Saturday: Hili dialogue

February 1, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first day of February: CaturSaturday, February 1, 2025. We made it through January!!!!  Sadly, I am ill today with a tummy ache, and was up all night in gastric pain. It’s much better now, but posting will still be light today. Bear with me; I do my best.

Here is February depicted in the manuscript of Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. It’s beautiful but looks very FRIGID. 

By Limbourg brothers – R.M.N. / R.-G. Ojéda, Public Domain. 

It’s also Car Insurance Day, International Pisco Sour Day (an excellent drink when made properly), Change Your Password Day, Ice Cream for Breakfast Day (I prefer pie), National Baked Alaska Day, National Serpent Day, National Dark Chocolate Day, International Furmint Day, and National Freedom Day, which has this excuse:

National Freedom Day, which celebrates the freedom that Americans share, takes place on the anniversary of the date in 1865 when Abraham Lincoln signed a joint House and Senate resolution that proposed the 13th Amendment, which would go on to outlaw slavery after being ratified by the states. Not only does the holiday celebrate freedom, but it honors the signing of the resolution. Lincoln did not live to see the resolution ratified, as he died the following spring, but it was ratified on December 6, 1865, and the amendment was adopted on December 18, 1865.

There’s also a Google Doodle today, celebrating house music. Not my favorite, but if you click below, you’ll go to a YouTube video celebrating the music:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Apparently the jam-packed airspace around Washington, D.C. has led people to worry for years about what actually happened on Wednesday. It looks as if the helicopter was flying too high, but it’s not yet certain. Believe me, though, something will be done. It also appears that the airport control tower was understaffed.

More than 700 planes had already taken off and landed at Reagan National Airport on Wednesday when American Airlines flight 5342 approached it through one of the nation’s most congested air corridors.

Shortly before 9 p.m., the passenger jet collided in a fireball with an Army Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training mission, leaving no survivors.

As officials scramble to determine the cause of the crash, the catastrophe is drawing new attention to longstanding safety warnings about the increasingly busy airspace above the nation’s capital.

Reagan sits on just 733 acres of land along the Potomac River, across from downtown Washington and the military’s Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. Space is so tight that federal regulators dole out takeoff and landing rights.

The airport’s convenience and close proximity to the Capitol have made it irresistible to Washington’s politicians. Over the years, lawmakers have lobbied to open access and add more flights, often to make quick jaunts to their home states easier. Last year, after a fierce debate over whether the airport could absorb more flights, Congress authorized more, which were awarded to five airlines proposing to fly to San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, Las Vegas and San Francisco.

Adding to the crowded airspace are helicopters that crisscross the Potomac every day, many of them military flights from the Pentagon and other government agencies ferrying officials or other passengers and cargo around Washington.

Officials and commercial and military pilots have warned that the airspace leaves little margin for error.

“We’re dealing with an extraordinarily complex airspace system that has been complicated even worse by the addition of flights to National Airport,” said Keith Meurlin, a retired Air Force major general and head of the Washington Airports Task Force. “At what point is enough enough?”

Pilots have been complaining for decades about the presence of military and other aircraft around Reagan.

*One of the few good things that happened during the first Trump Administration was Betsy DeVos’s changes in Title IX rules for adjudicating claims of sexual harassment or assault in colleges, giving reasonable rights to the accused—similar to the rights they’d have in a court of law. Biden rescinded those changes, but now they are back again, and this is a change for the better—for fairness.

Schools and universities responding to complaints of sexual misconduct must return to policies created during President Donald Trump’s first term, with requirements for live hearings and more protections for accused students, according to new guidance issued Friday by the Education Department.

In a memo to education institutions across the nation, the agency clarified that Title IX, a 1972 law barring discrimination based on sex, will be enforced according to a set of rules created by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The rules govern how complaints of misconduct are investigated and how to settle cases where students present differing accounts.

Colleges already have been returning to DeVos’ 2020 rules in recent weeks since a federal judge in Kentucky overturned the Biden administration’s Title IX rules. The court’s decision effectively ordered a return to the earlier Trump administration rules.

