Thursday: Hili dialogue

December 21, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to December 21, 2023, with just four days left until Coynezaa.  Get a good bottle of wine ready to celebrate! And today is the Winter Solstice—the shortest day of the year—which starts at 9:27 p.m. Eastern time. It’s also National Fried Shrimp Day (note: not kosher, deleterious to your health).

Finally, it’s also Anne and Samantha Day, honoring Anne Frank and Samantha Smith, the latter an American peace activist who died in a plane crash at only 13, Ribbon Candy Day, Crossword Puzzle Day, National Hamburger Day, National Coquito Day (cultural appropriation of Puerto Rican coconut eggnog), National Short Story Day (the best is Joyce’s “The Dead“), National Kiwi Fruit Day (an Aussie friend calls them “gorilla balls”), Forefathers’ Day, celebrating the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth on this day in 1620, São Tomé Day, commemorating the first European visit to the island in 1471 (there were no indigenous people there) and, of all things, it’s Gravy Day in Australia, “celebrated in honour of the song How to Make Gravy by Paul Kelly”.  Surely you want to hear that song! Here it is, but first a note from Wikipedia:

How to Make Gravy is a four-track EP by Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly and was originally released on 4 November 1996 on White Label Records in Australia. The title track was written by Kelly and earned him a ‘Song of the Year’ nomination at the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) Music Awards of 1998. It tells the story of a newly imprisoned man writing a letter to his brother, in which the prisoner laments that he will be missing the family’s Christmas celebrations.

Do any Aussie readers know it?

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the December 21 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Although the talks about a ceasefire resolution in the Security Council are still going on in the UN, and are still getting postponed because the U.S. doesn’t want a ceasefire, there are talks about a humanitarian pause (and perhaps hostage release) are going on in Egypt and Qatar, where representatives of Hamas and Israel are there undergoing mediation.

Ismail Haniyeh, the top political leader of Hamas, was in Cairo on Wednesday to hold talks with Egyptian officials about a possible truce in the war in Gaza as concerns in Israel grow over the fates of the dozens of hostages still being held in the enclave.

Israel and Hamas are attempting, via mediators in Egypt and Qatar, to discuss a new cease-fire that would see the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, and some proposals have been put on the table, said an official familiar with the talks. An Israeli official said initial steps had been made in the negotiations, but emphasized there was no deal yet.

A senior Hamas official said Israel would need to abide by a new sustained cease-fire and allow the unlimited entry of aid into Gaza before Hamas would start discussing the release of more hostages. If Hamas sticks to those demands, that would mark a departure from an earlier hostage deal that was secured in November, when Hamas discussed a hostage release as part of a wider cease-fire arrangement.

But there’s not going to be a full (sustained) cease-fire:

The comments may be more of an opening bid than a final offer: A full cease-fire, enacted without preconditions, would be unacceptable for Israel, since it would allow Hamas to remain in control of parts of Gaza.

“Anyone who thinks we will stop is disconnected from reality. We will not stop fighting until the realization of all the goals we’ve set: eliminating Hamas, freeing our hostages, and removing the threat from Gaza,” Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said in a statement on Wednesday.

And here’s the count of hostages still held by Hamas:

Of the 129 people that Israel says are still be held hostage, 21 are believed to be dead. Israel counts the dead in its total hostage figures.

Most of the remaining hostages are men, but the prime minister’s office said 19 women and two children were still believed to be held. They include Shiri Bibas, 32 and her two sons, Ariel Bibas, 4; and Kfir Bibas, less than a year old. Hamas’s armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, claimed the three had been killed in Israeli airstrikes, but Israel has not confirmed that.

All but 11 of the current hostages are Israeli or dual nationals with Israeli citizenship — the others are Thai, Nepalese, Tanzanian and one is a dual French and Mexican citizen.

It’s amazing to me that the captivity of all those hostages are not subject to the ire of the world.  Everybody but their relatives and the Israeli public seems to have been forgotten about them, or about how much a violation of the rules of war their capture was, not to mention killing and raping some of them.

*Here’s some horse sense from the U.S. Secretary of State:

US Secretary of State Blinken takes issue with what he says is the international community’s sole focus on making demands of Israel regarding the war in Gaza while remaining silent on Hamas’s own agency in the conflict.

