Monday: Hili dialogue

October 2, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Monday, October 2, 2023, and World Farm Animals Day.

It’s also National Fried Scallops Day, World No Alcohol Day (what’s the point?), World Architecture Day, World Habitat Day, and Gandhis’s Birthday (he was born on October 2, 1869), and, in  conjunction with that, Gandhi Jayanti in India and the International Day of Non-Violence.

Gandhi, one of my heroes, was assassinated on January 30, 1948, at the young age of 78. Here’s a scene of the assassination, Gandhi’s cremation, and then a flashback to the beginning of Gahdhi’s career as an activist, all taken from the first ten minutes of the eponymous movie (Ben Kingsley plays Gandhi).

As your task today from Professor Ceiling Cat, please read Orwell’s short appraisal of Gandhi’s life, “Reflections on Gandhi.”

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the finishing of the Appalachian Trail, explained at the link I just gave. As the site says, “On this day in 1968 The National Trails System Act established the Appalachian Trail as one of the country’s first National Scenic Trails.” Click below to see a series of 12 drawing celebrating this most famous of American hiking trails.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the October 2 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*House speaker Kevin McCarthy is about to feel the blows from his bipartisan bill to keep the government running for six weeks. According to the WaPo and other sources, at least one Republican is going to call for a vote to depose McCarthy, and one vote is all it takes to initiate the Big Vote:

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said Sunday that he is determined to try to oust Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his position as House speaker after McCarthy passed a stopgap measure to fund the government with Democratic support.

Gaetz said Sunday that he plans to introduce a motion to remove McCarthy from his leadership position, marking a dramatic escalation of the long-simmering tensions between the men. Gaetz did not say when he would introduce the motion. Once he does so, the House would have 48 hours to vote on the matter.

“I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy,” he said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Trustworthy to whom? Far right people like Gaetz? Or trustworthy to Republicans? Clearly it’s the former. My version would “trustworthy to at least try to move the country forward in a bipartisan way,” but that’s now beyond the realm of hope.

Hard-right obstructionists in the House GOP have made clear for weeks that McCarthy would be removed if he relied on Democrats to pass any funding legislation. The measure, called a motion to vacate, requires only one person to force the House to consider removing the speaker, a move that has never succeeded before.

Gaetz accused McCarthy of lying during the negotiations over the stopgap government funding talks, as well as lying to the Republican conference during the lengthy speakership fight in January that saw him going through 15 rounds of House votes before being elected speaker.

“Look, the one thing everybody has in common is that nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy,” Gaetz said. “He lied to Biden, he lied to House conservatives. He had appropriators marking to a different number altogether.”

Now, besides the inter-chamber animus between House and Senate, we have a serious fracture in the GOP. I love it!

*From yesterday’s NYT magazine: “Why can’t we stop unauthorized immigration? Because it works.” That’s a provocative title. How does it “work”? From author Marcela Valdes, who thinks work means “gives economic boons to migrants, legal or not, and provides jobs at low cost”:

Migrants dream of America because they are an entrenched part of our economy. This is nothing new; America’s economy has always relied upon a mass of disempowered, foreign-born laborers, whether it was enslaved Africans picking cotton, Chinese building railroads, Irish digging coal, Italians sewing garments or Mexicans harvesting fruit. Even today, some sectors in the U.S. economy seem almost reserved for workers who have been deliberately kept vulnerable. When Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, establishing a minimum wage, they excluded most farmworkers and domestic workers from its protections. These workers were largely excluded again when Congress passed the Occupational Health and Safety Act in 1970. “These spaces that were once filled by slaves are now filled by immigrants,” Anita Sinha, a professor of law at American University told me. “They are exploitative by design.”

Other sectors use foreign-born labor as a more recent strategy. When the anthropologist Angela Stuesse investigated the history of the poultry industry in Mississippi, for example, she found that when African American workers organized for better wages and working conditions in the 1970s, businessmen cultivated an alternative work force of Latin Americans, whom they found in Texas and Florida. As they recruited and transported these migrants, she demonstrates, they catalyzed the demographic transformation of central Mississippi and the poultry industry across the South.