A statement from the Education Department called Biden’s rules an “egregious slight to women and girls.”

“Under the Trump Administration, the Education Department will champion equal opportunity for all Americans, including women and girls, by protecting their right to safe and separate facilities and activities in schools, colleges and universities,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor.

The Biden administration sought to overhaul the rules and expand Title IX to protect LGBTQ+ students. It expanded the type of behavior that’s considered sexual harassment — a reversal of the DeVos policy, which used a narrower definition.

But a federal judge in Kentucky overturned Biden’s rule on Jan. 9, saying it was a presidential overstep and violated constitutional free speech rights by telling schools to honor students’ preferred pronouns. The judge, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves, said there was nothing in Title IX suggesting it should cover anything more than it did when Congress created it.

Even before the decision, Biden’s rule had been halted in half the states amid legal challenges from Republicans.

It looks as if the administration will also stop the Biden-era declaration that trans-identified men can compete against women in women’s sports all the way through high school. Maybe that’s okay up to sixth grade (age 11) or so, but past that, no way.

*The Wall Street Journal explains why Israel delayed releasing the (many) Palestinian prisoners it agreed to hand over in return for the handful of hostages Hamas is letting go:

Hamas wants to send the world the message that it is still in charge in the Gaza Strip. Its method: turning the release of hostages into a spectacle that Israel is powerless to stop.

The pattern began about two weeks ago, when the first Israeli hostages were released under a cease-fire agreement that includes the freeing of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Crowds of jeering men crowded around the Hamas trucks carrying the Israeli hostages. When the women got out, they ran to Red Cross officials waiting in nearby vehicles to take them home.

On Thursday, the militants upped the ante. They released two civilian hostages—a 29-year-old woman and an 80-year-old man—in front of the rubble of the home of Yahya Sinwar, the now-dead mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

This time, the hostages struggled to exit Hamas vehicles as crowds again turned out to greet them, cellphones out aiming for shots of the captives. The Red Cross vehicles weren’t nearby this time, forcing the hostages to wade through throngs of people seemingly on the cusp of attacking them. The hostages’ only protection was their armed captors, members of a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

Hamas is making each round of hostage releases in Gaza an increasingly elaborate event, showcasing its strength and humiliating its enemy—but also threatening to derail the fragile cease-fire in the strip, regional analysts said.

“Hamas is trying to make the release of the hostages look like a show,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of research for Israel’s military intelligence, adding that the move would backfire on Hamas. “Everyone is looking at the disrespectful way they treat the hostages.”

Israel reacted furiously to the display. It said it wouldn’t release the 110 Palestinian prisoners who were supposed to be set free as part of the deal. Mediators, including the U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, scrambled to hold the deal together. Israel eventually released the prisoners.

This really could scupper the cease-fire, and is bad optics for Hamas. They really do need to cool it and make the handover of hostages more low key and dignified.  What’s more, things could get worse when they start handing over the dead hostages in boxes, who will be last. They would not dare to make a spectacle of that, for Israel wouldn’t put up with it.

*It’s just 11 days after the inauguration, but Democrats are already seeing a comeback, as in Doug Sosnik’s overly optimistic NYT op-ed, “Trump is already failing. That’s the key to a big Democratic rebound” (archived here). Okay, I’ll bite:

The Democratic Party is now in worse shape than at any time since 1980. Joe Biden’s policy mistakes — making inflation worse and making the border less secure — and the lack of trust in Democrats who circled the wagons around him in 2024 have done damage that the party does not yet seem to fully grasp. The party is paying the price for failing to develop and allow generational change in leadership; the Clintons and the Obama-Biden administrations have dominated for more than 30 years. At the same time, Democrats have too often been focused on whom they are against rather than what they are for. Especially for the past 10 years, the Democrats’ primary mission was defeating Donald Trump rather than articulating a coherent and appealing vision for the future.

