Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Welcome to the Sabbath for Jewish cats, in which shabbos goys are required to clean their litter boxes. It’s CaturSaturday, February 22, 2025, and National Margarita Day. Who has not had one of these frozen concoctions? Here’s a nice frozen version that would go down well with fresh chips and a spicy salsa dip:
Jon Sullivan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
BREAKING: Hamas handed over five living male hostages to Israel this morning, with one more set to be released later. Also, Hamas finally handed over the body of Shiri Bibas to Israel, after having given a Palestinian woman “by mistake”. Earlier Bibas’s two children, both dead, were returned to Israel, with the doctors saying both children had been strangled to death by hand. Finally, Trump fired General Charles Q. Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: America’s senior military officer. Five other senior Pentagon officers were fired, the firing said to “[reflect] the president’s insistence that the military’s leadership is too mired in diversity issues, has lost sight of its role as a combat force to defend the country and is out of step with his ‘America First’ movement.”
*The battle between Trump and Zelensky continues, with Trump acting, as usual in this mess, greedily and reprehensibly. He wants Ukraine’s mineral rights given to the U.S, apparent as one a condition of a peace!
The Trump administration is stepping up its push for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to hand mineral rights worth hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S., after Zelensky’s initial rejection of the demand fueled President Trump’s escalating broadsides against Ukraine’s leader.
The White House called Zelensky’s refusal to sign a deal it proposed and his criticism of Trump unacceptable, a day after Zelensky said Trump is living in a “disinformation” bubble and Trump countered by calling Zelensky a dictator.
“They need to tone it down and take a hard look and sign that deal,” Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz said Thursday of Ukraine’s leadership on Fox News.
The U.S. demands were first presented by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Kyiv last week.
A U.S. Republican lawmaker who met with Zelensky on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference last week described the Ukrainian leader’s account of the interaction with Bessent.
Bessent pushed the paper across the table, demanding that Zelensky sign it, the Ukrainian president told the lawmaker. Zelensky took a quick look and said he would discuss it with his team. Bessent then pushed the paper closer to Zelensky.
“You really need to sign this,” the Treasury secretary said. Zelensky said he was told “people back in Washington” would be very upset if he didn’t. The Ukrainian leader said he took the document but didn’t commit to signing.
Trump is acting like the Godfather: “Nice little country you got here; it would be a shame if anything happened to it.” Trump is furiously osculating Putin’s rump, and demonizing Zelensky at the same time. Isn’t this the opposite of the way things should be?
*Apparently, the four bodies of the hostages returned to Israel by Hamas on Thursday did not include Sheri Bibas, the mother of the two young children whose bodies were returned. Further, the children were not killed by IDF fire or bombings, as Hamas claimed, but were murdered by the terrorist group. Further, and this makes me ineffably sad, the two children were strangled to death by the bare hands of terrorists.
From the ToI:
The Israel Defense Forces said Friday that forensic examinations have revealed that Palestinian terrorists murdered children Ariel and Kfir Bibas “with their bare hands” weeks after their kidnapping on October 7, 2023.
“We can confirm that baby Kfir Bibas, just 10 months old, and his older brother Ariel, aged four, were both brutally murdered by terrorists while being held hostage in Gaza no later than November 2023. These two innocent children were taken hostage alive, along with their mother, Shiri, from their home on October 7, 2023,” IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a televised statement.
But Hagari said the evidence clearly showed that they were not killed in an airstrike as Hamas claimed.
“Contrary to Hamas’s lies, Ariel and Kfir were not killed in an airstrike. Ariel and Kfir Bibas were murdered in cold blood by terrorists,” he said. “The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys — they killed them with their bare hands. Afterward, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.”
“This assessment is based on both forensic findings from the identification process and intelligence that supports these findings. We have shared these findings, intelligence and forensics with our partners around the world so they can verify it,” said Hagari.
Here’s Hagari’s statement. I have just heard that Sheri Bibas was murdered the same way as her children. Rumors say that the bodies were stoned by Hamas after they were dead to make it look as if they all died from an airstrike. Hagari below notes that the forensic conclusions have been shared with Israel’s allies throughout the world so they can be verified.
Early on Friday morning, the Israeli military announced that the body of Ms. Bibas — nominally returned, along with those of her sons, by Hamas to Israel on Thursday — appeared to be that of someone else. And an autopsy of the two boys, aged 4 and 8 months at the time of their abduction, revealed that terrorists killed them in Gaza “with their bare hands,” the military said.
A senior Hamas official, Mousa Abu Marzouq, said in a phone interview that the family was killed in an Israeli airstrike in November 2023, dismissing the accusation that a small militant group that held the hostages, the Mujahideen Brigades, had murdered them. But Mr. Abu Marzouq acknowledged that Ms. Bibas’s body may have been kept in Gaza by mistake, saying that Hamas members were now searching for her remains in a place where the family had been buried alongside Palestinians.
Neither side’s account could be independently verified. [I’m betting that Hagari’s statement, but not that of Hamas, can be verified.
