Saturday: Hili dialogue

June 28, 2025 • 7:15 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, June 28, 2025 and in a week I’ll be flying to Helsinki on the first stage of my Arctic trip. It is of course shabbos for Jewish cats, and National Foodie Day, celebrating all people who like food (see the Wikipedia entry here). I wouldn’t trust someone who didn’t like food! It’s hard to believe, but many people seem to regard food as fuel that propels them through life, and not as one of the wonders of life itself. And imagine how many foods there are that haven’t been invented or that don’t exist! It boggles the mind.

The best literature for foodies includes anything by Calvin Trillen as well as a marvelous but largely unknown book, Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris by A. J. Liebling.

It’s also National Ceviche Day, INTERNATIONAL CAPSLOCK DAY, and Great American Picnic Day.

Posting will be lighter than usual this week as I am preparing for a Big Trip, but bear with me. I do my best.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Supreme Court ruled on several cases yesterday in favor of Trump’s position. The one that stunned me was their upholding Trump’s position that children born on U.S. soil, most especially children of immigrants who came here illegally, are not U.S. citizens by virtue of their birth location. From the NYT (archived here):

The Supreme Court term that ended on Friday included an extraordinary run of victories for President Trump, culminating in a 6-to-3 ruling largely eliminating the main tool that his opponents have used to thwart his aggressive agenda.

In that case and others, the justices used truncated procedures on their emergency docket to issue decisions that gave Mr. Trump some or all of what he had asked for in cases dealing with immigration, transgender troops and the independence of government agencies.

The emergency rulings in Mr. Trump’s favor were theoretically temporary and provisional. In practice, they allowed the president to pursue his policies indefinitely and sometimes irreversibly.

In the first 20 weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term, his administration filed 19 emergency applications asking the justices to pause lower court losses while lawsuits continued. That is the total number of such applications the Biden administration filed over four years, and far more than the eight applications filed over the 16 years of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies.

The spike was a result of challenges to the blitz of executive orders issued by the administration since Mr. Trump took office. The upshot was a winning streak delivered by a court he remade in his first term, appointing three of the six conservative justices.

Many of the emergency decisions were based on rushed and cursory briefs, and came after the court did without oral arguments. They were usually delivered in orders containing scant or no reasoning.

Importantly, the Supremes ruled that judges of federal appeals courts with limited geographical jurisdiction cannot issue nationwiee rulings or injunctions.

Friday’s decision, which limited the availability of nationwide injunctions — rulings that bind not only the parties to the case but also everyone else affected by the challenged executive order — was an exception. It followed a special oral argument held by the court in May and yielded more than 100 pages of opinions. But it was the also the most important case on the emergency docket this term, as it did more than pause rulings from lower courts finding Trump administration measures unlawful. It made it much harder for lower courts to thwart such measures at all.

Rulings on emergency applications are seldom signed. While public dissents are common, it is possible that not all dissenting votes are disclosed, adding to the procedure’s lack of transparency.

But on the available evidence, six of the nine emergency orders involving the Trump administration since May were decided by 6-to-3 votes, with the court’s Republican appointees in the majority and the three Democratic ones in dissent.

Here’s the NYT list of Supreme Court rulings on emergency cases. Of fourteen of them, eleven (with yellowish coloration) were in favor of the Administration.  We’re going to have to get used to 6-3 votes. Click to enlarge:

From another NYT article (archived here) on the most important decision, which was part of the “no birthright” decision described above (the first one on the list).

The Supreme Court ruling barring judges from swiftly blocking government actions, even when they may be illegal, is yet another way that checks on executive authority have eroded as President Trump pushes to amass more power.

The decision on Friday, by a vote of 6 to 3, will allow Mr. Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship to take effect in some parts of the country — even though every court that has looked at the directive has ruled it unconstitutional. That means some infants born to undocumented immigrants or foreign visitors without green cards can be denied citizenship-affirming documentation like Social Security numbers.

But the diminishing of judicial authority as a potential counterweight to exercises of presidential power carries implications far beyond the issue of citizenship. The Supreme Court is effectively tying the hands of lower-court judges at a time when they are trying to respond to a steady geyser of aggressive executive branch orders and policies.

