Thursday: Hili dialogue

November 14, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, November 14, 2024, and National Pickle Day.  And if you go to Harold’s New York Deli in Edison, NJ, home of the biggest corned beef and pastrami sandwiches in America, you’ll find a free pickle bar to accompany your largesse:

It’s also Guinness World Records Day, National Spicy Guacamole Day, International Girls Day, World Diabetes Day, and National American Teddy Bear Day.  And in honor of the last day, here once again is my faithful teddy desnudo, who’s been with me since the day I was born. Do  you remember his name? (Put it below in the comments. First correct answer will get my warm congratulations.)  The bear has had a hard life, which shows in the scars of his eighth decade. Eyes replaced, hair gone, nose job, and head sewn back on:

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

Da Nooz:

Breaking news (since yesterday afternoon):  Well, everything has gone to hell.  The Republicans seem to have won the House (they now control both chambers and all three branches of government), and as for Trump’s cabinet, well, what can I say? Here it is so far, and so far it’s scary.  But wait! There are many open slots for loons!

But of these, the scariest to me are Hegsetgh and Gaetz, who will have enormous power. As Oliver Wiseman said of Gaetz in today’s morning take at the Free Press:

But the third announcement yesterday was the real jaw-dropper: Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, Trump announced, would be his pick for attorney general. The news was met with shock across Washington.

The Gaetz pick felt like the cabinet-appointment equivalent of shitposting. The man Trump wants to be the federal government’s top attorney practiced law for a grand total of two years before becoming a legislator. He was the subject of a long-running House ethics investigation relating to allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use—until he resigned from Congress shortly after Trump’s announcement. And if confirmed—a pretty big if—he would be running the department that recently investigated him for sex trafficking and obstruction of justice.

We spoke to several senior conservative legal scholars and former White House officials about his appointment, and let’s just say they weren’t thrilled.

“I’m already hearing from a wide number of solid and capable conservatives great consternation,” said one top conservative legal figure.

“My phone is blowing up,” said a leading Republican lawyer. “I can’t believe the Senate would confirm him.”

“Gaetz will have to plead the Fifth at his confirmation, which would be a first,” said a veteran Republican strategist.

So what’s the takeaway on Gaetz?

The left-wing critique is that he’s crazy and this will be a disaster. The conservative critique, expressed by several we spoke to, is that this is needless drama, especially given the other qualified names that had been floated.

Some wonder if Trump is playing 4D chess—that he knows Gaetz won’t get confirmed and ultimately has someone else in mind. If Republican senators die on this hill, then he can get the rest of his picks through. Maybe. But that all sounds a little too premeditated.

What does Gaetz represent? Full-bore MAGA. The 42-year-old congressional troublemaker would be unimaginable in a previous iteration of the GOP: fully on board both stylistically and ideologically, and unquestioningly loyal. Which won’t reassure those who worry Trump wants an attorney general to do his bidding.

Gaetz! My kishkes! And as the NYT reports, “House Ethics Panel was set to vote to release report critical of Matt Gaetz.” The report, dealing with allegations of illicit drug use and sexual misconduct, was said to be highly critical. It’s not certain that we’ll even see the report, and since Gaetz has left Congress to become America’s most powerful lawman, the Ethics Panel no longer has jurisdiction over him.

*Well, Elon Musk got himself a job in the gub’mint, along with another super-rich entrepreneur, Vivak Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump in fact created a new department for them.

Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead what he called the Department of Government Efficiency. It will be, he said, “the Manhattan Project” of this era, driving “drastic change” throughout the government with major cuts and new efficiencies in bloated agencies in the federal bureaucracy by July 4, 2026.

“A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence,” Mr. Trump wrote in a statement. “I am confident they will succeed!”

The statement left unanswered all kinds of major questions about an initiative that is uncertain in seriousness but potentially vast in scope. For starters, the president-elect did not address the fact that no such department exists. And he did not elaborate on whether his two rich supporters would hire a staff for the new department, which he said is aimed in part at reducing the federal work force.

Mr. Musk, who became one of Mr. Trump’s biggest campaign contributors, said before the election that he would help the president-elect cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. But he did not explain in any detail how that would be accomplished or what parts of the government would be slashed.

“This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” Mr. Musk said in the statement.

The statement by Mr. Trump also did not address how Mr. Musk in particular would handle this task, without creating conflicts of interest, given that SpaceX has secured more than $10 billion worth of federal contracts over the last decade.

