Some background for those new here. We take care of three cats, two also mooch / are fed by the neighbors also. One is our house cat Odie, then there is Tupac who is an inside / outside cat, and then there is Smokey an outside feral female who hangs out with Tupac and she will come into the family room to eat but won’t stay. Even though Tupac eats most of his food at our home, spends most of his day inside with us, if it is a nice night a lot of nights he likes to spend outside some or all of the night. If it is cold or raining he stays inside. Even though others feed them, it always seems to fall to Ron and me who takes Tupac to the vet and pay the bills, even though it seems the others have a lot more money. Maybe that is why. When Ron told the neighbor woman today who we see feeding them the costs, well she did not offer to help.
We have been noticing Tupac was getting thinner and thinner and thinner. Last year when we took him in for his shots and deworming he was also thin, but then once dewormed started to gain weight. But like I said, we noticed that he was losing weight fast. The last week or longer, he has spent more and more time inside. Then last Wednesday morning he threw up a lot of green bile looking liquid. Well sometimes he catches local rabbits or squirrels, other small game and eats it. So we worry he will get something. Or he will eat something that will make him sick that someone left out or an anti-cat person who wanted to poison the cats. His stomach made sounds all the night before and that day. But Thursday morning I found clear liquid throw up in the kitchen. Friday morning I found the same thing in the hallway. He had been staying in all week, which was not normal, as I already said. Again he was not eating or even drinking. Ron talked to one of the other people feeding them and she said Tupac quit eating last week also. I got him to drink a little water.
When Ron got up Friday morning I told him we should call the vet’s office. We had been talking about it, and knowing it was Friday I did not want to pay the costs of an emergency weekend visit, and Tupac was getting more thin and not eating or drinking. But as we had no appointment the vet’s office said we could bring him in, drop him off and they would see him when they could. That cost us $110.00 alone. But the worst was to come. Turned out our worst fears were not the problem, which meant Tupac was not going to die of feline leukemia or need surgery we couldn’t afford. But … it turns out he had an infection in his ear, maybe from a fight where he got scratched. The vet cleaned all that and gave him something for it. But … It seems his thyroid is seriously jacked up, running really too high. The test reads normal at 4 and Tupac was 12. He will need daily medication. The vet gave us two weeks of pills and we need to contact an online animal pharmacy for a medicated cream to rub on his ear which takes the place of the pills. We have never been able to get a cat to take a pill. This morning Ron tried to get Tupac to eat and take the pill. He refused both.
But then the hammer dropped. The total vet bill came to $530.00 and that was before we order the cream she gave us a prescription for. That is going to be more expensive than the pills the vet warned us. We had only $270.00 in both bank accounts until Ron gets his monthly Social Security late in the month. I transferred money from savings. So with Ron’s medication in January needing to be fully paid, something in February that needed to be paid, and the cat’s vet bill I had taken out of savings so far this year a total of $1,140.00 with no clue how to put it back if medicine and medical bills don’t slow down. I guess my new glasses will have to wait until fall, if not until next year.
What had made the day even worse for me and upset me was that I had spent all week catching up with comments and others blogs. Seriously when I went to bed Thursday evening I had everything caught up. Friday morning due to Ron having made a large roast, potatoes, corn, and gravy supper meal there were a lot of dishes and kitchen mess. So while we waited to hear from the vet, I helped Ron clean up and do dishes. Then in the morning while doing dishes Ron asked me to make a tomato red sauce. I had to use tomato puree instead of sauce as Ron got the wrong stuff. It made a nice sweet basil sauce. Ron made his wonderful meatballs. But by the time I got the sauce done, the bread ready to bake, the plates, strainers, and serving things set up I was wiped out. I had the water ready for the spaghetti but I couldn’t stay standing up even with all the break through medications. I was done, so Ron took over.
What this did blog wise was make me basically miss an entire day and by the time I opened up the bell notifications just before going to bed, I had lost some of the older comments and posts. Well there is another day. As always if you leave a comment and I have not responded to it in a few days send me another. I am not sure how much I can do today because I am already suffering badly sitting in my chair. I suffered through making eggs for breakfast because Ron loves how I make eggs over medium, cooked whites, runny yellow yoke. So now you’re caught up. Hugs. Scottie
Even though the media won’t report on how badly tRump is failing, we must. The public must know before voting. Plus we must remind people that reports show that the White House was awash with drugs, speed, uppers, sleep pills, pain pills, cocaine, and Adderall. Yet tRump and the maga bunch act so holy and pure. Hugs. Scottie
Donald Trump had several verbal slip-ups at his rally in North Carolina on Saturday, prompting the internet to go wild There were several instances in which the former reality TV star flubbed his lines, glitched, or otherwise slurred through his standard stump speech.