The ability of district courts to swiftly block Trump administration actions from being enforced in the first place has acted as a rare effective check on his second-term presidency. But generally, the pace of the judicial process is slow and has struggled to keep up. Actions that already took place by the time a court rules them illegal, like shutting down an agency or sending migrants to a foreign prison without due process, can be difficult to unwind.

Here’s the full “birthright” case decision; click to read or get pdf. Justice Barrett delivered the opinion, which is 26 pages long, but there are over 90 pages of concurring or dissenting opinions.

From Sotomayor’s dissent:

Children born in the United States and subject to its laws are United States citizens. That has been the legal rule since the founding, and it was the English rule well before then. This Court once attempted to repudiate it, holding in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857), that the children of enslaved black Americans were not citizens. To remedy that grievous error, the States passed in 1866 and Congress ratified in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which enshrined birthright citizenship in the Constitution. There it has remained, accepted and respected by Congress, by the Executive, and by this Court. Until today. It is now the President who attempts, in an Executive Order (Order or Citizenship Order), to repudiate birthright citizenship. Every court to evaluate the Order has deemed it patently unconstitutional and, for that reason, has enjoined the Federal Government from enforcing it. Undeterred, the Government now asks this Court to grant emergency relief, insisting it will suffer irreparable harm unless it can deprive at least some children born in the United States of citizenship. See Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, Exec. Order No. 14160, 90 Fed. Reg. 8849 (2025).

The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival. Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort. With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a “solemn mockery” of our Constitution. Peters, 5 Cranch, at 136. Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way. Because such complicity should know no place in our system of law, I dissent.

She has a point: the Supreme Court has not only overturned precedent but, by allowing the government to commit patently unconstitutional orders, has itself violated its own brief: to enforce the Constitution. This doesn’t seem a matter of interpretation, for the birthright doctrine is set out in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

*And, in yet another dissing of our northern neighbors, Trump has declared that he’s terminating trade talks with Canada because Canada proposes to tax “digital services,” including firms like Facebook and X (article archived here):

President Trump said he terminated trade talks with Canada over what he called an “egregious” digital-services tax on U.S. tech companies, plunging relations with America’s second-largest trading partner back into turmoil.

“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” Trump wrote Friday on Truth Social.

Trump’s decision is the latest blow to an already strained relationship between the bordering nations. Trump has said the U.S. should annex Canada to improve trade relations and security. Recently elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has staked his political reputation on pushing back. He has said Canada isn’t for sale.

“These are very complex negotiations and we are going to continue them in the best interests of Canadians,” Carney said as he left his office in Ottawa on Friday.

The two countries had been negotiating a new trade deal for months. Trump and Carney clashed over dairy tariffs and the digital tax last week during a bilateral meeting at the Group of Seven summit in Canada.

Trump had grown furious that Canada refused to drop the digital-services tax, according to a senior U.S. official. He gave no warning to Canadian officials before publicly calling off talks in his post, this official said.

“Economically, we have such power over Canada, I’d rather not use it, but they did something with our tech companies…it’s not going to work out well for Canada,” Trump said later Friday in the Oval Office. “We have all the cards.”

Hand it to Trump to alienate our long-time ally and friend to the North. And he loves asserting that “we have all the cards,” something that he and Vance said when they were humiliating President Zelensky of Ukraine. My strategy is to think “Well, this will all be over in 2028,” but I may be dead then, or they could elect another Republican President, like Vance.

*What Iran will do about its nuclear program clearly depends on how much damage the U.S. did in its bombing of Forda and other sites, and , but an editorial-board op-ed in the WaPo dilates on this (article archived here):

Destroyed, degraded or undiminished: What word best describes the state of Iran’s nuclear program after the U.S. struck three uranium enrichment facilities? This question, which has roiled Washington over the past week, is not a merely semantic one. The outcome of the conflict with Iran depends on its answer.

If the U.S. strike “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, as President Donald Trump insists, the United States will have shown that it can destroy at will the regime’s capability of producing nuclear weapons. Diplomacy would still be needed so the United States could avoid having to regularly bomb Iran to prevent it from reconstituting its nuclear program. But Iran would have to come to the table with concessions, including renouncing its nuclear ambitions.

If the U.S. strike resulted in lessthan total obliteration, though, Iran might sense that it is able to defend its nuclear program against overwhelming American firepower. The amount of damage the United States managed to inflict would determine the degree to which the regime feels capable of resisting American attempts to tame it. Diplomacy could be a necessity, not just a best choice, and negotiations might be more difficult for Trump.