Musk must be so busy that he doesn’t really have time for this job and SpaceX, Tesla, and his other initiatives as well. But having gained huge financial power, the obvious next step is political power. I don’t know Musk, though when I’ve seen interviews with him he seems to be “on the spectrum,” but I really have no idea what is motivating him to do this. To turn the government into a more profitable entity. Well, good luck to him, and I hope a lot of people don’t get booted out of their jobs (that, in fact, is likely).

Other news from the Free Press‘s morning bulletin:

  • Trump has selected South Dakota governor Kristi Noem to serve as his next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. If confirmed, the governor, who does not live in a border state, and is perhaps best known for shooting a dog, will head the sprawling agency that oversees U.S. Customs and Border Protection, FEMA, ICE, and the Secret Service. This may be the most random cabinet pick of the century, or at least a close second to Joe Biden’s appointing the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to the post of transportation secretary. Other administration picks announced Tuesday include former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as U.S. ambassador to Israel and New York congressman Lee Zeldin to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Semafor reports that Trump’s team is eyeing a Senate-confirmed job for RFK Jr.

*The Booker Prize winner was announced yesterday evening in the UK, and it wasn’t the book I expected and that the bookies had deemed the one with the best odds. That was  James, by Percival Everett, a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the slave, and a book with great reviews.

Nope, the winner this year was Orbital by Samantha Harvey, described by Booker this way:

Harvey’s novel takes place over a single day in the life of six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. Compact yet beautifully expansive, Orbital invites us to observe Earth’s splendour, whilst reflecting on the individual and collective value of every human life.

See more from Booker here, and you can order the book on Amazon here (only $15.30 for paperback).

Here is the announcement which I watched live. Harvey appears to have not been expecting to win at all.

*Here are the latest House of Representatives totals by party. The GOP needs two more seats to control the chamber; the Democrats need  eleven. UPDATE: The GOP now has 218 seats and controls the House (and, of course, the Senate):

Here are the contested races, and it looks as if Republicans have the advantage (they’re leading in six of eight races, but two narrowly).

CBS News characterizes control of the House as lean Republican, with the party now just three seats shy of the 218 needed to win the majority. [JAC note that different sites give slightly different projections].

Most of the undecided House races are in California, where state law requires mail ballots to be postmarked by Election Day and received by county elections offices up to seven days after the election, so many are still being counted.

*In his new op-ed piece in the NYT, “A worldwide ‘Jew Hunt’“, Bret Stephens shows that “antizionism” is simply a euphemism for Jew Hatred (aka antisemitism) that’s sweeping Europe and campuses in the US (h/t Peggy) The “Jew Hunt” refers to the assault on Jewish soccer fans by Muslim thugs in Amsterdam, but it’s now worldwide. Stephens:

Jew hunt: Grotesque as the phrase is, it can no longer surprise.

It is what the graffiti on a wall in an Oslo metro station promises: “Hitler started it. We finis[h]ed it.”

It is a wave of antisemitic hate crimes in Chicago, including “anti-Semitic flyers with rat-poison like pellets” found in Lincoln Park in April, a Jewish man shot while walking to his synagogue in West Rogers Park in October and two Jewish students at DePaul University assaulted by masked men last Wednesday.

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It is a long succession of assaults — sometimes with sucker punches, other times with cars, more recently with an attempted child abduction — against Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn.

It is the alleged gang rape near Paris in June of a 12-year-old Jewish girl by teenage boys “uttering death threats and antisemitic remarks,” according to a report from Agence France-Presse.

It is the arson attack on Monday on an Amsterdam tram — a follow-up to last week’s mayhem — with rioters in black yelling “Kanker Joden” — “cancer Jews.”

It is what a Hamas terrorist was doing on Oct. 7, 2023: “Dad, I’m calling you from the phone of a Jew. I just killed her and her husband, with my own hands I killed 10.”

Notice what these attackers aren’t saying. They aren’t expressing themselves in the faddish language of anti-Zionism. They aren’t denouncing Israeli policy or speaking up for Palestinian rights. They aren’t trying to make careful distinctions between Jews and Israelis. They are, like generations of pogromists before them, simply out to get the Jews — a reminder, if one was needed, of the truth often attributed to Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Which makes it even more remarkable how strenuously some people initially tried to obscure the nature of the Amsterdam pogrom. The media are rarely shy about calling out certain kinds of hate crimes as racist. Yet for days the word “antisemitic” was either put inside quotation marks or attributed to Dutch officials when talking about the violence. The identity of the attackers has been treated as a mystery, or a secret, beyond delicate references to people with “a migration background,” in the words of Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof.

