Note: I’ve been struck down by severe insomnia again, and now have gone two nights without sleep. Posting will be light today as I try to rest and recover, and may also be very light tomorrow.
Welcome to CatSaturday, June 8, 2024, shabbos for Jewish cats and National Jelly Doughnut Day. I prefer the Polish variant, Pączki, shown below. Don’t they look good? They are fat, yeasty, and filled with good jam.
It’s also International Young Eagles Day (why the ageism?), National Rosé Day (the wine), World Gin Day, Best Friends Day, Thomas Paine Day (he died on this day in 1809), International Drink Chenin Blanc Day (it can be good!), Bounty Day on Norfolk Island, “the day that the descendants of the mutineers arrived on the respective islands” in 1856, World Brain Tumor Day and World Oceans Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 8 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Good nooz first. According to the Times of Israel, the IDF rescued four hostages, ALIVE, in Gaza.
Four Israeli hostages were rescued alive by troops from Hamas captivity in a daring operation in the central Gaza Strip earlier today, the military announces.
The rescued hostages are named as Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv. All four had been abducted by Hamas terrorists on October 7 from the Supernova music festival near the southern community of Re’im.
Special forces had simultaneously raided two Hamas sites in central Gaza’s Nuseirat. At one location, Argamani was rescued, while Meir Jan, Kozlov, and Ziv were at the second location.
The rescued hostages are all in good condition, according to initial medical assessments. They were taken to Tel Hashomer Hospital for further evaluation.
Their photos from the ToI:
Argamani was known because videos of her being abducted by Hamas on the back of a motorcycle were widely circulated. Here’s a still photo of the abduction (h/t: Tom Gross):
*Clarence Thomas finally came clean about the ritzy trips he got from rich friends, revising his financial forms. Isn’t falsification of those forms a crime?
Justice Clarence Thomas revised his financial disclosure forms Friday to include two trips he took in 2019 that were paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow.
The first trip, in July 2019, was to the Indonesian island of Bali. The other was in the same month in Monte Rio, Calif. Crow, who is a real-estate developer and Republican Party donor, paid for food and lodging on both trips, according to the forms.
Thomas’s pattern of accepting luxury travel paid for by Crow was the subject of a ProPublica investigation in 2023.
At the time, Thomas defended his decision not to disclose the vacations, saying the personal trips weren’t the type that federal judges in the past had been required to report.
The ProPublica story renewed scrutiny of the court on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers have long pushed for the justices to revisit their ethics policies. Last year, the court adopted its first formal code of ethics, saying at the time that the move “largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct.”
Thomas said in Friday’s forms that he had “sought and received guidance from his accountant and ethics counsel” as part of a “review of prior filings that began last year.” The gifts from Crow were “inadvertently omitted at the time of filing,” Thomas said on the form.
Other stuff that was reported by other justices, who are more honest (Alito got a delay submitting his form).
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson reported being paid almost $900,000 by Penguin Random House, which is publishing her memoir later this year.
Jackson also disclosed that the singer Beyoncé personally gifted her tickets to a concert, which were valued at around $3,700.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh similarly reported $340,000 in book royalty income. Axios reported on Thursday that the justice is working on a memoir.
And I don’t believe Thomas’s claims that he “inadvertently omitted the trips”.
*It doesn’t look as if Hunter Biden is doing very well vis-à-vis his gun trial. His daughter testified today and it didn’t help him:
Hunter Biden’s daughter Naomi testified on Friday that her father was sober and “hopeful” in mid-2018, right before he claimed to be drug-free on a gun application — but that claim was quickly undercut by her own anguished texts saying he had driven her to the breaking point.
Ms. Biden, 30, a lawyer in Washington, took the stand hoping to bolster Mr. Biden’s contention that he was working hard to kick his addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol. She said he was “the clearest” she had seen him in years when visiting him in Los Angeles in August 2018.
But under an intense cross-examination, her claim seemed to crumble. Prosecutors read aloud her texts from mid-October, when Mr. Biden visited New York City, where Ms. Biden was living with her boyfriend and entering her second year of law school.
The exchanges painted a starkly different picture of his behavior. Mr. Biden ignored Ms. Biden’s desperate texts for hours and made a bizarre request when he did resurface, at one point asking her boyfriend to drop off keys to a borrowed truck at 2 a.m. in Midtown Manhattan before disappearing again.
“I’m sorry daddy, I can’t take this, I don’t know what to say,” she wrote to him on Oct. 18 — at a moment when he was buying crack and partying with a girlfriend, according to previous evidence introduced by the government.
His lawyers have offered a spirited, if narrow, defense centered on questioning whether Mr. Biden was actually using drugs at the moment he filled out the form. It remains to be seen whether Ms. Biden’s emotional testimony, intended to help her father’s case, had a positive impact on the jury.