“What is striking to me is that even as we hear many countries urging an end to this conflict… I hear virtually no one demanding of Hamas that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender. This would be over tomorrow if Hamas does that,” Blinken says.

“How can it be that there are no demands made of the aggressor, and only demands made of the victim. It would be good if there was a strong international voice pressing Hamas to do what is necessary to end this,” he adds.

The secretary insists that “any other country in the world faced with what what suffered on October 7 would do the same thing.”

It’s not clear where he said this, but it was reported today. And it’s not official policy, but if it reflects what’s coming, it suggests that the U.S. will not vote for any measure that will leave Hamas in power, and that includes a permanent cease-fire.

*This may be good news from the WSJ, which reports that Hamas is already planning for the end of the war—a war it will lose.

Hamas’s political leaders have been talking with their Palestinian rivals about how to govern Gaza and the West Bank after the war ends, a fraught negotiation that threatens to put them at odds with the militant wing fighting Israel.

The talks are the clearest sign that Hamas’s political faction is starting to plan for what follows the conflict.

“We don’t fight just because we want to fight. We are not partisans of a zero-sum game,” Husam Badran, a member of Hamas’s Doha-based political bureau, told The Wall Street Journal during an interview at a villa on the outskirts of the Qatari capital. “We want the war to end,” he said.

The Hamas leader’s statement marks a sharp turn from Oct. 7, when the militant wing of the group led an assault that killed more than 1,200 Israelis. Now, after more than two months of war, and about 20,000 Palestinian casualties in Gaza, according to health authorities there, Hamas’s political wing is talking about an end to the conflict.

“We want to establish a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem,” Badran said.

. . . According to the people familiar with the discussions and an Israeli official, the political leadership’s talks with Fatah, the dominant faction of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, have created tensions with Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas’s military wing based in Gaza. Sinwar, according to those people, doesn’t want Hamas to continue to govern Gaza, but believes the war isn’t lost yet and says it is too early to compromise.

I’m not sure how much appetite Israel has for a two-state solution at this point, for history shows that Israel being contiguous with a Palestinian-controlled territory is a recipe for continued terrorism and attacks on Jews. And I can’t imagine what kind of organization would govern that state. It can be neither Hamas nor the Palestinian authority, which promote terrorism. But it’s at least hopeful that the statements above imply that Hamas knows they’re going to lose.

*The NYT has a 23-minute podcast (oy, I hate these things), “Why a Colorado court just knocked Trump off the ballot“, described this way:

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that former President Donald J. Trump is barred from holding office under the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies those who engage in insurrection, and directed Mr. Trump’s name to be excluded from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot.

Adam Liptak, who covers the court for The New York Times, explains the ruling and why the case is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But I did listen to it! You can listen here, or read the transcript—which I discovered too late—here. Liptak knows that the Supremes MUST take this case, but thinks that they’ll overturn Colorado’s decision:

Michael Barbaro

Interesting. Many of the justices, you’re saying — perhaps all the justices, even the liberal justices — may be reluctant to issue the kind of ruling against Trump, in this case, that would effectively take electoral choices away from voters.

Adam Liptak

Yes, that’s right. And I think that works on two levels. The justices, of course, will understand themselves to be making a purely legal judgment based on text, history, structure of the Constitution, the facts, and so on. But even some of the doctrines that they’re looking at, like the so-called Political Question Doctrine, which urges courts to stay out of some kinds of disputes, are broadly similar to an impulse that many people might have, in a non-legal sense, that these are serious matters.

Donald Trump is accused of doing grave wrongs in trying to overturn the election. But who should decide the consequences of that? Should it be nine people in Washington, or should it be the electorate of the United States, which can, for itself, assess whether Trump’s conduct is so blameworthy that he should not have the opportunity to serve another term?

Michael Barbaro

Another way to think about this is that you’re suggesting that judicial restraint in matters of an election might override the justices’ impulse to carefully read the 14th Amendment and the facts of this case and find that Trump is an insurrectionist and that the courts have the power to take him off the ballot.

Adam Liptak

The prospect of what would be a profoundly anti-democratic ruling, saying that people who want to vote for Donald Trump may not vote for him, is going to weigh on the justices. It will be part of the rich stew of calculations that go into their decision in this case.