“A migration background”?  They don’t even have the reportorial guts to say that they are Muslims descended from immigrant Muslims, something important in understanding this story.  And this is a good point:

Nor does it add any light to provide the “context” of the war in Gaza as a way of trying to understand what happened in Amsterdam. No decent person would explain anti-Asian attacks in the United States by observing that attackers might be angry about, say, China’s human-rights abuses or its biosafety standards.

Yet so many supposedly decent people are quick to try to account for the evil that is done to Jews through reference to the evil (as they see it) that Jews do to others. As Leon Wieseltier pointed out years ago, this type of reasoning is not an explanation for antisemitism. It’s the essence of antisemitism.

Antisemitism in Europe has now reached the point where the future of many of its Jewish communities is seriously in doubt. I’m not sure most Europeans understand what a civilizational catastrophe this represents — albeit less for Europe’s Jews, most of whom will find other places to go and thrive, than for Europe itself. The fate of societies that become “Judenfrei” — free of Jews — has not, historically, been a happy one.

Stephens winds up the piece reporting that America may be in danger of becoming this way too.  I hope not, but I can’t rule it out completely. Jew-dissing or Jew hating is simply the Zeitgeist right now, and what will make it go away?

*River Page reports for the Free Press on what he (and others) call “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS). Democrat though I be, it seems to me that TDS is real (of course, the GOP has HDS too, but I worry about my own side). I’m wondering if those people who said they would move were Trump elected will now pull up stakes.  Check out the links below to verify what Page says:

Trump Derangement Syndrome subsided for a bit during the Biden years. But when I logged on to X yesterday and saw someone claiming they feared a newly elected Trump would “make rape legal,” I knew it was back.

Here’s what things are looking like the second time around:

  • Left-wing women are shaving their heads to protest Trump’s election. “This is the only thing we have left to control ourselves,” says one such activist in a TikTok.
  • People are cutting off contact with Trump-voting family members, a continuation of a trend that began in 2016. Dr. Amanda Calhoun, a Yale-affiliated psychiatrist, recently appeared on MSNBC to encourage “LGBT people” in particular to avoid visiting conservative family members during the upcoming holiday season. (Two years ago, she tweeted that her white husband had cut off many of his white friends.)
  • Feeling “unsafe,” some Democrats are buying guns and encouraging others to do the same.
  • After making much of Trump’s own election denial claims in 2020, some Democrats are speculating online that the election was stolen from Kamala. According to one conspiracy theory, voting machines were connected to Starlink—the satellite company owned by Trump backer Elon Musk. There’s no evidence for this claim, but it proves that there’s a tinfoil hat for every head. QAnon, meet BlueAnon.
  • After Trump won big with Latinos, some on TikTok have encouraged their followers to call our immigration enforcement agency and report the family members of any Trump-voting Latinos who might have entered the country illegally.

And then there’s the sex strike. As our own Kat Rosenfield reports, some women, enraged by Trump’s victory, have decided to adopt the tactics of 4B, a South Korean feminist movement in which women swear off dating, mating with, and marrying men.

Read Kat on the latest shot fired in America’s never-ending battle of the sexes: “Ladies, Stop Sex Striking for Kamala.”

It would be salubrious were the Democrats to get over their anger at the election in particular and Republicans in general ASAP, and start to confect a new strategy to actually win elections.  Many tactics of the Left only serve to alienate those in the middle who could be won over. Some of those tactics you can see in the links in Page’s piece.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej both seem to have run out of gas:

Andrzej: The ideal of a competent, politically neutral bureaucracy changed into a hell of power hungry dimwits pushing through their utopian ideas.
Hili: You’ve just noticed it?
In Polish:
Ja: Ideał kompetentnej, politycznie neutralnej biurokracji zmienił się w piekło niekompetentnych, żądnych władzy półgłówków, foresujących swoje utopijne idee.
Hili: Dopiero teraz to zauważyłeś?

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

From Cat Memes:

From Science Humor; I doubt they’d put it on YouTube!

From Jack, and this is SO true!:

From Masih: Six more Iranians–men this time–sentenced to death for apparently protesting the regime’s killing of Mahsa Amini for not wearing her headscarf properly. I don’t know how we can help them, though.

The answers, as of 1 pm yesterday, about whether I should leave Twitter (on Twitter). Linda Yaccarino is the CEO of the organization, and of course is defending it. This doesn’t bring me any closer to a final decision, though.

