Scientific Studies of Transgenderism

If you are trying to follow the science on transgenderism, Sabine Hossenfelder posted a video summarizing the evidence.

In short, transgenderism is a big fad, and the cause is not clear. It is also not clear whether any treatments help.

You may hear that medical societies have endorsed various treatments, but it is all voodoo. There just isn't any good scientific evidence supporting any of those treatments. There are many people who have gotten these treatments and regretted them.

Teenagers suffer a lot of mental health problems, with girls suffering a lot more than boys. Gender dysphoria appears to be just one of those problems, and there is no easy fix.

Multimodel models of animal sex

A new science pre-print argues:

“The vast array of sexual determination and reproductive systems challenge frameworks that impose human cultural binary categories on animals.” ...

The historical legacies of sexism, racism, queerphobia, and ableism have deeply influenced the frameworks we use to study nature. Challenging these foundations is difficult but vital to both increasing inclusion in biology and dismantling assumptions that interfere with our ability to observe the natural world on its own terms. ...

There is pressure for scientists to avoid making the politics of our work explicit, especially those of us who do not directly study social issues. However, especially in the United States, legislation targeting TGNC people is increasingly undergirded with simplistic binary language purportedly rooted in biology.

I don't even know what "TNGC" is, but it is obvious that the authors are trying to justify their sexual perversions by denying that animal sex is binary.

Of course animals are divided into male and female, and that is not a human cultural imposition.

Demographics is destiny

Elon Musk tweeted, a couple of days ago:

Demographics is destiny

I just listened to a Libertarian podcast (sorry, I lost the link) where they talked about Libertarian being pro-immigration, and usually in favor of open borders. They mentioned the argument that immigrants will not be Libertarian, and will vote for more anti-Libertarian policies such as voting for more welfare benefits for themselves.

They quickly called the argument absurd, and moved on to another topic.

This is a major blind spot in Libertarians. There was a recent takeover of the American Libertarian Party, and one of the main purposes was to stop working for more immigration. (Another was to stop working for more abortions.)

The America of the future will be determined by the immigrants we choose to admit today.

Most of our leaders refuse to accept this. Am Greatness reports:

Three of the five living former presidents have joined forces with American Express Global Business Travel and Welcome.US to create a non-governmental organization (NGO) that will fly illegal aliens to any desired destination in the United States.

Just The News reports that the new NGO, Miles4Migrants, was created by former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Welcome.US was a pre-existing NGO funded by far-left billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, originally created to provide logistical assistance to the roughly 85,000 Afghan refugees that were brought into the United States after the collapse of Afghanistan, which resulted from the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from that country.

Now, with Welcome.US teaming up with American Express for the joint effort, Miles4Migrants will raise money to provide air travel for illegal aliens from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Ukraine, with the illegals being allowed to fly to any destination they choose.

“Donations are needed to fund the flights for newcomers to travel to the United States,” the new group’s webpage declares. “Those forced to flee often leave behind all but what they can carry, and the costs of international travel can be prohibitive.”

These ex-Presidents are destroying America. Donald Trump is looking better every day.

The Two-Parent Privilege

Economist Tyler Cowen writes:

A new and great book, authored by Melissa S. Kearney of the University of Maryland. The subtitle is How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, and here is one excerpt of the summary points:

Two-parent families are beneficial for children.
The class divide in marriage and family structure has exacerbated inequality and class gaps.
Places that have more two-parent families have higher rates of upward mobility.
Not talking about these facts is counterproductive.

The marshaled evidence is convincing, and I will be blogging more about this book. While some stiff competition is coming, this could be the most important economics and policy book of this year.

Maybe those conclusions are true, but I am skeptical about the evidence.

Correlation does not prove causation. Maybe the bad child outcome causes the parent divorce. Maybe inherited genes cause both.

The NATO War in Ukraine

Who invaded Ukraine, Russia or Nato?

The London Guardian reports:

The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said all member countries have agreed that Ukraine will eventually join the transatlantic military alliance once the war is over, ahead of a meeting of western defence ministers discussing further military aid for Kyiv.

