Wednesday: Hili dialogue

July 24, 2024 • 6:45 am

Morning has broken. . .  A view from my lab three minutes ago, showing a gargoyle watching the Sun Tree:

Welcome to a Hump Day (ཧམ་པ་ཉིན་མོ།  in Tibetan): Wednesday, July 24, 2024, and National Tequila Day. Although I prefer mezcal, which has a more vegetal flavor, I do like a good tequila. Here’s a fascinating ten-minute video of how it’s made from agave plants:

It’s also Amelia Earhart Day (she was born on this day in 1897), and, in Utah, Pioneer Day.

World Wide Photos, Public domain

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 24 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Well, it’s been cogently explained to me why the Secret Service director should resign in the wake of the Trump assassination attempt, and I accept that.  And, indeed, she resigned yesterday.  responsibility,” according to a copy of a letter sent to agency staff and obtained by The Washington Post.

“In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your Director,” wrote Cheatle, who has been under intense pressure to resign from lawmakers of both parties.

“This incident does not define us,” Cheatle told staff. “I do not want my calls for resignation to be a distraction from the great work each and every one of you do towards our vital mission.”

The attack, in which a gunman opened fire with an AR-15 rifle from an apparently unsecured roof at a Trump presidential campaign rally July 13, was the first against a U.S. leader on the elite protective agency’s watch in more than 40 years. Cheatle, a veteran Secret Service agent, had called the security failure unacceptable and acknowledged that “the buck stops with me.”

She initially had said she would not resign and would cooperate with investigations into the shooting.

But during a House Oversight Committee hearing Monday, Cheatle faced withering scorn from Republicans and Democrats alike. Lawmakers took turns criticizing her for declining to answer detailed questions about what went wrong at the Trump rally.

*The Jerusalem Post reports that Hamas is firing rockets towards Israel from within a refugee camp, which must surely be a humanitarian zone. One rocket misfired and struck a local school:

In Maghazi in central Gaza, Hamas launched several projectiles towards Israel, but the rockets did not cross into Israeli territory, with a misfired rocket slamming into a school in the area of Nuseirat, the IDF said Tuesday.

Both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad have misfired rockets, with projectiles landing within the Gaza Strip.

The IDF has previously stated that around one-fifth of the rockets fired by terror groups land in Gaza, often killing Gazan civilians.

Note that firing rockets at Israeli territory and not deliberately aimed at military targets is a war crime. But it’s worse when rockets are fired from within refugee camps, as that gives Israel the right to target the camp as a military target (they didn’t this time), killing Gazan civilians.  In the meantime, Hezbollah continues to commit more war crimes, but of course nobody calls them out for it:

In the North, the IDF said that Hezbollah attacked the Galilee, launching multiple rounds of rockets, including around 10 at a time, as well as a series of drones.

Most of the rockets or drones fired toward Kiryat Shmona and Meron were shot down, but some got through, and others exploded, causing significant fires for the first time in at least several days.

In recent months, there has been an increase in the number of fires resulting from rockets or explosions from shot-down rockets.

*It’s clear now that Kamala Harris is going to be the Democratic nominee for President, and that the open convention that I and others favored won’t take place. Perhaps there wasn’t time, but more decisive is the withdrawal from candidacy of people like Gretchen Whitmer (my favorite), the immediate endorsement of Harris by people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and the announcement that Harris already has enough delegates to ensure her nomination at the Democratic convention:

Delegates to the Democratic National Convention support the party moving forward swiftly to nominate Kamala Harris as their presidential candidate, rather than going through a prolonged and potentially divisive debate, according to interviews conducted by The New York Times.

Times reporters spoke with more than 250 delegates across the country this week, before Ms. Harris announced that she had collected enough delegate pledges to become her party’s presumptive nominee. The conversations showed that the party loyalists whose votes will determine the nomination overwhelmingly described the vice president as the strongest candidate the party has to run against former President Donald J. Trump.

“Kamala Harris puts us in a much better position to be able to compete, up and down the line, and makes this a much more winnable race,” said John Hendrick, a delegate from Leon County, Fla.

As Ms. Harris turns her attention to selecting a running mate, the interviews show no clear consensus among this group of party insiders over whom she should pick: 16 percent of respondents said it should be Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, and 11 percent said Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona. About 28 percent of respondents said they did not know whom the selection should be, or they did not respond to the question.

As for Harris’s own VP choice, it’s very much in the air. Here are the results of the poll of delegates; note the high number of undecideds:

As for Five Thirty Eight, most of the polls pitting Harris against Trump show Trump leading, but it’s such early days that the site’s overall probabilistic prediction shows this:

*According to the WSJ, now that Biden is gone, Democrats have begun attacking Trump because of his age.  Of course, they didn’t do that to Biden until after he muffed the debate.

