Friday: Hili dialogue

March 7, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the tail end of the week:  it’s Friday, March 7, 2025: National “Eat Your Noodles” Day . But why the scare quotes? Are we only supposed to pretend to eat noodles?

At any rate, here’s how they make hand-pulled noodles at Jibek Jolu, Chicago’s only Kyrgyz restaurant, where I plan to eat soon. And of course I’ll have noodles.

It’s also National Flapjack Day, National Cereal Day, Friday Fish Fry Day,  National Crown Roast of Pork Day, and National Tartar Sauce Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*One thing that’s making the world wonder about Trump (okay, well, it’s making me discombobulated) is his constant back-and-forth stands on issues. For example, the U.S. is negotiating with Hamas (without Israel!) for 10 more living hostages and a two-month’s cease-fire at the same time that Trump is calling for a complete destruction of Hamas.  I have no idea how that will turn out. And the tariff wars go back and forth: first there’s tariff’s, then there’s not. The latest is that Trump has now declared a temporary “cease-fire” on the 25% tariff to be levied on most goods from Mexico and apparently some from Canada:

President Trump said Thursday that he would offer a one-month exemption from tariffs for imports from Mexico that trade under the rules of U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the trade pact Mr. Trump signed in his first term.

The president wrote on Truth Social that he would give Mexican products an exemption until April 2 from the 25 percent tariffs that he levied on all products from Mexico and most goods from Canada earlier this week. The exemption would cover the vast majority of North American trade and follows days of turmoil in the stock markets.

“After speaking with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, I have agreed that Mexico will not be required to pay Tariffs on anything that falls under the USMCA Agreement,” he wrote.

“Our relationship has been a very good one, and we are working hard, together, on the Border, both in terms of stopping Illegal Aliens from entering the United States and, likewise, stopping Fentanyl,” he added.

Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, made similar comments on Thursday morning, saying that the president would most likely exempt all products that trade under U.S.M.C.A. Mr. Trump’s announcement did not describe any exemption for Canadian goods.

. . . . Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick have implied that any relief from tariffs could be short-lived, since the administration is considering another raft of levies next month. The president has said he will announce “reciprocal” tariffs on April 2, which will raise U.S. tariffs to match the levels set by other countries, while also taking into consideration other practices that affect trade, like taxes and currency.

“My expectation is the president will come to the agreement today, and hopefully we will announce this today, that U.S.M.C.A.-compliant goods will not have a tariff for the next month, until April 2,” Mr. Lutnick said. Mr. Trump signed U.S.M.C.A. in 2020 to replace and revise the North American Free Trade Agreement.replace and revise the North American Free Trade Agreement.

I don’t get wny Mexico is treated better than Canada given that far fewer migrants and far less drugs come from Canada than via Mexico.  And why the pause if the rationale hasn’t changed. Of course, I don’t think tariffs are the way to solve any problem, except, perhaps, as a threat to get other countries to do what Trump wants, but it isn’t going to work with these countries. Or so I think.

*This news however, doesn’t seem fair, and Jack Daniels, the bourbon makers have beefed about it. The Canadians are not only raising the prices of American booze in stores, but in some cases taking it off the shelf.

Canadian provinces pulling US alcohol off store shelves in response to Trump trade policy is “worse than tariffs”, the boss of Jack Daniel’s maker Brown-Forman has said.

Several Canadian provinces, including Ontario, which is by far the most populated, took action this week in retaliation for US tariffs on Canadian goods.

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), one of the largest buyers of alcohol in the world, removed US-made alcoholic drinks from its shelves on Tuesday.

Brown-Forman boss Lawson Whiting said the Canadian response was “disproportionate” to the 25% levies on Canadian goods imposed by the Trump administration.

“I mean, that’s worse than a tariff, because it’s literally taking your sales away, completely removing our products from the shelves,” Mr Whiting said.

In response to the tariffs, Canada has retaliated with 25% levies on goods imported from the US, including beer, spirits, and wine.

Some provinces also took action themselves, including Ontario and Nova Scotia.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the LCBO sells nearly $1bn of US alcohol per year. “As of today, every single one of these products is off the shelves,” Mr Ford said on Tuesday.

The LCBO is the exclusive wholesaler in Ontario, which means other retailers, bars and restaurants in the province will no longer be able to restock US products, Mr Ford said.

