Wednesday: Hili dialogue

39 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

1. My pseudonym is ThyroidPlanet, and I am equally as proud to believe in any god as I am to believe there is a diamond the size of a shipping container buried under the median strip of the highway.*

   I also do not curl, paintball, ski jump, deep-sea fish, or play golf, and am equally proud of not doing all those things.**

   *variation on Sam Harris’ diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in my backyard thought experiment. That is, “pride” does not factor.

   **nod to Harris’ and Ricky Gervais’ atheist as a word that should not exist – like :

   agolfist
   adeepseafishingist

   etc… I mean, maybe I’d try ski jumping, but…

2. On this day:
   1602 – The Dutch East India Company is established.

   1616 – Sir Walter Raleigh is freed from the Tower of London after 13 years of imprisonment. [Sadly, his freedom didn’t last and he was executed in October 1618.]

   1760 – The Great Boston Fire of 1760 destroys 349 buildings.

   1815 – After escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.

   1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published.

   1854 – The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin, US.

   1888 – The premiere of the very first Romani language operetta is staged in Moscow, Russia.

   1916 – Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity.

   1922 – The USS Langley is commissioned as the first United States Navy aircraft carrier.

   1923 – The Arts Club of Chicago hosts the opening of Pablo Picasso’s first United States showing, entitled Original Drawings by Pablo Picasso, becoming an early proponent of modern art in the United States.

   1933 – Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of Dachau concentration camp as Chief of Police of Munich and appointed Theodor Eicke as the camp commandant. [Fun fact: Erwin Gohrbandt, one of the surgeons who pioneered transgender surgery, later conducted the infamous hypothermia experiments at Dachau, but trans rights activists conveniently forget that when calling anyone who doesn’t believe in their ideology a Nazi!]

   1942 – World War II: General Douglas MacArthur, at Terowie, South Australia, makes his famous speech regarding the fall of the Philippines, in which he says: “I came out of Bataan and I shall return”.

   1948 – With a Musicians Union ban lifted, the first telecasts of classical music in the United States, under Eugene Ormandy and Arturo Toscanini, are given on CBS and NBC.

   1964 – The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organisation) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.

   1985 – Libby Riddles becomes the first woman to win the 1,135-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

   1985 – Canadian paraplegic athlete and humanitarian Rick Hansen begins his circumnavigation of the globe in a wheelchair in the name of spinal cord injury medical research.

   1987 – The Food and Drug Administration approves the anti-AIDS drug, AZT.

   1990 – Ferdinand Marcos’s widow, Imelda Marcos, goes on trial for bribery, embezzlement, and racketeering.

   1993 – The Troubles: A Provisional IRA bomb kills two children in Warrington, England. It leads to mass protests in both Britain and Ireland.

   1995 – The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo carries out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, killing 13 and wounding over 6,200 people.

   2003 – Iraq War: The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland begin an invasion of Iraq.

   2010 – Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland begins eruptions that would last for three months, heavily disrupting air travel in Europe.

   2015 – A Solar eclipse, equinox, and a supermoon all occur on the same day. [Counterintuitively, a supermoon can occur during a new moon phase, which is when a solar eclipse can happen.]

   Births:
   43 BC – Ovid, Roman poet (d. 17).

   1612 – Anne Bradstreet, Puritan American poet (d. 1672).

   1828 – Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian poet, playwright, and director (d. 1906).

   1879 – Maud Menten, Canadian physician and biochemist (d. 1960). [Made significant contributions to enzyme kinetics and histochemistry, and invented a procedure that remains in use. She is primarily known for her work with Leonor Michaelis on enzyme kinetics in 1913.]

   1888 – Amanda Clement, American baseball player, umpire, and educator (d. 1971). [The first woman paid to referee a game, and may have also been the first woman to referee a high school basketball game. Clement served as an umpire on a regular basis for six years, and served occasionally for several decades afterwards. An accomplished athlete in multiple disciplines, Clement competed in baseball, basketball, track, gymnastics, and tennis, and has been attributed world records in shot put, sprinting, hurdling, and baseball.]

   1900 – Amelia Chopitea Villa, Bolivia’s first female physician (d. 1942).

   1904 – B. F. Skinner, American psychologist and author (d. 1990).

   1908 – Michael Redgrave, English actor and director (d. 1985).

   1915 – Sister Rosetta Tharpe, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1973). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

   1917 – Vera Lynn, English singer, songwriter and actress (d. 2020).

   1920 – Rosemary Timperley, English author and screenwriter (d. 1988).

