Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Fight them, without becoming them!

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Everybody saw this coming.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

This really is a full service blog.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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Reader Interactions

244Comments

  8. 8.

    Eunicecycle

    Nikki Haley has been yearning for the good old days. You know, when as a brown woman she definitely would not have been elected governor of SC.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    we live in a world where many lack mirrors.

    Narya lost a mirror in the middle of the night.

  14. 14.

    AnonPhenom

    Dowd erased his entire online history of supporting Republicans (see Bush 2004 campaign) before deciding to become a born-again centrists.

    Glass houses & stones. Go away, no rehabilitation for you.

  15. 15.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud:

    I agree with your sneering of that attitude, but I didn’t get that vibe from this post.

    I am (fairly obviously) on Team Sneering at Hopelessness, too, but I don’t get the connection between hopelessness and what I put up.

  19. 19.

    Soprano2

    So I’m standing on the stage at Carnegie Hall waiting to rehearse! Hard to believe I’m actually here!

  20. 20.

    cmorenc

    Re: the dad who attacked umpires and belittled his son on the field: at least in North Carolina, both in club and in school sports, they have really cracked down on bad parent and spectator (and coach) behavior toward refs or players since I started refereeing soccer 25 years ago.  Good thing that.

  23. 23.

    2liberal

    about trans in sports, there is a lot of regulation about performance enhancing in the sports world,  mostly about PEDs.  It seems to me that having been born and lived a life with male sex hormones, and then having surgery to reassign gender would be something that could be considered to be a disqualifier.  Guys just have a different frame and grow more muscles.  I don’t see where it is punitive or an act of hatred to say that this is something that can’t be regulated as part of basic fairness in competitive sports.  How should young women feel when they grow up knowing a person who competes as a male at a high level,  then goes thru gender reassignment, then find themselves competing with this person?

  25. 25.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @2liberal: As a practical matter, trans athletes have not dominated in the sports where they have competed.  I doubt that it is the advantage that many think it is.

  26. 26.

    Cameron

    The examples given show why that old lefty saw about “heightening the contradictions” was sadly mistaken.  Heighten these sorts of contradictions and your result will be lowering of human intelligence.

  27. 27.

    dww44

    @AnonPhenom: I welcome any and all converts.  Dowd came pretty much over to the light side from the dark side and even ran for office as a Democrat, albeit that he lost.  I applaud his conversion and have no issues with his version of centrism.  I think that we Democrats should welcome any and all converts, particularly if that enables us to build a true majority that can win elections all up and down the line.  That is the only thing that will save our Democracy….our being able to accrue and consolidate electoral power.

  34. 34.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, …

    Following an investigation, the @NRCgov has identified a violation at the troubled Vogtle-3 #nuclear reactor in #Georgia resulting from the actions of a former test engineer who "deliberately falsified completion" of a pre-operational test.

    t.co/qo5o3vpcgs— Edwin Lyman (@NucSafetyUCS) June 24, 2023

    This is my shocked, shocked face.

    Vogtle 3 recently came on line (after the usual story of years/decades of delays and billions in cost over-runs).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  39. 39.

    CaseyL

    @Michael Bersin: I returned home from a long vacation, put some nuts out, and the squirrels not only quickly returned, they resumed their habit of coming into the house looking for the Really Good Stuff (pistachios and hazelnuts*).

    *I made the mistake once of putting out hazelnuts when I ran out of peanuts.  News Bulletin: Squirrels really, really like hazelnuts. Now they get Very Annoyed if I don’t give them any.

  40. 40.

    FastEdD

    Retired teacher here. Kids don’t know much and don’t have people skills yet. Their “Hypocrisy Meter” however is extremely sensitive! Ye best be doin’ what ye be sayin’ or they will never listen to you.

  42. 42.

    Matt McIrvin

    @2liberal:

    1. Trans women have been competing in women’s sports for some time and as Omnes Omnibus said, they are simply not dominant. There are often regulations that already exist requiring them to be on HRT before competing, and while we could debate that, it seems to remove most of the overwhelming advantage one might imagine. It’s telling that there’s basically one case everyone seems to cite when calling for trans bans–a swimmer who was about as highly-ranked in men’s swimming as she was in women’s swimming after transitioning.
    2. Even if there is one–people come into sports with all kinds of natural advantages, and we don’t regard that as cheating. When Michael Phelps was dominant in swimming there were all these breathless stories about what an amazing physical freak he was–nobody thought the average person could get to where he was through pure effort. Same with 7-foot basketball players. These stories are treated as human interest, not scandals. Given that there doesn’t seem to be a danger of women’s sports being entirely taken over by trans women, I don’t see a strong reason to treat this differently.
    3. Even setting all that aside, the bad faith of the people pushing hardest for this comes out pretty quickly–we start out arguing about the validity of records for elite athletes, but it ends up they really want to force out one or two trans girls who try to compete at the junior-varsity level in high school. It doesn’t make sense to treat these cases like an Olympic doping scandal.
  44. 44.

    mrmoshpotato

    Matthew Dowd

    In the last 24 hours, we have Lance Armstrong lecturing people about sports fairness, Meghan McCain lecturing people about nepotism, GOP lecturing people about law and order, white evangelical leaders praising/worshiping Trump…we live in a world where many lack mirrors.

    Would someone on Twitter please ask this hypocritical bitch why he erased years-worth of tweets?  Also, ask him for me (and driftglass, and the rest of the Professional Left audience) about his “k’rupt duopoly” bullshit from 2016 and being a “fundamentally ridiculous person.”

    Oh, and prepare for him to block you.

  45. 45.

    raven

    Little Big Man, Younger Bear,the Contrary

     

    A Contrary, among the historical Amerindian tribes of the Great Plains, a tribe member who adopted behavior deliberately the opposite of other tribal members. They were a small number of individuals loosely organized into a cult that was devoted to the practice of contrary behavior.

    The Contraries are related, in part, to the clown organizations of the Plains Indians, as well as to Plains military societies that contained reverse warriors.[1]: 2  The Lakota word heyoka, which translates as clown or opposites, serves as a collective title for these institutionalized forms of contrary behavior of the Plains Indians. When Lakota Indians first saw European clowns, they identified them with their own term for clowns, heyoka.

  50. 50.

    Alison Rose

    @2liberal: It is not a given that someone assigned male at birth will have an edge over cis women in sports.

    A new report has found that trans women do not have any biomedical advantage in elite sport. They have no advantage over any other women, such as cis women. However, social factors such as nutrition and training qualities can affect this result.

    The report is an in-depth review of all existing scientific literature published between the years 2011 and 2021 in English regarding trans women in elite level sports. It clarified that biomedical factors do not pose any threat to cis athletes. Trans women do not have a biomedical advantage. This is the recurring myth transphobes continue to spread when debating the inclusion of trans people in sport.

    There is little evidence that seeks to identify the advantage of male puberty in trans women. Existing research usually focuses on the suppression of testosterone for trans athletes. This report concludes that trans women who have undergone gender-affirming healthcare, suppressing their levels of testosterone, have no biological advantage.

    See also here and here and probably many other places accessible by Googling.

  51. 51.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud:

    MTG’s call for decorum in the House! 

    Right after she slaps the shit out of that gun-humping, carpet-bagging, Rocky mountain, Florida trash.

  52. 52.

    Citizen Alan

    @2liberal: If fairness based on physicality is the issue, why don’t we also address unfairness within genders? Is it really “fair” that a guy who is only five foot eight is at a disadvantage when playing basketball? Or that a beanpole who only weighs 150 pounds probably can’t make the football team? What’s the plan for addressing the unfairness of those situations?

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    Kind of related to opposite day.

  56. 56.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud:

    Ahem. I am fully clothed. 

    You could’ve just claimed you were wearing pants.

    We didn’t need to know you’re commenting in your birthday suit.

  58. 58.

    gene108

    @Soprano2:

    So I’m standing on the stage at Carnegie Hall waiting to rehearse! Hard to believe I’m actually here!