Nevertheless, Mr Whiting said Canada makes up only 1% of Brown-Forman’s total sales, so the firm can withstand the hit.

Well, of course Canada can do what it wants in response to Trump’s risible levying of the 25% tariff on Canadian goods, but I think there will be some Canucks hurting for their Jack and Cokes in a short while.

*And, as I predicted, the unconscionable EOs issued by Trump will be overturned not by demonstrations or yelling in Congress, but by legal action. And indeed, that’s what is happening. Now a federal judge has blocked, indefinitely, Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans (including scientific grants), presumably because only Congress can do something like that.

A second federal judge has indefinitely blocked President Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans, saying the White House had “put itself above Congress” and undermined democracy.

In a ruling on Thursday, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island prohibited the Trump administration from freezing or otherwise impeding the disbursement of appropriated federal funds to state governments.

The decision is a victory for Trump critics who say he has trampled on Congress’s authority in his effort to cut federal spending and overhaul agencies.

McConnell’s order follows a similar one issued by a different federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 25. The judge had previously issued a temporary restraining order, which on Thursday he converted into an injunction, a more permanent form of relief.

“The Executive’s categorical freeze of appropriated and obligated funds fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government,” McConnell wrote.

“Here, the Executive put itself above Congress,” the judge continued. “It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending.”

The ruling by McConnell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, came in a lawsuit filed by 22 states with Democratic attorneys general, as well as the District of Columbia.

The lawsuit focused on a directive from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget instructing federal agencies to pause funding while it assessed whether government programs complied with executive orders issued by President Trump targeting foreign aid, diversity initiatives and green-energy projects.

Now I predict that, based on the recent vote that included Barrett and Roberts, the Supremes will also negate this executive order. The appropriation of money is the charge of the legislative branch of the government, and it’s presumably the abrogation of this requirement that led to the two federal court decisions.

*According to a YouGov poll, sentiment in the UK shows “an increased scepticism towards transgender rights across the board – and particularly in the two and a half years since our previous wave of this study.”  (h/t Jez). The article begins with a paragraph asserting the erosion of transgender “rights” without mentioning, as in sports, that these can clash with the “rights” of other groups:

Recent years have seen an increasing backlash against transgender rights. In the US, some of Donald Trump’s first acts upon resuming the presidency have been to sign executive orders declaring there to be only two sexes, restricting gender care services for young transgender people, barring transgender people from military service, and banning transgender women from women’s sports.

I wish they’d stop using the word “rights” since it is, on this issue, contentious what the “rights” are. It also conflates “gender” with “sex”:

Notable in this most recent study – conducted in mid-December – is the growing resistance on transgender rights among those groups that are typically more permissive on the issue, like women and young people.

In fact, the only question on which women now take the permissive view on transgender rights is saying that people should be able to change their gender socially, although at 55% this still represents an eight point drop since the 2022 survey.

When it comes to whether or not people should be able to change their gender legally, there has been a crossover among women. While in 2022 women supported allowing people to change their gender legally by 44% to 32%, these figures have since shifted to 37% who continue to be in favour but 42% now opposed.

Here are some data of particular interest to some feminists, as well as to me. The data go from 2018-2024.  The change in sentiments over this period, and among all age groups and sexes, is clear.

One more:

When it comes to the key questions of whether people should be able to socially identify as a different gender, the number of 18-24 year olds who say they should – 61% – remains almost exactly the same as in 2022. However, the number who say they should not has risen eight points to 25% over the same time period.

And when it comes to whether you should be allowed to legally change your gender, support among the young has actively diminished: while 50% still say so, this has fallen seven points since the prior study. At the same time, belief that you should not be allowed to change your gender legally has increased by a full 16 points, to 36%.

I couldn’t care less about whether people should be able to socially identify as a different “gender” (do they mean sex?). But at any rate, why should there be any rules about how one is socially identified. As for legally changing gender–and again they clearly mean sex–I do think that this is more problematic, especially since the NCAA uses what is on birth certificates as an indication of who can compete in men’s versus women’s sports, and in 44 states in America you can go back and change the sex on your birth certificate.  The whole piece shows how the concept of “gender” is very confusing, and should usually be replaced in this piece with “sex”.