Further announcements on weapons and support are expected after the summit at the Ramstein airbase in Germany, but Stoltenberg also sounded notably upbeat about Ukraine’s longer-term prospects for joining Nato.

“All Nato allies have agreed that Ukraine will become a member,” he said. “President Zelenskiy has a very clear expectation, we discussed this.

“Both the issue of membership but also security guarantees, and of course Ukraine needs security. Because no one can tell when and how this war ends. But what we do know is that when the war ends, we need to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself.”

This is a Nato war. Ukraine is being propped up with Nato weapons, with the full intention of absorbing Ukraine into the Nato empire.

Amy Dickinson Hates Blacks

From a terrible advice columnist:

Dear Amy: At the end of an extremely long road trip, my fiancée, her 16-year-old son and I stopped at a noisy sports bar at 9:30 p.m. – famished.

As we waited for our food, I saw an article regarding a woman who was recently fired for using a slang variant of “the N-word.”

I turned to my fiancée to recount the story, but instead of using the variant of the word I saw in the article, I leaned in and in a very low voice said the actual (offensive) word to her, never intending for her son to hear it.

So of course she sides with the White racists who infantilize Blacks.

Science Journal Pledges to Tackle Racism

The science journal Nature announces:

It is regrettable but true that researchers have used and abused science to justify racist beliefs and practices. As previous editorials have acknowledged, Nature has played its part in perpetuating racism — and has now pledged to play its part in tackling it, together with colleagues in the research community.

As part of this pledge, Nature and the Nature Portfolio journals are updating our advice to authors on reporting research that involves race, ethnicity and other socially constructed characteristics (see go.nature.com/3mtobwx). Specifically, we’re asking that authors exercise care and consideration so that the highest standards of rigour are applied where these attributes are found to be an explanation for an outcome or conclusion. This is part of our ongoing updates to guidance asking authors to describe how demographic characteristics, including sex and gender, are considered in the design of studies — and, more broadly, to consider the research’s potential to cause harm.

They are saying that truths about race and sex have the potential to cause harm, so they won't publish them anymore.

Here is an example of what they will not publish:

New data from the American Bar Association has shown that the gap in bar pass rates between white and minority law graduates has widened for the second year. The data showed that 83% of white test takers passed their bar exam on their first attempt, compared to 57% of Black examinees – a difference of 26 percentage points. This gap increased from 24 percentage points in 2021. The disparity also held for Hispanic and Asian test takers, with 69% and 75% first-time pass rates, respectively. The gap with white examinees grew from 13 percentage points to 14 for Hispanic test takers and six percentage points to 8 for Asian test takers.

And we threw everything at the wall

The leftist press is trying to convince us that the whole transgender controversy was manufactured by right-wingers to torture kids and raise money.

The NY Times reports in its top story yesterday:

When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage nearly eight years ago, social conservatives were set adrift.

The ruling stripped them of an issue they had used to galvanize rank-and-file supporters and big donors. And it left them searching for a cause that — like opposing gay marriage — would rally the base and raise the movement’s profile on the national stage.

“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the wall.”

What has stuck, somewhat unexpectedly, is the issue of transgender identity, particularly among young people. Today, the effort to restrict transgender rights has supplanted same-sex marriage as an animating issue for social conservatives at a pace that has stunned political leaders across the spectrum. It has reinvigorated a network of conservative groups, increased fund-raising and set the agenda in school boards and state legislatures.

Here is a supposed comedy tv show, SNL, with its first nonbinary cast member, doing a comedy skit that is actually just a rant against Republicans who are denying healthcare to kids.

This is absurd. Until several years, almost everyone was against transgenderism. They believed that schools should not be promoting transgenderism or drag shows. That schools should use legal names only, and not withhold info from parents. And there should be no gender-affirming drugs or surgery for minors.

The lizard people are gaslighting you again. Boys are boys and girls are girls. No one is nonbinary. Christendom is under attack by radical perverts.

Germany Closes Nuclear Plants

CNN reports:

Germany’s final three nuclear power plants close their doors on Saturday, marking the end of the country’s nuclear era that has spanned more than six decades.

Germans have joined the war against Russia, and so are not getting Russian oid and gas anymore. Germany has been building wind and solar power, but those are insufficient to meet needs. So it will go back to coal.

