Music for a Sunday: What’s that sound?

Everybody look what’s goin’ ’round…again:

This song may be older than I am, but it will never NOT be relevant. Especially in an age of incessant wars and school shootings.

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Posted in Angry Pacifist Speaks Her Mind, Canadian Counterpunch, Guns, Guns, Guns, Music for a Sunday | Comments Off on Music for a Sunday: What’s that sound?

Donnie’s tiny hands have blood on them (literally and figuratively)

Hey, hi, hello, and Happy New Year!

Take a good look at this, and tell me if you see what I see:

Aside from the creepy contrast between his pale palms and his orange face, Donnie Drumpf’s little baby hands have some angry red lesions on them. What could those mysterious bloody-red spots be?

James Carville asked around among some doctors he knows, and says they unanimously regard those lesions as a sign of secondary syphilis:

And yes, those do indeed look like gummas to my eyes, as well.

So, if Mr. Carville and the unnamed MDs he mentions are right, and ol’ Donnie has syphilis, it says a number of frankly awful things about him:

1. He doesn’t even have the basic courtesy to use condoms, despite all his talk of how trying to avoid STDs was as hard as going to war in Vietnam;
2. He doesn’t see his primary-care physician nearly as much as a man of his age and (obviously not good) condition should;
3. When he does see a doctor (whenever THAT may be), the doctor is not allowed to diagnose, let alone actually treat him, for any illnesses he may have (and be carrying, and spreading to God only knows who all else) — because Donnie, in his senile dictatorial vanity, won’t hear of it.

Given the widely affirmed fact that his hygiene and diet are terrible, as is his body odor, it seems entirely plausible that Donnie probably does have untreated secondary syphilis. Is it really shocking that a man who literally smells like ass would not only neglect to wipe and wash himself, but also neglect to seek treatment for a very curable bacterial infection?

If what I suspect proves true, and that his brain is deteriorating due to syphilitic paresis (the same illness that ended up killing Al Capone), then it explains a number of things, from Donnie’s grandiose and nonsensical daily rants, to the fact that Melania renegotiated her pre-nup and is seen with him as little as possible. Heck, it even explains why she’s so reluctant to hold his hand.

And why wouldn’t she be, considering where that hand has most likely been?

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Posted in Der Drumpf, Epidumbics, Farts, Fascism Without Swastikas, Filthy Stinking Rich, Mobsters, Sick Frickin' Bastards, The United States of Amnesia, The WTF? Files | Comments Off on Donnie’s tiny hands have blood on them (literally and figuratively)

It’s been a heckin’ year.

Hello again, friends and strangers.

Sorry I’ve been away so long, but there’s a good reason for that. This has been the Year From Hades for me.

I’ve had two driving tests (one flunked, one FINALLY passed), a biopsy, two surgeries, a bunch of household emergencies coming all on top of one another, and what feels suspiciously like a mental breakdown of sorts. It seems like I’ve had everything but cancer or COVID (and believe me, I’m NOT hoping to find out for reals what any of THAT is like, because I’ve had enough of sickness and convalescence this past year to last me another five at least.)

So, where have I been? Oh, where have I NOT?

I had to take my driving test twice, both times at a location an hour’s drive away. Which was, in addition to all else, tough to find because the street signs in the town where I took it were, shall we say, lacking. That screwed me up the first time I went to take it, because of course I got lost. No signs pointing me to the DriveTest centre, no GPS, no reliable roadmaps, no driving instructor to navigate and/or give me any last-minute coaching. It was just me in the car, scared shitless the whole way up the two-lane skinny, circling frantically through subdivisions and parking lots and leafing through the useless Google Maps printouts I’d laid on the passenger seat. By the time I arrived at the drive-test centre I was wayyyyy late, and really should have said no when they offered to test me anyway, because I was so flustered that I flunked. I also had to get an extension on my G2, which was a source of shame and chagrin for weeks afterward. I’d had such high ambitions for not only driving over an hour there (and over an hour back), but passing every element of the test with flying colors. Instead, I made all the dumbest rookie mistakes imaginable.

