GOP AG’s Warn Garland to Back Off Prosecuting Child Transition

BY RICK MORAN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/10/13/gop-ags-warn-garland-to-back-off-prosecuting-child-transition-surgery-critics-n1636712;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

A group of thirteen state attorneys general warned Attorney General Merrick Garland against investigating critics of child gender transition surgeries.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is leading the effort, demanding that Garland “stand down” on acting on the requests of several medical organizations to investigate “disinformation campaigns” about child gender transitions.

The letter came after the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Medical Association (AMA), and the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) asked Biden’s attorney general to take “swift action to investigate and prosecute” people responsible for making threats against hospitals and doctors that are targeted for “providing evidence-based gender-affirming care.”

“From Boston to Akron to Nashville to Seattle, children’s hospitals, academic health systems, and physicians are being targeted and threatened for providing evidence-based health care,” the medical groups told Garland.

“The attacks are rooted in an intentional campaign of disinformation, where a few high-profile users on social media share false and misleading information targeting individual physicians and hospitals, resulting in a rapid escalation of threats, harassment, and disruption of care across multiple jurisdictions,” the medical groups added.

Obviously, doctors don’t like people looking over their shoulders. But what starts as a serious critique of a serious issue can easily devolve into a hysterical social media sideshow complete with “influencers” looking to stir up trouble.

Making threats against doctors and hospitals should be prosecuted. But we all know how the Justice Department would interpret “threats,” and Republican AGs are drawing a line trying to keep Garland from straying into viewpoint suppression.

“A free society cannot tolerate trusted professionals calling on law enforcement and big tech to suppress criticism,” Skrmetti told Fox News Digital. “We are slipping into a dangerous orthodoxy where dissent is pushed further and further to the margins.”

“America was founded through passionate disagreement, and the ongoing vitality of our Republic depends on our shared commitment to free speech,” he added.

Fox News:

Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of medical watchdog Do No Harm, criticized the medical associations and commended the attorneys general for their letter.

“Medical associations should follow the science, not try to stifle public debate – especially when they’re pushing a divisive ideology that could literally ruin children’s lives,” Goldfarb said.

“The AMA demands that we follow their lead without question, yet these are the same forces who falsely equate psychological counseling for children to ‘conversion therapy’ in order to railroad minors into a predetermined path of drugs and surgery,” Goldfarb continued.

“The better path is to listen to these state attorneys general and let this conversation continue nationwide,” he added.

As far as “providing evidence-based gender-affirming care,” there is now a monumental debate going on in the medical community about the necessity and efficacy of “gender-affirming care.” There is no objective “evidence” that children would be better off with this care, and when it comes to cutting into a child in a procedure that might permanently alter his or her life, the state has a compelling interest in seeing that the needs of the child are kept paramount.

There is just too much medical quackery in the “gender-affirming care” industry. These clinics are sprouting up all over the country. What are the credentials of the physicians running these clinics? What guide are they using to fulfill their oaths to “do no harm”? What kind of regulation are they subject to?

These medical associations are obviously in business to help their members both professionally and financially. Perhaps a more neutral point of view is needed to protect the child and uphold the highest standards of medical care.

Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment Will be 8.7 Percent

BY RICK MORAN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/10/13/social-security-announces-cost-of-living-adjustment-for-2023-n1636721;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The Social Security Administration announced on Thursday that the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for 2023 will be 8.7%, the biggest increase in 40 years.

Seniors will begin seeing the increase in January. The average increase in benefits will be $140, according to SSA.

The 8.7% tops the 5.9% increase in 2022. At the time, that raise was the highest in 40 years as well.

It’s not enough. The government announced today a much higher-than-expected inflation rate for September. Prices rose 0.4% in September from the previous month. Prices climbed 8.2% on an annual basis.

This guarantees further painful interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve as the central bank continues to battle the inflation let loose by Joe Biden and the Democrats.

“The COLAs really are about people treading water; they’re not increases in benefits,” Dan Adcock, director of government relations and policy at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told CNBC.

“They’re more trying to provide inflation protection so that people can maintain their standard of living,” Adcock said.

But starting in December, you may be able to see notices online from the Social Security Administration that state just how much your checks will be next year.

Two factors — Medicare Part B premiums and taxes — may influence the size of your benefit checks.

The standard Medicare Part B premium will be $5.20 lower next year — to $164.90, down from $170.10. Those payments are often deducted directly from Social Security benefit checks.

“That will mean that beneficiaries will be able to keep pretty much all or most of their COLA increase,” Mary Johnson, Social Security and Medicare policy analyst at The Senior Citizens League, told CNBC.com this week.

