Welcome to the end of the “work” week: it’s Friday, February 21, 2025, and it’s National Sticky Bun Day, a celebration of those oversized cinnamon rolls that I love so much. Ann Sather is the most famous place in Chicago to get them, and sometimes people would bring a dozen to the lab, but, if you ask me they’re a tad on the small side.
It’s also National Caregivers Day, National Grain-Free Day (not if you have a cinnamon roll!), and World Kombucha Day, celebrated the fermented tea drink that I’ve never had–but would be glad to try.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 21 Wikipedia page.
Finally, there is a Google Doodle today in which you can play a game against an opponent, a game involving the Moon and the lunar cycle. Click below to begin:
Da Nooz:
*The NYT describes the return of the four dead Israeli hostages in a piece called, “With coffins and taunts, Hamas hands dead hostages back to Israel” (article archived here).
Hamas handed over on Thursday what it said were the remains of four Israelis abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, including a woman and her two young children whose abduction was widely seen as emblematic of the viciousness of the Hamas assault.
Crowds of Palestinians gathered near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis to watch the theatrical handoff staged by Hamas: four coffins placed on a stage in front of a cartoonish, vampiric picture of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Triumphant music thumped in the background.
One casket bore a picture of Kfir Bibas, who was less than nine months old when he was kidnapped. A few yards away, another poster threatened that if Israel went back to war against Hamas, even more hostages would return in coffins.
Miles away, Israelis watched the scene unfold in horror and anguish, a sharp contrast to the catharsis evoked by the recent releases of hostages who had survived. Israel’s leaders had vowed to topple Hamas and bring home the roughly 250 hostages the militant group and its allies abducted in October 2023.
But some of those taken captive are now coming home dead.
Critics in Israel say Mr. Netanyahu shares at least part of the blame, arguing that he pressed on with his campaign against Hamas rather than agreeing earlier to a cease-fire that would have saved some lives.
And despite more than a year of devastating war, Hamas’s show of force at the exchange demonstrated that the group was still very much in charge in Gaza. Scores of gunmen — most clad in green Hamas headbands — patrolled the area around the exchange.
On Thursday, the coffins containing the hostages’ remains were the latest props.
Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, called the display “abhorrent and cruel,” adding that it “flies in the face of international law.”
I suspect that when all the hostages (or their remains) are back in Israeli or Thai hands, Israel will resume activities assuring that Hamas will not govern Gaza in the future.
*Mitch McConnell is 83, and though many of us disliked him in the past, he’s found more favor with Democrats lately since he’s been voting with them. But he’ll be gone soon, for he’s not going to run again.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and longest-serving Senate leader who played a pivotal role in obstructing major Democratic agenda items and stacking the federal courts with conservatives, said Thursday that he would not seek another term in 2026.
In a speech on the Senate floor that fell on his 83rd birthday, Mr. McConnell made official what had been widely expected since he announced last year that he would step down as Republican leader. He said that representing Kentucky was “the honor of a lifetime,” but that “I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”
When he stepped down as leader, Mr. McConnell had said he was committed to finishing out his seventh term in Congress. He had not announced his political plans, but it had become clear that he was nearing the end of his career. Mr. McConnell has suffered a series of health issues over the past year, including a back-to-back pair of falls recently that left him temporarily using a wheelchair to navigate the Capitol.
Mr. McConnell established himself as a master tactician in the Senate during 18 years as minority and majority leader, making shrewd use of the chamber’s rules to thwart his opponents and empower his allies, including President Trump. He blocked former President Barack Obama from filling a Supreme Court seat at the end of his tenure and then led a Republican effort to install deeply conservative jurists on the bench under the first Trump administration, culminating in the confirmation of three Supreme Court justices.
But he has a deeply fraught relationship with Mr. Trump, despite the key role he played in enacting Mr. Trump’s agenda and allowing him to return to power. In recent weeks, he has found himself increasingly isolated within his own party, particularly on the issues of national security and safeguarding democracy.
All told, he was not good for the Republic, but I did admire his recent votes against Trump’s nominees.
*Trump issued an early EO that people born in the U.S. but whose parents immigrated here illegally, were here on temporary work visas, or were on student and tourists visas, did not deserve “birthright citizenship.” Since birthright citizenship is in the Constitution, I agreed with the many people who said that Trump’s dictum was unconstitutional. And one federal judge agreed, blocking the order. Now a federal appellate judge has done the same, setting up a Supreme Court case that, if all be right with the world, Trump will lose:
Justice Department lawyers had argued that the court’s injunction — which blocked Trump’s order nationwide after a lawsuit from four Democratic-led states — was harmful because it stymied Trump’s effort to “address the ongoing crisis at the southern border” and implement an immigration policy designed to combat “significant threats to national security and public safety.”
