Welcome to a Hump Day (“Dives e Hump-esqo” in Romani): Wednesday, November 20, 2024, and National Peanut Butter Fudge Day. I would prefer what’s below: peanut butter and maple fudge, with the maple syrup adding translucence to the confection. (Maple improves everything; try dark maple syrup drizzled over good vanilla ice cream.)
It’s also National Zinfandel Day, National Absurdity Day, and World Children’s Day.
Here I am feeding one of the Pond squirrels yesterday. They get plenty of walnuts and are sleek and fat. This is a young one who has not yet learned to climb up my leg to get nuts; he/she is at the stage at which they stand up close to you on their hind legs (showing their adorable white, furry tummies) and take a nut from your hand. Note that I am holding the bag of walnuts behind me because if I do not do that, they will scurry up my the back of my leg and try to make off with the whole bag! Photo by Marie.
If I can’t have ducks now, I’ll have squirrels.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 20 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Breaking nooz: Another ridiculous Trump appointment: Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has pushed pseudoscience on television (remember the coffee-bean pills) has been named by Trump to oversee Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. He has no experience running a large operation of any kind, and I consider him, like most of Trump’s other nominees, manifestly unqualified. The American people will see that they got what they voted for. Such is democracy, but we have to hold our noses and accept it. But now Dr. Oz????? And RFK Jr.? From the NYT:
In a statement announcing his choice, Mr. Trump said Dr. Oz would “work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.” Mr. Trump noted that Dr. Oz had “won nine Daytime Emmy Awards hosting ‘The Dr. Oz Show,’ where he taught millions of Americans how to make healthier lifestyle choices.”
Oh, and we have a new Secretary of Education:
Linda McMahon, the former head of the Small Business Administration and co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to run the Education Department, an agency he has threatened to do away with.
*Trump has affirmed one of his earlier campaign pledges: upon taking office, he said, he would use the U.S. military to deport immigrant who entered the country illegally. (See archived article here.)
President-elect Donald J. Trump confirmed on Monday that he intended to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military in some form to assist in his plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
On his social media platform, Truth Social, Mr. Trump responded overnight to a post made earlier this month by Tom Fitton, who runs the conservative group Judicial Watch, and who wrote that Mr. Trump’s administration would “declare a national emergency and will use military assets” to address illegal immigration “through a mass deportation program.”
At around 4 a.m., Mr. Trump reposted Mr. Fitton’s post with the comment, “TRUE!!!”
Congress has granted presidents broad power to declare national emergencies at their discretion, unlocking standby powers that include redirecting funds lawmakers had appropriated for other purposes. During his first term, for example, Mr. Trump invoked this power to spend more on a border wall than Congress had been willing to authorize.
In interviews with The New York Times during the Republican primary campaign, described in an article published in November 2023, Mr. Trump’s top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, said that military funds would be used to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for immigrants as their cases progressed and they waited to be flown to other countries.
The Homeland Security Department would run the facilities, he said.
One major impediment to the vast deportation operation that the Trump team has promised in his second term is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, lacks the space to hold a significantly larger number of detainees than it currently does.
The news last night said that Trump would first concentrate on apprehending criminals, though I presume he means criminals convicted in their home country, not in the U.S., for why else would they be roaming around free? At any rate, I have no objection to that, but using the Army? That is not good optics nor is it good politics, and the Army is better used for war fighting. Better to tighten the border than send the Army after immigrants.
*Apparently the U.S. has given Turkey a warning after it agreed to take in the senior leaders of Hamas previously housed in Qatar but now expelled. And remember that Turkey, as a member of NATO, is a U.S. ally. It should not be giving refuge to terrorists, some of whom are even indicted in the U.S. Two articles from the ToI:
Senior members of Hamas’s abroad leadership left Qatar last week for Turkey, an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel on Sunday, after Doha said it was walking away from efforts to mediate an end to the war in Gaza.
The Arab diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, downplayed the significance of the move for the terror group, stressing that Hamas’s leadership abroad already spends much of its time in Turkey when they are not holding meetings in Qatar.
The departure of Hamas’s senior politburo from Doha was first reported by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.
On November 8, the US revealed that it had asked Qatar to oust Hamas officials from Doha, which has hosted an office for the terror group since 2012, reportedly at Washington’s urging. The US said it made the request after Hamas rejected repeated hostage deal proposals and executed six captives, including an American citizen.