Today migrants are routinely employed in almost every blue- and pink-collar industry in America. Recent Times investigations by Hannah Dreier found unaccompanied minors packing Cheerios, washing hotel sheets and sanitizing chicken-processing plants. The United States has laws banning these and other abusive labor practices, but many companies have found a workaround: staffing agencies.

American consumers benefit from these systems every time they find exceptionally inexpensive ways to get their lawns cut, their bathrooms cleaned, their houses built, their apples picked, their nails painted and their young and old cared for. The prices we pay for these services have been subsidized for generations by transnational migrants.

Yep, they keep wages low for everyone, allowing workers, both foreign and domestic, to be exploited via competition.  The readers aren’t buying it, either: have a look at the comments, especially the “Reader Picks.”

If you follow Valdes’s logic to its conclusion, which are fully open borders (she doesn’t say any restrictions are needed, and implies that they’re impossible, which they’re not) we get this: wages would drop to a few bucks an hour, welfare systems would be overtaxed, and, Ceiling Cat forbid, Martha’s Vineyard would be overrun. I have yet to find an honest discussion about how to fix the border problem, which I think is real and becoming increasingly serious.

*Connecticut, which has among the strictest gun-control laws of any state (it is, after all, where the Sandy Hook massacre occurred), has passed new ones, but I have to say that they’re risibly lax. Such is America.

Connecticut’s most wide-ranging gun control measure since the 2013 law enacted after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting takes effect Sunday, with proponents vowing to pursue more gun legislation despite legal challenges happening across the country.

The new law, signed by Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont in June, bans the open carrying of firearms and prohibits the sale of more than three handguns within 30 days to any one person, with some exceptions for instructors and others.

If you aren’t American, you might laugh out loud as the above being construed as “gun control”.  Seriously? Who needs more than TWO handguns within 30 days (note that after a month you can buy another couple of handguns. It’s so stupid it’s funny. Yet Connecticut is seen as a gun-unfriendly state. There’s more: the morons who think that laws like the above are too restrictive:

Immediately after it was passed, the law was challenged in court by gun rights supporters. Connecticut’s landmark 2013 gun law, passed in response to the 2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown that claimed 26 lives, is also being contested in court.

Besides Connecticut, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, other politically liberal-leaning states including California, Washington, Colorado and Maryland also have passed gun laws this year that face legal challenges. They come in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court last year expanding gun rights.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom last week signed nearly two dozen gun control measures, including laws banning firearms being carried in most public places while doubling taxes on guns and ammunition sold in the state. He acknowledged some might not survive a legal challenge. Last week, a federal judge struck down a California law banning guns with detachable magazines that carry more than 10 rounds.

Have any of these opponents read the Second Amendment? Sure they have, they just can’t understand plain language, and they LOOOOVE their guns.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Who in a well-regulated militia (and we don’t even need one of those) gets to buy more than three handguns a month?

*The Supreme Court’s new term begins today, and there are some important cases on the docket.

Monday marks the first day of the U.S. Supreme Court’s new term as it prepares to tackle major cases involving gun rights, the power of federal agencies, social media regulation and Republican-drawn electoral districts, and considers taking up a dispute over the availability of the abortion pill.

The first case on the docket for the justices – six conservatives and three liberals – in their nine-month term is a dispute from Iowa involving the sentencing of a non-violent drug offender.

In a major case teed up for Tuesday, the justices will consider the first of at least three disputes that could result in new limits on the authority of regulatory agencies – sometimes called the “administrative state” – a longstanding goal for many U.S. conservatives and business interests.

The justices on Oct. 11 are due to hear a bid by South Carolina officials to revive a Republican-crafted voting map that a lower court concluded had unconstitutionally “exiled” 30,000 Black voters from what was a closely contested U.S. House of Representatives district.