From the view of global warming, Germany must be considered one of the world's worst offenders.

FBI Warning about the Red Pill

Fox News reports:

New documents released Monday warned that common internet lingo is being associated with "Violent Extremism" by the FBI.

The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project said it used a Freedom of Information Act request to expose FBI documents that include glossaries showing that common internet slang has been flagged as an indication of "Involuntary Celibate Violent Extremism" or "Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism."

Part of the document refers specifically to "incels," or those "involuntary celibate," whom the "threat overview" describes as possibly seeking to "commit violence in support of their beliefs that society unjustly denies them sexual or romantic attention, to which they believe they are entitled." The assessment notes, "While most incels do not engage in violence," some have been involved in "at least five lethal attacks in the United States and Canada."

Many of the terms mentioned in the FBI’s list of incel terminology are either widely used across the internet or innocuous in nature.

Here is the pdf FBI document.

It is amusing to see the FBI try to define these terms, and classify them as threatening.

The one term in the glossary is "Red Pill," which comes from the 1999 film "The Matrix" and has been used a metaphor for seeing hidden or politically incorrect truths about the modern world, particularly when it comes to politics or dating. The FBI list of key terms defines it as "a belief shared by many online communities that society is corrupt, and that the believer is a victim of this corruption." ...

The FBI list for terms associated with "Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism" (RMVE) has a mix of extreme terms and innocuous ones.

"Red Pill" also appears in this list, but with a different description: "In the context of RMVE ideology, taking the red pill or becoming ‘redpilled’ indicates the adoption of racist, anti-Semitic, or fascist beliefs."

It just means accepting the truth, especially when the authorities are perpetrating lies. Such lies might be that Blacks are violent and poor because of systemic racism, or that Jews are persecuted.

PBS says Defending Trump is Sowing Division

PBS TV is a US govt sponsored TV network. It pretends that its news shows are fair and balanced, but they are not. It never reports any political issue fairly. For example, whenever there is an issue involving Pres. Trump, it brings in two political commentators, and they always both hard-core Trump-haters.

In covering the Trump indictment, it has a steady stream of anti-Trump propaganda. If anyone defends Trump, it accuses him of election interference!

Yesterday, the PBS News hour broadcast this:

Analysis shows Russian and Chinese-backed efforts to sow division after Trump indictment

PBS NewsHour

A week after the arraignment of Donald Trump, we’re learning new details about a covert effort by Russian and Chinese-backed actors aimed at sowing division among the American electorate and increasing distrust in institutions. Laura Barrón-López discussed the findings with Colin Clarke of the Soufan Center And Zach Schwitzky of the data science firm Limbik.

If Russia or China were prosecuting a political candidate on such obviously bogus charges, PBS would be crying that it is anti-democratic.

there are American groups that consistently sow division in the USA, much more radically than the Russians and Chinese. They are Jews, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and the Democrat Party.

The Trump indictment fails for many reasons. It is one charge, repeated 34 times. The charge is that he had an incomplete business record that was intended to defraud and cover up another crime.

Trump paid a lawyer to settle a legal claim, and recorded that as a legal expense. That is an accurate description. The DA would have to prove that it was not a legal expense, but it plainly was a legal expense.

The indictments fails to allege what was wrong with Trump's description, or who was defrauded, or what other crime was being covered up. The statute of limitations has expired anyway.

There is no way anyone would defend this indictment, unless he was already a Trump-hater. If PBS or any other news media has not explained this, then it is lying to you.

Update: Some Trump-hating experts say that under NY law, prosecutors do not need to show that Trump was trying to avoid any particular law, or was trying to defraud any particular person.

PBS TV and NPR Radio have stopped posting to Twitter, because they do not like being labeled government-funded media.

California Policy is Secret Sexual Mutilation

The LA Times reports:

A bill that would have required California school officials to alert parents if their child identified as gender-nonconforming or transgender won't get a committee hearing, effectively killing the controversial legislation.

Assembly Bill 1314, introduced by Assemblymembers Bill Essayli (R-Riverside) and James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), would have required school districts to notify parents in writing within three days if a student "is identifying at school as a gender that does not align with the child's sex on their birth certificate."