The three-judge panel unanimously rejected the request, with Judges William C. Canby Jr. and Milan D. Smith Jr. writing in their order that the administration had not made a “strong showing” that it would succeed on the merits of its appeal.
In a six-page concurring opinion, Judge Danielle Forrest wrote that setting aside a court order on an emergency basis should be the exception rather than the rule, and that the injunction did not meet the bar. “A controversy, yes. Even an important controversy, yes. An emergency, not necessarily,” wrote Forrest, who was nominated to her seat by Trump in 2019.
In rejecting the emergency plea, the panel upheld a nationwide injunction ordered Feb. 6 by U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour in Seattle, who called Trump’s executive order “blatantly unconstitutional,” while paving the way for the case to be brought before the Supreme Court.
If you want to get rid of birthright citizenship, you’ll have to amend the Constitution, not issue executive orders. And that simply isn’t going to happen. Even Clarence Thomas won’t be able to find enough daylight to say that Trump’s order was lawful.
*Trump’s decision to settle the Ukraine war without the presence of Zelensky has just ticked off the Ukrainian leader, and rightly so. A sign of that animosity is that, following talks between Zelensky and Trump’s “Ukraine envoy” (what a snub!), there was going to be a press conference with the two. Now, however, it’s been canceled.
A news conference that was planned to follow talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. President Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy was canceled Thursday as political tensions deepened between the two countries over how to end the almost three-year war with Russia.
The event was originally supposed to include comments to the media by Zelenskyy and retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, but it was changed at the last minute to a simple photo opportunity where the two posed for journalists. They did not deliver statements or field questions as expected. The change was requested by the U.S. side, Ukrainian presidential spokesman Serhii Nikiforov said.
Kellogg’s trip to Kyiv coincided with recent feuding between Trump and Zelenskyy that has bruised their personal relations and cast further doubt on the future of U.S. support for Ukraine’s war effort.
Dozens of journalists gathered at Ukraine’s presidential office in Kyiv after being invited to take photos and observe a news conference with Zelenskyy and Kellogg. As the meeting began, photographers and video journalists were allowed into a room where the two men shook hands before sitting across from each other at a table.
Journalists were then informed that there would be no news conference with remarks by the leaders or questions from reporters. Nikiforov gave no reason for the sudden change except to say that it was in accordance with U.S. wishes.
The U.S. delegation made no immediate comment. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about why the news conference was called off.
. . . Kellogg, one of the architects of a staunchly conservative policy book laying out an “America First” national security agenda, has long been Trump’s top adviser on defense issues.
What did they expect? Trump is talking to Putin while Zelensky gets fobbed off on some factotrum. Is he supposed to sit there twiddling his thumbs while the Russian dictator and American dictator President decide how to slice up his country. Trump’s “diplomacy” in this case is execrable, but he’s never seen a part of Putin’s buttocks that he wouldn’t osculate.
*I have never swung a golf club in my life, save at miniature golf places as a kid, but the pros have now developed a new and weird way of putting called AimPoint:
When the best golfers in the world line up a putt these days, many of them look completely deranged.
Their process for reading greens everywhere from Augusta National to St Andrews involves standing over the line of the putt, closing one eye and sticking a couple fingers in the air as if they’re trying to hail a cab to the clubhouse. Never in the centuries since a bunch of Scots started malleting balls toward a cup had anyone studied greens quite like this before.
But that hasn’t stopped professionals from adopting the unorthodox putting strategy known as AimPoint, a technique that has become as popular as it is polarizing. One PGA Tour veteran, 2009 U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover, recently inflamed the controversy when he called for AimPoint to be banned and cited it as a factor in golf’s pace-of-play debate. Others have criticized it for simply looking silly—or worse, violating the game’s unwritten rules when players stomp around too close to the hole.
Still, a growing number of top pros swear by it. They argue it makes the maddening art of reading a green more scientific and that the backlash against it is just uninformed.
“AimPoint has 1,000% helped me,” two-time major champion Collin Morikawa said. “I don’t think people understand how AimPoint works to really say this is right or wrong.”