. . . . With that in mind, Democrats need to start making a compelling argument that President Trump and Republicans are failing at governing. Democrats need to do this in a way that reflects the mood of the country and cannot repeat the mistakes of Kamala Harris’s campaign, like focusing on joy during a time when anger and economic frustration dominated voter sentiment. With Republicans now in full control of the federal government, Democrats are well positioned to be the party of change, a narrative that finally broke the Reagan-Bush 12-year hold on the presidency in 1992.

Then as now, the strongest message for Democrats is centered on economic security and opportunity. With Mr. Trump and Republicans focused on tax cuts for the rich and corporations, it should be easy to make contrasts with his agenda on a regular basis. His blundered attempt to freeze federal money in ways that might affect popular programs, like Medicaid and Head Start, is an example of a prime opportunity to brand the G.O.P. as failing dangerously at governing.

. . . The 2026 congressional midterm elections can play a key role in better positioning the eventual nominee for the 2028 election. The party in power generally suffers losses in the midterms. While it is unlikely that Democrats will be able to take control of the Senate, they are well positioned to take back the House. There are also 38 governor’s races in the next two years, which gives Democrats a tremendous opportunity to reset the party going into the next presidential election.

. . .Mr. Trump starts his presidency with only 47 percent of the country giving him a positive rating. Current polling shows that a majority of Americans do not support some of his most radical proposals. He is misreading how big a mandate the voters gave him in the election and is widely overreaching with his executive orders and policy proposals. And Republicans start out not only with a historically narrow margin of control in Congress but also with a track record of demonstrating during the last Congress that they were incapable of governing.

In this environment, Mr. Trump and the Republicans have set a high bar for themselves on how they are going to improve the economy. At the same time they also claim that they will cut trillions of dollars from the federal budget. Under Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. has become a working-class party, and its base is full of people who will be hardest hit by cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which now constitute almost half of all federal spending.

All of this points to a favorable opportunity for Democrats to regain power if they can learn the lessons that followed the 1980 election. Jimmy Carter was president for only four years, but because of Republican tactics, he defined what it meant to be a Democrat for 16 years. It was only when Mr. Clinton was elected president that the party was able to move past the Carter years.

To me this reads that Democrats need to do some of what what Republicans did, in addition to arguing that since Republicans in control, Democrats can now say they’re the “party of change.” In other words, this column gives no useful advice, and since Democrats are now doubling down on wokeness, they don’t seem to be recalibrating for the midterms or 2028.  I bit, but I didn’t like the taste.

*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s snarky and engaging weekly news summary at The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: War room correspondent.”

→ Ireland’s president continues to troll about: Michael Higgins, the president of Ireland, who really does look like a leprechaun, spoke at an event commemorating the Holocaust, and there on that day of memory he. . . criticized Israel, calling their response to October 7 “unimaginable.” He was met with silence. He continued:

“When wars and conflicts become accepted or presented as seemingly unending, humanity is the loser. War is not the natural condition of humanity. Cooperation is.” He then told the audience that embracing diversity, duh, is the answer.

When a pregnant Jewish woman stood and turned away from him in silent protest, she was dragged out of the event by security.

And when Good Morning Britain paused to remember the Holocaust, an anchor explained it like this: “Six million people were killed in concentration camps during the Second World War, as well as millions of others because they were Polish, disabled, gay, or belonged to another ethnic group.” Six million people, no need to get too specific there, but also disabled gays were targeted, victimized, and othered. Today, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, we honor the gays who valiantly gimp their way to the club.

→ Wait, how many transwomen are there in jail? Trump banned transgender women (biological males) from federal women’s prisons. Which I’ve always thought is an interesting but still blessedly fringe issue. How wrong I was. In the federal system, per the NYT: “15 percent of women in prison are transgender.” That’s a lot! So, if Biden’s policy of letting folks pick their prison continued—and tell me with a straight face you wouldn’t choose the girl one—then 15 percent of women’s federal prison inmates would be biological males.

