Thursday: Hili dialogue

July 4, 2024 • 6:45 am

Greetings on July 4, 2024: the beginning of a long (4-day) weekend in America, celebrating Independence Day.   A lot of places weren’t happy with the use of drones last year as a replacement for fireworks, as people presumably want to hear a Big Bang. Here’s a big display by the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.

Camera Operator: SSGT. LONO KOLLARS, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Caesar Salad Day, Jackfruit Day (it’s good!), National Barbecue Day, National Barbecued Spareribs Day, and, weirdly, Independence from Meat Day. 

There’s a Google Doodle today (click below) celebrating Independence Day by showing scenes of America, from sea to shining sea:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 4 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*We have the first indication that Biden may be considering dropping out of the Presidential race.

President Biden has told a key ally that he knows he may not be able to salvage his candidacy if he cannot convince the public in the coming days that he is up for the job after a disastrous debate performance last week.

The president, whom this ally emphasized is still deeply in the fight for re-election, understands that his next few appearances heading into the holiday weekend must go well, particularly an interview scheduled for Friday with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place” by the end of the weekend, said the ally, referring to Mr. Biden’s halting and unfocused performance in the debate. The person, who talked to the president in the past 24 hours, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.

The White House, however, denies it, but I no longer believe the White House spokespeople, who are paid not to tell the truth, but to make the President look good (this is not unique to Biden, but I notice it more often these days).

Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said the report was “absolutely false” and that the White House had not been given enough time to respond.

The conversation is the first indication to become public that the president is seriously considering whether he can recover after a devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta on Thursday. Concerns are mounting about his viability as a candidate and whether he could serve as president for another four years.

Several of his allies stressed on Wednesday that Mr. Biden still wanted to fight to keep control of his candidacy even as headwinds in his party grew stronger.

A top adviser to Mr. Biden, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation, said the president was “well aware of the political challenge he faces.” That person added on Wednesday that Mr. Biden was aware that the outcome of his campaign could be a different ending than the one his is fighting for, but that the president believes he is an effective leader who is mentally sharp and “doesn’t get how others don’t accept that.” Mr. Biden still adamantly views his debate showing as a bad performance and not a revelatory event.

Well, to the rest of us, Biden doesn’t look mentally sharp, or even physically healthy (see two tweets down):

*From the Free Press‘s newsletter (not on the site); Nellie Bowles (I think) on Gavin Newsom. I’ve just finished Nellie’s new book, and was a bit disappointed. She simply reports on woke stuff, like Robin DiAngelo and transsexual issues, without giving her own views or even any snark.  The best part was the end, about San Francisco and its decline (and the decline of California as a whole), for there she doesn’t hide her horror at what’s happening. Some of the issues in the book are in her post below (not a TGIF post):

→ The trouble with Gavin: The quick-witted, smooth-talking governor of California would be an obvious pick for Biden’s replacement—in some ways. Gavin Newsom has been Biden’s surrogate throughout the campaign, and he’s good at it, always appearing vigorous and alive, seeming to genuinely enjoy sparring with Republicans. He’s charming; he’s dashing; he’s funny. And he runs the most important state in the union, California, the world’s fifth-largest economy. You can complain about its politics all you want (I do, I have, I will in the following paragraphs), but the numbers don’t lie: the state is a world power unto itself. Plus, there is his age. At a spry 56, Newsom looks like a teenager next to our gerontocracy. Our Gavin Newsom is only 56 years old. Sure, that’s about ten years older than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama when they began their terms, but that’s not what matters. To our eyes now, adjusted for Trump and Biden, a 56-year-old president is basically a teen mom—shocking, wild, vibrant.

You know what else is going in Gavin Newsom’s favor? His ex-wife is Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée, which is funny, strange, and definitely falls in the pro column. Plus, he’s managed to wrangle the rest of California’s political class of corrupt communists without ever seeming too corrupt or too communist himself. He’s done some vaguely moderate things. I do believe Gavin Newsom believes in the free market, and that’s a big deal for an elected Californian in the year 2024.

But Gavin Newsom would probably fail as a Biden replacement. Because he does, I’ve heard, have weaknesses. What are they?

