Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Remember the swing voters.

Of course we all live in our own little bubbles these days, and despair can distort the perspective of anyone including me. Still, from where I stand, the general tone of the conversation still sounds too much like 2016, when so many liberals and lefties were talking and acting as if Trump’s followers were supporting him by mistake, because they just didn’t know how awful he truly was, and would start abandoning him in droves as soon as they realized their mistake, hence the many confident predictions that his base would turn against him whenever he said or did something outrageous (i.e. whenever he said or did anything at all). It’s as if the 2016 election, all the scandals of Trump’s first presidency, his two impeachments, his endless legal trouble, and even his attempted coup d’etat (!) never happened, and we were still basically dealing with a normal, democratic politician who just happened to have a somewhat “unconventional style”. In the end, as we all know, all of Trump’s supposedly career-ending scandals didn’t stop him from gaining votes between 2016 and 2020.

So as much as I sincerely hope I’m wrong, I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t win again*. I almost wrote “pleasantly surprised” out of old habit, but I can’t honestly say I find anything “pleasant” about any of the available options, although there can be no doubt as to which candidate would be the lesser evil. If I’m right, then that will be it. Forget about “taking back power next time”. There won’t be a “next time”. I’m sure there will be (some parody of) an “election” in 2028, but it will be as meaningless as the next “election” in Russia.

* Not the popular vote, to be sure, but as the title of this post reminds us, he doesn’t need the popular vote to be first past the post.

Eli Stokols at Politico on the other hand thinks Trump’s game of Tease the Black Journalists blew up in his face.

“She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said, prompting audible gasps and murmurs, according to reporters in the room. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago until she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black.”

Trump continued to make the same point about Harris’ ancestry even as one of the moderators, ABC News’ Rachel Scott, interjected that Harris attended an historically Black college and has always identified as Black.

“She was Indian all the way and then all of the sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person,” Trump said.

…

The interview marked Trump’s first major attempt to pivot a campaign designed to defeat Biden toward a younger and more challenging opponent, and laid bare the difficulties the Republican nominee and his movement more broadly may have in taking on a woman of color without veering into misogynistic, racist invective. While many in Trump’s base may agree with his blunt assessment of Harris as a political token, it may reinforce the former president’s vulnerabilities with swing voters heading into the final stretch of what looks to be a very close election.

Ah the swing voters. I always forget about the swing voters. They’re too subtle for me.

Just hours after the event, Trump appeared to double down on the idea that people of mixed backgrounds can’t identify as more than one ethnicity, posting a video on his Truth Social account showing Harris, in his words, “saying she’s Indian, not Black” and calling her a “stone cold phony.”

Ok so Trump is 100% German; his mother’s contribution has nothing to do with the matter, he’s all his father’s idenniny. Hey I don’t make the rules.

Trump’s comments about Harris’ mixed heritage drew an immediate rebuke from the White House, where press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was read Trump’s quote questioning Harris’ race during a press briefing.

“As a person of color, as a Black woman in this position … what he just said, what you just read out to me is repulsive, it’s insulting,” Jean-Pierre said in response. “No one has any right to tell someone how they identify. “

Repulsive and insulting are of course the goal.

In his most watched public appearance since Harris took over for Biden atop the Democratic ticket, Trump’s coarse, cutting and at times snappish responses, including calling one of Scott’s questions “nasty,” showed him to be very much the same person he has always been despite the assassination attempt earlier this month that he initially claimed had changed his outlook and approach.

Yeah well nobody believed that. Nothing changes Trump. Nothing can change Trump. He has this little tiny core character-engine and all it can do is turn out the same old crap. It can’t be altered in any way, it can only be turned off.

Trump took issue with the first question he was asked, as Scott ticked off a number of past comments that many have seen as racist: questioning former President Barack Obama’s American citizenship, telling four congresswomen of color to go back to where they came from, describing Black district attorneys as animals and attacking Black journalists for questions he deemed “stupid.”