    Congratulations!!!

  62. 62.

    James E Powell

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I feel pretty good because less than halfway through my first cup of coffee, I got it

    ETA – I also did quordle in six, so it’s a good day.

  65. 65.

    narya

    @Baud: Hah! Yeah . . . the sad part is that it had been turned into an art piece by a friend from pastry school; she found it in her grandmother’s house and painted on it, including a quote from the Dalai Lama (“My religion is kindness”). She took her own life a number of years ago, and I was always grateful to have that bit of kindness from her. I still have the memory of it, though.

  67. 67.

    Geminid

    Politico put up an article this morning relating to the clean energy transition and the IRA, titled “Manchin says Biden broke climate deal. Others say ‘there was no such agreement.’ ”

    There is some discussion of technical matters like the meaning of “constituent materials” in the domestic content requirement, and language regarding leased commercial vehicles. More generally, Manchin’s problem stems from time pressures in the reconciliation process that left importatant questions to be addressed through Treasury Department rule-making. As someone familiar with the process said:

       “Are they trying to bend the law in a way that benefits EVs that Manchin doesn’t like? I think that’s fair. But it’s fair to say the administration has some flexibility in the law to do what they are doing.”

    According to the authors, Manchin wanted the bill to bolster domestic supply chains and manufacturing, but also to slow the growth of EV adoption. Besides griping very publically about the bill’s implementation, he has also voted no on several cabinet department nominees in climate related areas.

    The article was originally published by E&E New, which is owned by Politico.

  68. 68.

    Citizen Alan

    @WaterGirl Wow. I’m kind of speechless at the JB Pritzker speech. I have never seen a public figure articulate perfectly my deeply-held personal belief that conservativism is driven mainly by a primitive evolutionary impulse that the conservative has been unable or willing to overcome. And I am shocked that pritzker so effectively challenges my other deeply held personal belief that all billionaires are evil! If I were not 100% on Team Kamala for 2028,. I would be very interested in seeing this man run for president in that year.

  69. 69.

    gene108

    @2liberal:

    I’m of the opinion that if trans girls and women (no one really pays as much attention trans boys and men, for whatever reason) competing in sports have a major competitive advantage, than  sports programs from middle school on up would be bending over backwards looking to recruit trans girls and women.

    If the whole trans woman has a male frame, and thus an advantage, held water, elite women’s college basketball teams would be made up entirely of trans women.

    Since this isn’t happening, I doubt there’s much of an advantage.

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    @Soprano2

    The Russian Tea Room is right next door, too.

    Negatives: Russian
    Positives: Tea room, and the glitzy art deco decor.

  75. 75.

    gene108

    Also, too: turning 49 is stupid. It’s about as pointless as turning 47, with regards to having any real significance, unlike turning 40 through 46, where you can say you’re in your 40’s, early 40’s, or mid-40’s. 49, like 47, is just a place holder until you turn 50, with some 50+ people mocking you for still being a “baby”.

  77. 77.

    Kent

    @Eunicecycle:Nikki Haley has been yearning for the good old days. You know, when as a brown woman she definitely would not have been elected governor of SC.

    She only had to change her religion and cozy up to the confederate flag fetishists to win the governorship.

    Yes,  years later she finally signed a bill taking the flag off the SC Capitol but only after the Dylan Roof shooting made it too toxic, even for the SC legislature.

  83. 83.

    Kent

    @gene108:

    I’m of the opinion that if trans girls and women (no one really pays as much attention trans boys and men, for whatever reason) competing in sports have a major competitive advantage, than  sports programs from middle school on up would be bending over backwards looking to recruit trans girls and women.

    If the whole trans woman has a male frame, and thus an advantage, held water, elite women’s college basketball teams would be made up entirely of trans women.

    Since this isn’t happening, I doubt there’s much of an advantage.

    Why does the NCAA (and international Olympic committee) ban testosterone supplements in all women’s sports?

  84. 84.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Omnes Omnibus: Trans Athletes have been allowed to compete at the Olympics according to their gender identity.  Not one medalist.  Not one Transgender athlete has even qualified for the Olympics.  There is no domination of sports by Transgender Athletes happening.  Even at HS, college levels, the number of examples are miniscule.  It’s just not a problem.

    Also, athletic performance is complicated.  Size and strength are only one of numerous factors and aren’t predictive of success.  And in some sports they are DIS-advantages.  And scientific studies have not shown any clear advantage for athletes who are Trans.

    The Transphobic arguments that TERFs love to push are just dumb.

  85. 85.

    kalakal

    Any organization with the words “Freedom” or “Liberty” in the name

    Any country with the word “Democratic” in the name

    Sits back and waits for exceptions 😀

  87. 87.

    MisterDancer

    @2liberal: (SIGH) I just want to be say that you really need to read up on how people are impacted by these regulations. Here’s a story on how these rules impact Black Cis Women who’ve not taken any of these damned drugs: lgbtqnation.com/2021/07/two-cis-black-women-banned-olympics-natural-testosterone-levels/

    What you said/implied about “fairness’ and Trans athletes has already been touched on in some depth by others. But if you need more sources to read and get your wrong ideas clarified, I’ve got a few as well. Just yell out!

    (And I find it horrific, as well, that it’s always about “male” hormones being an unalloyed good in athletic competition. Funny, that.)

  89. 89.

    Another Scott

    @gene108: +1

    E.g., one doesn’t see 10 year old trans girls competing at pumping iron.

    These political memes against trans kids are based on twisted hypotheticals that don’t happen in the real world.  One can’t defeat them with logic, because they’re not based on logic.  They’re based on appeals to fear and anger and twisted interpretations of “the good old days”.

    “Mind your own business!!” is a powerful counter, I think.

    Ultimately, I continue to think that humanity is going to need something like a vaccine to protect itself from these appeals to dangerous nonsense and appeals to our worst selves.

    Short of that, Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit is still pretty good:

    1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
    2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
    3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
    4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
    5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
    6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
    7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
    8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
    9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    Jackie

    @CaseyL: I posted a link to a vintage RV camp site in OR in the morning post you might enjoy 😊

    They restore dilapidated RVs and campers to their former glory.

  94. 94.

    opiejeanne

    Rough week for us. My husband lost a healthy first cousin (we count him as ours, he’s married to Dave’s actual first cousin) in a shocking way, and I lost an unhealthy cousin in an expected way. When her sister called to let me know that she’d passed, she said she wouldn’t bring up politics but then immediately did, crowing about some group of immigrants who it turned out were conservative so it was all good because they got the Pride flag taken down at city hall. Told me it was on the national news. Probably Fox, because who else really cares what a bunch of troglodytes who hate gays did in the tiny town in SW Wyoming did?

    I’m still chewing on it and growling. Her sister, the one who died, was 79, a great liberal; her daughter is about to marry her girlfriend, and her son is now known as Molly, and I have to wonder how the surviving sister feels about them being the target of so much hatred. She is married to the biggest RW asshole I’ve ever met, loud and proud of his ignorance, so I think that’s why she’s the way she is.

    My husband’s cousin is married to a retired Lutheran minister who in tidying up his boat after a trip around Lake of the Ozarks with some visiting friends, must have miscalculated, stepped back, and fell on the concrete dock. His wife found him, face up and unresponsive. He was in perfect health, 74. Traumatic brain injury, probably almost instantaneous. We are reeling. It hasn’t been ten years since the last of our parents’ generation left us (Dad lived to 94), and now we’re starting to go. (I’m not ready, I need to get rid of a lot of junk and that may take us 30 years, so I intend to go then.)

    I’m having surgery on my left hand (arthritis) on July 7, so I may not be able to attend either memorial and I really feel like we should go, but maybe I’ll send David to his cousin’s one and get one of the girls to help me out if I need it.

  96. 96.