From Simon, who says he’s wasting too much time on Bluesky:

SCOOP: Mar-a-Lago sources say a favorite is emerging to lead Trump's USDA

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.bsky.social) 2024-11-12T21:26:49.002Z

From Malgorzata: a French official who wants to go to Amsterdam and beat up Jews. Sound up (it’s in French but there’s an English translation:

From my feed. Yep the UN is one big expensive joke:

Another from my feed. That guy lucked out!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

Two “skeets” from Dr. Cobb, who is happy as a clam on Bluesky. The first is actually bipartite, and the woman who tweeted it knows Sumerian. This is indeed about dog behavior!

May as well dive right in.

Did you know that dogs in ancient Mesopotamia also refused to drop the ball?

According to a Sumerian proverb, “The dog understands ‘Take it!’ It does not understand ‘Put it down!’”

Source: cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/34…

[image or embed]

— Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid (@moudhy.bsky.social) November 13, 2024 at 5:20 AM

— andrew phillips (@herfst.bsky.social) 2024-11-13T14:33:30.225Z

And two more connected skeets:

I don't enjoy reading papers much, but sometimes they talk about fat cheetah cubs being too full to play comfortably http://www.catsg.org/cheetah/05_library/5_3_publications/C/Caro_1995_Short_term_costs_and_corelates_of%20play_in_cheetah.pdf

— Anne Hilborn (@annewhilborn.bsky.social) 2017-06-13T18:25:04.000Z

Hmm, a fat belly didn’t stop this guy from trying to strangle his mother

[image or embed]

— Anne Hilborn (@annewhilborn.bsky.social) June 13, 2017 at 1:28 PM

 

42 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

      1. Yeah, Bryan, I thought about that, but did not want Jerry to wonder if anyone be reading early. But yes I did consider it.

        1. You know what – I raced over to edit that to “+1” but you beat me to it – I was just joking around, is all 😁!

  2. Elon Musk is not on the spectrum. He’s just an a-hole.

    That aside, does anybody else find it ironic that, to combat government waste, Tr*mp is creating a new department with two leaders?

    1. I think it is known as a non minimum phase system: sometimes to get things better, they first must get worse momentarily.
      Not that these guys considered the irony of course, but it is good theory and there are examples in real life.

      1. “non minimum phase system”

        Wow – started reading about this – this got my money’s worth on WEIT for today – never heard of that!

    2. I would not be so sure about your diagnosis. How can you say with certainty that “he’s not on the spectrum”. When I watched several interviews with him, that’s the first thing that struck me?

      Are you a psychiatrist or psychologist?

      1. Well this physician, who is in the middle of three generations on the spectrum, agrees that Musk is one of us.
        I hope (with reason) that Gwynne Shotwell will ensure that SpaceX continues to progress even though Musk is playing elsewhere.

      2. My take on this: Musk has way more traits associated with narcissism/ sociopathy than autism.
        In particular:
        – he requires constant reverence and adulation. Throwing a tantrum after one of Biden’s tweets got more attention than his, and tweaking Twitter such that his tweets get shown to everyone whether they want it or not? Normally, that would seal the narcissism diagnosis all by itself.
        – he’s prone to temper tantrums and has a reputation for callousness. Firing an entire division at Tesla because the manager contradicted him? Dumb AND cruel.
        – he has an open disdain for all rules that he hasn’t make himself – see his feuds with the SEC, the FAA and other regulatory authorities.
        – he positively thrives in chaos and improv. Definitely not a trait I would associate with autism, but common with sociopaths.
        – he lies and bullshits with as much gusto as his new master. Example, the presentation of Solar Roofs. “The houses you see around you are all solar houses. Did you notice?” – well no, because they weren’t, because the Solar Roof shingles weren’t functional at that time.
        Given that last point, I find it likely that he just wears the persona of the autistic genius as a mask.

        (If you want to see someone going through the whole psychopathy checklist as it applies to Musk, check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01LK1hxpwcY )

      3. Musk has been put on the list of people who must be despised by all good and decent people.
        I am not sure who decides which people go on the list, but complying with it is pretty strictly enforced.

        I remember watching the Colbert show some time ago, and he mentioned the name of a famous person ( I do not remember which one). The audience cheered at the name, until Colbert informed them that they were supposed to hate the person. So they obligingly booed.