(BTW, none of this would have happened if the drive-test centre in my own town had still been open; thanks a buttload, Mike Fucking Harris, for yet another fine screwing you’ve imposed on this province. I hope you get extra-long COVID, and that even your for-profit nursing home chain doesn’t save your miserable, unnatural life, you motherfucking toadstool.)

Thankfully, I was ready the next time, and everything I needed to do clicked in my brain just days before. Sometimes you buckle under pressure; other times, you just buckle the fuck DOWN.

Meanwhile, something was up in my uterus. Around this time last year, I had what felt like a massive, horrendous period, only worse. It was the second one I’d had in as many years. The previous time, it went on for over a week, and I was miffed because I’d have to set my menopause clock back to zero, after a good year without a period. This time, it went on for over two whole weeks. Again, after a good whole year without a period.

So I made an appointment with my doctor, embarked on a battery of blood tests that showed me to be menopausal after all, and got my first shock of the year in January: My blood pressure was too high! So, I got a prescription for that. Yay! My first official Old Lady Medication.

And while I was thankful that the pills worked well and without side effects, the Two (Postmenopausal) Periods From Hades were still very much on my mind, so I raised the issue repeatedly with my regular physician until she referred me to a gynecologist. He ordered tests. First an ultrasound, which determined that my uterine lining was unusually thick, which may have been the cause of the bleeds. Then, an endometrial biopsy, which I feared and dreaded but needn’t have; it was far less crampy than even a normal period for me. That test was inconclusive, since not enough endometrial tissue was aspirated to test. So then I had to have a hysteroscopy/D&C, which was the first of the two operations. It turned out to be a polypectomy as well; the scope had shown a growth on the uterine wall. Culprit found and eliminated! Or so I thought.

Well, a biopsy showed the polyp to be precancerous. While I was absorbing the good news it wasn’t cancer just yet, the gyno sprang his next little surprise on me: I was going to need a total laparoscopic hysterectomy, with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. (Try saying THAT five times fast. Drunk or sober, you simply can’t.)

If I’d been younger and still hoping for kids, this treatment might not have been recommended, but due to my age and the fact that I never wanted kids anyway, that horse was long out of the barn. In fact, my tubes were tied 20 years ago, so there was also that. And in any case, I’m not a believer in feminine martyrdom or anything else that falls under the rubric of “let God decide it for you”. If I could forestall cancer by getting rid of some non-essential organs which had been a source of grief to me for four decades, then damn it, I was going to. So I signed the consent form and made hasty preparations for my recovery at home.

Three weeks later, near the end of September, I was in surgery. Again. And after a couple of hours, I was out — sans uterus, cervix, Fallopian tubes, and ovaries. Tired, but hopeful. The garden had already been dug over and tarped just days before I was due to go in. All I had to do now was recover, and hope that the coming winter wouldn’t be too snowy. So far, it hasn’t been. My recovery has been considerably less eventful than the weather.

As for the household emergencies, I’ll spare you the details. I’m not out of the woods there yet, anyway.

So. Here I am, looking at another year, this time with some things I didn’t have this time last year (a full-fledged driver’s licence, blood pressure medication) and minus some things I did have (all my reproductive organs, right down to my tired, retired ovaries). Probably the first order of business in January (which starts tomorrow!) will be to call my doctor and get checked out mentally, and ask for either antidepressants or estrogen, I’m really not sure which. Maybe one, maybe the other, maybe even both. Won’t that be fun? Yep, I’m SO looking forward to that.

Anyhow, happy New Year! Let’s hope it’s better than this one’s been. Even as low as I am, I’m still thankful to put it behind me at last.

It could all have been so much worse.

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Posted in Confessions of a Bad German, Writer Lady Sings the Blues | Comments Off on It’s been a heckin’ year.

What you need to know about Israel and Palestine right now

First off, MSNBC’s Ali Velshi gives an on-the-ground impression:

The situation is really stark, and awful for Palestinians in Gaza particularly (seeing as it’s already the world’s largest open-air prison, this is all too predictable).

The Rational National’s David Doel has compiled a great bunch of tweets and clips, including one from the late Michael Brooks that hasn’t aged a day:

Yanis Varoufakis’s takes are, as always, the best.