I don’t even understand the description. What is the “biggest break”?
Here’s what you have to understand: First, you straddle the putt’s line at the point of the biggest break. Then you use your footing to discern the amount of tilt, at which point you assign a number—usually one, two or three—to the slope’s severity. Next, standing behind the ball with one eye closed and a pointer finger aimed at the center of the hole, you raise the number of fingers that corresponds to that slope. And that’s your line. So if you estimate the slope at 2% from right to left, you aim at the point outside your middle finger. Voilà.
Here’s an explanation and a demonstration, which sort of makes sense:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, it appeared that Hili made up with Baby Kulka! But the truce was short-lived. Malgorzata explains:
Kulka was eating from Hili’s bowl and Hili was not hissing. That’s why Andrzej thought that she finally accepted Kulka. But, as Hili said, it was just a temporary ceasefire. Half an hour later they were hissing at each other again and ready to fight. Andrzej took Kulka and deported her upstairs.
A: Finally you accepted Kulka.Hili: It’s just a temporary ceasefire.
Ja: Nareszcie zaakceptowałaś Kulkę.Hili: To tylko chwilowe zawieszenie broni.
And in snowy Berlin, a photo of Stupsi in the wild “Hatte ich Dir schon ein Bild von Stupsi geschickt, wie sie durch unseren Iglu läuft?” (translation: Did I already send you a photo of Stupsi walking through our ignloo?)
*******************
From Things With Faces, and the caption, “A forgotten potato at the bottom of the pantry turned into a Moose.”
From The Dodo Pet:
A thoughtful moggy from Jesus of the Day:
A 16-minute discussion between Masih and Quillette editor Jonathan Kay. Masih explains how Western feminists “Iransplain” to her: “hijabs are part of your culture,” etc.
He promised he’d never comment on a woman’s appearance, but this time, @jonkay just couldn’t help himself. See my reaction. ✌️
To those in the West who say we’re not at war with the Islamic Republic, let me tell you: the Islamic Republic is at war with us.
The world has turned… pic.twitter.com/xZPQkYXa7G— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) August 4, 2024
Philosopher Bogardus said this:
I found these two responses to the new definitions:
CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/19/health/hhs-sex-man-woman-definitions
Washington Post: https://archive.ph/jLdGbCNN offers this objection: “the new definitions fail to account for people such as those who identify as intersex.”WaPo offers this objection: “Intersex people and those with chromosomal conditions do not fit into a simple binary construct.”
Scanning CNN article for objections to the new HHS definitions of sex.
Scanning… scanning… finding… one (1)?
“the new definitions fail to account for people such as those who identify as intersex.”
But this isn’t a good objection… 🧵https://t.co/cRCSG0JecS
— Tomas Bogardus (@TomasBogardus) February 20, 2025
From Ken. Translation: “It turns out that debris from the second stage of the Falcon9 rocket fell near Poznań [Poland] photo: Adam Borucki”
Okazuje się, że pod Poznaniem spadły szczątki drugiego stopnia rakiety Falcon9
foto. Adam Borucki pic.twitter.com/cjNE1JZjuG
— poznan_moment (@poznan_moment) February 19, 2025
From Malcolm; an old man waits for his cat to catch up to him. (Sound up for the “meow” song.)
A cat walking with an old man is waiting for the old man to catch him…
So cute… pic.twitter.com/7aj3dAvyII
— Mohamed John Noura (@MohamedJNoura) February 3, 2025
I found a frogs amidst all the progressive virtue-signaling on BlueSky!
Tonight’s Dinner Menu has included Wriggly Crickets, Fingers, and also a Bath because Voigt Reasons!
— Stickyfrogs (@stickyfrogs.bsky.social) 2025-02-20T14:56:52.258Z
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:
This Polish teacher lived barely a month after arriving at Auschwitz.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-21T11:01:36.857Z
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a very unusual fly larva:
This nearly decade-old observation was finally identified as fly larva of the genus Rhyncomya thanks to the publication of a new scientific paper and it's our Observation of the Day! Seen in South Africa by peterwebb.Read the discussion at: http://www.inaturalist.org/observations…
I may have posted this, but so what? It’s amazing! Look at all those mRNA molecules wiggling around. And they have to be fast because proteins have to be made fast:
67 years after Pardee, Jacob and Monod called this stuff “X” (pronounced “eeex” à la française), now we can actually see mRNA molecules wriggling about. Quite amazing. Source in linked post.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-02-18T15:51:10.260Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some diehard’s vote. -David Foster Wallace, novelist, essayist, and short story writer (21 Feb 1962-2008)
Yep: always vote, even for the lesser of two evils. As I said some time ago in this space, I once stayed home rather than vote for a candidate who had really pissed me off with one of her votes on an important issue the previous year. But her opponent was noticeably worse. My stand on personal principle was extremely costly as the contest ended in a dead tie (had I voted for her she would have won by one vote) and was then decided by drawing straws, which she lost. With her loss, the house of delegates majority turned from dem by one to republican by one and thus my simple act of sitting out determined the majority of the lower house in our state General Assembly.
