HuffPo did an investigative report about the paid experts who travel around the country helping wingnut states defend anti-trans laws, such as bans on gender-affirming care, so-called “bathrooms bills” and trans participation in youth sports. Y’all will be shocked to learn the “experts” are greedy, unqualified, bible-humping assholes who don’t give a shit about the laws’ impact on real people’s lives! An excerpt:
Most…practice medicine in a field related to gender-affirming care — such as psychiatry or endocrinology — but have treated only a handful of adolescent patients for gender dysphoria, if that, and haven’t published relevant research. Several belong to openly anti-trans groups and have urged state legislatures to pass the very laws they get paid to defend.
Some of the most prominent witnesses were recruited by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal powerhouse whose mission is to realize a country governed by far-right Christian values. And many share ADF’s extreme antipathy toward LGBTQ+ people.
“They’re hired guns,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, a lawyer for the LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal who has faced Hruz and his cohorts in several cases. “These are not real experts. They’re manufactured as experts by the opponents of transgender rights.”
Still, for a rate of hundreds of dollars an hour, they can lend a sheen of scientific rigor to school bathroom restrictions and bans on gender-affirming care.
And they are increasingly having an impact. On Aug. 25, a Missouri judge temporarily upheld the state’s four-year ban on most gender-affirming treatments for minors, writing, “The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear.”
When a trans kid’s mom shared her fears about the heightened risk of suicide for adolescents who are denied gender-affirming care, one of the profiled “experts” told her to read Pope John Paul II’s opinions on the topic and said, “Some children are born into this world to suffer and die.”
That sick motherfucker’s name is Dr. Paul Hruz. According to HuffPo, he is a pediatric endocrinologist and has testified in 12 cases. Sarah Huckabee-Sanders’ state government in Arkansas has paid that man more than $41K.
Thinking about people like Hruz makes me stabby, so I’m gonna abruptly change the subject to dogs, okay?
The heroic police dog who nabbed the fugitive murderer in Pennsylvania earlier this week is a four-year-old Belgian Malinois named Yoda. Here is that good boy:
Thanks, Yoda!
Open thread.
SiubhanDuinne
Bringing this up from downstairs:
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!? Just heard that the three dudes on trial for plotting to kidnap MI Gov Gretchen Whitmer were all ACQUITTED ON ALL COUNTS.
WTF
trollhattan
Hired schlubs. Nice work, if you can find it.
Some people….
Who’s a good boy!
Mai Naem mobile >44
The reports said the guy was treated for a dog bite as well. Hope Yoda bit him where it hurts.
trollhattan
Airport security cosplay includes rifling your luggage and bags at checkin. I’d say at no extra charge, but it’s a direct charge. You might call it instant mordida with no fussy demanding of bribes.
Alison Rose
Bullshit. It is not unclear to the vast majority of medical professionals and scientists. Only to the bigoted ones. What IS clear, as noted in this post, is the immense increase in the risk of a child being taken by suicide if they’re not allowed to be their true selves. And any parent who would rather have a dead kid than a trans kid should never have had kids in the first place. I’ve been told a million times, often by people disparaging me for being child-free, that the love a parent has for their kid is unconditional. But if you only plan to love your kids so long as they adhere to what you think they ought to be, that’s conditional love. And if you only love your children conditionally, then you don’t actually love your children.
trollhattan
@Mai Naem mobile >44: Dude was in prison for killing his girlfriend so she could not rat him out to Brazilian authorities, where he’s wanted for…murder.
Alison Rose
@SiubhanDuinne: Yeah. There were earlier convictions, but…
Also: “But defense lawyers tried to downplay their clients’ actions. They suggested that the men were minor players who did not know much about the plans to harm Ms. Whitmer, were egged on by F.B.I. informants and were caught up in the overheated politics of 2020.”
YEAH SURE. COOL STORY.
Old School
@SiubhanDuinne:
These three were acquitted, but they weren’t the only people charged.
OzarkHillbilly
@SiubhanDuinne: Can’t win them all.
eclare
“Some children were born to suffer and die”? Jeezus. Great religious leader ya got there.
I mean, wow.
rikyrah
This is an excellent post from The Establishment Bar Blogspot:
Posted by T.LaFauci September 15, 2023
THEY ALL KNEW
Rest of it at the link. He is absolutely on point.
rikyrah
In moderation. please help.
rikyrah
@SiubhanDuinne:
Lips so pursed
Juju
“Some children are born into this world to suffer and die.”
That statement is your proof that none of their garbage has anything to do with prolife. It’s all about running other people’s lives. I just don’t understand why they can’t mind their own business and do the superior dance in their minds. They should just live their lives believing that the rest of us are going to burn in hell. I’m fine with that, but don’t tell me what I should do with my own body.
sab
@Alison Rose: He is not only a nut job, he’s a professor of pediatric oncology so he is passing this on to another generation of doctors. Yikes.
MisterDancer
Thanks for sharing this, Betty. We really underestimate, as a Progressive Movement, the damage these people are doing, I think.
