World’s sexiest athlete Alica Schmidt hits new heights



It's hugely incorrect to say so but once again beauty is Nordic.  There's no mistaking those brilliant blue eyes, blonde hair, narrow face and lightly tanned skin. And it's a very Nordic nose. I say more about the widespread preference for Nordic looks here

Meet Alica Schmidt who has been dubbed the world's sexiest athlete. She might miss out on selection for this year’s Tokyo Olympics but German runner Alica Schmidt is still making headlines after being dubbed the world’s sexiest athlete.

The 21-year-old has risen through the ranks in her native country and ran a personal best in the 200m last week at an indoor event in Potsdam.

She’s won several medals as a junior, helping Germany take silver in the 4x400m relay at the European Under-20 Athletics Championships, before backing it up with bronze in the same event at last year’s under-23 titles.

But Schmidt is also turning heads off the track too with her sexy photos on social media. She has over 625,000 followers on Instagram and is already sponsored by Puma and other brands.

US publication Busted Coverage has named her the “Sexiest Athlete in the World” and she was sought out to pose for Playboy — an offer she declined.

“I do not know why I got this title,” a bewildered Schmidt said about her surprise moniker. “Sport clearly comes first … There are thousands of girls on Instagram who look good and still do not have as many fans — and that’s just competitive sport for me.”

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Texas mother trying to transition her seven-year-old son into a girl loses in court as judge orders her to share custody with ex-husband who says boy is just 'confused'

What an evil woman!

A mother from Texas who was attempting to medically transition her seven-year-old son into a girl has lost a court case.

Dr. Anne Georgulas, who is the mother of James Younger, originally won her previous court case last October that allow her to give him hormones that block puberty.

But the decision by the jury meant the boy's father, Jeff Younger, who opposed such a procedure, had absolutely no say in his son's medical decisions.

Now that ruling has been overturned after Dallas Judge Mary Brown ruled on Thursday that both parents should have joint conservatorship over their child which would mean all decisions would have to be agreed upon by both parents.

 Georgulas's attorney has since promised to challenge the judge's ruling.

Thursday's ruling means Georgulas and Younger will have to make joint medical decisions regarding their child, which includes whether James should undergo hormone replacement therapy to transition to a girl.

They will also have to jointly agree on haircuts for the child, as well as dental and psychiatric care.

Younger and Georgulas will also be forced to go to counseling.

The decision comes after a jury ruled in October last year in favor of giving sole managing guardianship of James and twin brother Jude to their mother.

Georgulas, who is a pediatrician, had long argued that James is transgender and wanted her child to transition to a girl named Luna.

Her ex-husband, however, did not believe James has gender dysphoria and that his child was just experiencing some confusion with gender.

He accused Georgulas of forcing James to socially transition into a girl by making the child wear dresses.  

In November it was revealed the youngster had decided to attend school this year as a boy.

In a post from the Facebook page 'Save James,' pictures of James dressed in a button down shirt, slacks and tennis shoes were shared online.

The caption read: 'Going to school. This is what it looks like when JAMES gets to choose! *Affirm this! * Also, a photo taken yesterday, just before church. James and Jude proud to be men! Save James, save thousands of children!'

The bitter court battle began when Georgulas filed a court request in 2018 to change their joint custody arrangement to include a requirement that Younger start calling their child by the name Luna.

She claimed three mental health professionals had diagnosed James with gender dysphoria and that therapists had recommended they start using the name Luna instead of James.

Younger, however, filed his own request with the court to obtain sole custody of the twins to prevent the gender transition. Initially, he lost, but Thursday's ruling now sees him on an equal footing with his ex-wife over their son's welfare.

Georgulas and Younger married back in 2010 when they were members of the Orthodox Church.

They went through IVF to have twins and requested their gender be male before they were born in 2012.

The couple annulled their marriage several years later.

But the arguments over their child's gender began when Georgulas took James to see a gender therapist at the Children's Hospital Center.

She claims she had noticed James requesting girl-themed toys, that the child was imitating female Disney characters and had been asking to wear dresses.

The therapist recommended James start social transitioning by wearing dresses to school and going by the name Luna.

Younger claims his ex-wife had been forcing the transition ever since their divorce and has accused Georgulas of starting to manipulate their child when James was just three years old accusing her of locking their son in the bedroom and telling their child that 'monsters only eat boys'.

Younger also claims Georgulas had been forcing the child to wear dresses.

Younger went on to publicly accuse his ex-wife of sexually abusing their child.

'I want you to imagine having electronic communication with you son on FaceTime, and imagine that your ex-wife has dressed him as a drag queen to talk to you. He has false eyelashes and makeup. His hair has got glitter in it. He's wearing a dress,' he said.

'Now imagine how you would feel seeing what I believe is actual sexual abuse - I believe this is not just emotional abuse but is the very, most fundamental form of sexual abuse, tampering with the sexual identity of a vulnerable boy. Every. Single. Day.

