Barack shouldn't go either. Same for the Clintons and the Bushes.

Some of remember that motherfucking felon clown climbed into the 2016 race by embracing the racist Birther Conspiracy. He's the Worst Person in America, and Michelle is clearly out of fucks to give.

I'm not watching it either. I'm flying a flag upside down. It's going to be a tragic, shameful day.

“[Kettle’s] comment is beyond disturbing. As if the simple fact that prisoners outnumbered guards required American soldiers to rape and torture Iraqis.”

I suspect the thrust of Kettle’s comment was that understaffing at Abu Ghraib contributed to the abuse in that understaffing worsened the problems of inadequate supervision and discipline of the guard force.

Not sure why that analysis would be “beyond disturbing,” it is consistent with the findings of the Final Report of the Independent Panel to Review DOD Detention Operations and was also established during the courts-martial and NJPs of the abusers.

Supervising the guards is good! Training the guards is good! Disciplining the guards is good! We should want all of these things to happen. And all of it requires manpower. 😉

proposed Infernal Revenue Service poised to burn down USA’s economy

Faiz Shakir,
Ex-Bernie Sanders Campaign
Chief, Joins Race for [“]D.[“]N.C. Chair

Mr. Shakir said his mission, should he win the post,
would be to redefine the Democratic Party
as the party of the working class.

Mr. Shakir said he had sent a letter on Wednesday to the 448 members of the Democratic National Committee announcing his run. In it, he called for the party to build “its own powerful media outlet” and to engage with Trump supporters while building “an organizing army” and fielding more candidates for local offices.

The current crop of candidates to lead the party, he wrote, has been uninspiring.

“As I have listened to our candidates, I sense a constrained, status-quo style of thinking,” Mr. Shakir wrote.

“We cannot expect working-class audiences to see us any differently if we are not offering anything new or substantive to attract their support.”

oodles:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/us/politics/faiz-shakir-dnc.html

good luck,
Faiz! the status
quozzers ain't gonna
like it: they're quite Content.

I'm sorry, but there's nothing shameful about girls and women's athletics to exclude the unfair advantage of transwomen, nor is it transphobic.

Subjecting women athletes’ bodies to inspection is more misogynistic than transphobic but it’s that, too. There is a long and sordid history of this stuff and it’s sad to see it coming back. We’re really regressing as a society.

Hey look, a ceasefire in Gaza! 😃

But…didn’t some of you say the Israelis were going to drive all the Palestinians into the desert and build Jewish settlements everywhere? Gosh, what happened? 😉

“Here in Gaza, celebratory gunfire rang out after reports that a cease-fire deal had been agreed to.”

lol, nice 😎

@1
I’m not watching either. Can’t even remember the last one I bothered to pay the slightest bit of attention to. Besides I’ll be at work.

Someone explain why trans-gendered athletes having their own division is bad.
Does anyone really think that a swimmer who went from being ranked 460-ish to number one makes any sense?

bibi
Cannot
allow hostilities
to cease - it'd mean
an End to his Sovereignty.

look for yet another
nutnyahoo derailment
cum USA co-sponsored
massacration enablement

cuz AIPAC
OWNS America
w/Corporate Approval.

Sex can be determined through a cheek swab test, there is no need to visually check what's in people pants. It's not uncommon for student athletes to have get a physical examination just make sure they healthy enough in general to participate. And student athletes are often subjected to random drug tests in order to be able to stay in the program, except for in Washington state at least. So adding a cheek swab at some point doesn't strike me as all that more invasive than what is already in place. Title IX rights are based on sex. If transgirls are discriminated for participating in boys programs, that is a lawsuit I think they should win under Title VII protections.

I doubt this bill ever gets out of its Senate committee, much less gets a vote for cloture on the floor.

@10: lol, when an antisemitic conspiracy theorist gets ambushed by reality! 😂🤣😂🤣

@10: Can't you at least take a moment's repose from your rage to savor a bit of optimism?

"According to a report from the Israeli outlet YNet, Trump was able to persuade Netanyahu to agree to the deal by assuring him that he could back out of it at any time, along with pledging to remove sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers and the Israeli spyware firm Pegasus.

So it’s not as though Trump has taken a strong position against Israel; he’s just doing something instead of nothing.

The deal that’s in the works is reportedly almost the same as the one Hamas agreed to all the way back in May of last year, which Netanyahu sabotaged with the complicity of the Biden regime.

Biden could have ended this nightmare back in May, or indeed at any time since it began in October 2023."

