Sunday: Hili dialogue

July 14, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Sabbath for goyische cats, and it’s also Bastille Day: July 14, 2024 as well as National Mac and Cheese Day. Everybody loves it, even if it’s not found in France.

Texasfoodgawker, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Barn Day, National Grand Marnier Day (cultural appropriation), Shark Awareness Day, and International Non-Binary People’s Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 14 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The big nooz is that yesterday there was an assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. Apparently a bullet nicked or pierced his ear, but he will be all right. That’s not the case for one spectator who was killed and two others who were wounded. A sniper killed the assassin (see his photo below). He appears to be a person from the Right.

The authorities were racing on Sunday to understand how and why a would-be assassin shot at former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, days before his anticipated nomination as the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election.

The shocking attack in Butler, Pa., on Saturday killed one spectator at the scene and left two others critically injured, officials said. Mr. Trump had blood on his face as he was escorted from the stage, raising his fist in defiance.

He later said on social media that a bullet had pierced his right ear. Mr. Trump was rushed to a hospital from the rally, but walked off his plane unaided when it landed in New Jersey early Sunday.

Here’s what we know:

  • The gunman: The Federal Bureau of Investigation identified the shooter as a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, Pa. He fired multiple shots toward the stage during Mr. Trump’s rally before he was killed by the Secret Service, officials said. An AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, a common tool for mass shooters, was recovered from the scene. The authorities did not address his motive.

  • More details: A New York Times analysis of videos from the event suggests that the gunman fired eight shots from a small building that sat a few hundred feet from the stage where Mr. Trump was speaking.

  • Firsthand accounts: New York Times journalists were at the rally when shots rang out. A reporter and a photographer each described their experience. One image by the photographer, Doug Mills, appeared to capture a bullet streaking past Mr. Trump’s head.

  • Trump supporters: Some prominent Trump backers, including Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, said that inflammatory language by Democrats was to blame for the violence. A few of the former president’s supporters gathered at Trump Tower in Manhattan overnight to show support.

On his public FB page, D. J. Grothe posted some info and a picture of the shooter:

This attempt to murder is reprehensible and horrifying.  Blaming it on the Democrats’ “inflammatory language” is also reprehensible: we have no idea what motivated the shooter, but it doesn’t appear he was a Left winter.  We have a climate of hatred in America that will lead to things like this, whether the target be Democrat, Republican, or random people.  And there are too many guns. We will know more in the coming days.

Here’s a 5-minute video of the melée. Also look at this picture of the bullet going by Trump’s head; it’s a remarkable photo.

 

*Obituaries: Dr. Ruth died at 96. I liked her.

Ruth Westheimer, a child survivor of the Holocaust who became known to millions as Dr. Ruth, the perky sex therapist whose frankness on her long-running radio and television call-in shows made her a go-to guide for tips on the art and science of lovemaking, died July 12 at her home in Manhattan. She was 96.

Her death was confirmed by Pierre Lehu, a publicist and her co-author on several books, but no cause was noted.

Described as the first superstar sex therapist, Dr. Westheimer was over 50 when she debuted in 1980 on New York’s WYNY with “Sexually Speaking.” The radio program initially aired in 15-minute installments and was later syndicated and extended to two hours to accommodate the onslaught of queries she received from callers. More than a few listeners professed that she had saved their marriages.

Cable television viewers knew her as the prim, matronly host in the 1980s of “Good Sex With Dr. Ruth Westheimer” and as a frequent guest on late-night talk shows. At 4-foot-7, she often was seen perched on a seat, bedecked in pearls, cheerfully dispensing advice on best practices in the sack.

Dr. Westheimer’s old-world accent, at times seemingly incongruous with her discussion of intimate anatomy and its usage, was one of the few traces of her life before she came to the United States. Born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Germany, she survived the Holocaust at a Swiss orphanage where her parents sent her before they perished.

“I was left with a feeling that because I was not killed by the Nazis — because I survived — I had an obligation to make a dent in the world,” Dr. Westheimer once told an interviewer. What she did not know, she added, was that the dent would entail her “talking about sex from morning to night.”

After the war, she went to Israel, where she joined the Haganah paramilitary group fighting for Jewish statehood (and where, she said, she lost her virginity in a hayloft). Later moves took her to France and to New York, where she learned English before studying counseling.

Here’s a short trailer advertising a documentary about Dr. Ruth:

*Good lord; the Republicans are already planning how to contest November’s election in case Trump is defeated. Jan. 6 all over again!

The Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system. Their wide-ranging and methodical effort is laying the groundwork to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump.