The next day, Qatar said it had halted its mediation efforts and a diplomat familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel that Doha had asked Hamas leaders in late October to leave the country, though no timeline was mentioned.
****************
The US warns Turkey against hosting Hamas leaders, after an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel over the weekend that the terror group’s senior officials based in Doha fled last week to Ankara.
Turkey has not denied that Hamas officials are now in the country, but has insisted that it is not opening an office for them.
The US says it asked Qatar to oust Hamas leaders, arguing that the terror group has refused to substantively engage in negotiations for months.
Qatar has denied taking this step due to US pressure, but has admitted to halting its mediating role.
Asked during a press briefing about The Times of Israel’s reporting on Hamas officials moving to Turkey, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller says Washington does not “believe the leaders of a vicious terrorist organization should be living comfortably anywhere,” including NATO allies such as Turkey.
Miller notes that some Hamas officials, such as Khaled Meshaal, are under US indictment and should be turned over to the United States.
Again, my feeling is that Turkey (secretly sympathetic to Hamas) should expel the terrorists and let them find some other place to live. Nobody will want them!
*Matt Gaetz, unqualified nominee for Attorney General, is in trouble again:
This woman and a second woman, also represented by Leppard, testified that they were paid by Gaetz to have sex with him and other individuals who attended these “sex parties.” They were paid through Venmo or other conduits — including the PayPal of Nestor Galban, whom Gaetz has referred to as his “adopted son.”
Gaetz never pressured Leppard’s clients to do drugs at these parties, one of his clients testified, but she said that the use of drugs, such as ecstasy, was widespread and expected. When they were asked by House investigators if Gaetz showed signs of being on drugs, the women answered affirmatively, according to the lawyer’s account.
I will assume for the time being that Gaetz is innocent until proven guilty, but of course I oppose him because of his political background and his lack of credentials, as well as the likelihood that he’ll use the DoJ to exact revenge. Even Trump admitted that Gaetz may not be confirmed by the Senate:
In his private conversations over the past few days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has admitted that his besieged choice for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, has less than even odds of being confirmed by the Senate.
But Mr. Trump has shown no sign of withdrawing the nomination, which speaks volumes about his mind-set as he staffs his second administration. He is making calls on Mr. Gaetz’s behalf, and he remains confident that even if Mr. Gaetz does not make it, the standard for an acceptable candidate will have shifted so much that the Senate may simply approve his other nominees who have appalled much of Washington.
Oh dear Ceiling Cat, shoot me now! The bar has been lowered so much that even an earthworm couldn’t limbo under it.
*Pollster Nate Silver tells us, in a NYT op-ed (archived here), that we shouldn’t blame poor polling for the distressing victory of Donald Trump on November 20. And he exculpates himself. . .
The polls just can’t win in the court of public opinion — the very thing they’re designed to study.
They are either maddening in finding a race too close to call (in the final month before the presidential election, nearly 80 percent of swing-state polls showed a lead of no more than two and a half percentage points) or they break from the pack, only to be wrong. In her final Iowa poll Ann Selzer, a name synonymous with the gold standard in polling, had Kamala Harris up by three points, a shocking result that titillated Democrats. Ms. Selzer has had a long history of defying the conventional wisdom and being right, but Ms. Harris lost Iowa by 13 points.
It may even feel as though we’re Ping-Ponging between radically different futures, never quite certain what lies around the bend. Yet on the whole in 2024, polling did not experience much of a miss and had a reasonable year. Ms. Harris led by only one point in my final national polling average. And Donald Trump led in five of seven key states, albeit incredibly narrowly. The final polling averages were correct in 48 of 50 states.
So why did polling still feel so unsatisfying? In a world where the parties are remarkably efficient at corralling voters and competing to a 50-50 split each time, polls aren’t going to provide the certainty we crave. We’d better get used to it: This is now the fourth election in a row in which the popular vote margin was within five points, something that has happened only once before in the country’s history, for six elections between 1876 through 1896.
The problems with polls are the same problems that plague politics. Polling has become a mirror that reflects the frustrating, even infuriating, nature of politics in America in 2024. Our politics are messy, and that is not something polls can fix. We’d better get used to that, too.