Conservative columnist Tom Nichols said the people in Trump’s audience “mostly know he’s beyond addled now.” “You can keep showing it to them, and they don’t care, because they think it’ll be a hilarious lib-own to put him back in the White House and hand him the codes to 1500 nuclear weapons.”
Montage of 32 clips from Trump’s two speeches yesterday where he mispronounced words, got confused, mixed up names, forgot names, and babbled insane nonsense. pic.twitter.com/SQeURo2zhd
"Putin has so little respect for Obama that he's starting to throw around the nuclear word" — Trump again forgets who's president pic.twitter.com/ejB2iddGoD
High as a friggin kite, sweating like a pig. I’ve watched every Trump interview and speech for years – he’s never talked this fast. He sounds like Junior now. Doesn’t remember Milei’s name either, who he hung out with at CPAC just last week. https://t.co/ltzc3yfuQO
The MSM is salivating for the stories about Trump winning in November and soon causing total mayhem — they don’t get it that THEY are the very ones who’ll be first on the chopping block. Their blindness is beyond reason.
This is from corporate mainstream media. Let’s hope it ends the myth the anti-trans haters have been pushing, which has long been debunked. Maybe now they will stop spreading lies and learn that they have been wrong, stop hating trans people, and accept them. Oh well, I know, some people just can not accept change and new information / understanding. For those wanting to watch the video and better see the graph please go to the link. Best wishes. Hugs. Scottie
Most people are satisfied with life after transition. More than 9 in 10 respondents were at least a little more satisfied with their life after transitioning.
The National Center for Transgender Equality released early insights from its 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey, the largest survey of trans people in U.S. history.
A survey of more than 90,000 transgender people in the U.S. — the largest nationwide survey of the community ever — found that trans people continue to experience workplace and medical discrimination. However, the overwhelming majority of them still report more life satisfaction after having transitioned.
The National Center for Transgender Equality, or NCTE, one of the country’s largest trans rights organizations, released its 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey Early Insights report Wednesday after a yearslong delay due, in part, to the pandemic. The survey, the most comprehensive look to date at life for transgender people in the U.S., comes as hundreds of bills in the last three years have attempted to roll back trans rights, most often by restricting trans people’s access to transition-related health care and trans students’ abilities to play school sports.
“There’s still a drought of information available to lawmakers, the media and advocates regarding our experiences and our needs,” NCTE Executive Director Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen said at a news conference Tuesday. “At best, we’re working in a vacuum of information. At worst, we’re combating dangerous misinformation being spread by anti-trans extremists. Without question, the misinformation and lack of understanding is underpinning these escalating legislative attacks against our community.”
A woman attends a rally in support of trans youth in schools on June 26, 2023, outside the Fayette County Public Schools central office in Lexington, Ky.Ryan C. Hermens / Lexington Herald-Leader via Getty Images file
The organization’s 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey had been the largest survey of trans people in the country, with nearly 28,000 respondents 18 and older, and it has been widely cited, including by Congress and the Supreme Court. Josie Caballero, the director of the survey, said the 2022 iteration more than tripled the number of respondents — with a total of 92,329 from every state and many U.S. territories — and was improved in a number of other ways. For example, it included 605 possible questions (though no respondent received all possible questions), up from 324 in the 2015 survey, and it included more than 8,000 respondents who were 16 and 17. However, study authors note that respondents who participated in the online survey were not drawn from a random sample and that though the sample is large, the findings might not be representative of all trans people.
Of the 84,170 adult respondents, 38% identified as nonbinary, 35% identified as transgender women, 25% identified as transgender men and 2% identified as cross-dressers.
Continued discrimination and mistreatment
Among the key findings released Wednesday, the survey found that trans people continue to report experiencing discrimination and mistreatment because of their gender identities and/or expressions.
More than one-third of adult respondents, or 34%, were experiencing poverty at the time of the survey, and 18% were unemployed. More than 1 in 10, or 11%, of respondents who had ever held jobs said they had been fired or forced to resign or had lost jobs or been laid off because of their gender identities or expressions. And, in line with previous survey findings, 30% of respondents had experienced homelessness in their lifetimes.
Of adult respondents who saw health care providers in the previous 12 months, 48% reported having had at least one negative experience because they were transgender, including being refused health care, having staff members use the incorrect pronouns for them or having providers use abusive language or be physically rough or abusive while treating them. Fear of mistreatment prevented 24% of respondents from seeing doctors when they needed it in the 12 months before the survey.
Many respondents also reported past mistreatment in school. Of adult respondents, 80% who were out or perceived as trans in K-12 experienced one or more forms of mistreatment, including verbal harassment, physical attacks, online bullying or being denied use of the restrooms or locker rooms that matched their gender identities. Of the 8,159 respondents who were 16 and 17, 60% reported such mistreatment.