*During the President’s speech to Congress the other day, the Republicans rose and cheered everything that Trump said, while the Democrats (well, most of them) remained silent. That’s perfectly fine. But what’s not fine for anyone is to make a ruckus the way some Democrats did, and I’m also not keen on holding up signs, which is a form of disturbance. Whoever is President, decorum should prevail in the legislature. Sadly, Texas Representative Al Green made a pretty good ruckus, and was ultimately removed from the chamber by the Sergeant at Arms.  Today he was censured by the House, strictly along party lines:

The House on Thursday voted to censure an unrepentant Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, for disrupting President Donald Trump’s address to Congress.

Green was joined in the well of the House by more than 20 fellow Democrats as Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., read the censure resolution. Green and some of his colleagues began singing “We Shall Overcome,” an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, as Johnson spoke. Republicans in the chamber yelled “order” as the singing continued. Eventually, Johnson declared the House in recess.

The resolution against Green was approved in a mostly party-line vote of 224-198. Ten Democrats voted for it; no Republicans voted against it.

Johnson had Green removed from the chamber during the early moments of Trump’s speech Tuesday night. Green stood and shouted at Trump after the Republican president said the Nov. 5 election had delivered a governing mandate not seen for many decades.

“You have no mandate,” the Houston lawmaker said, shaking a cane and refusing an order from Johnson to “take your seat, sir!”

Republicans acted quickly to rebuke Green with a censure resolution that officially registers the House’s deep disapproval of a member’s conduct.

“They just felt that the rules get forced on them more strictly than perhaps Republicans or others,” Meuser said.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., confirmed the tenor of the exchange.

“Well, what we were just speaking about is that there is not, in terms of rules of decorum, they’re often violated by our Republican colleagues and the response is not punitive,” Pressley said.

Now I’m not sure that Rep. Pressley is correct, but if she is, then the rules need to be enforced the same way for all. But Democrats should realize that acting out like a bunch of kids is not going to help their public image. Sitting there in silence without applause would be much better.

Here’s Green waving his cane and getting escorted out:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is preening. When I asked Malgorzata what Hili meant, she said that Andrzej replied this way: “Every cat is beautiful. It’s a given. What is there to talk about? (Andrzej’s answer)/

A: What are you thinking about?
Hili: About the banality of feline beauty.

In Polish:

Ja: O czym myślisz?
Hili: O banalności piękna kotów.

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

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs, laxatives on sale;

From My Cat is an Asshole:

From America’s Decline into Idiocy:

From Masih. In fact, two Iranians won an Oscar, with the woman, Shirin Soani, winning along for Hossein Molayemi for the short animated film, “In the Shadow of the Cypress”.

I admire the first Iranian woman to win an Oscar, not just for her talent, but for her courage. Unlike other Iran’s actresses who surrendered to the regime’s forced hijab, she refused to cover her beautiful hair. This is the true face of Iranian women. Choke on it @khamenei_ir ! pic.twitter.com/8Wz64pQC4A

China is making threatening noises after the imposition of U.S. tariffs. From the Chinese embassy in the U.S.:

From Luana; this doesn’t look like ‘brutality’ to me:

Tw9 from my Twitter feed. First, a helpful mom:

Even though this is a d*g it’s still cute:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted.

This five-year-old boy was stripped upon arriving at Auschwitz and gassed to death, probably with his mother. We'll never know what his life would have been like.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-07T11:18:15.439Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, a small call duck bathing (sound up). They are named because they are LOUD:

Bath time for PeeWee our rescue call duck

— Chris, Caroline, Kara (@caenhillcc.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T19:41:39.517Z

A beautiful marine worm, which Matthew says is “Moar interesting than an hairy mouse”:

Who ever said worms weren’t beautiful?!? This is a marine scaleworm, drifting through the open ocean with the plankton….#scaleworm #worm #marineworm #blackwater #blackwaterdiving #underwater #scubadiving #blackwaterphotography #gug #chrisgug #gugunderwater

— Chris Gug (@gugunderwater.bsky.social) 2025-02-22T16:41:22.917Z

 

51 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    If we had paid no more attention to our plants than we have to our children, we would now be living in a jungle of weeds. -Luther Burbank, horticulturist (7 Mar 1849-1926)

  2. Interesting that the UK is similar to the US in terms of changing attitudes towards trans in sports and women’s spaces. And Gavin Newsom seems to have figured out which way the public is going. It will be interesting to see how midterm candidates handle the issue.