In a twist, President Biden’s exit from the race now makes Donald Trump the oldest man ever to win his party’s nomination.

The irony isn’t lost on Democrats, who after aggressively playing down concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity are seeking to flip the script on their GOP opponent.

“The American people are rightly concerned that the Republican Party has nominated Donald Trump, a 78-year-old convicted criminal,” said James Singer, a spokesman for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

Age has been heavy on the minds of voters in a race that was, until Sunday, between the two oldest presidential candidates in history—shattering the record they set when they ran against each other four years ago. Biden said he will address the nation Wednesday night from the Oval Office, writing on X that he will speak on “what lies ahead and how I will finish the job for the American people.”

Biden, 81, was to be the oldest presidential candidate if he was on the ballot this year. But with his withdrawal, 78-year old Trump is now positioned to top the record set by Biden in 2020, when he won the Democratic nomination at the age of 77.

“Donald Trump is now officially the oldest presidential nominee of a major political party in American history. Meanwhile. Vice President Harris is doing her thing,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), 53, wrote on X.

With the rise of Harris, 59, the expected Democratic nominee, and Sen. JD Vance, 39, recently selected as Trump’s running mate, the spotlight has now shifted to Trump’s age as many voters have yearned for alternatives to gerontocracy in Washington.

I’m not worried about age, but about competence and sanity. Biden was looking like he could barely control himself, much less the country. As for Trump, I find him incompetent because he’s deranged. He’s actually pretty vigorous for an old dude, but in my view he’s got a serious case of narcissistic personality disorder.

*I bet if you’re American you’ve seen the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile cruising down the highway: a hot-dog-shaped car advertising, well, wieners.  I’ve seen them several times (there are a couple), and once I saw one in a parking lot. Naturally I stopped to have a look-see, and wound up with a wiener-shaped whistle.  First, note that Wikipedia of course has an entry giving all the details and all the models of the Wienermobile.  From the AP, we learn that one of them flipped over on Monday.

First, here’s a regular-sized wienermobile.

TheDoctorWho, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The accident was right outside Chicago!

One of Oscar Mayer’s hot dog-shaped Wienermobiles ended up flipped onto its side after crashing on a suburban Chicago highway, police said.

The Wienermobile hit a car Monday morning along Interstate 294 and its driver lost control and overcorrected, causing it to roll onto its side near the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook, Illinois State Police said.

No injuries were reported after the crash, which prompted the closure of the right lane of northbound I-294 for more than an hour, officials said.

A spokesperson for the Oscar Mayer brand, which has several Wienermobiles, told the Chicago Sun-Times it’s “grateful that everybody involved is safe and there were no injuries.”

Video from the crash scene shows that the yellow and orange Wienermobile was later hauled away on a flatbed truck with apparent damage visible on part of the vehicle’s hot dog shape.

Here’s a news video of the crash. Actually, this was a micro-Wienermobile, as the mini-frank was mounted atop a mini Cooper:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a biological impulse she doesn’t understand.

Hili: I think I will jump up on it only I don’t know what for.
A: You will be able to look down at the place you are now in.
In Polish
Hili: Chyba tam wskoczę, tylko jeszcze nie wiem po co.
Ja: Będziesz mogła spojrzeć z góry na miejsce, na którym jesteś teraz.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Science Humor; this is a good one:

From Strange, Silly, or Stupid Signs. I wonder where this bathroom is, but I bet people have trouble going!:

From Masih, more repression of women who don’t want to wear hijabs. Note that several of these people address Masih direction, which is why Iran is trying to kill her.

From Andrew Doyle, aka Titania McGrath. His article is here:

From my feed, glowing fish (they’re “flashlight fish“, harboring an organ that contains bioluminescent bacteria).

From Simon. We can’t have Jews as VPs, especially balding gay ones!

From Malcolm, a good question:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

Two tweets from Herr Doktor Professor Cobb: This first one must surely be an insert-food door or remove-waste door:

I bet these are like Indohyus:

28 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Right now the Democratic Party seems particularly Soviet: Biden gets a cold; he steps down from the race; the Politburo picks a successor; in three weeks the Party Congress will all applaud the choice.

    If only there were some sort of scheduled event coming up, where party representatives could choose a new candidate.

        1. What why? France organised an election in a month and the DNC can’t democratically vote in a leader in that same time frame. It reeks of incompetence if that is true.

          They must believe American people are very gullible if they think there isn’t enough time to do so.

        2. Elections in Canada often have only a few weeks.

          It’s because the US has regularly scheduled ones that the very long campaign season has developed.

    2. Dr B: we disagree about many things on WEIT, but your entry this morning brought a grin …. Even a broad smile….to my face…thanks!