I am willing to believe that there are transwomen inmates who’ve had vaginoplasty and have taken hormones for decades and who would be harmless to biological female inmates. But the movement said that was too limited. The movement said identifying as a woman should be enough to go live in the women’s prison. Having a penis and a beard doesn’t mean anything! It’s all gender expression and it’s all valid. And that’s how “15 percent of women in federal prison are transgender.”

→ The UK yearns to be conquered: Oxford and Cambridge plan to move away from traditional exams in favor of “inclusive assessments” in an effort to boost the grades of minority and low-income students. Funny timing, I’m moving away from traditional stoplights to more “intuition-based driving.” Oxford said it would “use a more diverse and inclusive range of assessments” to “improve the likelihood” that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds would perform well. I’m no Oxford graduate (I was offered a full ride there, of course), but Oxbridge is literally saying “we’ll lower the standards so everyone will do better.” That’s the educational equivalent of saying we’ll print more money so everyone’s richer. Guys, do I have to call Javier Milei?

Speaking of the UK, more than half of Gen Zers there believe the country—kingdom? Technically it’s a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy—should be a dictatorship. That stat isn’t the most startling—a people who gather to crown their monarch in an ancient ritual obviously have a natural inclination toward despotism. They’re hardwired for domination. But some other statistics in the same study are just plain fun: 33 percent of Gen Z think the UK would be better off if the army was in charge, which, fact-check: true. With ranks like “bombardier” and “sapper,” I’d trust the British army more than someone with the oddly fascistic-sounding name Keir Starmer. And most importantly, around half of Gen Z men agreed—correctly, I might add—that “when it comes to giving women equal rights, things have gone far enough.”

Quite the flurry in the British Isles: DEI-poisoned Oxbridge and red-pilled young men. Maybe they do need a dictator to sort all this out. Maybe they need Greater America.

I’ve always said that Ireland is the most anti-Semitic country in Western Europe, though I really don’t understand it. They didn’t fight in WWII, either. But the reasons for both can’t really be connected, can they?  I had Jewish relatives in Galway a few hundred years ago!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili (with one eye open) makes a joke, though it may be inadvertent. She is not a woke cat!

A: It’s probably time for a little something.
Hili: I’m already woke.
In Polish:
Ja: Chyba czas na małe conieco.
Hili: Już jestem przebudzona.

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

From I Love Cats:

From Cat Memes:

From Things with Faces:

Nothing from Masih today. But Titania tweeted. An excerpt from the linked article:

Those colonial islands all have such offensive names anyway. There’s the Isle of Man (patriarchal), the Isle of Wight (racist), Ascension Island (phallic), the British Virgin Islands (slut-shaming), South Sandwich Islands (fat-shaming) and Orkney (not even a proper word).

From my feed, though this is a bit mean:

From Ricky Gervais; his cat Pickle:

Pickle in Blankets

— Ricky Gervais (@mrrickygervais.bsky.social) 2025-01-12T18:00:34.788Z

From Malcolm; a lovely cat painter. I like how the stripes are done first.

From Luana; I might have put this up before, but can’t be arsed to go back and check. Besides, it’s funny (or sad):

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted:

Murdered by cyanide gas upon arrival at Auschwitz, this Italian girl was only six.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-01T10:48:23.396Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, Crick about to get the Big Prize that I will never get!

An unusually nervous Crick at the 1962 Nobel ceremony, with Odile and his daughters, Jacqueline and Gabrielle, looking on.

— (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T11:25:44.275Z

And a beautiful bird from SE Asia and Indonesia.

Black-bellied Malkoha (Phaenicophaeus diardi)#BirdsSeenIn2025 #Perak #Malaysia #birds #nature #wildlife@birdsoftheworld.bsky.social @ebrrh.bsky.social

— Amar (@amarhss.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T04:38:08.695Z

 

44 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Best wishes to recover today. For some reason, I always thought that the product of the violence of a disease and its duration was a constant; much preferring 24 hours of ceaseless retching to ten days of moderate discomfort. Plus it always felt good to be a few pounds lighter in the wake of these attacks. Hope today proves to be one of great improvement for you.