The campaign involves a powerful network of Republican lawyers and activist groups, working loosely in concert with the Republican National Committee. Many of the key players were active in Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

But unlike the chaotic and improvised challenge four years ago, the new drive includes a systematic search for any vulnerability in the nation’s patchwork election system.

Mr. Trump’s allies have followed a two-pronged approach: restricting voting for partisan advantage ahead of Election Day and short-circuiting the process of ratifying the winner afterward, if Mr. Trump loses. The latter strategy involves an ambitious — and legally dubious — attempt to reimagine decades of settled law dictating how results are officially certified in the weeks before the transfer of power.

At the heart of the strategy is a drive to convince voters that the election is about to be stolen, even without evidence. Democrats use mail voting, drop boxes and voter registration drives to swing elections, they have argued. And Mr. Trump’s indictments and criminal conviction are a Biden administration gambit to interfere with the election, they claim.

It is THIS bad:

“As things stand right now, there’s zero chance of a free and fair election,” Mike Howell, a project director at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said at an event this week. “I’m formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election.”

The efforts named include restricting voting by mail (a favorite of Democrats) and making the certification of election more difficult.  But you know what? I’d prefer that Trump loses and the Republicans do their dastardly deeds over a scenario where this strategy doesn’t have to be used.

*From the WSJ: “Biden buys his campaign more time but pays a steep price.”  The price, of course, is the longer he waits to drop out—and I think it’s inevitable that he will—the more likely the Democrats are to lose:

President Biden has long held a Harry Houdini-like ability to escape political jeopardy. But even as he clings to his re-election bid, the president is now a severely wounded candidate leading a divided party.

Biden ended the most politically challenging two weeks of his presidency with a Friday rally in Detroit, where he heard chants of “Don’t you quit” and he later reassured the crowd, “I’m not going anywhere.”

It was the latest sign that the embattled president has fended off—for now—public pleas from fellow Democrats to end his re-election campaign in the aftermath of a disastrous debate. His performance in a high-profile news conference Thursday helped him calm some jittery Democrats.

But nearly 20 Democrats in the House and Senate have gone public with their concerns that the 81-year-old Biden can’t defeat Donald Trump and have urged him to stand down, taking a toll on the incumbent’s public image as he seeks re-election. That has also fueled concerns that his place at the top of the ticket will depress voter enthusiasm and hurt House and Senate candidates down-ballot.

Polls show Biden facing glaring weaknesses among Black, Latino and young voters and that his path to victory has narrowed. Some previous swing states look out of reach, and more states are coming onto the battleground map, giving Trump an opening in once reliably blue states such as Virginia, Minnesota, New Hampshire and New Mexico. The Biden campaign argues that the fundamentals of the race haven’t changed and briefed senators Thursday on their pathway to victory, most likely through the blue wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

The bad news:

An aggregate of polls by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report finds that a largely static race—with the candidates essentially tied at 46% each in national surveys—shifted after the June 27 debate to give Trump a 2.5-point lead, about 47% to 44.5%. Among Black voters, a crucial Democratic constituency, three straight Wall Street Journal polls this year have found Biden with 68% support to about 20% for Trump—a 48-point advantage that is far slimmer than the 83-point margin he won in 2020.

If those narrowed margins held through Election Day, “then Biden’s chances of winning Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan would be about the same chances that a human could survive on Mars for 24 hours,” said David Wasserman, a Cook Political Report analyst. “The lifeblood of the Democratic Party is winning enormous margins among Black voters, and voters of color as a whole, in these battleground states.”

The longer Biden waits to leave (or if he doesn’t leave), the greater the chances Trump will win. It’s hard to imagine that a pathological narcissist of his deranged stripe could be chosen to lead America. And I’ve been told by several of my European friends that they’re scared that Trump will win because who leads America also has a huge effect on Europe (and, of course, the rest of the world).

*Oh for crying out loud: Bernie Sanders has a NYT op-ed called “Joe Biden for President“.

I will do all that I can to see that President Biden is re-elected. Why? Despite my disagreements with him on particular issues, he has been the most effective president in the modern history of our country and is the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump — a demagogue and pathological liar. It’s time to learn a lesson from the progressive and centrist forces in France who, despite profound political differences, came together this week to soundly defeat right-wing extremism.

I strongly disagree with Mr. Biden on the question of U.S. support for Israel’s horrific war against the Palestinian people. The United States should not provide Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist government with another nickel as it continues to create one of the worst humanitarian disasters in modern history.

I strongly disagree with the president’s belief that the Affordable Care Act, as useful as it has been, will ever address America’s health care crisis. Our health care system is broken, dysfunctional and wildly expensive and needs to be replaced with a “Medicare for all” single-payer system. Health care is a human right.