An important case was added to the docket on Friday, when the court agreed to decide the legality of Republican-backed state laws in Texas and Florida that constrain the ability of social media companies to curb content on their platforms that these businesses deem objectionable.

In another social media-related case, the justices on Oct. 31 are due to hear arguments over whether the Constitution’s First Amendment limits on government regulation of speech bar public officials from blocking critics on platforms like Facebook and X, formerly called Twitter.

The answer is NO.  And two more:

A case to be argued on Nov. 7 presents the conservative justices with an opportunity to broaden gun rights even further. At issue is whether a federal law that bars people under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms violates the Constitution’s Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms.”

No it doesn’t. The Second Amendment is about a well regulated militia, for crying out loud.

The court could take up an important abortion case as well.

President Joe Biden’s administration on Sept. 8 asked the justices to hear its appeal of a lower court’s ruling that would curb how the abortion pill mifepristone is delivered and distributed. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in its ruling barred telemedicine prescriptions and shipments of mifepristone by mail. The 5th Circuit’s decision is on hold pending the outcome of the administration’s appeal.

What about the lower-court ruling that no Americans could have the drug because the FDA didn’t approve it “properly”?  That decision is still on hold pending other rulings.

*AI has now invaded online dating. The WSJ reports that there’s a FREE online dating service that requires nothing beyond your photograph to help you find a compatible partner.

Can artificial intelligence find your perfect romantic match—just by examining your face?

SciMatch thinks it can. The dating app runs photos of users’ faces through its algorithm to determine their personality traits, such as outgoing, neurotic or conscientious. It then recommends potential mates who have compatible characteristics.

AI is playing an increasingly larger role in our daily lives, providing medical diagnoses, homework help and meal planning. And it promises to reshape millions of other tasks.

When it comes to online dating, AI has already seeped into some aspects, such as helping people optimize their profile pictures and start conversations. But some relationship experts doubt AI can effectively play matchmaker.

. . . SciMatch, which launched in early 2022, has about 5,000 active monthly users. It’s free to use. People can pay for extras like the ability to be paired with someone who resembles their celebrity crush.

. . . Once the SciMatch app scans your face, it spits out a description that you can use in your profile. The algorithm doesn’t focus on specific facial features but studies the face as a whole. For example, people with heart-shaped faces are considered by face-reading experts (yes, this is a thing) to be creative and have a fiery temperament.

Well of course this is going to work to some extent, as photos are important in first impressions, and in some cases a photo attraction will lead to a permanent relationship. But the Lombrosian idea that you can discern personality from faces is going to prevent a lot of good relationships that could happen, and create a lot of meetings that will be futile. The former is more important than the other, but what’s wrong with writing your own profile, or even having a bot do it?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is puzzled why Andrzej is reading a book more than once:

Hili: It’s the third time you’ve return to this book.
A: There are such books.
In Polish:
Hili: Trzeci raz wracasz do tej książki.
Ja: Są takie książki.

And a blurry picture of Szaron, the world’s most affectionate cat:

*******************

A multiple groaner from Irena:

From Divy, whose cat Boba hides for hours after he even sees the vacuum cleaner. (I just had a Good Idea: can they make vacuum cleaners that sound like a tuna can being opened?):

From reader Pliny the in Between in honor of yesterday’s Blasphemy Day:

From Masih, kids who will grow up to resist Iran’s theocracy:

From Ricky Gervais. Would this go down well in the U.S.?

Cat t.v. from Malcolm:

From Jez, a tweet from actor Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I retweeted:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. If you’re feeling low, this is worth seeing again:

Bird sounds:

. . . and cats rule!

20 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Re. your mention of Gandhi.
    Ben Kingsley was chosen to play the role of ‘Gandhi’ in this film from the early 80s, but would an actor of his background (he was half Indian) be ‘allowed’ to play this role if the film was made today?

