Monday: Hili dialogue

July 15, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the new work week: it’s Monday, July 15, 2024, and National Tapioca Pudding Day.  I always think of Bill Cosby when I see this (I do like tapioca, but rarely eat it):

Tamar Hayardeni תמר הירדני, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Global Hug Your Kids Day, Gummi Worm Day, Orange Chicken Day, I Love Horses Day, National Respect Canada Day (like Rodney Dangerfield, Canada don’t get no respect), Elderly Men Day in Kiribati, and Statehood Day in Ukraine.  There’s a two-pound gummy worm you can get on Amazon for $27:

 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 15 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*We have more information on the guy who tried to kill Trump:

Former President Donald J. Trump vowed to remain “defiant in the face of wickedness” on Sunday as authorities discovered materials to build two explosive devices in a car belonging to a would-be assassin who shot at Mr. Trump at a Saturday rally, further roiling the 2024 presidential election.

President Biden was scheduled to make remarks to the nation at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time Sunday afternoon.

Federal law enforcement officials were working feverishly to understand how Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pa., was able to get within firing range of the presumptive Republican nominee, injuring Mr. Trump, killing one member of the audience and critically wounding two others. The spectator who was killed was Corey Comperatore, said Gov. Josh Shapiro. He was 50, according to a post on Facebook by Mr. Comperatore’s sister.

Law enforcement officials found explosive materials in Mr. Crooks’s car and believe they may have found more at his residence, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation. An AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle found next to Mr. Crooks’s body was purchased by a family member, possibly his father, according to an official briefed on the investigation.

Authorities have given no indication that they have a motive for the shooting. Early on Sunday morning, law enforcement officers closed down all roads leading toward the home of the suspect’s family in Bethel Park, about an hour’s drive from the site of the rally.

Mr. Crooks was killed by a Secret Service sniper, according to a spokesman for the agency, just before Mr. Trump was rushed off the stage with blood on his face and his fist raised in defiance. He later said on social media that a bullet had pierced his right ear. He was able to walk off his plane unaided when it landed in New Jersey hours later.

. . . The bureau confirmed that a second “suspicious device” was found during a search of the gunman’s house, in addition to the one found in his car. It was “rendered safe by bomb technicians” and is being evaluated by F.B.I. technicians at a laboratory in Quantico, Va., officials said.

From the Wall Street Journal:

President Biden said there is “no place in America for this sort of violence. It’s sick.” The two men spoke by phone and Biden will be delivering remarks at 1:30 p.m. ET today.

I find this attempted shooting reprehensible, and had I been (the nonexistent) god I would have stopped it.  But of course it also would seem to boost support for Trump in the form of a “sympathy vote”, and I sure don’t want this man as our next President.

*Speaking of the beneficial effects of this incident on the Trump campaign, the WaPo runs them down:

A shooting at former president Donald Trump’s campaign rally Saturday evening — which is being investigated as an assassination attempt — upended the already dark and tumultuous race for the White House.

Trump’s campaign said he still plans to attend the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled to begin in Milwaukee on Monday. But the shooting is sure to shift the messaging and tenor — not to mention the security — of the massive gathering where the former president is expected to announce his running mate and try to unify his party and the nation behind his vision of grievance and retribution.

. . . Trump is often most comfortable — and most effective — when playing both martyr and victim, and Saturday’s shooting naturally thrusts him back into that role. Trump immediately put out a statement thanking the Secret Service and law enforcement, expressing his condolences to the other victims and offering a dramatic recounting of the moment.

. . . Several images of the moment — including one with a blood-streaked Trump in the shadow of an American flag — are already ricocheting around social media, all but certain to prove iconic. Several Republican lawmakers simply posted the photos without any words.

. . .The images of Trump in the immediate aftermath of the shooting are likely to become iconic, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.

“There’s something in the American spirit that likes seeing fortitude and courage under pressure and the fact that Trump held his fist up high will become a new symbol,” Brinkley said. “By surviving an attempted assassination, you become a martyr, because you get a groundswell of public sympathy.”

. . . Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist and prominent Trump critic, agreed.

“The political consequences of this assassination attempt will be immense, and they will benefit Donald Trump, who just responded to being shot in the exact same way that Teddy Roosevelt did,” Schmidt wrote on social media.