And those are not my only disagreements with Mr. Biden.

But for over two weeks now, the corporate media has obsessively focused on the June presidential debate and the cognitive capabilities of a man who has, perhaps, the most difficult and stressful job in the world. The media has frantically searched for every living human being who no longer supports the president or any neurologist who wants to appear on TV. Unfortunately, too many Democrats have joined that circular firing squad.

Yes. I know: Mr. Biden is old, is prone to gaffes, walks stiffly and had a disastrous debate with Mr. Trump. But this I also know: A presidential election is not an entertainment contest. It does not begin or end with a 90-minute debate.’

. . . Enough! Mr. Biden may not be the ideal candidate, but he will be the candidate and should be the candidate. And with an effective campaign that speaks to the needs of working families, he will not only defeat Mr. Trump but beat him badly. It’s time for Democrats to stop the bickering and nit-picking.

Well, Bernie is old, too, but he didn’t lose because he acted somewhat addled; he lost because he was too “progressive” for most people. (Bernie is also a Jew who hates Israel.) Enough indeed!  If Biden persists with his scary behavior, he is not going to beat Trump badly. In fact, he won’t beat him at all.  Bernie should just take his mittens and go home.

*Delta Airlines has put in place a new “institutional neutrality principle” after people objected when two of its flight attendants were photographed wearing Palestinian flag pins. This, of course, caused a social-media uproar:

Delta Air Lines is changing its employee uniform policy following a turbulent ride through a social media storm started by a passenger’s outrage over two flight attendants photographed wearing Palestinian pins.

The uproar over the July 10 post, which described the Palestinian pins as “Hamas badges,” led Delta to ban its employees from wearing pins representing any country or nationality besides the U.S. The rule will take effect Monday.

“We are proud of our diverse base of employees and customers and the foundation of our brand, which is to connect the world and provide a premium experience,” the Atlanta-based airline said in a statement “We are taking this step to help ensure a safe, comfortable and welcoming environment for all.”

Delta’s policy shift reflects the ongoing tensions surrounding the Israel-Hamas war, which has triggered high-profile protests that, among other things, have roiled college campuses.

Both attendants captured in the post objecting to the Palestinian pins were in compliance with Delta’s previous policy giving employees more flexibility with uniform accessories.

Before Delta announced its new policy, one of its employees escalated the flag pin flap by posting a reply asserting the attendants wearing the Palestinian pins were violating company rules and sympathized with passengers who might be “terrified” by it. That post has since been deleted but was captured in a screenshot shared by the American Muslim rights group CAIR National.

Delta said the employee responsible for that post had been removed from handling its social media communications in a post that also included an apology.

Here’s a tweet I found just to show the attendant with the pin; I don’t know what the rest is about.

I think Delta made the right decision: there should be no political or ideological pins worn by employees on the job, as it could rile up or intimidate passengers. That goes for Stars of David, and maybe even American flags (I don’t know about that one).  There’s no freedom of speech for corporate clothing like this, though I think the application of the First Amendment varies depending on conditions. (For example, I think schoolkids can wear political slogans on their shirts so long as they’re not obscene, but teachers don’t have the same right.) But this is just a guess; I hope a lawyer will weigh in. I do know that Delta is within its rights to do this, and it did the right thing. Note that the employees have not been fired, and keeping them on with a warning was also the right decision.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is looking over the garden:

Hili: This lily fell over.
A: It wasn’t the first and it will not be the last.
In Polish:
Hili: Ta lilja upadła.
Ja: Nie ona pierwsza i nie ostatnia.

Shhhhh!  Szaron is sleeping.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Science Humor (I have no idea if this is true):

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih: a courageous woman under another oppressive theocratic and misogynistic regime, Afghanistan:

From my feed. The “community notes” say, correctly, that this is a FATHER’S love, for in jacanas it is the males who incubate the eggs. It all goes to show that behavior is not what defines sex. The reason we know that male jacanas incubate eggs is because we know these are males. And how do we know that? Because they produce sperm.

From Malgorzata.  This reminds me of the ridiculous criticism that Israel’s engaged in “pinkwashing.”

From Malcolm, a Pallas cat successfully rehabbed and returned to the wild. This is my favorite species of wild cat; enlarge the pictures to see why:

I would love it if readers would send me photos of their cats in fruit hats:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I retweeted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a funny political clip:

Buffins wins!

56 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “I would love it if readers would send me photos of their cats in fruit hats:”

    And are you buying the band-aids?