The bill sparked backlash from LGBTQ activists and organizations, ...

AB 1314 was assigned to the Assembly Education Committee, but the chair of the committee, Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance), announced Monday that he would not set a hearing date for the bill, meaning it was effectively dead before being considered for a vote. "This bill would require educators to 'out' a student to their parents, even when the student does not feel comfortable coming out, potentially forcing them into an unwelcoming or abusive home," Muratsuchi said in a statement. "All students deserve to be respected and supported for who they are, including at their schools." ...

In his statement, Muratsuchi called the bill "bad policy," arguing that giving it a hearing would also provide a "forum for increasingly hateful rhetoric targeting LGBTQ youth."

The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus applauded the decision.

"The California Legislature should not provide a platform for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that threatens the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ youth and empowers those who wish to cause harm," the caucus said in a statement.

Yes, California schools are really doing this:

Wednesday evening the Chico Unified School Board in Chico, California voted 3-2 in favor of schools having the ability to keep secrets from parents. The board agreed to keep their current policy, which directs staff to not reveal a child's gender identity to parents, it instead allows a child to determine when the school is allowed to tell parents about a change in their gender identity.

If the bill were really bad policy, then a hearing would show the facts and evidence against it.

California Democrats do not want a hearing because their secrecy policy is indefensible. It goes against the scientific and medical facts, against parental rights, and against the interests of the kids. This is no good excuse for a school to withhold child info from the parents.

Muratsuchi said: "All students deserve to be respected and supported for who they are, including at their schools." But not at home? If the school somehow knows who the child is, why not tell the parents, so that he can be respected at home?

No, the parents might disagree with sexual mutilation, and the Democrats want to secretly push that.

I am trying to understand the trans activists, but this is just evil.

Easter is not a Pagan Holiday

Here is an Easter essay from a banned web site:

Many stupid lies are spread by the Jews about the Christian faith.

Likely the most insidious lie is that Christianity is based on Judaism. This is stupid on its face, as the Jewish religion is fundamentally based on the rejection and hatred of Christ, and therefore it could only have existed after Christ. Moreover, it is simply an accepted historical fact that rabbinical Judaism – i.e., Judaism* – was invented in the first and second century. Not even the Jews themselves actually claim to be practicing the religion of the Old Testament, unless they are lying to Christians to try to get favor or money.

*You can refer to the religion of the Ancient Israelites as “Judaism” if you want, but it’s not the same religion. This is unnecessarily confusing, and not really even accurate. But people do refer to “ancient Judaism,” and that’s fine, as long as you recognize that this is not the same thing as rabbinical Judaism, and not even the rabbis themselves make that claim.

In reality, Christians are the inheritors of the faith of Abraham and the people of ancient Palestine. Most of the people living in the Holy Land at that time became Christians, and moved into Europe and married and reproduced, so we Europeans also share the blood of the people of ancient Palestine and the Levant. The Jews were a small secret of Israelite priests who rejected Christ, fled the Holy Land, and created a new religion based on rejecting Christ. If you study the Jew religion, you will find that it has virtually nothing to do with the religion of ancient Palestine, even though some of the Jews have maintained a form of the language.

There are many, many lies that are spread by these Jews about our Holy Faith, and one of the most ridiculous is that the Easter holiday is actually secretly a pagan holiday. This is very dumb and easily disproved, and yet it persists, because we live in a world of lies where lies are regularly taken as truth, even when they are disproved.

You may not believe a banned site, but Encyclopedia Britannica agrees and defines:

Rabbinic Judaism, the normative form of Judaism that developed after the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem (AD 70). Originating in the work of the Pharisaic rabbis, it was based on the legal and commentative literature in the Talmud, and it set up a mode of worship and a life discipline that were to be practiced by Jews worldwide down to modern times.

Wikipedia says:

Thus, some scholars have begun to propose a model which envisions a twin birth of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, rather than an evolution and separation of Christianity from Rabbinic Judaism. It is increasingly accepted among scholars that "at the end of the 1st century CE there were not yet two separate religions called 'Judaism' and 'Christianity'".

