Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, April 8, 2025, and National Empanada Day. Here’s one I bought in Santiago, Chile in 2019:
It’s also Dog Farting Awareness Day (do they need a day for that?), International Romani Day, and Free Cone Day, when you can get a free scoop of Ben & Jerry’s between noon and 8 p.m.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 8 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Well, the markets are bouncing all around today, contrary to my prediction that they’d do another nosediver (however, I’m writing this at noon on Monday). HOWEVER, Trump has exacerbated things by RAISINGTHE TARIFFS ON CHINA again. Oy gewalt!
A false dawn on the tariff front fueled a brief midmorning rally Monday, with the S&P 500 surging some 7% from its low on the day, before the administration clarified that there will be no delay in implementing new levies.
The episode, which touched off wild swings throughout the trading day, highlights the increasing desperation on Wall Street as the trade-war rout of 2025 extends into a new week.
In afternoon trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.5%, about 215 points. The Nasdaq Composite turned fractionally higher and the S&P 500 was flat, with all three indexes rallying after 1 p.m. ET.
The earlier rally followed erroneous headlines that President Trump was considering a 90-day pause in tariffs. The initial reaction showed how much desire there is among investors to return to the well-trod territory of administrations that want to assist markets and stock declines that are quickly followed by sharp bouncebacks.
This time, some major investors are starting to sound off publicly about what they see as the dangers in the shift to large tariffs. So far, though, it’s clear that President Trump and his advisers aren’t humming the same tune.
Trump said Monday he plans to add an additional 50% tariff on China starting Wednesday if the country doesn’t withdraw its retaliatory tariff increase on the U.S. “Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!” he wrote.
Stocks took their latest leg down in response. The S&P stood close to bear-market territory, defined as a 20%-plus decline from a recent peak. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell into a bear market last week.
Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” the VIX, leapt as investors braced for further volatility ahead, and global markets recoiled. The index has more than doubled in the last month.
I invested regularly throughout my career, doing “dollar-cost averaging,” in which I put in the same amount of money each month, and when the markets tanked, as they did several times during my career, I ignored it. That’s what younger people should do, and unless the markets completely tank, I’ll be okay even though I’m retired. But tariffs also mean inflation, and a lot of people have no money in the stock market. Trump’s actions these days defy sanity and rationality, and I have no idea what he thinks he’s doing.
*As I had hoped, one of Trump’s many unconstitutional and haywire decisions has finally reached the Supreme Court. Things have reached a pretty pass when a Democrat has to look to the Court to rectify crazy things done by a Republican President, but I think that, collectively, they have way more sense than Trump. The unconstitutional “birthright” decision hasn’t made it there yet, but Trump’s mistaken deportation of a man who may well be innocent may soon be adjudicated by the court. The thing is, Trump has asked the Supremes to block a federal judge’s order that the inadvertently deported man be returned to the U.S. However, late yesterday a divided court voted that the guy can stay in El Salvador (the vote was 5-4), but said that potential deportees must receive due process in the U.S. and that they could refile their lawsuits in the the place where they were detained. Ultimately, the legality of deporting citizens using the Alien Enemies Act wasn’t adjudicated.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block a trial judge’s order directing the United States to return a Salvadoran migrant it had inadvertently deported.
Judge Paula Xinis of the Federal District Court in Maryland had said the administration committed a “grievous error” that “shocks the conscience” by sending the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to a notorious prison last month. She ordered the government to return him by 11:59 p.m. on Monday.
In the administration’s emergency application, D. John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general, said Judge Xinis had exceeded her authority by engaging in “district-court diplomacy,” because it would require working with the government of El Salvador to secure his release.
“If this precedent stands,” he wrote, “other district courts could order the United States to successfully negotiate the return of other removed aliens anywhere in the world by close of business,” he wrote. “Under that logic, district courts would effectively have extraterritorial jurisdiction over the United States’ diplomatic relations with the whole world.”
He said it did not matter that an immigration judge had previously prohibited Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador.
“While the United States concedes that removal to El Salvador was an administrative error,” Mr. Sauer wrote, “that does not license district courts to seize control over foreign relations, treat the executive branch as a subordinate diplomat and demand that the United States let a member of a foreign terrorist organization into America tonight.”
From the WaPo:
Instead, the majority ruled that the five Venezuelan immigrants who challenged the policy did so in the wrong court, leaving open the possibility that those targeted for deportation could refile their case in Texas or other jurisdictions where they are detained.