  3. The Barnard “brutality” is kind of laughable, honestly. You are being arrested. You resist. That is all of the force used? I’ve had worse NOT resisting, more than once.

    CS gas isn’t fun. Being sprayed directly in the face with mace, while a couple officers hold you on the ground, despite providing no resistance, and another knees your head to keep you from turning away, isn’t considered brutality, in my experience, at least in Boston.

    1. Oh and nice to hear the voices and see some pictures from Caenhill again.

  5. Forget about booze–Doug Ford announced that Ontario is cutting off energy to 3 states, including New York, where I live (not far from Niagara). Yikes. I pay $206 a month now. . .

    1. The wife told me this will be done to 3 of our northern states. Minnesota, Michigan (where I live…), and Wisconsin. In the political scheme of things, 2 out of 3 voted for the Orange one last election, so maybe some Republicans will start to grow a spine?

      1. I sit a bit confused, because I’ve heard those 3, but also New York. I wish nothing bad on anyone, but I prefer it were the other states. C’mon Doug–I’m a Leafs fan!

      3. I heard Canada’s foreign minister say a 25% tariff would be added to those states’ utilities; not that they were shutting it off (she was on the BBC 30 minute evening broadcast out of the US on PBS Friday)

    2. If our northern friends, newly sober from a lack of bourbon cut off my juice down here in Manhattan I’m gonna call Leslie M. to complain!

      D.A.
      NYC

    3. Ontario exports electricity to three border states: MN, MI, and NY through fully integrated synchronous grids. Those three states together generate endogenously 26 times as much as they import from Ontario. All three states have Democratic governors. Most of these imports are of off-peak nuclear and excess hydroelectricity that allows the three states to burn less coal and gas. We import some from them, depending on cost and load.

      Contrary to what some Canadian hot-heads say, in no way do the three states depend on Ontario, it is just cheaper for them to import our excess than to follow all their load with their own generators. It also allows them to rely more on windmills and other generators that can’t follow load because the hydro dams of Ontario and Quebec serve as the battery these weather-dependent generators need to be viable. (Dams depend on weather too, but over days to months, not minutes.)

      Premier Ford has backtracked on this threat after a phone call from President Trump’s Commerce Secretary. His current lightbulb moment is to impose a 25% surcharge on electricity exports starting Monday which somehow the American importer utility will be made to pay. This will protect the revenue stream of Ontario’s electricity system operator, assuming American customers don’t just shrug and generate their own, pushing electricity back the other way. It would also avoid messing with grid stability that shutting it off would risk. (It’s not clear that a provincial Premier can impose export taxes, as international trade is a federal precinct. Just as Governor Whitmer cannot by herself close an international pipeline. But presumably the threat won’t go through, with tariffs now suspended again. Relax.)

      1. Thanks, Leslie. For the first sane explanation of the problem. Have a bourbon (American made) on me. 🙂

        D.A.
        NYC

        1. Thanks, David. I’ll consider it already drunk. I actually quite like it, and several young relatives and their friends do, too. It’s probably just as well I don’t drink much of anything.

          As far as Manhattan goes, you are no doubt aware of the extension cord from Canada which is to bring James Bay electricity from northern Quebec into New York City at Astoria, Queens, to supply a third of the Big Apple’s juice. The portion in Quebec, from Montreal to the border, is 65% complete. This is a one-way high-voltage DC asynchronous connector which, being DC, doesn’t participate in the NY or New England grids. It will be entirely between NYC and Quebec.

          Quebec’s exports to your neighbours in New England (and planned to New York) are all asynchronous DC because of the vast distance the electricity has to come from. (For local distribution the utility electronically inverts it back to AC.) These operate more like pipelines. The New England utilities have long-term supply contracts with Hydro-Quebec, as presumably your system operator will. (Indeed the export market underpins the economic viability of the monopoly, which is half-owned by private investors, mostly pension funds.) The New England customers have made no comment on the current unpleasantness except that they consider the contracts legally binding.

  6. The tweet from the Chinese Embassy sounds tough, but is really almost a tautology: Everyone fights to the end. It’s impossible to fight past the end.

    As for Trumps back-and-forths, I suspect it is a negotiating tactics, and that the tariffs, in general, are. I wish I could say what his end-game was, but he can hardly be expected to reveal that. Likewise his attitude towards our European allies, but we can see that that is already paying off in their announcements that they will re-arm, something Trump pushed as 45.