But then there are morons who try to blame the Democrats or the media, like Representative Mike Collins (R) of Georgia, who wrote on social media, ““Joe Biden sent the orders.” That’s shameful.

*The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) is notorious for employing members of Hamas, and for its schools in Gaza teaching hatred of Jews.  Because of this, many countries pulled their funding from UNRWA, but slowly the funding has resumed, due largely to an anti-Israel campaign  bythe organization and by UN itself.  They’ve denied pervasive involvement with Hamas. Now, asThe Times of Israel reports, there’s a “little list” (not so little, really, of UNRWA members with evidence they helped Hamas:

The Foreign Ministry [of Israel] has sent a letter to UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini that lists 108 employees of the UN refugee agency for Palestinians who Israel says are Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, demanding that they immediately be fired.

The letter, first reported Thursday by the German daily Bild and then also Fox News, warned that Israel has more names to come and that it will provide the information to international donors of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which serves Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

Israel has accused multiple UNRWA staffers of taking part in Hamas’s October 7 attack on the country, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage, mostly civilians. The IDF has found a Hamas data center located directly beneath UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, in addition to numerous findings indicating the use of the agency’s assets for terror purposes.

The Foreign Ministry has sent a letter to UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini that lists 108 employees of the UN refugee agency for Palestinians who Israel says are Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, demanding that they immediately be fired.

The letter, first reported Thursday by the German daily Bild and then also Fox News, warned that Israel has more names to come and that it will provide the information to international donors of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which serves Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

Israel has accused multiple UNRWA staffers of taking part in Hamas’s October 7 attack on the country, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage, mostly civilians. The IDF has found a Hamas data center located directly beneath UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, in addition to numerous findings indicating the use of the agency’s assets for terror purposes.

Ambassador Amir Weissbrod, who serves as Deputy Director General for UN and International Organisations Division at the ministry, sent the letter to Lazzarini on July 4. It includes the names, passports, and “military ID numbers” of the suspected terrorists who, it says, are “currently employed by UNRWA-Gaza.

Weissbrod called on UNRWA to “immediately terminate” the employees, as their work “poses a security risk for Israel” and “represents a breach of the principle of neutrality.”

Indeed: UNRWA shouldn’t exist at all, as it’s the only relief and works agency to help refugees from one specific country. It still regards the descendants of those who left Israel in 1948 and 1967 as “refugees”, which isn’t the case. But beyond that, the organization is simply a platform for terror and hatred and needs to be reorganized and subsumed into the other organization that takes care every other refugee in the world: The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. But the UN is defending UNRWA to the teeth, mainly because it hates Israel. And so UNRWA will continue to teach future generations of Palestinians to hate Jews, and that their highest calling in life is to become a martyr.

*Actress Shannon Doherty of “Beverly Hills 90210” television fame, died at only 53 after a long bout with cancer.

Shannen Doherty, the raven-haired actress known for playing headstrong characters in the 1990s television dramas “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Charmed,” and who had tried in recent years to shed her rebellious reputation, died on Saturday at her home in Malibu, Calif. She was 53.

The cause was cancer, her publicist, Leslie Sloane, said in an emailed statement.

Ms. Doherty learned she had breast cancer in February 2015 and had been open about her struggle with it in the years since. In the summer of 2016, she shaved her head as a group of friends stood by, and in 2017, she announced that the cancer was in remission. It returned in 2020, and in June 2023, Ms. Doherty announced that the cancer had spread to her brain. In November, she said it had spread to her bones.

But she continued to work, and started a podcast that month.

“I’m not done with living. I’m not done with loving. I’m not done with creating. I’m not done with hopefully changing things for the better,” she told People magazine. “I’m not done.”

That is very sad.  Here’s Doherty in 2008:

watchwithkristin, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

*And flamboyant exercise guru Richard Simmons also died; he was 76.

Richard Simmons, who for years was the face of home fitness through his wildly popular videos and his energetic personality, died on Saturday morning in Los Angeles. He was 76.

A representative for Mr. Simmons, Tom Estey, confirmed the death.