There’s a lot more in the podcast about how this case came about, so I didn’t mind listening to relatively the short podcast.

*Finally, the Washington Post has a mesmerizing article about the rings in a single old Ponderosa Pine, called “Bigelow 224”, in the Sonoran Desert.  Take a look at these two samples

Early on:

All that the tree experienced — the winds that shook its branches, the rain that soaked its roots — was recorded in the rings. An extra-wide band attested to the prime growing conditions of 1856.

The rings get thinner and thinner over the years, and look at this year’s!

But then came 2023, the hottest year that humanity — and Bigelow 224 — had ever seen. All around the planet, temperature records fell like dominoes. Up on Mount Bigelow, an unrelenting heat wave made the air feel like an oven and sucked moisture from the thin soil.

The toll of those unprecedented conditions was etched into Bigelow 224’s trunk. Scorched by relentless heat and parched by a delayed monsoon, it appeared to stop growing midway through the season. The ring for this year is barely a dozen cells wide.

It is a silent distress signal sent by one of Earth’s most enduring organisms. A warning written in wood.


Of course you can say it’s a one-off, but follow the rings through the years in the article. The reent thinning of those rings is scary.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s crawled into Andrzej’s lap as he works:

A: You are disturbing me a bit.
Hili: Don’t complain. Others have it worse.
In Polish:
Ja: Trochę mi przeszkadzasz.
Hili: Nie narzekaj, inni mają gorzej.

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

Reader Rosemary made a satirical meme of a Harvard student (depicted as a gerbil), proudly holding its summa cum laude degree in Copy and Paste (enlarge the degree). I’m sure you know what this refers to:

From Richard. Does somebody eat these things, or are they used in surgery to replace human rectums? And do pork rectums normally have bones?

A ghoulish meme from America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

All you need to know. From somewhere on FB:

From Masih: a discussion Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, who goes on trial today. For what? Criticizing the Iranian government, of course.

From Luana: I think this spells the end of Claudine Gay’s tenure as President of Harvard. This level of public scrutiny (and embarrassment) is too much for Harvard to tolerate. Read the Bloomberg article in the caption to see more (you’ll have to register to read one article).

Loupis is about as antisemitic as they come, and apparently so are her followers. (The “retard index”, whose name is politically incorrect, rates stupidity from 1 to 10 [dumbest]). Bit seriously, 86% would rather be kidnapped by Hamas than the IDF?

SPOT THE FOURTH CAT from Malcolm; the reveal of the cat can be seen at the bottom of this post. Can you spot it?

From Barry. When I posted this guy on Twitter some dumbass accused me of “punching down”, neglecting to try to find comity and love with those on the other side.  But sometimes there’s no comity to be had.

From Simon. Sound up! Is it possible that the cat is imitating what it hears? The crow chatter is pretty amazing. At any rate, I love it when cats indulge in “machine-gunning”.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a 14-year-old boy gassed after the selection:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, some humor (it’s a good tail):

A greedy cat!

Finally, HERE’S THE CAT. The second tweet shows the hidden cat:

51 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day:
    AD 69 – The Roman Senate declares Vespasian emperor of Rome, the last in the Year of the Four Emperors.

    1620 – Plymouth Colony: William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims land near what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

    1844 – The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers commences business at its cooperative in Rochdale, England, starting the Cooperative movement.

    1879 – World premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark.

    1883 – The Royal Canadian Dragoons and The Royal Canadian Regiment, the first Permanent Force cavalry and infantry regiments of the Canadian Army, are formed.

    1907 – The Chilean Army commits a massacre of at least 2,000 striking saltpeter miners in Iquique, Chile.

    1913 – Arthur Wynne’s “word-cross”, the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World.

    1919 – American anarchist Emma Goldman is deported to Russia.

    1934 – Lieutenant Kijé, one of Sergei Prokofiev’s best-known works, premiered.

    1937 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world’s first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre.

    1963 – “Bloody Christmas” begins in Cyprus, ultimately resulting in the displacement of 25,000–30,000 Turkish Cypriots and destruction of more than 100 villages.

    1965 – International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is adopted.

    1967 – Louis Washkansky, the first man to undergo a human-to-human heart transplant, dies in Cape Town, South Africa, having lived for 18 days after the transplant.