    1. At first I thought Trump was using tariffs as a negotiating tactic, but now I think that he really does want to erect a tariff wall around the U.S.

      I also think the only thing holding him back at this point is the reaction of the stock market.

      I’m curious what all the people who have decried neoliberalism say about this. Have they become hard core free traders now?

      1. Lysander, I’ve wondered about your question as well. I hear Democrats attacking the tariffs, but in the vein of “Trump’s tariffs are raising prices!” but not in the “tariffs are bad for economic reasons” sense.
        I heard a David Pakman podcast recently in which he railed against the new tariffs but defended Biden’s, especially the tariffs on computer chips. His point seemed to be that tariffs are good when Democrats apply them to protect certain US businesses (unsaid, but this to me means bending to either unions or crony capitalists), and that the traditional Republican free-trade policy is bad, but the Trump tariffs are horrible. To me it seemed like a lot of mental gymnastics and more of a “vote Democrat” message than anything substantive.

      2. I don’t think they’re threats. I think what’s happening is that business leaders are complaining loud and clear.

        That Karoline spokeswoman said Trump
        wants all companies to move their manufacturing back to the US.

        But 1) you couldn’t move a factory in one month even if you wanted to;

        2) For auto manufacturing it’s important to note that GM, Ford and Chrysler moved some manufacturing to Canada to encourage Canadians to buy their cars. This was done in the 1960s and is called the Auto Pact.

        Trump has apparently never heard of it or just doesn’t care.

  7. “The whole piece shows how the concept of “gender” is very confusing …”

    That is the result of deliberate mystification – also related to problematics – both post-modernist epistemic tricks to draw thought into the wizards’ circle, e.g. Judith Butler.

    I was going to note that on the Alex Byrne discussion.

  8. Perhaps the Honorable Democrat Representative Green was encouraged and inspired by the noble behavior of Maine statehouse Democrats several days ago.

    If the U.S. has a problem with Chinese-manufactured fentanyl or its precursors (at least some manufactured for U.S. businesses), then the U.S. should simply manufacture fentanyl in the U.S. for use in the U.S. only, and ban imports of fentanyl. (Or will that cost U.S. businesses and consumers too much?) Then U.S. manufacturers can take a turn at being accused of being responsible for Americans’ drug-taking decisions. I suppose that the Chinese, sick to the back teeth of U.S. complaints, could stop manufacturing the drug and its precursors. Or would the U.S. be unhappy about that too?

    1. I think the jist of the bitch is that Chinese fentanyl precursors are imported to Mexico from the PRC where they’re turned into street ready exports to the US. Of course legalized and regulated opiates would stop this but nobody is listening to me on this since Oregon did it all wrong a few years ago. (sigh). So a prohibition era bathtub gin type situation continues.

      The fentanyl in the dead person’s arm is almost identical to the morphine your doctor will give you after surgery if you ask him nicely: the distribution, purity, dose and regulation matter, not the substance. Opiates when used correctly are among the safest drugs we have – but it is impossible to use them correctly via the black market.

      Pronouncements from the foreign affairs spokesmen in the Middle Kingdom are always very amusing. There should be a parody account for their out of touch whining. I suspect most is for domestic consumption.

      D.A.
      NYC

      1. Their argument that it’s at least as much a demand problem as a supply problem ought to sit well with neoliberals, no? But it doesn’t seem to.

        And the market forces are the same as in the rest of the War On Drugs. Given a highly inelastic demand, even a successful attempt to reduce supply –> proportionally higher prices –> more vigorous / high-risk efforts to supply the market.

  9. The tariffs are driving me to drink (Jack Daniels, of course). Trump’s people talk about how things will get a bit worse before they get better—or words to that effect. The reality is that the getting worse part is entirely self inflicted! Is Trump rattling markets and goosing inflation simply to be able to pull back on the tariffs later and claim that he saved the economy? Cynical thought, no?

    1. My contacts at the Jedi Council office reliably inform me that the Leader is not playing 4-D chess here, but is actually the unstable ungenius he appears to be. Go figure.

  10. I thought the Republican who yelled “you lied!” at Obama was out of order and an idiot, and I think the same when the Democrats did what they did this week, as well as when Pelosi made a show of tearing up Trump’s speech in his last term.