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/finally-seeing-movement-toward-a?

@11:

In most cases that's true, but for someone who has Swyer's Syndrome, for example they could very easily present as male while being genetically female. So, in that instance, I could envision someone who isn't familiar with their condition challenging them for being male, despite what the swab says. We saw something like that recently in the Paris Olympics where people when ape-shit over a biological female who just happened to not conform physically to what they expect a female should look like.

@14: C’mon, you and Johnstone just need to say it outright: you actually prefer Trump to “Genocide Joe.” It’s a combination of Horseshoe Theory, plus the auto-reinforced fanaticism of the helplessly single-minded.

"the auto-reinforced fanaticism
of the helplessly single-minded."
--@Wormtongue

your projections
whilst Vile are
not mine.

If Thedonolde
stops bibi's
War on
Gazans

that's
a Good thing
tho you'll likely regret it.

@15

If someone objects to someone who happens to have a DSD, which is falsifiable, then the sports program's officials can make the determination that their participation is appropriate or not. It's not unimaginable that a policy protecting Title IX rights could be formed that is least invasive while also accommodating people with DSDs.

Birth sex isn’t the only thing women athletes are screened for. These invasive tests and standards of femininity have taken out cisgender women with genetic and medical conditions they didn’t know about until they were scrutinized for a competition. All transphobic roads lead to women being mistreated and excluded in ways that men would never.

@17: “If Thedonolde
stops bibi's
War on
Gazans

that's
a Good thing”

IF it happens, then is it worth every last other “bad thing” in the myriad of issues on which Trump will be far, far worse than Harris?

It’s really hilarious to listen to people defending discrimination against women by saying they are fighting discrimination against women. Any athlete is required to have a physical before competing by a medial doctor. At that point their eligibility can be verified. No one is going to be strip searched on the court. Worst case scenario argument fallacy.

@16 on this specific issue he appears to be better. Contrary to what you predicted in the immediate aftermath of the election.

@1 "Some of remember that motherfucking felon clown climbed into the 2016 race by embracing the racist Birther Conspiracy."

Didn't the Hillary campaign come up with the birther thing? And her "pied piper candidate" just ran with it.

@21: Indeed, why go into such contorted reasoning if you disagree that transwomen have an unfair advantage playing in competitive female athletic sports - just say so.

@22: I didn’t ask if Trump was better on this one issue. That’s a pretty spectacular reading fail, even for you.

What, exactly, did I predict “in the immediate aftermath of the election”? Oh, that’s right; you’re just going to call names and refuse to answer.

“Didn't the Hillary campaign come up with the birther thing?”

Maybe you could, you know, do the tiniest bit of research before commenting on an issue? Or would that disturb your perfectly luxurious comfort in your own intractable ignorance?

Educate yourselves, guys. There is a growing body of research showing that trans women do not forever retain advantages from their birth sex, but that’s not what this is all about, not is it about routine physical examinations.

Women’s bodies have been tested and scrutinized for athletic performance long before the current moral panic over trans people. You will never hear of men being disqualified for having too much testosterone or physical advantages over other men that are an accident of birth, but even ordinary cisgender women have been excluded from competition for failing these tests and this is just inviting more of that. It’s all rooted in sexist ideals about femininity and punishing women for failing to meet them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_verification_in_sports

@25: "do not forever retain advantages"

So that's a consolation to those women disadvantaged and losing a win at the time of the event?

@22,

No, Clinton did some shitty stuff, but her hands are clean with regard to the birther nonsense.

"It was desperate times in the Clinton camp, and the candidate did not always acquit herself well, such as when she said that Mr Obama was not a Muslim "as far as I know". But there is no evidence of ties between her and her campaign staff and the Obama birthplace allegations."

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37391652

Shitler didn't launch the rumor either, but surely did more than anyone to propagate it, and he absolutely used it as one of the signature issues of his campaign.

I don’t understand your point. A trans woman who isn’t on t-blockers or HRT should be disqualified from competition but if she is several years into her transition she is not going to have the advantages masculinizing hormones would give her.

The standards that you are endorsing would also lead to a cisgender woman with naturally occurring elevated t levels to be excluded for failing to meet whatever arbitrary cut point for testosterone levels are set to determine her femininity. Just going by the numbers, more cisgender women are going to be impacted by these tests than trans women because they outnumber them by several orders of magnitude.