    1. I thought the symptoms resembled intestinal gas, which can be extremely uncomfortable. But a good dose of anti-gas med will accelerate the recovery. Then come the endorphins, which are great.

      1. Yes, I took some of that white chalky liquid that has aluminum compounds and other stuff in it, and I felt better almost immediately. Now I’m back to normal and ready to go out to a big dinner!

      2. My thyroid gland died recently. One of the symptoms was bloating, and I was very uncomfortable for about two weeks until thyroxine tablets stabilized my condition.

        Now that I have access to thyroxine, I am tempted to buy an axolotyl to see if I can turn it into a salamander.

        1. I’m glad you stimulated my curiosity enough to look that up, even if I didn’t have to go beyond Wikipedia.

    2. Hi Jim. As our resident flight expert… Is it true that helicopters are notoriously dangerous? Or, at least, much more dangerous than planes? I don’t trust the internet with this question, especially not with the recent crash being so politicized.

      1. Very kind of you debi but i am not an expert since I retired from active involvement fifteen years ago. That said, I am pretty confident that both rotary wing (helicopters) and fixed wing aircraft are both fully safe if properly maintained and operated by certified and qualified individuals. Yes i like having solid wings, but i also know that a helicopter can set down in a tiny area in an emergency not needing a long runway. I have not studied any scientific comparisons ; maybe another reader has some reference data. Sorry.
        I did just a quick search and there is a claim that helos hace higher accident rate, but again if maintained and flown by qualified people, I am comfortable on either.

        1. Appreciate your response. It seems I hear of many more accidents involving helicopters. Maybe it’s because of the tricky places they often operate. I’m thinking of evacuations, search and rescue, etc. Thanks, though.

          1. Yes. And there is the Kobe Bryant tragedy. A well maintained high-end helo with a very experienced and highly respected pilot, but the thinking is that the pilot let his personal relationship with Kobe and his family affect his judgement and decision-making…he wanted to get Kobe and guests to their destination on time…and he flew into meteorological conditions he should not have. Sometimes called get-there-itus.

  3. “The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry ( English: The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry), or Très Riches Heures, is an illuminated manuscript that was created between c. 1412 and 1416. It is a book of hours, which is a Christian devotional book and a collection of prayers said at canonical hours. ”

    Thanks for highlighting this book (again, I believe) – an unexpected, fascinating diversion – for a moment…

  4. The one time in my life I had a prolonged phase of very bad digestion, I got excellent relief from papain. Eating fresh papaya works even better.

  5. Check the Blancolirio YouTube channel to see the real-time data in 100-foot increments :

    the helicopter was ascending while the “RJ” was descending to land. I believe they collided at 400 ft.

    Juan also makes the rules clear about how high helicopters are allowed. I can’t recall right now..

    1. Another tidbit is that Congress keeps raising the number of slots at the airport to make it easier for the pols to get in and out of town. This contributes to the highly congested air space.

      1. In Juan’s Kobe Bryant chartered flight crash update, he notes that the guidance and safety recommendations usually can sit and have no effect – but that a high-profile tragedy like Kobe Bryant can push the recommendations into hard rules.

        I don’t know if that actually transpired for the case Juan discussed.

        But I think way more people are wondering about the DCA airport and flight path safety now. Hopefully some concrete guidance will materialize.

  6. The most important news is that a coup is ongoing. Musk has seized control of OPM and Treasury, has access to 10’s of millions of email addresses and has implemented the destruction of the Federal civil service. Also the FBI is purging 100s of agents. Musk is violating a plethora of laws with his resignation “offer” to Federal
    workers.
    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-government-workers-out-computer-systems-us-agency-sources-say-2025-01-31/

    1. No doubt that the majority of The Orange Cult support this. Hopefully some will figure out that they have been scammed by the Con Artist In Chief, abetted by the spineless Repugnicans and liars on the SCOTUS

    2. I cannot believe the power this man has been given. I don’t love or hate Musk, but I feel like we’re going to look back on this period and ask why the hell we allowed this to happen.

