Cynical Cherry-Picking

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D, IL) insists that biological men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. He’s gone so far in his radical left ideology as to accuse those who disagree with him of hateful rhetoric for their disagreement.

Transgender youth are among the most at risk of homelessness, depression, and death by suicide. So, when these young people who are already struggling hear politicians amplify hateful rhetoric that denies their very existence, what message does it send?

Riley Gaines, a former top-drawer college swimmer even though she lost a critical race to a biological male competing as a transgendered woman, is one of those hateful Conservatives who disagrees with Durbin.

Senator Durbin, in your opening statement, you had mentioned this rhetoric. You had mentioned that, what message does it send to trans individuals? And my comeback to that is, what message does this send to women, to young girls, who are denied of these opportunities? … So easily, their rights to privacy and safety [are] thrown out of the window to protect a small population, protect one group as long as they’re happy.

Durbin’s cynical response:

Since reference was made to my earlier statement, I would just like to add something for the record: there is no evidence that transgender athletes are an issue in certain levels of sports. No transgender female athlete has ever won an Olympic medal in women’s sports, though the International Olympic Committee has allowed transgender athletes to compete since 2004[.]

I’ll leave aside the volume of evidence that Durbin is ignoring that those advantages exist, and that those advantages begin in the womb in the time frame when the embryos start to differentiate between male and female. Regarding Durbin’s other claim, there always are exceptional performances in the general population, and the Olympics, by their nature, strongly emphasize those exceptions. Olympic athletes are at the far right tail of the distribution.

In the general population, extending well out into that tail, male athletes retain those strong, critical advantages in size, speed, strength, stamina, and on and on, that they began to obtain ‘way back in their mothers’ wombs, over the female athletes against whom they’re “competing” in women’s sports. Those advantages hold no matter how the males identify, no matter what surgeries and hormonal treatments the males may have had, or for how long. In the end, allowing biological men to participate in women’s sports is exclusionary: women aren’t allowed to compete in their own sports; they’re only allowed to participate.

Durbin knows this. His virtue-signaling vote pandering sully the office of United States Senator, and they are an insult to women, and they are insulting to the intelligence of all of us.

More Political Censorship

Alphabet‘s CEO Sundar Pichai strikes again. Alphabet wholly owns Google (of which Pichai also is CEO), and Google wholly owns YouTube.

Pichai has just engaged—again—in political censorship:

Social media giant YouTube took down an interview of Democrat presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, Jr, claiming that chemicals in the water are turning kids transgender.

What makes this especially insidious is that Kennedy is a political candidate for the Progressive-Democratic Party’s nomination for President. Pichai is actively putting his thumb on the scale in an American election by censoring one of the candidates. His excuse for this, through his carefully anonymous Google spokesperson, is this:

YouTube “removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating YouTube‘s general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities.”

Therein lies an additional act of censorship: no one is allowed to question vaccines (which is not what Kennedy was talking about with his allegations of those chemicals, anyway); the science is settled, Damn it!

Pichai objects to open debate and to the correction of false, mis-, or erroneous information by the provision of other information via free discussion and debate. His behavior provides yet another reason to heavily modify, or remove entirely, social media’s Section 230 protections. Social media has gotten too big, become too central to our nation’s public square, to be allowed to continue to abuse that protection.

“He needs to be shot”

That’s the threat [skip ahead to ~3:30] the Progressive-Democratic Party’s US Virgin Islands Delegate to the House of Representatives, Stacey Plaskett, said on MSNBC Sunday about Party’s political opponent, former President Donald Trump (R).

She changed her phrasing right away and then followed her threat with her pro forma claim that Trump “should have his day in court,” but that’s just her claim that Trump should have his fast trial and prompt firing squad. What concrete, publicly accessible action has Plaskett taken since to indicate that she didn’t really mean her statement that Trump should be murdered?

This is the stuff of lower tier third world countries where political opponents routinely are murdered, when they’re not simply thrown in jail. And then murdered.

This is what the Progressive-Democratic Party wants to inflict on their political opponents here in our nation. Wait—she’s not typical of Party? It’s been three days since Plaskett made her threat. How many Party politicians have spoken publicly in repudiation or rejection of her threat? Their silence is their roaring approval.

Joe Biden and Women

And no, I’m not writing about the Progressive-Democrat President’s penchant for sniffing women’s and little girl’s hair. This is much more general than that.

Biden tweeted out his congratulations for a Las Vegas National Hockey League Stanley Cup victory, tweeting that the team’s win last week was

the first major professional franchise in such a proud American city.

Never mind that the Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA won the league championship last year.

It’s clear that Biden disdains women and women’s sports so thoroughly that he doesn’t even recognize women’s teams exist. Which may be why he’s so enthusiastic about allowing men to play in women’s sports.

One More Reason…

…to disband—not merely defund—the Federal Bureau of Investigation, relocate the bureau’s [sic] databases and forensics labs to small towns in the Midwest, reassign the line agents to the Marshals Service and Secret Service, and to return all other FBI personnel from field office agent in charge on up through Director to the private sector—not to any other assignment in the Federal government—and reallocate the FBI’s putative budget dollars to other uses, including payroll funds to the Marshals Service and the Secret Service to cover those added agents.

Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX), during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, quizzed FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate regarding an FD-1023, alleged recordings between a Burisma executive and Hunter Biden and between that executive and then-Vice President Joe Biden (D), and FBI supposed investigations of the allegations therein. Abbate’s repeated answer was nothing but FBI stonewalling:

I’m not going to comment on that, Senator.

And

I’m just not going to comment on information we’ve received [regarding] investigations or other matters.

And

This is an area that I’m not going to get into with you, Senator.

In the course of all of this, Abbate uttered the FBI’s Stonewall of Stonewalls:

I’m going to answer within the parameters that we operate in.

Those are FBI parameters, and for the most part, they’re useful. But the overarching, the controlling, parameter within which the FBI operates is the requirement to be responsive to Congressional oversight questions—in the present case, to be responsive to Senate Judiciary Committee oversight questions.

Congressional oversight requirements supersede FBI internal procedures, as Congressional oversight requirements do all Executive Branch agency internal procedures.

The FBI has long since outlived its legitimacy.