Well, there’s the homelessness situation. California’s cities are overrun with tent encampments. Root causes: lack of cheap housing thanks to “environmentalists” and neighborhood heritage types who block anything that’s not a single-family home, preferably with a chicken run out back. Also: empathetic-seeming but insane drug policies that all but pay people to do more fentanyl.

There’s the high-speed rail. This one’s a boondoggle has so far cost $18 billion across 15 years, with no train in sight, though the project randomly announces a few feet of track has been laid in a desert every couple years. The top railroad operator in France was supposed to help build it before abandoning the state to build one in a region that was “less politically dysfunctional” (that region: North Africa).

There’s the fact that California’s required ethnic studies courses are pretty antisemitic. There’s the fact that Newsom was eating indoors with all his friends at the French Laundry during the pandemic when everyone else was banned from indoor dining. I mean, don’t even get me started on Gavin’s lockdown policies.

As for the top issue on many voters’ minds: he’s not exactly an Abolish ICE guy, but he’s not particularly strong on the border. You’ve heard of sanctuary cities, but Newsom wants the whole state to be “a sanctuary to all who seek it.” Which is a lovely notion but. . . the entire world would like to move to California for a little Santa Monica sanctuary.

Personally, I like Gavin. (Stop throwing things at me, I am who I am!) But he’s too vulnerable on too many hot-button national topics right now, and I think the DNC knows that. —Nellie Bowles

*And another bit of information (caveat: it’s a long-distance diagnosis) from the daily FP newsletter. I thought this would interest readers. In her piece yesterday, linked below, Emily Yoffe said this: “In the absence of actual medical scrutiny, serious diagnoses are being floated: Alzheimer’s, Lewy body dementia, stroke, and Parkinson’s. The Parkinson’s diagnosis seems to be leading the pack.”  Here’s today’s report (bolding is by the anonymous author)

Biden has Parkinsonism, a neurologist tells The Free Press: On yesterday’s Front Page, Emily Yoffe called for the president to address questions about his fitness for office by undergoing a medical assessment conducted by a group of independent doctors and making the findings public. Biden’s team doesn’t appear to have any appetite for further medical scrutiny. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said a cognitive test was “not warranted in this case.”

But whether the White House likes it or not, medical experts are observing Biden closely and coming to their own conclusions. One of them, an emeritus professor of neurology at a top medical school, wrote to Emily to say he thinks the president has Parkinsonism. He did not want to be named, for fear of making himself a target. Here’s his full note:

Dear Ms. Yoffe,

I read your piece in The Free Press on President Biden’s obvious neurologic illness.

Neurologists frequently make diagnoses by observation. In fact, most movement disorder diagnoses are made by direct observation or description by patients and families. Mr. Biden has Parkinsonism, an umbrella term that refers to neurologic conditions that cause slowed movements, rigidity, and tremors. By observation, he has a masked face, reduced blinking, stiff and slow gait, hunched posture, low volume voice, imbalance, freezing, mild cognitive disturbance, and difficulty turning. I have seen one video of tremor. All these diagnose Parkinsonism. He would need further investigation by experts to determine which specific disease within the broad term he has, such as idiopathic Parkinson’s disease or another specific disease.

While there is no cure for the many conditions comprising Parkinsonism, there are effective treatments for many of the symptoms. By failing to get a diagnosis, the president is denying himself such treatments, and so worsens his own situation.

The long history in the U.S. of so many “covering” for the president going back to Woodrow Wilson should now be broken.

*Well, more about Biden, this time a NYT editorial by Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, “Doing nothing about Biden is the riskiest plan of all.” The NYT also reported yesterday that “Donald Trump is ahead of President Biden by six percentage points among likely voters in a new national survey. Overall, 74 percent of voters view him as too old for the job, an uptick since the debate.”

. . . . Looking at polls beyond the straight horse-race numbers between Mr. Biden and Donald Trump — ones that include Democratic Senate candidate races in close swing-state races — suggests something even more troubling about Mr. Biden’s chances, but also offers a glimpse of hope for Democrats.