Thus, in spite of her increasingly woke rhetoric in the closing weeks of her campaign (Opra-esque: a house for you and a house for you….), I voted for Kamala rather than stay home which would have given a half-vote to trump.
The decision not to decide is still a decision.
My strong preference would be for the candidate list to always include a “None of the above” choice. That way the disillusioned etc. voters can actually vote and have their vote counted. It would among other things reduce the overblown claims of a “mandate” by the winner. Of course for this and other reasons there is negligible chance that politicians would support such a change. Maybe it could be introduced by referendum in some jurisdictions.
I am very interested in comments about this.
I did not vote. I would have voted none of the above. And as for not voting for Harris and thereby giving a vote to Trump I felt voting for the Dems before they finally figure they have to change is like giving a vote for Trump’s third term. To me the Dems act like Donald was paying them off so he could win.
And it seemed to me they were tied. Trump was Jan. 6 and Putin’s pal and Harris was DEI and critical of Israel. And I also felt like even though Trump was worse for Ukraine, Biden dribbling out huge amounts of money to pay for ineffective weapons only served to turn people against the Ukrainians cause as another example of overspending. Which also helped Trump.
+1
I went to pains to vote in 2008, but not for President. I thought McCain would lead to nuclear war and Obama was awful. Many years have passed since 2008, but even in retrospect, I think I was correct.
Would you have voted if there had been a “None of the above”? I expect that some people are so alienated from voting in general that even voting “None of the above” would be unpleasant.
In France the «votes blancs» (blank votes) are counted and registered separately, but they have no other effect than being registered official statistical information about how many people explicitely used their vote to protest.
In Quebec (Canada) a guy created the «Parti Nul» (Null Party) to give people a way to express «None of the above» without waiting for the government to change the law. For the canadian federal elections there is the Rhinoceros Party, which in bonus is hilarious.
None of these options appear to be popular but I think that the fact that they are an option is significantly better than when protest votes are counted together with rejected ballots and such.
Very interesting, thanks. I know that many elections have “joke parties”, as well as other fringe parties that very few vote for. The problem I see with voting for such fringe parties is that it’s easy for the politicians to dismiss those voters as being fringe people. IMO an explicit “null party” has a reasonable chance of aggregating a large enough share of the vote to begin to be taken seriously. What do you think?
The Parti Nul has been in 4 elections so far and they really didn’t get that many votes, just a few thousands (they were apparently unable to put candidates in all electoral districts either). It seems to be difficult for a new political option to enter the mainstream even in a system where there are more than 2 realistic contenders and political parties get public funding proportional to the number of votes they got. The low scores may be in part because people just don’t know about them.
The Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark seems to indicate that the Constitution does not support birthright citizenship for children of people who are in the U.S. temporarily or illegally.
Based on the Chinese Exclusion Act, a foully racist piece of legislation, which was repealed in 1943. This is the hill Republicans are going to die on?
Oh they absolutely will. Nothing in their behavior suggests otherwise.
Yep. Republican leaders and Trump enablers have long since abandoned any principles. They are currently silent about Trump’s cozying up to Putin and I predict will soon be helping to solidify the U.S. slide into an authoritarian oligarchy. The illiberalism from the regressive left will be no match for the illiberalism from the Christian nationalist/billionaire right.
Which is why it is so important for the Dems to get rid of the regressive left. You can’t fight modern Autocracy with one hand tied. They have gotten smarter and they stick together. Read Anne Applebaums book.
The decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark did not rely on the Chinese Exclusion Act. If the decision had been based on the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong Kim Ark would have been denied entry into the US. The SC held that he could not be denied entry into the US. You have this reversed.