Meanwhile, at the Majority Report, Emma Vigeland is mincing NO words:

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Posted in Angry Pacifist Speaks Her Mind, Bullies, Crapagandarati, Do As I Say..., Fascism Without Swastikas, Gazing on Gaza, Human Rights FAIL, Isn't That Terrorism?, Israelly Uncool, Newspeak is Nospeak, Sick Frickin' Bastards, The United States of Amnesia, The War on Terra | Comments Off on What you need to know about Israel and Palestine right now

Plague rat heads exploding in 3…2…1…

Hold onto your hats, folks, it’s about to start raining rodent brain tissue:

Who knew that a vaccine technology pioneered in the 1990s — yes, way back then, and NOT yesterday! — would finally find its niche during a particularly deadly pandemic? And who knew that this technology — which is NOT experimental anymore! — would work?

Well, these two scientists did. And now the whole world knows, too.

Congratulations, Doctors, you deserve every bit of this. Just keep your umbrellas up in case some plague rat’s head explodes near you, y’hear?

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Posted in Epidumbics, Isn't It Ironic?, She Blinded Me With Science | Comments Off on Plague rat heads exploding in 3…2…1…

Trashy congresscritter actually forced to apologize for being trash

You may not need to see it in order to believe it (the part about Bobo being trashy, I mean), but here you go anyway:

Now, if only they would show the apology. I guess that part is just too much to expect.

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Posted in Credit Where Due, Fascism Without Swastikas, Fetus Fetishists, Grifters, Guns, Guns, Guns, Isn't It Ironic?, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Professional Phobes, Schadenfreude, The Hardcore Stupid, The United States of Amnesia | Comments Off on Trashy congresscritter actually forced to apologize for being trash

Old fart rips one at gasbag dinner

Come for the hilarity, stay for the unfunny reality:

Yes, that fart-fight at the food-fest was funny…but what’s not funny is the misinformation that Bobby Kennedy Jr. is spreading.

And he’s a fucking environmental lawyer! He knows better, or should — but he chooses not to care. And worse, he chooses to come to a false conclusion about the parts he does care about. Worst of all, he keeps spreading those false conclusions like a Typhoid Bobby. Remember his anti-vaccine activism? Over a million US citizens don’t, because they’re now dead of COVID. The death toll from that pandemic is now greater, for the United States of Amnesia, than those of both world wars combined! I hate to think how many of them died because Bobby or someone like him planted unjustified fear — oh sorry, “vaccine hesitancy” — in their hearts.

Just imagine how much more damage he can do with anti-environmental nonsense like his idea that man-made climate change is just a “scare”, and that the “discipline of the free market”, which has been conspicuously absent, will somehow “correct” it. Because unlike COVID, climate change will harm us all, and no place is safe from it. And the eastern seaboard of the US, in particular, is heavily populated and in grave danger from rising ocean levels.

Mike’s right, we should be concerned. It’s time to start slapping corporate carbon monsters with real punishments, instead of waiting for the much-vaunted “free market” to come up with something, because it won’t. And time’s up. My home and native land is on fire, and people are choking to death on the smoke, while our neighbors are drowning just to the south of where I sit. And what is the Great Environmental Lawyer, nephew of the late, lamented JFK, and son of the also-lamented RFK, doing about it? In effect, he’s just twiddling his thumbs and emitting hot air…when he’s not being openly farted at by some climate-denialist fool.

And that’s what really stinks.

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Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Crapagandarati, Economics for Dummies, Environmentally Ill, Epidumbics, Farts, Grifters, Isn't It Ironic?, Kooks, Law-Law Land, Quacks, Shysters, Teh Ghey, The Trans, The United States of Amnesia | Comments Off on Old fart rips one at gasbag dinner

Heeeeere, kitty, kitty, kitty.

Ash Sarkar dissects the latest right-wing moral panic over something that doesn’t really exist — i.e., kids who identify as animals. It’s especially hilarious when “journalists” start offering to pay for accounts by supposedly exasperated parents of such children. It’s such a real thing, that so truly exists, that they have to pay for stories of it!