The people who do this work are paid well, as the article notes. This means they can focus on doing damage, hiring out themselves in ways Left-ish movements rarely can afford. They can even — to go back to a recent conversation on here — afford to jump into politics in full, with a cushy sinecure if their run doesn’t work out.
Because they don’t get focus, it’s hard to grasp the scope. But my gut says the vast majority of laws that rip either political power and/or rights from people? They come not from a GOP legislator directly, but from one of these asshats.
It’s like the lesson learned from George Wallace was “let’s do that, but At Scale!”
Horrific.
steppy
@Mai Naem mobile >44:
Many thanks to Yoda and all the law enforcement officers who worked tirelessly on the case. Yours truly was in the search perimeter for the last three days of the manhunt. It made for some uneasy nights.
By the way, Yoda got Cavalcante on the scalp and on the arm.
MisterDancer
@rikyrah: Helped!
Mai Naem mobile >44
@trollhattan: he killed her in front of her young child. I have no issue with Yoda castrating the POS.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@eclare: So you’re literally willing to sacrifice the lives of your children for your religious ideals. If only someone had thought to address this practice in scripture. Oh, wait. Jeremiah 7:31:
“And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart.”–NKJV
OzarkHillbilly
@eclare: I think he would have a change of opinion if he was made to suffer.
Baud
@sab:
Not sure I get why a cancer doctor is opining on trans issues. But then the wingnuts found a couple of physicists to opine on climate change.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m sure he’s suffering plenty from being canceled for his views.
Yarrow
I hadn’t heard about this yet. Great.
MisterDancer
Fuck, I’m not done. This is the bottom line in a lot of ways, the thing we need to keep in mind when we’re talking politics — real people are in harm’s way:
Every one of these bottomfeeders take money to hurt innocent people like Dylan. And for bullshit:
Spock would PUNCH YOU SO HARD YOU SEE STARS for calling your hate “logic”:
It’s all a lie for right-wing judges to mount specious rulings on top of. It’s like everyone is rushing to make the next Plessey or Dred Scott, expect with Trans people.
Fuck fuck FUCK! OK, I gotta stop reading for now and go do something else. FUCK!
Scout211
Thanks, Betty. HuffPost is doing some good work reporting on trans rights.
From the article:
It takes brave people like Dylan to personalize the story to let people know that these horrible laws will harm real people. These charlatans who are parading as experts never make the story personal.
Betty Cracker
@MisterDancer: They are every bit as evil as the quacks who got paid to insist smoking doesn’t cause cancer
Hence the abrupt topic switch. It’s maddening in the literal sense.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Good analogy.
PaulWartenberg
Was there any word on a Central-North Florida gathering? I am planning to visit Gainesville in early November for some research on a poli sci book I’m writing for NaNo.
trollhattan
@Scout211: This happened.
Poor, misunderstood Kim Davis. Wait, nope, fvck Kim Davis and her personal Jeebuz.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker:
This is a good analogy and a possible springboard to push back. Pretty much everyone knows and believes that smoking causes cancer and other health issues. A good ad campaign could pull testimony and video from years ago from paid shills for the tobacco companies saying smoking was safe and compare that to these guys. Point out that powerful institutions will pay people to say whatever they want them to say even if it hurts people.
gvg
@PaulWartenberg: I hadn’t heard, but I live in Gainesville.
Sister Golden Bear
@Alison Rose: Just a reminder that last week the results of randomized controlled trial — the gold standard in research — were published showed that a group of trans men receiving trans health care saw a 55% reduction in suicidality, compared to a 5% reduction in the control group. But I’m sure the NYT will be running a “debunking” in short order.
@Baud: Because any doctor who’s actually familiar with trans healthcare won’t testify it because they know it’s beneficial. So that haters bring in quacks instead.
Meanwhile, a Florida judge has ruled that the state’s adult transgender care ban can stay in effect. As adults lose access to medication, thousands are forced to flee the draconian laws there. Slate looks at the human impact.
And in Missouri, conservatives used the same play as they’ve used for abortion clinics to shut down the only gender care clinic in St. Louis, after the NYT hypes a (literally) non-existent, completely debunked “scandal.”
Now to read about doggo before I get even more stabby.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Every.
Last.
One.
Baud
@Sister Golden Bear:
Aha! So you admit the result is random!
Elizabelle
Yay Yoda. A very good face to see this September Friday. Spirit animal of Major Biden.
I was relieved the fugitive Calvacante was captured without loss of human or animal life.
jonas
If some antitrans asshole had said that to my face about my kid, I would probably be sitting in a cell awaiting trial on assault and attempted murder charges, so help me.
252man
@Alison Rose: Outside of Metropolitan Detroit, Michigan is very red.
Ruckus
@eclare:
I’m an old fart that used to got to church with the family when I was a youngster. Nice presbyterian church, many of my school friends went there, including one who was just released on parole for a rather infamous murder after over 50 yrs ago. This was/is part of the concepts of the bible – stories of a lot of christianity, Jesus had to suffer, so all of us do as well.