   1922 – Carl Reiner, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2020).

   1935 – Bettye Washington Greene, American chemist (d. 1995). [One of the first few African American women to earn her PhD in chemistry and she was the first African American female Ph.D. chemist to work in a professional position at the Dow Chemical Company.]

   1936 – Lee “Scratch” Perry, Jamaican singer, songwriter, music producer, and inventor (d. 2021).

   1937 – Jerry Reed, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (d. 2008).

   1938 – Sergei Novikov, Russian mathematician and academic, winner of the Fields Medal.

   1940 – Mary Ellen Mark, American photographer and journalist (d. 2015).

   1950 – Carl Palmer, English drummer, percussionist, and songwriter.

   1951 – Jimmie Vaughan, American singer-songwriter and guitarist. [SRV’s older brother.]

   1957 – Spike Lee, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.

   1958 – Holly Hunter, American actress and producer.

   1965 – William Dalrymple, Scottish historian and author.

   DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH. (Terry Pratchett):
   687 – Cuthbert, Northumbrian (English) monk, bishop, and saint (b. 634).

   1929 – Ferdinand Foch, French field marshal (b. 1851). [Said to have declared: “My centre is yielding. My right is retreating. Situation excellent. I am attacking”, but sadly it is possibly apocryphal.]

   1945 – Dorothy Campbell, Scottish-American golfer (b. 1883). [The first woman to win the American, British and Canadian Women’s Amateurs.]

   1945 – Maria Lacerda de Moura, Brazilian teacher and anarcha-feminist (b. 1887).

   1964 – Brendan Behan, Irish republican and playwright (b. 1923).

   1997 – V. S. Pritchett, English short story writer, essayist, and critic (b. 1900).

   2013 – James Herbert, English author (b. 1943).

   2019 – Mary Warnock, English philosopher and writer (b. 1924).

   2020 – Kenny Rogers, American singer (b. 1938).

   1. Woman of the Day:
      [Text from Wikipedia]

      Sister Rosetta Tharpe (born Rosetta Nubin on this day in 1915, died October 9, 1973) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. She gained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar. She was the first great recording star of gospel music, and was among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm and blues and rock and roll audiences, later being referred to as “the original soul sister” and “the Godmother of rock and roll”. She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and later guitarists such as Eric Clapton.

      Tharpe was a pioneer in her guitar technique; she was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, opening the way to the rise of electric blues. Her guitar-playing technique had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s. Her European tour with Muddy Waters in 1964, with a stop in Manchester on May 7, is cited by British guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards.

      Willing to cross the line between sacred and secular by performing her music of “light” in the “darkness” of nightclubs and concert halls with big bands behind her, Tharpe pushed spiritual music into the mainstream and helped pioneer the rise of pop-gospel, beginning in 1938 with the recording “Rock Me” and with her 1939 hit “This Train”. Her unique music left a lasting mark on more conventional gospel artists such as Ira Tucker Sr., of the Dixie Hummingbirds. While controversial among conservative religious groups due to her forays into the pop world, she never left gospel music.

      Tharpe’s 1944 release “Down by the Riverside” was selected for the National Recording Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress in 2004, which noted that it “captures her spirited guitar playing and unique vocal style, demonstrating clearly her influence on early rhythm-and-blues performers” and cited her influence on “many gospel, jazz, and rock artists”. (“Down by the Riverside” was recorded by Tharpe on December 2, 1948, in New York City, and issued as Decca single 48106). Her 1945 hit “Strange Things Happening Every Day”, recorded in late 1944, featured Tharpe’s vocals and resonator guitar, with Sammy Price (piano), bass and drums. It was the first gospel record to cross over, hitting no. 2 on the Billboard “race records” chart, the term then used for what later became the R&B chart, in April 1945. The recording has been cited as a precursor of rock and roll, and alternatively has been called the first rock and roll record. In May 2018, Tharpe was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an Early Influence.

      Tharpe’s performances were curtailed by a stroke in 1970, after which one of her legs was amputated as a result of complications from diabetes. On October 9, 1973, the eve of a scheduled recording session, she died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as a result of another stroke.

      Rolling Stone named Tharpe the 6th greatest guitarist of all time in 2023.

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

   2. Just for clarification, Ovid died in 17 CE. I wonder if the ancients worried about systems crashes when flipping the calendar from bce to ce? And did they require three digit date to distinguish the real 80’s from the 180’s…. Seriously though: can a reader give me some info on how years were enumerated by civilizations in what today we call bce times?