A federal appellate court unanimously refused to block the judge’s ruling, but the Administration fought tooth and nail to keep a main out of the U.S. who has no known evidence against him. What’s next, the deportation of American citizens?
Indian police have arrested a 24-year-old American Youtuber who visited an off-limits island in the Indian ocean and left an offering of a Diet Coke can and a coconut in an attempt to make contact with an isolated tribe known for attacking intruders.
Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, from Scottsdale, Arizona, was arrested on March 31, two days after he set foot on the restricted territory of North Sentinel Island — part of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands — in a bid to meet people from the reclusive Sentinelese tribe, police said.
A local court last week sent Polyakov to a 14-day judicial custody and he is set to appear again in the court on April 17. The charges carry a possible sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine. Indian authorities said they had informed the U.S. Embassy about the case.
Visitors are banned from traveling within 3 miles (5 kilometres) of the island, whose population has been isolated from the rest of the world for thousands of years. The inhabitants use spears and bows and arrows to hunt the animals that roam the small, heavily forested island. Deeply suspicious of outsiders, they attack anyone who lands onto their beaches.
In 2018, an American missionary who landed illegally on the beach was killed by North Sentinel islanders who apparently shot him with arrows and then buried his body on the beach. In 2006, the Sentinelese had killed two fishermen who had accidentally landed on the shore.
Indian officials have limited contacts to rare “gift-giving” encounters, with small teams of officials and scientists leaving coconuts and bananas for the islanders. Indian ships also monitor the waters around the island, trying to ensure outsiders do not go near the Sentinelese, who have repeatedly made clear they want to be left alone.
Police said Polyakov was guided by GPS navigation during his journey and surveyed the island with binoculars before landing. He stayed on the beach for about an hour, blowing a whistle to attract the attention but got no response from the islanders.
. . .He later left a can of Diet Coke and a coconut as an offering, made a video on his camera, and collected some sand samples before returning to his boat.
On his return he was spotted by local fishermen, who informed the authorities and Polyakov was arrested in Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago nearly 750 miles (1,207 kilometres) east of India’s mainland. A case was registered against him for violation of Indian laws that prohibit any outsider to interact with the islanders.
This guy is an idiot. Not only is he endangering himself, but also, by carrying possible microbes to a low-immunity population, endangering the locals. Much as we are fascinated by wanting to hear about “uncontacted” tribes, they do not want to be contacted. If Polyakov really does get five years in an Indian prison—and in general Indian prisons are places where you really don’t want to be—he will be a very sorry influencer.
*Religious groups are having mixed feelings about my op-ed in the Wall Street Journal recounting my entanglement with the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which led to not only my resignation from the honorary board, but also that of Steve Pinker and Richard Dawkins. They are delighted to see that an atheist organization is acting quasi-religiously (odd, isn’t it, for them to think, “you’re as bad as we are?”), but are upset that it took a diehard atheist, me, to call them out. Here are two of several that I’ve seen.
First, from the World News Group (“Sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth”):
The outrage of these scientists is that the FFRF turns out to be a lot less committed to reality than they had thought. The foundation claimed to be building a big movement of atheists, scientists, and activists committed to secularism. After affirming abortion, assisted death, and other orthodoxies, the FFRF claims to be “an umbrella for those who are free from religion and are committed to the cherished principle of separation of state and church.”
It turns out that umbrella isn’t big enough for biological reality. Coyne, Dawkins, and Pinker are out. Coyne took to the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal in recent days to declare that “biology is not bigotry.” He went after the FFRF and its advisory board and especially after “transgender ideology” with outrage: “It insists on doctrines that are palpably untrue (“trans women are women”), engages in circular reasoning (“a woman is whoever she says she is”), and affirms mind/body dualism (“your self-concept is more real than your actual sex”).
Furthermore, “It also makes anathema of heresy and blasphemy (tarring of dissenters as ‘transphobes’), attempts to silence critics who raise valid counter arguments, seeks to proselytize children in schools and excommunicates critics.”
Make no mistake. Jerry Coyne insists that he is fully committed to atheism. His claim is that the FFRF has traded scientific atheism for ideological group-think. He also had the temerity to point out that the transgender revolution is incompatible with biological reality. When it comes to the gender ideologies and the new idols of the age, Coyne concludes that he is “proud to proclaim myself a heretic.” Sadly, when it comes to Christianity, Coyne is just as much a heretic, but with infinitely more at stake. We can only hope that his affirmation of biological reality will be extended to theological reality. For that we can hope … and pray.
