The Journal of the American Medical Association's online Medical column for October is Laura Buchholz' Transgender Care Moves Into the Mainstream

Despite the name of the article, Ms Buchholz highlights the difficulty transgender people have in obtaining competent medical care.

Trans people have been excluded from medical care, and their issues have been deemed not medical and not important.

--Joseph Freund, MD, a primary care physician at Franklin Family Practice in Des Moines, Iowa

Dr Freund recounted his struggles with insurance companies over reimbursement for transgender care, yet another barrier that transgender patients encounter.

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues and folk musician Taj Mahal. Enjoy!

"I have this beetle here in one hand," Aristotle proclaimed one day, "with a single oval shell and eight jointed legs, and I have here in my other hand this second beetle of lighter hue which has twelve legs and a shell that is longer and segmented. Can you explain the differences?"

HT to Common Dreams for carrying this new trove exposed by the Intercept.

'Kill or capture' war crimes r us illegal drone use now exposed for the fail it is, even as use may now be spread to Africa and even Bernie Sanders may not rein it in. Unless we 'help' him.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/10/15/drone-papers-leaked-military...

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues guitarist Dave Specter. Enjoy!

The Edmonton Catholic School District has been trying to come up with a policy about transgender students, as required by the Alberta Ministry of Education.

The result, as you might imagine, has been a lot of screaming and shouting.

Lead transphobe has been Trustee Larry Kowalczyk. Back in September his statement about the possibility of a policy was:

I see that as a mental disorder, my faith sees it as a mental disorder.

My stand is with that of the church. God has not made a mistake in the gender of me, or you, or anyone else.

--Kowalczyk

In the earlier interview, he compared transgender people to those suffering from schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder.

US Sends Ground Troops, Drones to Cameroon

Open-Ended Mission to Stop 'Anti-Colonial Movement'

Invoking the War Powers Act, President Obama informed Congress today that he is deploying 300 ground troops and drones to the West African nation of Cameroon on a mission aimed at helping governments tamp down a “regional Muslim anti-colonial movement.”

The White House says the deployment is going to be part of “a broader regional effort” and that the mission is totally open-ended, with the troops to remain until they are “no longer needed” in the country, though as usual they declined to lay out what this situation would look like.