. . . .Mr. Biden is charged with three felonies: lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the federal firearms application and possessing an illegally obtained gun. If convicted, he could face up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines. But nonviolent first-time offenders who have not been accused of using the weapon in another crime rarely receive serious prison time for the charges.
The defense has indicated it will seek to show that Mr. Biden was not using drugs at the time he applied to buy a gun, emphasizing the lack of evidence in witness accounts, text exchanges and Mr. Biden’s memoir. Already in some of his cross-examinations, one of Mr. Biden’s lawyers, Abbe Lowell, has tried to punch holes in the prosecution’s stated timeline of Mr. Biden’s pattern of drug use in the months before and after the gun purchase.
The defense argues that the question is worded in the present tense, and that the government cannot prove that Mr. Biden was using crack cocaine on the day he acquired the gun, Oct. 12, 2018.
Seriously? On the day he acquired the gun? I don’t think that’s what the question was meant to ascertain. Below is the relevant question from ATF form 4473, the one Biden checked “no” to. Note that the question says “are you an unlawful user of. . “. It implies, at least to me “during the period you got the gun”, not “on the very day you got the gun”. (And he was probably on crack then anyway, but it can’t be proven.) His ex-wife and girlfriend testified that, at the time he bought the gun, Biden was using crack, as evidenced from crack-smoking paraprenalia found in his car and direct observation (he was using crack “every 20 minutes or so“).
*As aways, I submit for your consideration three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at the Free Press, this week called “TGIF: Mystical old man era.” The first point is something that I think we really have to worry about:
→ Good days and bad days: Brave whistleblowers are coming out recently to say, “Guys. . . Biden. . . he’s so old, have you noticed?” And Democrats have no good response, even though there is a whole bench of nice, normal-aged options to swap in. This week there’s a mega Wall Street Journal investigation, including this detail from a major war funding meeting about Ukraine: “He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods, and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.” He sounds like me trying to break up with someone. He sounds like me as a stoned teenager running into my mom. You get it. “The White House and top aides said he remains a sharp and vigorous leader.” But over and over the investigation emphasizes: there are good days, and there are bad days. Like when you’re recovering from hip surgery. But just watch him at this wreath-laying ceremony with 46-year-old Emmanuel Macron: the look of confusion on Biden’s face; the moment he sort of starts to sit down but pauses; how Jill Biden leads him offstage as Macron springs around agile, alive, shaking hands, using his brain to tell his body where to go. At this point my theory is that Biden and his team know he cannot govern anymore and cannot even be an effective figurehead for staff machinations. So the theory: if Biden wins, he resigns, citing new health information, and Kamala Harris becomes president. In fact, I’d bet money on that. Please bet among yourselves in the comments. Other publications may have cooking apps. I have no problem becoming a betting app.
→ Briahna Joy Gray is letting it all hang out: Bernie Sanders’ former press secretary gives us a window every day into the mind of the American left. She’s been employed by The Hill, an otherwise normal, sane publication, where she gives her take from the progressive side of things. Her latest take: Hamas wants to build a beautiful multifaith, multiethnic country of freedom, just like the United States.
“When Hamas is talking about eliminating Israel, it’s talking about not killing all of the Jews. It’s about eliminating the idea,” she said onstage this week. (One of the panelists, Free Press columnist Eli Lake, erupts in laughter.) “Sir, can I just finish this sentence? It’s about eliminating the idea of a Jewish state, ending a Jewish state, ending an ethno-national state, and having a state more like what we have in the United States.” The Bernie brigade genuinely believes that Hamas wants to make a country just like the United States. I think they genuinely think this is what will happen. I think they’ve been foie gras–ducked with so much Iranian propaganda, they think this is what Tehran is too. Freedom has gotten so normal to this group they have no concept of what life under fundamentalist Islam even would look like.
And when the sister of a Hamas hostage implored Briahna to think about the suffering of the female hostages, Briahna literally rolled her eyes and ended the call. I’m grateful to Briahna Joy Gray for making the leftist stance here so clear. Which is why it’s a bummer that it looks like The Hill ended her contract on Thursday.
→ Oh, I love the NYT union: The very well-paid leaders of the New York Times’ union are doing what they do best: posting their hatred of Jews and Israelis, insulting reporters, saying the paper is trash and they hate it.
Here’s a beloved New York Times union leader, Nastaran Mohit, referring to “Zionists”—“All these Zionist butchers know how to kill. Children. Families. The next generation. Depraved monsters who will meet their fate one day.” Interesting read there. Reminder that if you believe in a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, then you are a Zionist to Ms. Mohit and the rest of the movement. She called the newspaper a “decrepit institution” and said it was “utterly reprehensible” that the paper received an award for its coverage of the war. Go to her with all your HR issues, y’all. I’m sure she’ll be great at reviewing a Jewish NYT employee’s harassment allegation. Good luck!
*And we can’t miss Sully. Over at The Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan’s main column is “How elites have empowered the far right,” with the subtitle “The US, UK, EU and Canada went far left on immigration—and are paying the price.”