Theological reality? No way! “Biblical truth” is almost an oxymoron, though a few historical bits of the Bible are true. And from the Albert Mohler site, devoted to pushing Southern Baptism. It’s okay up to the end, where they start denying evolution:
Listen to this. This is an anti-theologian, but he’s using theological language. “It also makes anathema of heresy and blasphemy, tarring of dissenters as transphobes, attempts to silence critics who raise valid counter-arguments, seeks to proselytize children in schools and excommunicates critics.” He mentions J. K. Rowling, for example. Now, I want to be clear, Jerry Coyne has not moved a millimeter towards Christianity.
He has not moved even slightly towards theism. But what he and some of his fellow very famous scientists in this group understood, is that many people who say they are all for science, they turn out to be all the more for, a very unscientific approach when it comes to something such as transgender identity, or even the larger LGBTQIA set of phenomena. And you’ll notice that Richard Dawkins has already been in trouble on this on the other side of the Atlantic. And by the way, if you do believe in biology, you’re going to be in trouble on this. As a matter of fact, if all you believe in is biology, you’re going to be in trouble on this.
I think it’s incredibly interesting that a newspaper, as influential as the Wall Street Journal, has decided just recently to run Coyne’s piece on this. And he goes right at so many of the, say, modern intellectual playthings of the age, and in particular, those that affirm the LGBTQ revolution. He goes on to say, “Biology is not bigotry,” an argument that is also used by many Christians. Of course, biology is not bigotry. He goes on and says this, “The FFRF has not only abandoned science, but suppressed discussion and argument about its decision.”
He says, “Given the organization’s embrace of quasi-religious and unscientific dogma, I’m proud to proclaim myself a heretic.” A heretic, in one of the, say, high churches of secularism. But he’s not any less secular than he ever was. He’s no less atheist than he ever was. He just understands that you can’t have male and female without, well, male and female, you mess that up.
And by the way, if you’re an evolutionary scientist, everything falls apart because you don’t have any forward motion. The mechanism of human reproduction is basically confused and taken away, and once you start talking out loud in this way, guess what? You get canceled. In the case of Jerry Coyne, his article disappeared.
No forward motion? What does that mean? There are plenty of things that don’t have forward motion but don’t fall apart, like, say, the Jungfrau or Mount Rushmore. No, good Christian folx, I remain a diehard atheist until I get evidence convincing me otherwise.
*The Times of Israel reports that an orange species of butterfly has been given a new Hebrew common name after murdered Israeli hostage Ariel Bibas, apprently stranged to death by Hamas (h/t: Bob Woolley)
he Hebrew name of a spotted orange butterfly has been changed to honor murdered hostage Ariel Bibas by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, the Bibas family announced Friday.
The academy last week officially informed the family, and on Thursday hand-delivered a letter addressed to Bibas’s father, Yarden — who was also taken hostage but released in February under a ceasefire deal — of the final decision to rename Melitaea ornata (eastern knapweed fritillary).
Using one of the biblical names of Jerusalem, Ariel, the name of the butterfly was replaced in Hebrew from Kitmit Yerushalayim (Orange Jerusalem) to Kitmit Ariel (Orange Ariel) in honor of the four-year-old.
The decision was made unanimously by the academy’s members in a full plenum session after first securing the permission of Yarden Bibas.
“We believe that of all the orange butterflies in our country, this butterfly deserves to be named Ariel, as it is one of the names of Jerusalem,” the letter to Yarden Bibas read.
The idea to rename an orange butterfly came from the head of the academy’s zoological committee, Dr. Liat Gidron, inspired by the eulogy delivered by Yarden Bibas, who said that his son loved butterflies and the natural world. For decades, the committee has undertaken the task of giving Hebrew names to all animal life — and insects — that are native to Israel.
The Bibas family became a symbol of the tragedy of October 7, with the color orange coming to symbolize the effort to free them, inspired by the vivid orange hair of Ariel and his brother Kfir, who was kidnapped at the age of nine months.
Yarden, his wife Shiri, and their two children were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz — among the 251 hostages that Hamas-led terrorists took when they stormed southern Israel, sparking the war in Gaza.
Here’s a photo of the insect from Wikipedia;
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is mystified by a phenomenon that really is occurring in Dobrzyn:
Hili: Either I’m imagining it or a new house is being built over there.Andrzej: The latter.Hili: The fewer people in our town the more houses.
Hili: Albo mi się zdaje, albo tam znowu wybudowali nowy dom.Ja: Masz rację.Hili: Im mniej ludzi w tym naszym mieście, tym więcej domów.
Notice once again that Kukla has much more white on her face than does Hili.