    MisterDancer

    @Eunicecycle: Haley went to a school so fuckin’ racist, it’s 1st class was “issued[…]a lapel pin featuring the Confederate flag and the word ‘survivor’, a pin modeled on those worn by confederate veterans after the [American] Civil War”

    Per Wikipedia, that school, “Orangeburg Prep was formed through the merger of two segregation academies, Wade Hampton and Willington Academy.”

    So yeah, you’re looking at a woman who’s the fruit of a VERY poisonous tree, with Hailey.

    I got this from the brilliant Michael Harriot, see threadreaderapp.com/thread/1672893653008695298.html for more.

  97. 97.

    cain

    Went for a walk yesterday, tripped and fell and smashed my phone on the sidewalk. Oops. It’s amazing how much WORK it is to replace your phone and get it all set up. I couldn’t remember the fucking password for my backups (I have a system, but for some reason none of them works because I haven’t used a screenlock password in 2 years) –

    Lesson to y’all keep your password for hte screenlock somewhere you can get to it. Sigh.

  99. 99.

    cain

    @gene108: Ah yes he pre-50 days – interesting times. I liked my 40s more than my 30s interestingly enough. I was separated at 46, and so I had the fun times of rediscovering dating, and making bad decisions about relationships. Good times.

    Happy birthday all the same! :)

  102. 102.

    FelonyGovt

    Seems like this has been a week to enjoy watching our enemies fighting with each other. The bad reality TV show in the Republican House, Putin vs Wagner Group… order ALL the popcorn.

  103. 103.

    Jackie

    Biden is urged to “own” his age:

    “Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg “has joined with other advisers in counseling President Biden to ‘own’ his age and turn it into an asset,” the Wall Street Journal reports.”

    “If Harrison Ford, 80 years old, can star in a new Indiana Jones movie and the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, who turns 80 next month, can strut around a stadium stage, Katzenberg says, then Biden should lean into his longevity as a sign of wisdom and experience while offering a sense of humor about it.”

  104. 104.

    NotMax

    @cain

    Old school here.

    I jot ALL passwords down in a little memo notebook kept near the desk. Aging memory almost demands it.

  106. 106.

    Jeffg166

    @opiejeanne: Getting old and falling apart is a drag. I OK with my declining health at 75. I don’t feel terrible just running out of juice. I was told in March I have a lung disease that will kill me eventually and my thought was, So what?

  107. 107.

    Turgidson

    @mrmoshpotato:

    He so desperately would like to be able to BothSides things into oblivion.  I can almost *see* him typing out, then erasing, “something something AOC hard left Ilhan Omar arglebargle!!” ten times before realizing he just can’t make himself believe it enough to put his name to it.  Life was just so much simpler for him pre-Drumpf.

  108. 108.

    Manyakitty

    @dww44: for sure. We need to leave room for growth. I halfway get the logic of keeping quiet about festering shitbags like Bill Barr because they’re speaking truth to people who might otherwise ignore it. Fine. Whatever. 🤮.

    HOWEVER

    People like Matthew Dowd, Nicolle Wallace, Steve Schmidt, Jennifer Rubin, etc, I hold to a higher standard because they publicly left the republican party. We may not always agree on policy and there’s space for that. They, to a person, understand the existential nature the Republicans pose to democracy and I believe they vote accordingly.

  110. 110.

    cain

    @NotMax: I havea  password manager for the most part  –  but that screenlock thing really messed me up.

    I mean – it’s fine, but what hurts most is that I lost all my texts to my wife as we were dating. :/

  115. 115.

    stinger

    @Citizen Alan: ​
     

    If I were not 100% on Team Kamala for 2028,. I would be very interested in seeing this man [Pritzker] run for president in that year.

    With you on both points.

  116. 116.

    Splitting Image

    @2liberal:

    How should young women feel when they grow up knowing a person who competes as a male at a high level, then goes thru gender reassignment, then find themselves competing with this person?

    What high-level athletes all have in common is that they focus relentlessly on succeeding at their chosen sport. This is true of Serena Williams; it’s true of LeBron James, and it’s true of Tom Brady.

    Brady in particular as a reputation as a complete meathead outside of football because he sacrificed all of the time that might have made him a more well-rounded person to become a better football player.

    The act of transitioning requires so much focus and attention that there is almost no way for a trans person to have enough left in the tank to compete at an elite level in any sport. They sacrificed their chance at that in order to transition. In practice, this more than offsets whatever advantages their genetic make-up might give them.

    Trans women have competed in professional tennis for fifty years, and no trans woman has ever dominated the sport. Note that women’s tennis has almost always been dominated by one woman nobody else could compete with for years at a time (Evert, Navratilova, Graf, Seles, Hingis, Venus and Serena Williams) but none of them have ever been trans.

  118. 118.

    cain

    @Omnes Omnibus: also the taking of female hormones cause bodily changes where you don’t get to have the male advantages or so I’ve read on here and other places online.

  121. 121.

    Kent

    @Alison Rose:

    @2liberal: It is not a given that someone assigned male at birth will have an edge over cis women in sports.

    But it is most certainly true on average.

    If we were to survey all the high schools and universities in the country with competitive sports programs, how many do you think we can find in which the women’s basketball team can beat the men’s team?  Or the women’s soccer team can beat the men’s team?  Or where the women’s 4×100 relay team can beat the men’s team?  Or where any women’s track and field school record at any distance or event beats the men’s school record?

    It is absurd to argue otherwise.

    The NCAA and International Olympic Committee also ban women from using testosterone supplements as a training tool even if they taper off their usage before competitions in order to pass drug tests a the East German and Soviet athletic programs used to do.  So it isn’t just about whether your hormone levels are meet certain thresholds at the time of competition.  It is also about whether they were elevated when you were developing your physique.

    I am 100% supportive of full inclusion in every manner of recreational sport and non-competitive youth sports like recreational soccer.  10-year old trans kids should absolutely be able to play in recreational leagues.  But for competitive sports in which we keep records and assign championships I think it is fair to have restrictions based not only one’s current body chemistry, but what it was when one was developing one’s current physique.  Since we most certainly have such restrictions for cis-women (and men).  And that is why we do off-season drug testing for athletes.  Even at the HS level.

  122. 122.

    cain

    @Geminid: Hey, maybe we can get Elon Musk to weigh in eh? He seems to love doing that – this is actually his area! Trolling him would be fun.

  124. 124.

    CaseyL

    @Jackie: I missed seeing it in the morning thread, so thanks for this!

    Since I think my future travels, at least for the next year, will exclude having to fly anywhere, a road trip to Oregon would be lovely – and a great excuse to stay at this place.

  125. 125.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Citizen Alan:

    I like Kamala a lot. I would happily vote for her as president. That being said, I’m in St. Louis. We are on the border with Illinois and get lots of Illinois news. JB is fantastic. Illinois was in deep financial do-do. His leadership turned it around. I can not wait until he runs for higher office. He is the real deal.

  126. 126.

    Burnspbesq

    @gene108:

    Every sport is different, and HRT affects different people differently, which is why it’s probably impossible to prescribe general rules for trans athletes. Consider one hypothetical and one real-world example.

    (1) imagine a 6’7” male volleyball player who can jump out of the building, who transitions. After two years of HRT (the minimum required under current NCAA rules), she won’t be jumping out of the building any more—but she’ll still be 6’7.” And as folks say, “ you can’t coach size.”

    (2) OTOH, consider Lia Thomas. Two of the swimmers she beat in the NCAA 400 IM final had swum faster than her winning time of 4:35 and a few hundredths. The fastest PR in the field was 4:32 and change. That winning time was also 17 seconds slower than Will Thomas swam in the Ivy League championship two years earlier. Unfair advantage? Or did she just produce a great swim on the big stage?

  129. 129.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Another Scott:

    Sagan’s baloney detection is good. It all rests on point 1, though. That is why conservatives have absolutely and energetically undetermined objective assessment of the facts. It gets hard, because then we use experts to differentiate fact from fiction, which they dispute for the reasons cited.

  130. 130.

    eclare

    @opiejeanne:

    That is a lot to deal with.  I’m so sorry for the passing of your cousins and the added stress of the RWNJ sister of one of them.