At the moment, the facts aren’t clear. A leaked Defense Intelligence Agency assessment suggests the U.S. strike set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months, and some senators who attended a classified briefing on the strike left thinking this was the case. But others who attended the same briefing said they believed the strike had done catastrophic damage.

One question is whether the Iranians managed to move some, or even most, of their highly enriched uranium to other locations out of harm’s way. Before the U.S. strike, Iran was believed to have about 880 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — far higher than needed for any civilian purpose and close to the 90 percent typically needed to make a bomb. Satellite images showing trucks lined up outside the fortified underground facility at Fordow — the target of those U.S. “bunker buster” bombs — as well as vehicles moving around the Isfahan facility strongly suggest the stockpile was moved. Containers holding the 880 pounds of enriched uranium could fit into a few car trunks. Common sense suggests the Iranians would not have been foolish enough to leave all of their enriched uranium in one spot after Israel launched its first attack on June 13.

The other big question is whether the U.S. strike destroyed the advanced centrifuges Iran needs to refine the uranium it might still have or acquire in the future — or whether other uranium-enriching centrifuges exist at unknown sites hidden from past inspections. With functional centrifuges, the Islamic republic could race to enrich more nuclear fuel. Without them, the regime would be stuck until it could build new ones.

Either way, the technical know-how Iran accumulated over several decades cannot be bombed away.

Fortunately, Trump appears ready to reengage Iran diplomatically — but, so far, Iran is refusing to negotiate,

My guess is that Iran did indeed remove a substantial amount of enriched uranium (60% enriched?) from the enrichment sites, but of course the U.S. and Israel will be able to find out where it is, and if Iran doesn’t negotiate, I also suspect that those countries will resume bombing. But to suggest that negotiation will solve the problem is ridiculous—a stupid Tom Friedman-ian view.  Iran has never negotiated seriously, because it wants a nuclear missile very badly.

Finally, if you’re a dg lover or just an animal lover like me, this will touch you, for Gilbert the Dog lay in state in the Minnesota capitol along with his staff, the two lawmakers who were killed in a brutal attack:

Gilbert the golden retriever was home with Democratic leader and Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband when a gunman fatally shot the couple and mortally wounded their beloved dog. And he was with them again Friday when the Hortmans lay in state at the Capitol in St. Paul.

He is all but certainly the first dog to receive the honor, having been put down after being badly injured in the attack. There is no record of any other nonhuman ever lying in state, and Melissa Hortman, a former state House speaker still leading the chamber’s Democrats, is the first woman. The state previously granted the honor to 19 men, including a vice president, a U.S. secretary of state, U.S. senators, governors and a Civil War veteran, according to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library.

Hundreds of people waited outside the Capitol before they were allowed into the rotunda at noon to pay their respects. Two pedestals sat between the Hortmans’ caskets, one for an arrangement of flowers and the other, for the gold-colored urn holding Gilbert’s remains.

A memorial outside the House chamber for the Hortmans included a box of Milk-Bone dog biscuits with a sticky note saying, “For the best boy, Gilbert.”

“We’ve all had family, pets, and it’s tragic to have the whole family lost in in a moment like that,” said Kacy Deschene, who came to the Capitol from the Minneapolis suburb of Champlin.

Gilbert has received a flood of tributes like Hortman and her husband, Mark, ever since news spread online that he had been shot, too, in the attack early on the morning of June 14 by a man posing as a police officer. The accused assassin, Vance Boelter, is also charged with shooting a prominent Democratic state senator and his wife, and authorities say Boelter visited two other Democratic lawmakers’ homes without encountering them.

Here’s a news video showing the caskets and Gilbert’s urn and photo:

It’s bad enough to kill two humans for political reasons, but shooting their dog, too? What is the reason for that? I doubt that it was because it alerted its staff by barking, so it was likely a case of complete sociopathy.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili appears to be looking for the Philosopher’s Stone:

Hili: There was a philosophical pebble somewhere here.
Andrzej: He could have fallen in a well.
In Polish:
Hili: Tu gdzieś był kamyczek filozoficzny.
Ja: Mógł wpaść do studni.

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

From Things with Faces, a sea lion yam!!!!