And when they’re not busy offering payment for anonymous parent accounts (and getting trolled by respondents who’ve clearly read their Kafka), they’re going on the air in cat ears and makeup themselves, and presenting this as An Actual Thing That Actually Happens. They’re becoming exactly what they’re supposedly denouncing.

The right is all about free speech, as we all know. And freedom of expression, too, provided that said speech and expression are sexist, racist, imperialist, pro-capitalist, anti-queer, anti-poor, or anti-anything and anyone that isn’t exactly like themselves. They will fight to the death (yours) for their right to call you a slur, and tooth and nail to oppose your right to object. And when you keep fighting back, and winning, they’ll retreat to their little corner, mewling and whimpering about how No One Has Any Respect Anymore.

Well, hard cheese. No one owes respect to people who seriously believe that public schools are now being forced to provide litterboxes in every classroom for those kids who identify as cats, or who can’t tell a transgender kid (which IS a real thing) from a kid who thinks they’re a cat to the extent that they actually communicate only in meows and eat only kibble. People who think that you shouldn’t teach school-age kids what LGBT+ people are without immediately assuring them that “that’s not normal, those people are sick and need help”, don’t deserve any more respect than a meow down the phone, or a prank e-mail about their son who now thinks he’s a giant cockroach. Because, unlike people who identify as cats, LGBT+ people are real, they are normal, and they don’t need any help other than the kind that comes from actual societal acceptance. LGBT+ people are the ones who are owed respect here, and they’re still having to fight to get it.

And when they put up a fight, and that fight seems to be going in their favor, what does the free-speech right wing do? Why, just what any respectable fighter for Freeze Peach does: They make shit up. Because made-up shit has always trumped reality in the right-wing world. How else would anyone believe that empires are good, that people who make their bundle off the backs of everyone else are the best and brightest, or that racism, sexism, and all the phobias and bigotries are normal?

Now, out here in the real world, there ARE classrooms where buckets of kitty litter are kept in the closet. But it’s not for kids who think they are kitties. It’s for when there’s an active shooter on the loose, and schools are in lockdown, so no one can get to a bathroom for hours on end. That is a real and pressing problem. But of course, the right won’t talk about that, and will even shame you for “politicizing a tragedy” if you try to bring it up — because among all the other made-up shit they believe in, they also think that guns are the solution to all problems, and never an actual problem unto themselves, nosirree!

And of course, the same right-wingers who think guns solve all problems, also think that guns would be the best answer to the existence of anyone who contradicts their smug, cozy, all-about-me narratives. LGBT+ kids? If you can’t talk them out of that, shoot them like you would a rabid dog. Same goes for blacks, Jews, Asians, indigenous peoples, you name it. Anyone who’s out of line, bang-bang.

Yes, it’s been tried before, and yes, a whole world war was fought (and lost) by those defending just such ideas. And empires and bigotries have been crumbling slowly ever since. But remember, kids, it’s Antifa who’s the real baddie here!

Most of all, you must never ask what Antifa is or why it’s so bad, because then, you’d have to talk about fascism. And that’s a swearword to those on the Freeze Peach right. You can tell by how much they whine when anyone calls them, quite rightly, a fascist. Hell, Elon Fucking Musk will even ban you from Twitter if you dare to denounce them as such, or try to block their hateful tweets. No, better just to believe some 4chan hoax than to point out that the emperor is nekkid as a jaybird, and nowhere near as pretty. Because it’s all about your freedom to believe in the dumbest shit, don’t you know?

PS: If you believe anything you see on GBN, here’s some news for you. Enjoy!

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Posted in Bullies, Crapagandarati, Dweebs, Fascism WITH Swastikas, Fascism Without Swastikas, Filthy Stinking Rich, Freeze Peach!, Guns, Guns, Guns, Human Rights FAIL, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Racist?, Isn't That Terrorism?, Kittehs, Kooks, Merry Old England, Newspeak is Nospeak, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Teh Ghey, The Hardcore Stupid, The Trans, The United States of Amnesia | Comments Off on Heeeeere, kitty, kitty, kitty.

Hubris sinks the Titan, just as it did the Titanic (and the other Titan!)