    On the other hand, I love watching Prime Minister’s Questions mainly for the lively and sometimes obnoxious questions and comments that occur. I’d love to see Trump in that situation.

    Bottom line is I’m torn between thinking that decorum and respect should be maintained in certain settings such as the State of the Union address, and my blatant disrespect for all politicians of any stripe which leads me to enjoy seeing them called out for their own stupidity regardless of their party or position. I guess it comes down to this: feel free to make an ass of yourself, but be prepared to face the consequences in accordance with the rules of the venue in which you do so.

    1. The GoPer who yelled “You lied” at Obama doubled his donation receipts after that stunt so incentives are important to consider here.

      AND remember MTG and handy Ms. Bobert harassing Biden’s SOTU lately.
      All the above – and old yelling guy Green with a cane – need to be condemned. Or we’ll end up with fisticuff legislatures like Taiwan, Korea, Georgia, Serbia etc. at their lowest moments.

      Nothing good from that outcome.

      D.A.
      NYC

    2. My theory, which is mine, is that Rep. Green’s ruckus was tactical. He knew that his bladder wouldn’t last the Orangeman droning on for nearly 2hrs, and so getting thrown out was preferable to getting up to head for the bathroom, which would have been condemned as walking out on him.

      2. Ha! I was a back-row kid when a boy. It has become increasingly handy to remain one.

    3. I miss the decorum. To my recollection, the “you lie” moment during Obama’s speech was a first. That incident and the remark from McConnell that he would do everything in his power to prevent Obama from succeeding (not said during a speech) marked the beginning of the end of both decorum and the Congress working for the ultimate betterment of the country rather than the demise of the “other” party. I am embarrassed by the cat fights that go on in congress today. The worst offenders who come to my mind are Crocket, AOC, and Taylor-Green.

  11. Many Americans seem to not understand how angry Canadians are at the words of your administration and the general apathy your people when your leaders attack the sovereignty of a foreign nation.

    This talk of Canada as the 51st state is a large part of the anger directed at the U.S. right now. As long as your leaders keep talking about this and your people fail to understand or grasp how dangerous and alarming this is you are going to continue to fail to understand why other countries are as angry as they are.

    W.r.t. boycotts and product removals: Canada is countering tariffs not just with more tariffs but with boycotts and taxes on power because it gives us more leverage to remove the unjust tariffs. The U.S. economy is larger than the Canadian one (obviously) and just responding with tariffs in kind is not likely to have a large enough impact to change the minds of the U.S. leadership.

    1. I understand (I live in Victoria, BC). I’m furious with Trump.

      But so are many Americans. Remember Dan Rather from 60 Minutes years ago? He’s still alive at 93 and has a Substack (with help). His readers are very upset with Trump and share protest plans, etc.

      You can read it for free. Check it out.

      https://steady.substack.com/p/chaos-compounded

    2. I know very well how angry Canadians are and I have sympathized with them. I made a lighthearted joke and I have criticized Trump over and over again for saying that Canada should be our 51st state (besides Trump saying this, I haven’t heard anyone else, nor do I know anybody who really believes it).

      Anybody who reads this website know that I have a great deal of respect for Canada (though not so much for Trudeau, who, to be sure, is properly incensed by what Trump has done), but I am not one of those who don’t know that Canadians are royally pissed off–and should be.

    3. Agreed. It’s not only anger, it’s a feeling of betrayal and even a fear of the USA as an existential threat. Many think that their sympathy for their neighbor was based on a naive illusion. It will take a lot before canadians trust the US as a partner again. I wouldn’t be surprised if the grief of the US as an ally is underway in Europe as well.

      Few in Canada believe that those tariffs are (or ever were) about problems at the border. If anything, more illegal activities go the other way and it wouldn’t have even occurred to anyone to blame someone else than their own government for that! The most likely reasons for the tariffs tango seem to be: a way to create conditions that force manufacturing industries to move their production in the US; to get the state money to offset the consequences of his economically costly decisions and fund his costly promises; to set examples aimed to dissuade resistance in the rest of the world as they are going to deal with this tariffs nonsense stuff too soon; keeping the media, the opposition and citizens constantly on their toes, too emotional and overwhelmed for them to offer an impactful response; bully psychology, that is, enjoying the power trip of seeing world leaders crawl at their feet, especially if it comes with the schadenfreude of making people they dislike struggle.