Not so long ago, as many of us reeled from the political earthquakes of Brexit and Trump, it seemed sensible for responsible mainstream political parties to adopt tighter immigration control to keep the populist right at bay. Mass migration in Europe had led to a far-right resurgence; in the US and UK, Trump and the Johnson-era Tories seemed to grasp this and moved to co-opt the anti-immigrant fervor. Democracy was working to accommodate a shift in the public mood.
Or so it seemed. Nearly a decade later, something else has happened: an immigration explosion. In response to a volatile public mood, Western elites actually intensified their policy of importing millions of people from the developing world to replace their insufficiently diverse and declining domestic populations.
The same thing is happening in the UK and Canada.
The recent figures from the US, UK and Canada are mind-blowing. The graphs all look like a hockey stick, with a massive spike in the last three years alone. Under Trump, the average number of illegal crossings a year was around 500,000; under Biden, that has quadrupled to two million a year — from a much more diverse group, from Africa, China and India. To add insult to injury, Biden has also all but shut down immigration enforcement in the interior; and abused his parole power to usher in nearly 1.3 million illegal migrants in 2023 alone. The number of undetained illegal migrants living in the US has thereby ballooned under Biden: from 3.7 million in 2021 to 6.2 million in 2023, according to ICE. If a fraction of those millions turns up for asylum hearings, I’ll be gob-smacked.
. . If you want to understand why Biden keeps trailing in the swing states, why the Tories are about to be wiped out in a historic collapse, and why Trudeau is at all-time low in approval at 28 percent, this seems to me to be key. As the public tried to express a desire to slow down the pace of demographic change, elites in London, Ottawa, and Washington chose to massively accelerate it. It’s as if they saw the rise in the popularity of the far right and said to themselves: well now, how can we really get it to take off?
. . . Even under Biden’s “crackdown”, he is still prepared to admit at least 1.75 million illegal immigrants a year! Last week, Chuck Schumer declared that the ultimate goal was to legalize every single illegal immigrant — because Americans are not having enough children. Without open borders, of course, our economy wouldn’t look so good: in the last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, foreign-born workers gained 600,000 new jobs, while native-born Americans lost 300,000. But don’t you dare mention the “Great Replacement Theory”!
I’ll skip the UK/EU stuff and just give the conclusions about the U.S. First, Sullivan avers that hes not against immigration per se, but wants ”legal, orderly, and controlled immigration”, which jibes with the wishes of most Americans, and explains why (read it). And the results:
One person was responsible for Trump’s first term: Hillary Clinton. And one will be responsible for his second: Joe Biden.
. . .All that means, it seems to me, is that if you care about the issue at all, as more and more Americans do, then Trump is the obvious choice this fall. Which is one reason I fear the election result will not be as close as most people think. Our elites have had almost a decade to respond to the public mood and a new global reality. And they still don’t get it.
This was, of course, supposed to be the job of Kamala Harris, but she didn’t do squat: one reason I wouldn’t trust her as President. Biden didn’t do squat, either, and don’t really understand why. It’s not exactly that he would lose by following the wishes of most Americans. Could he have bent to the whim of the open-border Democratic progressives? Whatever the cause, he failed to address until the last minute what the American people have been calling for loudly. I am no longer a big fan of Biden, and will vote for him only very reluctantly. I also think hell be close to non-sentient at the end of his second term.
*Finally, since it’s the weekend, here’s a story from the AP’s “oddities” section about a small kid getting nommed (well, picked up) by a giraffe:
A Texas family got a brief scare when a nibble from a giraffe turned a 2-year-old’s safari visit into an airborne adventure.
Paisley Toten was in the bed of a pickup truck on June 1 when her family drove through the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, where visitors can see exotic animals such as zebras, giraffes and sable antelope, and feed some of them from their car.
The family had stopped to feed a giraffe when it grabbed Paisley’s shirt with its mouth and lifted her several feet. Paisley’s mother was in the pickup bed with her and shouted, prompting the giraffe to drop the toddler into her arms unhurt. Video of the encounter taken from the car behind went viral. The girl’s family also shot their own video.
“Paisley was holding the bag and the giraffe went to go get the bag, not get her, but ended up getting her shirt too and picking her up,” Jason Toten, the girl’s father, told television station KWTX.
“My heart stopped, my stomach dropped … it scared me,” Toten said.
The family then took the girl to the shop and bought her a toy giraffe.
Park rules when the family visited allowed riding in an open truck bed as long as an adult was riding with any children. The park on Thursday changed its safety rules to require everyone to stay inside their vehicles with doors closed.
Yeah, but you’re allowed to feed the giraffes by hand? That doesn’t sound too good to me. I’m informed that giraffes can bite people very hard, and also kill them with a hard kick. People should stay in the cars with the windows rolled up, and the giraffes should be fed only by the wildlife center.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej and Hili have some badinage:
A: Here you are!
Hili: Only because I’m not somewhere else.