MattF
OT. Still reading that book on crypto. Faux has gotten to the point where the actual uses of the Tether ‘stablecoin’ are becoming clear. It’s money laundering for Chinese gangsters. Huge amounts of cash are being funneled around. Extremely ugly. He’s heading for Cambodia, which is worrisome, but he apparently survived.
Roger Moore
@MisterDancer:
So much this. The judges aren’t looking for evidence; they’re looking for justification for doing what they already wanted to do. This is why they happily ignore the experts’ complete lack of relevant experience or credentials. They just want a plausible-sounding excuse. The fake experts create a controversy where none exists, and that’s enough for the judges to let the legislators do as they please.
Geminid
@252man: Democrat Hilary Scholten flipped a Republican seat in western Michigan last year.
Ksmiami
@Yarrow: No wtf no- I’d heard of Nipa from Robin Cook’s Hot Zone -horrible, violent, bloody disease
Ksmiami
@252man: Ann Arbor, Southaven, Flint? Definitely more Blue
Dangerman
“Feel the force (of my bite, motherfucker)!”
Yoda
Suzanne
Imagine this person being responsible for the medical care of your child. Just mind-blowing.
Leto
@steppy: we’re not far away from that, in fact used to live about 15 mins away, and Avalune still works close by. Just going to say, it didn’t look so much like cops but a couple of platoons of infantrymen in Iraq. Same gear, same armored vehicles, all of it.
Kelly
Vetting of expert witnessing seems too dependant on individual judges reviewing the CV of folks in fields the judge can’t possibly have the time to understand.
Ruckus
@MisterDancer:
I was told that this is a free country, that you can be who you are, but part of that is not hurting others.
Sounds OK, sounds good.
But.
There was a catch, there almost always is. You have to suffer in the ways that we say, because those that came before you had to suffer, it’s a part of humanity, suffering, and it wouldn’t be right if everyone didn’t have to. And of course there is some tiny, tinny truth to that, life can and often does include suffering. But we don’t get to cause more suffering just because, there is more than enough to go around in just being alive. People my age went through a lot of diseases because we had no way to stop them – but we do and have had ways for a long time. We are going through a highly contagious disease once again – for which we have several vaccines in far shorter time than we used to because we learned from experience and effort what the hell to do to lessen that. When I was born there was one vaccine – smallpox. Fifty plus years ago I got 7 vaccine shots in about 2 minutes in navy boot camp. Today we – and most of the world, does not have to suffer from those diseases because of science. We have learned a lot over the time of humanity. And at the same time have really, in many cases, not much at all.
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, every now and then I hear something that makes me think “That guy in the Saw movies had a point….”
MisterDancer
@Suzanne: If you’re the
whiteright kind of child, he’s likely not bad at all.Alison Rose
@Suzanne: Suzanne! You work in architecture, right?
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
“You have to suffer the same way the people before you did” is classic conservative thinking. No, we don’t have to suffer the same way our ancestors did. We can make life better so some kinds of suffering can be eliminated. Some suffering is inevitable because we spend our whole lives dealing with other fallible humans and that will inevitably result in some suffering, and because we’re destined to get old and die, and there’s always some suffering in that. But we shouldn’t have to deal with stuff we know how to prevent or ameliorate just because people used to have to deal with it.
NickM
‘One of the profiled “experts” told her to read Pope John Paul II’s opinions on the topic and said, “Some children are born into this world to suffer and die.”’
”Culture of Life”, amirite?
jonas
@trollhattan: Good grief, that’s a long time for a judgment, but good for them.
Like I wrote at the time, this was exactly as if a pacifist Quaker ended up working in an office where they were responsible for issuing firearms permits, and refused to do so based on their deeply-held religious beliefs about non-violence. I wonder how many of these “religious freedom” outfits would have stood up for that?
The cricket-chirping would have been deafening.
Anoniminous
The former leader of the International Pedophilia Protection League Pope John Paul II said
while other children are born into this world to be raped by Catholic priests.
It’s God’s Will & all that bullshit
Hoodie
@Yarrow: Just avoid the raw date palm sap
RaflW
@Alison Rose: caught up in the overheated politics
At least some of the other perps got dinged. But this “I lost my cool, but I’m otherwise normal” bullshit is just … bullshit.
A kidnapping plot is not just something like “I was passing through the town square and saw a riot in progress and I guess I just sort of got swirled into the crowd.”
A plot means scheming and organizing. Jeepers.
dr. luba
@252man: And Ann Arbor, Traverse city, Marquette, Lansing. Even GR itself is pretty blue.
Bigger cities, university towns are blue, rural areas, red, like pretty much everywhere else.
dr. luba
Also, too, Yoda is a Detroiter!!
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I’m NOT saying that. That is what I was told/taught in church as a child. I believed it was bullshit then and I’m more convinced of it now.
