What Actually DOES the "W" Stand For?

I've never actually watched the WNBA, the basketball league ostensibly for women that is some type of subsidiary of the actually well-known NBA (which I also don't watch). I have many reasons for not having watched it, most of the "I have to wash my hair" variety.  

Now, I suppose, I have even less reason to watch it. That's assuming it is even broadcast; I literally couldn't tell you if the games are televised.

Today, the league shot itself in the foot, having shot itself in the other foot a few times.

Even we non-WNBA fans are aware of the foofaraw caused by the assault and battery (oops, "flagrant foul") committed by a player on the Chicago team against one Sophie Cunningham, a player on the Indiana team.

We've all seen it; Miss Cunningham was driving clear toward the basket for an easy layup when the Chicago player reached her from behind and whacked her across the neck and head as the shot went up. There was no excuse for it, but there was a reason.

The reason is that Miss Cunningham has had the courage to state the obvious, that being that men are men and women are women. Controversial, right?  Enough to deserve getting your head whacked on a basketball court, right?

Here's the thing ... for some reason, it matters to the league to maintain some kind of gender ambiguity. That's the only possible explanation for actions of its representatives in the ensuing days.

First, the Indiana coach made a couple public statements, the first of which having been that she "hadn't actually seen the play" at the time. That was so ludicrous, and so lacking in evident support to her player, that she had to make a second statement, this time yelling at the assembled press that how dare they think she doesn't support her players, and something about having ten toes (seriously). She added that they should all go to Heck, or perhaps near-suburban Heck.

In response, and clearly in defense of Miss Cunningham's reasonable position on requiring one to be a good old XX female to participate in women's sports, a couple former NBA stars decided to announce that they felt like women and were declaring for the WNBA draft. Enes Kanter Freedom, the first to do so, is a 34-year-old Turkish-American former NBA star who has always been willing to speak his mind in defense of America and American values.

The WNBA's agreement with its players association states clearly that the league is for women players. Of course, when the agreement was drawn up, they left it at that, as it didn't seem necessary to have to define what it meant to be a woman. It actually still doesn't seem necessary, but the league apparently did ... or not.

Shortly after the men declared their intent for the WNBA draft, the league convened some kind of committee to decide what a woman was. I'm serious.

If that weren't sufficiently nutso, the committee today actually issued a statement that it was some kind of issue too complex for now, and they'd listen to arguments on all sides. My mind immediately flashed back to "Miracle on 34th Street" when the judge declared he was open to arguments on the existence of Santa Claus, whereupon Fred Mertz pointed his cigar toward chambers to tell the judge they needed to talk.

The WNBA draft is in April. The league had better decide what a woman is long before then. 

I'll tell you what a woman isn't.  That's Enes Kanter Freedom, who is about 6'8" and strong as an ox. If he ("she") had been the Chicago player whacking Sophie Cunningham across the back of the head, she wouldn't be rendering opinions on anything anymore.  

And yet ... how many WNBA teams are thinking about tanking their season to give them a top position in the draft to nab him with the first pick?

Think about it. The WNBA salaries are very low, because the league loses a lot of money, and requires heavy subsidies from the NBA even to exist. Their attendance is brutal, because when the players aren't giving each other unwanted chiropractic adjustments, it's still women's basketball, which is pretty much high-school level. You remember how the vaunted US national women's soccer team lost to a 15-year-old boys all-star team? You get the idea.

So anything to get butts in seats, right? Enes, you think you're a woman? Good enough for us, sign here and let's see the turnstiles spin.

Enes Kanter Freedom put the WNBA in a wonderfully impossible position. By applying for the draft, the league had to accept him, or provide a reason not to. And if they rejected him, there had to be a reason, and the reason had to relate to his not being a "woman."

And if they say he is not, he's going to sue, so they have to define a woman. If a Supreme Court justice thought was beyond her ability, it is surely too hard for the WNBA to get right.

And then once they do define "woman", no matter how they do it, they're stuck with it. Plus, they'll have set a precedent for other ostensibly-women's sports leagues.

The WNBA has only one option. They will have to declare that a "woman", for the purpose of playing on its teams, is a human with two X chromosomes.

Which, of course, we've always known, even without a biology degree from M.I.T. 

But if it matters, I have one of those. 

Copyright 2026 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.  

The Democrats' Unfixable Dilemma

It's no secret that the Democrats have serious problems on their hands.

Once upon a time not that long ago, the opinions and beliefs of Americans sorted into two large groups -- liberal and conservative. At that time, the liberals were overwhelmingly Democrats and the conservatives overwhelmingly Republicans. The Democrats, as my Best Girl would say, were seen as the party of the "worker", while Republicans were seen as the party of "big business."

That changed in 1980 -- or rather, 1976. The economy under Jimmy Carter was so bad -- double-digit mortgage interest, huge inflation -- that, come 1980, they lost a healthy chunk of the formerly Democratic base. Many of these people were what became known as the "BCECs" -- blue-collar ethnic Catholics who had voted solidly Democratic, factory workers and tradesmen. 