Israelis remain deeply traumatized by the October assault, and the return of the Bibas boys, coupled with the uncertainty about their mother’s whereabouts and the disrespectful way that Hamas paraded their coffins on Thursday, revived the torment.
Responding to the military’s announcement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned to the language of vengeance that defined his speeches in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack.
“May God avenge their blood,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a recorded speech to the nation on Friday morning. “And we will also have our vengeance.”
The seething tenor of Mr. Netanyahu’s response was maintained across much of the Israeli political spectrum. Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, said in a broadcast interview that the Bibases’ treatment showed how “the majority of Gazans want to murder all of the Israelis.” (Polling last fall suggested that less than 40 percent of Gazan Palestinians supported the Oct. 7 attack, down from more than 70 percent early last year.)
. . . For some Israelis, the fate of the Bibas family underlined the need to restart the war to defeat Hamas once and for all. The current truce is set to elapse in early March unless Hamas and Israel can agree to an extension. “The only solution is the destruction of Hamas, and this must not be postponed,” said Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister, in a post on social media.
Others in Israel differ, of course, but I still think Hamas needs to be defeated; it cannot be allowed to run Gaza. This is from Alison on FB:
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: War Games.”
→ Planes just falling out of the sky now: A Delta Air Lines plane crash-landed in Toronto, which NBC News managed to associate with Trumpo, even though the crash was technically not in America (yet). “This is going to, yet again, raise the concern about FAA staffing, air traffic control staffing. Now, this is a Canadian air traffic control tower and this is under Canadian authority once it crosses the border, and yet, as you know, there has been this talk about maybe staff cuts at the FAA as a part of President Trump’s effort to trim down the federal workforce.” The cause of the accident is still under investigation. So the American right doesn’t yet know whether to blame this on union workers making the plane badly or suspiciously tan pilots—is that an Italian with a man bun or a Latina with a bun bun? We need to know.
There’s an amazing essay in Palladium Magazine about how complex systems like modern air travel can’t survive our anti-competence culture, and I think there’s a lot of truth to it. For planes to fly around and basically never crash, you need a lot of extremely competent people working together competently. And for the last decade, the air traffic control worker tests have penalized anyone who indicates interest in science or math. It sounds conspiratorial but it’s true. We can say that being on time is “white supremacy culture” when the stakes are the anthropology department’s annual team dinner, but we can’t do that with air travel. Or we can. But then planes absolutely will fall out of the sky.
→ Julianne Moore’s controversial book about freckles: The new Department of Defense has apparently banned Julianne Moore’s children’s book Freckleface Strawberry from Pentagon-run schools. The ban followed a broad review by the Department of Defense Education Activity of school books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics.” So: freckles. Moore’s book follows a 7-year-old girl “who’s learning to love the skin she’s in.” She wrote the book for children “to remind them that we all struggle but are united by our humanity and our community.” Military professionals can still get to Freckleface Strawberry if they really need to, if it’s a freckle emergency. During the Defense Department’s review process, officials said that, of problematic books like Moore’s, “access will be limited to professional staff.” I, for one, am glad we’re bringing back freckle-shaming. It’s enough about them and their sunburns. Red hair is alarming. Freckles are a sign that no one put zinc oxide on your face, and therefore you’re unruly and anti-authority. I’ve never known a peaceful redhead. My case remains. Did you know they need more anesthesia during surgery? That’s real. Good ban, Trump. Get ’em.
→ We simply did not woke hard enough: As I do every week now, I ask the question: Are there still Democrats? Where are you? America is calling for your return. New polling from Gallup shows that a plurality of Democrats favor party moderation, a significant shift from 2021 following Biden’s victory.
But that is not what Dem intellectuals want. No. Liberal intellectuals are actually arguing the opposite. Still. Even now. Here is Rebecca Traister, an influential progressive writer, with a clarion call for action in New York magazine this week: “Democrats have lost recently not because of an excess of wokeness but because of a failure to get excessive enough.” That is a real quote. She believes that the wokeness was not woke enough. The rioters need to smash more windows. The people who misgender don’t get fired—they get the wall. There can be no change of course; Kamala ran too moderately. The polls are wrong. Taxpayers gave a brand-new, Stacey Abrams–linked eco-nonprofit just $2 billion dollars when it should have been $3 billion, you see (that $2 billion is real, by the way). We must simply woke more and harder.
In that essay, she calls my wife “a reactionary troll,” but in fact, Bar is tall and quite calm compared to some of the women I dated. Anyway, Rebecca, I know you hate me and everything I stand for, which is whatever Matt Yglesias tweeted that morning combined with whatever Derek Thompson tweeted last night. But I promise, the answer is not to woke harder. If you could just stop screaming at anyone who believes slightly different things, you might win something. As Jen Psaki put it last week: “Democrats just lost everything. They control nothing.” Rebecca—it’s okay. We know it’s sad that the canceling stuff didn’t work out and most Americans aren’t into making crimes legal.