  131. 131.

    Another Scott

    @Kent: What’s that old legal expression – “Corner cases make bad law”??

    What about Michael Phelps?  (He of the well outside-the-norm arm proportions (apparently).)

    What about Caster Semenya?  (She of the naturally high testosterone levels.)

    What about emaciated, toothpick-thin, male Chinese divers who make no splash?

    For that matter, what about little powerhouses like Simone Biles?  Maybe being short is somehow an unfair advantage there?

    Yes, the Soviets and the russians and the Armstrongs cheated.  And rules must be in place to prevent such cheating.

    But the automatic proposition that trans kids and adults (at the college or professional level in particular) (or people with outside-the-norms bodies) are gaming the system is wrong.

    The governing bodies can figure out ways to fairly handle cheating and still let trans (or other “unusual”) people compete if they want to.  It’s their job.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  133. 133.

    Alison Rose

    @Kent: As others have already noted, if this were true, we would see tons of trans girls and women winning all kinds of competitions across the country. We’re not.

    Also, can we please fucking remember that trans people are a tiny portion of the population? And thus trans athletes are an even tinier portion? And also that simply being AMAB does not automatically endow one with athletic skill? There are plenty of cis men out there who are tall and muscular who probably suck at sports, because being big is not the only requirement.

    This is simply not the massive issue that some people are making it out to be, and that you seem to be worried it is.

  134. 134.

    Kent

    @Splitting Image: The act of transitioning requires so much focus and attention that there is almost no way for a trans person to have enough left in the tank to compete at an elite level in any sport. They sacrificed their chance at that in order to transition. In practice, this more than offsets whatever advantages their genetic make-up might give them.

    I am a HS teacher and I have many trans students.

    I would suggest that it is absolutely impossible to make such a generalization.  in fact, the majority of my trans students who have adopted female names and use he/her pronouns, or they/them pronouns, and present outwardly as female or gender non-conforming in some way are NOT actually engaged in hormone therapy.

    These days, especially with youth, it does not seem to be as much about body chemistry as it is about identity.  This past school year out of about 150 students I probably had about 10 who were somewhere on the trans spectrum.  But every single one was at a different spot.  They are all individuals.   And many are not engaged in any medical therapies.  So where do you draw the line when it comes to competitive sports?  Assuming we are even going to have a line and not just let random boys compete in girls sports.

  135. 135.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    One of my favorites was George’s mother’s reaction to the wine. Paraphrasing from sketchy memory:

    “Merlot? is that something new? I’ve never heard of it.”

  136. 136.

    Burnspbesq

    If you’re looking for tone-deafness, don’t forget George Santos advocating for censuring Adam Schiff “… to restore the dignity of the House of Representatives.”

  139. 139.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @cain: Yes, there are many reasons why it isn’t the problem that (I will be polite) trans skeptics fear, but I just wanted to to cut to the chase.  The thing they claim they fear isn’t happening.

  140. 140.

    2liberal

    My thoughts about the trans people in sports issue is not so much about the real world level in competitive ability,  more about the way that sports are regulated for PEDs , I’m putting gender reassignment in that category.  I don’t think it is a personal catastrophe for a trans person to not be able to compete in competitive sports.  I think Kent said it better than I did (thanks!)  I don’t have much knowledge about this.

  141. 141.

    AnonPhenom

    @Manyakitty:

     

     

    People like Matthew Dowd, Nicolle Wallace, Steve Schmidt, Jennifer Rubin, etc,

    And there you have it, not just welcomed into the tent but appointed Spokespeople for the Democratic point of view. And on the ‘Liberal’ channel, no less.

    This will end well, I’m sure.

  143. 143.

    Geminid

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Have you followed 13th Illinois CD Representative Nikki Budzinski? Her district runs from the east St. Louis suburbs to Champaign. I thought Budzinski’s Wikipedia biography was very impressive. So are the news articles I’ve read about her.

    Fun 13th CD facts: the district has been located in central Illinois since the Civil War. Nikki Budzinski was the first Democrat elected from the 13th since 1892.

    Past Democratic Reps include Adlai Stevenson, who represented the district 1877-1879. His grandson, Adlai Stevenson II, was the Illinois Governor and then a Presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956.

    A not so fun fact: Donald Rumsfeld represented the 13th CD from 1963 to 1969. Phil Crane and Robert McClory were other 20th century Congressman from there.

  144. 144.

    James E Powell

    @gene108:

    Happy Birthday! Celebrate your life! 49 is a perfect square year. The numbers have whatever meaning you choose to give them.

  146. 146.

    Kent

    @Alison Rose:

    @Kent: As others have already noted, if this were true, we would see tons of trans girls and women winning all kinds of competitions across the country. We’re not.

    Also, can we please fucking remember that trans people are a tiny portion of the population? And thus trans athletes are an even tinier portion? And also that simply being AMAB does not automatically endow one with athletic skill? There are plenty of cis men out there who are tall and muscular who probably suck at sports, because being big is not the only requirement.

    This is simply not the massive issue that some people are making it out to be, and that you seem to be worried it is.

    Times change and society changes.  Sometimes rapidly.  It was once the case that gay people were banned from the military and coming out as gay was a sure ticket to get you out of the draft during WW2, Korea, and Vietnam.    Yet few men actually took such a path because the societal ostracization that would come with being openly gay would have been severe.

    Today if there was a universal draft for an unpopular war, and being gay was your ticket out of the draft, I would suggest that such a policy would be absolutely impossible to enforce.  There would be millions of straight guys who would happily “come out” as gay to their friends and families, posting up Instagram feeds of themselves kissing men, etc. if it meant a draft exemption.  That is a whole lot easier than fleeing to Canada.

    Just because something hasn’t commonly happened in the past under one set of social norms, doesn’t mean it won’t happen more commonly in the future under a different set of social norms.  And I assume you are advocating for a world in which social norms around trans people change in the future, are you not?

    And note.  I don’t actually object to trans athletes competing in competitive sports.  I just think the standards should be scientifically based and cover a person’s developmental history, not just their body chemistry at a given moment in time during competition.  That is the same exact standard that we hold cis-women to.

    I would not want to see a world in which say girl swimmers are given testosterone supplements from ages 10-16 and then tapered off so they can pass drug tests during competition like the East Germans used to do.  Or a world in which that is what was required to actually win.  And yes, I have been around competitive sports in Texas.  Both athletes and parents do absolutely crazy things to win.  And there are probably very few HS weight rooms in Texas where football players do not have as easy access to steroids as they do to pot.

  148. 148.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kent:

    That is the same exact standard that we hold cis-women to.

    Most of the people who end up in trouble under rules intended to root out some sort of gender-related cheating in elite sports are actually cis women who may have some sort of intersex condition, or just present as “too masculine” according to some busybody or other (they are disproportionately Black too, so there’s a racism angle there as well). And it’s pointless and shouldn’t be happening.

  149. 149.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Thank you all for your support of trans athletes.

    @UncleEbeneezer: Minor correction, a trans woman weightlifter did make it to the last Olympics, but didn’t made it pass the first round of competitors. There was also a non-binary person (who was assigned female at birth) who did win an Olympic medal as part of a team sport (may have been indoor volleyball).

  151. 151.

    Alison Rose

    @Kent:

    I don’t actually object to trans athletes competing in competitive sports.  I just think the standards should be scientifically based and cover a person’s developmental history, not just their body chemistry at a given moment in time during competition.

    And what would this look like in practice? Because “a person’s developmental history” sure sounds like “no trans people allowed”.

  153. 153.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @cain:

    taking of female hormones cause bodily changes where you don’t get to have the male advantages or so I’ve read on here and other places online.

    After a year of estrogen hormone treatment, trans women have the equivalent muscle mass as if they’ve been assigned female at birth. I can vouch for this from personal experience.

  154. 154.