  3. AFAIK, DOGE is the first federal government “department” to be conceived with its own termination date. I read July 4, 2026 (if this link comes through):

    x.com/elonmusk/status/1856502787930050927?s=46

  4. I saw something about Musk planning to introduce a leader board of wasteful government expenditure and citing a $500,000 research study into HIV in transgender monkeys, but can’t remember where.

  5. Republicans are making this mistake, too: Trump didn’t create anything. He announced what can only be an intention to ask Congress to create a new Department. Congress will have to define its powers by statute and provide funding. Trump also announced who he would like to lead it, and since it appears that his will be a Cabinet-level organization, both Musk and Ramaswamy will have to be confirmed by the Senate.

    2. “Have to be” confirmed by the Senate? Nope. It’s called recess appointments. And you’re also assuming that Congress (meaning those who have the majority) is going to stick up to him in any way. Not gonna happen.

  6. A correction, Boss: the quote about Gaetz was from today’s The Front Page, by Oliver Wiseman, not St Nellie in her TGIF, for which we must wait until tomorrow.

  8. During nomination confirmation hearing surely all will be asked to whom their highest allegiance is, Trump or the Constitution.

    If Gabbard wins confirmation, I gather that she will no longer be covertly followed by Quiet Skies federal air marshals when she flies (though possibly accompanied by them as security).

  9. And, before the morning goes too far, oy vey, Matt Gaetz has his law degree(JD) from our dear William and Mary…the Law School…not the College…but it still stings a bit.

  10. Matt Gaetz for AG. Russian asset Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence. Little Marco for Sec. State. Noem for DHS Secretary. Recess appointments to bypass congressional approval. The country elected a Joker who is going to burn down the USA. The only possible silver lining is that when the sh-t show peaks the MAGA crowd must own it.

    1. My last post this morning (da roolz), but must say that this all reminds me a bit of the fate of Bushwood in Caddyshack 2.

    2. The isolationist crowd. Who want to hand Ukraine to Putin. It will look very bad, whatever this crowd thinks.

      I’m also suspecting that Trump’s support of Israel (which is definitely good) is related to several wealthy Jewish donors.

      That explains the strange disconnect of policies supporting Israel but abandoning Ukraine.

    3. Tulsi G. suggested as anything serious has to be humor of the highest level.

      She’s silver medal bonkers, only outshined by gold medal RFK who is possibly the most dangerous American alive.

      Rubio is OK, the others predictable. Even old timey Christ clapping fraud Huckerby isn’t terrible for Israeli Ambassador. Sam Harris often says only fundy Christians can conceptualize the Islamicist mindset. And that’s a thing in that job.

      At least this time Trump has some semi-serious people. Last time they had to nab party planners, golf caddies and some lady who did Melania’s bikini wax (I’m only partly exaggerating on these examples) b/c nobody expected him to win.

      We’ll see. Gotta ditch Tulsi’s tushy and Brain Worm Kennedy though.

      D.A.
      NYC

  11. River Page is a he, not a she.

    I think Matt Gaetz is put forward so that after the Senate rejects him, he can get Ken Paxson, the Texas AG, confirmed. That would be real bad.

  12. Yes, Gaetz is a nutcase. Let’s see if he is confirmed or has to bow out.

    It appears that Bret Stephens is right on yet again. (I don’t have access to the article itself.) It’s Jew-hatred pure and simple—and seemingly universal. Even Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt used the term Jew-hatred in her report to the Jewish community (which I attended online). It’s not just the polite “antisemitism” anymore, and it’s a real threat.

    1. Discouragingly, the top comment at NYT on the Bret Stephens article:

      You just wrote about “pogroms” returning to Europe. Today it’s a “Jew hunt”. Have you heard about the chanting that some of the Israelis in Amsterdam were saying about “no more children living in Gaza” because they’ve all been slaughtered?

      And have you reflected upon the fact that only in the case of Israel is it possible to hide behind claims of religious persecution – antisemitism – as a way to deflect criticism of the genocidal government policies that Netanyahu is carrying out against the Palestinians?

  14. Just like in 2016, but even worse choices for his cabinet this time around. And the GOP are all spineless sycophants, no “Cheneys” left so it will be a continuous chaotic shit-show from the get-go. Big surprise!

    Edit: and I just heard RFK was indeed offered the position of HHS secretary. Good going Trump voters!

  15. Sumerian dogs. 🙂
    I am familiar with their descendants, Australian Shepherds, one I’m very close to (right now, actually) who is all into the ball, will drop it in my lap, fetch or catch in mid air, return it.
    But try getting it back!
    Nice to know some things don’t change much.

    D.A.
    NYC

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