This last piece burns my onions. Why are prominent Democrats doubling down, increasing their demonizing of those who voted for Trump? Yes, of course Trump is on balance hurting America, but the Democrats don’t have a chance in hell of gaining any power unless they become more moderate. It’s as if Dems are so angry at having lost the election to an unhinged narcissist that they’ve lost their cool—to the extent that they can’t figure out what to do now save curse Trump and his minions. I suspect this is making it worse for all Democrats.
*Andrew Sullivan is really peeved at the Trump Administration, perhaps so much so that he’ll declare himself a Democrat (there are few Republicans as moderate as Sullivan). His latest piece, about American foreign policy, is called “Requiem for the West“, with the subtitle, “Trump and Vance have put a stake in the heart of the free world.”
We only saw Donald Trump’s foreign policy darkly in his first term — constrained, as he was, by a handful of white-knuckled Republicans in the executive branch. Now we see it face to face. It’s a vision where international law disappears, great powers divide up the planet into spheres of influence, and the strong always control the weak. It’s Trump’s vision of domestic politics as well. And of life.
Control, plunder, gloat. This is the Trump way.
And to give the madman his due, something had to happen. Neoconservatism is long since dead — by suicide, of course, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the global position of the US after 1945, and then after 1989, is over and never coming back. There is simply no threat in the world that is equivalent to the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Maoist China. Islamism was never going to replace them.
And so a retrenchment of the US position was inevitable at some point: a more judicious approach to interventionism, a greater balance with the allies, a pivot toward Asia and away from Europe and the Middle East: responsible, realist re-positioning. In fact, failure to do so when our debt payments now exceed our military budget would be asking for trouble.
. . . . What we are witnessing now — as Washington’s support for Ukraine crumbles — is what happens when US promises run way ahead of its core interests and US public opinion, and we get caught funding an unending, unwinnable, unspeakably bloody war.
On this much, Trump is right. The Ukraine conflict is at a stalemate; the human toll is vast, unimaginable, and mounting every day; there’s no chance of repelling Russia from its current occupation — but there is some chance of driving a hard bargain to ensure a stable, new border and an independent rump Ukraine, with security guarantees against any future invasions from Russia.
And so I’ve always been in support of a tough peace negotiation that would have to reflect the facts on the ground. I was prepared for concessions from the West in the end, alongside some guarantees against future aggression. Even if it was realistic to understand that victory was impossible, we could still find a way to protect Ukraine’s fledgling democracy and remaining territory, keep the democracies aligned against Putin, and maintain the broad structure of the post-war settlement, alongside international law.
But that is not, it now seems obvious, the Trump position at all. What he is doing is not about making a tough peace deal with Russia, recalibrating NATO, or protecting Ukraine’s democracy. He is merely setting the terms of a new alliance and relationship with the criminal Russian dictatorship — directed against the European democracies.
Clearly, Sullivan concedes that some of Ukraine will have to be given to Russia to end the war. Everybody seems to think so, though I deeply regret that, because it’s a tacit admission that Russia can take whatever land it wants (granted, the cost was high). But I would love to see Ukraine in NATO. That may be a dealbreaker for Russia, and they’d continue the war, which they’d eventually win at a huge cost in lives and moneuy. But to see our administration on the side of despotism rather than freedom is a hard thing to bear. And I completely agree with Sullivan in his closing:
This is who Trump is. But it isn’t who Americans really are. I have faith that the West, now mortally wounded, can yet survive Trump and Putin, and re-emerge at some point. But it may be a dark, dark few years before the dawn’s early light breaks out again.
Indeed.
*And from the AP’s reliable oddities section, which also reports that the New York Yankees baseball team has finally dropped its ban on players having beards. But this piece is about Birkentocks, which I’ve always thought were the ugliest footwear in creation. The company tried to prevent other makers from selling copycat designs, and Birkenstock tried to defend its interest by claiming the sandals were art. They lost.
Birkenstocks: They are ubiquitous in summer, comfy and very German. Sometimes they look chic and sometimes shabby. But can these sandals be considered art?
That’s the question Germany’s Federal Court of Justice wrestled with Thursday, and it ruled they’re just comfy footwear.
Birkenstock, which is headquartered in Linz am Rhein, Germany, and says its tradition of shoemaking goes back to 1774, filed a lawsuit against three competitors who sold sandals that were very similar to its own.
The shoe manufacturer claimed its sandals “are copyright-protected works of applied art” that may not be imitated. Under German law, works of art enjoy stronger and longer-lasting intellectual property protections than consumer products.
The company asked for an injunction to stop its competitors from making copycat sandals and order them to recall and destroy those already on the market. The defendant companies were not identified in the court statement.
Before Germany’s highest court for civil trials weighed in Thursday, the case had been heard at two lower courts, which disagreed on the issue.
A regional court in Cologne initially recognized the shoes as works of applied art and granted the orders, but Cologne’s higher regional court overturned the orders on appeal, German news agency dpa reported.
The appeals court said it was unable to establish any artistic achievement in the wide-strapped, big-buckled sandals
The Federal Court of Justice sided with the appeals court and dismissed the case. In its ruling, it wrote that a product can’t be copyrighted if “technical requirements, rules or other constraints determine the design.”
