Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 12, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Wednesday, June 12, 2024, a Hump Day ( “День Горба” in Ukrainian) as well as National Peanut Butter Cookie Day.  Here’s how they make peanut butter, an essential ingredient in these cookies (and in many people’s sandwiches):

It’s also National Jerky Day, Superman Day, International Cachaça Day, Red Rose Day, International Falafel Day, The Jewish festival of Shavuot, Russia Day (in Russia), marking the day when Russia declared sovereignty in 1990. Further, it’s World Day Against Child Labour, and Loving Day, celebrating “the anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in sixteen U.S. states. Here’s Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, a mixed-race couple whose situation brought the case to the court and ended the stupid laws:

By Bettmann/Corbis via New York Times retrieved on September 17, 2008, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13624396

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Big Nooz is that Hunter Biden was convicted of lying on a federal gun application, and could wind up in stir (maximum sentence 25 years). But he has no previous criminal record and probably won’t see jail time.

A jury in Wilmington, Del., on Tuesday found Hunter Biden guilty of three felony counts of lying on a federal firearms application in 2018, a grievous blow to the Biden family as his father enters the final months of his re-election campaign.

Mr. Biden, 54, said in a statement that he was “disappointed” by the verdict, but that he was grateful for the love and support of his family and friends. He could face up to 25 years in prison, but first-time offenders who did not use their weapons to commit a violent crime typically receive no jail time. No sentencing date was set.

The verdict brought an end to an extraordinary trial that made painfully public Mr. Biden’s crack addiction, reckless behavior and ruinous spending — narrated by three former romantic partners, including the widow of his brother, Beau Biden.

Here’s what else to know:

  • The president’s reaction: In a statement, President Biden said he and the first lady, Jill Biden, were proud to see their son be “so strong and resilient in recovery” from his addiction. “Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support,” he added. “Nothing will ever change that.”

  • Sentencing could be months away: The judge in the case, Maryellen Noreika, said sentencing would typically be about 120 days after the verdict — that’s early October, or about a month before the election. Although the maximum possible sentence Mr. Biden faces is more than two decades behind bars and $750,000 in fines, federal sentencing guidelines call for a fraction of that penalty. Here’s a look at the charges.

  • Inside the courtroom: Mr. Biden stood with arms crossed, grimly surveying the jury as the verdict was read — although some members of his family were unable to get into the courtroom in time to hear it. Mr. Biden held the first lady’s hand as he left the courthouse and did not speak to reporters. “Recovery is possible by the grace of God, and I am blessed to experience that gift one day at a time,” Mr. Biden, who has said he’s been sober since mid-2019, said in his statement. Read about the scene at the courthouse.

Biden has indicated that he won’t pardon his son (these are federal charges, so he could), but Hunter isn’t out of the woods yet, as the NYT adds this:

The Delaware case, brought by the special counsel David C. Weiss, is widely regarded as the less serious of the two federal indictments against Hunter Biden brought last year. He still faces serious tax charges in Los Angeles stemming from his failure to pay the government during a yearslong crack, alcohol and spending binge; the trial is scheduled to start in September.

*Another NYT article, looking at sentences for crimes similar to Biden’s, suggests that there’s a substantial probability that Hunter will go to prison:

According to themost recent manual published by the United States Sentencing Commission, which sets recommended sentencing guidelines, someone in Mr. Biden’s position would typically face 15 to 21 months’ imprisonment for offenses related to the unlawful receipt, possession, or transportation of firearms.

From 2019 to 2023, just 52 defendants were sentenced in a similar category as Mr. Biden, and 92 percent were sentenced to serve prison time with a median prison term of 15 months, according to the commission’s data. Around 8 percent of people in that category received probation or a fine.

But judges frequently depart from the suggested guidelines when handing down a sentence and may reduce the time spent in prison in light of the particular circumstances unique to each case.

Mr. Biden, as a nonviolent first-time offender and as someone who was not accused of using the weapon in another crime, did not commit any of the aggravating factors that a judge might normally consider in setting a harsher sentence. (Examples would include making a straw purchase to transfer a gun to somebody who could not buy one legally.)