I disagree. The decision simply doesn’t address the issue; which would fit with the pre-Trump Supreme Court practice of deciding the issue before it as narrowly as possible rather than writing broadly. Wong Kim Ark was born in the US to legal immigrants (“green card holders”, if you will); so there was no need to address the issue of whether a child born in the US to non-immigrant parents was entitled to US citizenship.
In case anyone missed my late comment from yesterday:
The Times of Israel reports:
“IDF: Remains of Kfir and Ariel Bibas ID’d, but 3rd body sent by Hamas is not their mom Shiri.
Army says the boys were ‘brutally murdered’ in November 2023 when they were 10-months-old and 4-years-old, demands that Hamas ‘return Shiri home, along with all of our hostages”
Headline from todays TOI:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-threatens-annihilation-after-hamas-returns-bodies-of-bibas-boys-without-their-mother/
The woman returned is not ANY of the hostages.
The whole thing is just appalling.
😢😡
It gets worse.
“IDF says captors murdered Ariel and Kfir Bibas with their bare hands”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-february-21-2025/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2025-02-21&utm_medium=email
After Hamas said they were killed by an Israeli rocket. More Hamas lies (standard).
Despicable!
😡😡
Finally a topic on which I can educate Jerry!
Re: the biggest break
If you are putting the ball toward the hole, and the ground is sloped at some angle, you will need to start the putt toward a point that is “outside” of the center of the hole. If you aim correctly, the ball’s path will form an arc as it rolls to the hole. If you compare that arc to a direct line between the ball and the hole, the point of ‘biggest break’ is point where the arc is furthest from the straight line to the hole.
Regarding the Aimpoint, if you know the percent slope and the length of the putt, you can calculate where to aim your putt with a significantly higher level of accuracy (but note that even professional golfers make an 8 foot putt about 50% of the time, so there is plenty of room for error). The point of the fingers in the air is, based on the perceived slope and the length of the putt, you hold up a certain number of fingers in front of your eye to determine the aiming point for the putt.
As a golfer what I have found interesting is that Aimpoint advocates claim you can sense the percent slope through your feet while straddling the putting line. I have tried it, I feel nothing. I suspect, with no evidence, that golfers use other clues to sense the slope and merely convince themselves they are using their feet. I would love to see a controlled trial where blindfolded golfers are put onto random slopes to see if they can really do what they claim.
I contemplate basketball shooters employing quadratic equations if they could possibly have the time. Good that there are no breaks along the trajectory of the ball through the air.
Good explanation Kevin! I’ve tried Aimpoint too, I think I can feel the slope, but you may be right I’m fooling myself. And Aimpoint is only helpful on modest slopes. On a steep green it’s more important for me to pick the right speed than to pick the right line. [Can’t believe we’re discussing golf on WEIT – cf. Barry @ 7.]
RE rocket debris fall in Poland: so Musk seems to be turning the entire Earth into his toilet with this fall to Earth in Poland and last week’s explosion that rained debris down into active jet routes over the Caribbean. You are welcome to do rapid engineering design and break things, but you should not put other people and property at risk in the process. What’s next??
This Trump trauma on Ukraine is exactly why, nose pinched and fists clenched, I unwillingly voted Democrat. Trump’s horror re Zelensky is predictable and horrible. It is Putin’s Europe now.
(An aside – what is amazing to me is Zelensky is actually still alive.)
That said… MAGA is indeed good on Israel even coming after Biden who – despite his detractors – was better than any other US prez on Israel.
I wrote about Gaza and Trump in my column this week (posted here yesterday).
https://democracychronicles.org/so-what-of-gaza-trumps-plan-and-some-context/
D.A.
NYC
Since you bring up Ukraine in the context of (democratic) voting (rights), is it true that: Zelenskyy’s term expired some months ago; he has banned opposition parties; and has declared martial law and forbidden elections? (As an aside, the U.S. held elections in 1864 during the Civil War and of course during WW II. Apparently there were insufficient “don’t change horses” concerns. I recently became aware that Britain did not hold elections during WW II, though opposition parties were not outlawed.)
Re: Boris Johnson (at the follow-up behest of the U.S.) inserting himself into Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations in Istanbul April 2022 and talking Zelenskyy out of further pursuing the matter. As president of an independent sovereign nation, ought Zelenskyy, obviously interested in peace and no more Ukrainian deaths, have stood his ground against such third party meddling? I take it there is some irony in his now finding himself effectively an excluded third party in U.S.-Russian negotiations about Ukraine. I gather that any world power including the U.S. – regardless of its geopolitical views – feels entitled to meddle if it has invested billions of dollars in proxy wars and (attempted) regime change.