“For the copyright protection of a work of applied art — as for all other types of work — the level of design must not be too low,” the court wrote. “For copyright protection, a level of design must be achieved that reveals individuality.”
I agree, but I also know that tastes differ and I’m not gonna kick your butt if you wear these monstrosities. For your delectation, here is not-art from Wikipedia:
From Malgorzata, who captioned this as “Innocent, starving Gaza civilians rejoice at the sight of murdered Israeli babies.”
This video shows how sick the “Palestinian” society really is.
These are Nazi civilians, including kids, having a big party cheering as 4 dead Jewish hostages, including 2 dead kids, are paraded through the square before being handed over to Israel
Two posts from Dr. Cobb, who’s heading for Asilomar, CA, the subject of his first post:
Criticisms of the 1975 Asilomar meeting on genetic engineering are quite valid, in terms of its lack of representation and so on. But remember the positive consequences – all insulin is now produced in engineered microbes, and careful medical use of the technology can be amazing:
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. -Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (22 Feb 1788-1860)
[ pic of Schopenhauer ]
^^^never disappoints
R. Traister : “Democrats have lost recently not because of an excess of wokeness but because of a failure to get excessive enough.”
Maoism with American Characteristics.
Gawd help us
It’s very discouraging. In yesterday’s newsletter Heather Cox Richardson was advocating for trans women (= men) in women’s sports.
Only a tiny number of commenters objected.
This issue helped Trump win the election.
What are these people thinking?
Heather Cox Richardson was not advocating for trans women in women’s sports – she was reporting on the exchange between Trump and Janet Mills, the governor of Maine.
I quote:
Today, Maine governor Janet Mills took the fight against Trump’s overreach directly to him. At a meeting of the nation’s governors, in a rambling speech in which he was wandering through his false campaign stories about transgender athletes, Trump turned to his notes and suddenly appeared to remember his executive order banning transgender student athletes from playing on girls sports teams.
The body that governs sports in Maine, the Maine Principals’ Association, ruled that it would continue to allow transgender students to compete despite Trump’s executive order because the Maine state Human Rights Law prohibits discrimination on the grounds of gender identity.
Trump asked if the governor of Maine was in the room.
“Yeah, I’m here,” replied Governor Mills.
“Are you not going to comply with it?” Trump asked.
“I’m complying with state and federal laws,” she said.
“We are the federal law,” Trump said. “You better do it because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t….”
“We’re going to follow the law,” she said.
“You’d better comply because otherwise you’re not going to get any federal funding,” he said.
Mills answered: “We’ll see you in court.”
As Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times put it: “Something happened at the White House Friday afternoon that almost never happens these days. Somebody defied President Trump. Right to his face.”
Hours later, the Trump administration launched an investigation into Maine’s Department of Education, specifically its policy on transgender athletes. Maine attorney general Aaron Frey said that any attempt to cut federal funding for the states over the issue “would be illegal and in direct violation of federal court orders…. Fortunately,” he said in a statement, “the rule of law still applies in this country, and I will do everything in my power to defend Maine’s laws and block efforts by the president to bully and threaten us.”
“[W]hat is at stake here [is] the rule of law in our country,” Mills said in a statement. “No President…can withhold Federal funding authorized and appropriated by Congress and paid for by Maine taxpayers in an attempt to coerce someone into compliance with his will. It is a violation of our Constitution and of our laws.”
“Maine may be one of the first states to undergo an investigation by his Administration, but we won’t be the last. Today, the President of the United States has targeted one particular group on one particular issue which Maine law has addressed. But you must ask yourself: who and what will he target next, and what will he do? Will it be you? Will it be because of your race or your religion? Will it be because you look different or think differently? Where does it end? In America, the President is neither a King nor a dictator, as much as this one tries to act like it—and it is the rule of law that prevents him from being so.”
“[D]o not be misled: this is not just about who can compete on the athletic field, this is about whether a President can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation. I believe he cannot.”
In addition to reading Andrew Sullivan this week (which I think analyzes the machinery of trump2.0 versus the brownian motion-like trump kid in a candy store 1.0 very well) let us not forget, Douglas Murray’s “The War on the West”. You are not paranoid if they really are after you.
The War on the West is one of the top five books I’ve read in recent years.
If kids these days could read I’d make them read it.
Damn kids on my lawn, all not readin’ etc.
D.A.
NYC
Trump has fired inspectors general. Installed MAGA loyalists in the Justice Department, FBI, and intelligence services. Conducted a Friday night purge of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and top military leaders. Given an unqualified oligarch and his minions unprecedented access to the nation’s financial systems. Pardoned those convicted in the Jan. 6 riot. Congressmen happily supporting him and wanting to declare Trump’s birthday a national holiday or have him serve a third term. This nation is becoming ancient Rome and Trump is now Caesar.
Yep. Trump is going to provoke some kind of Tiananmen Square massacre and establish martial law. Bannon was practicing his nazi salute in Baltimore last Thursday.
You taking bets on that? I do have some American dollars to put up. You have to specify a time frame for your prediction.