*******************
From Cat Memes:
From Claire (I presume this cheese is from Lesbos):
From Things With Faces; whatever it is, it has a turban:
From Masih, a falsely charged human rights advocate:
They want to execute this brave woman!
Please be her voice before it’s too late!Pakhshan Azizi, a courageous social worker who fought against ISIS in Syria and helped the wounded, was arrested and imprisoned upon returning to Iran. The corrupt judicial system has sentenced her… pic.twitter.com/GIeo1AmIUE
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 6, 2025
From Barry, who says, “A nice way to deal with anxiety.” Note: Bridget eventually did find her way home.
Two tweets from Luana. Seriously, men almost surely have an advantage in billiards by virtue of longer arms and bodies, giving them a greater reach:
From Malcolm. Sound up on this one!
Otter sound like a puppy and a cat at the same time and i absolutely love it pic.twitter.com/wuWE28ijXm
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 27, 2025
From my feed; this sure looks like petting to me!
Okay now i have seen it all. I just watched an Alpaca pet a cat. pic.twitter.com/0wojmn6d32
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) April 6, 2025
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:
A three-year-old French Jewish girl gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz. She would have been 85 today had she survived.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-08T10:29:10.470Z
Two from Dr. Cobb. How did “Arthur” get in there?
Tfw you are reading your proofs, and you discover a gremlin has replaced the word “replication”, which 100% appeared in the last version of the manuscript, by “Arthur”.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-04-05T19:38:51.142Z
Matthew apparently thinks this is funny!
The minute I met my wife I knew I would make her mine. And within only six weeks I had her working in the family tin mine
— Sanjeev Kohli (@govindajeggy.bsky.social) 2025-04-07T18:29:45.917Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life. -Barbara Kingsolver, novelist, essayist, and poet (b. 8 Apr 1955)
30 years ago Edward Luttwak was writing about themes very much in the news today. His point is that a balance must be struck between maximizing GDP and social cohesion.
Now he is back with the best article I have read so far about what Trump is trying to accomplish:
https://unherd.com/2025/04/tariffs-will-awaken-the-american-dream/
In 1993, I myself published a book called The Endangered American Dream, in which I tested the claim that the replacement of the industrial economy by the service economy was a Good Thing. In the event, I found that it was only a Good Thing for South Korea, Taiwan, the lower end of the Japanese economy and the poorest European regions. All these places kept out foreign — including US — imports while exporting vigorously to the US. Stateside, where lower-tech industries were collapsing, the American heartland suffered too.
Fentanyl had yet to arrive. But in those towns, Father could no longer provide a dignified life for his family by going off with his lunchpail to work in the factory down the street. Instead, he counted himself lucky if he could get a job at Walmart at much lower pay, helping to sell cheaper imported versions of what he himself had once made.
My book included a warning that social breakdown would open the way for some form of product-improved fascism in the US. But reviewers failed to notice that, as they contemptuously slammed my protectionist idiocy: I had dared to question the secular religion of the ruling elite: whose dogma was that unlimited free trade would make the whole world richer. That is certainly true, but globalisation also made American industrial workers poorer, too poor to send their children to college, endangering the American Dream.
I will try to look at it as time allows.
But the sheer complexity manufactured goods today makes this scheme seem impossible. How can we re-tool to give American workers factory jobs, with decent pay and benefits, in order to make cheap products that Americans will buy? As a random sample, consider an electric razor. This is made with plastic, wiring, and several tiny and precisely assembled metal bits. It is sealed in plastic, and secured in a cardboard molding with little twist-ties, and then enclosed in a box with lots of pictures and printing on it. No doubt much of the assembly and packaging process is done with machines with human monitors, and earlier the parts themselves were synthesized with machines that also had human monitors. And the machines that do all this are in turn made by other machines.
The factories sit on large parcels of land that must be lit, heated, cooled, cleaned, and staffed. All that, plus the requirement that all workers are given a living wage and benefits that will encourage them to stay.
Meanwhile, a gazillion other factories are also competing for the same pool of workers, and meanwhile our population growth is not keeping up because we are having fewer children.
And we can’t scale up in order to increase profits and reduce costs bc electric razors are durable goods that last 10 years or so. And we can’t sell them overseas bc of tariffs against us.
The model of 50-60 years ago is not how things are today.
But the sheer complexity manufactured goods today makes this scheme seem impossible.
So if everything gets a tariff, the tariff effectively becomes a sales tax.
There’s a problem with stability in the Trump administration. As economist Paul Krugman points out: no is going to to build a new factory in the US when they don’t know what tariffs will be next week never mind next year.