They bailed on the Democrats because the Democrats abandoned beliefs key to the BCECs' faith.  Also, they couldn't afford to stay with them. Ronald Reagan convinced them that he would lower their taxes, get interest rates down, and slash the inflation rate. When they helped elect him, he did all of that, so they reelected him.

Result? The BCECs, a large voting bloc, were no longer reliably Democrats.

Cut to 2008. Barack Obama, who had no relevant experience and had never run anything in his life, was elected president, because (A) his race gave him something to talk about, (B) he could read a speech written for him well, and (C) he was not George W. Bush. He would be given a Nobel Peace Prize not long thereafter for (C), by the way.

Obama, a socialist at heart, proceeded to ram government-run health insurance down the Americans' throats. Naturally, it didn't work, as everything else he tried would fail, since he was a socialist and socialism doesn't work anywhere. He was, however, reelected, despite hideous performances in debates (he needed a script), because his opponent, Mitt Romney, declined in his summary statement to nail the vulnerable Obama for his administration's horrible botching of the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi.

By 2016, the BCECs and others, to be fair, had again had quite enough of the Democrats and, like everyone else, detested Hillary Clinton, who took them for granted. Enter Donald Trump. The Obama people didn't just hate Trump, they feared him. The "deep state" -- the entrenched forces in government who (as the later USAID investigations and DOGE effort would show) were making huge money stealing from the taxpayer -- was being exposed.

Out of that fear of exposure, the Obamists and Hillary created an accusation of Trump colluding with Russians to deflect attention and handicap the new president. The lapdog press amplified all that, crippling now-President Trump's ability to manage his own administration -- and yet he was still able to boost the economy beyond even his own expectations. The BCECs noticed.

You know the rest; COVID, the corrupt 2020 election, etc., but most of all, the resultant situation where the Democrats' sole identity was "We hate Trump." No actual policy or even a goal, just being against the sitting president.

All the above -- I remind you of it because, as we speak, a movement called the Democratic Socialists has won an election and a number of primaries around the country. It is far, far left, advocating for government control of most everything, open borders, abolishing the Senate, the Supreme Court and even the presidency. It is virulently anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, antisemitic and not very partial to Christianity either.

Among its social platform planks are men in women's locker rooms, government-owned grocery stores, and assorted communistic nonsense -- but it is a platform. It has both a "what" and a "how", even though the "how" has never worked anywhere.

Most importantly for this piece, with no resistance, their party, the DSA, has co-opted the machinery of the Democrat Party. Their candidates run as Democrats, leaving (when they win a primary) no non-DSA Democrat in the race. The Michigan Senate race is a perfect example -- you either vote for a radical Muslim or a Republican. Trump won Michigan in 2024 ... this ought not to be pretty for the Democrats if the election is fair. 

The Democrats had all manner of  opportunity to reject the communism of the DSA. They did nothing while the DSA wedged its way into their party without resistance.  The Democrats will now be spending a ton of money to elect an antisemitic communist to the Senate in Michigan, as well as assorted DSA-sponsored congressional candidates around the country.

The BCECs bolted the Democrats after Jimmy Carter -- there's not a prayer they're voting for anti-Israel, pro-Hamas communists no matter how much the Democrats spend. So it looks extremely rocky for the Dem-ville nine, to corrupt "Casey at the Bat." 

But as alluded to earlier, this is not a short-term issue for the Democrats. 

Some years back, I wrote a piece to the effect that Barack Obama had left the Democrats in a terrible position, not just because his policies were awful, but because he had taken all the Democrat oxygen out of the room -- during his eight years, he had not allowed the cultivation of young talent to develop within the party. His VP was a geriatric incompetent, and virtually no Democrat governors were allowed to speak prominently. The Democrat leadership in the Senate was ... Chuck Schumer. 'Nuf sed.

Obama had left his party with no leadership, and it showed. Beyond that, for the four years of the first Trump Administration, the Democrats spent so much time trying to impeach the president, there was no opportunity for any young talents to rise by doing anything that mattered. Then came Biden, who of course was neither young nor talented.

Communists apparently abhor a vacuum. No leadership in the Democrats? No problem -- we'll ram in our own people, and push the furthest-left policies we can possibly promote -- who exactly is going to fight us? And there we are.

Obama's negative impact on the Democrats persists to this day. But the rise of the communists in the party stems from several factors:

- Obama's inexperience running anything, leading to his failure to develop a cadre of next-generation leadership talent

- Eight years of the Democrat leadership having only one policy -- "we hate Trump." Opposing everything that Trump supported, including a lot of common-sense, rational policies, stuck them with being the party with no ideas.  

- The Party's failure to say "no" to anything, allowing the furthest-left, unworkable policies to become part of their platform and forcing less-socialist Democrat candidates to sign up to issues they don't subscribe to

- Donald Trump's strategic co-opting of so-called "80-20 issues" -- prominently supporting the overwhelmingly popular sides of issues where the Democrats stuck themselves with having to defend unpopular sides like men in women's lockers, open borders, opposing voter ID, supporting Hamas, etc.

- Islamism -- which is not a communist aspect of its adherents, but one whose followers see as requiring the taking over the world. Let the Democrats fail to develop its own leaders, and the Islamist radicals are happy to jump in.  