So it is not really correct to say that Jesus was a Jew, and that Christianity developed from Judaism. It is more accurate to say that Judaism is a religion based on rejecting Christ.

Orthodox Jews do not necessarily agree with any of this, and are not necessarily so anti-Christian. They claim their religion goes back to Moses and Abraham.

World War T in the Schools

Courts are being clogged with silly transgender cases, such this Indiana decision:

. John M. Kluge brought a Title VII religious discrimination and retaliation suit against Brownsburg Community School Corporation (“Brownsburg”) after he was terminated from his employment as a teacher for refusing to follow the school’s guidelines for addressing students. Brownsburg requires its high school teachers to call all students by the names registered in the school’s official student database, and Kluge objected on religious grounds to using the first names of transgender students to the extent that he deemed those names not consistent with their sex recorded at birth. After Brownsburg initially accommodated Kluge’s request to call all students by their last names only, the school withdrew the accommodation when it became apparent that the practice was harming students and negatively impacting the learning environment for transgender students, other students both in Kluge’s classes and in the school generally, as well as the faculty.

This is absurd. No student is harmed by being called by his last name. Or by pronouns based on sex.

Reading these cases convinces me that transgender advocates are the most unreasonable people on Earth. They are mentally disturbed and want everyone to go along with their psychotic demands.

In another context, Jerry Coyne wrote:

Once you start seeing the word “harm” connected with a science, you better give it close scrutiny, for nearly all the time the word means “offense”, not actual “harm.” And it’s been used in every other science I know of, as well as in medicine, to stymie research. I’m not denying that harm has been caused in the name of science, but nowadays the connection between the two is almost nonexistent.

They say "harm" because that makes it legally actionable, but it is all bogus. There is no harm.

Other cases are about sex-segregation in school sports. Unfortunately these are usually argued in terms of harm, fairness, and effect on elite competitions. These arguments are mostly foolish, on both sides.

Maybe some sports do not need to be sex-segregated. If you agree that sex-segregation has value, then every competitor of the wrong sex is harming everyone who appreciates that value.

If a girl joins a girls team to play with other girls, then that is what she wants. And there is a consensus that girls sports participation is a worthwhile activity. If she is willing to practice and play hundreds of hours, then she is getting sojmething out of it. If you take away the all-girl experience, you are harming her.

If you follow the science, the evidence is overwhelming that (1) sex is binary and immutable; (2) transgender people have serious mental disorders; and (3) gender affirming treatments make them worse, such as increasing the suicide rate; and (4) the transgender movement is harming girls sports and everything else it affects.

This war is being fought by a trans lobby that isn't even particularly interested in sports. Their real target is Christendom. They will say and do anything to bring down the culture. They are evil and destructive.

Origin of Jewish Strategies

Nathan Cofnas wrote in an academic paper:

I recently criticized some key tenets of what I called the “anti-Jewish narrative,” particularly as defended by Kevin MacDonald. According to MacDonald, Judaism is a “group evolutionary strategy” that led Jews to impose liberal multiculturalism on the West in order to advance their evolutionary interests at the expense of gentiles. In light of MacDonald’s reply, in this paper, I refine my previous arguments, address some popular misunderstandings, and discuss the root causes and consequences of anti-Semitism. I conclude that, contra the anti-Jewish narrative, Jews are not particularly ethnocentric, Jewish intellectuals do not typically advocate liberal multiculturalism for gentiles but not for Jews, Jews did not orchestrate the rise of liberalism or blank-slatism in the West, and anti-Semitism is not primarily a response to actual Jewish wrongdoing.

MacDonald responds. He has been blackballed, and the publisher retracted his last academic paper. Even the editor had to resign.

It is strange that these are the only two guys on the planet who are willing to discuss this issue. My guess is that it is career suicide for both of them.

Cofnas writes:

I challenged three key tenets of the anti-Jewish narrative, which have been defended by MacDonald: (a) Jews are highly ethnocentric, (b) liberal Jews hypocritically advocate different policies for Jews/Israel and gentiles/gentile countries, and (c) Jews are responsible for liberalism and mass immigration to the USA. ...