Also interesting, and to the point:
America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back
https://x.com/molson_hart/status/1908940952908996984
Abstract:
When I was in my Fourth Year at Chicago, I was taking a seminar on English History with the late Mark Kishlansky. He had gotten proofs back for his latest book, Parliamentary Selection, and asked a couple of us to read them. The book was about how members of Parliaments were chosen in the sixteen and seventeenth century. As I recall there were no problems in the text. The day the printed copies arrived, though, Mr. Kishlansky took a copy from the book, and immediately spotted an error on the back cover! (Elizabeth II instead of I).
Still nothing better than the infamous “Cdesign proponentsist” printing error, though, if I remember right, this was in a draft, not the printed edition.
That looks more like a global find/replace FUBAR in a word processor to me.
It was a draft, but the error was spotted by some sleuths during their research for the Dover Pennsylvania trial.
Your thing with a face that is wearing a turban, looks more like it’s wearing a bearskin to me (think British Guards regiments—Grenadier, Coldstream, Welsh, Scots and Irish).
Trump’s territorial ambitions are not specifically mentioned in today’s Dialogue but after reading an article by Gwynne Dyer I decided to submit a quote from it.
“We should presume, therefore, that his territorial ambitions with regard to Greenland, Panama, Canada and even Gaza (probably in that order) are as seriously meant as McKinley’s were for Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines and Hawaii. Greenland, Panama and Gaza will probably have to submit, in the end, but Canada may face a dreadful choice.
Trump currently talks about making Canada the ‘51st state’ and says that he will only use economic pressures to force Canadians to accept their fate. In reality he is building an authoritarian regime at home as fast as he can, and if crushing their economy does not bring Canadians to heel he may well resort to force in a couple of years.
In that event, Canadians would have to choose between resistance, knowing full well that they would probably lose in the end, or surrender without a fight to save lives. And by then it would be clear that their destination is not statehood and American citizenship, but some kind of subordinate colonial status. A big Puerto Rico, perhaps.
You think that’s crazy talk? Consider what has happened to civil rights, the rule of law and respect for the constitution in the United States in just the past two months, and project those trends for another twenty or thirty months. They may not continue unchanged, but why not?”
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/three-hours-in-greenland/
What has happened to civil rights in the United States? Mr. Dyer’s whole argument rests on the premise that something (unspecified but bad — “erasure”, maybe?) has befallen them.
Here’s a new instance: armed terror-supporting racists shouting “globalize intifada” (sorry, meant to say pro-palestiinian protesters but there was a typo) have taken over Grand Central Station in NY. https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-849279
Of course this is Trump’s fault for suggesting a takeover of Gaza. Imagine if this kind of mob action, vandalism, attacks on right wing journalists, and outright antisemitism continues for another 20 or 30 months.
Damnit yes Darryl! These lost youth and girls-who-aren’t-doing well regularly take over Grand Central (three times now?) with their teenage angst and terrorism chic mixed with weirdly retro 70s Socialist Thirdworldism.
They disrupt commerce and last time delayed a trip I had to make from my home in Manhattan to Westchester. Damn I was steamed. Then the lawyer in me said: “Freedom of speech and all, Dave!”
But… they’re simping for “River to Sea” annihilationism, the utter destruction of their neighbors and Islamofascism. So I’m … less sympathetic.
And leave NYers public transport alone – it already has enough challenges!
(y’all know I’ll say it……
…..
Onwards Israeli heroes. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
A TPUSA event at UC Davis was attacked by left-wing thugs on 4/4/2025. Even with Trump in office, the left is still attacking free-speech. As for Canada… What can I say… A country where flags flew at half-mast for months in response to a hoax. Of course, a quite different hoax took years to resolve in the USA.
Thanks Frank, for the answer to Leslie’s question about “what happened to civil rights”. In addition to the TPUSA incident, you can add attacks on private property in the form of vandalism on vehicles and dealerships.
If the question of civil rights is stemming from the deportation of non-citizens, I’m not a lawyer, but I struggle to see why a country needs to provide the same due process for non-citizens as it does for citizens. Once a person becomes a full-fledged legal citizen, then all rights should be conferred to them as anyone else, but I view the time before that as a probationary period, similar to the 90 day window that we have at work in which new hires can be dismissed quickly and easily if we find that they are not working out or if they violate any terms of employment.
Also, something I’ve been wondering: why would “Canada” be the 51st state? That’s a huge area to govern as a single state. Why would we not keep the existing 10 provinces and 3 territories as-is and thereby create the 51st through 60th states, with the 3 added territories as we currently have other US territories?