Ja: Tu jesteś!Hili: Tylko dlatego, że nie ma mnie gdzie indziej.
Baby Kulka is enjoying the fine weather:
And the flowers are blooming in Hili’s (and the staff’s) yard:
*******************
From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:
From Alison; father and daughter, killed October 7, 2023:
From The Dodo Pet:
Retweeted by Masih; two dissidents hated by Russia (see about Bill Browder here):
Bill and I sat next to each other at the opening dinner in Oslo. With so many glasses at the crowded table, I asked him, “Bill, is this water yours or mine?” “Garry,” he said, “It doesn’t matter. They’d both be poisoned!” https://t.co/Xx4fAX9iZa
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) June 5, 2024
From the news: the draft Security Council resolution about Israel. Looks like Hamas pretty much wins. And since the U.S. proposes this, it will pass the Council.
🚨🚨Updated U.S. draft security council resolution calling Hamas to accept the proposal for a hostage deal and stressing Israel has accepted it. Full version here:
The Security Council,
PP1 — Reaffirming the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,
PP2 —…
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) June 6, 2024
I love this one, and the cat found a loving home (read the full second tweet; h/t Keith):
The mountaineer was surprised to find a cat at such a high altitude, but he quickly realized that the cat must have been a stray or lost. The cat seemed to be in good health, but was clearly hungry and in need of help.
The mountaineer decided to bring the cat down the mountain…
— BOT SKNDOM (@Bot1Dr) June 5, 2024
From Bryan; a rescued duckling! It reminds me of the good old days for me!
Lucky the ducky is still in the wildlife rescue center, getting fattened up so he can be released back into the wild.
This little baby slept on my chest under a blanket the whole night. I am his mother. https://t.co/AWRMdXjZhw pic.twitter.com/DrxfzygYKi
— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) June 7, 2024
Here I am with Sammi the duckling, who also slept on my chest, but under my hand (I got no sleep). He/she also slept in my armpit:
From Barry. Get a load of those peepers!
The eyes of a conch
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) May 11, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial; one I reposted:
Gassed to death upon arrival; age five https://t.co/VLdkFRnqJH
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) June 8, 2024
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a duck on a cricket field. Matthew adds, “Also: a duck is the word for getting out for zero in cricket. A golden duck is getting out first ball.”
Anuj Dal was worried, but this duck played it nice and cool pic.twitter.com/Wpmovy9IFh
— Vitality County Championship (@CountyChamp) June 6, 2024
. . . . and American sports. A fantastic throw from right field, getting the runner out at home plate:
Japanese baseball player Chusei Mannami went viral a couple weeks ago for this ABSURD throw.
I ended up going down a rabbit hole and folks… this guy might have the most electric arm in baseball history.
🧵 Threadpic.twitter.com/xS1obWWGxY
— Kendall Baker (@kendallbaker) June 5, 2024
Sullivan is right. In the UK, Rishi Sunak might be technically competent over finance/banking, but he seems to have no political feel for what the electorate want, and especially (and surprisingly), no feel for how that portion of the electorate minded to vote Tory feels about things. Most previously-Tory-electing voters are currently thinking that there’s just no point in voting Tory. Hence the Tories are about to get massacred at the polls. What will then be interesting is how the right-of-Labour factions then reform themselves.
It’s the daylight I think (Northern hemisphere)… I’m getting it too… intermittently…
IDK but seems today’s Hili Dialogue is … not a perfect world, but what, a relief? Auspicious?
🙂
Hmmm. Did not think about increased daylight. Though I have had attacks of insomnia for several days at a time over the past few years. Cannot correlate with anything let alone create a double blind study to ascertain cause. I have just blamed it as another aberration of living so long….apparently a double-edged sword.
Although it would be nice if Biden were ten years younger, I’m not particularly concerned about his age. True, the man looks stiff at times—but that’s because of the arthritis in his back. True, the man may not always speak clearly—but that’s because of his stutter. Generally speaking, Biden’s in pretty good shape, and I wish the media would STFU about his age. Also, this, which I may turn into a tweet of some kind:
There’s Warren Buffett, who is 93 and still running Berkshire Hathaway.
There’s Clint Eastwood, who is 94 and currently directing a new movie.
There’s David Attenborough, who recently turned 98 and is still doing nature documentaries.
There’s Carol Burnett, who is 91 and co-stars in ‘Palm Royale,” a TV series for Apple+ (recently renewed for an additional season).
There’s John Williams, who is 92 and said “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” would be his last score—and then he changed his mind.
And there’s Rupert Murdoch. (That I loathe his politics is, of course, irrelevant.)
So is Biden really too old to be president?
Yes
+1 And the answer to your question is no.
I’m willing to consider arguments that the Dems should nominate someone other than Biden. We know that will not happen.
There are no good arguments for voting for Trump. I, too, wish the news media and conservatives like Sully and Bari Weiss—and, frankly and with all due respect, Jerry, this Website—would stop harping on Biden’s age.