Count me in on that bet Leslie. The whole Trump is Nazi thingie is just plain dumb. And Bannon is nobody’s idea of a serious person. He’s like the king of dunce cap history complete with a Burger King cardboard crown on his fat messy head.
D.A.
NYC/Florida
ps Damn. Now I’m going to have to go to Burger King!
Some degree of martial law by the 2026 midterms. I will wager 25 dollars US or Canadian. If I lose I will meet you at the statue of Robert Burns, in Allen Park, the next time I am in Toronto following the date of the midterms. We can work out the details later.
Too wishy-washy, like being pregnant to some degree. There is either martial law or there isn’t, as defined in U.S. federal law including its declaration. At a minimum the military police and justice system must explicitly replace the civil authority, even if only briefly. Otherwise we aren’t talking martial law. We don’t need “suspension of the Constitution”, (if that is even a thing.) But mere deployment of the military at the request of a mayor or governor to assist the civil authority (as has happened several times in Canada) doesn’t count as martial law, as authorities are careful to point out when it happens. If you wanted to count the invocation of the Insurrection Act as a qualifying event, you should have said so at first. I confess I wouldn’t bet against that.
And I’m holding you to your original prediction of a massacre first. Let’s say at least as large as the Boston Massacre and it has to be by agents of the state, not just a riot between rival gangs that gets out of hand. I won’t insist that President Trump can be shown to have provoked it. I’ll accept it if one happens on his watch. The essence of the bet is that a politically inspired massacre is carried out by police or military, and then the Government imposes martial law in response.
But the US$ 25 I can afford. And I will spot you out to Election Day 2026.
More probable scenario: rigging elections. See here from the NYT:
Trump Dismantles Government Fight Against Foreign Influence Operations
Dozens of employees who had been working to fight foreign interference in U.S. elections have been reassigned or forced out, according to current and former officials.
Broken record that I am, I don’t suppose that the Government Fight Against Foreign Influence Operations had anything to do with Quiet Skies federal air marshal surveillance of Tulsi Gabbard, or the seizure of Scott Ritter’s passport, preventing him from flying to Russia, and shortly thereafter the FBI raid on his home.
In relation to foreign influence in U.S. elections/politics, do I (in)correctly gather that the United States has never interfered in other countries’ elections (let alone regime change) via US Agency for International Development or other government entity? Is it true that the U.S. has not sought to impose its opinions/preferences in the upcoming German election and politics (much as the U.S. taxpayer funded Obama’s trip in order for him to stand on British soil and advocate against Brexit)?
If you’re an admirer of Tulsi Gabbard or Scott Ritter please stop responding to my comments. To be blunt I am not interested.
Both of them have questionable loyalties.
I am inclined to think that the war (in Gaza) will restart sooner or later. Hamas will try to maintain the ceasefire for as long as possible. However, sooner or later they will run out of living hostages. Dead hostages won’t keep the ceasefire in place and they (now) no it.
Yes Frank.
Once the hostages are accounted for… as Kissinger said in the 70s: “The wider war begins.”
The bs and their pride about mistreating the hostages, the celebrations of their fat little kids at handover – all this is ammunition for the kind of wider apocalyptic approach warranted.
Contra to ideas in our retarded media the “poor pawestinians” aren’t a victim people exploited by mean Hamas bullies. The hate is bottom up. They are a society whose entire moral architecture is based on annihilation of the Jews. And destruction of the west. This is NO secret.
Problem is our minds can’t understand the moral squalor of an Islamist mindset indoctrinated in genocidal mania for 70 years. We have to reference point in our existence or remembered history.
” There is simply no threat in the world that is equivalent to the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Maoist China. Islamism was never going to replace them.”
Islamism:
“Hold my beer …”
Maoist China: not completely gone by any means. True, they’ve dropped communist ideas but that’s only made them wealthier and more powerful.
They’re interfering all over the world (including Canada).
Well, someone has to do it, since the U.S. is not interfering and has never interfered.
Leave me alone. I’m not interested in your opinions.
“No words”, indeed.
I see only red.
Let hearts always beat.
Gonna get in big trouble for this one:
Birkenstocks are just crocs for boomers.
Now… let me have it!
🙂
D.A.
NYC/Florida
David,
It appears that in the period between your morning and afternoon posts, you have appended a “/florida” to your signature line. Did you take a late morning flight out of this wretched northeast winter to the warmer climes, but wretched politics, of florida?
HAHHA. Thanks Jim. After nearly 30 winters in NYC we now spend much of Jan/Feb at my mother in law’s house in Daytona Beach. Back to the big smoke and fearsome NY temperatures next week. “East or West, home is best.”
We DRIVE because we have an old dog who isn’t up to jet transportation. 🙂
D.A.