You don’t need another pundit telling you that Mr. Biden should quit the race, although I’m among those who emphatically think he should. But Democrats should be more open to what polls are telling them — and again, not just Biden-Trump polls. There is a silver lining for Democrats to be found in these surveys. Voters in these polls like Democratic candidates for Congress just fine. More than fine, actually: It’s Mr. Biden who is the problem.

he data is remarkably consistent. There are five presidential swing states that also have highly competitive Senate races this year: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. (Sorry, Florida and Ohio don’t count as swing states anymore — and Texas isn’t one quite yet.) In those states, there have been 47 nonpartisan surveys conducted since Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump emerged as their parties’ clear nominees in March.

In 46 of the 47 polls, the Democratic Senate candidate polled better than Mr. Biden. He and the Senate candidate performed equally well in one poll. Which means that Mr. Biden didn’t outpoll the Senate candidate in any of the surveys. (I’m using the versions of the polls among likely voters, and the version with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. included if the pollster made one available.)

None of the 47 polls — not a single one of them — showed the Democratic candidate trailing in the Senate race, though two showed a tie. In contrast, Mr. Biden led in only seven of the surveys, was tied with Mr. Trump in two and trailed in the other 38.

But surveys like the ones above are vital for two reasons. First, they make it much less likely that there’s some sort of systematic skew in the surveys. The pollsters are finding plenty of Democratic voters, just not enough Biden voters. And second, these Senate candidates are well known to voters in their states and running in actual races, not hypothetical matchups, like those featuring other prospective Democratic presidential candidates that pollsters occasionally test. Relatively unknown candidates typically underachieve in surveys.

Silver then suggests that Biden drop out and be replaced by an open poll of Democrats who want to run; they will then debate each other. Then there would be a few straw polls that the delegates at the Democratic National Convention could take into account when choosing Biden’s replacement. But to me it seems too late to do this, and even Silver has his doubts:

It’s not a great plan. But there is no great plan left. At this point, any Democrat would likely be an underdog to Mr. Trump. Not because Mr. Trump is popular, which he very much isn’t, but because it’s hard to imagine a replacement being fully prepared for the race.

Indeed. Trump’s lead is widening, and we’re screwed.

*According to the Seattle Times, the Feds are getting ready to kill “hundreds of thousands” of barred owls—perhaps half a million. (h/t Wayne).

It is time, federal wildlife managers have decided, to kill invasive barred owls in the Pacific Northwest that threaten native spotted owls with extinction.

The barred owl, ransacking forests and pushing deeper into fragile habitats, is outcompeting the spotted owl. It’s bigger, more aggressive, and eats anything in the spotted owl’s territory. Wildlife managers see no choice but to reduce the number of barred owls in some areas, to create refugia where spotted owls may persist.

The control program, outlined in a final Environmental Impact Statement announced Wednesday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is intended to result in the annual removal of less than one-half of 1% of the current North American barred owl population — but it’s still a lot of birds: as many as 500,000 barred owls, over the next 30 years, depending on how fully the program is implemented.

The policy is the result of more than 15 years of review and study and collaboration, said Bridget Moran, Oregon Fish and Wildlife Office deputy state supervisor.

“We are at a crossroads. We now have the science. … There is time for us to act now, but that window is closing,” Moran said.

“We are wildlife biologists, we don’t take this on lightly. We do so because we know the Endangered Species Act requires us to do everything possible to protect endangered species, and we are doing that.”

Under the program, trained professionals would be deployed in about half of the areas where spotted owls and invasive barred owls are found in the northern spotted owl’s range, and also deployed to limit the barred owl’s invasion into California. Hunting by the general public would not be allowed. Shooters are to call barred owls into close range to confirm the species’ identity, and kill them with a shotgun. Lead shot will not be used.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, having already collected public comments, will make a decision on this plan within a month from Friday.  I don’t know how I feel about it, as I love owls; all I know is that I don’t want to be the one shooting them. Do any readers think that this is a bad plan?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s heading for dinner:

Hili: The road to the bowl is sometimes rocky.
A: But at least you have the guarantee that it will not be in vain.
In Polish:
Hili: Droga do miski bywa kamienista.
Ja: Ale przynajmniej masz gwarancję, że nie będzie bezowocna.