From Jesus of the Day:

From Now That’s Wild; use the Oxford Comma:

Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran doesn’t like Masih’s metaphors:

Reposted by J. K. Rowling:

From Malcolm; the best beatboxer in the world (or so it says). It’s pretty amazing:

From Luana.  This is about a month old, but it’s still telling:

Two from my feed. First, a heartwarming post:

A great idea!

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish girl was gassed to death immediately after arriving at Auschwitz. She was two years old and would be 85 today if the Nazis hadn't murdered her.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-06-28T09:50:00.408Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb.  First, another wonder of natural selection:

In what may be one of Earth’s craziest forms of mimicry, researchers in 2023 reported a species of rove beetle that grows a termite puppet on its back to fool real termites into feeding it.Learn more during #InsectWeek: scim.ag/4nmJLMv

— EwA (Earthwise Aware) (@earthwiseaware.bsky.social) 2025-06-27T09:17:42.803Z

The unique human chin remains a mystery, though it may simply be a byproduct of evolutionary changes in the rest of the skull. This was Stephen Jay Gould’s contention.

Why evolution can explain human testicle size but not our unique chinstheconversation.com/why-evolutio…

— Max Telford (@maxjtelford.bsky.social) 2025-06-26T15:53:35.205Z

53 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  1. I even more highly than usual recommend today’s TWIV episode 1230, clinical update with Dr Dan. He and Vincent address this week’s HHS meetings on vaccine approval. They explain how the process is supposed to work as well as the current bastardization of science processes by this administration. Vincent and Dan address the mercury issue that was brought up this past week on this site. Please take 30-45 Minutes to watch this very informative episode. I wanted to get this out to WEIT community early today. TWiV 1230, weekly clinical update should be at url https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/
    It is extremely depressing but a “must watch.”

    1. Indeed, this was a good TWiV. Since you posted this so early, just curious if you’re on the W Coast and so can get the new episode at a reasonable time on Friday night. Since I’m on Eastern time I have to wait till morning since they don’t post till midnight here. Or are you just an early riser?

      The fake publication about thimerosal was particularly astonishing. These people are just like creationiists.

      1. Early riser in eastern Virginia. Twiv is usually available weekend mornings before weit, so I start with it around 6:30 or 7:00 ET then to weit around 7:45 ET when it pops up.

  2. “… [food] … one of the wonders of life itself.”

    Hear hear… taste taste!

    😁

  4. It seems like Trump is shooting himself in the foot. If he makes US citizens stateless, then they won’t be able to obtain a passport and leave the USA, and he can’t deport them to countries that they aren’t citizens of. He doesn’t have the power to grant citizenship to them on behalf of any other country.

    The UK has removed citizenship from UK born people, eg Shamima Begum, but this must be approved by the Home Secretary.

    1. No, I don’t think so, Joolz. A child born to parents who are resident or transient in a foreign country inherits the citizenship of their parents. Deeming such a child born in the U.S. not to be also a U.S. citizen (which of course is the rule in the UK and Australia, too) has no impact on the child’s other citizenship. If the parents are deported the child goes with them as a fellow citizen. If the parents leave voluntarily when their visit finishes, the child they take home with them will need proof that he is a citizen of the home country, i.e., is a child born to citizens. An infant may or may not need a passport from the home country, but that’s no concern of the U.S. It will be up to the parents to work this out with their home country but a country doesn’t normally refuse to allow its citizens to come home.

      1. “Trump’s position that children born on U.S. soil, most especially children of immigrants who came here illegally, are not U.S. citizens by virtue of their birth location.”

        I may have misunderstood the ‘most especially’ in this, but I read it as applying to more than just illegal immigrants.

        If an immigrant has become an American citizen then surely their child born in the US is one too? So how could this apply to people who aren’t illegal immigrants?

        We have a situation similar to that you describe in the UK at the moment. Shamima Begum was born in the UK to Bangladeshi parents and was given British citizenship because her parents were resident here. Her British citizenship was revoked and Bangladesh refused her citizenship so she is trapped in Syria. I think I read something about Bangladesh saying she should have claimed citizenship before she was 21.

        Begum’s parents aren’t British citizens, but they are here legally. Perhaps Trump should be more specific about the people he’s referring to, but he doesn’t seem to be very good on detail.