My point was that living can and does have suffering. I had an accident once caused by a coyote and was hit head on by a pickup truck. Me. Not the car that I wasn’t in. ME. Now fortunately I was wearing a motorcycle helmet because I WAS riding one and I walked away. We do suffer at times, I’d say at minimum, 99% of us. I had a cousin who lived 6 months. Her aunt lived 95 yrs. There is nothing that says we will all live 95 or 105 yrs, we might get 6 months, or not a minute, or be the woman who lived over 122 yrs. Life is a crap shoot. Sometimes it’s a real shoot. And yes I’ve been shot at once, walking back to the navy ship I lived on, heard the shot and the bullet wiz by. I was 22 yrs old. I’ve made it another 52 yrs.
You do the best you can, you live as long as you live.
Jackie
The two Justin’s have started something!
Democrats over perform in another TN Special Election!👍🏻
RandomMonster
What a strikingly beautiful dog.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: It seems like religion always has trouble walking this tightrope, trying to reassure people that the suffering we can’t avoid has meaning and good can be extracted from it, without actually encouraging people to cause or seek more suffering.
Maxim
@Jackie: Excellent!
Miss Bianca
So, if this Dr Paul Hruz is a pediatric endocrinologist, does he tell his patients’ parents that “some children are born to suffer and die” as a matter of course?
RaflW
@Jackie: This, too: “Olivia Hill, the first openly transgender person elected to the Metro Council.”
I got an email last night about that, from an LGBTQ political fundraising org. In these times when horrible stuff like the ‘expert’ testimony that seeks to erase transgender people is happening, having members of the impacted communities get into elective office matters. And she won one of the at-large seats, so it’s not even a niche liberal neighborhood, it’s the whole city.
This slog for human dignity is far from over. I gain some hope from the fair citizens of Nashville.
gene108
Conservatives seem to have an inexhaustible supply of “experts” to influence things, from the tobacco lobby fighting against information that smoking increases the risk of cancer to the three percent (random estimate) of “scientists” who are skeptical of humans causing global warming.
RaflW
@gene108: The Bushies meant it when they famously said they created alternative facts.
Jackie
@RaflW: That’s terrific!!! Tennessee has a long road to haul, but the road is getting shorter one mile at a time!
Elizabelle
The renowned Colombian, artist, Fernando Botero, has died at 91, in Monaco. I’m sure a lot of you have seen his voluptuous sculptures and paintings. It is such fun to find them unexpectedly while traveling. Wonderful two-ton cat in Barcelona (seat of Catalunya), and a sculpture in Bamberg, Germany too.
One of those cases where you weren’t absolutely sure the guy was still alive, but glad to hear he had such a long life, in hearing of its end.
It seems Colombia has gotten much safer since he was working there in the 1970s and 80s. There’s apparently a wonderful Botero museum in Bogotá.
Botero did a lot of political art, including renditions of the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
One of his statues was blown up by a car bomb, in Colombia (collateral damage), and he insisted that the replacement statue be displayed near the earlier work’s ruins.
cain
@MisterDancer: how come all these right wingers all have familiar last names like “Cantor”.
It is indeed horrific.
One must ask how they are all getting funded – it seems like either govt money or rich people’s money is used to fund all these experts either through this or think tanks and the like.
Sister Golden Bear
@RaflW:
Hill is the first transgender woman elected in Tennessee history. More details.
The Metropolitan Council (officially the Metropolitan Council of Nashville and Davidson County) is the legislative body of the consolidated city-county government of Nashville, Tennessee and Davidson County.
Omnes Omnibus
@RaflW: You didn’t hear the evidence at trial and neither did I. The fact that juries convicted some but not others is okay on my books. I only want people to be convicted of crimes if they have actually committed the specific crimes. Just convicting people for being shitty doesn’t work. It’s the same thing with people wanting banksters locked up post-2008. If you can prove that they violated specific criminal statutes, lock ‘em up. Otherwise, no.
Mike S
@eclare: The infliction of pain is the point.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
I understood you were relaying what you were told rather than presenting your own views; I’m sorry if it sounded like I was criticizing you. I just hate the “I suffered so you have to suffer” approach to life. It isn’t only religious conservatives who do this kind of thing. You see it as an excuse for all kinds of crap, including incredibly stupid stuff like hazing or making trainee doctors work when they’re too tired to think.
cain
@NickM:
The suffers at Magdalene’s Laundries would like a word.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Fucking doctors are supposed to try to relieve suffering. God, that just enrages me.
Miss Bianca
@jonas: “The defendant was heard to say, in answer to Dr Hruz’s contention that ‘some children are born to suffer and die’: ‘Yeah, and you’re one of them, asshole!'”
cain
@gene108: They have a lot of rich crazy-ass religious zealots helping to pay for all that. We’ve been steadily creating more oligarchs and tax cuts and the like – they hoard money but also fund shit like this.
cain
@Miss Bianca: Some adults are meant to fuck around AND find out.
Notice how they ask for leeway there, huh?
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: If he does, his patients should flee as quickly as they can. Hell, they should do it anyway because he thinks that about anyone.
marklar
@trollhattan: With your posting history I’m absolutely sure that this wasn’t your intent, but I do want to mention videos like the BBC’s contribute to implicit racial biases.
Making people aware of theft by TSA agents is a good thing, but this video brings me back to all the news-footage showing African Americans being perp-walked over and over and over again.