But Silver still finds an advantage to polls:
Polls still provide important hints, leads and hypotheses. They were basically right that Democrats’ dominance among minority groups was waning, overestimating the swing among Black voters but understating it among Hispanic voters. Asian Americans, Native Americans and the oft forgotten group of voters who identify their race as “other” also shifted toward Mr. Trump.
They were right that Democrats would experience a significant erosion among younger voters. Ms. Harris won voters ages 18 to 29 by just four points, according to the A.P. VoteCast survey — down from Joe Biden’s 25 points in 2020. But the shifts were much bigger among young voters who didn’t attend college, especially men.
*Over at the Reason website, Jesse Singal describes “How Scientific American‘s departing editor helped degrade science,” (subtitle: “When magazines like Scientific American are run by ideologues producing biased dreck, it only makes it more difficult to defend the institution of science itself”). I’d suggest that John Horgan read this, but of course he would never do that (h/t reader Darryl R.).
Whether or not Helmuth’s resignation was voluntary, it should go without saying that a few bad social media posts should not end someone’s job. If that were the whole story here—an otherwise well-performing editor was ousted over a few bad posts—this would arguably be a case of “cancel culture,” or whatever we’re calling it these days.
But Helmuth’s posts were symptoms of a much larger problem with her reign as editor. They accurately reflected the political agenda she brought with her when she came on as EiC at SciAm—a political agenda that has turned the once-respected magazine into a frequent laughingstock.
Sometimes, yes, SciAm still acts like the leading popular science magazine it used to be—a magazine, I should add, that I received in print form every month during my childhood.
But increasingly, during Helmuth’s tenure, SciAm seemed a bit more like a marketing firm dedicated to churning out borderline-unreadable press releases for the day’s social justice cause du jour. In the process, SciAm played a small but important role in the self-immolation of scientific authority—a terrible event whose fallout we’ll be living with for a long time.
When Scientific American was bad under Helmuth, it was really bad. For example, did you know that “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy“? Or that the normal distribution—a vital and basic statistical concept—is inherently suspect? No, really: Three days after the legendary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died, SciAm published a surreal hit piece about him in which the author lamented “his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior.” That author also explained that “the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.” But the normal distribution doesn’t make any such value judgments, and only someone lacking in basic education about stats—someone who definitely shouldn’t be writing about the subject for a top magazine—could make such a claim.
Some of the magazine’s Helmuth-era output made the posthumous drive-by against Wilson look Pulitzer-worthy by comparison. Perhaps the most infamous entry in this oeuvre came in September 2021: “Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.” That article sternly informed readers that an acronym many of them had likely never heard of in the first place—JEDI, standing for “justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion”—ought to be avoided on social justice grounds. You see, in the Star Wars franchise, the Jedi “are a religious order of intergalactic police-monks, prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic lightsabers, gaslighting by means of “Jedi mind tricks,” etc.)”
You probably think I’m trolling or being trolled. There’s no way that actual sentence got published in Scientific American, right? No, it’s very real.
Singal has been especially concerned with gender issues, and he takes the magazine to task for treatment of that. Again, I call this to the attention of Dr. Horgan:
This was a chronic problem at Scientific American. One article, to which I wrote a rebuttal for my newsletter, contained countless errors and misinterpretations: Most importantly, it falsely claimed that there is solid evidence youth gender medicine ameliorates adolescent suicidality, when we absolutely do not know that to any degree of certainty. As far as I can tell, every article SciAm published on this subject during Helmuth’s tenure followed the exact same playbook of reciting activist claims — often long after they’d been debunked.
Some of these articles might have done serious damage to the public’s understanding of this issue. For example, SciAm ran a response to the Cass Review written by a pair of writers who were somehow able to issue a searing critique of the review despite having clearly never read it.
But of course you knew all this stuff before other folks thanks to your ever-attentive and science-protective host. I’m just putting this up to fill out the record on the journal, and to add the links about Singal’s rebuttals and the magazine’s attack on the Cass Review, which I don’t believe I ever saw.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Malgorzata explains today’s Hili Dialogue: “Lately we often have to hastily translate new articles that have to be posted immediately, and they push out already-translated articles that are not so time sensitive. Hili, as Editor-in-Chief, doesn’t like these constant changes in planned publication of articles.”