Speaking of Sully, I think he is following James Lindsey and succumbing to Woke Derangement Syndrome. “The elites made me vote for Trump!” It’s not a reason but a weak, craven excuse.
I’m sorry, but don’t tell me to stop harping on Biden’s old age. Every time I see him it worries me. Of course I despise Trump, but I don’t do this to make people vote for Trump. I do this because I’m worried. “With all due respect” (nothing good ever follows that phrase), please don’t tell me what to be worried about or what to write about. You can disagree but you also must follow the Roolz.
+1 to Stephen and Barry. While I love reading Bari 90% of the time, I really despise the 10% of her carping which is aimed at uncle joe, playing into the hands of trump by pushing on undecideds and giving permission to progressives to not vote, and most of her sister and spouse.
Also I found one of the President’s d-day speeches at Normandy to be unexpectedly energetic and almost Churchillesque in delivery.
+1
Also, the video from France Nellie linked was misleading. The full video shows him being stiff and elderly but not at all disoriented as Nellie had implied.
+1
You have to admit that Biden is old enough that he may not survive another four years. Do you really want Kamala Harris taking over? She’d be a disaster.
You also have to admit that Trump is old enough that he may not survive another four years. Do you really want whichever Evangelical extremist he chooses as VP taking over? They’d be a disaster.
None of those fine people are running for president of the US; the jobs are not the same. Not in the slightest.
+1. The age concern is nonpartisan and applies to both major party candidates. Presidenting demands a nimble mind that is able to switch gears on a dime and to choose subordinates who have incredibly good judgement and who put the entire country first. Neither man has proven to have those qualities.
If the guy looked sentient, I wouldn’t worry about his age. But he looks forgetful and out of it. Listing older people who still function, and there are many, does not dispel my worries.
I had a relative with Alzheimer’s. Some days he would be confused, other days he would seem normal. Yes, there are people in their 90s or their second century who are as sharp as ever, but that doesn’t mean that it is “ageist” to point out that not all elderly people are. This sounds like the kind of denial that smokers use: “My grandmother smoked like a chimney and lived to be 100.”
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are still rocking at 80
+1
And Ian Gillan’s not too far behind at 78.
Is all this angst intended to try and get the Democrats to replace Biden as nominee? If so, then good luck. I wish they had nominated someone else but here we are.
So we can worry about Biden’s age all we want. But at the end of the day, if you’re not MAGA, who do you vote for? Kennedy is a bad joke and sitting it out is not an option.
I admit the choices are terrible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a US election with such bad choices, including RFK Jr.
Well, after two 5 o’clock scotches and watching a long shot win the Belmont, I am loose enough to admit that I like Joe; he’s extremely qualified through years a serious service in Congress, as VP, and now four years in the big seat. He is a serious guy, understands what our founding fathers had in mind, and can translate those ideals into the 21st century. RFKjr and tRump are clowns and dangerous clowns at that, both absolutely and relative to Biden.
A younger Biden would be fine. But now you risk ending up with Kamala Harris.
Canada started allowing in large numbers of immigrants not because of ‘leftism’ but because of demographics. Boomers who account for about a third of the population are retiring in mass and it is having a huge effect on the economy. Skilled workers across the entire workforce have become or are becoming scarce. Non skilled workers are scarce.
One area hit particularly hard is healthcare. Boomers are retiring from healthcare as boomers, the largest section of society, need ever more healthcare. Meanwhile boomers are still retiring.
Was it handled well? No. Not everything is because of leftism. Sometimes it’s just incompetence. They increased immigration too much too quickly and caused a housing crisis – but this is also caused by nimbyism on medium and high density housing – a problem also seen in many US cities.
+1
Increasing immigration because of “demographics” will never cure the problem, it simply delays it and makes the future worse. Immigrants are consumers just like everyone else and increasing the population into a what is a finite system is ultimately unsustainable. Human expansion is its own largest problem and this is obvious to any observer of the planets environment, flora and fauna. This is not “nimbyism” this is reality and it will only get worse.
I’ve never seen a good argument that immigration to solve demographics benefits the country, particularly for low-skilled tasks.
What would happen without it? Wage levels would increase as labour becomes scarce. Companies would innovate to increase productivity with fewer people (for example by using AI).
Mass immigration increases GDP, yes (more people, more money changing hands, higher GDP), but I’ve not seen convincing evidence that it increase GDP per capita. It’s the latter that surely matters, in terms of the population’s overall quality of life.
The nations highest up the “quality of life” league tables all have high GDP-per-capita and high labour costs and low unemployment.
Coel.
I agree with you one hundred percent and Scandinavian GDP and life quality re inforces this. Norway has one of the highest per capita GDP and the population is relatively unchanging although there has been more immigration over the previous ten years.The UK and Canada have unsustainable immigration and this is now showing in the UK in particular where the “ indigenous “ population are in high density population areas completely overwhelmed often by immigrants who have no intention of integrating into the host country society. Coupled with pressures on infrastructure such as water supply, waste and movement are just some of future problems which will intensify.