The Los Angeles Fire Department and the Los Angeles Police Department responded to an address linked to Mr. Simmons at 10 a.m. on Saturday. A Fire Department spokesman said that personnel at the scene determined he had died of natural causes.

At his Beverly Hills exercise studio, Slimmons, and in his videos and DVDs, Mr. Simmons exuded an enthusiastic can-do spirit to inspire people of all ages and fitness levels to get moving.

Mr. Simmons stretched and jumped in contrast to other fitness gurus of the 1980s, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, who exuded movie-star looks and charm. His approach was perhaps more noticeable, and relatable, than that of his counterparts, as he spoke directly to audiences in his aerobics videos.

One video features him clapping and singing in unison with students, as they enter his studio.

I used to watch him because he was bizarre, but he was also empathic, helped people, and many loved him (he once weighed about 270 pounds and got down to 150). Here’s a video:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn: Hili’s taking up biology:

A: What are you looking at so closely?
Hili: I’m studying photosynthesis.
In Polish:
Ja: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Hili: Badam fotosyntezę.

And Andrzej with the newish baby from the upstairs couple. Mother Paulina took the picture. He loves children!

The caption: “We are discussing growth rate.”

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

From Cat Memes:

From Ducks in Public:

From Science Memes via Cody Joe Blacklock (oil doesn’t come from dinosaurs, or at least hardly any of it):

 

From Masih, who gives a test. If you’re a male, are you uncontrollably aroused? (Her singing begins near the end of the video.)

Girl singing to her kitty; ineffably cute!:

From Malgorzata, one of UChicago’s professors.  I expect the trouble to begin again when school starts this fall:

From my feed. At least on social media, cows are the new cats:

From Pinkah; the recovery of a nearly-extinct wild felid:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb.  The first one is a real song (sound up). Matthew calls the tweet “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” which was also a real song (Fats Waller):

I presume you will get this one:

29 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “Andrzej with the newish baby ”

    Needed that – wow, what happiness!

    😃

    … also the Lynx story – I think PCC(E) posted that here a while ago!

  4. Warm, freshly made tapioca pudding is the best!

    I agree the rhetoric and blaming needs to be toned down. I can also imagine that had the victim been the other candidate the blaming would be occurring ceaselessly on all media. Biden said this on X: “Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for”. If Trump had said this of Biden, and Biden had an attempt on his life, it’s not hard to see what the story today would be. After all, Trump was blamed for the J6 riot, even though he tweeted “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue”
    If we agree that the blame game is destructive, can we also agree to stop blaming both of the sides? Or are we supposed to only blame one side for everything negative that their supporters do while seeing individuals on the other side as solo actors who are not influenced by party and media rhetoric?

  5. I don’t believe Biden sent the orders, but the Dems’ rhetoric for years has been over-the-top about Trump’s being an existential threat and how we needed to do anything to stop him. I am surprised we do not have a super-cut of violent, anti-Trump rhetoric, yet, but it will come, starting with Kathy Griffin holding up Trump’s bloody head and ending with Rep. Dan Goldman saying Trump “must be eliminated.” (This will be followed by the super-cut of people upset that Trump wasn’t actually killed.) Do we really not know the assassin’s motivation? It wasn’t to impress Jodie Foster. The only surprise here is that an attempt hadn’t happened before now, and I will be surprised if it doesn’t happen again.

    Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a good piece on her Substack called, “Trump Derangement Syndrome Draws Blood.”

    1. What can be, [ gesture upward] unburdened by what has been [ gesture downward]

      Harris has said this in speeches at least 10 times. The exact count might have been tallied by now.

      1. Gawd! I just went to “know your meme” and watched a compilation of her (Harris) repeating that strange –whatever it is — over and over, gesticulating the exact same way each time. What is going on in her head? Her facial expressions tell me that she truly believes she’s profound. Who, (if anyone) does she run this stuff by? Who is telling her she’s “awesome”? It’s really embarrassing and hard to listen to her.

        1. I always think of her as England’s King Ethelred the Unready. I realize unready in those days just meant untutored but still what an unfortunate moniker to have for that 3 a.m. phone call!

    2. Amid the partisan recriminations after the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), one accusation from Democrats and liberals stood out: it’s Sarah Palin’s fault.

