Political cartoons / memes / and news I want to share. 3-6-2026
Tag: Healthcare
Oregon man sentenced after violent hate crime against gay man
Again Christian fundamentlist rehtoric and constant attacks on LGBTQ+ people by religious leaders lead to the gullible doing actions like this. He knew demons would be there and he needed to be the hero and slay the evil man living in a way that made his god un happy. Every church leader who preaches hate against other communities should be held responsible for the actions of those who listen to their ridiculous, hateful claims and then act on them. Hugs
McGee told detectives they met on Grindr, and that he went to his apartment because he knew “demons would be there,” according to court documents. He also told detectives he intended to “slay” and “get rid of” the victim.
Investigators discovered that McGee planned the attack ahead of time, and including searching the internet for violently homophobic material, purchasing the weapon and searching for how to get away with murder, as well as how to dispose of a body.
https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/oregon-man-sentenced-after-violent-hate-crime-against-gay-man/
An Oregon man was sentenced on Tuesday after he assaulted a man in 2021 due to his sexual orientation.
Daniel McGee, 26, was sentenced to just over 12 years in prison, along with five years of supervised release.
“The right to live safely in one’s community is a fundamental civil right. The District of Oregon remains committed to combating hate crimes and protecting that right for all,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon Scott E. Bradford. “While no conviction can undo the harm caused, we hope this sentence will bring some measure of justice to the victim and our community.”
“Hate crimes impact not just individuals, but entire communities,” added FBI Portland Special Agent in Charge Matt Torres. “The FBI works together with our partners to prevent hate crimes from impacting our communities, and every attack on someone because of who and what they are deserves to be acted on by the full extent of the law.”
McGee made national news in 2021 when he was charged with attacking a man he met on Grindr, a dating app for gay men.
In court documents, prosecutors said he used the screen name “str8 curious” and arranged to meet the man at his apartment. He said he had just turned 18 and wasn’t ready to kiss yet, but wanted to make sure they would be alone.
But when McGee arrived at the apartment, he attacked the man. He struck the victim over the head repeatedly using a small wooden club known as a tire thumper. Multiple callers told emergency dispatchers they could hear someone screaming for help.
When police arrived, they found both men inside the victim’s apartment. The victim had life-threatening injuries, including multiple lacerations to the sides and back of his head, and a large portion of his scalp was missing.
McGee told detectives they met on Grindr, and that he went to his apartment because he knew “demons would be there,” according to court documents. He also told detectives he intended to “slay” and “get rid of” the victim.
Investigators discovered that McGee planned the attack ahead of time, and including searching the internet for violently homophobic material, purchasing the weapon and searching for how to get away with murder, as well as how to dispose of a body.
In November 2021, McGee was charged with a federal hate crime involving an attempt to kill. He pleaded guilty in federal court in Nov. 2025.
Political cartoons / memes / and news I want to share. 3-2-2026
C-SPAN Anchor Stunned By Struggling Caller
A poor person calls in to explain how they have nothing and no way to live with all these cuts to social services. Horrific. The Democrats must promise to fix this and return the safety to the safety nets. Hugs
Political cartoons / memes / and news that I want to share. 3-1-2026
The diagnosis of my pain doctors and it was worse than I thought.
I have been promising this post since monday. But I have always been too tired or in too much pain to write it or post it. I am going to start this tonight but it is late for me and I may go to bed before finishing so it may take several days.
The fact is before I even went to my pain doctor to tell me the result I knew things were bad. In the morning I can only sit in my chair for at most two hours before I have to get up and do something that helps relieve the pain. Mostly that is going to bed. I don’t sleep just lay their reading news or telling my self stories I create hoping to fall asleep. Randy sent me a headband with speakers but that just interferes with my own thoughts and keeps me awake. It was a good try and I bought one for Ron and he loved it. I will give this one to him. I go to bed and lie there only to get up and sit for a couple of hours to have the pain again overtake me. Once the pain gets that bad it is 10 to 15 minutes at most before I have to leave the desk and simply walk around or do something because the pain gets so bad so fast.
Also Tupac is on the desk being as close to me as he can. He is not lying on the towel I leave down for him but as close to the keyboard as possible even at time placeing his paws on the on the keybord hitting random keys. He wants to be as close to me as possible since Ron has been away so long. He feels he lost another human. I will be exciteed t0 see him react when Ron gets home on monday night.