“Why should Black voters trust you after you’ve used language like that?” Scott said.

Trump responded defensively: “I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner.” He called ABC a “fake news network” and dismissed Scott’s question as “disgraceful.”

Yes sure it’s the question that’s disgraceful, not the behavior the question is about.

The hangout with Black journalists went as expected: Trump being as rude and disgusting as possible for points or attention or both. He wins even if he loses, because he gets his jollies being rude and disgusting.

Trump falsely asserted during an event with Black journalists that Harris was “Indian all the way” and suddenly “became a Black person.” He also gave credence to those suggesting Harris doesn’t deserve to be vice president by saying she “could be” in the job because of a push for diversity, equity and inclusion. And he lambasted one of the events’ Black moderators as “very rude,” turning the event into a spectacle that could refocus attention on his own 2024 White House campaign.

…

Trump has long been willing to wade into fraught political territory with inflammatory statements, many of them touching on racial issues. His comments about Harris are just the latest example.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said Wednesday.

Is Trump a German Nazi or a Nazi German?

“Chaos is his friend, it’s a partner he uses,” University of Illinois-Chicago political science and communication professor Zizi Papacharissi said in an interview before Wednesday’s event. “Chaos and noise is an election strategy for him. Above all he’s trying to create noise and distraction.”

It’s an election strategy but it’s also his happy place. He loves being shitty. He loves it the way real people love dogs or travel or cats or art or music or conversation. Trump is all about the recreational bullying and belittling.

Picking a fight is a favorite Trump pastime. His appetite for conflict was evident from the beginning of Wednesday’s event, when he excoriated a journalist for her first question noting his history of racially-charged language and asking why Black voters should trust him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner, the first question,” Trump responded, adding “I think it’s a very rude introduction.”

Trump criticized the reporter again later, saying she treated him “very rudely.”

Trump treats everyone very rudely. See above. It’s his strategy but it’s also his fun.

I’ve never understood why boxing is a sport in the first place. I still don’t.

Even a temporary and mild brain injury is a brain injury, and brain injuries are bad. Really bad. It’s not like repeatedly getting a bruise to the shoulder. Brains are vital to human functioning and they are easily damaged and the damage doesn’t just go away. That’s why boxers end up with brain damage – it’s cumulative.

That’s why I’ve never understood why we consider it a sport and entertainment.

That of course goes double triple a hundredful when it’s men who claim to be women punching women.

Grotesque.

“They are women on their passports,” he says twice, irritably.

What does that mean?

People could “be” anything at all on their passports if the rules of passports allowed it. They could be ants, trees, nations, planets – because passports are just human artefacts, which humans can change at will. If a man’s fist smashes a woman’s face it really doesn’t matter what his passport says.

They are women on their passports, he says. Ok but are they women in their bodies? Are they women for real? Are they women in the sense we normally understand it?

I’ve been trying to find that out this morning and not finding it easy. The reporting is muddled.

But Mark Adams’s dismissive “They are women on their passports” suggests they are not women in their bodies, as women have been saying for the past few days.

It’s all so absurd. He might as well write on a piece of paper “They are women” and hold it up whenever a woman asks the question. “Look, it says right here they’re women, now stop asking.”

News!

Dr Laura Favaro:

Dear all,

I have excellent news: City, University of London and I have settled my Employment Tribunal claim and I hope soon to be regaining access to the rest of my research data (survey). I am extremely pleased with the resolution that we have reached.

This outcome was made possible by the generosity of people all around the world. It is only because of your donations that I have been able to pursue this claim with legal representation. I am also sincerely grateful for your messages of support and encouragement throughout these testing times.

I am pleased to confirm that there are remaining funds in my account. These will be allocated to other similar cases on the CrowdJustice platform, to support someone with a case similar to mine, including loss of employment and the inability to cover legal fees otherwise.