Canada potentially has the same problem and the LPC of Canada think that importing vast numbers of often unemployable immigrants plus their extended family members will “fix” the problem. It does not and the infrastructure, health, housing, basic facilities, environment etc are in many provinces not operating as they should be. Incompetence in Federal and Provincial government exacerbates the problem.
Parts of the planet which become difficult to inhabit because of changes to climate will increase migration to the northern and southern hemisphere’s and it potentially is a disaster in the making particularly for the Northern hemisphere.
Maybe works for Canada with selective immigration. In Germany, where most immigration is not selective (like US immigration at the southern border), it doesn’t. While there are immigrant subgroups who contribute more services than they receive (some of them migrant workers in the literal sense of going back and forth, especially in the agriculture and building sector), all immigration taken together has so far been slightly more of an additional drain on the system than a help. Immigrant work participation on average is not higher than among the much older autochthonous population, as average immigrants have lower female participation and much higher unemployment, and they tend to have children who need more special services. Germany has grown by 4 million people within a relatively short time, and most of them went to the densely populated areas. All of that additional housing has to be built by someone, too.
Don’t agree. Trudeau brought in way too way many too fast.
South Korea and Japan have the same problem but have not resorted to such radical measures.
Immigration to compensate for an aging population whose young women decided many years ago to stop having babies (except at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder) kicks the can down the road. All those immigrants also have small families because it costs so much to raise children. And they bring their elderly parents over to help look after the children, to get better (and free) health and social services than back home, and because they miss each other. Many immigrants go to work in the mushrooming civil service — there is always something more for government to do –, causing taxes to rise and the production of real wealth per capita to fall.
For Canada this doesn’t work so well because only a small strip near the U.S. border is inhabitable. Since you can’t walk across the border except from the United States, anyone who immigrates or requests asylum has to be wealthy enough to buy a plane ticket to fly here. That makes them older than the crowd wading across the Rio Grande, meaning they will produce wealth and pay taxes for a shorter period, losing much of the benefit of compounding over a life-long working career before they become dependent themselves. All we can say is that we didn’t have to pay to educate them.
If people who live here don’t want to have medium- and high- density housing because of the unassimilable people with foreign customs it attracts and also want to stop suburban sprawl, that is their right as voters and taxpayers to say so, as long as they admit that these two desiderata aren’t together compatible with mass immigration. It does keep house prices and rents high which everyone who already owns a residence just loves. No one who has bought an unaffordable house wants their house to become “affordable.” That’s another kind of housing crisis of a very ugly kind. You can carp about NIMBYism except when it really is your back yard. Then you talk about greenbelts and wilderness preservation and traffic and climate change. I know. I do the same. We all think development should have stopped as soon as our own houses were built.
The point in the road where immigration policies beginning in the 1980s kicked the can down to, we are now at. Surprise. Most of us who were of an age then when large numbers of Filipino nurses to look after them seemed like a great idea are now long dead, and the then-young nurses have retired, often childless.
Great memory: 1987, Wrigley Field, Andre Dawson in right field, Reds had man on second. Long fly ball, Dawson catches it on the track and the runner tags. Dawson turns and throws an absolute strike to 3rd, I don’t think the ball was ever more than six feet off the ground. Runner and ball arrived at the same time. Runner was safe, but what a throw.
🙇♂️
And, a different throw by Dawson:
Nice. Thanks for posting.
Ichiro’s iconic peg at third base: https://youtu.be/WYAxk01E404?si=d1DctHr0CSAW6Ad8.
Greetings from the land of the Seattle Mariners, who have yet to go to the World Series. 🙁
Two words:
Roberto Clemente
Nellie’s prediction, that Biden will resign for health reasons in the first year of a new term, was my prediction for his current term.
In related news, here’s a video comparison of Biden’s Ponte du Hoc speech with Reagan’s. It’s clear Biden’s is just a lame paraphrase of Reagan’s speech. Where’s Neil Kinnock when you need him.
International Young Eagles Day is the day that members of the EAA give free airplane rides to children, mostly in homebuilt or restored vintage aircraft, to interest them in aviation. Flights take place throughout the year at local chapters, but today is a concerted effort to fly as many kids as possible.
I retired from working at EAA about ten years ago (although I still do freelance work for them), and at that point close to two million children had been given a free flight.
Their headquarters, about three hours north of our host, Oshkosh, WI is the home of the largest annual aviation gathering in the world, AirVenture.
I’m not sure if it still holds the record for the busiest airport in the world for that week, but it used to. (It also holds the record for most port-a-potties installed at an event, and in bygone days for the temporary installation of payphones.)
Note to readers: EAA is Experimental Aircraft Association, a national association of very serious aero pilots and hobbyists.
