal woes / Canon still protecting tRump / ICE
The appeals court told her to have it completely wrapped up by the first week of January and this is not doing that. I expect more to happen fast with this. She ignored the appeals court order to please tRump.
“There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating and vomiting on themselves,” the college student from Venezuela who sought U.S. asylum, said. “Four guards grabbed me, and they beat me until I bled until the point of agony. They knocked our faces against the wall. That was when they broke one of my teeth.”
Increasingly, he blames their children as well.
Mr. Miller’s belief that seven decades of immigration has produced millions of people who take more than they give — an assertion that has been refuted by years of economic data — is at the heart of the Trump administration’s campaign to restrict immigration and deport immigrants already in the country.
Stupidity beyond belief and why do people believe it / Never challenge the dear leader / Cult of tRump
Fulnecky has been trying to leverage her idiocy into a career as a MAGA influencer.
The U.S. Air Force will provide Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt with military funeral honors, reversing a Biden-era decision that denied her family’s request, according to a legal group that has represented her family.
In June 2025, the Pentagon agreed to pay the Babbitt family a $5 million “wrongful death” settlement. Below, see the latest from Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who is himself reportedly suing the DOJ for $100 million.
This is not true. The construction industry has crashed in Florida. No workers so nothing being built. Half crews means nothing built. The work is far to hard for most people. Hugs
In his first year back in office, Mr. Trump has unabashedly adopted the trappings of royalty just as he has asserted virtually unbridled power to transform American government and society to his liking. In both pageantry and policy, Mr. Trump has established a new, more audacious version of the imperial presidency that goes far beyond even the one associated with Richard M. Nixon, for whom the term was popularized half a century ago.
Trump is expected to announce plans to build a new, large warship that Trump is calling a “battleship” and is part of his larger vision to create a “Golden Fleet” that includes as many as 50 support ships, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized comment publicly.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/02/white-house-media-bias-tracker-gimmick
The White House’s new media ‘bias’ tracker is a desperate gimmick
The site isn’t exposing misleading reporting – it’s revealing the bubble Trump increasingly inhabits
‘Given that bubble, harsh reality via the media is a rude intrusion.’ Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Donald Trump has used the mainstream press as a punching bag for many years, but in recent weeks his jabs have become even more frequent – and more ill-tempered.
He threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn last month over the editing of a documentary that aired more than a year ago. He called one White House reporter “piggy”, and told another – the well-regarded Mary Bruce of ABC News – that she was a “terrible person and a terrible reporter”. He called a New York Times reporter “ugly, both inside and out”.
And last Friday, his White House unveiled the latest wrinkle: a new website that supposedly tracks media bias. It offers a “Hall of Shame” and “media offenders of the week” to focus on reporting that the president dislikes. It names individuals and news organizations, and it points to the Boston Globe and CBS News, among others, for doing supposedly misleading and biased work. It uses terms like “left wing lunacy” to describe some of its complaints.
The site’s first iteration is particularly focused on media reporting about Trump’s call for six Democratic members of Congress to be arrested, tried and punished for their supposedly “seditious” video reminding military and intelligence personnel that they are not obliged to follow illegal orders. Trump even boosted a social media post that shouted: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD” (He later told Fox News he wasn’t “threatening death, but I think they’re in serious trouble”).
All this for a video in which the members of Congress sought to remind people that military members make an oath to the constitution, not to the president.
“Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders,” Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former astronaut and a US navy veteran, says on the video. Trump has been especially furious about Kelly, who seems like just the wrong person to go after, giving his background of service and high credibility.
The White House site crows that those journalists and outlets who reported on all this are now “exposed”.
There really is something being exposed here, but it’s not the reporting.
It’s Trump’s own increasing desperation and his decreasing ability to countenance anything other than flattery and sycophancy. That’s not what the mainstream press is – or should be – in the business of providing.