So 10 new states would mean 20 new senators? Hmm, I wonder what political party these senators would be.
I was wondering that too. Now I understand that Canada has a political mix that is comparable to the U.S., but it seems to lean more to the left.
So we would have 1 or more states that frequently vote democratic.
I would rather have Democratic nuttery than the current form of Republican nuttery.
Darryl: as one state, Canada would add two Democratic Senators to the Senate. As 10 states, it would add 20 Democrats. Not going to happen, especially since eight of those new Senators would speak for tiny welfare dependencies tacked on at the east end of Maine. America would be best advised to leave those four provinces sovereign to fend for themselves. And even Alberta is not likely to elect Republicans. The Canadian socialist movement was born on the Prairies.
As for the House, Canada’s 41 million people would entitle it to the same number of reps as California now has. But the House is capped at 435 seats. This would mean redistribution for other states to lose districts to accommodate Canada, all of which would be perpetually Democratic seats. Also not going to happen.
The only annexation that would be acceptable to Congress would be as one large unincorporated territory with no voting seats in either House. No states. The existing provincial boundaries would be erased, and maybe decades later redrawn to suit American tastes if Congress then decided to make one or more new states.
“We might as well be the 51st State,” has been a touchstone of Canadian insecurity ever since Alaska and Hawaii made it 50 but the sentiment goes way back. President Trump is just riffing on this. He knows it gets under our skin to play it back at us. It’s most unlikely that the United States would be better off annexing Canada just for the territory unless the geopolitically strategic high Arctic, which we cannot secure, was likely to fall under Chinese control (which our government does seem to be conniving at.)
Thanks Leslie, I hadn’t thought about it that deeply!
Nonetheless, I’ll still sponsor you for a Nova Scotian passport, Leslie.
Many right wing Americans are completely opposed to Trump’s 51st state plan for Canada. They note that most of the country is well to the left of US Republicans. It would be like adding another California.
Frau Katze is absolutely right. It would be suicidal for Republicans if Canada became the 51st state. It would make far more sense for Democrats to want this.
Does everybody remember the Johnny Cash song “Boy Named Sue?” Maybe Trump thinks Canada is too soft and socialist and wants to toughen it up a bit.
“Should be disqualified for bringing too many balls to the table”
Now that is funny and true.
But there are so few of them! C’mon, let them play with the ladies!
(Just kidding).
Honestly, I don’t know if bio-males have a real physical advantage playing pool. Arm length is also effected by height, and everyone varies in height.
It turns out that Chess is divided by sex. The physical advantages of males obviously have nothing to do with Chess. However, males tend to be more aggressive and there is the GMV. Elite math (the Putnam test) is also divided by sex.
Hi Frank again. Maybe the difference is between spacial vs verbal IQ in men vs women respectively. I’ll bet the beautiful colorful frogs at WEIT today that that has a lot to do with the differential in chess. In fact a better eg of that is hard to find.
keep well,
D.A.
NYC
“Should be disqualified for bringing too many balls to the table”
There is (bad) precedent for this. Back in 2016, all three of the medalists in the 800 M “Women’s” race were actually male. Did this fiasco bring dramatic reforms? Of course, not (at least in 2024).
Elite corn-hole players are also divided by sex. Seriously, they get air time on ESPN, and there seems to be serious competition with teams and everything! I’d imagine the same is for darts, but I don’t know.
Why is that? I would think so the boys could be boys, and the girls could be girls in their off-time.
Goodness Mark. There is an “elite corn hole” circuit? The mind boggles.
Eat your heart out polo snobs.
I bet they have top notch parties though – sandbags all over the place!
D.A.
NYC
Being a bit pedantic, chess has “open” competitions (that women may enter) and women-only competitions.
Currently, the world’s 3 best women are ranked 103rd, 292nd and 316th overall.
That’s our Amy! And to tweet it while awaiting a Decision as to Penalty from her licence regulator. You go, girl!
I ❤️ Amy Hamm!
So many crazy things to talk about!
The long-term message of the tariffs is that the United States cannot be trusted as the guarantor of the world’s financial stability. The shorter-term message is contained within the whipsawing markets. Millions of Americans who have toiled for decades for an affordable retirement are seeing their nest eggs disappear, come back from the grave, and disappear again. Many people will naively sell their stocks and mutual funds in a panic, locking in their losses. It’s sad and it was completely preventable.
The guy who invaded the island off India just so that he can introduce the inhabitants to Diet Coke is an idiot. Diet Coke doesn’t taste as good as regular Coca-Cola. Not only that, the guy is an idiot.