Hili: Planning publication is very risky.A: Why do you think so?Hili: Something constantly happens.
Hili: Planowanie publikacji jest bardzo ryzykowne.Ja: Czemu tak sądzisz?Hili: Ciągle coś się dzieje.
*******************
From Donna:
From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:
From Spoken English:
From Masih; Cotler is Canada’s former justice minister who’s been a harsh critic of Iran. Now there was a plot to kill him, but it was stymied.
I am grateful that Canadian law enforcement authorities foiled an attempt by the Islamic Republic to harm Irwin Cotler.
As far as these Islamic republic is in power none of us who dare to criticize the terrorist nature of this regime will be safe. https://t.co/NvlNAafNHE— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) November 18, 2024
From Barry. Guess what kind of invertebrate this is:
squishy
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@amazingnature.bsky.social) 2024-11-19T02:55:49.646Z
Reader Simon sent this saying “Yup!:
Hope I'm the first to post this all time classic on this platform
— Oded Rechavi (@odedrechavi.bsky.social) 2024-11-19T04:51:25.056Z
From Luana: graduate-student unions have gotten so pricey that some graduate programs are being suspended. These are not trivial programs, either!
Boston University has suspended admissions to 12 PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences.
The reason appears to be “increased costs associated with the union contract that graduate student workers won after their historic, nearly seven-month strike ended in October.” pic.twitter.com/nmgHgWsH2I
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) November 19, 2024
From my feed: how free speech is punished in the UK. I HOPE I am missing something. . .
You went on to say that you did not want your money going to immigrants “who rape our kids and get priority”.
This offence is so serious that an immediate custodial sentence is unavoidable.
The sentence is one of 20 months in jail. pic.twitter.com/aKUclhm4eV
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 19, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I retweeted:
A Czech girl murdered with Zyklon-B gas upon arrival at Auschwitz. She was seven. https://t.co/uhbsnXoAeA
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 20, 2024
Three tweets from Dr. Cobb. Look at the size of those owls!
We went to Hokkaido, Japan to see these guys last year and they are the size of a fire hydrant
— Kate Laskowski (@katelaskowski.bsky.social) 2024-11-17T15:57:42.520Z
I’d give a lot to see one of these EVOLVED creatures (kudos to the poster):
The #platypus gods have been most kind – this little lady showed up within a minute of me arriving at her creek outside #Hobart today. Literally the greatest species that has ever evolved.#MammalWatching #WildOz #platypuses #Tasmania
— Jack Ashby (@jackdashby.bsky.social) 2024-11-17T07:56:44.005Z
I wonder what cabinet job Hulk Hogan will get.
“illness industrial complex”? “World Wrestling Entertainment”? Oy! And you are right this is what the majority voted for…I do not think that this behavior was any secret…. So I am resolved just to live with it, not to try to think about it rationally because that will cause mental illness, great unhappiness, and the darkest of moods. With the president’s control of the executive, the legislative, and judicial, the tri-fecta (actually a quad-fecta because within legislative, he controls each the House and the Senate independently), there is really nothing I can do but try to stay aware of national and world issues, continue to work for the election of good candidates in local and state elections, and stay in contact with my representatives as they sit in the loyal opposition in DC….just imagine how they feel in the beginnings of the coming shit show.
And, there likely will be issues that I can get behind, issues that eschew some recent extreme progressive over reach, especially in education, and maybe help my Congressman to positively shape them a bit around the edges.
“But of course you knew all this stuff before other folks thanks to your ever-attentive and science-protective host. ”
Hear hear!
Yes, I have to say that Dr. Oz is a terrible pick, even if you are merely looking for disruptors.
And, of course, Gaetz will never be “proven” guilty. The DOJ declined to press charges because the two accusers are untrustworthy. It’s interesting how all these allegations against GOP appointees over the years have been beyond ability to prove for one reason or another. At this point I evaluate them as being just smears.
Of course you do. It can’t be the GOP appointees who are lying, right? Nobody associated with Trump would ever even think of such a thing.
GOP’s McCarthy seemed to think that about Gaetz, it was more than just a smear.
I read Jonathan Slaght’s book about his adventurous research into Blakiston’s Fish Owls. It’s called “Owls of the Eastern Ice” and I recommend it.