Is it your position that Ukrainians who opposed Johnson’s meddling; opposed the war and the prospect of many thousands of Ukrainian deaths which no less predictably and horribly became reality; and who actively avoided being physically manhandled into military service against their will, are traitors? (Or ought these questions be peremptorily and perfunctorily dismissed as “Russian talking points” by “Putin puppets, assets, and useful idiots”?)
Re: birthright citizenship: apnews.com/general-news-travel-161a0db2666044dc8d42932edd9b9ce6
Though from 2019, the AP article appears to reasonably reflect Trump’s current position. (Which in light of recent events could change, at least as regards Russians, eh?) I reasonably gather that Hillary Clinton heartily supports birthright citizenship. As much as she despises Putin/Russia, has the idea of Russian infants being born on U.S. soil galled her to no end? (Or have rules changed since 2/2022 and thus far the U.S. seeks to prevent Russians from visiting the U.S., much as the U.S. seeks to prevent Americans like Scott Ritter from visiting Russia?)
During WW 2 in the UK there were no elections. Spies and traitors were treated harshly.
I guess Churchill was a dictator?
Do you think there are proper elections in Russia? If so, I’ve got some swampland you might be interested in buying.
Halting elections b/c of war is standard. Z. is absolutely not a dictator. Parts of the right wing’s love of Putin in the US is amazingly retarded.
There’s no way to properly run a decent election with the disruption war causes. Z. has been in power since 2019 so it isn’t like he’s a perma-president like, ahem, the guy(s) next door pushing 25 years plus. In Russia and Byelorussia.
Gathering opinions, feedback surveys etc on which direction to take can be done on a less than nationwide election method. And this is important. The Ukrainians are the only people who should decide whether the settle or fight on. A full election isn’t the only way to consider their preferences.
At this point were Ukrainian I’d take the 20% loss of country (Donbas, Crimea etc.) if I could get some kind of agreement for peace. And a bitchin’ Korean style DMZ wall.
I think Ukraine will run out of men before Russia does and that is the deciding factor.
D.A.
NYC
For the best analysis over the past 5 years I listen to (Australian) Perun’s podcast on youtube every Sunday.
Yep, peace would be good even if territory is lost. But there should some kind of security guarantee or Putin will just spend a year recovering and then invade again.
For both David and Frau Katze (since there is no reply button under her post).
President Obama rightly understood that Ukraine was more important to Russia than it was to the United States–and Putin knew that. What might shift that calculus? Think rare-earth metals.
Ukrainian constitution does not allow elections during a war, or martial law.
There are opposition parties in Ukraine, as anyone who seeks Ukrainians rather than Russian sources knows.
Several American presidents have been pro-Israel (in different ways). Truman provide diplomatic recognition of the newly formed (then) nation of Israel. Johnson airlifted vast amounts of military material during the 67 war. Eisenhower forced Israel, France, and the UK to back off in the Suez crisis of 56. Apparently, the Israelis got security guarantees from Eisenhower at that time. In 67, Eisenhower called Johnson to tell him that he had to send military material to Israel (which Johnson did).
Putting is all about BELIEF that you know the break that the putt will take. Aimpoint convinces believers that they know the break so they putt confidently. Uncertainty about the break causes bad putts. So erasing doubt helps putting. But there is no evidence that it really helps you read the break. The best caddies learn the break solely from experience. If you listen to them it also removes the doubt. The problem with Aimpoint is that it assumes that the slope you read at one point is true for the whole putt. Really, you should do Aimpoint for every foot of the putt and then calculate a series of one-foot putts working your way all the way back to your ball. But this would take forever, and then people would be tempted to break it down into 6 inch putts. At two inches it might be foolproof but 18 holes of gold would take two weeks to complete.
Finally, a really important issue discussed here!!!
Hmmm, Barry. Sounds vaguely like first week of Calculus in 1966: For every epsilon greater than zero, there exists a delta greater than zero, such that….etc..etc.
🙂.
Zeno’s Putting Paradox?
I have to say, the paper from Jennifer Douda’s lab* cited above is one of those “Holy smokes, science is so cool” kind of papers. If you can, you should download the videos and watch the single mRNA molecules become highly active after stimulation. You can see them wiggling and jiggling like unstable toy tops. Active little buggers.