I hope shortly to be able to publish on all the data from my ‘gender wars’ research project. My latest article, entitled Let Us Be Free from ‘Academentia’, explores the detrimental impact of queer theory and politics at universities and beyond. Those of you interested in my work can check for updates on my X account, @DrLauraFavaro, as this CrowdJustice page will close today.

Onwards and upwards!

Eternally grateful,
Laura Favaro

Now listen here. Enough of all this drag queen nonsense, what you need to do is put men who pretend to be women front and center instead.

“Stop flooding every single stage with drag queens, and put speakers with meaning and depth, especially trans and non-binary people, on instead.”

Like this guy for instance. This guy with the long dangly blonde curls, the long dangly earrings, the priddy necklace, the rings on every finger, the long dress with the plunging neckline, the bracelets – [pause for breath] – flood every stage with guys like him instead of drag queens. There’s your meaning and depth right there!

Could be interesting.

Donald Trump is set to field reporters’ questions at the National Association of Black Journalists Annual Convention in Chicago on Wednesday, as he re-tools his presidential campaign to combat his likely rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

It’s hard to imagine he will come out of that looking good.

Trump will be speaking with Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner, ABC News senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott and politics reporter Kadia Goba of Semafor. It will be livestreamed at 1 p.m. ET on the group’s Facebook and YouTube pages.

The event gives Trump, who won just 12% of Black voters in his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden, an opportunity to directly appeal to voters of color.

Well, yes, and it also gives him an opportunity to antagonize voters of color, and/or to make a complete fool of himself.

The difficulty (for Trump) is that he’s already done such a thorough job of appealing to voters of racism that it’s tricky for him to pretend otherwise now.

The Trump campaign, in a press release Monday night announcing his NABJ appearance, claimed that he “accomplished more for Black Americans than any other president in recent history.”

And everyone laughed.

Originally a comment by Sastra on Their primary duty is to ensure that somebody does not die.

A woman athlete who walks out has possibly just lost everything she’s worked for her whole life— her match, her eligibility, her standing, her reputation, and at least some of her friends. A group of women walking out simultaneously might manage to make a majority, but there will always be true believers and upcomers to step into their places on the team. Remember that the moral melodrama being trumpeted high and low is that transwomen are in the same position black athletes once were. You boycott, you take on the role of someone skipping class so they don’t have to sit next to a colored.

This battle can’t be fought by an easy solution like a walkout unless the scale is massive and the numbers close to unanimous— and even then they need the science. The organizers have to change.

Hey no biggy, just slashing some bitch who said no.

An EastEnders actor who slashed a woman with a knife after she turned down his sexual advances has been spared jail.

Oh well thank fuck for that. How dare she say no to his sexual advances?

Harry Rafferty, 34, flew into a “rage” and threatened to kill the woman during a confrontation at a friend’s home in Camden. He threw punches and slashed the woman across the stomach, chest and both sides of her face with a knife.

Which is a very natural and forgivable thing to do.

At Wood Green crown court, Judge David Aaronberg KC handed Rafferty a two-year jail sentence and agreed to suspend it, in part because of court delays and a lack of prison places.

“I don’t want to lock you up but you have got to get your life sorted out,” said the judge. “You have a drinking problem, and you are drinking in the last chance saloon.”

Yes it’s all about his life. The life of the woman he punched and slashed is so much garbage.

In a victim impact statement, the woman said that afterwards she lost friends, felt suicidal and became afraid to leave her own home.

Rafferty sobbed as he was sentenced earlier this month, telling the judge: “I’m deeply remorseful, I really am.”

Judge Aaronberg criticised him for pleading not guilty to the assault charge, in the face of “overwhelming” evidence, and subjecting the woman to cross- examination at trial.

So he’s not really all that remorseful, is he.

NBC News is pretending Khelif and Lin are actually women, not men pretending to be women.

Two boxers who were disqualified from competing with women at a global event last year have been permitted to fight in the Paris Olympics, the International Olympic Committee confirmed.

Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan failed to meet gender eligibility tests at the Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi last year, prompting their disqualifications. But they have been cleared to compete in the women’s 66-kilogram and women’s 57-kilogram matches in Paris this week, the IOC confirmed in an email Tuesday.

…

“Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues into posing as women,” the association’s president, Umar Kremlev, told Russia’s Tass news agency at the time. “According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition.”

Khelif and Lin have both always competed as women, and there’s no indication that either identifies as transgender or intersex, the latter referring to those born with sex characteristics that don’t fit strictly into the male-female gender binary.

Shifty. Very very very shifty. They’ve always “competed as women” – well what does that mean? And the issue isn’t really whether they identify as trans or intersex, but whether they are trans or intersex.

The reporter is an LGBTQ++++ reporter, but if he’s right in his insinuation that Khelif and Lin are not trans then why is this his beat?

This piece isn’t reporting but manipulation.

Hmmm, will that include men who pretend to be women invading women’s boxing?

One violent man stopped.

Anjem Choudary, the leader of the banned terror group al-Muhajiroun, has been jailed for life and may never leave prison alive. He was found guilty of directing the group and encouraging support for it through online meetings

The sentence means that Choudary cannot seek to leave jail on licence until he is more than 85 years old. Choudary appeared shocked and rocked on his feet in the dock as he was given a minimum term of 28 years at Woolwich Crown Court.

Shocked was he? How does he think his victims felt?

Mr Justice Wall said Choudary’s group was a radical organisation that intended to spread sharia law, by violent means, to as much of the world as possible.

That’s not “spreading” sharia, that’s imposing it.

Al-Muhajiroun, which emerged in the late 1990s, has been linked to dozens of acts of terrorism with followers committing acts of violence both at home and abroad. Choudary has been at the heart of the organisation since its earliest days and became leader in 2014 after its founder was jailed in Lebanon.

He gives us two choices: submission or slaughter.

The Telegraph’s chief sports writer Oliver Brown points out that someone could get killed.

Boxing, in case you have not already noticed, is based on trying to knock someone out as the quickest route to victory. It is the sporting realm where sexual dimorphism is most pronounced, since men are biologically favoured with not just wider shoulders and longer reach than women, but 90 per cent increased bicep strength and 162 per cent greater puncher power.

To spell this out, this means that a man’s average punch has over 2.6 times the force of one delivered by a woman. It is a stark illustration of the responsibility that boxing’s authorities must carry when they match fighters up. Quite simply, their primary duty is to ensure that somebody does not die. And yet the International Olympic Committee has decided that two fighters who failed testosterone and gender eligibility tests only last year have fulfilled the criteria to compete in the women’s category in Paris.

I guess that’s because it’s only women who could die, so meh.

Imane Khelif of Algeria and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting were both thrown out of the world championships in Delhi last year amid questions over their biological sex. Lest anyone imagines this is some state secret, it is openly acknowledged in the official Olympic profiles for both athletes. But where the International Boxing Association (IBA) saw fit to disqualify the pair, the IOC have given them a free pass to go up against female opponents in the most dangerous sport, and on the grandest stage of all.

Women, you see. Women don’t matter, unless of course they’re really men.

“You have to understand the unfairness,” says Dr Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist and a leading expert in how differences between the sexes translate to sporting performance. “Seeing three DSD athletes on the podium of a women’s 800m race was shocking, but at least you knew that nobody had risked their life. But this is a risk that is now being contemplated at the Olympics on ideological grounds. Instead of the IOC saying, ‘No, these athletes can’t be in a female sport, especially not in boxing’, they are trying to balance fairness, inclusion and safety. But safety is not about balance. Safety is a cut-off. If it is not safe, nobody cares if it is fair or inclusive. You canot do it.”

Unless of course you simply don’t give a shit if women are killed by men who claim to be women.

When unions go mad:

Why would unions be in the business of disrupting puberties and handing adolescents over to gender quacks to have their lives ruined? Why is submission to trans ideology a requirement for all trade unions? Why is it a requirement for any trade union?