    1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 8 is launched from the Kennedy Space Center, placing its crew on a lunar trajectory for the first visit to another celestial body by humans.

    1988 – A bomb explodes on board Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, killing 270. This is to date the deadliest air disaster to occur on British soil.

    1995 – The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control.

    2020 – A great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn occurs, with the two planets separated in the sky by 0.1 degrees. This is the closest conjunction between the two planets since 1623.

    Births:
    1615 – Benedict Arnold, Rhode Island colonial governor (d. 1678).

    1795 – Jack Russell, English priest, hunter, and dog breeder (d. 1883).

    1804 – Benjamin Disraeli, English lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1881). [The only British prime minister to have been born Jewish.]

    1866 – Maud Gonne, Irish nationalist and political activist (d. 1953).

    1872 – Trevor Kincaid, Canadian-American zoologist and academic (d. 1970).

    1884 – María Cadilla, Puerto Rican writer, educator, women’s rights activist (d. 1951).

    1890 – Hermann Joseph Muller, American geneticist and biologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1967).

    1892 – Rebecca West, English journalist and author (d. 1983).

    1905 – Käte Fenchel, German mathematician (d. 1983).

    1905 – Anthony Powell, English author (d. 2000).

    1917 – Heinrich Böll, German novelist and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1985).

    1922 – Cécile DeWitt-Morette, French mathematician and physicist (d. 2017).

    1937 – Jane Fonda, American actress and activist.

    1940 – Frank Zappa, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, composer and producer (d. 1993).

    1943 – Albert Lee, English guitarist and songwriter.

    1946 – Carl Wilson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1998).

    1947 – Paco de Lucía, Spanish guitarist, songwriter, and producer (d. 2014).

    1948 – Samuel L. Jackson, American actor and producer.

    1950 – Jeffrey Katzenberg, American screenwriter and producer, co-founded DreamWorks Animation.

    1953 – Betty Wright, American singer-songwriter (d. 2020).

    1954 – Chris Evert, American tennis player and coach.

    1959 – Florence Griffith Joyner, American sprinter and actress (d. 1998).

    He read at wine, he read in bed, He read aloud, had he the breath, His every thought was with the dead, And so he read himself to death:
    AD 72 – Thomas the Apostle, Roman martyr and saint (b. 1 AD). [There are claims that “Doubting Thomas” may have travelled to China, Indonesia, and er… Paraguay. Hmmm!]

    1375 – Giovanni Boccaccio, Italian author and poet (b. 1313).

    1824 – James Parkinson, English physician and paleontologist (b. 1755).

    1889 – Friedrich August von Quenstedt, German geologist and palaeontologist (b. 1809).

    1933 – Knud Rasmussen, Greenlandic anthropologist and explorer (b. 1879). [The “father of Eskimology”, he was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled.]

    1940 – F. Scott Fitzgerald, American novelist and short story writer (b. 1896).

    1945 – George S. Patton, American general (b. 1885).

    1948 – Władysław Witwicki, Polish psychologist, philosopher, translator, historian (of philosophy and art) and artist (b. 1878).

    1992 – Albert King, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (b. 1924).

    2009 – Edwin G. Krebs, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1918).

    2014 – Billie Whitelaw, English actress (b. 1932).

    2017 – Bruce McCandless II, US astronaut who conducted the first untethered spacewalk (b. 1937).

    1. Bruce McCandless’ tetherless spacewalk in 1984 using the manned maneuvering unit that he helped develop, was captured in this view from the Shuttle at https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/astronaut-bruce-mccandless-first-ever-untethered-spacewalk-2/
      I found that free-flight photo to be an iconic representation of the space program and had a copy above my desk for the remainder of my career. McCandless was one of the first astronauts who was not a test pilot – he was a carrier-qualified fighter pilot, but had not attended test pilot school.

      1. That’s a beautiful photo, thanks Jim!

        Edit: And I got an email notification that you’d replied to my post! The tech guys have done their job well recently.

        1. Yes. Glad I could point this good ole goody out. I think sometimes, because we have crews on Station operating continuously, we start to take Space for granted these days, but this picture serves as a reminder of what a hostile, dangerous, dark, and cold environment it is.