Single molecule videos! Amazing how far we’ve come. Pretty cool. Still no flying cars though. Just saying.
*(Xia, C., Colognori, D., Jiang, X.S. et al. Single-molecule live-cell RNA imaging with CRISPR–Csm. Nat Biotechnol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-024-02540-5)
“Critics in Israel say Mr. Netanyahu shares at least part of the blame, arguing that he pressed on with his campaign against Hamas rather than agreeing earlier to a cease-fire that would have saved some lives.”
“Critics say that the woman shares at least part of the blame, arguing that she wore a low cut top and did not accept the advances by the man rather than agreeing to his demands”
Yes. I wasn’t in love with Netanyahu prior to Oct. 7 and I can’t believe I was ever so naive to believe in peace. Bibi was right all along and were I Israeli I’d vote for him.
No surrender. Peace with Arabs countries wanting peace who want to join the civilized world – note I say countries – but for “Palestine”: never. Ever.
Onwards Israeli heroes.
D.A.
NYC
Is that potato a moose or an axolotl?
I sense that many commenters here do not want the war in Ukraine to end. I understand this. Part of the peril of war is that injustices will be seen everywhere and emotions will cloud reason. This dynamic can play out both in those who are belligerent and in those we sometimes call “peaceniks.” For belligerents, the fallacy of sunk costs also kicks in, the wretched idea takes hold that men and women would have died in vain if we quit, particularly if they were your family or comrades, so we must “stay the course.” But let us assume that all but a commenter or two here, not being tied up in the combat itself, still has their reason. How would you end this war? I hear protests that Trump will give away land, but the hard fact is that Putin already took the land. If you want it you must take it back, thus I assume you want the war to continue. Or do you naively think that Putin will hand it back to you without getting something he values even more in return? What would that be? Many here want Ukraine in NATO, but this is a condition to which Putin will never agree without being first defeated on the battlefield, thus an insistence on it means the war continues. Negotiating with Putin is apparently “bad,” as your favored political party refused (quite stupidly, I might add) even to meet with him. If one will not even talk with the chief adversary, then I assume you want the war to continue.
So, I ask: who will fight it? Whose lives are you willing to offer up for your ideals and your hatred of Putin? At what point do you deplete the manhood of Ukraine sufficiently that you accept the conditions that were available before all the bloodshed? Or do you still think you can win? Show me the feasible plan for victory. Many of your experts also had a plan for victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their daddies had a plan for Vietnam. But perhaps they are right this time. What is that plan? If you have one, we might disagree about its potential effectiveness, but I will at least understand why you want the war to continue. It is of little use to protest that it is Zelensky who wants the war to continue (most Ukrainians now want to negotiate an end.) For without your weapons, Zelensky would have been forced to capitulate long ago. So, it is clear, you also want the war to continue.
If I am mistaken and you truly want the war over, then what are your negotiating terms? Tell me why Putin should accept them. It will serve little purpose to explain how the terms are just, or that it isn’t fair that he killed so many and got away with it, or some such moralizing. This is war. It cares neither about your feelings nor your sense of justice and fairness. All it cares about is whether you can impose your will on your adversary. Please, tell me: how will you impose your will on Putin either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table?
I think this is perfectly said.
I will also add on a very personal note: After a fifty year hiatus my wife and I moved back to my old college town, where today I saw a contingent of idealistic college students with signs protesting and advocating for the continuation of the Ukrainian war, in the selfsame location that I, as well as Jerry, Batterson, Hempel, Stash Krod, and many other viewers of this site put ourselves out there to end the killing in Vietnam, being called traitors and suffering various other repercussions.
Even though Putin will “get way with “it”” it has to end, for now, and rebuild. Let the Ukrainian people speak as to what they want.
While I wouldn’t blame any American who protested the Vietnam war because he didn’t want he or his loved ones to die there, I am sad that the USA didn’t win. I think this paved the way for today’s truimph of autocrats and barbarians and demise of the Western civilization.
I think that they are against forcing Ukraine to capitulate. Ukraine could capitulate from day 1. They didn’t need Trump to come and force them to capitulate.
The feasible plan for victory is to arm Ukraine. Period. Zelensky presented this plan, the Western countries rejected it.
And frankly, I am tired of the argument “you are not dying in a trench in Ukraine fighting the Russians with your kitchen knife, so shut up”. Nest time, when there is a fire, I’ll be asked to go to extinguish it with my water bottle or put up with everything burning out.
