Lest we forget –

The administration of former President Donald Trump obstructed an investigation looking into why officials withheld about $20 billion in hurricane relief for Puerto Rico following the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017, one of the deadliest U.S. natural disasters in over 100 years, a new report says.

Or to put it another way, the Trump administration withheld about $20 billion in desperately needed hurricane relief for Puerto Rico and then obstructed an investigation into this brutal theft.

The Trump administration’s OMB also insisted on overhauls to Puerto Rico’s property management records, suspension of its minimum wage on federal contracts and other prerequisites to access relief funds, according to the report. Some HUD officials worried such requirements were potentially beyond HUD’s authority to impose on grantees.

Trump steals millions if not billions, and shields his billions from taxation, while he makes sure to prevent people in Puerto Rico from getting the minimum wage for federal work.

Throughout his term, Trump repeatedly opposed disaster funding for Puerto Rico while disputing and failing to acknowledge Maria’s death toll. Trump had also told top White House officials “that he did not want a single dollar going to Puerto Rico,” the Washington Post reported in 2019. “Instead, he wanted more of the money to go to Texas and Florida.”

More white people there, you see. More people like Trump there.

The federal government has allocated nearly $69 billion to help the island recover from Maria as well as other disasters that have hit the island over the past few years. But most of the money, specifically funds for housing and infrastructure relief, hasn’t made its way to communities on the island. Puerto Rico has received $19 billion, according to the Office of Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency.

$50 billion here, $50 billion there, and pretty soon it starts to add up.

H/t Holms

As Skeletor mentioned in Miscellany Room, Caitlyn Jenner got something right for a change.

Guess who doesn’t approve.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on What comfortable looks like.

And it isn’t resolved by transferring the problem to GC feminists, and attacking them as the enemy. They are the ones with the most understanding of the real problem, because we feel it ourselves. We live with it every day, and somehow manage without cutting off healthy parts, changing our name or our pronouns, or adopting the stereotypical image of the opposite sex.

It’s amazing how allegedly progressive people and organizations have bought into gender ideology, which is irredemably regressive and reactionary. Gender critical feminists are actually fighting the real war.

In the eyes of trans activists, GC feminists are the enemy, and for good reason. The huge increase in FTM transitioners is a symptom of the bigger picture that feminists see. The epidemic of ROGD can be seen as a “rational” response by young women, trapped within a sexist, patriarchal culture, attempting to escape the burdens placed on their sex. Trans activism denies that ROGD even exists, and by doing so, attempts to try to find any sort of “cause” or “pattern” behind this non-existent phenomena must be derailed. Young women are supposed to just conform to sexist stereotypes, either by submitting to femininity, or “identifying” into maculinity. And of course, there’s always the option of “sex work.”

The locus of change, and the onus of responsibility for change, is thus shifted to female minds and bodies, and directed away from the toxic standards from which they are trying to escape. Within trans activism, “gender non-conformity” is the freedom to switch from one cage to the other, leaving bodies broken, and sexist, patriarchal stereotypes safely intact. This is a feature, not a bug.

This atomization, the attempt to prevent anyone from connecting the dots, the denial of the sheer numbers of “isolated incidents” of ROGD, is an attempt to conceal the bigger picture that is driving this. To borrow Margaret Thatcher’s phrasing “There is no such thing as patriarchy, just individuals and their gender identities.” Or, to quote The Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”

Another crack in the dam.

Exactly.

Very damn disturbing indeed.

The thread is all the more encouraging when you see that Rustin is a leader writer at the Guardian.

I didn’t know the Australian PM is an evangelical.

Scott Morrison has asked a national conference of Christian churches to help him help Australia, while revealing his belief that he and his wife, Jenny, have been called upon to do God’s work.

In video that has emerged of the prime minister speaking at the Australian Christian Churches conference on the Gold Coast last week, Morrison also revealed that he had sought a sign from God while on the 2019 election campaign trail, and that he had practised the evangelical tradition of the “laying-on of hands” while working in the role of prime minister.