The majority of athletes lose every event they compete in. That’s how it’s supposed to work, but people like you are asking us to consider the plight of the losing athlete any time a trans woman competes against her. It’s extremely strange to think about athletics in these terms and it’s infantilizing of all women.

@25 but that’s not what’s being discussed. What’s being discussed is that if you were born male you have biological advantages over women in sports. If you were born female and you are blessed with unique abilities no one is throwing you out. You continue to use these edge cases to deny the reality that on average a biological man will be stronger/faster/more coordinated than a biological women and that’s not equitable.

29 that’s not true about trans women or the tests they use to determine whether women are allowed to compete. Women who were assigned female at birth are excluded from competition all the time for failing these tests. You don’t know the first thing about any of this beyonfd your prejudices against trans women.

"IF it happens, then
is it worth every last
other 'bad thing' in the
myriad of issues on which
Trump will be far, far worse than Harris?"

--@wormmy

would I trade
'our litle Experiment
in Democracy' to Free Palestine?

I'd Trade
smokin' Joe's
Blanque Cheque
for Israel plus the Bearhug
he gave bibi on October 8th for

the TEN$ OF BILLION$
we handed to our Weapons
Manufacturers and the Lives of
the 100,000+ Palestinians in a second

gleefully

if Biden
had djt's
balls the fucking
Genocide never wouldda Started

can we trade for some
Balls for Biden, post-
tensually? my
gott you're
tedious

just fucking think:

WE COULDDA HAD BERNIE.

wtff.

@30 now you're going to add ad hominem attacks to your list of argument fallacies. Maybe a better testing standard is needed but pretending individuals don't have an inherent advantage is denying science. It's not transphobic to point that out.

@14, @22, @31, @32: The only ‘evidence’ Trump had anything to do with the cease-fire deal comes from @14’s lengthy quote of Johnstone’s fantasy, referencing some ‘source’ no one’s ever heard of. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has a detailed account of how the Biden administration (not ‘regime’) helped this to happen. (The Journal’s account mentions Trump only to repeat his empty boast from his social-media platform.) The Journal’s account also gives the actual reasons the deal was delayed:

“Hamas has been battered and isolated by Israeli attacks that killed much of its leadership and cowed its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, and major backer Iran. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has solidified his governing coalition, reducing the leverage of right-wing parties who have opposed any deal, and has been emboldened by Israel’s wins on the battlefield.”

“The Israeli public increasingly supports the deal, with 60% saying they believed Israel achieved its military objectives in Gaza and should focus on diplomatic efforts to release the hostages, according to a survey this week by Agam Labs at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.”

In other words, Israel’s walloping of Hamas and Hezbollah, along with the weakening of Iran’s position, meant that Hamas finally had to give in — and had no idea if this deal would still be valid under the unpredictable Trump.

(https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-ceasefire-deal-gaza-hostage-release-cdf9ba32?mod=mhp)

@35 blah blah blah

yeah
that's
all well
n'Good

but bibi
holds ALL
the Cards and

if the choice's war
or Accountability
bet Heavily on
the Former

we'll see
how Long
this Ceasefire lasts

hopefully
Forever

@35: “In other words, Israel’s walloping of Hamas and Hezbollah, along with the weakening of Iran’s position”

Pretty much. Israel’s neighbors have only ever made peace with Israel after they have become convinced that they cannot defeat Israel through military force…the latter being by far their preferred course of action.

It typically takes a prolonged series of thrashings before they finally “see the light,” so the ball is now in Gaza’s court to see whether they’ve learned anything from this latest episode. If not, well, there’s always next time! 🤪

@35/37 per this tweet from yesterday's Slog these terms are a pretty big loss for Israel given their previous states objectives:

https://x.com/academic_la/status/1878889705837842653

I also read that Hamas had agreed to these same terms a while ago but Israel refused at that time. By no means can this be seen as Israel "walloping" or "thrashing" Hamas until they "had to give in." It was Israel that changed its position for some reason. Is it not possible Trump's 1/20 deadline was that reason?

@38 also:

“The involvement of President-elect Trump’s team has been absolutely critical in getting this deal over the line,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

Nancy Okail, head of the U.S.-based Center for International Policy, said acceptance of the deal in the face of Trump’s insistence that a ceasefire be in place when he takes office “ironically shows how effective actual pressure can be in changing Israeli government behavior.”

https://apnews.com/article/gaza-ceasefire-trump-biden-israel-hamas-0e6c324ba0e3e9413bafe740fdefebc6

"On the reasonable assumption that a deal will indeed be reached, the critical factor (as was reported here a month ago) is the Trump effect. The incoming president has much more leverage over Netanyahu and the Egyptian and Qatari mediators than does the outgoing president, Joe Biden. The best example of Trump's influence was the unusual Shabbat morning meeting in which the prime minister hosted the incoming president's special Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff. The envoy explained to his host in no uncertain terms that Trump expected him to agree to a deal. Things that Netanyahu had termed life-and-death issues suddenly vanished."