MacDonald (1998/2002) argues that Jewish intellectuals promote liberalism to undermine gentile societies and advance the evolutionary interests of Jews. He says that Jews were a “necessary condition…for the triumph of the intellectual left in late twentieth-century Western Societies” (ibid., p. 18).

I proposed what I called the “default hypothesis” to explain Jewish overrepresentation in the leadership of liberal intellectual movements (Cofnas, 2018). Jews are overrepresented primarily because of high average IQ, and secondarily because of their concentration in influential urban areas that allowed them to capitalize on their ability. Jewish political influence has skewed left in recent history mainly because right-wing movements have been disproportionately anti-Semitic. But Jews have been overrepresented in virtually all non-overtly-anti-Semitic intellectual activities. Despite being a fraction of one percent of the world population, Jews have been 44% of world chess champions, 25% of fields medalists, and 24% of winners of Japan’s Kyoto Prize. Jews comprise 26% of Nobel laureates in Physics, 26% in Physiology or Medicine, 39% in Economics, 19% in Chemistry, 14% in Literature, and 8% in Peace (JINFO.ORG, 2022).Footnote 1 Many of the most prominent figures in art, business, and politics are Jewish (Lynn & Kanazawa, 2008). With respect to politics, Jews are frequently the leaders of movements with radically opposing aims such as libertarianism and socialism. The default hypothesis says that Jews are overrepresented in liberal intellectual movements for the same reason(s) they are overrepresented in other intellectual activities. I argued that the evidence in fact supports the default rather than the group-evolutionary-strategy hypothesis (Cofnas, 2018).

I explicitly stated that Jewish IQ — which is something like 110–112 on average (Cochran et al., 2005; Lynn & Kanazawa, 2008) — “is not enough to explain Jewish achievement” (Cofnas, 2018, p. 137). I suggested that, besides a geographic advantage, personality traits could also play a role in Jewish success, although the nature of these traits is a matter of speculation. The fact that stereotypes tend to have a basis in reality (Jussim et al., 2015, 2016) and that Jews have been consistently stereotyped as having distinctive personalities — for example, as being “shrewd” (Brigham, 1971)—provides preliminary support for the hypothesis of personality differences.

So we have multiple possible explanations for Jewish domination of Leftist causes. And not much hope of a serious academic resolution of the matter. Maybe there are multiple contributing factors.

Cofnas argues that Jews are not ethnocentric, because American Reform and secular Jews marry non-Jews so often.

Okay, Reform Jews are less ethnocentric that Orthodox Jews, and more ethnocentric than Whites. Jews are only 2% of the population. My impression is that Reform and secular Jews prefer to marry Jews, but do not always have the opportunity, as most of their friends are non-Jews.

Compare to Irish-Americans. They are proud of being Irish, but marry non-Irish all the time. And Irish-Americans do not vote as a bloc.

Jews vote as a bloc. When asked, they might say that they vote for the party that is good for the Jews. I do not hear Irish or other ethnic groups say things like that. So yes, I think that Jews are very ethnocentric.

I am not sure why Jews deny being ethnocentric. Maybe they don't realize how ethnocentric they are. Or they just like to pretend that they are not. If you mention that someone is Jews, then other Jews will immediately rush to call you anti-semitic. Why do they do that? They are not embarrassed to be Jews. It is a form of extreme ethnocentrism.

Happy Easter.

NPR Radio is US State-Affiliated Media

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Twitter has labeled National Public Radio as “state-affiliated media” on the social media site, a move some worried could undermine public confidence in the news organization.

NPR said it was disturbed to see the description added to all of the tweets that it sends out, with John Lansing, its president and CEO, calling it “unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way.”

It was unclear why Twitter made the move. Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, quoted a definition of state-affiliated media in the company’s guidelines as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”

“Seems accurate,” Musk tweeted in a reply to NPR.

NPR does receive U.S. government funding through grants from federal agencies and departments, along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Besides the direct govt funding, NPR gets about 30% of its money from govt-funded local stations. The NPR web site says public radio station reveneues are 13% from the govt. It also says "Federal funding is essential".