Betty Cracker
@cain: To your last point, it seems like the regulation of nonprofit entities is one of the many thousands of things in desperate need of reform. Blatantly partisan orgs like “Alliance Defending Freedom” mentioned above, “Moms for Liberty” etc., hoover up money and throw their political weight around as 501(c)(3) nonprofits.
Suzanne
@Alison Rose: Yes, I do!
Sure Lurkalot
@Juju:
And some people go into the medical profession to alleviate suffering and prevent needless deaths from disease and sick ideologies.
Whenever I think people cannot be more horrible, fuckwads like this so called doctor pop up.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s a truly horrifying thing to hear a pediatrician say. I suddenly can’t help imagining which children he might choose not to treat, or even speed on their way, if their treatment came to him.
cain
@Betty Cracker:
Apparently it is much harder to do a tech 501(c)(3) – but apparently political ones are easy. I agree that we need to curtail these non-profits – but in the end, we really need to stop creating billionaires.
Citizen Alan
@Juju: One of the great deficiencies in religious conservativism, IMO, is how weak their faith is. Deep down, they really don’t believe their god will properly punish sinners in the afterlife, so they insist on doing it themselves in this world. It’s like a form of self-idolatry.
FelonyGovt
@Kelly: I’ve had to vet expert witnesses as an arbitrator, and yes, it’s hard. However, I would like to think I would look critically at a profferred “expert” with absolutely no experience or credentials in the area on which they’re going to testify. And I would look ESPECIALLY hard at someone who appeared to be a religious fanatic.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Got It!
No problem whatsoever. I reread what I posted and in doing that it seemed that it could be taken either way and I just wanted to clear it up. Thanks!
Alison Rose
@Suzanne: Is there a specific name for this type of building look? The white building at the end of the alley and the yellow one on the right, with the brown lines painted on the fronts. (Hopefully you can see the image.) I tried Googling but it couldn’t seem to come up with what I meant.
Suzanne
@Alison Rose: That’s “Tudor Revival” half-timber.
Sure Lurkalot
@MisterDancer: @Sister Golden Bear:
I learn so much from you two when you’re stabby!
sab
@trollhattan: Great work if a dog can get it, being a good boy for biting a people twice.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
…without actually encouraging people to cause or seek more suffering.
In my experience they seem to fail at this way to easily and way too often.
RaflW
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m not saying these particular three had to be convicted. I’m pushing back on news industry framing of some of these RW nutjobs as “swept up in history and making mistakes.”
I’m not ready for bygones for attempted kidnapping. Beyond a shadow of a doubt (or even preponderance of evidence, if civil), maybe not. But this country excuses white guy excesses all the time, while going full on Central Park Five on black bodies.
/rant
eclare
@Ruckus:
My recollection is that Jesus suffered so that we did not have to.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: I worked for Mother Jones Magazine many years ago, which is published by the nonprofit Foundation for National Progress. I was in circulation and development customer service, and I would quite often get calls and emails from people wanting us to essentially endorse certain candidates or proposition stances and such, and I’d have to explain over and over that as a nonprofit, we could not do that legally. We certainly published content that made it fairly clear what our views were, but we couldn’t say “vote for this person” or “vote this way on this proposition”. We were always very careful about not stepping over or even close to the line. Sadly, a lot of these orgs (probably not only conservative ones, but I’d bet they make up the majority) don’t seem to give a shit, and seem to get away with it!
Alison Rose
@Suzanne: Ahh okay, thanks! I absolutely love it. It’s just so damn charming and gives me Ren Faire vibes :) The photo is from a FB friend’s trip to a town called Colmar in NE France.
sab
@cain: Some IRS people ruined their careers early in the Bush years by doing their jobs going after political organizations disguised as non-profits. Republicans in Congress went nuts.
cain
this is a good thread to monitor – some interesting tidbits there. Basically talking about information that is actually useful although it is still kind of horse race – but gives some insight on what going on with the GOP caucus.
reddit.com/r/politics/comments/16jhebf/congress_came_back_in_full_this_week_and_is/
ETA
Hi! I’m Ursula Perano, I cover the Senate with POLITICO. Thanks for the question!
I’d say it’s more probable by the day — but not guaranteed. There are only a handful of legislative days left in both chambers before the deadline and limited progress was made this week. The House is stuck. And in the Senate, which is usually pretty cooperative on these things, we saw leadership this week struggling to even get through to amendment votes. Both parties want the opportunity for amendment votes.
Trivia Man
I’m surprised I am not seeing any discussion about the recent ruling in Georgia regarding splitting up defendants. To me a very significant aspect is – if you do not EXPLICITLY waive your right to a speedy trial, you WILL join the Kraken on October 23.
Baud
@gene108:
They don’t need many. Only a handful will provide equal balance to the majority of experts who are truthful.
Geminid
@Suzanne: Those Tudor builders sure knew the difference between a hawk and a handsaw!
Ken
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m thinking the police need to dig under his patio and check his freezer. I can definitely imagine a news report ending with “the suspect said only ‘Some children are born to suffer.'”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jackie: That’s great news.