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-01-14/ty-article/.premium/israel-will-have-to-pay-a-heavy-but-inevitable-price-for-hostage-release-deal/00000194-6185-d2ad-a19d-77cd9b810000

@38: Yep, Israel didn’t hit them hard enough this time. That means there’s probably going to be a next time. 😉

The good news is, if Israel keeps hammering them hard enough, they’ll eventually fold. It’s happened with other Arab nations, it’ll happen with the Palestinians, too. It’s kind of up to the Palestinians how many hits they wanna take first.

They didn’t seem to like this round very much while it was going on, but I bet you in retrospect they will conclude it was worth it. Just means Israel is going to need to hit twice as hard the next round. 😉

@38: So, you have Twitter, I have the Wall Street Journal.

"I also read that Hamas had agreed to these same terms a while ago but Israel refused at that time."

Yes, yes you did indeed read that. @14, above. So now you've got Twitter and Johnstone as your sources.

'By no means can this be seen as Israel "walloping" or "thrashing" Hamas until they "had to give in."'

Yes, I agree. Specifically, I doubt very much that your source, Johnstone -- who refers to a certain longstanding US ally as "Israhell" -- would tolerate any notion that Israel had "walloped" or "thrashed" Hamas. But I wasn't referring to Johnstone, I was referring to The Wall Street Journal. Again: “Hamas has been battered and isolated by Israeli attacks that killed much of its leadership and cowed its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, and major backer Iran." That suffices to explain the difference between the peace deal failing last year, and succeeding now.

@39: The Biden Administration recently added incoming Trump Administration officials to the negotiations because that's what responsible administrations do, to ensure continuity. Continuity between administrations is far more important than exactly who heads each administration. The article you cited spends several paragraphs emphasizing this:

"The Biden administration’s open embrace of the Trump team’s involvement in the talks was rooted in far more than the president-elect’s influence with Netanyahu and his threats to get a deal done before he’s back in the White House, three current U.S. officials said.

"The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to offer candid details, said their interest in having Witkoff participate in the talks alongside Biden’s Mideast pointman, Brett McGurk, was primarily designed to ensure that an agreement — which will require a lengthy American commitment — would have continued U.S. support after Biden leaves office.

"Yet, since Witkoff entered the latest round of talks alongside McGurk, these U.S. officials have downplayed Trump’s relevance to the process, apart from the importance of ensuring his support for a deal painstakingly negotiated over the past year. They also want backing for a plan pushed by the Biden administration for the governance, reconstruction and security of Gaza that will take many months — and significant U.S. backing — to succeed."

@41 wow, crazy, "current (read: Biden) officials" don't want to admit the Trump team got done what they couldn't over many months. Interestingly they were all anonymous while the people I quoted put their names on their statements. Bottom line is Biden was too weak to being peace to Gaza without Trump and his people's help. Guess all those Michigan Arab voters weren't as stupid as you thought.

@41: On the one hand, Israel failed to achieve its war aims in Gaza. So I think you have to call it a loss for Israel.

On the other hand, Hamas saw half its fighters wiped out, along with 2% of the population of Gaza, with nothing to show for it except an acid pride at having escaped extinction. Fine, I guess, but hopefully next time Hamas “wins” twice as hard! 😆

‘ This development comes as new polling shows us that Kamala Harris’ depraved position on Gaza probably cost her the election last November.

A poll released on Wednesday by IMEU Policy Project and YouGov found that among people who voted for Biden in 2020 but didn’t vote for Harris in 2024, Gaza was their number one reason — surpassing even issues like the economy and healthcare.

So it turns out all those Muslims in Michigan that liberals have been screaming at for refusing to vote for Harris were right all along.

Kamala Harris told them “I’m speaking” when they protested her genocidal atrocities at a political rally in Detroit. Well, who’s speaking now? ‘

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/thoughts-on-the-ceasefire-deal

first
Hillary
and her
closed-door
$400,000.00
“I’m speaking to
the Banksters” fees

thanks
again to
our “D”NC
the center con-
tinues it’s slow &
steadily-Increasing
drift into reich-wing Utopia

brought to us
by & for Corporatopiana
& their many Mouthpieces of shite

brought to us
by & for Corporatopians
& their many Mouthpieces of $hite.