But you are a woman, Maya, who will never be given a rifle and put on a truck heading to the front. (Nor should you be. It is men’s duty to safeguard wombs.) Even in its last collapsing days when it was down to boys and old men, the Wehrmacht didn’t conscript women. Feminists used to say that once women got the vote, there would be no more wars. But today so few women have children that they seem not to mind the idea of sending other women’s sons into a Hell neither they nor their daughters will ever have to experience. And then kvetch about toxic masculinity.
The Canadian government actually had this insight during the First World War. It allowed women to vote in the conscription referendum if they had sons in service. Turned out mothers gleefully supported conscripting other mothers’ shirking sons (who were disproportionately French-Canadian and cared nothing for Europe.)
Even mass rape is a better fate than the meat grinder of a dug-in infantry war protracted until one side runs out of men because the other side never ran out of ammunition. Russia may well dominate much of Europe. But it is unlikely to massacre the women. They are too useful for other purposes.
This is a reply to Doug #11
Do you think Russia invaded Ukraine, or was it just a special military operation? If the former, do you think it is right for nations to invade other countries?
Everyone wants the war to end, but that decision should be made only by the Ukrainian people, and every nation that values democracy and sovereignty should be at their side.
I can understand that the US do not want to continue investing money and resources into this war. It’s a valid decision. However, the withdrawal of support should have been discussed and negotiated with Ukraine and Europe first. Not with the dictator from Russia.
I recall the whole western world imposed sanctions on Russia. Do you think the US should lift those sanctions?
I see you avoided answering my questions, but I’ll gladly answer yours.
Russia invaded Ukraine—and it is currently an irrelevant point. How to get them out—if you can—is what now matters.
Is it “right” to invade another country? As with your first question, you apparently think you score moral points. The question is irrelevant both to the task at hand and to potential adversaries who do not share your values.
“Everyone wants to end the war.” No, they do not. There are people in the American policy world who will gladly bleed Putin and try to weaken Russia over the long term at the expense of the Ukrainian people.
“The decision should be made only by the Ukrainian people.” Another moralizing stance. I empathize, but in war you earn the right to decide your fate by imposing your will on the adversary. Any decision to end the war—and the terms on which it will be done—will be forced on Ukraine by one party or another unless Ukraine reaches a point at which it can impose its will or make it too difficult for Russia to continue.
“Every nation that values democracy . . .” I appreciate your consistency in trying to score moral points, but all that matters in war is whether you can win. I long ago tired of the feeble “we support the troops” mentality. It is very easy to tie that yellow ribbon around the tree and declare your fealty to all that is righteous and good. What you haven’t yet done is proposed a viable plan.
Resources. Many of us who do not want to invest resources in this war come to that position because we value lives. (It is also possible that some of us overlearned lessons from our own careers watching or serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.) The sending of resources was understandable yet its long-term continuance is misguided. Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition with Russia barring direct US military involvement—and even that is not a guarantee. If you differ, give me a plan. In the meantime, rather than rehash whether the lives already lost could have been saved if calmer heads had early prevailed, tell me why we should lose more. “Because democracy matters” won’t take care of the wounded and the widows.
Sanctions. I think they are mostly a fool’s errand. The workarounds are vast. Moreover, the United States may soon enough undercut itself by using its economic might to coerce others.
I greatly respect the fight and courage the Ukrainians have shown. While the original war plans have not produced their promised outcomes, I understand why one would try. Unfortunately, evil men often win wars and good, brave men often die. Complain to the gods about the injustice of fate. In the meantime, I would love to hear a viable plan to either defeat Putin or coerce him at the negotiating table.
Thank you, Doug. Your two comments certainly give the lie to the bad advice that the best way to deal with a bully is to stand up to him. Wrong. Sometimes he kills you. And then what have you proved?
Maybe the advice does work with some kinds of bullies, the kinds who are really weak cowards who won’t fight. But surely no one still thinks that of Vladimir Putin.
It would work with Putin. He always tries and advances when he does not meet resistance.
I am in desperation because of the willingness of Americans to let Putin have Europe.
+1 as a Polish-Canadian survivor of the communist satellite state of USSR.
The real problem is Americans as a nation promoted the cynical view that in the struggle for personal happiness, values are a hallmark of the weak.
Of course we have no idea how to deal with Putin, because democracies are not united for good by any definition other than “economic self-interest” – which Putin plays like a fiddle.