Seriously though…what kind of lunatic goes to a hotel and lies around near the pool to take photos of his legs and post them on Twitter?????

Who does that?? And why???

Guardian lede omits the crucial point of the very story it’s reporting on:

The International Olympic Committee has confirmed that two boxers who were disqualified from last year’s world championships for failing gender eligibility tests will be allowed to fight in Paris.

Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) both start their Olympic campaigns this week, with Khelif meeting the Italian Angela Carini in the 66kg category and Yu-ting expected to face an unnamed opponent in the 55kg category on Friday.

Just look at the Graun carefully not saying that these are men who will be allowed to beat up women in Paris. If you’re familiar with the pattern then the mention of Angela Carini tells you where you are, but even that is in the second paragraph. Two male boxers who failed gender eligibility tests last year will be allowed to fight women in Paris. How chickenshit of the Guardian to go out of its way not to say that.

The IOC’s decision will be controversial, with the former world champion Barry McGuigan expressing his unease. In a post on X, he wrote: “It’s shocking that they were actually allowed to get this far, what is going on?”.

Why is it controversial? Why did the former world champion express his unease? Why does he say it’s shocking they were allowed to get this far?

…the boxing in Paris is now being run under the auspices of the IOC’s Paris 2024 Boxing Unit, which has more relaxed rules than IBA.

Oh more relaxed are they. Is that what you call it. It’s more relaxed to let men beat up women for public entertainment. I don’t suppose the women find it more relaxed.

Rules regarding who should compete in the female category have been hotly contested in recent years. However there has been less debate about combat sports, where the risk of serious injury and even death is far higher.

Scientific research has also found that the average punching power is 162% greater in those who have gone through male puberty compared to females.

Too bad that clarity comes at the very end of the story.

Well well. Is the ship starting to turn at last?

And today, they capitulated at tribunal, admitting liability for harassment and discrimination. Lizzy has won! Book World – there is a lesson in here, if you would only listen to it. Well done, Lizzy and her legal team!

It seems Cambridgeshire County Council just said “It’s a fair cop, guvnor” and that was the end of that.

Guido Fawkes tells us:

Jolyon Maugham and his Good Law Project have faced yet another defeat. Earlier this year, Jolyon’s brigade attempted to overturn former Health Secretary Victoria Atkins’ ban on puberty blockers, raising a whopping £60,000 from gullible donors to fight their case. The High Court has now upheld the ban, citing a study that identified “very substantial risks and very narrow benefits” of puberty blockers. Another one bites the dust…

The Good Law Project took to X to bemoan their loss, promising they are “consulting on next steps.” This marks the second case Jolyon has managed to lose in less than a week. When will credulous donors wake up and realise that when it comes to campaigns, Jolyon seems to be the kiss of death?

Probably around the same time they realize people can’t change sex.

The water is going away.

Two of the largest reservoirs in America, which provide water and electricity to millions, are in danger of reaching ‘dead pool status,’ a result of the climate crisis and overconsumption of water, experts say.

Lake Mead, in Nevada and Arizona, and Lake Powell, in Utah and Arizona, experienced their lowest ever levels last year. ‘Dead pool’ status would mean the water level in the dams was so low it could no longer flow downstream and power hydroelectric power stations.

The Lake Mead reservoir, which is the largest artificial body of water in America, was created in the 1930s by the construction of the Hoover Dam, an engineering masterpiece. Lake Powell, the second largest, was created in the 1960s with the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam.

“The conditions in the American west, which we’re seeing around the Colorado River basin, have been so dry for more than 20 years that we’re no longer speaking of a drought,” said Lis Mullin Bernhardt, an ecosystems expert at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “We refer to it as “aridification” – a new very dry normal.”

Other people just call it the desert.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell not only provide water and electricity to tens of millions in Nevada, Arizona, California, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Mexico, but they also provide irrigation water for agriculture. Experts warn that as the crisis deepens, water cuts will need to be introduced, but this may not be enough.

Ya think?