          1. Space is the canvas upon which nature paints stars, planets, and life (at least here on Earth).

            I very much admired — and still do — the photos of an untethered McCandless. I had a poster of one photo framed and hung between the first and second stories of a small cottage I rented for 7 years. (On Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, San Francisco Bay Area.) I would see the photo while going both up and down the staircase.

            The photo I framed showed him at the maximum distance he reached from the Space Shuttle Challenger — about 320 feet — which I think best highlighted his daring excursion as a solitary human orbiting Earth:

            (Click to enlarge)
            https://appel.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/untethered_eva.jpg

          2. This is to jon (there is no reply feature on his comment itself): wow. Thanks. I had never seen that view.

          3. Hmm… There’s no reply button now, too, on your last comment, Jim. But your comment shows in the correct sequence to me on the comment thread, so maybe mine will be in the correct sequence as well. (Why does this site have so many problems?)

            In any case — Yes, that’s an amazing photo taken during an amazing EVA. It’s up there with a photo of astronaut Ronald Evans doing an EVA outside the spaceship while between Earth and Moon during the Apollo 17 mission. (He was retrieving photo cassettes.)

            Though it’s not as “photogenic” as the untethered McCandless excursion, the intellectual knowledge of someone being in space, outside a spacecraft, *between* two celestial bodies … informs another wonderful “solo” moment:

            https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_17_astronaut_Ronald_E._Evans_performs_an_EVA_to_retrieve_film_cassettes_during_the_trans-Earth_coast.jpg

          4. Jon, I don’t think it is a problem with the reply feature, but just a decision that eventually, with so many indentations, the available writing field will be prohibitively narrow. Looks like four are allowed which, in most cases allows for a reasonable conversation. After that, one can continue under the last reply and it looks like things will stack up in the order written…as we are doing now.

  2. Not only are the pork rectums boneless, they are INVERTED!

    I think I’ll stop eating dumplings.

    The Mathematics of Boneless Pork Rectums
    https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/2926/
    QUOTE:
    ===========================
    “Ever wonder what’s in those delicious dumplings? What gives them that special tang? The flavor that cannot quite be named? Wonder no further! For the secret has been revealed. Boneless pork rectums

    And the secret is…boneless pork rectums, finely diced. All the hush-hush is over because, through carelessness, these boxes were allowed to be photographed just before they were hustled into a restaurant in Taiwan. But now that their presence has been revealed to the world, the silence surrounding dumpling recipes can be broken.

    Take a careful look at the labels. Not only are these rectums boneless—all the best ones are—but they are inverted! Culinary insiders have long known that it is only in the cheapest dumplings that one finds non-inverted rectums.

    This is almost certainly because inverting a rectum is a tedious, labor-intensive process, requiring specialized skills and arcane knowledge available to only a few. We can only imagine that the apprenticeship leading to a mastery of inversion is long and grueling.”

    😨😨😨

    Also. The future is filled with Gerbils.

    1. Yuck, each to their own but I am glad I am a vegetarian and only ever eat dumplings made from vegetable suet.

    2. Gosh, talk about the Chicago meat-processing plants using every part of the pig except the squeal.

      1. I heard a rumor about the pork rectums a few years ago — that a Chinese importer was able to market them as substitute/adulterant for calamari. In any case it appears that tons of piggy a-holes are no longer going to waste.

    1. I’ll bite: my candidate is “Big Two-Hearted River,” the purest example of both the Hemingway style AND his ‘iceberg theory,’ since it’s the “war story with no war in it.”
      I love this story.

  4. Regarding Hannibal Lecter’s Advent Calender, if I recall correctly, he only ever ate “ free range rude” ( credit Thomas Harris) so this wouldn’t have worked, not fresh enough!

  5. The thing I find most interesting about this Colorado ballot case is that section 3 of the 14th Amendment is about barring people from holding office, not about keeping them off of ballots. In other words, if the SC does uphold the Colorado SC’s decision, then wouldn’t they have decided that Trump is barred from being POTUS?

    Another interesting thing, the dissenters on the Colorado SC did not contest that Trump engaged in insurrection, or that he was an officer of the US. Their dissents were based on whether or not Colorado state law gave the CSJ the legal authority to keep a person off of a ballot.