At the same time, the people who face charges similar to Mr. Biden often plead guilty and rarely go to trial, a fact that could further muddy the judge’s determination.

By a judges calculation, a guilty plea from a defendant can count strongly toward an acceptance of responsibility for their crimes, substantially lowering, in some cases, the so-called base offense level that informs the sentencing.

According to the commission’s data, a defendant comparable to Mr. Biden who received credit for accepting responsibility would see a suggested range of just 10 to 16 months in prison, and in practice, 30 percent of people sentenced in that category from 2019 to 2023 were sentenced to probation with no prison time.

Yes, he may get reduced prison time, but it’s still prison time. I have no dog in this fight, so I don’t particularly care, but you know how people argue about ”lawfare”.

*The WSJ has a piece on Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, and the brutal and bloody route he’s forging to keep Hamas ahead of Israel. It’s long so I’ll just give a taste.

For months, Yahya Sinwar has resisted pressure to cut a ceasefire-and-hostages deal with Israel. Behind his decision, messages the Hamas military leader in Gaza has sent to mediators show, is a calculation that more fighting—and more Palestinian civilian deaths—work to his advantage.

“We have the Israelis right where we want them,” Sinwar said in a recent message to Hamas officials seeking to broker an agreement with Qatari and Egyptian officials.

Fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas units in the Gaza Strip’s south has disrupted humanitarian-aid shipments, caused mounting civilian casualties and intensified international criticism of Israel’s efforts to eradicate the Islamist extremist group.

For much of Sinwar’s political life, shaped by bloody conflict with an Israeli state that he says has no right to exist, he has stuck to a simple playbook. Backed into a corner, he looks to violence for a way out. The current fight in Gaza is no exception.

In dozens of messages—reviewed by The Wall Street Journal—that Sinwar has transmitted to cease-fire negotiators, Hamas compatriots outside Gaza and others, he’s shown a cold disregard for human life and made clear he believes Israel has more to lose from the war than Hamas. The messages were shared by multiple people with differing views of Sinwar.

More than 37,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, most of them civilians, Palestinian officials say. The figure doesn’t specify how many were combatants. Health authorities said almost 300 Palestinians were killed Saturday in an Israeli raid that rescued four hostages kept in captivity in homes surrounded by civilians—driving home for some Palestinians their role as pawns for Hamas.

In one message to Hamas leaders in Doha, Sinwar cited civilian losses in national-liberation conflicts in places such as Algeria, where hundreds of thousands of people died fighting for independence from France, saying, “these are necessary sacrifices.”

. . .Even without a lasting truce, Sinwar believes Netanyahu has few options other than occupying Gaza and getting bogged down fighting a Hamas-led insurgency for months or years.

It is an outcome that Sinwar foreshadowed six years ago when he first became leader in the Gaza Strip. Hamas might lose a war with Israel, but it would cause an Israeli occupation of more than two million Palestinians.

“For Netanyahu, a victory would be even worse than a defeat,” Sinwar told an Italian journalist writing in 2018 in an Israeli daily, Yedioth Ahronoth.

Yes, the odd thing is that although the world and many Palestinians decry the death toll of civilians in Gaza, which is unknown, Sinwar and Hamas want it higher, just the opposite of what Israel wants. That’s the irony of the whole affair, and yet Western pro-Palestinian progressivists are blind (perhaps willfully so) to the fact that Hamas revels in the blood of Palestinian civilians. He sees clearly that the higher the death toll, the more pressure there is on Israel to stop the war and even give Palestine a country. To Sinwar, the blood of civilians lubricates the path to victory. Those who support Hamas and at the same time criticize the death toll of Gazan civilians don’t realize the irony of their position.

Oh, and don’t forget that when Sinwar was in an Israeli prison for terrorism (he was released in a swap), Israeli doctors saved his life by removing a brain tumor. More irony. . . .