    Kent

    @Matt McIrvin:

     

    @Matt McIrvin:Most of the people who end up in trouble under rules intended to root out some sort of gender-related cheating in elite sports are actually cis women who may have some sort of intersex condition, or just present as “too masculine” according to some busybody or other (they are disproportionately Black too, so there’s a racism angle there as well). And it’s pointless and shouldn’t be happening.

    That is because we actually have drug testing at the higher levels of competitive sport to prevent supplement usage during the off season.

    And you are wrong.  It is absolutely NOT the case that it is mostly intersex athletes who run afoul of drug testing standards.  Without actually trying to look up the statistics, I would suggest that probably over 99% of athletes banned for illegal substances are ordinary cis athletes.   Here is a Wikipedia list of athletes who have failed drug tests that is by no means comprehensive.  How many of these are intersex athletes?  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_athletics

  155. 155.

    Amir Khalid

    @2liberal:

    My thoughts about the trans people in sports issue is not so much about the real world level in competitive ability, more about the way that sports are regulated for PEDs , I’m putting gender reassignment in that category.

    That’s probably not the right way to look at gender-affirming healthcare vis-á-vis sporting performance, including reassignment. If male-to-female reassignment doesn’t give a consistent advantage like PED use does — and the evidence suggests it does not — why regard it as akin to PED use?

  156. 156.

    WaterGirl

    @Steeplejack: Thanks!  The dialogue at the link from Omnes was great, and this was even better.

    I had forgotten there was a laugh track, though.  Jeez, whoever thought that was a good idea.

  157. 157.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kent: And you are wrong. It is absolutely NOT the case that it is mostly intersex athletes who run afoul of drug testing standards.

    Matt did not say that.

  159. 159.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    For that matter, what about little powerhouses like Simone Biles?  Maybe being short is somehow an unfair advantage there?

    One of the things that gets ignored here is how women’s gymnastics coaches began to deliberately look for small, stocky, compact body girls as gymnasts. If you look at film from, say, the 1940s, you will see a different body type.

    Nobody whines that this is unfair to willowy women who are 5 ft 11.

    Changes in equipment can also influence performance and maybe what types of individuals might be the best competitors. High jumpers would not all be doing the Fosbury Flop if changes in padding had not been made. This jumping technique has become the standard since 1968.

  162. 162.

    MisterDancer

    @2liberal: I don’t think it is a personal catastrophe for a trans person to not be able to compete in competitive sports.

    Let’s just say it another way, esp. given the example I have already provided around Black Women being impacted by bans around these issues:

    “I don’t think it is a personal catastrophe for a Black person to not be able to compete in competitive sports.”

    I’m not playing this game. I’ve literally read, in history, this time and again — multiple groups get put into this “too good for games” bucket. One personal example: I’m someone who’s had to study on the history of IQ just to overcome the bullshit science behind The Bell Curve and the literally centuries of horrific race science that it just covers up.

    Really, it’s like none of y’all read Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, to take just one work that opened my eyes as to how science gets misused and abused for supporting bigotry. And it’s CERTAINLY like y’all just ignored my point about how “restrictions based upon body chemistry” just so happens to harm not just Trans athletes, but (shock and amazement) Black Women.

    It’s like two “scientific” bigotries, for the price of one.

    You will NEVER get me to sign off on excluding a group of people simply because you don’t have the time and grace to actually understand the situation in full, to read the scientific literature on them, and actually LISTEN to the people who’s lives you so calmly decide aren’t worth anything but a few “but common sense says!” lines on a blog.

  163. 163.

    Soprano2

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I’m performing with members of the Missouri State Choral Union plus other choirs. I used to sing second soprano, but I transferred to the alto section several years ago because I can’t sing in the high register for long anymore. I’m still a soprano in my heart, though.

  165. 165.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kent:

    I would not want to see a world in which say girl swimmers are given testosterone supplements from ages 10-16 and then tapered off so they can pass drug tests during competition like the East Germans used to do.  Or a world in which that is what was required to actually win.

    Those aren’t trans people.

    Is there some kind of slippery-slope way that allowing trans people would require allowing this? Are you imagining some sort of scheme where insane sports parents make their cis daughters claim to be trans boys and then detransition later, so their interrupted HRT helps them with sports? Is there any evidence that someone is planning to do this?

    To me, this seems similar to the “we have to keep out trans women because cis men will lie about being trans so they can peep in women’s bathrooms” fear.

  166. 166.

    Mo MacArbie

    Is the issue the sport itself or the shit we’ve attached to it like scholarships, material success, being able to afford an American life, etc.

  169. 169.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @2liberal:

    I don’t have much knowledge about this.

    Then you should listen to the people who do know what they’re talking about.

    The number of trans athletes is tiny. When Utah’s governor vetoed that state’s first ban on trans athletes, he noted there was only one high school trans athlete in the entire state. One. The Olympics, NCAA, and various state-level high school sports conferences have allowed trans athletes for years and you can count the number of trans kids/adults who’ve won major competitions on one hand. Yes, literally. It. Is. Simply. Not. A. Problem.

    And it’s telling that those seeking to ban trans athletes never talk about trans boys/men, some of whom actually are taking testosterone (albeit amounts within the limits of typical male hormone levels).

  171. 171.

    dww44

    @Manyakitty: ​
      Thank you. And I agree that all of those you listed in your 2nd paragraph are deserving of approbation and should not be cavalierly dismissed. We do want to convert people to our side and that means eschewing the temptation to reflectively dismiss them.

  172. 172.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MisterDancer:

    Really, it’s like none of y’all read Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, to take just one work that opened my eyes as to how science gets misused and abused for supporting bigotry.

    Excellent book and in that connection, I’ve literally heard the supposed advantage of Kenyan marathon runners used to support scientific-racist claims about IQ. So how we think about sports does bleed into everything else.

  173. 173.

    Brachiator

    @MisterDancer:

    Really, it’s like none of y’all read Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, to take just one work that opened my eyes as to how science gets misused and abused for supporting bigotry.

    Read it, and years ago had Gould autograph my copy at a Skeptics Society meeting.

    And a number of people here agree with the points you have made.

  174. 174.

    MisterDancer

    @Mo MacArbie: Is the issue the sport itself

    The issue is bigotry. This is happening on multiple levels — see this horrific ban in FL from Jun 2021:

    Florida’s Republican governor signed a bill Tuesday barring transgender females from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes born as girls, plunging the state into the national culture war over transgender rights.

    Just like with Trans kids, the “professional” concerns are just a stalking horse for banning in general.

  176. 176.

    dww44

    @twbrandt: ​
     Same here. I just attended the funeral of a 79 year old class mate who was in good health and had lost his wife just 18 months earlier. Seems that he was driving (in his Florida town) to pick up a grandchild from school and a driver crossed the center line and hit his vehicle face on. He lived for a couple of days and everyone thought he was gonna make it, but then he suddenly died. There are untimely deaths even for us senior citizens.

  177. 177.

    MisterDancer

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m worked up, and get your (and others) point.

    Please consider the “y’all” directed towards this who align, in whole or in significant part, with this…opinion.

  178. 178.

    Citizen Alan

    @kalakal: I think it was back around 2000 or 2001 that I began my practice of substituting the word “nazi” for the word “family” in any political organization that had the word family in the title. I suppose I’ll have to start doing the same for the words “liberty” and “freedom” now.

  179. 179.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Kent:

    I just think the standards should be scientifically based and cover a person’s developmental history, not just their body chemistry at a given moment in time during competition.

    So where do we draw that line. Hormonal tests for women athletes intended to keep out trans woman have instead been used so far to exclude Black women, and women with PCOS (which a significant number of women have).

    As mentioned, swimmer Michael Phelps has significant physical advantages, making him a physiological extreme, even compared other Olympic swimmers, who by definition are physiological extremes.

    Also, while I realize you don’t intend this, I’ll note the moral panic over trans athletes was consciously used by the Republican Christofascists as one their first steps towards othering/dehumanizing trans people in order to achieve trans genocide. Just sayin.’