        1. The fact that she went to Syria to join ISIL makes her case a little unique, wouldn’t you say?

        2. Under President Trump’s position, a child born on U.S. soil would not be a U.S. citizen unless at least one parent is a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the U.S. (To that end it wouldn’t matter where the child was born. What he’s saying is jus sanguis replaces jus solis.) If the parent is a citizen, whether naturalized or by birth, or a PR, the child is also a citizen. The XO says nothing about revoking U.S. citizenship for misbehaviour.

          Here we need to be careful about terms. There is no such thing as an “illegal immigrant.” A person in the U.S. who is not a citizen is an alien. There are four types of legal aliens — people in the U.S. on valid visas of various types and lengths, those with asylum claims pending adjudication, those eligible for visa-free visits for time-limited tourism, and permanent residents (Green-card holders.) Only the fourth type of legal alien is an immigrant, and all immigrants are legal immigrants by definition. Everyone else is an illegal alien. They have either overstayed or violated their visas or visa-free allowance, or they snuck in. Under jus sanguis, children born only to the PRs (and to the citizens) would be automatic U.S. citizens.

          Another way of saying this is that children born to “immigrants” would still be citizens. The XO would deny citizenship only to children of illegal aliens and to children of legal aliens who are not “immigrants.”

          If there are any countries that don’t confer automatic citizenship upon children born abroad to their citizens, women from that country would be strongly advised not to have children while traveling, or to have their children only in jus solis countries, like Canada, because otherwise yes their children will be stateless unless they can petition their home country to accept them. But if this is anyone’s “fault”, the fault lies with those citizens’ home country. It is not the duty of the United States to provide citizenship of last resort to all the world’s stateless. Indeed jus solis countries should prohibit entry to female citizens of those countries, for fear of being stuck with a child they can’t deport and have to foster if the mother decides to abandon it. A pregnant alien, legal or not, should be deported before she gives birth. Such “cruelty” would not be necessary under jus sanguis because the child would not be a U.S. citizen anyway and could be deported with the parents.

          New-World countries adopted jus solis early in their histories because they were clamouring for immigrants. Come to America (or Canada) and we promise your children will be citizens — no paperwork in an unfamiliar language to decipher — even if you have them before you have been able to become citizens yourselves. It was too far, too dangerous, and too expensive for women to visit just to have babies, or to sneak in by trekking across the desert or the frozen steppes of Canada. Safe, cheap foreign travel today means foreign women can contrive to have anchor babies born in country under circumstances that don’t benefit the host country. I don’t understand why in the new reality anyone would still advocate for jus solis citizenship, especially when it can be so easily gamed. I repeat: the children of immigrants (legal immigrants — there are no other kind) will still be citizens just as in the Ellis Island days. It’s the visitors, temps, and illegal aliens who will be affected.

          I also note that the Supreme Court has not upheld President Trump’s XO ending jus solis citizenship. It has only granted him relief from nationwide injunctions against his order and has directed the lower courts to reconsider their judgements on the merits while the case works its way through the law’s digestive system. No babies’ citizenship papers are being ripped up yet.

          1. That sounds more reasonable than what I suspected was going to happen. Thank you for the clarification.

        2. No, I’m not, and I later contemplated that a citizen of a country that doesn’t give citizenship to her child born abroad should do her utmost not to have a baby in a jus sanguinis country. Ideally she shouldn’t travel abroad at all because one can never know for sure where one will be in one’s odyssey when one’s water breaks.

    3. Respect Joolz but that’s not quite how it works.

      Trump’s idea (I think) is that the deportees (“anchor babies”) will have their parent’s citizenship – but that isn’t assured at all and the US (and UK) are parties to a 1960s agreement saying they legally can’t make somebody stateless.

      Even now a US citizen must show a 2nd citizenship to “denaturalize” here or at a US embassy abroad. If you can show another passport/citizenship they’ll let you (though you still owe Uncle Sam taxes for a decade).

      Stripping that little British beheader Shamima Begum of her citizenship was a great idea – should have stripped her of her head in my book – but despite her parentage, she is not a Bangladeshi citizen (and had never even been there). Why she is out of jail though, injustice that that is, is another matter I’ll refer to the Law Lords of London.

      best Joolz,

      D.A.
      NYC

      1. I remember reading that we can’t legally can’t make somebody stateless, which is why there was such a fuss over Begum, and why the UK Gov tried to persuade Bangladesh to take her.

        I don’t believe in the death penalty, but I’m happy that she is stuck in Syria where her living conditions are much worse than they would be in a comfy UK jail.