      Liberals referred time and again to Palin’s political action committee web page – since taken down – that had once posted a target list of Democrats who voted in favor of health care, one that literally put crosshairs over Giffords’ district.

      https://www.politico.com/story/2011/01/liberals-blame-palin-047252

      Meanwhile:

      Pelosi: “This is not a normal election where you want to win and if you don’t, you cooperate and do the best you can for the country and hope to win the next time. This is something that is undermining our democracy. He must be stopped. He cannot be president!”

      Biden: “It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

      1. I call BS on all of you guys. Neither Biden nor Pelosi has ever advocated for violence. FFS, Pelosi’s husband had his head bashed in by a hammer-wielding rightwing nut! Don Jr. joked about it afterwards. Justice Sotomayor narrowly escaped a recent carjacking attempt. Meanwhile Trump, MAGA and other republicans have initiated and cornered the market on violent messaging. Watch and weep:
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVGkT_z8zbE
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmFkEilsl_8.
        (at the 3:43 mark, MTG said her people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 would have won on Jan. 6 because “we would have been armed”.

        1. I also remember another Republican (a woman with very short hair – forgot her name) boasting about strapping on a Glock.

          It’s all sick stuff.

        2. Add together Pelosi’s words, Bidens repeated refrains – e.g. https://x.com/JoeBiden/status/1806745000971296833 – and the onslaught of hysteria from the media, comparisons to Hitler and the refusal of so many Americans to even try and understand why Trump is popular..

          Then throw in the continual violence in the name of, erm, anti-fascism (ironic), BLM (ignoring the statistical evidence) or indeed, against Trump, which has been implicitly or even explicitly supported – e.g. Kamala Harris supported a bail fund for rioters – and is it really so surprising that someone tried to assassinate a Republican Presidential candidate?

          They lost the lawfare, they lost the debate so now they’re trying other means.

          “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”

          1. Steve Scalise shot, others at that ballgame shot at.
            Armed gunman arrested near Brett Kavanaugh’s home.
            Donald Trump shot.
            A pattern?

  6. Breaking news – Judge Cannon has dismissed the classified documents case against Trump. She’s being called ‘Justice Cannon’ by Trump.

  7. Jihadwatch.org republished my (comedic) article from my column, variously syndicated. Which made me happy. To wit: (if you missed it last week when I put it here) https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/07/kindergarten-jihad-who-plays-the-beheaded

    Like the boss here at WEIT, I don’t write that column for money. I do it to get my ideas and what I believe are good arguments out there. I write about other things than the Middle East usually, thankfully, but it is so pertinent right now and I’m knowledgeable in the subject. And public understanding is so….. terrible. If those campus twats actually KNEW what they were marching and camping about they’d be horrified.
    I got some push back: “Jihadwatch is islamophooobic!”.Jihadwatch is called Islamophobic because – like my column – it accurately describes Islam as a set of ideas which – I’ll put to you here – Westerners really have no understanding of other than “religion of peace” nonsense. 

    A central mechanism here is secular people don’t understand the central, defining, all encompassing role *religion* actually plays in the Islamosphere, in every aspect of personal and social life there. Even the Arabic language which I speak (badly I’ll admit).God and religion – with all of Islam’s actual anti-semitism written into the Koran – is EVERY-WHERE in Islamic life and the Arab sphere in a totalitarian manner we secular countries can’t comprehend. Hell, I only understood how VERY deep this goes after language and travel there.

    Enjoy the chuckles of my article – hard to write comedy about Gaza – hehehe – and stay to look at jihadwatch. You won’t see such coverage in the woke MSM.
    D.A.
    NYC

  8. One of the pro-2nd amendment arguments is that guns are the peoples protection against tyranny. Is assassination the way that would work? One problem with this way of thinking is that not everyone agrees on who is a tyrant, so it would lead to attempted assassinations of every candidate.

    1. The answer to your question is No. The Colonists who rose in armed rebellion against Britain’s tyranny did not try to assassinate King George or his colonial governors even though he was the author of the tyranny. (Quite literally. He put his signature to the Royal Proclamation of 1763.) The other point is that tyranny by definition can be exerted only by office holders wielding executive power. Candidates for office have no such power and should not be assassinated in the name of fighting tyranny. Rationally, assassination of opposition candidates would be a way to promote tyranny, exploiting the state’s monopoly on lethal weapons. (I have said elsewhere that I would not have tried to assassinate Hitler before he achieved power.)