But as Jonathan Lemire reported this week in the Atlantic, this president has become more and more isolated lately. His social media appears mostly restricted to his own (poorly named) Truth Social site; his travel is generally not to meet with (or even see) ordinary Americans; instead he tends to hang out with the billionaires who want something from his administration and are willing to cozy up shamelessly to get it.
“President Trump has never before been in such an echo chamber,” according to Lemire. “His domestic travel has basically stopped. He sees rich donors and Maga media, not actual voters.”
Given that bubble, harsh reality via the media is a rude intrusion, and the new White House site is an evident effort to dispel the discomfort by disparaging it.
Who, I wonder, does Trump think he’s reaching with this effort?
The Maga faithful, of course, don’t need to be persuaded. They already are fully on board with anything their dear leader does. And most other Americans – even some of the millions who voted for him – already have his number.
Trump’s overall approval rating of 38% is the lowest since his return to the presidency, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. It has fallen dramatically since the start of that second term and is down two percentage points just since the beginning of November. Even his iron grip on the Republican party has weakened. All of that is a deep worry with the approach of the midterm elections – less than a year away.
Who can he blame?
Why, the press, of course. And that’s precisely what this new site is all about.
Will it work? Granted, trust in the mainstream press is low, so reporters and news organizations are a convenient target of criticism. And granted, media bias exists, though the most blatant is on the far right, the busy pro-Trump propagandists.
But I agree with Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who told the Washington Post that most people – whatever their politics – aren’t going to buy what this new “bias tracker” is selling.
“People understand the obvious conflict inherent in a presidential administration appointing itself the arbiter of media bias,” Stern said.
That’s especially true for media criticism from those doing the bidding of Trump, who has made his antipathy toward the press so central to his persona.
Calling out inaccurate and biased reporting is a fair pursuit. Journalists are far from flawless; they make mistakes, and the best of them correct those quickly and fully.
But that’s not what this new site is about. And trashing the media is not going to help Trump get out of the trouble – or the bubble – that he’s in.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
Randolph County Public Library is doing without its Board of Trustees for now.Commissioners in Randolph County, North Carolina dissolved the county library system’s entire board of trustees last week, after the trustees voted to keep a picture book about a transgender boy on library shelves.In October, the Randolph County Public Library’s Board of Trustees voted to keep the picture book Call Me Max on shelves despite some objections from members of the public. The book, written by Kyle Lukoff and illustrated by Luciano Lozano, tells the story of a young trans boy who asks to be called Max at school, eventually leading him to come out to his parents. The Randolph County trustees voted 5-2 to keep the book available, with some trustees reportedly commenting that removing or relocating the book would be a “slippery slope” toward censorship.In response, the Randolph County Board of Commissioners voted 3-2 on December 8 to dissolve the library board and its governing bylaws entirely, Blue Ridge Public Radio (BPR) reported. Commissioner Hope Haywood, who cast one of the two dissenting votes, told BPR that the other commissioners’ likely intended to appoint new members, but that she had wanted to establish plans to facilitate that process first.
“Three commissioners didn’t see it that way. Three commissioners felt like, just abolish the board and then figure it out,” Haywood told BPR.
Minutes and video of the December 8 meeting were not yet available at time of writing. According to coverage of the meeting by local news website Randolph Hub, commission chairman Darrell Frye made bizarre comments about a member of his family he said had killed themself after being “brainwashed” on social media, apparently in reference to being trans. “It’s about, to me, exposing a child before it’s able to make a decision. It’s personal to me,” Frye reportedly said. Commissioner Kenny Kidd opined that dissolving the board of trustees was “a black-and-white issue,” and that “the soul of our children” was at stake.
“We adhere to the rules for the disposition of materials. We have the responsibility to serve all sides of issues,” trustee Betty Armfield reportedly told the board, adding that it was “parents’ responsibility to choose what they believe are appropriate books for their children.”
Call Me Max will still be available to check out from Randolph libraries in the wake of the commissioners’ vote, the county public information officer told CBS affiliate station WFMY. Still, Lukoff — who won a 2020 Stonewall Book Award for another picture book about a trans boy, When Aidan Became a Brother — lamented the vote and what it represents on Instagram last week.