NYC/FL
Where you really see Trump’s transactional, amoral approach is with the rare-earth metals’ proposal to Ukraine. This is not purely a resource grab. I recall President Obama correctly acknowledging that Ukraine was a core interest for Russia in a way it was not for the United States. Moreover, it is right next door to Russia. Those facts alone caution against military entanglement even if you are significantly more powerful than a foe and nuclear weapons are not in the mix. (Think US engagement in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.) Putin and every other former and potential Russian leader know this. How do you shift this security calculus? How do you make Ukraine matter more to the United States even if you do not allow them in NATO? Most importantly, how do you make it clear to Russia that Ukraine might become to the United States what it never has been before—a critical national security interest?
Trump is now, essentially, telling Zelensky that if he wants a security guarantee from the United States, then we need to get something in return. It seems like straight extortion, but it could also elevate significantly the strategic importance of Ukraine to future Administrations of both parties. (People will differ on whether that is desirable.) The aim here, it seems, is not only to get leverage against Putin but to also reduce our quite dangerous reliance on China for core materials needed in our advanced weapons systems and some critical industries. The strongman look that Trump is posing is not pretty. But this power play is not without forethought.
Thanks for the very thoughtful analysis. I perceive, however imperfectly, that, whatever the “noble” motivations of the Trump administration, Russia would have no particular problem with the U.S./E.U. trading with Ukraine as well as with Russia and elsewhere. Regarding U.S. security guarantees to Ukraine (in relation to Russia I gather), I’d like to think the security guarantees would consist of the U.S./E.U./NATO simply agreeing to stop trying to expand NATO eastward and trying to impose regime change in nuclear-armed Russia.
Why can’t that reasonably happen? It could have happened in March-April 2022 during the Ukraine-Russian negotiations in Istanbul, except for pressure from the U.S. (and the noble Boris Johnson). Would it have been wrong or immoral for Zelenskyy to resist this pressure, if only to save the thousands of Ukrainian lives otherwise predictably lost? (What say ye, Saintly Sage of South Carolina Lindsay Graham?)
The problem is that Trump wants the minerals while refusing any security guarantees, and telling Ukraine it has to give up land and forget about NATO.
Now that NATO is functionally dead and America’s promises of security are proved unreliable, I wonder if we’re going to see a lot of very rapid nuclear proliferation all over the world. Germany’s next chancellor is already talking about seeing if France will extend its nuclear umbrella to cover Germany. Britain relies on America for its ICBMs: that now looks like a really bad idea, so maybe they’ll develop their own. And what of Poland and the Baltics? The Swedes had a nuclear program until the 1970s. Might be wise to dust it off and get started again.
Not to mention South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, all of whom border an unfriendly colossus, all of whom rely on American protection that now looks very dubious, and all of whom have the technology to run a crash program?
Ukraine bitterly regrets giving up its nuclear weapons under US pressure and in exchange for false US promises of safety in 1994.
Every time I think that Palestinians cannot do anything more horrible, they do.
As for Sullivan, I am surprised at his indignation, given that he was against US aid for Ukraine and was very happy that Ukraine is not getting its occupied lands back. I have lost all respect I had for him once. I cannot find a molecule of respect for anyone who is against Ukraine.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. -Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (22 Feb 1788-1860)
[ pic of Schopenhauer ]
^^^never disappoints
R. Traister : “Democrats have lost recently not because of an excess of wokeness but because of a failure to get excessive enough.”
Maoism with American Characteristics.
Gawd help us
It’s very discouraging. In yesterday’s newsletter Heather Cox Richardson was advocating for trans women (= men) in women’s sports.
Only a tiny number of commenters objected.
This issue helped Trump win the election.
What are these people thinking?
Heather Cox Richardson was not advocating for trans women in women’s sports – she was reporting on the exchange between Trump and Janet Mills, the governor of Maine.
I quote:
Today, Maine governor Janet Mills took the fight against Trump’s overreach directly to him. At a meeting of the nation’s governors, in a rambling speech in which he was wandering through his false campaign stories about transgender athletes, Trump turned to his notes and suddenly appeared to remember his executive order banning transgender student athletes from playing on girls sports teams.
The body that governs sports in Maine, the Maine Principals’ Association, ruled that it would continue to allow transgender students to compete despite Trump’s executive order because the Maine state Human Rights Law prohibits discrimination on the grounds of gender identity.
Trump asked if the governor of Maine was in the room.
“Yeah, I’m here,” replied Governor Mills.
“Are you not going to comply with it?” Trump asked.
“I’m complying with state and federal laws,” she said.
“We are the federal law,” Trump said. “You better do it because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t….”
“We’re going to follow the law,” she said.
“You’d better comply because otherwise you’re not going to get any federal funding,” he said.
Mills answered: “We’ll see you in court.”
As Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times put it: “Something happened at the White House Friday afternoon that almost never happens these days. Somebody defied President Trump. Right to his face.”
Hours later, the Trump administration launched an investigation into Maine’s Department of Education, specifically its policy on transgender athletes. Maine attorney general Aaron Frey said that any attempt to cut federal funding for the states over the issue “would be illegal and in direct violation of federal court orders…. Fortunately,” he said in a statement, “the rule of law still applies in this country, and I will do everything in my power to defend Maine’s laws and block efforts by the president to bully and threaten us.”
