Trump’s Desperate and Deadly Search for a Scapegoat

One thing that can be depended upon when dealing with a malignant narcissist such as Donald Trump is that they will NEVER admit that anything is their fault. Any misfortune or calamity MUST be the fault of someone else because their narcissistic personality disorder prevents them from ever admitting a mistake or miscalculation - no matter what the objective evidence indicates otherwise. Today, in a further morally bankrupt attempt to shift blame from his own and his administrations failures and incompetence in handling the coronavirus threat, Trump has targeted the World Health Organization and cut US funding to the international organization - a move criticized even by a number of otherwise self-prostituting Republicans.  A column in the New York Times looks at this dangerous move by a tyrant who seemingly increasingly sees himself as a monarch rather than a elected official who serves at the bidding of the public.  Here are column highlights:

Thousands of Americans would be alive today if President Trump had spent more time listening to the World Health Organization instead of trying to destroy it.

Trump’s announcement that he is halting American funding for the W.H.O. just as the world is facing a raging pandemic is a dangerous attempt to find a scapegoat for his own failings.

Yes, some of the complaints about the W.H.O.are valid,  . . . . But it has still managed the coronavirus crisis far better than the Trump administration has.

The W.H.O. tweeted its first warning about the coronavirus on Jan. 4 and then rang alarm bells, culminating at the end of that month when it declared a “public health emergency of international concern.” It developed an effective diagnostic test that is used in dozens of countries, while the United States still cannot manage adequate testing.

In late January and in February, the W.H.O. issued increasingly urgent warnings about the coronavirus. Trump ignored them, instead insisting that it was “totally under control,” predicted the number of infections would drop, declared that “it’s going to disappear” and consistently downplayed the virus while talking up the stock market.

Trump’s passivity — even as the W.H.O. and his own advisers warned him of the risks — squandered the chance to acquire more personal protective equipment for doctors and nurses. His likening of Covid-19 to the flu led people to join public gatherings like Mardi Gras and Florida spring break, and that is one reason the United States has had 80 deaths per million inhabitants from Covid-19, compared with four per million in South Korea and fewer than one per million in Taiwan.

The W.H.O. is bureaucratic, frustrating, timid — and indispensable. No other organization can fill its international role overseeing the fight against disease. It has battled an outbreak of Ebola since last year in Congo, and that’s one reason we haven’t had Ebola cases in the United States.

Every day, the W.H.O. saves lives. It has promoted safe childbirth, and the number of women dying in childbirth has been cut almost in half over 25 years. It fights female genital mutilation and helps women with obstetric fistula. It is struggling to eliminate cervical cancer. It is part of the campaign against polio.

Normally, an American president is a leader in global health, and Democrats and Republicans have often cooperated on a humanitarian agenda. President George W. Bush started a program against H.I.V./AIDS called Pepfar that has saved 17 million lives. President Barack Obama helped lead the global effort to end the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014-16.

In contrast, Trump has provided zero global leadership against the coronavirus, and he is now trying to crush the one organization providing such leadership.

Trump’s main complaint about the W.H.O. is that it is too close to China, and there’s some truth to that — but Trump himself fawned over China’s response to the pandemic. “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,” Trump tweeted on Jan. 24. “I want to thank President Xi.”

Gutting the W.H.O. would mean more kids dying of malnutrition, more moms dying of cervical cancer, and the coronavirus infecting more people in more countries — impairing the pandemic response, which may well cost even more American lives. And all because an American president is seeking a scapegoat for his own ineptitude.

Yes, Americans have died unnecessarily from Covid-19, and I’ve been seared by my own reporting in “hot zones” of New York hospitals. But if Trump insists on holding people accountable, he needn’t denounce the W.H.O. He can gaze in the mirror.

Bill Introduced to Bar "Ex-Gay" and Reparative Therapy In Virginia

Wow!  I can already hear the shrieks and howls and envision the flying spittle at Teh Family Foundation ("TFF") over a bill introduced by Delegate Patrick Hope that would bar therapists from engaging in reparative therapy, a/k/a "ex-gay" therapy with minors.  One of the major agenda items for TFF is to maintain the myth that being gays is a "lifestyle choice" and that sexual orientation can be "cured."  Literally, every legitimate medical and mental health association has condemned the practice which has been found to be dangerous.  Here are highlights from GayRVA:

A bill hoping to ban the use of ex-gay therapy on youth in Virginia will go before the 2014 General Assembly. The bill’s early language states “under no circumstances” should a medical health provider try to change the sexual orientation of any person under the age of 18, and doing so would result in “discipline by the licensing entity” against the practitioner according to early copy of the bill obtained by GayRVA.

“Seeing what has happened in California and New Jersey; it’s really encouraged me to put this bill forward,” said Delegate Patrick Hope, the bill’s chief patron, from his Northern Virginia office. Hope said he was introduced more recently to the issue of ex-gay therapy – after speaking with some constituents who had been forced into the process, seeing what was happening in other states, and reading about the damage the treatment can cause, Hope threw his support behind the bill. “I think this is the right tome to have a conversation about it.”

The bill would ban the practice of conversation therapy on minors, and practicing psychologists could lose their license if they are caught using the treatment.