        1. Sorry. Didn’t see this before writing my comment above. You’re hip to her particulars. Oops.

        2. Oh yes I think I remember now Joolz. Isn’t she in Al Hol prison/camp? It is in NE Syria in the wasteland – one of the worst places on earth: a Syrian, Kurdish run prison for ISIS people. Guess they got their Dawa Islamiyya (Islamic State)… just smaller than expected. 🙂

          D.A.
          NYC

          1. I’ve seen film of the camp, it certainly looks like a hell hole.

            The three girls who went over were groomed to go, so I felt sorry for them at the start. If they had realised their mistake quickly and wanted to return right away, they should have been allowed to do so, but they didn’t. Now one is dead, I think another is still missing and Begum wants to return. She chose to have three children to a terrorist, so she clearly wasn’t concerned about anyone else’s safety. She made her choice. If the babies hadn’t all died, I wonder if she would be so keen to return to the UK.

      2. Wikipedia says the British Courts are satisfied that Shamima Begum is a Bangladeshi citizen under their interpretation of Bangladesh’s Nationality Act (which recognizes jus sanguis) and so the Home Office did not render her stateless when it revoked her British citizenship. The Bangladeshi Government may well have other opinions — both sides are likely engaging in motivated reasoning here because neither country wants her — but it is Britain Ms. Begum seeks to re-enter, not Bangladesh, so it would seem the British opinion rules.

        1. That’s exactly why there was such a fuss. The UK stated that they weren’t making her stateless and they were acting legally because her parents are Bangladeshi citizens and therefore she is too.

          There was an outcry at the time because she was a young girl and some were concerned about her safety, but the fact that the Bangladeshi government is rejecting her is not a reason to allow her to retain her British citizenship.

  5. Canada’s Government has for ideological protectionist reasons decided to go ahead with the digital services tariff, and for domestic political reasons it can’t yield on the dairy tariffs and import quotas which keep American dairy almost entirely out of our market. “Standing up to Trump” and intimidating him to end his tariffs while keeping ours (and scaring the voters into thinking his opponent wouldn’t) was how Prime Minister Carney’s Liberal Party won the recent federal election. (The admonition, “Elbows Up!” is a hockey expression meaning to elbow the other guy in the face while making it plausibly look not like a deliberate foul.) Supposedly we are going to pivot to transoceanic trade and mutual defence with Europe and Asia away from our trading partner and ally next door, and away from Israel. (The PM said from a podium recently, “Muslim values are Canadian values.”) Many people who voted Liberal are already grumbling that Mr. Carney has been altogether too conciliatory to President Trump since taking office. So here we are.

    The correct response to tariffs by any foreign government would be to eliminate tariffs of our own and to reduce domestic taxes. Both moves would attenuate the penalty of foreign tariffs on domestic producers — they could reduce their prices to protect their foreign market share — and reduce the cash penalty to domestic importing consumers. In this case that would give a score-keeping President a win, too. But all three are ideologically radioactive in Canada. Some Canadians are still calling for Canada to cut off the oil and electricity and let Americans freeze in the dark. That wouldn’t happen but it feels good to say it. To the extent that President Trump takes it seriously is bad for us, though.

    1. Like me Leslie (particularly as a NYer after this week) you must spend a lot of time yelling at the telly! 🙂

      I find it hard to follow the various ideas flowing south from your country. I only have you, Jon Kay and David Frum to guide me. Lots of bonkers up there.

      with great neighborly affection,

      D.A.
      NYC

  6. Other bit of news coming out of Iran is that they have done a substantial purge of anyone even remotely suspected of complicity with Israel. There have been quick executions and a lot of arrests. The actions have also extended into arrests of people who merely expressed dissent about the regime, and also their family members. This from the BBC News web site.

      1. Thanks FK, I missed that one though it doesn’t surprise me. “SPIES!” was the catch call for the KGB during the 40s in the purges and central to the entire intellectual architecture of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia 30 years later.

        Like “Islamophobia” or “Transphobia” or “Racism” it is a deadly charge that is almost unprovable and one can offer no defense to. Thus it is a fave of all types of totalitarian.

        The article linked to this: https://archive.is/IgSVe “Crackdown on spies”.
        It must be terrifying to live in Iran.

