When President Joe Biden (D) pretended to visit our southern border by going to El Paso and no closer, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott (R) hand delivered a letter to him laying out the situation—both regarding his visit to El Paso and the conditions resulting from his border policies. (Right click|Open Link in New Tab for a larger image.)
The Letter speaks for itself. And for us Texans, and for all of us average Americans.
Federal Judge Joseph Goodwin of the Southern District of West Virginia has upheld West Virginia’s law barring transgender student athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports, even from playing on girls’ and women’s teams. Goodwin
found that West Virginia’s definition of “biological sex” for school sports is “substantially related to its important interest in providing equal athletic opportunities for females.”
Goodwin further ruled that
the law was designed to “prevent transgender girls from playing on girl’s sports teams,” but said this was legally permissible if there was a substantial government interest in doing so.
The State’s government most assuredly has that interest. After all, as Goodwin also wrote,
While some females may be able to outperform some males, it is generally accepted that, on average, males outperform females athletically because of inherent physical differences between the sexes. This is not an overbroad generalization, but rather a general principle that realistically reflects the average physical differences between the sexes.
…there is much debate over whether and to what extent hormone therapies after puberty can reduce a transgender girl’s athletic advantage over cisgender girls. …
The fact is, however, that a transgender girl is biologically male and, barring medical intervention, would undergo male puberty like other biological males. And biological males generally outperform females athletically. The state is permitted to legislate sports rules on this basis because sex, and the physical characteristics that flow from it, are substantially related to athletic performance and fairness in sports[.]
Biological men—which is what they are, from the bottom of their DNA and XY chromosomes on up through their stronger muscles and larger bones (which actually began their development differing from women development in the womb)—regardless of how they might self-identify or how much hormone therapy or gender surgery they might have gone through, have no business competing against women in sports. That denies the women contestants their own opportunities for recognition and financial aid.
Sports, too, are the path out of poverty-ridden neighborhoods for girls and young women just as it is for lots of young men; this path would be denied them by transgendered men competing against them.
Biological men, however transgendered, by competing against women in sports erases women, their very womanhood, in sports.
There is a Title IX case, using the transgendereds’ logic that the law’s specification of sex is broader than biology, for sports programs to create Transgender Athletic Associations/Conferences/Leagues for transgender athletes to compete in. They should make that case. Better, though, would be for Congress to update Title IX to the current state of medical technology and mandate explicitly transgender athletic programs.
Goodwin’s ruling can be read here.
Former President Donald Trump (R) said Thursday that President Joe Biden (D) has sided with the Mexican drug cartels regarding Biden’s No Southern Border policy (my term).
Fentanyl, heroin, meth, and other lethal drugs are pouring across our wide open border, stealing hundreds of thousands of beautiful American lives, and it’s happening like never before in our history. Children are being left without parents. Families are being ripped apart. Communities are being decimated. Our neighbors and fellow citizens are having their entire worlds destroyed.
And
The drug cartels are waging war on Americans, and it’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels. In this war, Joe Biden has sided against the United States and with the cartels.
Regardless of his intent, though, Biden hasn’t just given a free path to the cartels. He’s also, functionally, given permission to the People’s Republic of China to supply the cartels with the raw materials for making fentanyl.
…of NATO’s European members, especially its central and western European members, shying away from honoring their commitments to NATO—and to their mutual defense generally.
When France wanted to send Leclerc tanks to bolster the defenses of NATO ally Romania in September, fellow alliance member Germany opposed trucking them across its highways. The problem wasn’t peace protesters or political opposition. It was the heavy French tank-transporters.
The flatbeds’ weight on each axle exceeded the legal limits for most German roads, said government authorities, who proposed a route that Paris deemed unacceptable. Instead, France sent the tanks by rail, delaying the shipment.
And
The EU invests billions of euros annually in transportation infrastructure, but has rarely made military mobility a concern.
And
Retired General [ex-CG United States Army Europe, Ben] Hodges says national regulations remain too onerous and governments aren’t sufficiently focused on the problems. “Until I see money being applied to it and real changes, we’re not going to get this fixed,” he said.
Logistics is where wars are won or lost. Neither the combat skills and courage of the soldiers, nor their equipment or technological advantages, matter if they can’t be supplied and resupplied. Even those central and western European government men and women understand that.
They just don’t care.
Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov says it’s…silly (my term)…to negotiate with the Russian barbarians while they’re still inside Ukraine.
“There’s no way to have conversations with them; you can’t talk with terrorists,”…citing Russia’s attacks on civilian infrastructure during a brutal winter. The war will not end, he continued, until the Ukrainian forces “turn everything back—all the territories.”
And
“Everything will be linked once again, including Crimea,” Danilov said. “Not one meter will be left for the taking of the enemy.”
Indeed. How is it even possible to negotiate with an entity whose first and only goal is the utter dissolution of your nation?
Readers of this blog know the peace terms I’ve been advocating for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to require.