Estimated Gaza Toll
May Have Missed
25,000 Deaths,
Study Says

Analysis found that more than 64,000 Palestinians may have been killed by traumatic injury in the first nine [of FIFTEEN] months of the war.

Deaths from bombs and other traumatic injuries during the first nine months of the war in Gaza may have been underestimated by more than 40 percent, according to a new analysis published in The Lancet.

The peer-reviewed statistical analysis, led by epidemiologists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, used modeling in an effort to provide an objective third-party estimate of casualties.

The United Nations has relied on the figure from the Hamas-led Ministry of Health, which it says has been largely accurate, but which Israel criticizes as inflated.

But the new analysis suggests the Hamas health ministry tally is a significant undercount. The researchers concluded that the death toll from Israel’s aerial bombardment and military ground operation in Gaza between October 2023 and the end of June 2024 was about 64,300, rather than the 37,900 reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The estimate in the analysis corresponds to 2.9 percent of Gaza’s prewar population having been killed by traumatic injury, or one in 35 inhabitants.

The analysis did not account for other war-related casualties such as deaths from malnutrition, water-borne illness or the breakdown of the health system as the conflict progressed.

The study found that 59 percent of the dead were women, children and people over the age of 65. It did not establish what share of the reported dead were combatants.

--by Stephanie Nolen; Jan. 14, 2025

More on Your
tax dollars oh
so Hard @
Work:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/health/gaza-death-toll.html

nutnyahoo
had Zero
respect
for Joe
Biden

thank
Gawd this
holocaustic
Massacre may
be nearly over

If bibi'll
permit it

@44: So, the All Gaza All the Time crowd is officially taking the blame for Trump, eh? That fits perfectly with your enthusiastic ball-cupping of the felon @32.

The next four years won’t be pleasant, but you guys lining up behind your felonious leader will provide us liberals with some grand old punching-bag recreation.

@42: If you believe the source you freely cited lacks journalistic integrity, then just say so. Doing so does not exactly harm my point about your use of unreliable sources.

@47

yeah
thanks
for bringing
us eltrumpfster
mr Wormtongue.

your full-throated
Support for bibi's 'little
Genocide' definitely paved
his way back to the Offal Office

well
done
dipshite
speaking
of balls-cupping.

here ya Go wormmy:

from the Chris Hedges Report:

The Ceasefire Charade

Israel plays a cynical game.
It makes phased agreements
with the Palestinians that ensure
it immediately gets what it wants.
It then violates every subsequent
phase and reignites its military assault.

. . .

Israel, going back decades, has played a duplicitous game. It signs a deal with the Palestinians that is to be implemented in phases. The first phase gives Israel what it wants — in this case the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza — but Israel habitually fails to implement subsequent phases that would lead to a just and equitable peace.

It eventually provokes the Palestinians with indiscriminate armed assaults to retaliate, defines a Palestinian response as a provocation and abrogates the ceasefire deal to reignite the slaughter.

If this latest three-phase ceasefire deal is ratified — and there is no certainty that it will be by Israel — it will, I expect, be little more than a presidential inauguration bombing pause. Israel has no intention of halting its merry-go-round of death.

The Israeli cabinet has delayed a vote on the ceasefire proposal while it continues to pound Gaza. At least 81 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours.

The morning after a ceasefire agreement was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of reneging on part of the deal “in an effort to extort last minute concessions.”

He warned that his cabinet will not meet “until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement.”

--by Chris Hedges; Jan 16, 2025

more, Edifyingly:
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-ceasefire-charade?

we’ve seen this before;
we’re Exceedingly
Likely to see
it Again.

at least
we'll Know
where You stand
wormmy: ANYThing
to keep bibi Outta Prison.

you are
AIPAC.

@48: Ha! Your own favorite source says your unrelenting obsession with Gaza helped to defeat Harris. You people who cannot see the big picture — who cannot even see Hamas shooting at Israel from Gaza! —brought us Trump. It was your monomaniacally obsessive insistence upon calling genocide in Gaza, which you wrongly rated as more important than stopping Trump. So you can keep right on expressing your amazement at the size of Trump’s balls.

Have a fun four years defending the felon you refused to help us liberals stop.

a neocon
calling itself
a "Liberal"? too
Funny, wormmy!