Whoops! I forgot because our style/usage was to refer to it as EAA whenever possible, because as the organization got bigger during the late 80s and 90s, people thought “Experimental” meant that people were just slapping together aircraft (or rebuilding vintage aircraft) with no FAA oversight.
In fact, during the early 2000s there was talk of renaming it the Sport Aircraft Association.
Thanks for the information.
Check out the Associated Press headline: “Israel rescues 4 hostages taken in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. At least 94 Palestinians are killed” along with a picture of an injured Palestinian. The AP’s Israel-hate is palpable. I hope they go bankrupt. View the AP headline here: https://apnews.com/.
Most of the media is unreadable on the subject of Israel. WSJ had a favourable opinion piece with reader comments running 95% positive. So they’re considered “right wing”? I prefer their coverage.
The problem with Andrew Sullivan’s analysis, with respect to the UK, is that he is right that the populists played on fears of immigration to gain power but the populists – or their successors – were the ones who failed to keep immigration under control. The reason for this is that governments really like immigration: immigrants work hard for less money, use the welfare state less and pay more taxes. We need that with our aging population.
But this is not why the Tories are going to be wiped out at the next election. The UK is visibly falling apart in many ways and the Tories are held responsible. Not only that, many of them have turned out to be corrupt charlatans. We just want rid of them.
I think that depends very much on which immigrants. It’s certainly true for immigration into the UK from places like Poland. If you have data showing it to be true for immigrants from countries such as Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, I’d be interested to see it.
I’ve seen claims that immigrants from the EEA (European Economic Area) are a net contributor to government revenues but that immigrants from outside the EEA are overall a net deficit — but I’ve not seen reliable and up-to-date figures on this, so I’d be interested if you have some.
One also has to factor in that mass migration drives up house prices (since we’re building far fewer than the numbers of migrants), and a higher GDP doesn’t itself produce a higher standard of living if you then need to spend a higher fraction of your income on somewhere to live. We’ve now got to the point where the average house in the UK costs 8 or 9 years of the average pre-tax salary.
So, yes, governments like immigration because it boosts tax receipts. Whether it increases the average citizen’s standard of living is a rather different matter.
Most immigrants from the Commonwealth and “other” countries are in the UK and are not working harder for less money, urban myth. Polish immigration has been of nett benefit to the UK. Other immigrants particularly those arriving illegally are a large burden to the UK economy and this has been allowed to happen by successive UK governments not just the dysfunctional Conservative Party. Never forget that it was “insincere smile sweaty armpits” now Sir Anthony Blair whose policies opened the floodgates of unsustainable UK immigration. When it comes to unsustainable immigration all UK governments are incompetent at addressing the problem let alone fixing it. The illegal boat arrivals could be stopped in less than one week, just tow them back out to sea ideally the Atlantic, either that or let the French take care of them.
This may well be true for the kind of immigration anglophone countries received. It is certainly not true for Germany, France or Sweden. Official data from Germany from 2020:
People with an immigrant background (includes the second generation born here) were more than twice as likely to be unemployed. First generation immigrants were not quite 11 % of the population in 2020, but were 38 % of all recipients of social welfare.
https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-situation-in-deutschland/61649/bevoelkerung-mit-und-ohne-migrationshintergrund/#:~:text=Und%20obwohl%20die%20Ausländer%20mit,IV)%20Ausländer%20mit%20eigener%20Migrationserfahrung.
The capitalists of course love all immigration as it means growth (even if it’s not growth per capita, they don’t care), drives up rents and lowers salaries.
I never expected Noa to make it out alive. Goodness knows what she’s been through.
I’ve been busy offline, so I’m missing much of Jerry’s posts. (Sorry for your insomnia, Jerry.)
However, I wanted to post the link below for two reasons…
https://x.com/Jon_Alexandr/status/1799180988423049389
One, because it’s interesting — showing two covers from Aviation Week & Space Technology, but almost exactly 20 years apart.
Two, because that same link keeps getting rejected when I send it to my contact at FFRF. (I’ve been conducting multiple email tests with him, and he’s also had other problems with rejected email.)
Can you go to the link?
(I’ll be mostly offline today.)
And I just saw this — someone offshore Florida got a video of the Starship super-heavy booster doing its test landing over the water.
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1799458854067118450
(Could they have been actually under it? I know that exclusion zone notices for these things are sent out for ships and planes, but people in small boats are known to ignore them.)
Looks like a musk post. Maybe spacex had a drone ship in the landing area where for a real at-sea landing would be a platform. Ruth: Final pics are from top of booster showing water disturbance due to business end of braking-rocket firing I believe. But I am just spitballing.
This was the Starship super-heavy booster test flight. There certainly wouldn’t have been a landing on a drone ship (though SpaceX might have been confident enough to deploy a drone ship without worry that the booster would hit it). The test was intended to only simulate landing on land and test the precision of targeting. And, yes, the other shot was from the booster itself.
The link works fine for me, Jon. It’s your friend’s issue.