  180. 180.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    I would not want to see a world in which say girl swimmers are given testosterone supplements from ages 10-16 and then tapered off so they can pass drug tests during competition like the East Germans used to do.  Or a world in which that is what was required to actually win.

    Give it a rest. Performance enhancing drugs and various illegal or unregulated procedures are part of many sports. It is an ongoing competition to come up with new performance enhancing measures and also to come up with ways of detecting the measures and (very hardest part) determining whether the substances and practices should be accepted or prohibited.

    Olympics level athletes often have to give blood samples which are stored and which may be tested in the future if currently undetectable drugs can later be identified.

  181. 181.

    Alison Rose

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    And it’s telling that those seeking to ban trans athletes never talk about trans boys/men, some of whom actually are taking testosterone (albeit amounts within the limits of typical male hormone levels).

    Yeah. Similar to how the bathroom conversation focuses almost entirely on trans girls and women in the women’s room, and rarely if ever mentions trans boys and men in the men’s room. But of course, that’s because the people arguing against trans people using the bathroom don’t give a single shit about the safety of trans people. The “we must protect cis women!!!!!” thing is disgustingly reminiscent of wanting to “protect” white women from Black men.

  182. 182.

    MisterDancer

    @Brachiator: Read it, and years ago had Gould autograph my copy at a Skeptics Society meeting.

    SO JEALOUS! :) In truth, I find myself returning to Gould’s works time and again in my life. I’ve got Lying Stones of Marrakesh in my reading rotation at the moment.

  183. 183.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    The number of trans athletes is tiny.

    The one point here I will concede is that if society weren’t so horrifically transphobic, the number of trans athletes would presumably be much larger than it is.

    But it’d still be fairly small. The fact is that not that many people are trans compared to society at large.

    I think the parade of horribles being imagined here is a notion that women’s sports would become completely dominated by cis people faking trans for the medals, which, as I said, is a lot like the “fake trans peeping Tom in the restroom” fears. Not something it’s right or fair to persecute trans people for even if it weren’t completely imaginary, and it shades into the whole transphobic idea that trans-ness in general is a kind of fraud or trickery.

  184. 184.

    2liberal

    The issue of trans persons participating in athletic programs doesn’t require me to have in depth personal knowledge of the realities of living the life of a trans person.  Being told to stifle myself is not appreciated.

    For someone choosing to make this dramatic lifestyle change ,  sacrificing participation in organized athletic competitions doesn’t seem to be too much to give up.

  185. 185.

    Brachiator

    @Citizen Alan:

    If fairness based on physicality is the issue, why don’t we also address unfairness within genders? Is it really “fair” that a guy who is only five foot eight is at a disadvantage when playing basketball? Or that a beanpole who only weighs 150 pounds probably can’t make the football team?

    There are sports where weight classes are common. You don’t see heavyweight boxers competing against featherweights. Similarly in wrestling, weight lifting, etc.

    Even in horse racing, I think weights can be added to saddles, I think, to adjust for some differences relating to jockeys.

    There are not a lot of trans athletes. Or even people generally trying to compete in non traditional ways in various sports.

    If it ever becomes a serious issue, I think that people will come up with ways of adjusting.

  186. 186.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Sister Golden Bear: Oh thank you for the correction.  Still hardly the epidemic of domination the TERFs would have us believe, but I will update my phrasing, going forward :)

  187. 187.

    Jackie

    @zhena gogolia: ???

    Obviously we interpreted this POV differently? I’m ALL for Biden embracing his age in a positive light. Age is just a number – as the saying goes. Biden’s 80 is much more youthful than TIFG’s 77.

    And Biden’s political experience and wisdom is a HUGE PLUS vs “the anyone but TIFG” GQP presidential candidates.

  189. 189.

    SFAW

    @WaterGirl:

    Oh, I see.  That flew right over my head!

    Not your fault. Omnes’s well-known lack of a sense of humor would lead one to think he was being serious.

  190. 190.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Citizen Alan: Your comment about basic inequalities reminded me of the Vonnegut stories, Harrison Bergeron and Sirens of Titan, where everyone is given handicaps to make a perfectly equal society. 

  193. 193.

    Splitting Image

    @2liberal:

    The issue of trans persons participating in athletic programs doesn’t require me to have in depth personal knowledge of the realities of living the life of a trans person.  Being told to stifle myself is not appreciated.

    For someone choosing to make this dramatic lifestyle change ,  sacrificing participation in organized athletic competitions doesn’t seem to be too much to give up.

    Jesus Christ.

  194. 194.

    Alison Rose

    @2liberal: Okay, you really need to stop. You started out with this BS wide-eyed “just asking questions” kind of thing, and now you just sound like a grumpy bigot. You are not being told to “stifle” yourself, you’re being told to stop pontificating about a topic you know nothing about and are clearly antagonistic toward.

    You might wanna consider changing your nym, just saying.

  196. 196.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    The reason for the current frenzy from our homegrown lunatic fringe conservatives is they have realized, to their utter horror, that the last 48 hours have shown they have a dumbass gap with the Russians.

    For example, here is a picture of a Russian tank stuck in circus gate from yesterday.  Clearly the GOP needs to get their game face on or just go home if they expect to match this level of shear stupidity.

    twitter.com/mattia_n/status/1672838950170378240?s=20

  197. 197.

    MisterDancer

    @2liberal: Being told to stifle myself is not appreciated.

    As I see Alison Rose has already rightly called out, you sure did shift your “just askin’ questions” tone when we started trying to lay out facts for you. I’ll give you that, unlike some others, you didn’t try to whip out a link or 4 and Gish Gallop us, so thanks for not making me waste a Sunday afternoon on that exercise.

    But otherwise? If getting told your stance is bigoted is “being stifled,” man, what a wonderfully insular world you must live in. I used to get in tougher verbal fights being a Black Baptist kid going to Catholic School in the 1980s!

  198. 198.

    Burnspbesq

    @WaterGirl:

    Please tell me that George Santos did not utter the word “dignity” with a straight face.

    Wish I could accommodate you, but it’s twoo. He go dere.

  199. 199.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Geminid: Its been impossible to miss news stories about JB. I have heard good things about Budzinski, but the coverage of her has not been as extensive.

  200. 200.

    Glidwrith

    @2liberal:

    @Kent:

    Whelp, I probably shouldn’t feed the sea-lioning bigots, but instead of being stifled how about being told to fuck off?

    Both of you following classic patterns of what if? and “just asking questions” before showing your colors.

    Numerous others here have been giving real world examples and you just keep going. Bye-bye.

  201. 201.

    2liberal

    I won’t be commenting on this issue in this space going forward.  So I will stifle myself.

  206. 206.

    FelonyGovt

    My daughter was involved for awhile as an official in women’s’ roller derby. Trans women and non-binary folks were cheerfully accepted on the “women’s” teams, and didn’t seem to have any particular natural advantage. Definitely a “can’t we all get along” situation. And these players are COMPETITIVE- this wasn’t a recreational league.

  207. 207.

    Geminid

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I first started paying attention to new Democratic Representatives after the 2018 Blue Wave. I found that very few get much notice in the “national” media, even after a couple of years. Many don’t even try to, but still are a frequent presence in state and local media. Sharice Davids (KS-3) is a good example of this.

    Despite the fact that this is the first time Representative Budzinski has held public  office, she strikes me as a very skilled and capable politician. Many Democrats, however may not pay much attention to Ms. Budzinski until a few years from now when she runs for Senator, which I think is a likely prospect when Dick Durbin retires.

  208. 208.

    SFAW

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Clearly the GOP needs to get their game face on or just go home if they expect to match this level of shear stupidity.

    You must be new to this country. The GQP’s level of stupidity is like Peak Wingnut — they always go higher, and just when semi-rational say “well, at least it can’t get any worse,” the GQP says “hold our beer.”

  210. 210.

    SFAW

    @Steeplejack:

    It was an Oxford y’all.