      1. Jews counted years from the (supposed) creation of the world; Romans from the (supposed) founding of the city of Rome by Romulus and Remus. I don’t know about other civilizations.

         1. I remembered another one: the Greeks numbered years from the first Olympic Games (776 BC by our calendar). They would say “In the third year of the twentieth Olympiad,” for instance.

         2. Of course! ( giving myself a head slap). But why did our Hebrew school teachers not say the first temple was destroyed in 2588 or something close to that instead of using 586 bce to recognize the hebrew calendar as we did each year for rosh hashona (57xx). We are products of our education. Thanks!

3. It is still the case that only one conflict has people calling for an immediate cease fire. I don’t see a call in Haiti, Sudan or anywhere else except Gaza.

4. I actually agree that the borders are the responsibility of the Federal Government. What is unclear is why they aren’t doing anything about the border and why they object so vehemently against States doing anything. Once again it is clear that the admission of millions of illegals is a positive policy of the Biden Administration, and not the result of poor management or lack of tools.

   1. It was House Republicans who refused to bring the border bill up for a vote, after it was passed by the Senate, with bipartisan support. They have the votes to pass it in the House, too.

      It was Trump who told Speaker Mike Johnson not to bring it up for a vote.

      So, you can blame the “Biden Administration” all you want, but Trump didn’t want a vote so that he could do the same thing, blame Biden, when it was actually he who stopped it.

      L

      1. It was a garbage bill, which would have codified uncontrolled, mass immigration. The bill was written with the expectation that the Republicans would reject it. It’s real purpose was to provide a deflecting argument, to keep the discussion away from why Biden has worked from inauguration day to not just allow uncontrolled migration, but facilitate it.
         He said he would do it, and he did.
         “I would in fact make sure that there is – we immediately surge to the border all those people are seeking asylum. They deserve to be heard. That’s who we are, they should come.”

         Most recently, we have learned that asylum applicants are being flown on chartered aircraft direct from overseas into US cities. Not those who have been accepted for asylum, but simply applicants. Those administering the flights have made it clear that their job is not to adjudicate the people’s claims, but simply to transport them, provide them with a hearing date, and release them. This, even with the knowledge that 80-90% of them will be determined to be inadmissible.

         It is insane.

         1. While the Mexican boarder is a difficult situation, apparently the normal, formal immigration mechanisms are working in parallel. The program mentioned is primarily aimed at people at high risk in stressed nations. All immigrants in the program are vetted and sponsored. The total admitted by Biden over 4 years is at least one million – these are legal immigrants.
            “Angelo Fernández Hernández, a White House spokesperson, said Wednesday that reports of secretly flying people into the country were “categorically false” and that Cubans, Haitian, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans were “thoroughly screened.” “.
            The information you site is largely coming from DJT and company and is not factual.

            https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2024/03/07/trump-unfounded-false-claim-biden-flying-migrants

         2. Also, if the immigration bill “was a garbage bill”, why did House Republicans help it pass and the Senate seemed on the verge of doing the same, before the infamous phone call from DJT?

            1. Occam’s razor at work. One correction: it was the Senate who passed the bill with bipartisan support and it was House Republicans, via Mike Johnson, who held up the bill after speaking with DJT. They had the votes, so why didn’t Johnson put it up for a vote? Obviously, he couldn’t let it pass because his Dear Leader didn’t want it to pass.

            2. Note that I did not say “secret” or “from parts unknown”, which were the main points the article debunks.
               However, there is secrecy involved, particularly the destinations of the flights.
               I remain skeptical of the thoroughness of screening possible for applicants living in countries like Cuba or Venezuela, places not known for cooperation with US law enforcement.
               Also, your article notes that these folks are being “paroled”, and have no path to citizenship. Homeland security helpfully defines this status as “Parole allows individuals who may not otherwise be allowed into the United States to enter the United States legally and stay temporarily, even if they are inadmissible or ineligible for other reasons.”
               The program has existed for many years, in a much smaller scale and tighter focus. Expanding it has allowed the administration to move lots of people from the “illegal” to the “legal” column.
               The numbers of paroled inadmissables have increased ten-fold between 2021 and 2023, even as the 2023 data only covered 10 months.
               Even so, the vast majority of inadmissibles are not paroled, but are instead given a “Notice to Appear”, which means that they are expected to show up for a hearing in five years or more.
               To your second point, I think their reaction to the bill was due to their reading it.