  7. There were some key comments here the other day about how the system of training air traffic controllers has been badly impeded by dei mandates, and how most trainees don’t get through while there is favoritism for under-represented minorities. There is also severe understaffing, as is well known.

    1. Mark,
      Is this in response to my comment? The DEI stuff, while concerning, is a side show to Musk’s coup. I am not being hyperbolic to claim a coup is happening. Are you aware of Trump’s cessation of Federal grants, albeit temporarily halted? I am a retired Federal scientist, and I have the training to know that Musk is violating Federal law like crazy.
      It should also have been mentioned in the WEIT news that Trump’s tariffs go into effect on Monday.

    2. A lot of data are now available with some expert preliminary analysis and commentary (and of course some non-expert commentary and speculation) on several you tube channels. It is amazing how much raw data we have available these days from sources such as flight aware. I think that now is the time to be patient while the ntsb does its expert investigation including public hearings and publishes its report. Likely around a year or so until final report with probable cause and recommended changes. Past reports have also addressed such specifics as pilot and other flight crew actions, training and experience; atc (air traffic controllers) actions, training and experience; even emergency response crews actions, training, and experience.

      An example of such a complete report is the one on Sully’s miracle on the hudson water landing several years ago at url https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/accidentreports/reports/aar1003.pdf
      There are others that look specifically at atc in-depth such as when there was a spate of ground collisions and near-collisions in the mid-eighties.

  8. I hope you feel better soon.

    Lots of great stuff here, except for the news, of course.

    The Cats in Watercolor video is amazing. And the dog that’s smart enough to avoid having its paws chopped off by an axe is precious. The other dog is too enamored with food for its own good!

    I don’t understand Irish antisemitism, but the country’s leadership is doing a good job promoting it.

    Finally, thank you Betsy DeVos, who restored sanity to sexual harassment law during the first Trump administration. I’m glad that Trump II put her policies back into place.

      1. Thank you Edward, I’ll read that. Montefiore is excellent and the Irish-Palestinian pipeline has always amazed me.
        I recall in the 80s Gadaffi was sending the IRA terrorists arms.
        “Anti-colonial” is a red flag for disastrous Third Worldism and terrorism.

        People underestimate the harm and millions of dead the “heroes” of the Third World Movement – to a man – have inflicted on humanity. Mao, Mfune, Gadaffi, Mugabe, Mengistu, Arafat, Sankara, Suharto and a bunch of assorted leftist Husseins – were all Hitler level evil and yet still lionized by those who don’t understand history.

        D.A.
        NYC

        1. IICR reading, the U.S. was not pleased with Sukarno, and orchestrated Suharto’s accession.

          1. Yes, true. The changeover came with about half a million deaths – mainly “communists” which I’ve always thought was just cover for being ethnically Chinese.

            SE Asia is a very mixed place for overseas Chinese, similar to the Jewish experience in Europe.
            Malaysia is an example of terrible “affirmative action” still. Thomas Sowel talks about it and many of my friends in high school in Australia were Malaysian Chinese.

            D.A.
            NYC/FL

    2. I think the dog is acting, garnering likes and clicks for its owner. He deserves a Tony. Good boy!
      (If he wasn’t in on it, yes, it would be mean to scare him with a hatchet.)

    1. Do you happen to have the link to an archived version of that story? I’d be very interested to read it, but it’s paywalled.

        2. It’s not at the first archive site (though a similar story from NYT is there and I’ll read that one) and the Wayback Machine says it was archived twice yesterday, but there’s no copy there…? No link there to click on, either.

        3. I’m being a complete pest now, sorry. I finally got the WaPo article from the Wayback Machine, though. Mission accomplished. Yay! (I rarely have luck with these sorts of things so I’m quite pleased)

  12. In other news: Trump started his tariff war with Canada and Mexico. Starting today we are making sure we don’t buy any groceries with Made In USA labels. We just have to read the labels more carefully. Too bad, I was always for local integration within Cascadia, but I am not going to finance that bully.