He also describes the misuse of social media as the work of “the evil one”, in reference to the Devil, and called on his fellow believers to pray against its corrosive effect on society.

It’s unnerving, that kind of thing. If you believe in “the Devil” and “God’s work” and “the laying on of hands” then what other magical beliefs do you have? People in government should have real-world beliefs.

The prime minister travelled to the conference from Sydney using his taxpayer-funded aircraft. No video of the address has been promoted on his Facebook or official pages, nor has his office released a copy of his speech, as usually occurs when he is speaking in his official capacity as prime minister.

Oh he kept it kind of secret, did he. Sinister.

The video, which was broadcast by Vineyard Christian church then distributed by the Rationalist Society, gives rare insight into Morrison’s personal religious practice and the beliefs that guide him and the rapidly growing Pentecostal movement in Australia.

Why is the insight rare? Surely it should be public knowledge.

H/t Omar

On Any Questions yesterday, starting at 33:50 minutes, a caller named Arthur asked “What is a woman?”

Jackie Baillie, Labour, starts with “I’m supportive of the Gender Recognition Act,” then says she recognizes “there are women who will identify as being a women based on their sex”

Ok let’s pause there – that’s a “recognize” too many. Women don’t “identify as being women based on their sex.” They just are women. Women are women, based on their sex. Sticking the I-word in there adds nothing but confusion.

She continues “and there are trans people whooo you know may be born as a different gender who will identify as women and I think we should demedicalize the process and enable them to live as they feel they should do.”

So, she doesn’t answer the question.

The presenter says let’s take a step back, we’re talking about a conflict of rights, between people who identify as blah blah blah many words blah, tiny pause, “and women, and Jackie you would expand the rights for trans people…” In other words the important issue is these people who need many words to explain, not those stupid people who are just the one dull word “women.” The hell with women, let’s talk about expanding the rights of the enthralling mesmerizing fascinating exciting men who say they are women.

Next up, Lorna Slater for the Scottish Greens, who announces that it’s not a question asked in good faith, it’s an anti-trans position. Cool, so much for women then, because who cares. The presenter says hang on, you’re assuming Arthur’s motives, that’s not fair. Slater says it’s a dog-whistle question that tries to make it seem as if women’s rights are threatened by trans people which they are not, absolutely no conflict between women’s rights and trans rights, trans women are women. Human rights are human rights, she concludes. Breathtakingly stupid and fanatical and, if she only knew it, misogynist.

There’s more; maybe later.

How the headline looks on the BBC front page:

Whoever is in charge of that front page is sending a signal. Nicely done.

The BBC solemnly reports on “Elliot” Page’s conversation with Oprah Winfrey.

Elliot Page says having transition surgery has been a “life-saving” experience.

So what the BBC is doing here is promoting the idea that getting your healthy breasts cut off can be life-saving. That is, the BBC is encouraging girls and women to think it can be good to get your healthy breasts cut off. Why is the BBC doing that?

The Canadian-born actor, 34, said having top surgery had allowed him to “feel comfortable in my body for probably the first time”.

And why is the BBC calling it “top surgery”? Why is the BBC, a grown-up institution, using baby talk for amputation of healthy breasts? There’s no such thing as “top surgery”; that’s political slang for removing healthy body parts, an act usually seen as a sign of mental illness.

Top surgery involves the removal of the breast tissue to create a masculine chest.

Healthy breast amputation involves the removal of the healthy breasts so that the owner can pretend to have a “masculine chest.”

Page said the surgery had given him a new energy, “because it is such a freeing, freeing experience”.

And she said it while looking as wan and low-energy and pallid and profoundly miserable as it’s possible to look.

Page also used the interview to criticise moves by some US states banning transgender athletes from competing in girls sports teams.

Yet another respectable news organization repeats the lie.

“If you’re not gonna allow trans kids to play sports, children will die,” Page said. “And it really is that simple.”

Baby talk all the way down.

Someone is shocked and hurt in Halifax.

“Shocked and hurt” is how Alicia Frederick says she felt when she learned about a new book purchased by Halifax Public Libraries.