Back in 1898, Morgan Robertson published The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futilitya novel depicting the sinking of an “unsinkable” ocean liner, of then-unprecedented size and “innovative” safety features that are touted as infallible, but which collectively prove to be the ship’s doom. The novel was meant as a cautionary parable on the hubris of the wealthy, the powerful, and the careless. The author was no crystal-ball psychic; he relied on his own knowledge of the then-current trends in ship design to create a convincing picture of what elements could combine to create such a disaster. He also relied on well-known facts about the nature of Gilded Age capitalism and the captains of that particular (metaphorical) sinking ship.

14 years later, in April of 1912, that novel proved eerily prescient when the similarly-named (and sized) Titanic sank on her maiden voyage, after striking an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland. The ship’s captain sailed into a known iceberg field on a moonless night in early spring, disregarding warnings that the ship was about to hit a berg — which it did. The “watertight” compartments that were supposed to contain any seawater leakage failed, due to cost-cutting and poor construction. One by one, they filled and spilled over. This, in turn, caused the ship to tilt stern-up before finally speeding to the bottom of the Atlantic. The Titanic‘s lifeboats, already insufficient for the number of passengers on board, were lowered only half-full. Over 1500 people drowned that night.

The Cassandra-like warnings of Morgan Robertson had gone unheeded. A combination of hubris, cost-cutting, and willful ignorance brought the Titanic up against an iceberg…and eventually, down onto the sea floor.

More than a century later, it’s evident that some people just haven’t learned a damned thing from Morgan Robertson’s parable, or from its all-too-real sequel. A tourist mini-sub named (what else?) the Titan fatally imploded on its way down to the wreckage of the Titanic a few days ago. Four passengers and a pilot — the OceanGate company’s CEO, as luck would have it — perished. The passengers had paid $250,000 US apiece for the privilege of visiting a sea-floor graveyard in an unregulated submersible which was very shoddily constructed for its intended purpose.

And yes, the same forces at play in The Wreck of the Titan and the wreck of the Titanic also played an all-too-predictable part in this particular disaster:

What’s truly galling about all this is that submarine design principles have been known, or at least researched, for far longer than Morgan Robertson’s novel has been in existence. And all the truly good ones — the same “rules” Stockton Rush complained of, and bragged of breaking — have been around, and followed with excellent results, for decades. Here is a video by an engineer, explaining clearly and in some detail why the Titan was not safe for the depth it was supposedly designed for, and why the whole expedition went catastrophically wrong:

Bad choices of materials; no secure seating; cheap gaming controllers instead of a more reliable dashboard (and redundancies in case the primary controls fail); exposed wires on the outside of the ship, held on by zip-ties. Not only was the Titan disastrously out of its depth, it was something to be wary of at any depth.

And, bear in mind, that’s just from an engineering perspective — although at the end, the narrator does touch (with audible exasperation) on the stupid interpretation from right-wing commentators that “woke hiring” was somehow what doomed the vessel, because the CEO said a few disparaging things about “white men in their fifties”. No, that’s not it. For one thing, most of the OceanGate hires were male, and all (as far as I could see) were white. As for the younger ages of the employees, cost-cutting and greed are far more likely reasons; that, and the tendency for very young employees to be intimidated by the CEO, who clearly was a cocky son of a cuss. Not only would they not have the nerve to demand better pay (and insist on doing things the way they ought to be done for safety’s sake), they also wouldn’t have the experience and know-how to justify such demands.

And nerve, experience, know-how, et cetera ad nauseam, are NOT traits limited to white men over the age of 50. It’s cringey how often this needs to be pointed out, but for right-wing ignorami, certain things are just not as self-evident as you’d think they were. Here’s another video, just for funsies:

No, “wokeness” didn’t sink the Titan. Hubris did. It’s sheer hubris to build a minivan-sized potato-chip can out of carbon fibre deemed unsafe for aircraft by Boeing, over the protestations of one of the few employees who knew better, sue said employee for “revealing trade secrets” when he raises a public alarm, drive it around with gaming controllers, and expect anything other than disaster to eventually ensue. Hubris is the opposite of wokeness, on steroids. Don’t buy the crapaganda…and don’t waste much time mourning for a 60-year-old white man — oh sorry, “innovator” — whose million-dollar-a-trip greed got him quite literally (and permanently) out of his depth.