    L

    1. Gonna pass on the Pineapple Cat Hat challenged, so, also a “no” and for same reason.

    2. Though I think one of my boys would tolerate a fruit hat (Senior pantera negro del porche, the no-longer feral abandoned by neighbors), I will not subject him to the indignity. He has come too far.

      My indoor boy (14 next labour day, feral when I picked him up at 4 months or so old) would practice plastic surgery on my if I tried. He is still fast and prcise.

  2. Not a lawyer, but am a former local school board member (1988-96). In Virginia, schools are guided by the Supreme Court Case “Tinker vs Des Moines schools” in which a 7-2 majority found that students must be allowed to wear armbands that protested the Viet Nam War as a part of free speech rights as long as the wearing of such expression did not cause immediate interference with the education process. The political aspect of clothing was given broad acceptance as I recall my training by our school boards association attorney. A good write-up of the case is on Oyez at url https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/21
    Ah. Those were heady days for the court. Miss them terribly. A real lawyer should correct my misinterpretations…I do really miss Ken at times such as this.

  3. The NYT has reported that the shooter in Pennsylvania “donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a liberal voter turnout group, in January 2021”, and showing a financial disclosure form. Pennsylvania has a closed primary and it is possible that he registered as a Republican to cast a vote against Trump in the primary. As the shooter graduated in 2022, this would be probably the first presidential election he would participate in. Certainly there are more questions than answers.

    1. I was going to say, for this reason it is reasonable to suspect far left political motivations of the shooter. But not to conclude anything even now. It hasn’t been unusual for these sorts of assassins to have no motivation other than being mentally ill, resentful, and with a simple wish to lash out at anyone important. We just don’t know about this one yet.

      1. Another possibility is that the would-be assassin was simply suicidal and chose to exploit the nearby Trump rally in order to commit so-called ‘suicide-by-cop’ in the most dramatic way possible.

        But if that’s true, he could only have succeeded thanks to the appalling negligence of the secret service.

    2. Even my moderate Democratic friends have openly hoped for an assassination. And CNN immediately downplayed the attempt: “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally” and WaPo said this “Trump escorted away after loud noises at Pa. rally.” No idea if they were true, but were up almost immediately after.

      1. Right after an event news organizations usually try to avoid interpreting before official confirmation. Had they immediately jumped to “Assassination Attempt “ for what later turned out to be fireworks set off by an over enthusiastic supporter they could be guilty of creating news. My understanding is that all the networks changed their first headlines almost immediately.

        Of course they’d do that no matter how biased they were. Given a choice between a headline that says “bullets fired” and one that says “loud noises heard,” the public’s going to read/buy the more sensational one. Profit.

  4. Be aware that the image you posted that was claimed to be a picture of the shooter has had its accuracy challenged, and indeed does not match other (pre-event) pictures of the shooter.

    It doesn’t match the alleged close-up of the body on the roof either.

  5. Thanks for a good post, balanced.

    I hope Trump recovers fully. And good wishes go to his family and friends. Also sadness on behalf of the person who was killed and the other (2?) who are badly injured. Murder is not a solution to political/ideological differences. The senseless violence must be categorically condemned and rejected.

    The shooter is (or was) a registered republican who donated to a liberal/DEM group; he may be “just a nutter” who gained access to the Trump rally (remarkable that no SS folk were on that roof, why?). Having said that, it’s best to wait for more information to be available before speculating on motive.

    As far as rhetoric. We need to stop ginning up hatred of the “other” and soundly reject the crazed notion that either party winning will “end our democracy”. Our democracy may suffer, but it will not end. The mad jargon (a la MSM and the DEMs) around Trump is wild and crazed; Trump is not Hitler, as Joy Reid (MSNBC) alleged recently, it’s just as divisive as Tucker Carlson’s jargon around a “conspiracy to murder Trump” – both are disgusting. The other party is not an existential threat in the manner conveyed by surrogates of each.

    Recently, I’ve been curious about what is takes (what manner of mind) to be *truly* objective, to be curious about “the truth”, vs aligning oneself with “comforting” fictions. The state of mind is a function of information, but not solely of information. And how do we amplify this state of mind – one of independence, curiosity and objectivity?