  2. If you follow Valdes’s logic to its conclusion, which are fully open borders (she doesn’t say any restrictions are needed, and implies that they’re impossible, which they’re not) we get this: wages would drop to a few bucks an hour

    I don’t believe that is the case, any least not if all the migrants are documented so they pay their taxes and are protected by US employment law (such as it is). It has been found in the UK that immigrants, on average, pay more tax and are less of a burden on the welfare state than the people born here. This is because they often come here after they have completed most of their education and many leave again before they retire and become a burden.

    Immigrants are a good thing for a country and an economy. This is the real reason why governments are so bad at controlling them. That and the fact that somebody whose previous life was so bad that they are prepared to travel hundreds or thousands of miles, often risking their lives is going to be far more determined to get in than any American is to keep them out.

    1. You’re quite right, Jeremy.

      All else being equal, economic migrants are better for a country than those seeking asylum against state persecution. These days most asylum claimants are in fact economic migrants but have to dissemble and make lengthy bogus asylum claims in order to be allowed to stay. Real asylum claimants want something from you — protection, succor, shelter — and don’t necessarily offer anything in return, whereas economic migrants want to work.

      The evidence is that as long as migrants are allowed to work legally, they are a good deal, especially in a country with a niggardly welfare state. Not only do they pay taxes, the demand for goods and services that they create by their presence and by knock-on effects increases the demand for all labour, not just theirs, and wages do not in fact fall. They are more likely to integrate and assimilate if they can work gainfully and openly instead of being crammed into exploited under-the-table workers’ ghettos. Or street gangs. Denying them work permits, as Sweden does at the behest of its labour unions, is folly. The Economist reports on this regularly from a variety of international viewpoints.

      Whether a country or region is a welfare magnet or an opportunity magnet depends more on the cultural characteristics of the country, particularly in regards structural unemployment (i.e., disincentives to be in the labour force) than on characteristics of the immigrants themselves. Another “emergent” property maybe.

      There is no clear, clinching economic argument against immigration, even when you can’t pick and choose them for success potential as Canada tries to do and they just show up at the border. Which brings me to concede that wild surges of immigration do stress the services that working, tax-paying immigrants can expect to be available at a price: houses, schools, public transit. But as Jeremy says, you can’t turn off the flow because the economy wants immigrants and it will get them. Why it seems such a mess right now is likely related to flows, not stocks. As long as they are finding jobs, they’ll keep coming.

      As for social cohesion, the legacy-white English-speaking countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, and NZ) seem less fussed about the changing demographics wrought by mass immigration than, say, Denmark and Sweden do at much lower rates. At least that’s something that we racist WASPs get right.

    2. Agreed. Americans want inexpensive gardeners, janitors, and construction workers, but they wouldn’t have those without migrant workers. Far from crashing the welfare system, they will keep social security funded, which in turn provides a good case for providing a path to citizenship to undocumented migrants who have been steadily working in the US. As the Bipartisan Policy Center noted, “Immigrants to the United States tend to be of working age on arrival, which means they can begin contributing to the Social Security system as soon as they begin working. Immigrants also tend to consume fewer benefits than the native-born population, including fewer Social Security benefits.”

  3. Nobel week: The first is in
    (from the Nobel Prize website)
    “the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

    jointly to

    Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman

    for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19”

  4. “As your task today from Professor Ceiling Cat, please read Orwell’s short appraisal of Gandhi’s life, “Reflections on Gandhi.” ”

    Done.

    1. An interesting and thoughtful essay (obviously, one expects nothing less from Orwell). I didn’t know this about Gandhi:

      There was a time, it is interesting to learn, when he wore a top hat, took dancing lessons, studied French and Latin, went up the Eiffel Tower and even tried to learn the violin — all this was the idea of assimilating European civilization as thoroughly as possible.

      (Interestingly (to me, anyway), Theodor Herzl was a Germanophile and keen believer in assimilation before his conversion to Zionism.)