    1. Buying food from American farms doesn’t finance Donald Trump. Not buying it just hurts American farmers (a little tiny bit) and the Canadians who earn their living distributing imported food to Canadian grocery stores (a lot.) If our government applies tariffs to American agriculture then yes you will behave like a rational Homo economicus and try to find alternatives. Whole oranges are better for you than orange juice and can be sourced from many countries other than the U.S., for example. Or just take a Vitamin C tablet. But if food imports don’t get tariffed your plan is just cutting off your nose to spite your face. Things are going to be tough enough without having to do without fresh broccoli and Brussels sprouts in February. Assuming we can afford them when the dollar falls to fifty cents.

      My plan to fight back is to not buy anything from America that I already don’t buy anyway. Like bourbon, outboard motors, motorcycles, and Hollywood movies. That’ll show ‘em! And of course nothing tariffed, in the spirit of tax avoidance.

      1. I’d love your opinion on this, Leslie. Trump claims he’s imposing these tariffs because of fentanyl and illegal immigration…from Canada? Really? Even if this is a problem I don’t agree with his methods, by the way.

        1. I had to think about this, Debi. I suspect these are not the real issues. President Trump has said he intends to annex Canada as the 51st state. (This has been a perennial neurosis in Canada since long before there even were 50 states. Almost every Canadian has said at one point about some issue, “We might as well be the 51st state,” either sarcastically or wistfully. But previous American Presidents have always been too polite to troll us with it. It’s a made-in-Canada neurosis even though, ironically and typically for us, it is itself imported from the USA.)

          There is no reason to think Mr. Trump does not intend to do what he says if he can. He said he was going to impose tariffs and he did. Canada has been greatly weakened domestically and on the world stage by a variety of structural problems and political choices of our own making which date to Confederation but accelerated after the Second World War. There is no longer a coherent Canadian identity other than free health care and organized guilt over aboriginals, and a weaponized niceness which makes it not “safe” to criticize either in public discourse. With the British Empire long gone, this is no nucleus to form a nation around. The Prime Minister even bragged recently that Canada is a post-national state.

          President Trump says he intends to use his free hand in foreign and trade policy to apply enough economic force against Canada to squeeze us into accepting annexation on his terms (not ours, obviously. Presumably we would be annexed as one large territory governed from Washington.) Or he might not demand annexation and just allow us to become a poor vassal state as a cheap source of raw materials. I’m not sure that annexation even serves the interests of the United States, although Manifest Destiny (with Greenland!) would certainly get him a place in the history books…if Congress goes along with the plan.

          It so happened that a Substack I follow had a piece about this today. I suggest you just scroll down to a Nov 27 memo quoted in full (author’s name withheld) that begins, “To Wit:” It gives a pretty good synthesis of what knowledgeable Canadian insiders will be discussing.
          https://www.readtheline.ca/p/dispatch-from-the-front-line-thud

  13. Thank you, Leslie, for your thoughtful response. It was worth waiting for. I have, of course, heard of the Canadian “identity crisis”, though never has it been described quite so wryly, “… free health care”, “organized guilt over aboriginals” and a “weaponized niceness” You are too much. Or, as my grandmother would say, “You’re a real card”. I love it.
    I bookmarked that Substack site. The “line editor” (would that be Gurney and Gerson?) presented the most insightful take I’ve read thus far on Trump’s motives. I wrote this line down, “The President will change his course when his own personal metrics are met, and it’s not clear Canada has any control over those metrics at all. Hell, it’s not obvious that those metrics are even clear to Trump himself, right now”. I agree with them that he (Trump) really believes the tariffs are good for the United States, that “Trump’s Court” views the status quo as an “existential threat to America” and that his modus operandi is simply “asserting superiority”. I surely committed numerous punctuation errors here. Hope you can overlook them.

  14. To me, the root cause of the crash at Reagan airport is the cavalier practice of the military to train their helicopter crews in “realistic circumstances”, i.e. among civilian aircraft, using civilians as exercise tools.

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