      As a practical matter, the modern state has so much executive depth that decapitation by a lone wolf or a small cabal is unlikely to change policy except to increase repression so is counter-productive. Armed resistance is more profitably directed in an organized manner like a rebellion against the tyrannical state itself seeking its military defeat, as various decolonization and independence movements have achieved around the world, for better or, mostly, for worse. For that to work, you need the leader to survive to negotiate the peace treaty or sign the articles of surrender with sufficient authority that his followers will lay down their arms and desist from free-lance violence.

      So no, having guns as a means to fight tyranny does not rationally imply assassination. The risk of irrational assassination (as well as random murder) can be brought as an argument in favour of gun control, sure. But that’s another discussion.

    2. No, No, No.
      Nobody is seriously talking about anything like that.

      Here is a better illustration. Lets say an actual tyrant gains power, and suspends civil liberties.
      He or she might start putting up checkpoints all over the place, and even demand people turn in contraband. The contraband could be anything. Guns, gas powered chainsaws, forbidden books. Jews in the annex. It does not matter.
      So they start going door to door, probably with the threat of force. Sometimes, they will knock down the door in the middle of the night. There will be confusion, mistakes will be made, and some percentage of the raids will end with the homeowner or one of the government representatives getting shot.

      So one needs to explore the logistics of such an operation. Someone will be tasked with kicking in all those doors. Who? The Police? 700K officers in the US kicking down 130M doors, behind 50M of which are armed citizens. The local cops are unlikely to show up, because they live there and their kids attend the local schools. the percentage of incidents that escalate to violence can be pretty low, and the numbers still unsustainable.
      Solzhenitsyn explored this topic at length.

      Think defensive rather than offensive action.

      1. Definitely with the threat of force, Max. Every action the state takes is backed up by the threat of force. The question is how much force do the governed consent the state to use against them, and who blinks if that threshold is exceeded.

        1. I should have written that I find the likelihood of anything like that happening vanishingly small, because of the logistics I mentioned. Even if those in power had the desire to do that sort of stuff, I think we would notice them gathering the resources and personnel to act on it.

          The circumstances that might lead to my using a firearm for self defense are, in order of perceived likelihood:
          Angry wild animals
          Poachers on our land
          Home invaders/ armed robbers
          Then, there are a lot of blank lines, followed by
          Civil unrest
          Tyranny would be much further down the list than that. Even then, I cannot imagine what circumstances could lead to my leaving my land or community to seek out conflict.

          This spring, my Dad had such an incident. He woke up in the middle of the night with a large bear trying to break in the outside door to his bedroom. We suspect it was going for the dog dish by the bed.
          He fired above the bear first, to no effect, then he shot it center mass, and it fled.

  9. I’ve seen at least once the media reporting that “Trump says” he was hit in the ear by a bullet. Would they also say that “Trump says” that there was blood on his cheek? What does it take for the media to simply say that Trump was hit in the ear and that there was blood on his cheek? (It appears so far that no one has said “Trump said” that he pumped his fist in the air and repeatedly shouted “Fight!”) One hears speculation that the shooter was miffed at Trump because he wasn’t conservative enough. It seems speculators are no less obligated to voice the possibility that Trump is too conservative or not liberal enough.

  11. Jack Black’s bandmate made a questionable comment Sunday after the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
    Kyle Gass, who plays in “Tenacious D,” told Black his birthday wish was for a future assassin to not miss Trump.
    “Make a wish,” Black said after singing happy birthday.
    “Don’t miss Trump next time,” Gass replied.

    https://www.nbcmontana.com/news/nation-world/dont-miss-trump-next-time-jack-blacks-bandmate-jokes-about-assassination-attempt-jack-blacks-bandmate-made-a-questionable-comment-sunday-after-the-assassination-attempt-against-former-president-donald-trump-kyle-gass-who-plays-in-tenacious-d-told

    I’m glad to see liberals are so against violence, and especially gun violence.

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