        D.A.
        NYC

    1. I don’t see anything terribly awry here, other than that she homeopathically dilutes herself by stepping into a wide range of causes. Ironic that she chose that shawl or vest, though …

  8. When my wife (on rare occasion) complains that she simply needs something to eat else she’ll get weak and pass out, I have been known to tell her to tell herself that “it’s only food,” and that we’ll get something to eat when we have the chance. This sometimes happens when we’re on the road with no restaurant in sight. I do like food, but I can resist if necessary.

    This leads me to the concept of the “foodie.” I know that there are other characterizations, but it seems to me that you (Jerry) have identified perhaps the most succinct definition yet: a person who loves food so much that he or she imagines food that has not yet been invented. That’s a foodie!

    1. Ignoring your wife’s need for food isn’t necessarily the wisest thing to do. Some people need food at regular intervals to prevent physical consequences, for example, migraines, diabetes reactions, etc. If I don’t get food when I feel like your wife, I very soon end up with a horrendous migraine. Maybe your wife doesn’t physically react if she doesn’t get the food, but I think you are being inconsiderate or insensitive!

      1. I’m not as heartless as it might appear. When this happens (rarely) we immediately initiate a quest for food. We’ve eaten some pretty stale sandwiches at gas station mini-marts.

        1. Careful of that, Norman. I assume it is just a desire to eat but weird appetites and weakening, shakiness can portend some serious shit (hypoglycemia) you want to avoid.

          I’m very thin, a good lookin’ 55 years old, but diabetes came and impacted my life a few years ago and almost killed me out of the blue – so get her (and your!) blood sugar checked.
          Otherwise, bon appetite!

          D.A.
          NYC

          1. I showed this thread to my wife. She thanks everyone for your kind words of support.

        2. I would suggest testing for A1C levels, not blood sugar (as suggested below). A1C is more stable that blood sugar. I should know, my A1C levels were high. Of course, you should get real medical advice from a real doctor, not me.

    2. On road trips that go on for some hours, we always bring various munchies along with us. Nothing healthy, I will admit.

  10. If you haven’t yet read Liebling’s “Between Meals” book, I heartily recommend it.

  11. “It’s hard to believe, but many people seem to regard food as fuel that propels them through life, and not as one of the wonders of life itself.”

    I’m in that group. It’s not that I don’t like food, but I like other pleasures of life even more, and the need to eat food keeps me from those.

    1. I’m with you on this one. I never learned how to cook and I’m not much of a multitasker… Having more than one burner on at a time freaks me out. Bake potato. Eat potato. Still hungry? Steam some vegetables. I eat like a healthy bachelor(ette). Whatever.

      1. Exactly! But eve steaming vegetables is too much for me, as I often get lost in concentration about what I am doing for real, and forget about the thing on the stove. Boiled potatoes are somewhat resilient to being forgotten, so potatoes it is!

  12. I think you’ve misunderstood the Supreme Court ruling. It is NOT – emphatically not – “upholding Trump’s position that children born on U.S. soil, most especially children of immigrants who came here illegally, are not U.S. citizens by virtue of their birth location” (so it is not overriding precedents on that). The ONLY thing it has done is to say that during litigation over birthright citizenship (or anything else), a President’s executive order can’t be blocked by a nationwide injunction from a single district judge. There are still other ways of blocking it: it can be blocked for any actual litigants in the case (who can be very numerous, if they join in a class action); it can also be blocked en masse if the litigant is a state. (So the actual litigants in the case before the court will continue to be able to have the President’s order blocked for them – which is why it is wrong to say that the court upheld the President’s order.)

    When the Supreme Court actually comes to rule on the birthright citizenship question on the merits, I would be very surprised if they uphold the Administration’s position. My bet is that at least two out of Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Roberts will vote with the three liberal justices to support birthright citizenship.

    It is still a blow – if very possibly only a temporary one – to people affected by the executive order; and for that reason I’m sorry it happened. But I do understand why the Justices ruled as they did. Nationwide injunctions have been increasingly abused in recent years by both Republicans and Democrats against presidents of the opposite party, finding a sympathetic district court judge and then having that judge block the president’s orders in their entirety. At some point something like this was going to have to be done to rein it in.

    There is a very clear article in the New York Times by Prof. Samuel Bray of Notre Dame setting this all out (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/opinion/birthright-citizenship-supreme-court-injunction.html): Prof. Bray believes the executive order is unconstitutional and will be overturned, but he thinks the judges came to the right decision on nationwide injunctions.