    1. Hi Rosemary,
      It seems some Democratic Party insiders told Ezra Klein from the New York Times 3-4 days ago that they aren’t particularly worried about a Donald Trump re-presidency ending democracy, either. The story and subsequent histrionic X meltdown by the True Believers was covered gleefully by Fox News but before anyone rolls his eyes and discounts it, I stress the source of story is the Times, not Fox. https://www.foxnews.com/media/progressives-enraged-democrats-reportedly-privately-admit-trump-isnt-existential-threat-democracy

      The rationale is that Trump will come and go but politics is forever. If black people stop giving the Democratic Party 90% of their votes or stop turning out for elections, the Party is done for. Kamala Harris was put on the ticket to send a signal and by the god of DEI that signal she is going to send. (Joe Biden himself is admired because he worked for their guy and has called for white people to fade away, even if Candidate Harris called him a racist.) There is no path to dumping Mr Biden that leaves Ms Harris or any other black-ish/adjacent person with a shot at becoming President. This would explain Sen. Sanders’s ringing endorsement of Mr Biden to stay in the race.

      The funny thing about losses is that once their near certainty is priced into the market of expectations, the actual loss doesn’t hurt as much, as anyone who’s been in a doomed romantic relationship knows. All those 25-year-old staffers and operatives plotting their careers in politics will still be not yet thirty when President Trump leaves office. Lots of time.

      Recent polling in battleground states suggests that young people aren’t wholly buying the threat-to-democracy argument. While 61% did endorse it, only 49% of them are planning to vote.

      I didn’t include a link to this poll, so as not to send this comment to moderation for multiple links. It and some other interesting items in the conservative press come up with the google string: “Democrats Trump not threat to democracy”

      1. +1

        Thank you. Very good analysis.

        Most of “these folk” don’t really believe in the doomsday scenario – on the right OR on the left; it’s abysmal that politicians and surrogates gin up the masses with mythological existential threats and some of us (a few? more?) actually believe the fiction.

        I’m not sure Kamala Harris can send a smoke signal strong enough to save her party, and you are right in that regard as well. She won’t “stop” with the DEI messaging, she can’t help herself; this extends (in a muddled way) to Israel as well.

        I agree that between the DEI appointees/picks and Biden, Biden still stands the best chance of winning against Trump.

    2. Top democrats surely are not acting as if democracy will be on the line when Americans go to elect another president later this year. Joe Biden said on Friday during the press conference that

      he wouldn’t get out of the race unless his team “came back and said, ‘There’s no way you can win.’ Me. No one is saying that. No poll says that.” (according to Maureen Dowds NYT column, emphasis added)

      Think about this: Biden is saying that, for him to get out of the race, someone would have to convince him that the probability of his re-election is about zero!!! (And in the interview with Stephanopoulos, a week earlier, he had said he would get out of the race only when god, the almighty, told him to.) So Biden is happy with having a low probability of beating Trump, like 10, 20 or 30%. Does someone, who thinks that democracy is on the line, talk like this?

      The respected forecaster Nate Silver, in his forecast from this week, gives Biden a 30% chance of beating Trump.

      New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s latest column is about this:
      Do the Democrats Really Think Trump Is an Emergency? July 12, 2024
      https://archive.ph/06D77

      Of course, one can reply that Biden thinks he is the best qualified Democrat to go up against Trump. Then even a low probability of Biden beating Trump would not matter since other potential Democratic candidates would have even lower chances of winning than Biden. But recent polling tells us that Biden does as well against Trump as do a slew of other potential Democratic candidates. So the polls don’t confirm Biden’s claim that he is the best positioned Democrat to beat Trump. And all the other potential Democratic replacements for Biden are at least 20 years younger than Biden. And this matters to swing voters – they have repeatedly told pollsters this. So it’s reasonable to think that if the Democrats replaced Biden with another Democrat, the latter could do better than his/her current poll standing.

  6. The real scandal, in my view, is the incompetence of the Secret Service. How could they let a guy climb a roof with a rifle a mere 150 yards from Trump?

    It is obvious that Trump would be a target given the unhinged rhetoric from the Dems. Most people understand it is hyperbole but some crazy people will take it literally. Even John McWhorter has called for Trump’s assasination.

    Glen Loury:

    My friend John McWhorter is a calm, rational, reasonable guy. So I was truly shocked when he implied some weeks ago that he wished someone would assassinate Donald Trump. I thought maybe John just got carried away in the moment. But in this clip from our most recent conversation, you’ll see him apologize for making the statement without quite taking it back. When even a moderate centrist like John, who is usually so mindful of his language, feels license to talk like this about Trump, we must be in a very dark place as a nation.

    https://glennloury.substack.com/p/did-john-really-say-what-i-think

    1. I agree the rhetoric has become wildly hyperbolic and inaccurate–“end of democracy”, “existential threat”, etc. The reason politicians and their partisans use this language is to persuade the masses, so their writing and talking about Trump being Hitlerian does serve to dehumanize Trump. I think it’s fair to criticize the Democrats who’ve used this language and to a portion of the blame for this assassination attempt at their door.