*As I’ve noted before in the Nooz, many retailers raised prices too fast during and after the pandemic, and consumers are cutting back on spending. This accounts for recent falls in prices of stuff like cars, toilet paper, and grocery staples like milk and eggs, are dropping. The WaPo discusses whether this will last.

Does this mean that inflation is gone?

Not quite. Most of the announced price cuts are on goods, such as cars, furniture, appliances, sporting goods and dairy products — all of which have already gotten cheaper in the past year, according to federal inflation data.

The part of the economy where prices are still rising too fast is in services, like housing, health care and insurance. Those have been much harder to bring down, in part because they rely so heavily on workers, who have recently gotten pay raises. Overall, prices are 3.4 percent higher than they were a year ago, though some services are still notching double-digit growth.

“It won’t affect inflation because inflation now is in housing, medical services and gas,” said Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst for Forrester. “But it will impact perceptions of price when consumers shop in mass retail and that perception is what is most important.”

What does this mean for my next shopping trip?

You might start to notice things are cheaper, but experts say it won’t happen all at once. Even if some items cost less, it’s possible others will cost more, leaving you with a similar tab at the checkout line.

“This will be a very gradual process that is not a straight line or linear or orderly,” said Cohen of Columbia. “Just when a consumer might see some relief in one place — ‘wow, my groceries cost less’ — they’ll likely encounter something else that is inflated. There’s so much that goes into how we experience inflation and the things we buy are just one part of it. It’s also your rent, your health bills, your electricity costs, tuition.”

What does this mean for the economy?

The spate of lower prices, combined with slowing spending, suggests the economy is losing some steam after last year’s rapid momentum. That could create room for the Fed to start cutting interest rates by the end of the year. Some Wall Street economists say rate cuts could begin as early as September, especially if inflation continues its descent.

But the economy’s direction is still very much up in the air. Fresh jobs data on Friday showed that employers added 272,000 jobs in May — far more than expected — suggesting that growth is still running hot.

As for me, I have a freezer full of steaks, which somehow don’t seem to have dropped in price during the pandemic. On the other hand, I’ve cut down on eating eggs, as they more than doubled in price.  I buy toilet paper in huge packs from Costco, and the local produce store has reasonable fruits and vegetables.  I eat a lot of black beans and rice, which I happen to love.  I have enough dosh to be comfortable, but I really notice the price changes when I shop for groceries. (However, nuts for squirrels and duck food–for next year–will be purchased whatever the cost.)

*I’m not sure whether this is kosher, but a liberal documentary filmmaker pretended to be a religious conservative while secretly recording the thoughts of two Supreme Court Justices, Alito and Chief Justice Roberts.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is heard questioning whether compromise between the left and right is possible in a conversation posted on social media. The conservative justice is also heard agreeing with a woman who says the United States should return “to a place of godliness.”

The audio was posted Monday on X by liberal filmmaker Lauren Windsor. She said it was recorded at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner last week.

“One side or the other is going to win,” Alito said. “There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”

Windsor then told Alito: “I think that the solution really is like winning the moral argument. Like, people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness.”

“I agree with you,” Alito responded.

Windsor also spoke with Chief Justice John Roberts, who rejected a similar argument. When Windsor suggested the court should lead the nation on a “Christian” path, Roberts responded, “I don’t know if that’s true.”

The court declined to comment on the recordings.

. . . In an interview with Rolling Stone, Windsor said she recorded the conversations with Alito and Roberts because “the Supreme Court is shrouded in secrecy, and they’re refusing to submit to any accountability in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious ethics breaches, I think that it’s justified to take these types of measures.”

And from CNN:

Asked how the country can become less polarized, Alito responded: “I wish I knew. I don’t know. It’s easy to blame the media, but I do blame them because they do nothing but criticize us. And so they have really eroded trust in the court. … American citizens in general need to work on this to heal this polarization because it’s very dangerous.”

Altio said he doubted the court was in a position to bring the country together.

“I don’t think it’s something we can do,” he said. “We have a very defined role and we need to do what we’re supposed to do. But this is a bigger problem. This is way above us.”