That 8.7% COLA increase won’t come close to covering price increases for food, fuel, or rent. Food prices alone are up 11.4% over last year and with inflation showing no signs of slowing down, those retirees who live on Social Security alone or on a fixed income will be in a world of hurt by mid-year.

Democrats are already trying to demagogue the issue.

Social Security isn’t funded by the “wealthy.” It’s funded by workers paying Social Security taxes out of their paychecks. And that includes convenience store clerks and Fortune 500 CEOs.

No doubt the COLA will be welcome. But once seniors realize the increase they’re receiving comes up short of helping them make ends meet, any gratitude they feel to Elizabeth Warren and the Democrats will be short-lived.

Hundreds of Muslims Shut Down School Board Meeting Over LGBTQ+ Book Controversy

BY MEGAN FOX

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/culture/megan-fox/2022/10/13/watch-hundreds-of-muslims-shut-down-school-board-meeting-over-lgbtq-book-controversy-n1636713;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

This is the fight I’ve been waiting for. Let’s be totally honest. The only religious people the left is truly scared to offend are Muslims. Criticizing Muslims is completely off the table according to the left’s rules of engagement, so if Muslims are upset about something, the amount of twisting, back-bending, and acrobatics the left will perform in order not to offend them will be something to see.

So when hundreds of Muslim parents, upset at gay porn in the school libraries, showed up to a school board meeting in Dearborn, Mich., and it devolved into shouting and chaos with board members running away and gay protesters being chased to their cars, the fallout was absolutely hilarious. The headline in the Detroit Free Press after the event went haywire was “LGBTQ and Faith Communities Struggle for Unity.” BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Can you imagine what the headline would have been if it were a Baptist church chasing gay protesters to their cars? “Fascist White Supremacist Book Burners Bash Gay Man in Parking Lot,” or “Rabid Religious Zealots Terrorize Gay Man Defending Right to Read,” or something equally terrible. I don’t know about you, but I’m enjoying this disaster.

Enjoy this thread and all the videos in it. I know I did.

I’ll be going over this hysterical story on today’s live stream. I’m covering the Darrell Brooks trial (if I can get through it and more). Meet me there! 

RON DESANTIS FOR GOVERNOR-HIS LIFE & BACKGROUND

Transgenderism Among Young Children Is Skyrocketing

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-spencer/2022/10/11/marylands-largest-public-school-district-sees-582-increase-in-gender-madness-among-students-n1636309;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Long ago, in less enlightened ages, when superstitions all too easily beguiled and misled the human soul, people thought they saw their neighbors conversing with demons and flying through the air by means of witchcraft. We laugh at all that now. Now we know to Trust the Science, and the Science tells us that men can become women and women men and that children as young as toddlers can know that they’re trapped in the wrong body, but when this happens, medical professionals can fix them right up with puberty blockers and surgery that will make everyone everything he or she or xe or it ever wanted to be in a jiffy. That’s so much more enlightened, and it’s spreading: in Maryland, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) reports a 582% increase in students with gender confusion.

Isn’t it wonderful that so many children are awakening to their true selves? Or rather, is it yet another sign that this is a mind virus, a social contagion that emanates more from societal obsessions than from the confused child’s actual psyche? The answer really isn’t unclear, much as many people would wish it to be. The transgender madness is a sociocultural fad like the hula hoop or stuffing people into phone booths or swallowing goldfish or growing one’s hair long and dropping out of school to find oneself, and one day in the not-too-distant future people will look back with horror at how so many children were mutilated and their lives destroyed in service of this madness.

But right now, it’s all the rage. The Daily Caller reported Tuesday that MCPS found out about the skyrocketing numbers of transgender students “from forms school counselors fill out when students approach them to talk about gender identity issues. Because the numbers rely on self-reporting, the near-sevenfold increase from 2019 to 2022 could indicate a massive increase in the number of gender-diverse students, an environment that encourages those students to be more open with counselors or both.” It’s not just an environment that encourages transgender students to be more open with counselors. It’s an environment that encourages students who may already be lonely or depressed, alienated, directionless, or any number of other things, to think that their problems all stem from “gender dysphoria” and can all be solved by going under the knife and becoming a lifelong dependent of the pharmaceutical industry.