      I live in Oregon, so my vote doesn’t count. I have been planning to vote for neither candidate, as I feel they’re both unfit to be president. Why do the Democrats keep trying to make me change my mind? I can’t be the only one who feels this way. Bill Ackman has come out on X saying he will vote for Trump, and we all have seen how clear headed and intelligent he is. I am interested to read the longer post where he explains his decision.

    2. RE:

      The real scandal, in my view, is the incompetence of the Secret Service. How could they let a guy climb a roof with a rifle a mere 150 yards from Trump?

      Here’s an interesting X-thread by a former law enforcement officer on how this could have happened:
      https://x.com/LtTimMcMillan/status/1812383798740324380

      Also this 2-minute interview from the BBC with a local Pennsylvanian who was at the scene of the crime, and who had seen the shooter get on the roof, and who had signaled this to the local law enforcement:
      https://x.com/UpTheVibePod/status/1812412817464525088

    3. +1

      Agree with this. That (Secret Service issue) is the real scandal.

      We are in a very dark place as a nation, when we think “murder” is a good solution to resolving problems.

    4. I am shocked that John McWhorter said this. I bought his book (“Woke Racism”) and I am now very limited in using this book’s arguments in a conversation. He basically eliminated it from the pool of sources I can use without risking having this thrown right back at me.

      1. Just because McWhorter says something stupid in one place doesnt mean that his book is worthless. Far from it! And anybody who would use that argument to trash the book is a mushbrain!

  8. It was a relief to see most prominent left-wing politicians and public figures clearly condemn the shooting. Obama was classy as usual. This was a horrible deed, that also resulted in the death of at least one innocent person (based on what we know so far).

    As a rationalist, I could do without all the conspiracy theories and the blaming of political opponents that will inevitably result. We know that many assassins are deranged losers who hold a variety of fringe beliefs.

  9. Given that Biden has spent three years flooding the US with over 10,000,000 illegal immigrants, and that the Dems in Congress have just this week defeated a Bill to prevent them from voting in Federal Elections, it seems only prudent for Republicans to be ready to contest the election.

  10. I don’t believe the Democrats can win the presidency without an enthusiastic turnout from Black voters, especially Black women. The only two candidates who can gain enthusiastic support from Black voters are Biden and Harris. I think that Harris is less likely to win the election than Biden. A perception by Black voters that Harris has been passed over would greatly diminish Black voter turnout. Maybe there is no winning strategy for the Democrats, but it is possible that Trump may do something that loses him the election, though it is hard to believe that Trump’s voters will be dissuaded from voting for him by anything. This is only to register what may be a minority opinion but it isn’t I think obvious that Biden harms the Democrats’ chances by hanging on. His giving up the candidacy might gain the Democrats votes among some demographics but would lead to their losing votes among Black voters.

  11. I agree with Jerry that is reprehensible to ascribe to the shooter partisan motivations about which we have no evidence. Both sides of partisan hacks have engaged in this behavior for years. It is disgusting.

    That said, I also find it a bit incongruous, I might even say reprehensible, to read and hear all the wishes for a speedy recovery, all the claims of “political violence is unacceptable” when speaking about a man who “threatens the very foundations of our republic,” who is “an existential threat to America,” and if one didn’t process that, who is “an existential threat to our democracy.” President Biden, who said all the above, went on to add to this latter piece that “This is not hyperbole. This is a fact.”

    We can document countless other cases of current and former national political figures wishing a speedy recovery to the “treasonous” man, the “fascist,” the “dictator in waiting,” the authoritarian who will “undermine the rule of law,” the man who, if re-elected, will cause “a full-blown crisis in our democracy.” The last one is particularly nice, Hillary, coming from the gal whose team instigated years of “Russia” paranoia in our democracy. There are many more examples without even diving into the “Hitler” morass of social media and the mainstream media. (Nice cover they had on that issue of “The New Republic.”)

    So, here are some rhetorical questions: What would each of us do to prevent the next Hitler? To prevent American democracy from falling to fascist authoritarianism? From preventing a man from destroying the very foundations of our republic? Political violence would not be acceptable? Really? You wouldn’t take a shot on Hitler if you had the chance?

    Perhaps these national politicians are being disingenuous in their well wishing and disavowal of violence. More likely, they simply don’t believe their own bullshit.

    Of course, little of this is about Trump, a man whose noxiousness and unfitness for office can be decried without resorting to Third Reich imagery. Various levels of the political, national media, and celebrity world have explicitly invoked Hitler and the Nazis when speaking about Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, even Nikki Haley. I have heard it my entire life. Why should I, or anyone else, believe any of it—even should a real Hitler arrive?