'You have to see your son sexually abused, and you have to maintain your calm... because the courts are not going to be fair to you. And the only way you can survive this and get your son through this alive is to calmly allow your son to be tortured right before your eyes and outlast the opposition. That's what it's like.'

Separate from the custody court battle, Younger had been campaigning to prevent his child's gender transition.

Websites and Facebook groups called 'Save James' have been set up and there is a GoFundMe page with about $52,000 in donations to help with Younger's court costs.

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Our Military Should Be Cultivating Masculinity, Not Denigrating It

A recent review of U.S. special operations forces pointed to a leadership crisis in our military, concluding that leadership, discipline and accountability must be strengthened at all levels. West Point Military Academy, which is supposed to be the Army’s preeminent leader development institution, hasn’t been immune to this breakdown in leadership. Earlier this month, West Point cadets attended "Honorably Living Day,“ a mandatory event dedicated to promoting diversity and feminist thought where facilitators discouraged what they called "toxic masculinity.”

The curriculum featured the documentary Miss Representation, which was produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, first lady of California and wife of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.). The documentary included commentary from left-wing commentators such as Katie Couric, Rosie O'Donnell, and Jane Fonda. What does any of this have to do with fighting and winning wars? That was the question Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William G. “Jerry” Boykin asked when he joined Washington Watch Wednesday to discuss this new initiative. “In no way does this help enhance the readiness of our military,” he told me. “It is a reflection of what was forced on our military in the Obama administration. The disappointing thing is that it’s still there…”

Instead of developing leaders, West Point is taking time to attack masculinity. The program even questions the phrase “be a man.” Yet, by attacking masculinity, mandatory trainings such as Honorably Living Day undermines the very characteristics our military desperately needs. General Boykin quoted George Orwell, who fought in the Spanish Civil War and observed the hardships of battle first-hand: “Orwell said, ‘We rest well in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence against those who would threaten us.’”

General Boykin argues that the campaign against masculinity inflicts a great deal of damage on society beyond the military. “This whole idea of ‘hypermasculinity,’ which is one of the phrases that they’ve coined now… is absolute nonsense, has nothing to do with reality. It is about destroying men because they are the foundations of the family… The men are so important, and the men are walking out of their families today all over America. And this is a reflection of exactly what the crisis in masculinity is all about.” Indeed, a lack of male leadership has certainly taken its toll on American families. All the more, this highlights the importance of preserving strong and moral male leadership in the military, despite the Left’s effort to destroy it.

For centuries, men have largely been the ones fighting wars, protecting their countries, and defending their people. Instead of disparaging a perceived “toxic masculinity,” the U.S. military should be building the character of men and fostering their natural instinct to protect and defend. The strength of our military and the security of our nation depends on it.

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Democracy may be messy but the alternative is chaos

Bills of Rights can go badly wrong.  Much depends on who drafts them.  They can very easily express a Leftist agenda

Janet Albrechtsen

The rights activists could not be more wrong. The latest bid for an Australian charter or bill of rights launched this week by Amnesty International fails at the most fundamental hurdle: the one about who should make laws in a democracy.

Should it be the Australian people? Or a handful of judges empowered by a bill or a charter of rights and egged on by lawyers in search of work and other impatient activists?

The activists, including legal academic George Williams, are trying to harness new recruits in the media to an old cause. Riding the slipstream of the media’s Right to Know campaign, they claim the only way to truly protect the media’s ability to report matters of public interest is with a complete legal overhaul. Simple tinkering will not do, they say.

It’s all very curious. These people weren’t free-speech fans when it came to repealing section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Nor are they the least bit interested in a religious freedom law. But the Right to Know campaign? That, apparently, demands a new law to protect freedom.

Except it’s not new. They have been flogging this same old dead horse for years and it is deeply anti-democratic. Even a charter of rights passed by our federal parliament as a mere legislative instrument is a ruse, a way to warm us up for the finale, a real lawyers’ picnic: a constitutionally entrenched charter.

If that all sounds rather dramatic, while in Canada these past four weeks I saw the perfect proof of why Amnesty is wrong and why we should steer clear of any kind of charter of rights. It involves one of the most fundamental rights imaginable: a person’s right to decide when to end their life.

In Canada the courts call the shots about this issue. In Australia, we, the people, decide these laws. And you don’t need a legal degree, let alone a doctorate in constitutional law, to work out which is more democratic and which model carries more legitimacy with the people.

Recall the history of assisted dying laws in Australia. The Northern Territory Legislative Assembly passed the world’s first law to legalise euthanasia in May 1995. Then, in March 1997, the federal Senate passed another law, rendering that law invalid.

It was a highly contested issue. More than 20 years later two Australian states, Western Australia and Victoria, have passed assisted dying laws because our elected representatives have undertaken the messy, long and laborious process known as democracy.

It involves considering, investigating, discussing, calling for submissions from lay folk as well as medical experts, drafting, deliberating over changes and, finally, passing these laws.

As Western Australia’s Health Minister Roger Cook said after the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill passed in the state’s parliament last year: “We are at the end of a very long process, a momentous process for the West Australian parliament and West Australian public.”