So before the doctor told me the damage I knew something was badly wrong. So remember that even before I talked to the doctor I knew something had gone drasticly wrong. Sadly the MRI showed that.
Yup figured that would happen the pain levels are too high so I am going to bed. It is 8 PM my time.
It is now Saturday and I am trying hard to get this post done and out. But today my pain levels are very high and it is difficult to focus but I will do my best.
One of the things that the doctor told me was that my spine is no longer aligned; the disks are not lined up with each other but shifted to different degrees. Remember this was only the lower spine now they are going to MRI the upper spine. Second my spine has curved wrong. Then we got to the serious stuff. Degenerative discs, bulging discs, and discs so damaged that the nerves are outside the spinal channel. The arthritis is so advanced it is deep / spread in each vertebra. She tried to explain all the medical terms. At one point she excused herself to go speak to the surgeon I see for spine shots. When she came back it was with bad news. He no longer thinks epidurals will help me in my lower spine and I need nuero surgeon to do back surgery. Crap I cannot afford that. I am losing my sight, Ron has to have eye surgery right away, and the van needs 2 grand in repairs. That doesn’t even include my eye surgery and the repairs on our home.
While I did not understand everything she said I so desperately wished Ron had been there as he often explained these things to me later, and I have forgotten some of it, the situation is I need an MRI of the upper spine as well, she has refered me to her prefered spianl nueraal surgenon. Then I will need spinal surgery as the state and federal government won’t let them increase my pain medication because I can’t take the fentanyl patches with my skin allergies. I am being squeezed into a surgery I cannot afford or seeking illegal drugs for relief to be able to function.
I remember when I started in this clinic in 2009. They looked at my MRI of my spine and gave me 75 gm of morphine twice a day. I asked it to be reduced to half that amount and it was and I could live normally. But after the opioid “crisis” the states started to inject non-medical legislators into the medical field to show they were tough on abuse and misuse of drugs. It got ever more crazy until my life went from normal and even being able to work for a few years to not even getting enough pain relief to sit in my desk chair and blog for an hour. Now the federal government is demanding it be restricted even further, as RFK Jr. taking steroids can work out in jeans. On the restrictions I can’t get enough relief to blog for any extended time of the day. I spend half of my awake time in bed instead of at my desk. I struggle to stand to do dishes. I just told Ron that I cannot clean the floors before he gets home as I tried and it left me in tears. Even with our lightweight, easy to use cleaning devices. The damage to my spine and the lack of medical relief have gotten that bad. This makes no sense to me. Why deny me the pain blocking medications that allow me to fuction semi normally. It simply makes no sense to me. Why put me in this state what is the goal?
Do you see my point? Why put me and people like me through this? Do they want us to use illegal means for relief, or do they want us to suffer to death and go away? Do they care about us at all as they make these rules? There is more things my pain doctor told me about my spine I did not list yet, things like protrusions, spikes hooking nerves, some thing she kept say stenoisis, and nerves being pinched between vertebrae. At one point she mentioned I have advance degerneritive disc, I so wish Ron was there as I understood so little of it, then came the but you need a neurosurgeon and back surgery to help you because the state and federal government won’t let us give you enough medical relief to have any life. I hate this regressive holier than thou republican elected officials that swallow all the illegal drugs they can get from their providers while denying us poor people relief for bigoted racist reasons and their personal gains.
I am sure I left things out. I had to take after talking to Ron a saved 30 miligarm instant relief morphine because I was going out of my mind. I try desperately to save extras so when the pain is so off the chart I can get relief. But with the new restrictions, how do I do that? Why do the people in power who have access to pill mills and who have no pain and want to just make a name for themselves while doing the very thing they legislate against try to hard to make the live so people like me so hard? And I am poor and scared. Hugs
American Psychological Association Reaffirms Support For Trans Youth Care, Pushes Back Against NYT
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/american-psychological-association
A recent article from Jesse Singal in the New York Times seemed to indicate the organization might be quietly retreating from supporting trans youth care.
B Christopher/Alamy
Yesterday, anti-transgender activist and columnist Jesse Singal published a piece claiming there were “cracks in the wall” around gender-affirming care (which you can find fully fact-checked here). To make that case, he relied heavily on a statement from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons that bypassed the organization’s normal scientific review process and was advanced under pressure from leadership aligned with the Trump administration, including a president who is a major Republican donor. Singal also invoked the American Psychological Association, suggesting the organization was retreating from its 2024 position supporting transgender care and rejecting claims that gender identity is “caused” by external factors. But a representative for the APA tells Erin In The Morning that the organization stands firmly by its 2024 guidelines supporting transgender youth care and provided documentation indicating Singal mischaracterized its position.