“[W]hat is at stake here [is] the rule of law in our country,” Mills said in a statement. “No President…can withhold Federal funding authorized and appropriated by Congress and paid for by Maine taxpayers in an attempt to coerce someone into compliance with his will. It is a violation of our Constitution and of our laws.”
“Maine may be one of the first states to undergo an investigation by his Administration, but we won’t be the last. Today, the President of the United States has targeted one particular group on one particular issue which Maine law has addressed. But you must ask yourself: who and what will he target next, and what will he do? Will it be you? Will it be because of your race or your religion? Will it be because you look different or think differently? Where does it end? In America, the President is neither a King nor a dictator, as much as this one tries to act like it—and it is the rule of law that prevents him from being so.”
“[D]o not be misled: this is not just about who can compete on the athletic field, this is about whether a President can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation. I believe he cannot.”
In addition to reading Andrew Sullivan this week (which I think analyzes the machinery of trump2.0 versus the brownian motion-like trump kid in a candy store 1.0 very well) let us not forget, Douglas Murray’s “The War on the West”. You are not paranoid if they really are after you.
The War on the West is one of the top five books I’ve read in recent years.
If kids these days could read I’d make them read it.
Damn kids on my lawn, all not readin’ etc.
D.A.
NYC
Trump has fired inspectors general. Installed MAGA loyalists in the Justice Department, FBI, and intelligence services. Conducted a Friday night purge of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and top military leaders. Given an unqualified oligarch and his minions unprecedented access to the nation’s financial systems. Pardoned those convicted in the Jan. 6 riot. Congressmen happily supporting him and wanting to declare Trump’s birthday a national holiday or have him serve a third term. This nation is becoming ancient Rome and Trump is now Caesar.
Yep. Trump is going to provoke some kind of Tiananmen Square massacre and establish martial law. Bannon was practicing his nazi salute in Baltimore last Thursday.
You taking bets on that? I do have some American dollars to put up. You have to specify a time frame for your prediction.
Count me in on that bet Leslie. The whole Trump is Nazi thingie is just plain dumb. And Bannon is nobody’s idea of a serious person. He’s like the king of dunce cap history complete with a Burger King cardboard crown on his fat messy head.
D.A.
NYC/Florida
ps Damn. Now I’m going to have to go to Burger King!
Some degree of martial law by the 2026 midterms. I will wager 25 dollars US or Canadian. If I lose I will meet you at the statue of Robert Burns, in Allen Park, the next time I am in Toronto following the date of the midterms. We can work out the details later.
Too wishy-washy, like being pregnant to some degree. There is either martial law or there isn’t, as defined in U.S. federal law including its declaration. At a minimum the military police and justice system must explicitly replace the civil authority, even if only briefly. Otherwise we aren’t talking martial law. We don’t need “suspension of the Constitution”, (if that is even a thing.) But mere deployment of the military at the request of a mayor or governor to assist the civil authority (as has happened several times in Canada) doesn’t count as martial law, as authorities are careful to point out when it happens. If you wanted to count the invocation of the Insurrection Act as a qualifying event, you should have said so at first. I confess I wouldn’t bet against that.
And I’m holding you to your original prediction of a massacre first. Let’s say at least as large as the Boston Massacre and it has to be by agents of the state, not just a riot between rival gangs that gets out of hand. I won’t insist that President Trump can be shown to have provoked it. I’ll accept it if one happens on his watch. The essence of the bet is that a politically inspired massacre is carried out by police or military, and then the Government imposes martial law in response.
But the US$ 25 I can afford. And I will spot you out to Election Day 2026.
More probable scenario: rigging elections. See here from the NYT:
Trump Dismantles Government Fight Against Foreign Influence Operations
Dozens of employees who had been working to fight foreign interference in U.S. elections have been reassigned or forced out, according to current and former officials.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/business/trump-foreign-influence-election-interference.html
Archived here:
https://archive.ph/uUksf
Broken record that I am, I don’t suppose that the Government Fight Against Foreign Influence Operations had anything to do with Quiet Skies federal air marshal surveillance of Tulsi Gabbard, or the seizure of Scott Ritter’s passport, preventing him from flying to Russia, and shortly thereafter the FBI raid on his home.
In relation to foreign influence in U.S. elections/politics, do I (in)correctly gather that the United States has never interfered in other countries’ elections (let alone regime change) via US Agency for International Development or other government entity? Is it true that the U.S. has not sought to impose its opinions/preferences in the upcoming German election and politics (much as the U.S. taxpayer funded Obama’s trip in order for him to stand on British soil and advocate against Brexit)?
If you’re an admirer of Tulsi Gabbard or Scott Ritter please stop responding to my comments. To be blunt I am not interested.
Both of them have questionable loyalties.
I am inclined to think that the war (in Gaza) will restart sooner or later. Hamas will try to maintain the ceasefire for as long as possible. However, sooner or later they will run out of living hostages. Dead hostages won’t keep the ceasefire in place and they (now) no it.
Yes Frank.
Once the hostages are accounted for… as Kissinger said in the 70s: “The wider war begins.”