    1. That would, of course, be the first consideration. If the court doesn’t have the authority, then it doesn’t need to address the facts.

      1. Of course. And that’s a matter of state law, which according to most experts the SC won’t be considering.

    2. That’s an interesting aspect. The Colorado court sees it as its duty to judge whether a candidate is qualified – for the purpose of deciding whether he gets added to the ballots. That doesn’t have an automatic impact on other states, but for that reason it’s obvious that the US Supreme Court has to judge whether Trump could become president if he is elected.
      What I’d like to know is whether the USSC has to take the Colorado ruling into account, i.e., really prove them wrong in order to come to a different conclusion, or whether they start from scratch. IANAL, but the Colorado ruling looks really sound and well-thought out.

      1. The general rule is that a lower court’s factual findings are reviewed under the deferential abuse-of-discretion/clearly erroneous standard, while the lower court’s legal conclusions are subject to strict de novo review.

        1. Ken,

          Justice Samour, in his 43-page dissent, claims that Trump did not receive the due process to which he is entitled, thus calling into question the “guilty of insurrection” assertion. He not only questions “why wasn’t he charged under section 2383?”, but he also asserts that the due process afforded to Trump was inadequate “even under civil-procedure standards” (¶320). As a political matter, this will surely be the grounds on which this plays out in public opinion. But as a legal matter, were you to take part in the defense, what would you make of the merits and disadvantages of this line of reasoning?

          1. “why wasn’t he charged under section 2383?” – that’s a good question, but that wouldn’t be the job of a Colorado court, would it? Their job is to judge whether he’s qualified to appear on the ballots in Colorado.

        2. Thanks for the clarification! The part where the court judged that Trump engaged in insurrection is part of the factual findings, right? So to reverse that part of the ruling, the USSC would have to show that it clearly wasn’t an insurrection, or that he clearly had nothing to do with it? Good luck on that!

    3. There’s no question about the general authority to keep someone off the ballot. The dissenters did not opine at all on Trump’s guilt other than to imply that it has not been established. All three did state that the district court does not have the authority (especially under the expedited procedures, which were grossly violated) to decide challenges based on Amendment 14. They stated that it is a complex matter, not resolvable in a few days. That’s not agreement that it happened, that’s a statement that there has not been a valid legal decision on the question, the procedures to be followed could not possibly have been intended to make one, and thus the district court was obligated to dismiss the case.

      I doubt that SCOTUS can rule on whether the district court violated Colorado law, but they could at least determine:

      1) What really counts as “insurrection”? Two of the dissenters noted that there currently is no accepted legal definition. Of course, every non-lawyer in the county thinks the answer is obvious.

      2) Who gets to enforce Section Three disqualifications? Justice Samour disputed the idea that the section is self-executing and thus decidable at the state level.

      3) Was there adequate due process? Samour ripped the district court to shreds on procedural grounds.

      Even a writer at vox.com – about as far Left as one can get – says that the ruling should be overturned:
      https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/12/20/24009521/supreme-court-donald-trump-colorado-ballot-insurrection-fourteenth-amendment-anderson-griswold

  6. The Colorado Republican Party came out quickly to say that if Trump isn’t going to be allowed on the ballot, then they won’t participate in the primary and will caucus instead. The court’s decision is nothing but politics. Trump has not even be charged with Insurrection, and you know he would have been if Jack Smith thought he could make it stick. For the court to make a decision like that is a violation of due process, both for Trump and people who would vote for him.

    1. Have you read the ruling? I think it addresses these points. Being convicted of an insurrection is not a requirement, and the fact-finding regarding Jan 6 was as thorough as anyone could hope for in any process. I don’t think even Trump’s lawyers deny the facts that lead to the conclusion that he engaged in an insurrection.

      1. We need to keep Trump off the ballot in order to save democracy = we need to destroy the village in order to save it.

        1. It’s a very sound legal argument (don’t take my word for it, listen to the experts) and it has nothing to do with saving democracy or destroying villages. It’s about following the Constitution, plain and simple. You may argue that following the Constitution isn’t always wise in political matters, and I assume that’s what this SCOTUS will decide. They’ve done it before, bye bye Gore!