  6. On this day:
    1864 – American Civil War: Confederates defeat a Union attack on Saltville, Virginia. A massacre of wounded Union prisoners ensues.

    1944 – World War II: German troops end the Warsaw Uprising.

    1967 – Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first African-American justice of the United States Supreme Court.

    1980 – Michael Myers becomes the first member of either chamber of Congress to be expelled since the Civil War.

    1996 – The Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments are signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton.

    2002 – The Beltway sniper attacks begin in Washington, D.C., extending over three weeks and killing 10 people.

    2004 – The first parkrun, then known as the Bushy Park Time Trial, takes place in Bushy Park, London, UK. [Women are currently protesting against female track records being stolen by men who self-identify as women.]

    2006 – Five Amish girls are murdered in a shooting at a school in Pennsylvania, United States.

    2018 – The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

    Births:
    1452 – Richard III of England (d. 1485). [His body was found under a car park in Leicester – that’ll be one hell of a parking fine…]

    1718 – Elizabeth Montagu, English author and critic (d. 1800).

    1800 – Nat Turner, American slave and uprising leader (d. 1831).

    1869 – Mahatma Gandhi, Indian freedom fighter, activist and philosopher (d. 1948).

    1871 – Martha Brookes Hutcheson, American landscaper and author (d. 1959).

    1890 – Groucho Marx, American comedian and actor (d. 1977).

    1895 – Ruth Cheney Streeter, American colonel (d. 1990). [The first director of the United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve (USMCWR). In 1943, she became the first woman to attain the rank of major in the United States Marine Corps when she was commissioned as a major on January 29, 1943. She retired in 1945 as a lieutenant colonel.]

    1904 – Graham Greene, English novelist, playwright, and critic (d. 1991).

    1909 – Alex Raymond, American cartoonist, creator of Flash Gordon (d. 1956).

    1926 – Jan Morris, Welsh historian and author (d. 2020). [Born James, Morris was one of the first British men to undergo “sex change” surgery. Morris’ daughter has written about her father’s cruel and misogynistic treatment of herself and her mother.]

    1937 – Johnnie Cochran, American lawyer (d. 2005) .

    1941 – Ron Meagher, American rock bass player.

    1943 – Anna Ford, English journalist.

    1945 – Don McLean, American singer-songwriter.

    1949 – Richard Hell, American singer-songwriter and bass player.

    1949 – Annie Leibovitz, American photographer.

    1950 – Mike Rutherford, English guitarist.

    1951 – Sting, English singer-songwriter and actor.

    1955 – Philip Oakey, English singer-songwriter, keyboard player, and producer.

    Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying:
    1850 – Sarah Biffen, English painter (b. 1784).

    1927 – Svante Arrhenius, Swedish physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1859).

    1968 – Marcel Duchamp, French painter and sculptor (b. 1887).

    1981 – Hazel Scott, Trinidadian-American activist, actress, and musician (b. 1920).

    1985 – Rock Hudson, American actor (b. 1925).

    1987 – Peter Medawar, Brazilian-English biologist and zoologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1915).

    1988 – Alec Issigonis, English car designer, designed the Mini (b. 1906).

    1998 – Gene Autry, American actor, singer, and guitarist (b. 1907).

    2005 – Nipsey Russell, American comedian and actor (b. 1918).

    2015 – Coleridge Goode, Jamaican-English bassist and composer (b. 1914).

    2017 – Tom Petty, American musician (b. 1950).

    2022 – Sacheen Littlefeather, American actress, model and activist for Native American civil rights (b. 1946). [Born Maria Louise Cruz, after her death she was accused by family members and journalists of being a “pretendian”.]

  7. A case to be argued on Nov. 7 presents the conservative justices with an opportunity to broaden gun rights even further. At issue is whether a federal law that bars people under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms violates the Constitution’s Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms.”