Now the poor man who was sent by mistake to a prison in El Salvador is trapped in the machinations of our political and judicial system. He’s being ground up in the works.
And finally, one might think that naming a beautiful butterfly after the slain Ariel Bibas would be seen as a lovely gesture by all. I am expecting the dissenters to spring up at any moment to decry this act.
Let’s not get butt hurt about the guy probably wrongly sent to El Salvador. I defended criminals in the courts above the infamous “Tombs” jail in Manhattan and a few of the unfortunates in that jail were innocent.
MANY also were transferred to the wrong prison, trials delayed through no fault of their own and a few (very few) wrongly arrested. And other stuff ups as in any big system with humans in it.
A few mistakes don’t invalidate the system itself. There will always be slipped through the cracks errors and it is important to fix those errors quickly but their existence doesn’t mean what we’re doing is a bad thing because of that.
As a related aside – the deportation of terrorist Sharif is not a stuff up. It is EXACTLY how the system must work.
D.A.
NYC
If no one gets “butt hurt” then where does the pressure to do it better come from? The “just the cost of doing business” view is sort of like a deepity.
No Darrell it is less a deepidy (RIP Dan Denet – loved him) than a mathematical reality. (I think I mis-spoke above).
No system is 100%.
It is good we have free speech b/c it allows attention and outrage to be focused on the mistakes the state make. Otherwise they’d never be rectified! That’s why the First Amm’d is our most precious thing, a course corrector.
And let’s get that poor guy back from El Salvador ASAP. I’m butt hurt about errors also.
But the error doesn’t disgrace the whole El Salvador project in the same way the few wrongly arrested in jail under The Tombs disgrace our whole justice system.
Plus… the new El Salvador system is… well… new and there will be new errors. It is also a mix of two quite different systems so that alone will increase the error rate. We need to be wise to that.
best,
D.A.
NYC
Looks like we are more in agreement than not. Your first comment seemed quite different from your response here. Seems I misinterpreted it.
60-minutes had a good expose of CECOT and Trump’s use/abuse in paying El Salvatore to utilize it. A place where people go to get erased. Prisoners there are better off dead, and indeed, they die all the time.
I believe you wrote about the death rate in El Salvador and how CECOT was the inevitable response. I agree. I remember back when Duterte was the one fought over. He generated lots of comments online. All of the US comments were negative. All of Filipino comments were positive.
“bringing too many balls to the table”
This was cute, and as thoughts can also ricochet and collide, it got me wondering. Does anyone else see the irony in men having been driven out of their formerly male-only spaces only for many of the same women (and their daughters) who did the driving to solicit male help in keeping female-only spaces? I understand the differences, particularly regarding safety, and I believe strongly in retaining female-only spaces and activities. And, as disclosure, I am not one who has ever been personally fond of male-only spaces and activities or the “male bonding” that is important to so many. But when an earlier generation of men suggested there was value in male-only spaces—whether it be a boys’ school or a social club that allowed men to freely speak and act in ways that many cherished with other men but were uncomfortable doing alongside women—some women scoffed, ridiculed, or raged. In the name of equality, the segregated spaces must fall, they were told. Any concerns that men voiced were deemed illegitimate—by women, who, apparently knowing how it feels to be a man, readily dismissed claims that men could be uncomfortable around women in certain circumstances, eye-rolled at their desires for male bonding, and raged at the suggestion that the very presence of (young) women could destabilize cohesion among a team of men. And now, we are told, in the name of “equality,” the remaining segregated spaces must fall. Curiously, it is largely women who are, again, involved in this crusade. This, rather than the earlier dynamic, is what most puzzles me.
On a lighter note, which many married men will understand (though many will not be quite as stupid as I to say so)—the whole thing reminds me a bit of the ever-migrating female products that displace the few male ones on the bathroom vanity, or of the clothes in more petite sizes that somehow never have enough closet space and rapaciously look to colonize others. I stand for separate spaces. For men. For women. May everyone be blessed with the budget and opportunity to have his and her bathrooms, closets, and home offices forever—but some might need to be larger than others.
Edgy post there Doug, kudos.
I agree entirely. Males spaces for us “to be blokes” are essential, especially to show the younger guys how men behave and discipline them. To TRAIN them to become respectable young men and not animals. The loss of male spaces is a big loss societally for sure. (Also note the trans cult now has women’s spaces under threat!)
hahah On bathrooms. Having two bathrooms is essential for a marriage for sure. B/c the sexes have different needs, preferences and as you mention products.