    2. For whatever it’s worth, your charge that the Colorado court’s decision is “nothing but politics” is undermined by the fact that many of the most prominent voices supporting it’s legal positions are conservative scholars and/or members of Mr. Trumps own party.

      While it’s certainly true that the ruling has political ramifications and that political actors will respond to it in the political sphere (i.e. your example of the CO GOP’s response), this does not demonstrate that the case, the ruling, or the court itself are inappropriately putting political considerations ahead of important legal questions. ([cough] Bush v. Gore [cough])

      Case in point, conservative legal scholar J. Michael Luttig considers the legal arguments in the ruling to be correct and “unassailable”. See this interview:

      https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/21/luttig-14th-amendment-trump-00132792

      One quote: “The Constitution itself tells us that disqualification of the former president is not anti-democratic. Rather, the Constitution tells us that it is the conduct that can give rise to disqualification under the 14th Amendment that is anti-democratic.”

      2. +1

        So many characterize this and other legal troubles Trump is experiencing as Democrats inappropriately going after Trump. Yet the majority of witnesses and many of the judges, prosecutors and plaintiffs are Republican.

        Trump is in trouble because he has done many things that are plausibly illegal, not because Democrats are on a witch hunt.

        1. I’m hopelessly late to this thread, but for what it’s worth.

          “Yet the majority of witnesses and many of the judges, prosecutors and plaintiffs are Republican.”

          This is the reality for the majority of Trump’s investigations/indictments. 1st impeachment, 2nd impeachment, Jan. 6 investigation, his plethora of “election fraud” cases, a few of which went to SCOTUS, Jack Smith’s investigation, the Georgia investigation, on and on. Why does this witch hunt narrative stick? It’s another media blunder; they’re pretty much useless when it comes to Trump and accountability.

          Of course, if you say or do anything anti-Trump, it doesn’t matter if you’re “R” or “D”, you’re “the enemy” and if he’s elected, you’re in the sights of the MAGA Reckoning. The only party in the world of Trump is the “M” party…which, like the GOP, is not a political party in any traditional sense.

  7. Dear PCC(E),
    Just received the latest copy of Skeptical Inquirer magazine and read that you have recently been made a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry based on your “distinguished contributions to science and skepticism”. Quite Right Too & Congratulations!

    1. I’ve been watching “outdoorsavannah” videos for some time — note that the Savannah breed was created by introgressing serval cats[Leptailurus serval] into a domestic cat line, with the goal of a stable and fertile hybrid with serval-like build and build. [This cross is on the ragged edge of inviability and male sterility persists out to F4. The cat we’re seeing in the video is probably F5 [both sexes fertile and legal in many jurisdictions that prohibit “exotic” cats], which would put its serval component roughly at the level of my Neanderthal heritage. Servals have incredible leaping ability and are extremely efficient predators of birds — so I wouldn’t be surprised if this mimetic chirping behavior is “on her mother’s side”….

  9. “It’s amazing to me that the captivity of all those hostages are not subject to the ire of the world.”
    I’m only one, small voice, normally only heard in my house when shouting at the TV, but the plight of the hostages has me seething with anger.
    And every time I hear calls for a ceasefire, from governments or protesters on the streets, the first thought that comes to mind is, “Why aren’t you asking Hamas to surrender and end the war?” Closely followed by, “Why don’t you go to Gaza and ask Hamas to surrender and end the war?” So well done Secretary of State Blinken.

    1. Me too. The war would be over instantly and no more innocents would be harmed if Hamas returned the hostages and surrendered. It’s the oppressor/oppressed ideology that has rotted the minds of so many. No one cares about the Israeli and other hostage because they have been designated as oppressors.

      Until the hostages are released and Hamas surrenders, or until Hamas is no more, the war must go on.

    3. Agreed. Every time I start thinking maybe the toll on Gazan civilians is too much, I’m reminded this would all stop (or at least go back to something more like October 6th) if Hamas would surrender and release the hostages.

  10. All that news—both good and bad—is almost too much to comment on.

    My news is that I saw the fourth cat within 0.5 seconds.

  12. Re: Paul Kelly’s How to make Gravy

    As a piece of video, this is unwatchable. Did these guys ever hear of a tripod? I got queasy a minute in. Hold the bloody camera still and let the musicians rock ‘n’ roll. Please!

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