Trans rights are human rights, just as women's rights are. If that means providing gender affirming care for minors, then that's what it means. Not providing such care is tantamount to child neglect and abuse. But then, we know Trump's position on child abuse.
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At least 21 hospitals have ended or restricted trans care for minors since January
Good for Connecticut and Rhode Island!
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States vow to fight Trump official’s stop-work order on offshore wind farm
This morning, as I was finishing my bagel and coffee, Priscilla Kitty came in to get a drink of water. The feeding station is close to my place at the table. So, I leant my hand down and waited, watching her.
When she finished, she looked around. Then she came right up to me and briefly touched her nose to my hand before strolling out of the kitchen.
I was thrilled! That's by far the most trust or affection she has ever shown me! It really made my day. Sometimes it's the little things that get you through.
It may well seem as though we have enough, and more than enough, nowadays to keep track of, protest against or agitate for. Indeed, the ever-expanding list of things we absolutely have to follow and speak out about leaves me, for one, dizzy and exhausted.
And yet, the problem of the disconnect between the public’s awareness of nuclear arms and their governments’ rush to modernize and even expand nuclear stockpiles grows more acute as time goes on. While people assume they are as safe now as, say, when the START treaties were signed and put into effect, the fact is that nuclear non proliferation agreements and structures have been crumbling over the past decade and more.
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, last year global Nuclear Weapons Spending Surpassed $100 Billion - enough money to feed three hundred forty-five million people facing hunger and starvation for two years.
And the problem isn’t only the obscene and absurd waste of money represented by nuclear arms. The fragile protection offered by mutually assured destruction has crumbled as more countries become nuclear powers, and as more of those countries engage in conventional wars and military actions, the probability of accidental – or deliberate – escalation to the use of nuclear weapons increases.
I know when everything is a five alarm fire, nothing is a five alarm fire. You get numb to urgency. I get that! I’m exhausted and heartsick all the time now. One more thing I have to feel outrage over, and write/post/blog about and share? Really? Come on!
This cause is fundamental though. Like climate change, the spread and ever increasing power of nuclear weapons poses an existential threat to civilization. But unlike climate change, it also poses a broader threat to life on Earth itself.
Howsoever tired we are, howsoever fervently we want to crawl into a hole and pull it in after us, we can’t ignore the looming threat of nuclear arms.
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Threat of Nuclear War Is Rising, But Scientists Say the Public Can Change That - Click
I was quite surprised to stumble across this video detailing the Great Barrington tornado, right here in my neck of the woods.
As Israel's genocide and engineered famine in Gaza reach new depths of depravity it is important, not only to keep calling attention to the attrosities and war crimes, but also to humanize the suffering Gazan Palistinians. This piece in The New Yorker does that, not with sentementality, but with deep compassion.
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Treating Gaza’s Collective Trauma - Click
BREAKING: Paramount Will Have a 'Bias Monitor' Overseeing CBS News Reporting to TrumpIn a move that would have seemed like satire a few years ago—perhaps something ripped straight from an especially cynical episode of South Park—the federal government under Donald Trump has successfully strong-armed one of the most powerful media companies in America into adopting a "bias monitor" and eliminating its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs as a condition of merger approval. This isn’t a dystopian Netflix pitch. It’s policy now.
Last Thursday, FCC commissioner Brendan Carr approved the $8 billion merger between Skydance Media and Paramount—an act that would normally garner attention for its financial and creative implications. But we now know that this merger came with a disturbing catch: government-mandated ideological restructuring. Paramount must now hire an ombudsman—essentially a political commissar—tasked with flagging any perceived "bias" at CBS News. This bias monitor must report directly to Donald Trump.
To say this is unprecedented is an understatement. We’ve entered a new phase of culture war: not one merely waged on social media or cable news, but one enforced by regulatory muscle.
While Trump’s first term was marked by a toxic rhetorical war against the press—“enemy of the people,” “fake news,” “scum”—his second term appears more tactically effective. He’s not just yelling anymore; he’s governing. And he's using the full power of the federal government to reshape the media landscape in his image.
The timing is impossible to ignore. Only days before this merger approval, CBS canceled The Colbert Report, an iconic show known for its sharp political satire—particularly when directed at Trump. The cancellation followed shortly after Paramount agreed to pay Trump a $16 million settlement over what he claimed was the “unfair editing” of an interview with Kamala Harris. Legal experts called the suit frivolous. But it didn't matter. The settlement came. The show got axed. And a billion-dollar merger received a presidential green light—so long as CBS cleansed itself of both "bias" and DEI.
The Trump White House has also now taken to issuing official condemnations of comedians. Last week, Joy Behar was labeled “an irrelevant loser” by the administration for a tame joke about Trump’s jealousy of Barack Obama. South Park—which has lampooned every political figure imaginable—was attacked for being “irrelevant” after an episode featured Trump in bed with Satan.
It’s worth asking: What happens to a culture when satire becomes suspect? When jokes become federal offenses in all but name?
When media companies start thinking twice about airing an SNL skit, a political cartoon, or even a provocative drama because the White House might retaliate financially or regulatorily—that’s not just chilling. That’s totalitarian adjacent.
We can mock the absurdity of a federal government that obsesses over comedy sketches and internal DEI training slides. But that mockery must be paired with alarm—and action. Because this isn’t theoretical. It’s happening now. And it’s happening fast.
Media institutions must decide whether they are in the business of truth or the business of survival. Journalists must decide whether they are stenographers or storytellers. And the public—you, reading this—must decide whether you’re comfortable with your government telling late-night comedians what they can joke about and newsrooms who they can hire.
Paramount has capitulated. Others may soon follow. The question is: who will stand?
Prof. Bartov's assessment comes as no surprise to anyone who has been following Israel's genocide in Gaza and attempts to destroy the PA in the West Bank for the last few decades, but still horrifying when couched in such terms.
No other country on the face of the Earth would have been allowed to get away with a fraction of what Israel has done to the Palestinians, most especially in Gaza!
As a Roman Catholic, I love and respect the Jewish people, our elder brothers in faith. But, that has never stopped me, nor will it ever stop me, saying as loudly and frequently as possible, that the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu is a murderous, genocidal regime.
All the members of the IDF who carry out Netanyahu's sick, grandiose genocidal vision shall eventually find, here or in the Hereafter, that "just following orders" doesn't cut it.