“A library’s entire board of trustees was fired and replaced because they refused to ban one of my books. It’s so terrible,” Lukoff wrote. “I just feel so bad for the people who live in that community and love their library,” he added in a later reply.
Anti-LGBTQ+ activists have increasingly targeted local and school libraries over the past several years, particularly amid the rise in popularity of “Drag Queen Story Hour” events, some of which have been the subject of bomb threats and harassment from far-right militia groups. Tennessee officials have ordered libraries across the state to remove books with LGBTQ+ themes or characters this year, while in South Carolina, the York County Library board voted last week to move all books dealing with gender identity to sections for patrons aged 13 and older. One conservative activist claimed that move was necessary for “protecting childhood innocence.”
Issues of access to LGBTQ+ materials are increasingly landing in courts. Earlier this year, former Wyoming librarian Terri Lesley settled a wrongful dismissal lawsuit with county officials for $700,000, after she was fired in 2023 for refusing to remove LGBQ+ books from children’s and young adult sections of her library. (Neither party admitted wrongdoing as a result of the settlement.)
“People that want to keep pushing an agenda to go against these library materials and the First Amendment, I hope they see this, and I hope it’s a deterrent,” Lesley told CBC Radio in October.
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Dr Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Mehmet Oz, better-known as Dr Oz, has raged about “$150k penis surgery” for trans youth, but he failed to cite any facts.
Dr Oz, who leads Medicaid and Medicare, announced on Thursday (18 December), alongside health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, measures that will ban gender-affirming care for trans youth.
The ban, part of Dr Oz’s bid to end “taxpayer funding of sex rejecting procedures for children in Medicaid and CHIP [children’s health insurance program], full stop”, takes the form of two new proposed rules from Medicaid and Medicare.
The first prevents doctors and hospitals from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement for gender-affirming care provided to trans youth under the age of 18, while the second blocks all Medicaid and Medicare funding for any services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care.
Medicaid, which is the health care program that covers low-income Americans, alongside older and disabled citizens, is taken at most hospitals, meaning the proposals could have a wide-ranging effect, as per New Hampshire Public Radio.
During announcing the proposals, Kennedy referred to gender-affirming care as “malpractice”, while Dr Oz went completely off topic.
The 65-year-old began ranting about the prices of bottom surgery, which is very rarely performed on individuals under 18.
“A vaginoplasty – a procedure a child does not need – costs $60,000,” he claimed, adding: “Shockingly, a phalloplasty, the creation of a penis, costs, on average, in America, $150,000 per child.
“I do believe, with doing some work, that these prices have continued to increase due to increased manufactured demand,” he continued. “A scrotalplasty, where you add testicles? That’s extra.”
Dr Oz didn’t clarify where he pulled his quoted figures from, but according to the Gender Confirmation Center, the price of a vaginoplasty is between $23,000 and $24,500, while phalloplasty ranges between $35,000 and $50,000.
According to 2025 data from the Williams Institute, about one per cent of people aged 13 and older identify as trans in the US, and despite the proposals attacking gender-affirming care for trans youth, multiple studies show that surgeries are rarely performed on minors.
A 2024 study by researchers at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health found that no gender-affirming surgeries were performed on trans or gender diverse youth (TGD) aged 12 and younger in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available.
For teens ages 15 to 17 and adults ages 18 and older, the rate of undergoing gender-affirming surgery was 2.1 per 100,000 and 5.3 per 100,000, respectively. The majority of surgeries were chest surgeries.
Co-author Elizabeth Boskey, instructor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, said: “We found that gender-affirming surgeries are rarely performed for transgender minors, suggesting that US surgeons are appropriately following international guidelines around assessment and care.”
Lead author Dannie Dai, research data analyst in the Department of Health Policy and Management, added: “Our findings suggest that legislation blocking gender-affirming care among TGD youth is not about protecting children, but is rooted in bias and stigma against TGD identities and seeks to address a perceived problem that does not actually exist.”
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