    We could do a similar litany of “Commie” language coming from the other side. Our politics needs to change. It will only do so one man and one woman at a time. I’m not hopeful.

    1. It was faith in democracy that prevented Trump’s attempt to stay in office despite losing the 2020 election. Most Republicans around him viewed his usurpation of power as illegitimate, including his vice president.

      I’m not a fan of historical analogies. But did Hitler not benefit massively from the Weimar Republic’s lack of legitimacy? Democracy itself was unpopular in Germany at that time. The military was notoriously reactionary, but many aristocrats and clergy also disdained the republic. And at the last free election, a majority of the electorate chose Nazis (iirc they had partners) or Communists, who were openly antidemocratic. In America today, the military accepts civilian control, and almost everyone has been taught in school to revere democracy. There is also no ugly history of temporary dictatorships. This makes me hopeful.

    2. I can still argue that Trump is an existential threat to our democracy by the simple fact that he tried to overthrow the last election. It’s just that our democracy worked insofar that he did not succeed. So Trump has tried to be a threat to our democracy, but he is so far not an actual threat. That is still scary enough.

    3. Doug, you ask what I think is a rhetorical question but it does deserve an answer, “[I] wouldn’t take a shot on Hitler if [I] had the chance?”
      This is confined strictly to your hypothetical of pre-1933 Germany and should not be taken as a partisan comment on current American politics. I’m a foreigner, remember.

      My answer is No. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 led to war. Assassination of political candidate A. Hitler might not have kicked into motion a similar train of diplomacy and military mobilization but you never know, and no one could know in real time (the only time there is) what instability might be wrought on the fragile German republic. And Hitler did have popular support. Absent him, the communists might have taken over which, at the time especially, would have been just about the worst outcome imaginable: the Revolution spreading to an industrialized country with ready-made soviets in the factories. Hitler had shown his hand with Mein Kampf of course and the German people were primed to blame the Jews for Versailles but so was fashionable opinion in Britain and North America disposed to feel they were overdue for a comeuppance. Gangs of thugs breaking up meetings and beating people in the streets? In many parts of the world that’s still politics today.

      After 1933 as Hitler in power started to re-arm Germany and put state effort behind persecuting Jews and other minorities the question is different. By then he had a vast secret police protecting him and organized foreign state actors would have been necessary to take him out, a gross violation of Westphalian sovereignty. The task for the world from 1933 on was to defeat Germany militarily (again) for violating the Treaty of Versailles. That is a different question from a brave band of political extremists trying to get close enough to Hitler during the 1933 election to shoot him in the head. (And here I have to ask if there were enough guns in civilian hands to pull off the job. All it takes is one, I guess.)

      1. +1 Leslie.

        Also, “who is Hitler?”, how do you identify him/her, what’s the metric, and what is real/believable in the age of fantasy, rage and AI?

        I can (without difficulty) make the case that the democrats are just as much a threat to democracy, as Trump. The truth is (as I see it) neither are, though both have marred the ideal of America.

        A friend said today… “remember that 99% of your fellow Americans are not your enemy”. No matter what the motives of the assassin were, the ugly rhetoric must be toned down and turned off.

        2. Every Republican since Dewey has been called accused of fascism or called “Hitler”. The only reason the democrats did not do so before is that Hitler had not really done any Hitler stuff prior to then.

          I suspect the difference between then and now is that the DNC has a better ability to keep mass media in line, and there is a much higher media saturation.
          Whoever comes to prominence after Trump is gone will also be Hitler. If Tevye the milk man was nominated as a republican, he would be reviled as a fascist, too.

    4. I highlight the importance your concise and effective definition of “American democracy” with an excerpt from a figure who wrote “democracy” in a favorable way 106 times in one book – four in this excerpt alone :

      “In capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority.
      Communism alone is capable of providing really complete democracy, and the more complete it is, the sooner it will become unnecessary and wither away of its own accord..”

      -Vladimir I. Lenin
      The State and the Revolution: The Marxist Doctrine of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution
      Chapter 5
      1917
      (Various translations)

      1. The trouble with bringing either Hitler or Lenin/Stalin into this discussion is that either style of totalitarian dictatorship was never experienced by anyone in America except for some immigrants. Whenever I talk with anyone about how it was back then, I observe the “I am getting sleepy” look. Experiences can’t be conveyed in a conversation with someone for whom these horrors are yet another story.

        1. The experience of hearing people use the word “democracy” — extracted from context — is no different.

          This is happening so much at all levels it might as well be categorized as an epidemic.