  13. I almost became a foodie.

    Being generally disinterested in food, I was surprised by my own reaction to necessarily having to feed myself via a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube i.e. a pipe through my belly wall into my stomach, for six months. I began looking forward to the day the tube would come out and I could eat properly again. The high-protein liquid food I had to ‘eat’ had the most revolting odour and also made me continuously nauseous. I used to crush up my meds in a large mortar and pestle, pour in the ‘food’, mix it up, suck it into a giant syringe and then pump it into my stomach. You know that contented feeling you get after a satisfying meal ………?

    In the waiting rooms of all the medical practioners’ rooms, I would dive straight into the magazines that featured food recipes and devour(!) them. Weekend TV back then was when you could watch the likes of Julia Child, Rick Stein, and a host of others on the weekend, and I would consume every minute of viewing time.

    Then the PEG tube came out, and I learnt that I could no longer swallow properly, that my saliva output was nil (it rebounded a little) , that my teeth would shortly have to be removed, that I could not wear false teeth, and that my jaw was partially frozen.

    I gotta tell ya, I almost became a foodie.

    2. That’s terrible Mr. Grasshopper. Is that how you got your name? hehehe
      Seriously though mate – glad you’re better now. We don’t appreciate the smaller things in life until we lose them.
      best,

      D.A.
      NYC

    3. Sorry, Grasshopper. We just never know what others are dealing with, do we? Life throws some nasty challenges at us. Everybody’s dealing with some kind of hell. We don’t know when we pass a stranger in the store if they just lost their spouse or their child, if they’re in pain… if they can chew or even swallow their food. Glad you’re a little better now.

  14. Thank you all for your comments. And you, Debi, hit the nail on the head, with your comment regarding “Everybody’s dealing with some kind of hell.” I am wont to observe that when you see a person with a club-foot, you can know immediately that that person has had an awkward life, but you tend not to reflect at all about the “normal” person standing next to him.

  15. The actual text of the (section 1) 14th Amendment is “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

    The US has never had (and probably never will have) “birthright citizenship”. The legal question (which SCOTUS has not ruled on) is whether illegals are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”.

    1. Yes, that is the crux of the matter.

      Speaking carefully as a foreigner, not wanting to tell the U.S. Supreme Court what to do….but perhaps a foreigner might offer some insight about “jurisdiction thereof.” When I visit the United States I recognize I must, as an alien, obey American laws and that it has the power to deport me at its (dis)pleasure. But I don’t consider myself “under the jurisdiction thereof” in any other way. I don’t sing The Star-Spangled Banner at hockey games in Buffalo — I would rise as a courtesy — and I wouldn’t be expected to pledge allegiance to the flag if that was the form at some event I was invited to. If war broke out I wouldn’t be drafted into the U.S. Army. There are certain Canadian laws that I, as a Canadian citizen, can be punished for violating in the U.S., when I get home, even if the conduct is legal in the U.S. In all respects my allegiance obligation is to Canada (and additionally to the King as my Commander-in-Chief — yes, really — if I was a member of the Armed Forces, even if I was attached in liaison to a U.S. unit or warship as many of ours are.)

      So to my way of thinking, the idea that my child who happened to be born in the U.S. just because his mother’s flight home got delayed by a blizzard should be a citizen (with obligation to file U.S. tax returns forever) is just a little bit bizarre. Surely the U.S. (and its Founders) would want him to be a citizen only if his parents were settling legally and permanently in the U.S. with the goal of starting an American family.

      The Supreme Court will have to decide what 14A means, but if they rule it means only the children of citizens and Green-card holders are citizens as the XO says, this is not unreasonable…even if it means handing President Trump another 6-3 victory.

      1. It is the exception, rather than the rule, that people born in a country automatically get the citizenship of that country. There is an industry of bringing pregnant women to the U.S. so that their children can get U.S. citizenship, and perhaps then enable the parents to immigrate. That is not what the writers of the 14th amendment intended. It’s a bit bizarre to be an originist only on some issues.

        1. It is not well-known, but the country of Ireland abolished birthright citizenship by referendum back in 2004. The vote was roughly 4:1.

          1. Interesting. It is still relatively easy to get Irish citizenship, though, if one has Irish ancestors, even if they were several generations ago and one has never been to Ireland.

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