“No, APA’s position has not changed,” says a representative speaking for the APA, attaching a link to their 2024 policy statement which provided broad support for gender-affirming care. “APA continues to support unobstructed access to evidence-based care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals of all ages.”
The 2024 policy statement is to date one of the most significant supportive stances of any medical organization for gender-affirming care. It states that gender-affirming medical care is medically necessary, opposes bans on gender-affirming care, declares that being transgender is not caused by autism or post-traumatic stress, establishes the organization’s support for combatting disinformation on transgender healthcare, and finds that rejection of a trans youth’s gender identity can increase their risk of suicide and harm their psychological wellbeing. The policy was passed overwhelmingly, 153-9, with each voter representing a large subset of the organization’s 157,000 members. Now, the organization says that it is not accurate to claim that there is any regression on support for transgender youth care from the organization.
The organization also disputes Singal’s portrayal of a 2025 letter written by Katherine McGuire to the Federal Trade Commission. In his piece, Singal claims the APA “cautioned that gender dysphoria diagnoses could be the result of ‘trauma-related presentations’ rather than a trans identity,” and noted that “co-occurring mental health or neurodevelopmental conditions (e.g., depression, anxiety, autism spectrum disorder) … may complicate or be mistaken for gender dysphoria,” framing this as evidence that the organization is retreating from its 2024 policy supporting transgender youth care. That interpretation is incorrect, according to an APA representative, who says the letter does not contradict the organization’s 2024 position and does not represent a regression in its support for evidence-based transgender care.
The FTC letter sent by APA Services was not saying that transgender identity can be caused by autism or depression. Rather, it was describing what any competent psychologist does with any patient: assess the whole person, including whether conditions like depression or anxiety are present. The letter does not say that depression or anxiety or autism cause gender dysphoria; it says that psychologists are careful about not mistaking these conditions for gender dysphoria. Notably, the letter was written in direct response to the Trump administration’s FTC, which had accused gender-affirming care providers of deceiving consumers, and McGuire was explaining that psychologists conduct thorough, individualized assessments—not that the organization’s position on care or “causes” of being transgender had changed. Had McGuire not indicated that psychologists were making these determinations, the FTC would likely then accuse the organization of not investigating its crank theories on gender dysphoria.
You can view the letter here:
“The 2024 policy statement and the 2025 FTC letter are consistent. The 2024 statement reflects the organization’s policy position on access to care. The 2025 FTC letter describes what competent psychologists do in individual clinical practice: they do not make generalized claims to families but instead provide individualized, evidence-based assessment. Both documents reflect APA’s consistent commitment to evidence-based psychological care,” says the representative.
The American Psychological Association’s reaffirmation of its support for transgender youth health care is significant. The organization is among several reportedly under FTC investigation as part of a broader effort to pressure medical bodies to retreat from transgender youth care. It is also facing a coordinated pressure campaign from anti-trans activists like Jesse Singal and outlets such as The New York Times, both of which have repeatedly sought to cast doubt on established standards of care. That context makes Singal’s portrayal especially consequential. Readers were left with the impression that the APA was backtracking. According to the organization itself, that is false. What Singal presented as evidence of “cracks in the wall” was yet another attempt to manufacture doubt around the professional consensus supporting transgender youth care.
Political cartoons / memes / and news I want to share. 2-28-2026
My live in a totality. Hugs
Again trying to stay well and healthy I had breakfast and at 3:24 just finished supper. Here is the sandwiches I made and ate
Here are the ingrediance I like in my sandwich tonight.
I start with heating the meats as I dislike cold foods. I then put the bread slices for two sandwiches on the plate and apply mustard to them.
Then the bread slices for the bottom which I put mustard on.
Then I add the first layer of meats.
Then the lettuce, which gives it a crunch.
Then the other meats.
Then more mustard on the top of the last meats.
Then the last of the bread and the cutting of the sandwiches. I like my slice on an angle. 
And that is my supper tonight. I doubt I will eat again. But at least I ate. Now I am exhausted but want to stay up. It is not yet 4 pm here but I was up at 2 am because of Tupac and then I couldn’t get back to sleep finally fell asleep at 5:30 but woke at 6 after a nightmare and knew I wouldn’t be going to sleep again that morning. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 