  12. ‘The big nooz is that’ today’s the day of the Euro final: England is playing Spain! 🙂

    At least for me, that is the most important thing. England has not won anything since winning the World Cup in 1966, and Spain hasn’t won anything since 2012. Spain won the 2008 Euros, the 2010 World Cup, and the 2012 Euros.

    1. I agree it would be quite something if England would win. I remember well the last time in 1966 when I was in Algeria visiting Roman remains, quite something, I digress, the town where I was staying went absolutely wild and I had to get a friend to translate the news as my Algerian French was lacking. Once found I was English I received more back slaps and handshakes and never since re experienced. This was before muslim influence in Algeria and of course not much communication apart from the wireless.

  13. I think it is important to remember that hyperinflation played an important role in Hitler’s rise to power. People worked and saved their entire lives only to find their savings were worthless.

    Something to keep in mind when people downplay the importance of the national debt.

    1. As far as economic events prepared the ground for Hitler’s rise to power, it was the 1929 world economic crisis (Great Depression, 1929-1939) and the associated mass unemployment that mattered, not the German hyperinflation of 1923. As late as 1928 Hitler’s party did badly in elections: 2.6% of the votes in the May 1928 federal parliamentary elections.
      This poor electoral showing was followed by winning 18.3% of the votes in the September 1930 federal parliamentary elections, and 37.3% in the July 1932 elections.

        1. The authors of the Encyclopedia Britannica article you reference are simply wrong.
          The time series of inflation rates* in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s simply does not line up with the electoral results of Hitler’s party (NSDAP) to support the claim that the 1923 hyperinflation played an important role in Hitler’s rise to power. For the first 5 years after the hyperinflation of 1923 the NSDAP has hardly any support among voters, then, at then end of the 1920s, as Germany descends into a deep economic crisis and mass unemployment (and experiences a decline in the general price level – i.e., deflation, the opposite of inflation), Hitler’s party takes off, and we are supposed to assign hyperinflation an important causal role in the rise of the NSDAP?

          *Price indices in Germany, 1870-2011 (annual series)
          https://www.gabriel-zucman.eu/files/capitalisback/T271

  16. As read on eXtwitter (edited at [..])

    “Certain media outfits are making a big deal out of the fact that last night’s shooter was a registered Republican.

    But because (like the shooter) I live in Pennsylvania I know that this is exactly meaningless. [..]

    The fact that he donated to ActBlue it’s a far more reliable signal of his political affiliations.”

    x.com/esrtweet/status/1812570916238348580?s=46

  18. I have mentioned before that I am one of the minority of folks who has never had strong feelings about Trump either way.

    One thing that has fascinated me for a long time is how people react to extreme stress or danger. Everyone who heads into combat for the first time worries about how they will react. I have seen a lot of those reactions, including a few people who went completely insane from the stress of it.
    My Dad flew F-105s over North Vietnam, which was one of the most dangerous combat jobs in modern history. It still amazes me not that he flew those planes, but that he was able to fly them, get home somehow, then get back into the plane the next day and do it again. Hundreds of times.

    Anyway, I happened to be watching Trump when he was shot. I had turned the TV on with the intention of watching the Tour de France, but had not yet switched over to the race when it happened.
    His reaction was first-rate. He got behind cover as he was taught to do, then he got angry. I was impressed.
    Being shot at is sort of like how Robin Williams described cocaine. It reveals a lot about your inner nature.

    1. While I am not in the Trump hater camp, I have never liked the man. Nevertheless, I’ll echo your sentiment that his response yesterday was impressive. Some of his security detail, not so much.

  19. I have personally heard many of my D friends and family express the desire for Trump to be shot. One of them says “I wish someone would just shoot that idiot” with passion every time he is shown on TV. I have never heard any of my R acquaintances say the same thing about Biden or other D leader. They may wish them to fail, but I’ve never heard of them wishing death to any of them. If one truly is brainwashed into believing that a trump presidency is the end of the country as we know it, then one could reasonably take any means necessary to ensure it didn’t happen. If you could go back in time and assassinate Hitler before he took over Germany, would you?

    Regarding the voting registration: one aspect of the D party in the past couple of years is to support wacko R candidates in primary elections to ensure they lose in the general election. This is well documented. If this is true about the shooter, it could be that he was following that strategy.

  20. Every time someone mentions going back in time to kill Hitler, I’m reminded of this 2002 Twilight Zone episode.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=byIkAPRnWnU

    A woman who possesses the gift of time-travel (Katherine Heigl) uses her powers to go back to when Adolf Hitler was born and kill him to prevent the future dictator’s notorious reign from happening.

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