Related: Poll: Almost No One Wants Sexualized Smut in K-12 Classrooms

Nowadays, “coming out” as transgender can make a lonely, friendless student suddenly become the center of attention, lionized for his or her “courage,” and applauded everywhere. The literature celebrating trans madness that we keep seeing in schools is there for a reason: it sets up trans people as heroes, doing something noble and good. That’s a powerfully attractive appeal to young people, and it’s clearly working. The Caller notes that in Montgomery County, “during the 2019-2020 school year, a total of 35 students reported gender nonconformity to a counselor, including four elementary students, 19 middle school students, and 12 high schoolers. During the 2021-2022 school year the total number of students reporting gender nonconformity spiked to 239, including 18 elementary students, 129 middle schoolers, and 92 high schoolers.” Are all these people really suddenly realizing that they’re girls trapped in boys’ bodies, and vice versa? Of course not. They’re suddenly realizing that being transgender is the in thing, the quick path to becoming the school hero.

Notice how many among them are elementary and middle school students. These children don’t even have a clear idea of what it is to be a man or a woman; how can they possibly realize the implications of transitioning from one to the other, or rather, from one to a freakish facsimile of the other? Montgomery County is also not singular; the same thing is happening all over the country. Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright has pointed out that “if a girl gravitates toward trucks and cars as a child, she is considered ‘gender nonconforming’ and ‘transgender,’ even if she shows no signs of gender dysphoria.”

Then in a few years, after she is left mutilated and unable to function normally, this whole thing could end, both in her own mind and in the culture, and then what? Once the transgender mania is over, will the doctors who facilitated her destruction apologize and restore her to womanhood? It cannot be done. What is being done to these young people is nothing short of monstrous. Those who are facilitating this cultural madness are destroying the lives of human beings. By the time this is obvious to everyone, the damage will not be able to be undone.

Trump, Gabbard Warn of Nuclear Armageddon

Addison Smith reacts to Tulsi Gabbard's exodus from the democratic party and warns that conservatives ought to be careful embracing her, because, while she may be right on a number of issues, she still holds a number of views that are diametrically opposed to conservative values.

BY ATHENA THORNE

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2022/10/12/trump-gabbard-warn-of-nuclear-armageddon-n1636445;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Former President Trump and former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard are emerging as voices of reason, as the world watches developments in the Ukraine War with increasing concern. Ukraine is awash in cash and weapons sent by the Biden administration to support its war to repel Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is taking full advantage of the situation, refusing to take a breather until his country is restored to its pre-Russian-aggression borders — including the return of Crimea. Globalist powers are aligning to back nuclear-armed Russian President Vladimir Putin into a corner — an extremely volatile situation.

At a rally in Mesa, Ariz., on Sunday, Trump pressured the Biden administration to de-escalate the crisis. “We must demand immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine or we will end up in World War Three, and there will be nothing left of our planet, all because stupid people didn’t have a clue,” Trump said. Speaking of the Biden administration, he warned, “They really don’t understand — I rebuilt our military, I rebuilt our nuclear power — they don’t understand what they’re dealing with, the power of nuclear.”

Related: Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant Has Lost External Power as Russia Claims Ownership

Trump isn’t alone in thinking the party in power should try sending peace negotiators rather than weapons of war.

On Tuesday, Tulsi Gabbard made the dramatic announcement that she is leaving the Democrat Party. “I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness,” the former presidential candidate and combat Army veteran said in a statement on her departure.

Gabbard concluded a litany of grievances against her former party by writing that it was “above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.”

Even without the potential for a nuclear nightmare, there is much to be concerned about with the administration’s policy in Ukraine. “President” Biden seems hell-bent on sending billions of dollars and tons of military equipment to Zelenskyy, guaranteeing that the war will rage on and that it will be bloody and destructive. At the same time, he has displayed zero interest in brokering an off-ramp for Russian President Putin. As many of my PJ Media colleagues have already noted, Putin won’t survive a Russian defeat in Ukraine, not politically and probably not mortally, either. Thus, the only conclusion to draw is that the White House is using Ukraine as a proxy for overturning the Russian government.

It’s not like they haven’t done this before — remember President Obama’s glorious “Arab Spring”? The Obama administration stuck its nose all about the Middle East, merrily tipping over imperfect-but-stable governments with no plan for follow-up. The power vacuums left behind were quickly filled with civil wars and model citizens such as ISIS. Europe’s migrant crisis was the direct result of Democrat-Globalist-sown chaos. Biden picked up where Obama left off, abandoning Afghanistan to the tender mercies of the Taliban. How’s that working out?

So perhaps Biden and his Democrat buddies are envisioning another smoldering pit of civil collapse where Russia used to be, but it’s highly unlikely Putin shares their vision. But if he’s pushed too far — if he’s faced with the loss of his power and probably his life — Putin will have nothing to lose. And people with nothing to lose have no reason to behave.