    3. Indeed, a wise council of gnostic “elder statesman” deciders has made the best decisions.

      The Russian word for council is :

      sovet, or soviet

      (I am not sharp with Russian grammar).

    4. It used to be said that “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line,” but I think that script has now been flipped.

      A few weeks of chaos and uncertainty would not be the worst thing for the Dems. Remember Will Rogers’s quip: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”

    5. I wonder if Biden made a deal with the party leaders: “I’ll step down, if you agree to support my chosen successor.”

    6. Biden didn’t just “get a cold” (or Covid), he had a disastrous debate performance which proved to pretty much everyone that he was unelectable.
      He named his choice as a successor.
      Plenty of people agree with that choice.

  2. Love the picture of sunrise from your lab window. I always paused for a moment when the winter sun was visible through my office window as it rose above the 16-foot transonic wind tunnel. No gargoyles in the world of 20th century NASA architecture. But it was just a peaceful moment as I started the day.

  3. Aufheben der Democrats

    Fret not about candidates, for this is the stage where the State withers away of it’s own accord — there will be no position for anyone to hold.

    #Ouroboros

  4. It’s a shame that Laura Kelly, in her second term as governor of Kansas, is not in the Democratic VP discussion. She’s been elected twice in a very red state that has a very conservative GOP legislature. She is a pragmatic centrist with a history of being able to work on both sides of the aisle and has a strong record regarding reproductive rights, healthcare, and equitable taxation. Under her guidance, Kansas went from a disastrous GOP-led trickle-down economics plan to a $4.5B surplus.

    1. I hadn’t heard of her and checked out her Wikipedia page. I would vote for her. I would also like to vote for a president like her, but that’s not going to happen.

    2. Under her guidance, Kansas went from a disastrous GOP-led trickle-down economics plan to a $4.5B surplus.

      It is a shame that for those of us who believe the national debt is a serious problem there is no one we can vote for that offers any hope.

  5. I was hoping to see the flipped Chicago-area wiener mobile dragged through the garden, but there was only cement. Does that break any local laws?

  6. I read about the crash of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Oh, the humanity!

    Every time I read of another rocket being launched from Gaza into Israel, I am reminded that Israel still has more to do in this war. The international community may hate the State of Israel, but so long as Hamas continues to fire rockets, Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself.

    Today both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Joe Biden will give speeches—on very different topics, of course:

    I am hoping that Netanyahu will thank the U.S. for its support and will remind the U.S. that the attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah on Israel are attacks by Iran. I am concerned about Netanyahu’s security and about whether his audience in Congress will be respectful. I also hope that his visit isn’t ruined by protestors.

    Biden’s speech scheduled for 8:00 PM Eastern time. I’m expecting him to thank the American people for entrusting him with the Presidency, and I expect to hear a bit about how he plans to end his term. I don’t think that this will be his goodbye speech. That will come later. I’m looking forward to watching.

    1. I hope he doesn’t say goodbye yet. He’s still President until January.

  7. I remember seeing a men’s room very much like that one, in a very large mall in central or northern England. Might have been the one in Gateshead. Only I remember the women looking more enthusiastic… but maybe my memory has shifted over the last 11 years.

    I wanted to take a picture like that one, only there were other people using the facilities and I thought doing that might be frowned upon.

  8. “The irony isn’t lost on Democrats, who after aggressively playing down concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity are seeking to flip the script on their GOP opponent.”

    From reading this I perceive that the irony IS lost on Democrats. (Trump is four years younger, vigorous for his age, and seemingly experiences little of Biden’s current state of cognition.) I didn’t see anything in this reporting to indicate that the irony is not lost on Democrats. Have some Democrats said elsewhere, “The irony isn’t lost on us” (but we’re going to take this tack anyway)? Maybe I’m struggling to rub two neurons together this morning.

  9. The mini Wienermobile has been living at a driving range a few blocks from my house in Madison, WI. for at least a year. Despite the fact that Oscar Meyer’s owner, Kraft, closed the local processing OM plant a few years ago, we still see those beautiful rolling dogs driving all over town.

  10. Re the flashlight fish, it is a Photoblepharon. There are two species that I don’t know how to tell apart.

    1. I had never heard of these fish before the post today. Thanks for more information.

  12. I know, eh?! It’s like being with your parents in the car and noticing that the odometer says 39993 and being on tenterhooks that the drive home will be long enough to see all those 9s flip over to 40000. ‘Cos if it doesn’t get there, your Dad will get to see it flip when he drives to work next morning and you’ll miss it. Like sleeping through a solar eclipse.

  13. So Merrium-Wokster has definitely answered “What is a woman.” But they go further:

    man– an individual human;
    especially : an adult male human

    woman – an adult female person;
    a woman belonging to a particular category (as by birth, residence, membership, or occupation.)

    So human/individual vs person/category…?

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