    I’ve been sounding the alarm about this case, United States v. Rahimi, in this space since a panel of the ultraconservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the federal statute — 18 USC section 922(g)(8) — that prohibited persons against whom domestic violence injunctions have been entered from possessing firearms. See, e.g., here and here.

    In the case in which SCOTUS first held that the Second Amendment guarantees the individual right to own and possess firearms (quite apart from one’s service in a militia), District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Court spoke specifically of the right of responsible, law-abiding US citizens to own and possess guns.

    Two terms ago, however, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022), the Court, in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas and joined by the five other conservative justices, shifted the rationale regarding the right to keep and bear arms. Language in the opinion by Thomas stated that the key question was whether any proposed regulation restricting an individual’s right to own and possess firearms was consistent with the “historical tradition of firearm regulation[.]” This is a call for the supposed “original intent” of the Second Amendment to take precedence. In other words, any federal restriction on firearm ownership and possession is presumptively unconstitutional unless a similar restriction applied as of December 15, 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified as part of the Bill of Rights. (As regards state restrictions on firearm ownership and possession the applicable date would be July 9, 1868, since that was the date of ratification of the 14th Amendment, the due process clause of which has subsequently been interpreted to incorporate the Bill of Rights — which was originally intended as a restriction on federal authority — to be a restriction on state power.)

    Given that US laws restricting firearm possession based of any disability were essentially nonexistent in the 18th and 19th centuries, this bodes ill for the constitutionality of laws that keep firearms out of the hands of domestic abusers, or persons displaying the indicia of dangerous mental illness, or drug addicts, or any other persons to whom current “red flag” laws prohibiting them from possessing firearms might apply.

    Fasten your seatbelts — or get strapped with a firearm yourself — since it looks like we’re in for a bumpy ride.

    1. So the 2A fanatics should be up in arms, so to speak, about the firearm prosecution of Hunter Biden, right? Haven’t heard many complaints about that.

    2. Ken – I have questions about the 2nd Amendment: First, what do conservative (reactionary) judges and justices think the first part of the Amendment is doing there? They all seem to pretend it doesn’t exist, but if they really are “originalists”, why don’t they include its existence in their reasoning? Why doesn’t someone even ASK them what they think it’s doing there?

      Second, they seem to be relying on what was the case when the Constitution was written. Why is that OK as far as the possession of guns, but not OK with regard to evolving technology? It seems to me that if they want to replicate the world as it was then, that they should have to be limited to the technology that was AVAILABLE then. Surely the Founders didn’t anticipate AR-15s.

      Thanks for explaining it all to us non-lawyers.

      L

      1. Just a non lawyer’s two cents but the law back in 2008 pretty much ignored the first part and just simply eliminated it. It was all pre-determined by the law students for the federalist in the preceding years. And by the way, Madison wrote the thing the way it was because the militia was the key thing. The anti federalist were scared of the big bad federal govt. and their ability to have a “standing” army. Throwing out the second amendment would appease them with the militia idea. OH good, a militia and no standing army. That is the history if anyone cares.

      2. Linda,

        The right-wing SCOTUS justices’ reasoning (such as it is) regarding the original intent of the opening clause of the Second Amendment was set out in Part IIA of the majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia (and joined by his four most conservative colleagues), in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), an opinion drafted 217 years after the Second Amendment was originally ratified. Two years after the Heller decision, in a majority opinion by Samuel Alito and joined by the identical four conservative justices, McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), held that this interpretation of the opening clause of the Second Amendment was made applicable to the several states, via the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, and the so-called “incorporation doctrine,” when our nation had ratified the US constitution’s 14th Amendment 140 years earlier, during the summer of 1868.

        You can read Section IIA of Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion doing all this belated original-intent-discovering in District of Columbia v. Heller, here, and all this belated incorporation of the Second Amendment as against the states via the 14th Amendment’s Due Process clause in McDonald v. City of Chicago here, respectively.

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