    Well, Oxford is sort-of in the south of England. And it’s famous for its southern cuisine: Oxford boiled Buttermilk Fried Chicken, boiled hush puppies, boiled Peach Cobbler, boiled Pecan Pie, and so forth. Food like that “is to die for.”

    For some unknown reason, I’m hoping Tony Jay is reading this.

  211. 211.

    James E Powell

    @Geminid:

    I found that very few get much notice in the “national” media, even after a couple of years.

    Not many house members get national attention. The national political media do whatever the Republicans tell them to do. So the house members that get attention are the loud bigots of the right & the Democrats that the Republicans are demonizing: Pelosi, AOC, etc.

    I’m fine with this & when I consider how many people do not know who their congressperson is, I hope that every Democratic member, new or old, is working to become more well-known in their district.

  212. 212.

    Manyakitty

    @dww44: If we want to be a big tent party, we need to find a way to welcome people who show an interest in reality. Demanding doctrinal purity leads to failure.

  214. 214.

    Jackie

    @Geminid: We gained quite a few rising stars in that crop. With more in ‘20 and ‘22.

    The quality of new Democrats in the House is remarkable compared to the GQP and MAGA newbies.

  215. 215.

    Kent

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Those aren’t trans people.

    Is there some kind of slippery-slope way that allowing trans people would require allowing this? Are you imagining some sort of scheme where insane sports parents make their cis daughters claim to be trans boys and then detransition later, so their interrupted HRT helps them with sports? Is there any evidence that someone is planning to do this?

    To me, this seems similar to the “we have to keep out trans women because cis men will lie about being trans so they can peep in women’s bathrooms” fear.

    What is your definition of a trans person?

    As a HS teacher I frequently have trans students who identify as more female on the gender spectrum, use female pronouns, dress more as women, etc.  But who are not [yet] undergoing any sort of medical therapies at all.  And so biologically speaking are entirely male (or entirely female as the case may be).

    Are they, or are they not trans?  And who get to decide?  And by what criteria?

  216. 216.

    Kent

    @Brachiator:

    Give it a rest. Performance enhancing drugs and various illegal or unregulated procedures are part of many sports. It is an ongoing competition to come up with new performance enhancing measures and also to come up with ways of detecting the measures and (very hardest part) determining whether the substances and practices should be accepted or prohibited.

    Olympics level athletes often have to give blood samples which are stored and which may be tested in the future if currently undetectable drugs can later be identified.

    Testosterone is a performance enhancing drug that is regulated in every sport that does drug testing for performance-enhancing drugs.   And not just at the time of competition, but during training and the development of one’s athletic physique.

  217. 217.

    Kent

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    So where do we draw that line. Hormonal tests for women athletes intended to keep out trans woman have instead been used so far to exclude Black women, and women with PCOS (which a significant number of women have).

    As mentioned, swimmer Michael Phelps has significant physical advantages, making him a physiological extreme, even compared other Olympic swimmers, who by definition are physiological extremes.

    Also, while I realize you don’t intend this, I’ll note the moral panic over trans athletes was consciously used by the Republican Christofascists as one their first steps towards othering/dehumanizing trans people in order to achieve trans genocide. Just sayin.’

    I don’t know where we draw the line.  I don’t have all the answers.

    I don’t even know what the definition of a trans person is.  As a HS teacher I have lots of students who identify as trans, use they/them or opposite pronouns from the ones they were born with and who dress in non gender-conforming ways.  But who are not undergoing any sort of medical therapy.  And who may never undergo medical intervention.

    Are they trans or are they not trans?  They certainly think they are.

    Who gets to decide?  What is the line?  Is there one?

    I also happen to think that the insistence on accommodating trans athletes into highly competitive women’s sports without some sort of very strict standards is one sure way to alienate a lot of people who would ordinarily supportive of the trans community.  Whether you like it or not, that is a reality.  And it isn’t just MAGA cristo-fascists.  And claiming that trans athletes don’t have a competitive advantage is not going to cut it when there are always going to be examples where they do.  They might be somewhat rare examples, but they most certainly exist.

  218. 218.

    artem1s

    @Another Scott: ​
     

    resulting from the actions of a former test engineer who “deliberately falsified completion” of a pre-operational test.

    Jeebus help us. did these engineers not study Chernobyl?

  221. 221.

    Alison Rose

    @Kent:

    I also happen to think that the insistence on accommodating trans athletes into highly competitive women’s sports without some sort of very strict standards is one sure way to alienate a lot of people who would ordinarily supportive of the trans community.

    They are not “ordinarily supportive” if it is this easy for them to stop supporting the trans community. Again, for the thousandth time, we are talking about a tiny tiny number of people. People whose life goals, I promise you, do NOT include “making cis girls who play basketball sad”.

    You keep babbling about being a high school teacher who apparently has an extremely high rate of trans students. But you sure as shit don’t seem to care anywhere near as much about those students’ happiness and well-being as you do about the hypothetical cis kids who they might decide to play a sport against. Also, you really seem to lack an understanding of gender as a spectrum.

  223. 223.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kent: The scenario you imagined is a girl who was assigned female at birth, identifies as female now (and is therefore cis), but claimed to identify as male for several years in the interim for the purpose of cheating at sports after detransitioning. This simply isn’t relevant to trans rights as we know it today and it’s an absurd reason to oppose trans sports participation.

  224. 224.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    Testosterone is a performance enhancing drug that is regulated in every sport that does drug testing for performance-enhancing drugs.   And not just at the time of competition, but during training and the development of one’s athletic physique.

    And so? There is a long list of drugs and practices covered by anti-doping protocols.

    And of course there are organizations that attempt to deal with this.

    With all the information, attention, and debate over performance-enhancing drugs (or PEDs), many people want to further understand how performance-enhancing drugs affect one’s body. It’s an important area of concern for athletes and at the foundation of why USADA and other anti-doping organizations exist. Simply put, PEDs have the ability or potential to drastically alter the human body and biological functions, including the ability to considerably improve athletic performance in certain instances. These drugs, however, can be extremely dangerous and, in certain situations, deadly. The negative effects these drugs can have on one’s body make USADA’s mission paramount as to why no athlete should ever have to consider PED use to succeed in sport.

    Athletes who deliberately take performance enhancing drugs or who use certain procedures to get a competitive advantage is a larger issue than the possible inclusion of trans athletes.

    But yes, the presence of trans athletes may require some adjustments. But so may the presence of athletes whose natural attributes appear to present challenges.

  225. 225.

    Geminid

    @Jackie: We lost a few promising members from the Class of ’18 in the 2020 election, including Kendra Horn (OK), Joe Cunninham (SC) and Xochitl Torres Small (NM). Democrat Gabe Vasquez reclaimed Ms. Torres Small’s southern New Mexico seat last year, and she is on track to be confirmed as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture as soon as a Senate floor vote can be scheduled.

    Rep. Elaine Luria lost her coastal Virginia seat last year, but I think she will seek a rematch in 2024. She’ll have a good chance in a Presidential year. Democrats are already hitting current 2nd Va. CD Representative Jen Kiggans hard in ads.

    Class of 2018 member Deb Haaland is the Interior Secretary now, and Elissa(sp?) Slotkin will likely be Michigan’s new Senator come January, 2025. Jaime Raskin will have the inside track for the race to fill Maryland Senator Ben Cardin’s seat if he decides to run. Right now he’s undecided.

    But these talented Representatives will accomplish a lot of good work even if they never advance to higher office.

  228. 228.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Omnes Omnibus: Thank you.  You could even argue that the complete lack of evidence of any actual widespread problem of Trans Athletes dominating competitive sports kinda proves that the existing rules are already working to prevent the slipper-slope to the  purely hypothetical crisis in Kent’s fantasies.

  229. 229.

    Kent

    @Omnes Omnibus: @Kent: ​
    You are talking about this as if there are no real rules in the subject and someone could just throw on a dress and compete as a woman. Here, for example, are the NCAA rules. People have been working on this for quite a while now.