It’s illegal in some places to record people without their knowledge and permission,  but I guess it wasn’t in this case.  But really, although I disagree with Alito’s view of the importance of “godliness”, and of his rulings in general, did he say anything headline-worthy here? And I guess reporters are allowed to misrepresent their own views to draw out the views of their ideological opponents, but this seems a bit sneaky to me.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being a good naturalist:

A: What are you looking at?
Hili: I’m observing the corporate life of ants.
In Polish:
Ja: Na co patrzysz?
Hili: Obserwuję życie korporacyjne mrówek.

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

From Strange, Silly, and Stupid Signs:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Science Humor:

Masih was on my favorite t.v. show, 60 Minutes!  Here’s the whole segment, and shows how much danger she’s in—constantly.

From Bryan, a denuded CT scanner. Look how fast it goes! Bryan finds this “astonishing.”

From Simon, Larry the Cat speaks up:

From my feed, a shopping canid:

From the absent Jez, two lessons on physics:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

This cat deserves the gold medal for high jumping. Imagine how high a human could jump if it could do it proportionately to the cat!

42 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

      1. If he loses, he could obviously do it as well (with even fewer possible negative consequences). But I agree that he probably won’t.

        Ironically, DJT may face some legal trouble himself, for not handing in one of his guns after his felony conviction. It’ll be fun to see how conservatives will spin this.

        1. He said he wouldn’t pardon his son. I think that will lend additional moral high ground in comparison to DJT.

          1. DJT surrounds himself with people who commit crimes for him, they’re convicted, he pardons them, and it’s Biden we have to look out for.

    2. Seems oddly somewhat biblical. Something about Abraham trusting in god regarding the sacrifice of son Isaac?

    3. It’s comments like these that make me less of a WEIT participant nowadays. The Trump humpers have gotten a hold here. Sad. (Oh wait, don’t tell me, You don’t like Trump, but you just don’t like Biden more…jawohl.)

  2. I have that picture of Anne Frank and a quote of hers (her’s?) about writing on my wall. I read her diary only recently – gems to be found within.

  3. “I don’t believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated, and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.” -Anne Frank, Holocaust diarist (12 Jun 1929-1945)

    1. I saw that quote in another email I received this morning. For a 16-year-old, I think she was pretty wise.

  4. Another amazing thing about CT scanner – the magnet is a zero-resistance superconductor with a circulating electric current that the manufacturer ‘charges’ up with energy and then leaves it running. There are youtube videos of magnet quench discharging a CT device boiling off the liquid helium.

    1. Chuck,
      You are confusing CT with MRI. The unit in the video is a CT scanner, which uses X-ray. MRI uses a magnet, usually superconducting, and no moving parts.

  5. “I agree with you,” could mean agreement with winning the moral argument, rather than the cited religious example.

    He could also have been trying to get her to stop harassing him during dinner..

    1. When I heard Alito’s comments, I thought, “well, can we really expect him to give a clear answer in such a situation?”. Then I heard Justice Roberts’ answer to basically the same spiel by the same interviewer, and he said “Yeah, I don’t know that we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say, maybe not, and it’s not our job to do that. It’s our job to decide the cases as best we can.” Sooooo… it’s apparently possible even for conservative judges to give the correct answer.
      Also, as Justices of the SC, these people are as independent from public opinion as anyone in public service can possibly be, so they don’t really have to be overly accomodating. “It is not appropriate to discuss my private opinions on this with strangers” would be a possible response as well.

      1. Both conservative and liberal Justices air their private opinions in public. And one doesn’t need a “tape recorder” to hear Justice Sotomayor’s opinions?

        When asked at a Berkeley Law School event how she copes with the consistently conservative rulings from the court Justice Sotomayor replied, “Every loss truly traumatizes me,” but “I get up the next morning.”

        Then in June, “Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, said she sometimes weeps in her chambers after the conservative majority issues one of its polarizing rulings.”

  6. I love the happiness on the face of the little girl as physics (and a proper initial kick) places the ball in her backpack. Success is sweet!