Thanks, Debi. The problem does seem to be with his email. (FFRF has made some changes to its online protocols.)
Thanks for the video! Maybe it was some automated small vessel (like a buoy) sent there for the purpose?
I had problems interpreting the perspective at the end of the footage. At first I thought the end sequence was taken from the spacecraft’s own camera, but apparently it wasn’t.
(Meant as an answer to Jon)
Yes, it could have been an automated vessel, Ruth.
I would certainly be nervous about the booster coming down on a person, but I could easily put myself into a virtual role — with memories of the 1950s science-fiction movie “20 Million Miles to Earth,” which had an Earth spacecraft crash-landing in the ocean with a specimen of alien life (that eventually caused havoc on the ground, of course).
And, yes, the final video clip was was from the booster itself, though the live feed was longer.
I got up early to watch live the entire launch and landing of both the booster and Starship. It was wild seeing hot reentry plasma eating into a Starship flap even as it continued to function as a dynamic aerodynamic control surface to help bring the ship to a controlled test landing over the water.
(I don’t think there are any videos of Starship doing its controlled landing in water, just telemetry confirming that.)
Starlink, by the way, allowed all the videos to be streamed live from each spacecraft. Previous U.S. space missions did not have the communications technology to deal with the hot plasma, which normally causes a telemetry blackout.
Thanks for the details, Jon!
Onwards Israeli heroes!!
Note carping of the retarded media about Gaza locals KIA. To rescue HOSTAGES!
The moral asymmetry here is astounding – like an IQ test (is there Moral IQ?).
There are no two sides in Gaza (https://themoderatevoice.com/there-are-no-two-sides-in-gaza/) and it is arguable whether there are any civilians in a society inculcated since birth with Islamic jihadism.
The saturation of Jew hatred and the dynamics of society in the Islamosphere is a HUGE mess of ignorance in the west. They’re not “just like us, want just what we want” at all!
Yet it is almost impossible for secular westerners to understand that other societies have wildly different goals, motivations and desires.
———————————-
Try not to nap in the day PCC(E) re your insomnia.
best,
D.A.
NYC
https://themoderatevoice.com/author/david-anderson/
“it is arguable whether there are any civilians in a society inculcated since birth with Islamic jihadism”
That’s exactly the argument Hamas used to justify their attacks on civilians on 10/7: There are no civilians in a society where everybody is inculcated with Zionism from an early age, and practically everyone is a soldier at some stage.
Israel isn’t using this argument.
Correct, Ruth. Israel does not argue that everyone in Gaza has been militarized and so can be killed with impunity. Her actions in attempting to evacuate civilians from areas they plan to attack show this. Her argument is that civilians who take up arms or who directly assist the enemy military can be killed as enemy combatants in any number. In addition, non-combatant civilians who remain in a battle area (consensually or under compulsion from their own side) can be killed if the expected loss of life is in proportion to the military value of the objective in the eyes of Israel, not the antisemites heckling from the sidelines who want that objective to fail. If the objective was four live hostages, it’s hard to imagine that any number of Pal civilians killed would be disproportionate.
Intent matters. These young men and women in the IDF are going to go home and, we hope, live long loved lives after this is over. They have to be given a moral framework that they and their families can know that they fought a just war justly. Some will also have to square it with their God who forbids murder. We have to be able to forgive our warriors for killing on our behalf when we lack the skills, brute force, and willingness to defend ourselves. To do that we have to trust that they made sincere efforts to distinguish combatants from non-combatants as far as the military circumstances—their jobs we bade them do—allowed. No one wants to have babies with a baby-murderer.
So the Convention on Armed Conflict is mostly aspirational. It’s for our* troops, not for the enemy’s civilians: Do not kill wantonly, lest you become what you fight. But don’t lose either, lest you be judged by those who hate you.
But my Heavens the Walk with Israel tomorrow is going to pleased to remove joyfully four posters from the gallery of the missing after 8 months!
———————
* putting myself briefly in the shoes of an Israeli, if I may.
+1
Is Jez Grove alright? On vacation I hope?
Sorry about the insomnia curse! Nothing like it to screw up everything.
I wondered the same thing.
And agree on the insomnia…
Jez has jumped in with a comment or two the last few weeks I think. I was worried too though doing the events of the day, day in and day out must have been very difficult. Maybe just taking a little break? We miss Ken
K also, but his brother gave an update.
I have written to Jez asking if he’s okay.
Thanks!
Jerry,
You might be interested to read that at least one protestor in Australia has been expelled. The ‘spokesperson’ for the ANU encampent went on public radio and made a clear, unambiguous statement that Hamas deserved ‘unconditional support’.
She’s been expelled for it and curiously the group she was spokesperson for are denying that what she said has anything to do with them, after all she’s not their spokesperson…
Other groups are calling for her reinstatement because she said nothing wrong…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-06/anu-expels-student-over-comments-supporting-hamas/103944796