Ken
@Trivia Man:
DEFENDANT: “But your honor, I told my lawyer I didn’t want to waive my right to a speedy trial. Did he not tell the Court that?”
JUDGE: “No But let me guess — your lawyer is being paid by Donald Trump?”
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Well we do live in a “free” country. We are free to be assholes, as well as to not be one. We are free to be rich, or to sleep on the sidewalk. (OK that one usually gets one in trouble at some point) We are free to be a person who saves/makes lives better – (OK it can cost a lot of money to learn to do that) We are also free to be assholes. (OK it’s usually someone else that pays for that, but sometimes they do get their comeuppance) We get to form no profit entities that often do good – and often shit. But the point is that the entity is there to do something, and it will cost money, but no one is making a fortune doing whatever it does. (OK I worked as a mental health counselor for 4 yrs, a long time -decades ago in a non profit, it paid me exactly nothing, other than experience)
Life has a need for non profit entities, not everything should be a Scrooge McDuck designed business.
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose: My husband’s ancestors are from Colmar.
Juju
@Sure Lurkalot: I think that most people who become doctors do it to help people, and make a decent living, but there are always some who are assholes. There are always assholes, or as you put it, fuckwads.
Betty Cracker
@Trivia Man: Coincidentally — for real! — I just posted on that very topic.
trollhattan
@eclare: Jesus stomped right past that leper and kept going. and Lazarus? Everybody hated him and was glad he was gone.
Roger Moore
@Alison Rose:
That general style is called half-timbered. In traditional examples (which I think those in your picture are) there’s a structural frame made of the heavy timbers exposed on the surface. The space between the timbers is filled in with something else, either wattle and daub, brick, or whatever.
In the US, many houses, especially ones considered to be part of the Tudor style, look like this. In that case, though, it’s just a surface decoration. The underlying structure is made the same way as most other houses, with a frame made from 2x4s rather than the heavy timbers you can see in the houses you showed.
Juju
@Citizen Alan: Is that a deficiency of the religion or of the person practicing the religion?
Jackie
@Trivia Man: That seems worded awkwardly. This explains it better:
eta link: wcpo.com/trump-waives-right-to-a-speedy-trial-in-georgia-election-case
billcinsd
@Elizabelle: I went to the Botero Museum in Bogota when I was there for a conference. It was excellent
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museo_Botero
Bobby Thomson
Dont’ take this the wrong way, but I heard Yoda is a bitch
Bobby Thomson
@Mai Naem mobile >44: She bit him on the scalp, causing blood to cover his face before they cleaned him up, and again on the leg.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
I’m sure someone has posted this already, but FFS already with these spoiled babies. And yeah, I’m stating the obvious, but let me vent: They’d be the first ones to complain if someone else wants the government to provide necessities they can’t afford. But when they want to throw a tantrum about how oppressed they are and leave, but they can’t afford a new house? Well, that’s different.
(And guess what side the ex-welfare recipient is on.)
These fuckin’ people.
Outflanked by liberals, Oregon conservatives aim to become part of Idaho
eclare
@trollhattan:
Hahaha…yes that is what I remember from my Methodist youth.
lowtechcyclist
There’s a guy whose face I’d genuinely like to punch – can’t blame you for feeling a need to change the subject. Since he’s quoting a Pope, I assume he thinks he’s some sort of Christian. Well, the sin that Jesus spoke against more than almost any other was hardness of heart, and boy howdy, does that line about how some children are born just to suffer and die ever line up with that. Totally callous and heartless.
(Bet he’s “pro-life,” and really wants them to be born, though, so they can suffer and die.) Can’t remember when I last felt the desire to haul off and punch someone, but it’s a good thing I’ll probably never meet this asshole.
thalarctosMaritimus
@Suzanne: LOL, you reminded me of a story.
I spent a year in England, daily walking past–among other things–a still-active church dating from 1089.
Once, I mentioned a nearby “Tudor-style” house to my landlady. She was quite amused to correct me that it was not a “Tudor-style” house at all; it was an actual house from the Tudor period.
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
Those look like they might actually be boards. At least when I was in Europe a lot of the buildings that looked like that, they actually were boards.
trollhattan
@thalarctosMaritimus:
That’s a hoot. And a very English thing to say.
Jackie
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA): They need to be careful of what they wish for… economically, ID is way different than OR. No sales tax in OR and OR’s minimum pay rate is a lot higher, for starters.
OR minimum outside of Portland metro is $13.20 for non-urban counties; and $14.20 for all others. ID is $7.25.
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
I saw a lot of places in Europe were like that when I was there. The sign on the sidewalk on the left is not in english, so I suspect that may be where it is. I think French but my foreign language skills are, what’s that word, pretty much gone. (if they ever existed in the first place)
trollhattan
@Alison Rose: Tell me more about the Museum of Chocolate, to the left!
Alison Rose
@zhena gogolia: Small world! It looks like a lovely little place.