I listen to NPR Radio regularly, and I have never heard it give a politically balanced report on anything. Not PBS TV either. For example, they never have a Trump representative giving his side of a Trump-related story. I have found more balanced stories on RT, the Russia-funded network.

Twitter should have put this label on PBS and UK BBC also.

Maryland Court Favors LGBTQ Parenting

Maryland child custody dispute. The parents divorced, and the mom got primary custody of the two kids. Under the mom's care, the 12-year-old boy turns gay and the 15-year-old girl turns transgender. The dad does not approve.

So they went to court. The judge sided with the mom, and the appeals court agreed! The dad is now cut out of their lives.

Here was the proof that the dad was unfit:

Half an hour later, Father texted Mother a picture of a horned, animal-like human sitting on a throne and wrote that it is a picture of a deity called "Baphomet" that was "after everyone's children right now."

I never heard of Baphomet, but I do believe that evil forces are at work here. This mom is a monster, and so are the social workers and judges who sided with her.

See this 1980s SNL comedy routine about a sick medico pushing trans surgery. I guess it was funny back then. SNL is not funny anymore, and neither is transsexualism.

Trump Indictment is Released

Trump appeared in court, and the indictment was released. It has 34 counts under New York state law. They all say essentially the same thing.

It is bogus for many reasons. The statute of limitations expired in 2018. Trump has a right to say whatever he wants in his business. None of it was false. The payments were to Cohen for legal expenses, just as recorded. Trump uses his personal funds, as that was more proper than using campaign funds. Any campaign fund issue would be a federal one, and the feds already decided it was not a crime. The only witness against Trump is Cohen, a convicted perjurer.

The idictment claims that the public was defrauded because Trump sought to suppress allegations that might be damaging to his campaign. One of the allegations was the completely false claim that he had an illegitimate child. Apparently the NY AG thinks that it is a crime to counteract a false claim, if it helps win an election.

Violent crime is out of control in NY, because the prosecutors are letting criminals go free.

No one can possibly think that these Trump charges are legitimate. The charges will probably be dismissed in a few months. The purpose is to damage Trump's candidacy for President.

I do not hear Pres. Biden or other prominent Democrats denouncing this. They say the Jan. 6, 2021 protests were anti-democracy. No, indicting Donald Trump is the most anti-democracy event of my lifetime.

Difference between Guilt and Shame

Here is a new short video from Ben Shapiro on the difference between guilt and shame.

Wikipedia explains:

In cultural anthropology, the distinction between a guilt society or guilt culture, shame society or shame culture and honor–shame culture, and a fear society or culture of fear, has been used to categorize different cultures.[1] The differences can apply to how behavior is governed with respect to government laws, business rules, or social etiquette. ...

In a guilt society, control is maintained by creating and continually reinforcing the feeling of guilt (and the expectation of punishment now or in the afterlife) for certain condemned behaviors. The guilt worldview focuses on law and punishment. A person in this type of culture may ask, "Is my behavior fair or unfair?"[citation needed] This type of culture also emphasizes individual conscience.[3]

In a shame society, the means of control is the inculcation of shame and the complementary threat of ostracism. The shame–honor worldview seeks an "honor balance" and can lead to revenge dynamics. A person in this type of culture may ask, "Shall I look ashamed if I do X?" or "How will people look at me if I do Y?" Shame cultures are typically based on the concepts of pride and honor,[4]. Often actions are all what count and matter.

In a fear society, control is kept by the fear of retribution. The fear worldview focuses on physical dominance. A person in this culture may ask, "Will someone hurt me if I do this?"

In the view of some of these anthropologists, Western Civilization was made possible by Christianity transforming Europe from being shame-based or fear-based into being a guilt-based culture.

Most Third World countries are still shame-based.

Shame can be very destructive:

Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre accurately describes shame as “a hemorrhage of the soul,” that is, a painful, unexpected, and disorienting experience. It is often linked to some painful incident—sin that has been done to us rather than by us. Shame has the power to steal our breath and smother us with condemnation, rejection, and disgust.

Guilt, on the contrary, occurs due to sins actually committed. It is based on the concrete fact of the human condition: God made us and requires us to be perfect (Lev. 19:2; Matt. 5:48), but because of original sin, we have all broken his commands. We stand guilty because of something we have done.