            3. Max, while I agree there are problems with immigration, the tone of your comment is alarmist, in line with DJT’s inflammatory rhetoric at his rallies. Rates of immigration have grown steadily for 40 years, as a Pew report shows. But, the US has been absorbing immigrants successfully from it’s founding. Biden may be more tolerant and lenient than Trump, but there’s no liberal conspiracy to corrupt the US with a flood of people from sh*t hole countries.
               https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/

         3. Given the mainstream press’s abysmally biased reporting, for example the NYT who appears to have decided a few years ago to abandon it’s long history of liberalism and start working for the Trump campaign, I can understand why so many believe so many false things about our border crisis.

            Congress makes the laws and the executive is legally required to execute and uphold the laws they pass. People demanding that Biden close the border, and similar demands, are being unreasonable. In several ways, but in this case they are demanding something that Biden doesn’t have the authority to do. Congress could make it happen, the authorization part, in days or less if they wanted to, and it would pass. Authorization to close the border when certain triggers are met is one of the changes Biden’s proposed border bill included, and it’s included in the senate’s current bipartisan bill that the craven RP just blocked. I know. All lies, right?

            Every single thing that Biden has attempted to do to address the border crisis has been blocked, by Republicans. Actually, the RP has been blocking border bills since the Obama administration. Now, no doubt you will again claim that every single thing Biden has proposed was either crap or insincere. On the former, I would encourage you and anyone else to go look at primary sources, as in source documents, and read the proposals for yourself. Because if you think they don’t address the problems you say need addressing then you are in denial. The RP blocked a proposed border bill on day one of Biden’s term, just as they have blocked this recent bipartisan bill that had already passed the senate with strong bipartisan support. On the latter, I think you are simply wrong about the intent of the proposed bill. The DP has been trying to pass border bills and the RP has been blocking them for the past several administrations. And even when the RP has had the ability to pass any legislation they desire, they have not come up with or passed a border bill. How on Earth a person can know that and continue to believe that the DP are to blame for our border woes is truly a mystery.

            And this . . .

            “It’s real purpose was to provide a deflecting argument, to keep the discussion away from why Biden has worked from inauguration day to not just allow uncontrolled migration, but facilitate it.”

            Jesus, Max. Do you know how crazy that sounds? Want some facts that illustrate how bizarrely wrong that is? From the Cato Institute, that bastion of liberalism (I kid, I kid!)

            “In absolute terms, the Biden DHS is removing 3.5 times as many people per month as the Trump DHS did. These figures are important for understanding how each administration has carried out border enforcement.

            During the Trump administration, DHS made 1.4 million arrests—what it calls “encounters”—in fiscal years 2019 and 2020 (24 months). Of those people arrested, only 47 percent were removed as of December 31, 2021, which includes people arrested by Trump and removed by Biden, and 52 percent were released into the United States.

            Under Biden, DHS made over 5 million arrests in its first 26.3 months, and it removed nearly 2.6 million—51 percent—while releasing only 49 percent. In other words, the Trump DHS removed a minority of those arrested while the Biden DHS removed a majority. Biden managed to increase the removal share while also increasing the total removals by a factor of 3.5.”

            I know. Fake news, right?

            1. Thanks for taking the time to debunk many of the right-wing claims about the border bill. The Heritage Foundation didn’t like the bill, and that’s all I needed to know. If the HF likes a bill, then the bill is bad for America. Anyway, it’s been proven over and over again that the bill died because Trump didn’t want Biden to have a “win”. Why is that so difficult for people to understand? Fox certainly won’t tell that truth, but there are other ways of gleaning knowledge. What, no google?

               I think it’s also important to note that America’s post-Covid economy is the best in the world. The main reason? Immigrants. We also need immigrants to keep our economy going. Without them, our “natural” population growth would be a net negative in decades to come which is terrible for an economy such as ours that depends on continued population growth to function.

            2. I stopped reading at “the NYT [is] working for the Trump campaign.”

            3. @Mike…
               Reads “appears to…” And I consider Darrell’s observation valid. The NYT’s obsession with both-sides-the-same, soft-ball questioning to maintain access, coupled with MAGA gish gallop submission, and constantly accepting right-wing talking points at face value: HE’S A ZOMBIE! WITNESSES! IMPEACHABLE! HUNTER BIDEN!!!…I can go on. Bottom line, they are not helping to spread the truth. They do it with many (not all) woke issues as well. They’re maintaining a narrative, and when it comes to Trump, much of the narrative (not all) is to normalize him, which is the worst any journalistic enterprise can do. Simply put (and of course, this narrative is the modus operandi of FOX / News Max and other right-wing propaganda outfits): Biden is normal, so let’s make him look abnormal, Trump is abnormal, so let’s make him look normal. It’s a monetary operation- who cares about truth, as long as the narrative makes profits, and if the narrative is wrong, and we’re just stirring pots for profits, so be it. Tomorrow, we’ll all move on, and we’ll make sure of it.