Both California and New Jersey have banned the treatment but legal challenges followed shortly after the bills were signed into law. CA’s ban was upheld at the federal level, and Hope cited the 9th District Federal Court ruling which upheld the ban in August of last year.

“The courts have said (the ban) does not violate speech or religion; it’s conduct that we’re going after, not speech or religion. In terms of parental rights, parents do have a right to make decisions regarding the care and custody of their children, but that right is not without limitations,” said Hope. “We as a government need to step in to protect our children. The risks far out weigh the benefits.”

Hope said the bill has been submitted to the House’s digital system, but due to backlogs in updates and needing approval for final language, it might not be visible in the system until next week.

The Alliance for Progressive Values took the lead on helping get this bill before the GA. Victoria Bragunier, Policy Director for APV, said the practice of conversion therapy harkens back to the days of shock treatment and the use of dangerous drugs. Add to that the main stream mental health communities’ acceptance of homosexuality and you’re left with a pseudo science option for an issue that requires no treatment. “With that kind of quackery, it lays open a minefield of abuse for people who don’t have a mental disorder. When you throw into that treatment for children, the vulnerability is dangerous.”

In May of 2012, the World Health Organization released a statement on the 20th anniversary of the removal of homosexuality from the list of mental disorders and took the chance to condemn the practice of conversation therapy.

“Since homosexuality is not a disorder or a disease, it does not require a cure. There is no medical indication for changing sexual orientation,” said Pan American Health Organization (With the WHO) Director Dr. Mirta Roses Periago. “Practices known as “reparative therapy” or “conversion therapy” represent “a serious threat to the health and well-being—even the lives—of affected people.”

As more information becomes available there will be updates on the bill and its precise wording.  Meanwhile, expect a shit storm out of the Family Foundation.  Likewise, it will be interesting to see how Republican Members of the General Assembly who pushed for ridiculous restrictions on abortion clinic out of supposed "concern for the health and safety of women" will try to justify voting against a ban supported by every legitimate medical and health care association in America.  

UN Panel Considers Dangers of "Ex-Gay" Therapy

OMG!  The Christofascists and professional Christian crowd - who already despise the United Nations and fret about "one world government" - are going to go berserk at the news that the UN has begun considering the harmful effects of "ex-gay" therapy in the context of protecting LGBT individuals' human rights.  As many blog posts here have indicated, many of the foulest anti-gay hate groups in America are busy exporting anti-gay animus and "ex-gay" batshitery to backward and ignorant nations in Africa since their snake oil isn't selling so well anymore in the developed world.  Every legitimate mental health and medical association in the United States condemns "ex-gay" reparative therapy and it is time that its exportation overseas be stopped.  It serves absolutely no purpose other than to oppress LGBT individuals and to keep the lie alive that one's sexual orientation is a choice.   Here are excerpts from Huffington Post:

A panel of mental health experts, human rights advocates, religious leaders and a former patient gathered Thursday at the United Nations Church Center to discuss a controversial therapy that claims to "cure" gay people and make them straight. Although such practices have been around for decades, the concept has come under increased scrutiny over the last five years as lawsuits and litigation attempt to curb the "conversion therapy" and the mainstream mental health profession renounces it.
The panel is the first at the U.N. to directly address this so-called therapy, sometimes referred to as sexual orientation change efforts. Those who organized the event said they hoped it would be the first of many similar conversations, and part of a larger push from the U.N. to address gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights.

Mainstream mental health organizations, from the American Psychological Association -- where a 2009 task force found the practice to be both harmful and ineffective -- to the World Health Organization, have said there is no evidence that the practice works and have concluded that it may lead to depression, anxiety and even suicide. Meanwhile, the dwindling pool of supporters, nearly all connected with religious organizations, insist that change is possible for some people, and that those people who do wish to change should not be denied the opportunity.

Those gathered at the U.N. on Thursday were careful to stress that the point of the meeting was not a debate over the effectiveness of these "conversion" practices. "The other side tries to present it as if it's a debate," Jack Drescher, a psychoanalyst and a member of the American Psychiatric Association, told the crowd. But, Drescher added, there is no longer any real debate about this therapy among mental health professionals. The debate now, he said, is not clinical, but cultural.  And the harms of this practice, those on the panel all stressed, go far beyond any suffering an individual may experience in the therapy.

The panel began with a preview of an upcoming film about Uganda and the so-called "Kill The Gays" bill, a law that is currently sitting in that country's parliament and would impose harsh penalties on gay people. "The fact is that many people see that bill being born of the influence of Western evangelicals who came en masse to Uganda to spread the gospel, specifically the notion that LGBT people can change," Levovitz said as the discussion got underway Thursday.

"The idea is that gay people are somehow broken, that we need to be fixed," Wolfe said. "You can see the line of reasoning: therefore we're not entitled to equality under the law and we're not due equal respect and to be treated well," Wolfe, who described himself as a "survivor" of conversion therapy, explained.

"What we're really talking about here is creating a world and a society where sexual orientation change efforts are looked upon as as ridiculous for LGBT people as they are for a heterosexual person," said Toiko Kleppe, a representative of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. "That is also a world that human rights law is in favor of."

Reason, logic and legitimate science needs to trump religious based ignorance and bigotry.  As this process advances, expect louder and more violent shrieks and opposition from those who enrich themselves and control others through the opiate called religion.