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

From Cat Memes, a Venn diagram:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih, how some women allow themselves to be oppressed in Iran:

Madame VP Harris reassures a worried woman that “girl, I’m out here in these streets”, and every thing is okay except for those damn extremists.  “Fellow Bison” refers to Howard University, where Harris went to school.

From the reliably loony Candance Owens. Have a listen!  Do you think she still uses scientific medicine, or does she go to a shaman? (For a bit more of her spiel, go here).

From Malcolm, a cat discovers tinfoil:

From Barry: Look at the face on this poor kitty!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I posted:

Two tweet from Dr. Cobb. The first is cats with brain freeze. Don’t miss them!

And strange horse behavior:

28 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  2. Wow – I almost just sent that owl article from AP News to PCC(E) – was very confused as to what precisely that whole thing was about…

  3. Big news for us Britishers in that it is polling day for what might be a historic election.

    By the time the Hili Dialog gets published tomorrow (although possibly not when the post gets written tonight) we will most likely have a new government.

  4. In a Vice-Presidential match-up between Kamala Harris v Candace Owens—
    who would win, and why?

  5. God is Freedom.

    Atheism is enslavement and aligns with the goals of international communism. Enslavement to those who wield the rational narrative. Divide and conquer rulers use dualistic rationalism to establish command and control over their people, against another people, populism; two gigantic contradictory mutually antagonistic internally consistent ideologies with the exact same goal 🙂

    2. Just curious — would you be making the same argument if it happens to be the case that God doesn’t exist?

      If so, then you’re suggesting that freedom can come out of a lie and the willingness to believe it. That won’t lead to any sort of harmony among individuals allowed to let their reason run amok.

      If not, then you ought to stick to demonstrating that God actually exists before you go off into consequences of concluding one way or the other.

    3. I’d guess this is weird sarcasm. But with this guy it’s hard to be sure.

      1. Could it be a bot sent here to stir up trouble? I can’t make sense of it and since the 2nd posting simply scroll on by.

  6. Living here in the Seattle suburbs, I read about the plan to eliminate the Barred Owls. By the numbers—the plan will kill off only a small percentage of the North American population—the plan might be sound, but I have three concerns/thoughts.

    1) Killing that many owls is gruesome. They are sentient beings that (in my view) have a right to live.

    2) Killing the owls may not be effective in saving the Spotted Owls, which have been on the brink of extinction for decades. While I would like to see them survive, extinction eventually befalls all species.

    3) Displacements of populations of one species by another are not uncommon, and the new species to the area participate in the economy of nature and evolve their own unique genetic variations (depending on gene flow and other factors). This is how species spread, and the process is not inherently bad. Unless the Barred Owls are about to destroy the ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest, maybe we should look upon their arrival and spread as a natural part of ecological transformation.

    In conclusion, I’m not convinced that the biological reasons for getting rid of the Barred Owls are strong enough, but there are political and cultural factors in play as well.

    1. This vaguely reminds me of the, perhaps apocryphal, story about how they rid of pigeons in Peking after the revolution, by having everyone go out and beat pots and pans for twenty-four hours, so that the pigeons were kept in flight, and ultimately dropped dead from exhaustion.

      1. Odd that Mao’s starving peasants didn’t drop dead from exhaustion, too, from the sustained effort of pot-banging. A classic war of attrition. (Of course the peasants could eat the pigeons….)

    2. Likewise: I live north of you in British Columbia where the last wild Spotted Owls have just gone extirpated. We have plenty of Barred Owls though.

      One might think that shooting all of the Barred Owls in an area would be a difficult task, and that subsequently more Barred Owls would migrate into the area to replace them. But they seem to be talking about specifically-chosen small areas (“refugia”) and removing the Barred Owls for a long period (30 years), so maybe it could work. Anyway they have been studying this for 15 years so second-guessing from me is worthless. It’s just a pity that I won’t be here to see the results.

      Incidentally, another result of the Barred Owl incursion here in SW Canada is the disappearance of Western Screech-Owls. I expect it’s the same down there in Seattle.

    3. For all the reasons listed by Norman, and more, I think the proposal to kill Barred Owls is a horrible idea. Nothing good will come of this state-sponsored slaughter of innocent and beautiful wildlife. Absent these stately and naturally-arrived avian predators, perhaps the Northwest will then become overrun with rats.