Higher life satisfaction after transition
Despite those negative experiences, the vast majority of adult respondents, 79%, who lived at least some of the time in different genders from the ones they were assigned at birth reported that they were “a lot more satisfied” with their lives. An additional 15% reported they were “a little more satisfied.”
——————————————————————————————
Please see the chart at the link above. The written version I have included below.
Most people are satisfied with life after transition
More than 9 in 10 respondents were at least a little more satisfied with their life after transitioning.
This bar chart shows how respondents who had transitioned genders described their satisfaction with life after transitioning. 79% were a lot more satisfied, 15% a little more, 3% neither more or less, 1% a little less and 2% a lot less satisfied.
A lot more satisfied. 79%
A little more satisfied. 15%
Neither more or less satisfied. 3%
A little less satisfied. 1%
A lot less satisfied. 2%
Respondents who received transition-related medical care reported similarly high rates of satisfaction. Of respondents who were currently receiving hormone treatment, 84% said receiving such treatment for their gender identities/transitions made them “a lot more satisfied” with their lives, and 14% said it made them “a little more satisfied.” Just 1% said hormone treatment made them neither more nor less satisfied, and less than 1% said hormone treatment made them a lot less satisfied.
Of respondents who underwent at least one form of gender-affirming surgery, 88% said it made them “a lot more satisfied,” and 9% said it made them a little more satisfied. Less than 2% total said surgery made them a little less or a lot less satisfied.
“That might seem obvious to some of us that of course if you’re transgender and you need transition-related health care, of course your life is better off when you get that health care,” Heng-Lehtinen said Tuesday. “But it’s really important to have actually asked people and found out objectively what is their experience, because transition-related health care is otherwise so under attack in state legislatures around the country.”
Effects of anti-trans legislation
In the last three years, 23 states have restricted gender-affirming health care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries — for minors and, in a few cases, adults, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. Half of states have banned trans student-athletes from playing school sports on the teams that align with their gender identities rather than their assigned sexes at birth, while 10 states have passed laws restricting what bathrooms trans people can use in schools, colleges and/or government-owned buildings.
Nearly half of respondents to the latest U.S. Transgender Survey said they had thought about moving to other states because their state governments considered or passed such laws that target transgender people, and 5% — about 4,600 people — said they had actually moved to other states because of such legislation.
The top 10 states where trans respondents most often reported moving from were, in alphabetical order, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
The state of trans rights across the country does not necessarily reflect what trans people are experiencing at home with their families. Of adult respondents, 67% reported that their immediate families were either supportive or very supportive, while 22% reported they were neither supportive nor unsupportive and 12% reported they were either unsupportive or very unsupportive.
Of 16- and 17-year-old respondents, 44% reported that their families were either supportive or very supportive, while 28% reported that they were neither supportive nor unsupportive and 29% reported they were unsupportive or very unsupportive.
“It’s important to see that many trans people do have supportive families, since we often hear and see otherwise,” Sandy James, one of the report’s authors, said at Tuesday’s news conference.
Heng-Lehtinen said the new data will revolutionize the field of transgender advocacy.
“I am confident that the results of the 2022 survey will not only serve as a crucial tool for education, research and policy, but it will catalyze a paradigm shift for the movement for transgender advocacy by empowering advocates with robust and current data regarding our needs and experiences,” he said.
Courts, including the SCOTUS, have long held that congress gets to set its own rules. Period. They just upheld that with the fines for not wearing masks. So the idea that a court in Texas can invalidate a law because during covid the Speaker of the House allowed voting by remote or proxy is crazy. But more than that, stop and look at what part of the bill that the Texas Attorney General is fighting, fair pay and equality for pregnant women. Yes protections for pregnant women is something Texas is against! What happened to much vaunted and talked about wanting women to get pregnant and forced to have babies, but they don’t want to protect them in the workforce. Oh now I get it, … The work force. This is about them wanting pregnant women at home dependent on their husband. By my dogs that love gravy, this is right back to Christian men ruling the home and working with women waiting at keeping the house, raising the man’s issue, having meals ready, and being ready to please the man. Talk about wanting to return to the 1950s. I know I say that about their stance on LGBTQIA to wipe us out of society, but now I realize they intend that for women also. Hugs. Scottie.
Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration over a pregnant worker protection law that he said was unconstitutional because it passed mostly by proxy vote.
he U.S. Capitol during sunrise in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 15, 2020. Credit: REUTERS/Al Drago
A federal court in Lubbock ruled Tuesday that proxy voting in Congress doesn’t count toward a quorum, weakening a law to protect pregnant workers that was passed with proxy votes.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration last year over a massive government funding package that passed largely by proxy votes because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding package, passed in December 2022, included the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which protects accommodations for pregnant employees in the workplace and allows workers to sue employers for failing to do so. It prohibited employers from denying employment opportunities or forcing pregnant workers to go on leave if alternative accommodations were possible.