Two years earlier Victoria’s parliament passed a similar law after an equally gruelling process.

Meanwhile, democracy led the NSW parliament to consider the same issue and reject it in 2017.

The ACT government has responded to, and largely agreed to, an end of life report, even though it lacks the power to enact such laws. Queensland’s parliament undertook an inquiry in 2018, extending it until March this year. South Australian Premier Steven Marshall also has committed that state’s parliament to an inquiry, with public submissions concluding last year.

Contrast our long, carefully considered and, yes, messy but very democratic path to assisted dying laws with Canada’s route.

There, a lovely sounding charter of rights and freedoms has turned a vibrant people’s democracy into a guided democracy with the Supreme Court of Canada playing the part of Lee Kuan Yew. In this and other major policy areas the real decision-maker in Canada is a judicial aristocracy, an unelected, unaccountable and unsackable body that treats elected parliaments with disdain, if not contempt.

It was not always thus. Canada, like Australian states and territories, historically followed a centuries-old legal principle embodied in section 241 of Canada’s Criminal Code. That law, enacted by parliament, provided that assisting someone to commit suicide was a crime. Indeed, even Canada’s Supreme Court, in a 1993 decision called Rodriguez, upheld that position despite the addition of the charter of rights and freedoms to the Canadian Constitution in 1982.

But then fashions changed. By 2015 the Supreme Court, in a case called Carter, decided the charter of rights and freedoms did, indeed, confer a right to assisted suicide for those with a “grievous and irremediable medical condition, including an illness, disease or disability, that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition”.

How did they decide? It was nothing short of a court assuming the role of philosopher king.

Somewhat condescendingly the Supreme Court gave the Canadian parliament 12 months to draft a law complying with the court’s ruling.

The government had to go to court to grovel for an extension but eventually parliament did what the court ordered it to do.

Or did it? Last September a single judge in a lower court, Justice Christine Baudouin of the Quebec Superior Court, marked parliament’s exam paper with F for fail. The judge decided that it breached Canada’s charter for the parliament to insert a limitation requiring that death be “reasonably foreseeable” before a patient was eligible for voluntary assisted death.

Activists cheered Bau­douin. And they are rubbing their hands together in anticipation of further judicial activism over two other aspects of the parliament’s law on assisted dying.

Parliament has prohibited minors from accessing assisted dying and also prohibited “advance directives”, preferring to demand that consent be given for assisted dying in the moments right before death.

If activists can find a few agreeable judges they can override the will of the people here, too.

Note that a single judge with no special expertise in relevant medical, social, or economic policy areas has widened the boundaries of a deeply complicated issue without access to all the analytic, expert and research resources of parliament, or the benefit of full, public consultation. And neither should courts have access to these resources. After all, they are not meant to be politicians.

Yet Canadian courts run the country in key areas because they can. And parliaments must dance to their tune.

Apologists for the Canadian charter will point to what is called the “notwithstanding” clause as rescuing parliamentary sovereignty. While it is true there is a theoretical ability for parliaments to override the courts, they can do so only for a limited period and some critical charter rights cannot be overridden, even temporarily. Proof that this is a useless fetter on the court’s ability to tell the parliament what to do is that the federal parliament has never once tried to use the “notwithstanding” clause.

Making all this worse, when the Supreme Court of Canada in the Carter case overruled its own Rodriguez decision it made stare decisis (the legal principle of determining points in litigation according to precedent) a dead letter and effectively invited lower courts to ignore legal precedents and get in on the lawmaking act.

Canada’s key social policies are hostage not merely to the latest fads sweeping the Supreme Court but also the policy fashions of judges in myriad lower courts.

And that is the other inherent flaw in the case for an Australian bill of rights to protect our basic freedoms. Like Williams, charter fans claim it is the only way to deal with issues that parliament squibs.

What the advocates and activists won’t mention is that they are simply impatient with old-fashioned democratic processes and often deeply scornful of its results.

A bill of rights is the undemocratic fast-track to laws they prefer. It gives judges a set of human rights laws that are vaguely drafted, inviting them to decide big policy issues and allowing them to inject their personal biases into judgments.

There is a reason the Americans call it an end-run around democracy. It’s how to run right past democratic processes without getting bogged down by the people or the politicians who represent them.

This battle between parliament and the courts is not confined to Canada. This week, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern backed euthanasia laws. If passed by the parliament, it will be only a matter of time before a few judges in that country use the New Zealand bill of rights to meddle in this controversial issue.

A fortnight ago, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was concerned that judicial review had become a way of “conducting politics by another means”. While judicial review is, indeed, a vital cornerstone of our legal system and a fundamental protection for the citizen against an over-mighty government, there is a pretty strong argument it has gone too far.

Judicial review was intended to prevent abuses of process and patently untenable decisions. Today, spurred by like-minded activists who head to court, judges increasingly are using their unelected pulpits to implement their personal policy preferences over those of elected and accountable politicians.

In Australia, we should never take for granted that Australian laws are still made by parliaments elected by, and accountable to, Australian voters.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here.

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