      1. Really?
        I think the idea is to encourage the stately and naturally endemic avian predators to eat all those rats instead. .

      2. I totally agree plus humans interference with the environment flora and fauna usually goes badly wrong, let nature take its course.

      3. Another complication is that there are several barred-spotted hybrid individuals. Despite this possibly adaptive gene flow, the hybrids are slated to be snuffed.

    4. Who gets to play god and decide which species may persist and which can be allowed to shuffle off this mortal coil en masse? You?
      The Endangered Species Act calls on USFWS to conserve extant species, not to make decisions about acceptable ecosystem replacements. And conservation must concentrate on populations, not individual sentient beings or their supposed rights.
      Spotted owls are in trouble–as a species, an independent evolutionary lineage–mostly thanks to humans and our habit of clearcutting their habitat, where they historically belong. Now, people who know a hell of a lot more about it than me–or you– have determined–via science–that a major threat to the few that remain is competition from this other species, which does not historically belong there and is in no trouble at all at a population level.
      They have to do something about it. They don’t have the luxury of philosophizing about which ecological processes are natural or permissible or acceptable.

      1. I rather think you’re right. Wildlife management and species conservation is based on science, whose conclusions are testable by the scientific method. Spotted owls, an endangered species we say we want to save, might be saved in some locales by culling invasive competitors. The contrary idea that barred owls are sentient beings with rights not to be killed is fundamentally a religious position (or at least an ideological one) that cannot be tested but it has consequences that would be bad for sported owls. So, logically, the barred owls have to go.

        We run into a similar problem on our Atlantic coast with our lobster fishery. Lobsters are not endangered but people do want to eat them in quantity. The federal fisheries scientists provide the sustainability rationale for the season, catch limits, number of licences granted, and rules against taking gravid females, which all fisherman must obey. Aboriginal “self-licensed” fishermen say they aren’t bound by any of that science, and therefore not the law, either, because their ways of knowing will protect the stocks even though they use the same modern traps, boats, and radar to exploit the fishery as vigorously as they can. Their level of scientific education is no better than white fishermen. (They have Treaty Rights to catch eels out of season, “modestly.”)

        Supporters of the indigenous fishery say they don’t want to let science encroach on traditional knowledge and freedoms in the noble fight against the white Crown. Science can go to Hell.

        My fear is that if we deny the conclusions of science because white liberals don’t want to cull barred owls but then tell aboriginal fishermen we’re going to arrest their boats and seize their catches if they don’t submit to our white science, we’re applying an ideologically partisan double standard that is easily dismissed as racist.

  7. “. . . always appearing vigorous and alive. . . .”

    I know that Bowles is joking here, but hopefully the Dems are setting a higher bar than this. Last time it was “anyone but Trump” and look where we are.

    With respect to Biden’s future, I’ve seen predictions for most every outcome, and none seems more authoritative than any of the others. My guess is that he drops out of the race. (The Babylon Bee suggests that he won’t be replaced, because the Dems have already completed so many ballots with him on it in preparation for November.) I’ve only seen a couple stories that suggest, correctly in my opinion, that he resign due to incapacity.

    I am intrigued by the idea of a poll of Democrat voters to determine potential candidates (wasn’t that what the Primaries were?), by how they imagine they would do this, and what the criteria for deciding who gets to participate in the poll are. I wonder if it would even be legal in States where there are open primaries. And then debates? The clock is ticking for nominations and ballot-making. I am betting on SmokeSmug-filled rooms as the mechanism for determining a new candidate.

  8. Oh, and, by the way, Happy Independence Day! In two years it will be America’s 250th birthday.

  10. The “chat” between VP Harris and the actress is so obviously staged, complete with film crew, it’s gross. Just another lame attempt to get black votes. Their dumb, woke policies have already cost them many black male votes. Biden/Harris should both make it clear neither of them is running in 2024. Let someone tough, and more capable, with a good sense of humor, who understands ordinary Americans like Sen. Amy Klobuchar run against Trump. She overcame a difficult background to become a Senator, in contrast to the privileged background of most potential candidates.

  12. One very minor point: Nate Silver is no longer with FiveThirtyEight; he has an independent substack and podcast and has his own election forecast model.

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