Once there were two large peaks of political belief -- liberals and conservative, represented in office by Democrat and Republicans. The Democrats let the communists into their party, and now no longer represent a cohesive or coherent constituency. Or belief system. 

The Democrats' dilemma is unfixable, because someone has to be the repairman. And anyone capable of leading the return to sanity has already left the Party.  

Copyright 2026 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.  

And Then What (Iran Version)

First, a real pardon-me for not having posted for a while. I figured to comment on Iran but the situation kept changing halfway through writing each article. Thank you for your patience.

Regular readers know that one of my standard approaches to an issue is to try to define the problem, rather than going off on a tangent that doesn't successfully solve it. I would really like to apply that here, but it's going to be hard.

You remember George H.W. Bush ("Bush 41", if that helps)?  One memorable quote of his was to complain about "the vision thing." That was in response to complaints in the press that he seemed to lack vision, that he didn't have a view of the future. Of course in his case, he had won election to the presidency after eight years of economic success under Ronald Reagan, and he could hardly be blamed for wanting to continue moving in the same direction, rather than excessively innovating.

The Iran situation is a classic example of the need for the "vision thing." Because what we need depends on what you see as the best long-term situation there. 

What is Iran now? As I write this, it is a country with 90 million people, who have been repressed for 47 years by an Islamo-fascist dictatorship. They're capable of so much more. There are seriously intelligent people there, fully capable of implementing a government structure that would allow the free and independent exchange of ideas and would free the Persian people to achieve success and become a vital economic force and a partner in the world community.

That country is defenseless now. There is no navy or air force, its shore defenses are being blown up one at a time, and only the IRGC is left there as a military structure, murdering protesting civilians and tossing up drones here and there to attack neighboring countries. The "gay ayatollah", who is supposedly alive and making decisions there, has not been seen since his alleged ascent to power. If he even is alive, he is being propped up by the IRGC.

And oh yeah, they have lots and lots of oil, more than enough to fund a legitimate economy, or a nuclear weapons program, depending. 

The news media keep talking about two options -- the US bombs them into submission, or they walk away and let them surreptitiously rebuild their nuclear program. 

But "the vision thing" is about two different options, the ones possible after the U.S. departs the region, or at least ends the war. Those options entail who actually runs the Iran that remains afterward -- the current theocracy or a modern representative government. And that is a challenge.

It's a challenge because for the U.S. to be involved in that to any real extent is "nation building", and that phrase leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. 

But let's face it, the greatest outcome of the conflict out there would be for the Persian people themselves to overthrow the corrupt ayatollahcracy, dismantle the IRGC and implement a representative democracy of some kind. Reza Pahlavi, the 65-year-old son of the former Shah of Iran, has offered to help form an interim government and then step away, and he does have at least some level of support among the masses.

Shah's son or not, in order for the people to create a government, the IRGC has to be eliminated as a factor in the way of power getting to the people. I'm not close enough to know how much of an effort it would be, but the "people" are effectively unarmed, so either the U.S., the allies in the region (who have no love for the current Iranian leadership) or both would have to take action.

It's already been a different kind of war, since we are definitively not trying to conquer Iran, just trying to stop the rulers from developing a nuclear capability (a people's government would be great, but it's not why we're there). So it is absolutely not in our interest to kill civilians or take over territory, but facilitating a popular takeover would be great -- and we need the people to grit their teeth while we bomb away.

This has been the dilemma that President Trump has had to face. Normally when you press the delete button on your enemy's navy and air force, they surrender and you go forward. But like the knight in the Monty Python sketch who keeps getting limbs cut off but keeps yelling to continue the fight, the terrorists running Iran won't give up.

Those terrorists running Iran now have no interest in either reaching a negotiated peace settlement or agreeing not to resume their nuclear weapons program. They simply drag out negotiations, sign this or that only to have it repudiated by other elements of the government. The gay ayatollah is nowhere in sight, if he even is the effective leader.

What is the end game?

That is the question. And the answer is unfortunate and simple. We don't want to occupy the country, and President Trump simply is not going to, even to afford time for the people to vote in some kind of government.

The IRGC is not going to agree to a negotiated settlement. Ever. They don't do that. They lie. And we know where the leadership is. Our intelligence and that of our allies, the Israelis, is that good.

The choice is what it is. Terrorists can not have nuclear weapons. They and the leadership of the IRGC need to be taken out and, if boots are needed on the ground, the Israelis are really good at that. 

Then? Hope is that the populace can somehow unite around Persians who are committed to a free government, whether resident there now or returning from overseas or exile. But hope is not a strategy. And the U.S. can only be involved just so much before we're invested. 

We have only one real strategy -- take out the leadership until the IRGC is no more, or no longer effective. Leverage regional allies to facilitate elections and help the Persian people however we can to retake their government themselves. Promise the people that we will support a representative democracy and help them rebuild their economy. We can do that.

That kind of Iran, disarmed and denuclearized, can be a reasonable force in a new Middle East. It can sell oil to China to its heart's content.

That is a vision. Now we just have to get there. 

Copyright 2026 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.