Vital for domestic tranquility. I’m sure most wives will agree!
I often joke the perfect setup for a couple would be one bathroom for each spouse, one for guests, one for the help, probably one just for disabled/blood, and another spare. So…. 6 or so per couple? (I’m not an architect and society is fine with that fact).
cheers Doug,
D.A.
NYC
Doug, private men-only spaces are legal in the United States, as they should be.
It’s when clubs and such are open to the public, or have any government funding or tax breaks, that they run into trouble with anti-discrimination laws.
At one time, male-only clubs were places where professionals and wealthy businessmen commonly met to make deals and contacts. This placed women trying to break into the professions, or to break the “glass ceiling,” at a disadvantage.
Such private clubs can and do still exist–as long as they don’t engage in “commercial activities” or claim any governmental subsidies. Per Wikipedia, in California:
Harvard invited Caster Semenya as keynote speaker at their Women In Power Conference
https://www.thefemalecategory.com/p/harvard-invited-caster-semenya-as
Men are indeed the best women!
Medals for winning races, new records in many sporting events, “woman of the year” awards, keynote speaker at women’s events, support from smarmy John Oliver, recognition of their womanhood from major science magazines and organizations, etc.
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra is getting into the act. Men can be considered for the Women in Musical Leadership mentorship program for young female conductors it operates as the senior orchestral partner with other musical performance ensembles in Canada. Too darn many cisgendered male conductors! Only 3% of working conductors are female, and I’m sympathetic to the idea of giving them a leg up, but is it really helping to allow trans-identified (or non-binary) men to “count” as progress?
https://www.tso.ca/noteworthy/taking-the-podium
We say No, and have decided not to donate to the Orchestra this year or renew our season subscription. The TSO has drunk deeply from the Trans Kool-Aid jug, with their celebration of Pride Year being essentially Trans-Pride now, but it was mostly harmless posturing until this explicitly misogynistic mentorship program hit our radar screen.
(Of course, as with all things Canadian, the TSO is worried about losing its government grants and running into very expensive trouble with the Ontario Human Rights Commission if it “discriminates” against trans-identified men, so we should cut them some slack. Just politely not give them any money.)
Discouraging. But not surprising.
How did this mass brainwashing occur? How did educated people (and it’s primarily post-secondary school educated people) come to believe that men who “identify” as women actually are women? This even affects scientists who should know better and women who in the past fought to have their own sports and spaces.
I mean, this is some real MK ULTRA level mind control stuff here.
I also consider that if these transbelievers are able to be brainwashed that easily, what else are they being manipulated to believe?
Next they will be claiming that starving anorexics who feel they are fat really ARE fat!
JezGrove posted this just on April 4.
https://archive.is/6WTEr
The document that reveals the remarkable tactics of trans lobbyists
James Kirkup
Essentially you get ahead of the Government agenda and sneak your proposals in under a veil of protection thrown up for proposals that are less controversial. Same-sex marriage equality not only makes homosexuality boring and uncontroversial but it also gets people nodding along to same-sex prisons and “gender equality”. Sounds good, right? Why would anyone not want to end “gender discrimination”? People really don’t pay attention to realize just how transgressive what you are proposing really is.
I don’t know if anybody here endured John Oliver’s cringe last gasp attempt to justify “trans men” in women’s sports on his show the other night but it is a story worth following. Unlike John Oliver himself.
I love Brits (my Mum is one) and love London, but Johnny O. can go home.
D.A.
NYC
….wait, I’m out of the loop — so, after JK Rowling thoroughly disposed of him last year, John Oliver returned to this issue? It must have been cringe indeed. Ugh!
Also — Helen Joyces’ useful mnenomic: trans = fake — thus, trans man: natal woman posing as man; trans woman: a man wanting to be perceived as a woman. Well, I expect you know that and your phrase: ‘ “trans men” in women’s sports’ corresponding to me railing about “the dude who smashed Peyton McNabb’s face in volleyball”.
I think the Sentinelese should be contacted to the degree necessary to ensure that they do not murder unlucky seafarers who wash up on their shores.
Thx Mr./s Hopper.
An interesting tit bit in this long run fascinating story is that recently I learned that google maps admins actually “mix and match” and manipulate their images of Nicobar Island to confound adventurers, like that Christian guy (the murdered guy a few years ago selling Jesus there) and this latest punk.
So the google maps are intentionally WRONG there.
The whole story is utterly amazing to me.
D.A.
NYC
Satellite images of Area 51 were censored until a few years ago!