      1. By what I just wrote I don’t mean that these feelings would be comforted by what Mr. Coyne wrote, just that it is what people here express as far as I can see. And that I too thought that this perception may be something people in the US are not aware of.

  12. When I saw this, I first thought it’s a video fake—but it’s not:

    “US Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared on Fox News yesterday with the sign of the cross on his forehead.
    Although his appearance initially seemed strange, it now has an explanation.
    Christian tradition dictates that on “Ash Wednesday,” a priest sprinkles ashes on the heads of believers or makes the sign of the cross on their foreheads with ashes.”

    Source: https://telegrafi.com/en/The-US-Secretary-of-State-appears-on-television-with-a-cross-on-his-forehead–his-appearance-now-has-an-explanation/

    1. Watching this administration is funnier than watching the movie Idiocracy. Until you remember that it’s real.

    2. Holy Guacamole. When I saw that cross I was sure the video must be a fake. And do RC priests really put a Greek cross on the sheep? Or maybe it’s a Crusader cross? Or crosshairs?

    1. At least one item in that alarmist screed is misleading. The Biden Administration’s proposed Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard of 55.7 mpg would have required that the industry produce nothing but Toyota Priuses, which get about this gas mileage. (The separate, modestly lower standard for SUVs and pickup trucks would be impossible for any to meet.) If a customer wanted something else, the manufacturer would have to pay a penalty to the government to the extent that its fleet average, in responding to demand, bumped up over this benchmark. For this standard, it wouldn’t matter how many electric cars a manufacturer made. The manufacturers would have to meet the standard entirely with its combustion vehicles. Only by making very few of them, fewer than customers want, could it minimize the aggregate penalty. (Note that if everything other than Priuses became scarce, the manufacturers could probably raise the sticker prices enough to pay the penalty to the federal government and still make a profit.)

      Recognizing that it was never going to fly, the Biden Administration itself relaxed this standard in summer 2024. And the Trump Administration has rescinded it.

      A separate standard from the EPA (which did allow electric vehicles into the mix), sets fleet average tailpipe emissions in such a way that manufacturers would have to make 68% electric vehicles to meet it, regardless if customers were willing to buy them. What they would do is make their dealers buy two expensive EVs for every combustion car they allocated them. Then it would be the dealers’ problem to move the unsold EVs off their lots somehow.

      https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/07/biden-pulls-back-on-tightened-car-and-truck-fuel-standards-00162297

      Regardless of your opinion about the merits and virtues of electric cars and the pressing need to fix climate change, remember that voters don’t have to change their behaviour just because their Government wants them to. They can instead change their Government. And here they did. (The hard Left may have abandoned President Biden for not standing firm, too.)

      1. I’ve wondered why environmentalists who push electric cars don’t seem concerned about disposal of all those batteries.

  14. Re the mom winning the internet; for sure! The range of her child’s expressions and reactions is beyond wonderful.

  15. While it is entirely fine for the Democrats not to applaud Trump, it was extraordinarily stupid of them not to applaud for a 13-year-old brain cancer patient, for a high-schooler admitted to West Point, and for a man recently released from unjust imprisonment in Russia and reunited with his 95-year-old mother, both of whom were in attendance. Pure political stupidity emerging from unhinged hatred of the Orange Man.

    It also seems that the highly-paid consultants that pull the Democrats strings have landed on a sure-fire way to win back those working-class men who abandoned the party. Just swear in public. A lot. Say “fuck” and “shit.” Toss in “hell.” Call Trump a “bi . . .” (No, we can’t say that word.) Run a strikingly motivating video showing the Democratic women as fighters. It’s so effective, the Republicans are running the clip for them!

    When one caters primarily to the stupid, the young, the trivial, and the transgressive—it means you are lost. The bipartisan affliction of our times.

    https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1897654223585636735

  16. I think Canada should channel its anger into increased defense spending. That’ll show Trump.

  17. Rep. Pressley is indeed correct – Republicans were routinely disruptive during SOTU addresses by the last two Democratic administrations and faced little to no repercussions.

  18. I thought that Rep. Green’s correction of Trump’s claim to have been elected by an overwhelming majority was perfectly timed.

  19. Pingback: Quotes of the week | Homepaddock

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