            4. Mark, thank you for responding to Mike on my behalf. Explained why better than I would have. I’d only add that I was being sarcastic. As you pointed out, the real problem with the NYT is giving up journalistic ethics and responsibility in favor of making as much money as possible.

               Mike, your loss. Personally I’d be pissed to find out that the sources I’d been listening to were lying to me, but the possibility wouldn’t deter me from at least looking at some facts. But hey, you do you.

            5. As the meme goes, this is all so tiresome.

               Jerry’s site so often has useful interesting commentary that when useless sarcastic (or I guess possibly “valid”) point-scoring does get posted here it really stands out.

               I sincerely meant it: I wanted to read Darrell’s comment but I stopped reading at the NYT bit because it seemed both misguided and insincere but hard to tell which. To paraphrase Nathan Poe himself, “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is uttrerly [sic] impossible to parody a partisan Democrat in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.”

               Maybe I shouldn’t read or comment here. I’m not American, and don’t know much about partisan US political machinations. If wading into these discussions is going to attract “but hey, you do you”-level engagement then I’m out for now. I’ll just watch the cat videos and read the science posts. There have been some good ones lately.

5. Regarding the Babbling Beaver reports on MIT graduation: maybe think The Onion. In looking at the MIT commencement website, it appears that the official graduation ceremonies proceed under a “OneMIT Commencement” banner and over a three-day period at the end of May and look pretty much normal: a ceremony for all followed by individual ceremonies and celebrations by the various schools and departments. There is a Lavender event two weeks earlier and last year saw a Latinx event which organizers hoped would become annual, but both were, it appears, alumni and club sponsored with a nod from some DEI-type school functionaries. In summary, from looking at the commencement website, it does not appear that MIT has gone nuts…but I could be wrong.

   1. That’s the way it always works; there’s a big graduation ceremony for everyone (with a famous speaker) and then a lot of ‘identity graduations’.

      MIT has gone nuts; that’s why the Babbling Beaver exists. Remember, they canceled Dorian Abbot from my own university who was going to give a speech on extraterrestrial life, and they canceled him because he’d made videos at Chicago in which he criticized DEI.

6. I must remind all that Hamas is not antisemitic but only anti-Zionist. So when they entered Israel on October 7th they were careful to line everyone up and check if they were Zionists and non-Zionists were immediately released.

   From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free of Zionists.

   Do I really need add a snark?

   1. Well, indeed, Hamas is not antisemitic.
      Judith Butler (famous gender studies professor at UC Berkeley, a lesbian Jew, and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace) [bolding added]:

      The uprising of Oct 7 was an act of armed resistance. It is not a terrorist attack, and it is not an antisemitic attack … I did not like that attack … It was for me anguishing, it was terrible. However, I would be very foolish if I then decided that the only violence in the scene was the violence done to the Israeli people. The violence done to Palestinian people has been done for decades. This was an uprising that comes from a state of subjugation, and against a violent state apparatus.”

      https://youtu.be/Yuf3iQmxsNQ?si=rcN-wNCXDyMGN9wh&t=25

7. Re Trump’s defamation suit: The suit will be an uphill slog. He was found to have committed sexual assault, in this instance digital penetration of woman. In ordinary American English that is a form of rape (I think; I have not seen surveys on the language). The judge in the earlier case has already held that saying that Trump raped Jean Carroll is substantially true, and at least one case has been dismissed on that basis.

   1. Indeed, Judge Kaplan has used the word “rape” several times in his written opinions according to analysis by the Meidas Touch Network. So Trump’s suit is looking fairly frivolous.

8. “Donald Trump has sued both ABC News and George Stephanopoulos for defamation, claiming that they used the word that he had been found liable for ‘rape’ instead of ‘sexual abuse.’”