    I’m well aware that there are rules.  And that they are constantly changing as the link you posted describes.  And that each sport is entitled to come up with their own standards.  And that is just for the NCAA.  We haven’t even begun to talk about High School.  It is most certainly the case that the rules will continue to change and the rules in 2030 will be different than they are today in 2023.  And they will likely continue to evolve because this is not a settled issue.

    @Alison Rose:  And who gets to decide?  Definitely not cis people

    Actually yes, definitely cis people.  It is fantasy to think otherwise.  Cis people are the majority on the governing boards of every single sport that is generating standards for transgender participation.

  230. 230.

    Kent

    @Matt McIrvin:@Kent: The scenario you imagined is a girl who was assigned female at birth, identifies as female now (and is therefore cis), but claimed to identify as male for several years in the interim for the purpose of cheating at sports after detransitioning. This simply isn’t relevant to trans rights as we know it today and it’s an absurd reason to oppose trans sports participation.

    I don’t oppose trans sport participation.  Never have and never will.  I have coached recreational youth soccer for 15 years and would happily welcome any trans kids on any of my teams.

    That does not mean I don’t think there aren’t competitive issues at the higher levels of sport.  And that they will become increasingly acute as society becomes more open and welcoming towards trans people in general.  The insane lengths that some people (and parents) go to for competitive advantage is beyond belief.  Especially when it comes to things like earning NCAA athletic scholarships.

    Are the current standards in place at the NCAA level the correct ones?  I have no idea.  But I am absolutely sure that they will continue to evolve and refine as trans participation in athletics becomes more common.  And the same thing is no doubt going to filter down to the HS level.  It is inevitable and naïve to think otherwise.

  233. 233.

    AWOL

    I hate the Yankees but I went to Yankee Stadium today. Five bucks plus scalper fees.

    A 77-year-old retired schoolteacher started up a discussion with me. He was riled up. He was listening to Giuliani’s podcast this a.m. He was disgusted by how many seven-year-olds were getting all these “transgender operations” without their parents’ permission.

    I pointed out that seven-year-olds don’t often book complex and extremely expensive surgery for themselves.

    He shut up.

  234. 234.

    Alison Rose

    @Kent: You need to back the hell up. When I said “definitely not cis people”, I was responding to you saying this:

    Are they, or are they not trans?

    CIS PEOPLE DO NOT GET TO DETERMINE TRANS PEOPLE’S IDENTITIES.

    You keep shifting the goalposts, changing your statements when people push back. But it is very clear, your lofty claims of open arms to trans kids on the sports teams you’ve coached aside, that you do not fucking care about trans people or their lives or their happiness, because for some reason you are obsessed with the hypothetical notion that a few cis girls somewhere might one day lose a competition to a trans girl and that would, in your mind, apparently be the worst thing to ever occur in human history.

    Why do you care so fucking much about this? And why don’t you care about the trans people being ACTUALLY harmed every day more than you do about cis people being POTENTIALLY harmed in ways far far below the violence and bigotry directed at the trans community? Because I’m sorry, but between “cis girl doesn’t win a trophy” and “trans girl is kicked out of her home or forcibly removed by a politician, denied proper health care, mocked, beaten, raped, and killed”, I sure as hell know where my empathy lies.

    Where does yours?

  235. 235.

    Another Scott

    @Brachiator:

    Athletes who deliberately take performance enhancing drugs or who use certain procedures to get a competitive advantage is a larger issue than the possible inclusion of trans athletes.

    Indeed.

    Simona Halep had breast reduction surgery:

    The World Number one tennis player, Simona Halep underwent a breast reduction surgery in the year 2009. Her game was getting affected due to her heavy breasts also she had the urge to excel in the field of tennis. Right after she got them operated Halep claimed it to be the biggest and the only sacrifice she did for tennis. Her decision to undergo a surgery along with her everyday tennis practice, everything paid off in the year 2018, when she lifted the Roland Garros trophy in Paris after reaching the final two times.

    Unfair competitive advantage?

    I don’t think so, though one could potentially make the argument. Or talk about other what-ifs (like some pitchers being better (or thinking they’re better) after Tommy John surgery).

    The surgery certainly helped Halep’s game (and probably her quality of life in general). Should she have been barred from tennis afterwards? I don’t think so.

    Corner cases make bad law, and bad policy.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  236. 236.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    OK. I’m going to weigh in briefly, not to express an opinion about the issue, but the clarify the disconnect I’m seeing in the conversation.

    Kent basically is concerned at the HS and Jr HS level, we need standards to ensure fair competition.

    Higher levels of testosterone give athletes a competitive advantage.

    As numerous folks have pointed out, trans women athletes who are on HRT do not have a competitive advantage.

    Kent responded that a number of young trans people are not on HRT. Maybe they will be later, but at this stage of their transitioning, they are not.

    While he hasn’t explicitly stated this, its implied that he thinks young trans women athletes who are NOT on HRT should not be competing against cisgendered women athletes as they will have an unfair advantage.

    Because this doesn’t seem to be a prevalent issue, some commentors don’t feel he should bring it up.

    Am I characterizing this discussion fairly?

  237. 237.

    Wapiti

    @CaseyL: I feed crows in my backyard. The crows like cashews (Trader Joe’s has them cheap). I’ve put out a mix of cashews and chopped salami and the crows take the nuts first. They cache what they can’t eat right away.

    Curiously, if I put out only a little food, the 2 crows who are closest will come in quiet-like. If I put out more food, they’ll noisily call in their neighbors. So I don’t do that. Nor do I put food out in the morning or afternoon when Seattle’s crow population is commuting to their roosting sites.

  238. 238.

    Citizen Alan

    @Manyakitty: Please! I’m from mississippi and have three degrees from ole miss. “Heritage” has been on my red alert list for thirty years or more.

  239. 239.

    Kent

    @Omnes Omnibus:@Kent: It seems that you are moving the goalposts here.

    I’m not moving any goal posts  and haven’t changed any positions at all.  My positions are the following:

    Trans people (and everyone else) should be absolutely free to determine their own identity themselves.

    First, Trans kids and trans athletes should be absolutely free and welcome to participate in recreational sports and every other part of society.

    Second, At the higher levels of competitive sports there are and should be standards to ensure competitiveness.  Medical standards for trans athletes are just a small segment of that.  There are all manner of other standards from performance enhancing drugs to training standards to recruiting standards.  Are the current ones the correct ones?  I have no idea but they are constantly changing and they will make their way down into lower levels of sport such as the HS level whether anyone likes it or not.

    Third, To claim that genetic males to not have an advantage on average over genetic females is absurd.  In some sports where strength, speed, and size are important they do.  In sports where flexibility, agility, and light weight are important they don’t.

    Fourth, To claim that being on hormone therapy for one year completely negates those advantages is also untrue.  Current research that I have read suggests that female trans athletes do lose some of the competitive advantage they have over genetic or cis female athletes after a year of HRT but not all of it.  And we are talking about some sports where the difference between winning and losing is measured in tenths or hundredths of a second.  Which leaves sports administrators with a policy decision.  Do they increase the standard in some fashion, or do they simply accept the fact that on average, female trans athletes may have a competitive advantage over genetic or cis female athletes.  That is a POLICY decision.  There are existing lines as everyone acknowledges.  Whether they will change in the future and/or be extended into other areas of sport where they do not currently exist is a policy question.  Do I have the answers?  Obviously not.  Do I know what the correct lines are, or if there are any?  No.  But to claim that this issue doesn’t exist is absurd.  And staking out an absolutist position is to stake out a position that you will lose.  Just like you will lose if you stake out any other absolutist position in politics

  240. 240.

    Citizen Alan

    @Steeplejack: Ah  good ole Oxford. MS. That tiny dot of almost civilization amidst the sea of barbarianism. The Velvet Ditch, we often call it. Because it’s the sort of place you can fall into and not be able to climb out of because it’s just so comfortable, even though in the end it’s still a ditch.

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