  7. Does anyone know what that brush on the corner of the wall in the photo of the kitty with shaved legs is? Is it like the brush for cattle, except miniaturized for pets?

    Steak, oh steak – I wish I had a freezerful of steak! Instead, I’ve got exactly zero. Lately, the prices have been so high that it feels sinful to buy any.

    But no sense of guilt over rice and beans – which I also love. Bodega beans with a hefty drizzle of olive oil is a treat….

    Unfortunately, I can’t eat rice and beans since I began the keto diet in a last ditch effort to lose a stubborn 20 pounds before I give in and go on a lifetime of Ozempic. I guess this is a good excuse to throw thrift to the wind and splurge on a couple of NY strip steaks (my favorite). Does Costco sell steak?

        1. We have one and, yes, it gets used. We have two kitties and the one who has a thick coat and likes to be brushed uses it. The other, who is painfully-skinny and has a thinner (but full) coat has never used it, to my knowledge.

          βPer

    2. “Does Costco sell steak?”

      They sure do! Not only is it very good quality meat, but you can save money by buying it in large sections and slicing it into steaks yourself. Which is what I do to make NY strip steaks.

      1. Thanks for the info! I’ve been looking for a reason to join costco, and this is it.

  8. Black beans and rice is delicious. Sometimes I’ll toss a can of corn in there too.

    1. Keep on adding stuff ending with a dollop of sour cream and eventually you will have a great vegetarian chili.

  9. PCC(E) – I might retire my deliberately absurd pseudonym “ThyroidPlanet” and use my real name “Bryan” – omitting last name “Lepore” – from now on. Been meaning to for a while for a number of reasons.

    For better or worse.

    Testing it out here…

    1. Fine by me, Bryan. I will keep in mind for a few weeks “the commenter formerly known as ThyroidPlanet”.

      1. Well, it was Car Talk’s approach with callers : “no last names”. Similar dynamic – but OTOH I’m glad to share w/readers.

        1. I did like listening to the philosophical excursions of Car Talk and the host’s running jokes about “quantum mechanics.” I wonder how much their approach was inspired by Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”

          But I vote for last names. They make it seem more like the correspondence is with a real person. (It’s no guarantee, of course.)

    3. Use the word “gnostic” so we know it’s really you… Something about the dialectic will do.

  10. Sinwar’s most potent weapon is, and has always been, dead Gazans. The Wall Street Journal gets it. The rest of the media gets it, too, but they make more money by demonizing Israel. The protesters in the U.S.—now also part of Sinwar’s armamentarium—prove that stupidity, too, can be weaponized.

  11. It may surprise you to learn that the maximum height to which animals can jump is pretty much the same. Not the same relative to the animal’s size, but the same absolutely (in Earth gravity). It depends on the scaling relationships of muscle, mass, and size.

  12. From the secret recording of the Alito’s, we also learned that the Justice was not responsible for the flags flown at his home. From the WSJ:

    “Justice Samuel Alito’s wife corroborated that he isn’t responsible for whatever flags have flown at his homes.

    “The feminazis believe that he should control me,” Martha-Ann Alito says, in audio Ms. Windsor posted online. “So they’ll go to hell. He never controls me.”

    Mrs. Alito adds: “You know what I want? I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag, because I have to look across the lagoon at the pride flag for the next month. And he’s like ‘Oh, please don’t put up a flag.’ I said, ‘I won’t do it because I’m deferring to you. But when you are free of this nonsense, I’m putting it up.’”

    1. He was responsible for it the first time he saw it and let it stay up. He is not supposed to display even the appearance of impropriety.

      1. I guess that’s how it works in your household. I gather from from Mrs Alito’s response their household is different.

        And what do you think of Sotomayor’s propriety when she publicly voiced her opinions. These are more than “appearances.”

        When asked at a Berkeley Law School event how she copes with the consistently conservative rulings from the court Justice Sotomayor replied, “Every loss truly traumatizes me,” but “I get up the next morning.”

        Then in June, “Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, said she sometimes weeps in her chambers after the conservative majority issues one of its polarizing rulings.”

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