Public libraries buy a lot of books. It’s not really a worthwhile project to try to monitor their purchases for what makes you, Random Person, shocked and hurt. Libraries don’t and can’t filter their acquisition process according to what might possibly make someone feel shocked and hurt.

The library currently owns two copies of the book by Abigail Shrier, called Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. As of this writing, 21 people have it on hold. The book’s description on the library website says:

Unsuspecting parents are awakening to find their daughters in thrall to hip trans YouTube stars and “gender-affirming” educators.

We’re supposed to think that’s stupid and wrong. Go take another look at “Elliot” Page to see how stupid and wrong it isn’t.

On March 17, Nicole Nascimento, another mother of a trans child, expressed concern about the book in a Facebook post, and linked to a letter* written by Elm Klemic, who had addressed it to the Ottawa Public Library, asking that library to not include the book in its collection.

…

The letter says that the book “has the potential to cause great harm.” It cites statistics on the high levels of harassment and violence trans youth report, as well as the alarming percentage of those who have made at least one suicide attempt.

The usual nonsense, in short, along with the obligatory threat of suicide which, as mental health professionals keep pointing out, is considered very bad practice because it promotes suicidal ideation. But hey, trans activism trumps all the rules.

Now that the library has put the book into circulation, Nascimento said in a message to the Examiner that she was “concerned.” She wrote, “It surprises me that our library would carry a book that would risk the lives of trans youth simply for the sake of intellectual freedom. It is incredibly irresponsible, especially given the fact that the book in question has little to no scientific ground to stand on.”

The book doesn’t exist “simply for the sake of intellectual freedom.” Shrier wrote it to say something that needs to be said. It’s a substantive book with a substantive argument, and that’s why she wrote it and the publisher published it and Halifax readers are requesting it from the library.

Earlier this week, Mila McKay launched a new online petition calling on the library to remove the book from its collection. The petition says, “Transgender Identity is not a choice, a Craze, or a Fad” and that the inclusion of the book in the library’s collection has “increased ease of access to parents and other adults who work with youth who may believe the hateful messages in the book and subsequently act in ways that endanger trans children.”

But Mila McKay doesn’t know that trans identity is not a choice or a craze or a fad. How could she know that? Does she have infallible insight into the minds of all people who identify as trans? How could anybody know what she claims to know?

McKay, a trans/non-binary anti-poverty activist and sociology student at Mount Saint Vincent University, said in an interview she was “very angry” about the library’s decision. She does not think the book should be censored — but that removal from the library collection does not constitute censorship. It “isn’t stopping [Shrier] from selling her book or publishing her book… There are all kinds of books [Halifax Public Libraries] don’t shelve. They don’t buy just any book. So why this book?”

Who put her him them in charge of what books Halifax library adds to its shelves? Why this trans/non-binary anti-poverty activist and sociology student?

The headline, for a start.

‘It is life-saving’: Elliot Page reveals happiness at having had top surgery

That is, Elliot Page claims happiness at having had her healthy breasts cut off.

It has been widely noted that Page doesn’t appear the least bit happy in her interview with Oprah Winfrey.

“I want people to know that not only has it been life-changing for me, I do believe it is life-saving and it’s the case for so many people,” the actor told Oprah Winfrey on her new show for Apple TV+.

So more and more and more girls and women should get their healthy breasts cut off. It will make them so happy.

Unless of course it doesn’t, but hey, it’s still awesome to be encouraging this, because you just never know, am I right?

Page urged officials to support healthcare for transgender people and allow them access to sports. Republican lawmakers across the US are seeking to curtail gender-affirming care and punish doctors who deliver it, as well as banning trans youth from playing sports.

No they’re not, you stinking liars. They’re not “seeking to ban trans youth from playing sports.” You know that. You’re telling a shameless lie, in aid of helping more boys and men take the place of girls and women in sports.

“Children will die,” Page said. “And it really is that simple.”

No it isn’t.

This week, state legislators in Florida rushed through a bill that would ban trans women and girls from participating in school sports. Critics described the move as “cruel and horrific”.

No they didn’t. Lying again.

I hope the backlash starts soon.