Betty Cracker
@Bobby Thomson: Detroit News, which did a story on the hometown hero, says Yoda is a boy. CNN and USA Today also identified the dog as a male. But I’ll promptly correct the post if it turns out they’re all wrong. Good girls deserve recognition too!
Alison Rose
@Ruckus: Yes, as I added later (and should’ve in my first comment LOL), it’s in Colmar, in France.
@trollhattan: Right??? Yes please.
Geminid
@Jackie: Back in 2020, when Virginia Democrsts won control of the General Assembly and were expected to pass some gun safety laws, there was a short-leved “Wexit” movement that proposed that western counties secede to West Virginia. It went nowhere of course. People living next to the Mountain State could easily see how poor and underfunded the neighboring counties were.
Alison Rose
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA): Sounds like the yutzes up in NE California who wanted to secede and form their own state called Jefferson. Like yeah, definitely show what moral people you are by naming your fantasy land after a slave-owning rapist.
lowtechcyclist
@Anoniminous:
Hey, don’t make the evangelical pastors feel left out!
Jackie
@Geminid: The grass is always greener on the other side of the border… NOT!
Ruckus
@eclare:
But suffering to one degree or another is/always has been a part of being alive – for any living creature. Learning to lessen that suffering rather than revel in it is one of the signs of actually being an adult.
Life is easier than it was 200 yrs ago and easier than it was when I was born – let’s just say a hell of a long time ago but a bit less than 200 yrs. But because of humanity and all the crossroads and pathways and crap that can happen to any of us at any time we as humans have either tried to make it easier for us or harder for others to live and enjoy doing so. Why I cannot explain, and as I stated above I was a mental health counselor for 4 yrs so I should have some concept of it. But other than greed I don’t have any answer. Maybe greed is the answer. Greed for living, greed for money, greed for power. Those 3 things have caused a hell of a lot of damage, as part of being human. But then if life was easy we’d all live 122 yrs, like the known oldest human did.
Life is living, doing the best one can with the skills and health one has. Other than that it’s just existing.
Live and let live, it’s better than just existing.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
@Jackie: Yeah, part of me wants to see them succeed at this only to find a whole new list of things to whine about.
But most of me just wants them to STFU.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA): That article was so fucking sympathetic to the poor oppressed conservatives in Oregon, and completely ignored the real life loss of rights for women and trans residents of eastern Oregon that would occur if they forcibly became residents of
GileadIdaho.Just move to Idaho, assholes!
Kelly
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA): Greater Idaho is silly.
Kelly
@Alison Rose: Several SW Oregon counties have a few of state of Jefferson enthusiasts. The public radio station that runs out of Southern Oregon University in Ashland is Jefferson Public Radio probably to denote it’s service to N California. It a good station if your in the area. ijpr.org/
trollhattan
@Kelly:
They have a bazillion repeaters so when driving north on 5, you start listening to it before Red Bluff and continue to, say, Eugene. Just have to skip to the closest frequency every several miles.
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne:
Fuck that with rusty pitchforks!
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
I thought that sign was in French but hell, my english skills are not great, (maybe that’s because I was born in CA not in the UK) so one should likely not expect my foreign language skills to even exist. It has been over 1/2 a century since I was in Europe.
FelonyGovt
@Alison Rose: Yes, the “State of Jefferson” proponents amuse me. Exactly what is going to be their tax base?
lowtechcyclist
@eclare:
That is my recollection, and my experience, as well.
mrmoshpotato
The first half of this post deserves to be filed into the Assholes category.
Go fuck yourself, Paul. As the question goes, do you want a dead son or a live daughter (or vice versa)?
What a fucking bigotted monstrous pile of shit.
252man
@Geminid: Grand Rapids is becoming less red and more urban.
NotMax
@FelonyGovt
Cannabis.
tokyokie
@MisterDancer:
Drugs have different brand names from market to market, but the generic names are the “official” names for them. And medical professionals are supposed to refer medications by generic names in practice, i.e., “acetaminophen” rather than “Tylenol.” Research and journal papers refer to the generic name, not the brand name. That he couldn’t specifically name any puberty-blocking drugs in and of itself isn’t reason for condemnation; there are thousands of medications available, and few can name them all. But professionals should be familiar with those medications that are used in their area of practice, and if you’re supposed to be an expert in the field, you should know them. But cripes, this bastard is too lazy to even review them before giving testimony in court. A scam artist, nothing more, and he should have his license or certification questioned by whatever governing board does that sort of thing with regard to his field of practice.
kalakal
@thalarctosMaritimus:
The Shambles in York is a great place for Tudor buildings ( & earlier)
Shambles
kalakal
These evil fucking grifters have been around for quite a while. Here’s the loathsome George Alan Rekers who’d made a fortune as an ‘expert’ pushing anti gay bigotry whose career imploded after he was caught going on holiday with an assistant he’d hired from rentboys.com back in 2010
Rekers
Roger Moore
@FelonyGovt:
They wouldn’t have much of one, which is just fine by them. They want less government, because they think of government as people telling them what to do and giving away freebies to Those People. They don’t think of government as roads and firefighters.