The bs and their pride about mistreating the hostages, the celebrations of their fat little kids at handover – all this is ammunition for the kind of wider apocalyptic approach warranted.
Contra to ideas in our retarded media the “poor pawestinians” aren’t a victim people exploited by mean Hamas bullies. The hate is bottom up. They are a society whose entire moral architecture is based on annihilation of the Jews. And destruction of the west. This is NO secret.
Problem is our minds can’t understand the moral squalor of an Islamist mindset indoctrinated in genocidal mania for 70 years. We have to reference point in our existence or remembered history.
D.A.
NYC
in my column this week:https://democracychronicles.org/so-what-of-gaza-trumps-plan-and-some-context/
Andrew Sullivan:
” There is simply no threat in the world that is equivalent to the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Maoist China. Islamism was never going to replace them.”
Islamism:
“Hold my beer …”
Maoist China: not completely gone by any means. True, they’ve dropped communist ideas but that’s only made them wealthier and more powerful.
They’re interfering all over the world (including Canada).
Well, someone has to do it, since the U.S. is not interfering and has never interfered.
Leave me alone. I’m not interested in your opinions.
“No words”, indeed.
I see only red.
Let hearts always beat.
Gonna get in big trouble for this one:
Birkenstocks are just crocs for boomers.
Now… let me have it!
🙂
D.A.
NYC/Florida
David,
It appears that in the period between your morning and afternoon posts, you have appended a “/florida” to your signature line. Did you take a late morning flight out of this wretched northeast winter to the warmer climes, but wretched politics, of florida?
HAHHA. Thanks Jim. After nearly 30 winters in NYC we now spend much of Jan/Feb at my mother in law’s house in Daytona Beach. Back to the big smoke and fearsome NY temperatures next week. “East or West, home is best.”
We DRIVE because we have an old dog who isn’t up to jet transportation. 🙂
D.A.
NYC/FL
Where you really see Trump’s transactional, amoral approach is with the rare-earth metals’ proposal to Ukraine. This is not purely a resource grab. I recall President Obama correctly acknowledging that Ukraine was a core interest for Russia in a way it was not for the United States. Moreover, it is right next door to Russia. Those facts alone caution against military entanglement even if you are significantly more powerful than a foe and nuclear weapons are not in the mix. (Think US engagement in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.) Putin and every other former and potential Russian leader know this. How do you shift this security calculus? How do you make Ukraine matter more to the United States even if you do not allow them in NATO? Most importantly, how do you make it clear to Russia that Ukraine might become to the United States what it never has been before—a critical national security interest?
Trump is now, essentially, telling Zelensky that if he wants a security guarantee from the United States, then we need to get something in return. It seems like straight extortion, but it could also elevate significantly the strategic importance of Ukraine to future Administrations of both parties. (People will differ on whether that is desirable.) The aim here, it seems, is not only to get leverage against Putin but to also reduce our quite dangerous reliance on China for core materials needed in our advanced weapons systems and some critical industries. The strongman look that Trump is posing is not pretty. But this power play is not without forethought.
Thanks for the very thoughtful analysis. I perceive, however imperfectly, that, whatever the “noble” motivations of the Trump administration, Russia would have no particular problem with the U.S./E.U. trading with Ukraine as well as with Russia and elsewhere. Regarding U.S. security guarantees to Ukraine (in relation to Russia I gather), I’d like to think the security guarantees would consist of the U.S./E.U./NATO simply agreeing to stop trying to expand NATO eastward and trying to impose regime change in nuclear-armed Russia.
Why can’t that reasonably happen? It could have happened in March-April 2022 during the Ukraine-Russian negotiations in Istanbul, except for pressure from the U.S. (and the noble Boris Johnson). Would it have been wrong or immoral for Zelenskyy to resist this pressure, if only to save the thousands of Ukrainian lives otherwise predictably lost? (What say ye, Saintly Sage of South Carolina Lindsay Graham?)
The problem is that Trump wants the minerals while refusing any security guarantees, and telling Ukraine it has to give up land and forget about NATO.
Now that NATO is functionally dead and America’s promises of security are proved unreliable, I wonder if we’re going to see a lot of very rapid nuclear proliferation all over the world. Germany’s next chancellor is already talking about seeing if France will extend its nuclear umbrella to cover Germany. Britain relies on America for its ICBMs: that now looks like a really bad idea, so maybe they’ll develop their own. And what of Poland and the Baltics? The Swedes had a nuclear program until the 1970s. Might be wise to dust it off and get started again.
Not to mention South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, all of whom border an unfriendly colossus, all of whom rely on American protection that now looks very dubious, and all of whom have the technology to run a crash program?
Ukraine bitterly regrets giving up its nuclear weapons under US pressure and in exchange for false US promises of safety in 1994.
Every time I think that Palestinians cannot do anything more horrible, they do.
As for Sullivan, I am surprised at his indignation, given that he was against US aid for Ukraine and was very happy that Ukraine is not getting its occupied lands back. I have lost all respect I had for him once. I cannot find a molecule of respect for anyone who is against Ukraine.