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Posted in Filthy Stinking Rich, If You REALLY Care, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Law-Law Land, Men Who Just Don't Get It, She Blinded Me With Science, The "Well, DUH!" Files, The Hardcore Stupid, The United States of Amnesia, The WTF? Files | Comments Off on Hubris sinks the Titan, just as it did the Titanic (and the other Titan!)

Neo-Nazi terror group caught selling fake hormones as part of anti-trans psy-op

I first caught wind of this icky plot a couple of days ago, when Vaush posted this video:

Minus the YouTube-necessitated censorship, the title reads: “Don’t buy the e-pills from Twitter! They will kill you and Nazis made them!”

Someone tried to kill (and/or humiliate) trans women and girls by offering fake estrogen pills for sale on Twitter. The pills in question allegedly contained an unsafe dose of ashwagandha, an Ayurvedic herb that is supposed to act in much the same ways as ginseng: as an adaptogen, immune-system supporter, and in men, as a fertility and virility booster. Some unscrupulous supplement manufacturers even tout it as “Indian ginseng”, or as actual ginseng, which it is not.

Apparently, the male fertility/virility aspect is the one the Twitter Nazis seized upon. They claimed it would actually induce male-pattern baldness and other testosterone-related woes in any transfem unwary enough to buy it in hopes of getting a working substitute for the gender-affirming hormonal therapy that several US states have attempted to ban.

But there is no evidence that ashwagandha will actually create or exacerbate “masculine” traits in a user at any dose. Here is a list of its actual side effects. You’ll note that elevated testosterone is not among them. In other words: They will not make a transfem “more masculine”, which is something she’d undoubtedly want to avoid, as it would aggravate any existing gender dysphoria she may have.

What too much ashwagandha would do, however, is make an unwary user pretty damn sick to the stomach, possibly induce peptic ulcers, dangerously lower the blood pressure, and even do liver damage. Any of these could indeed prove fatal.

So who’s behind this dirty (and possibly deadly) trick? Well, we already know it’s Nazis, who have had it in for LGBT+ people ever since Ernst Röhm met a horrific end on the Night of the Long Knives. But who exactly was running the show?

This fucking guy.

His name is Kevin Lowy, and this was not his first rodeo — and not the first in which he ended up wearing the clown shoes, either. In 2021, he and his neo-fascist “Patriot Front” confederates got exposed and humiliated thusly:

He’s the first guy shown, in case you wonder.

How embarrassing that he looks exactly like the kind of pudding-fed, out-of-shape “soy boy” he and his buddies are supposedly trying to beat back into the closet, eh?

Oh, and in case you’re still in the dark ages: soybeans don’t “feminize” you any more than ashwagandha “masculinizes” you. Turns out that unrefined plants — including the humble soybean, which has fed the very large population of China for centuries — aren’t that good at influencing the sex hormones in general. Oopsie poopsie!

Unable and/or unwilling to learn from his past mistakes, Kevin is still at it. And attempting to profit from it, too, by joining an existing anti-LGBT+ campaign which has been bumble-fucking along for the past three or so years. Yeah, Operation Pridefall is apparently still a thing. 4chan wankers tried it (and failed) in the summer of 2020, and apparently this fake-estrogen-that’s-really-(not)-testosterone is just its latest toxic iteration.

Thankfully, nobody bought any of this potentially dangerous bullshit. But now, Kevin’s on the run again, and his toxic product is no longer up for sale.

Here’s hoping his day in court — whenever it comes — will be as hilarious as his 2021 run-in with the cops was.

And if you’re looking for actual transgender healthcare, here’s a list of helpful resources that actually work.

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Posted in Drrrrruuuugs, Fascism WITH Swastikas, Fascism Without Swastikas, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Isn't That Terrorism?, Karma 1, Dogma 0, Pissing Jesus Off, Professional Phobes, Schadenfreude, She Blinded Me With Science, Sick Frickin' Bastards, Stupid Sex Tricks, The Trans, The United States of Amnesia, The WTF? Files | Comments Off on Neo-Nazi terror group caught selling fake hormones as part of anti-trans psy-op