My wife has a “Millennial Anti-Theft Device” sticker on her stick-shift Jeep!
+5
Ironic that Helmuth and SciAm endorsed Harris and Biden as a way to oppose politically-driven misinformation but published their own politically-driven misinformation.
Like rain on your wedding day.
Or a free ride when you’ve already paid
“From my feed: how free speech is punished in the UK. I HOPE I am missing something. . .”
The Reuters fact-check adds details that are deliberately omitted from the Tw**t and embedded video clip:
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/clipped-video-mans-sentencing-over-social-media-comments-is-misleading-2024-08-16/
Inciting others to commit violence is against the law in England. The individual being sentenced pleaded guilty to inciting others to commit violence. He committed his offence at a time when violent attacks, including attempted arson, were actually being committed against hotels housing asylum seekers. That context was almost certainly an aggravating factor which led the judge to impose a stiff prison sentence.
Thanks much for that clarification.
That was no invertebrate, that was my wife!
But seriously folks
That’s a puffer fish. With vertebrae.
Thanks for the clarification, embarrassing as it is to a biologist!
Anyone wanting more info about Oz, see his Wikipedia page:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmet_Oz
Yes, he looks pretty bad.
Hamas officials can’t find refuge in any of their middle east neighbors, and the only place they feel safe is in a NATO country?
Regarding use of National Guard or active-duty military: I agree with Doug – OK to use the NG in a limited role, as they were established for use on US soil, but role must be very narrowly limited.
No to active military operating on US soil unless there is a direct military attack, which this is not. I’m against illegal immigration, but I am not for any president using the other service branches to combat it. That will only lead to the next person holding that office riding the slippery slope to greater abuses of power.
I favor taking power away from politicians, not giving them more, regardless of what party they belong to and even if I agree with their end goals.
“I favor taking power away from politicians . . . even if I agree with their end goals.” You mean to say you value an overarching philosophy of governance and adherence to principle over the raw pursuit of power and policy gains? What are you smoking?!! Pass it around, whatever it is.
In the name of bipartisanship, perhaps the new Senate majority leader should immediately bring to the floor one of the outgoing leader’s chief priorities: the abolishment of the Senate filibuster so that all legislation can pass the Senate with only 50 votes (and a VP vote to break the tie). The Republicans can then follow that with a chief priority of the Democratic activist class and not a few of its elected officials: expanding the Supreme Court by three or more seats this term.
They won’t, of course, because on these two matters the Republicans still maintain a respect for sensible process and practice even if abandoning them might advance their policy agenda. Fancy that.
Passing it around it kind of led me to that view!
As a freshman at my university, and a typical dumb college socialist, I was attracted to a meeting of the Libertarian Party because they favored legalization of what I WAS smoking. After a couple meetings, which I attended straight and sober, I found that I liked what they had to say and started expanding my mind via reading Von mises, Spooner, Bastiat, Rothbard, Friedman, the Founding Fathers, as well as Marx (one needs to understand all points of view). However, my dormmates called me “worse than Reagan” for this (except for reading Marx), and my girlfriend told me that people just can’t be free to do what they want, and broke up with me. I found that holding classical liberal and libertarian views made me much more of a rebel at my school than being a lockstep leftist liberal who screamed “No Nukes” outside our university president’s home. Fast forward, and I still hold most of those base philosophies, though I’m no longer a “legalize all the drugs” guy due to the destruction of lives that can be wrought by that policy.
I agree with you about the Republicans, though it would be a good troll to start talking about doing those things just to see the response!
When will people for once understand that making people happy by force makes matters worse, usually much worse? That includes removing laws as much as creating new ones. The real problem is with the idea that “if only we did this or that, all evil will vanish.”
What a journey! I hope that you eventually found a new, better girlfriend.
Horgan has a bad reputation. He actively opposed scientific research that was not PC.
The Free Press interviewed Thomas Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Trump’s “border czar.” Per NPR, “Homan was executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Obama. During that administration, ICE carried out a record number of deportations.”
Per the FP interview, “[Homan] foresees asking the Department of Defense to help transport and temporarily shelter immigrants while providing intelligence support. “With the DoD’s help, we can take our armed law enforcement officers out of those administrative duties and put them on the streets,” said Homan”