Paxton argued the Constitution requires a physical majority of members in the U.S. House to pass legislation. Since a majority of members of the House voted on the funding package by proxy, Paxton said it was unenforceable.
Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed members to vote by proxy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Members of both parties took advantage of proxy voting for a range of reasons, from meeting with lobbyists to promoting books. The funding package came to a House vote in late December when many members had already left Washington for the holiday recess.
Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas agreed with Paxton’s understanding of a quorum.
“Based on the Quorum Clause’s text, original public meaning, and historical practice, the Court concludes that the Quorum Clause bars the creation of a quorum by including non-present members participating by proxy,” Hendrix wrote in his opinion.
Paxton took issue with the PWFA in particular in his original lawsuit, asserting it put undue burden on the state government to accommodate its pregnant employees. He wrote Texas already has provisions to accommodate pregnancy and that the law unconstitutionally opened the state to lawsuits over the federal law.
Hendrix ruled the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act unenforceable against the state government and its agencies. It does not nullify the entire $1.7 trillion spending package. Doing so would jeopardize programs across the federal government, including defense spending, health care and veterans programs.
Hendrix gave the federal government a week to appeal.
It was not the first legal challenge against proxy voting. Former House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sued to end proxy voting in 2020, but a federal court in Washington ruled it did not have the authority to rule on the House’s procedures. The Supreme Court declined to take the case.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, led an amicus brief last year supporting Paxton’s lawsuit. Roy was one of the fiercest opponents of the spending package, which he said amounted to government waste without appropriate oversight.
“The Constitution was made for times such as this, when government may claim emergency powers or special privileges to respond to extraordinary circumstances,” Roy wrote in the amicus brief. “But affording the government such powers undermines our structure of government, and ultimately imperils American citizens even more than infectious disease does.”
I don’t think it is cognitive dissonance; I think it’s deliberate. They clearly want fewer women in the workforce, and will exploit any avenue they can to push them out. With this, they get the added benefit of weakening a federal law for the whole country.
It looks like this judge views this differently than the House Parliamentarian. The wiki page for this Fed judge had this note:
This contradicted the opinion of the House Parliamentarian, who had determined that rules allowed members to vote remotely and that their presence counted toward a quorum.
More attacks on women and reproductive rights. Forcing pregnancy and denying rights to pregnant people puts us back in the 1930s. Undoing all the gains of the Civil Rights era is the point to these people.
Once again, a direct assault on women. I wonder if it’s even possible for women to rise up out of their second class citizen mindset and vote these people out of office.
The hardest thing to understand is that many women AGREE with being controlled by men. How that attitude made it through the 20th century is unfathomable.
WTF? This violates the Enrolled Bill Doctrine. If Congress says a bill was properly passed procedurally & sent to the president, a court cannot look behind it.
Do 80% of transgender kids grow out of gender dysphoria? Do 80-90% of trans people desist? Here, we look at the Desistance Myth using an informed understanding of Gender Dysphoria and its diagnostic criteria in the DSM 5, the defunct diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder from the DSM 4, and recent research from reputable medical institutions. And yes, we analyze the famous Thomas Steensma study (2013) and detransition rates overall.
Flat out, I love this show. The show runs Monday to Friday, with Emma running the show on Thursdays, which is Sam’s day off. The show is about three hours long, divided into two parts. The free half is mostly news and interviews, and the fun half is with calls and IMs. Now don’t panic, if you are poor like me you can still see the entire show. There are two ways. First if you can not afford it they give free memberships if you need one. Or do what I do. The way I do it can be a pain in the butt, but it works. Wait until the show starts on YouTube. Open the live broadcast, then in the description box they include the link to the fun half. Click that and it switches to the entire show. Now as long as you don’t close the browser you have the link to the entire show for free. You don’t have to watch it all then, like any YouTube video or live stream, you can pause it and go do things, often I will start watching it and finish in the morning, leaving the computer tab open all night. Anyway, here are the clips. I especially like the ones that showed how clearly Israel was lying and got caught, and how the republicans had to admit that they did not have anything on Biden. Plus the one of right wing media correcting tRump’s claims of winning the election was fun to watch. Hugs. Scottie
Now we move to the horrible lies Israel has told. Hugs. Scottie
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/73c586efa3e9a3c02a1a017be6a2f89a/US%20Capitol%20DC%20REUTERS%20TT.jpg)
Scottie's Playtime 