Shame is a painfully confusing experience—a sort of mental and emotional disintegration that makes us acutely aware of our inadequacies and shortcomings, and is often associated with a shrinking feeling of failure. It can be simultaneously self-negating and self-absorbed: “All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face” (Ps. 44:15).

Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew, and gets this exactly backwards. He says the purpose of religion is to promote shame instead of guilt. Maybe Judaism, but certainly not Christianity, and certainly not Americanism.

I do not expect a Jew to promote Christianity, but he is a conservative, a proud American, a supporter of religion, and an articulate critic of wokeness. He has a lot of Christian followers. He probably does not even realize that his worldview is so anti-Christian.

Atheists want School Drag Shows

I tried watching this video from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Instead of attacking religion, it was all about promoting drag shows in schools!

They keep saying that only Christian nationalist theocrats would refuse to accept the transgender agenda. All anti-trans beliefs are inherently religious, they say. The "evidence-based lawmaking is telling us something else."

A prominent atheist biology professor laments that FFRF has gone off the rails:

Lately, however, the FFRF has crept out of its bailiwick of enforcing separation of church from state, and is, like the ACLU and the SPLC, engaged in matters of social justice. Well, that’s their call, and I wouldn’t beef about it unless I thought they’ve undertaken campaigns that are unwise.

Well, the FFRF has, and has gone to ground on the same issue where the ACLU went astray: transgender issues in sports. ...

I’ve always been a strong supporter of the FFRF: it’s my very favorite secularist/humanist organization. But this time they’ve gone too far, and have refused to take what most of us would see as a reasonable stand on this issue. I will share this post with them, but I have little hope that they will modify their stand on trans rights so that they don’t trample on women’s rights.

The atheists say they are not just expressing social opinions, but are the ones basing policy on reason, science, and evidence.

It is all a lie. The science says that boys have an advantage over girls in most sports, and girls sports will be ruining if boys are allowed to compete.

A comment says:

The FFRF seem to be in favour of trans ideology, not on its merits, but purely because right-wing Christians are against it. That is tribalism rather than a reasoned, evidence-based approach.

And anyone who doesn’t accept that, in the vast majority of sports, men overall have a big advantage over women, and that that is the entire point of segregating sports by sex, is not taking a reasoned, evidence-based approach.

It is sad to see the FFRF going the way of too many atheist/humanist organisations in the US and becoming woke.

I am not sure. Most of the talking in the above video is from a transgender person with abiguous gender and "they/them" preferred pronouns.

They apparently believe that Christianity is the only thing in the way of woke radicals taking over the world. Are they right? Maybe.

Schools are Targeting your Kids Genitals

News from England:

Nearly half of secondary schools are allowing children to self-declare their gender without parental consent, an investigation has found. ...

According to the report, only 28 per cent of schools said that they would reliably inform a parent as soon as a child disclosed they were questioning their gender.

The investigation also found that 28 per cent of schools do not have single-sex toilets, while at least 19 per cent are not maintaining single-sex changing rooms.

No school should be concealing info from the parents.

Pres. Joe Biden announced:

Transgender Day of Visibility celebrates the joy, strength, and absolute courage of some of the bravest people I know — people who have too often had to put their jobs, relationships, and lives on the line just to be their true selves. Today, we show millions of transgender and nonbinary Americans that we see them, they belong, and they should be treated with dignity and respect. Their courage has given countless others strength, but no one should have to be brave just to be themselves. Every American deserves that freedom.

Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul — proudly serving in the military, curing deadly diseases, holding elected office, running thriving businesses, fighting for justice, raising families, and much more. As kids, they deserve what every child deserves: the chance to learn in safe and supportive schools, to develop meaningful friendships, and to live openly and honestly. ...

Meanwhile, we are also working to ease the tremendous strain that discrimination, bullying, and harassment can put on transgender children — more than half of whom seriously considered suicide in the last year. The Department of Education is, for example, helping ensure that transgender students have equal opportunities to learn and thrive at school, and the Department of Justice is pushing back against extreme laws that seek to ban evidence-based gender-affirming health care.

There is much more to do.

This is sick.