   The problem for Trump is that the judge in the case in question (Lewis A. Kaplan) had actually ruled that the jury’s acceptance of E. Jean Carroll’s claim in her defamation lawsuit that Trump had committed “forced digital penetration” was effectively a determination that Trump had committed “rape” as that term is commonly understood. Carroll herself had accused Trump of “rape” and Trump had filed a counterclaim for defamation against her claiming that the jury had rejected her claim of “rape” and had merely concluded that he committed sexual abuse. In denying Trump’s counterclaim, the judge ruled:

   “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

   Kaplan added that New York’s legal definition of “rape” is “far narrower” than the word is understood in “common modern parlance.” Kaplan cited definitions offered by the American Psychological Association and the Justice Department, which in 2012 expanded its definition of rape to include penetration “with any body part or object.”

9. I doubt that Stephanopoulos is in any danger of being found guilty of defamation. The judge in the E. Jean Carroll case is on record as specifically clarify that the jury found Trump liable for raping E. Jean Carroll.

   It does not seem reasonable to me that a person could be held liable for defamation for what Stephanopoulos said when the judge in the case at issue has written this, CARROLL v. TRUMP (2023), MEMORANDUM OPINION DENYING DEFENDANT’S RULE 59 MOTION

   Meanwhile, Trump’s fortunes continue to worsen and he is showing increasing signs of having lost his marbles every day. Among many other things, support among RP voters has slipped significantly according to pretty nearly every Republican primary election exit poll, and campaign donations from both small “grassroots” donors and big donors has tanked. The Biden campaign picked up more in one day than the Trump campaign did in the past month. Personally I hate politics being about money, but there is no denying the correlation between campaign funds and winning elections.

   I’m confident enough to call it right now. With the caveat that there is still time for some unforeseen event(s) to change things, as things sit right now Trump doesn’t have a chance of becoming president again.

   1. I hope with every fiber of my being that you are right.

      1. Me too.

         For what it’s worth, which ain’t much, I “predicted” Trump would win his first run a few months before the election.

   2. Yes, I came here to cite this from the WP:

      Despite Carroll’s claims that Trump had raped her, they noted, the jury stopped short of saying he committed that particular offense. Instead, jurors opted for a second option: sexual abuse.

      “This was a rape claim, this was a rape case all along, and the jury rejected that — made other findings,” his lawyer, Joe Tacopina, said outside the courthouse.

      A judge has now clarified that this is basically a legal distinction without a real-world difference. He says that what the jury found Trump did was in fact rape, as commonly understood.

      So, like you, I doubt Stephanopoulos has anything to worry about.

      And re. 2024, Trump is looking very weak indeed. Even Pence didn’t endorse him (not that it means much, more symbolic than anything). His latest speech in OH shows a desperate man, flailing, unhinged, and despicable (it seems a new tactic is to refer to immigrants as “not even people”). He still has SCOTUS doing his bidding as well as other justices by slowing down the legal processes, and it would be the proverbial nail in the coffin if any of the dozens of charges against him stick. I would hope our systems of justice would consider these charges as a vetting process before deciding on a candidate before an election; it’s a pity they don’t seem to hold that perspective.

10. “I’m not familiar with the ins and outs of defamation law, but I don’t think that Stephanopoulos had to know that he was misspeaking; all he had to do was make a false public statement that damaged Trump’s reputation.”

    I don’t think this is correct. Given that Trump is a public figure, the legal standard would be whether Stephanolpoulos spoke with actual malice, or with reckless disregard for the truth. Making an honest error on a very fine distinction between rape and sexual abuse could never, I think, meet that standard.

11. Wow! Given that the majority of the comments so far today are discussing definitions of rape and politician’s “true” intentions with respect to the US/Mexico border–two issues I cannot add to without losing my cool…
    Great Hili Dialogue today! The tweet supporting Masih is spectacular. The video explaining the gamete definition of sex is awesome! Thanks for your WEBSITE, Jerry. I appreciate it so much. And I hope hope hope that, if the MEMRI video/report is genuine, that more Palestinians join the protest against Hamas. That is the most hopeful thing I’ve read since October 7th.

12. I like the Bernie/royal children picture, but why does Bernie have four hands? Poor Photoshop skills, or is there a significance that I’m missing?

13. Butler’s claim “The violence done to Palestinian people has been done for decades.”
    By the State? or by individuals? What is she (and others) talking about?

14. Never mind Musk, Murdoch, and Milken (3M. Ha!) But Martha Stewart’s accomplishments as a businesswoman and writer are many. As for Sylvester Stallone, not only is he an actor (and director and screenwriter), he has been a painter for decades.

    1. Yes, but these don’t seem prizeworthy to me. There are PLENTY of actors and directors better than Stallone.

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