Wvng
Not to be a wet blanket, but all, all, of the Scandinavian counties have pulled back from gender affirming practices for minors because they finally took a good look at the data, to the extent it exists, and found it wanting in regards to outcomes. This kind of serious review is starting to happen in the US and I would be surprised if they found any different, because that hasn’t yet happened anywhere it’s been tried.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
Robosigning. That shit was open-and-shut.
The real problem was that “look forward, not back” garbage. There sure didn’t seem to be any attempt to find out of they’d broken any criminal laws. And the robosigning deal sure suggested that nobody wanted to find out.
Yeah, I’m still pissed about that.
Soprano2
@Ruckus: This is true. Today is the 11th anniversary of my sister’s death in a small plane crash at the age of 46. There was no way to know this would happen. I miss her still, and always will. Live while you can, because there’s no guarantee for any of us. As I was telling my therapist today, I’ve had my share of tragedy in my life but many others have it worse than I do. You have to maintain perspective. We all think everything is about us at least sometimes; it’s good to have a reminder that no, it’s not.
Sister Golden Bear
@mrmoshpotato: During hearing on one of the draconian Red State anyi-trans laws, a Republican legislator explicitly said she’d rather have a dead son than a live daughter.
Sister Golden Bear
@Wvng: This is a complete misstatement of the facts. Scandinavian governments have pulled back, but it’s because of unscientific, fact twisting, fear mongering campaigns similar to what we’ve been discussing.
Miss Bianca
@Sister Golden Bear: Your version sounds likelier to me.
lowtechcyclist
@Sister Golden Bear:
Too bad we can’t call Child Protective Services on parents like that. Even if her son has no desire to transition, I bet there’s plenty of other ways that that mom is keeping him from being the person he really feels he should be.
Alison Rose
@FelonyGovt: Meth?
Alison Rose
@Sister Golden Bear: Thank you. I wish people didn’t swallow this garbage so easily.
rikyrah
@MisterDancer:
Maybe the average voter does, but, those of us involved in politics. I think we are very clear about their hatred and the literal damage it is doing to REAL LIVES. I think we are very clear about that.
Carol
I’m a 1960s liberal, but I tend to agree that changing a minor’s sex should wait until s/he is grown and can fully understand the ramifications of the decision. This guy, though, is just a hypocrite no matter which side he’s on. He’s doing no good in either direction.
and @SiubhanDuinne…At least 18 were convicted of the plot against the governor before these fellows were let go. Wait until you hear that Trump has been declared not guilty of any of the charges against him. All it takes is one vote, I believe, to get an innocent, or hung jury judgement.
@SiubhanDuinne
mrmoshpotato
@Sister Golden Bear:
Good lord.
Alison Rose
@Carol: No one is performing bottom surgeries on minors (except when doctors decide to do so on intersex babies, but the anti-trans crowd doesn’t seem to care much about that). The most that happens with kids is social and cosmetic level transitioning, and possibly puberty blockers, which are safe and reversible. And with all due respect, it’s not your place, nor anyone else’s, to decide when someone is old enough to “fully understand the ramifications” of something. But what you should try to fully understand are the ramifications of a child being forced to live as the wrong gender.
Roger Moore
@Alison Rose:
The problem is look for evidence that supports their beliefs rather than basing their beliefs on the best evidence. They’ll happily accept garbage if it tells them what they want to hear.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Jackie: Also Nashville’s new Mayor, Freddie O’Connell, beat his GOP challenger almost 2-1; the 4 city council at large seats in yesterday’s runoff were women by women, who just happened to be Democrats, including Olivia Hill, the first transgender person elected in Tennessee.
Here’s hoping Behn—my new state representative—can win in the regular election.
ETA: I see RaflW beat me to the news on Olivia Hill—but it’s a great slate all-around and I hope the GOP in the state Lege get unmanageable heartburn over this.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@RaflW: She’s a genuine blue-collar Democrat, too—a Navy veteran who then went to work at the Vanderbilt physical plant & then retired from that.
Betty Cracker
@Wvng: & @Carol: I’m not a doctor or a scientist with relevant expertise, so what I do is accept the consensus guidance of people who are. They aren’t always right. The consensus can change. But I think society generally gets better outcomes with the expert consensus method than by following every crank down every rabbit hole, no?
brantl
@252man: Not nearly as read as gerrymandering made it. We now have blue: House of Representatives, Senate, & Governor.
Pittsburgh MIke
@Sister Golden Bear:
In fairness, the study was pretty lame. It has nothing to do with treating minors — all participants were in the range of 18-70.
The study wasn’t double blind, and the two arms of the study were people who were given T immediately, and those who were given it after 3 months. The comparison period was between the start of the study and the end of the 3 month period.
The study warned that the 3 month period for the first group was too short for any physical changes from taking T to show up, so any change in suicidality may just be due to T’s anti-depressive effects.
In short, N=62 is a very small study; there could easily have been significant placebo effects in the T treated arm of the study, since the study wasn’t blinded at all; 3 months is a very short follow up period; and the study is of adults, while nearly all concerns I’ve seen have to do with transitioning minors.