Friday: Hili dialogue

August 15, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the end of the “work” week: Friday, August 15, 2025, and National Lemon Meringue Pie Day. What a good breakfast this would make now!  I had a damn protein bar. . . .

Mifflin’s Tea Room, Bonavisata, Newfoundland; photo by Kenny Louie from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also The Assumption of Mary (bodily, into Heaven), National Kool-Aid Day, National Relaxation Day, and National Best Friends Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 15 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A NYT op-ed by Mara Gay reports that, as a sign of increasing Democratic interest in Zohran Mamdani as a candidate after his victory in the NYC Mayoral Democratic primary, Obama called him and gave him advice.

In the days after it became clear Zohran Mamdani had won New York City’s June mayoral primary, much of the Democratic establishment began to panic.

Former President Barack Obama, the last Democrat to captivate the party’s base, got on the phone. In a lengthy call in June, Mr. Obama congratulated Mr. Mamdani, offered him advice about governing and discussed the importance of giving people hope in a dark time, according to people with knowledge of the conversation.

Others in Mr. Obama’s orbit have also shown a keen interest in Mr. Mamdani and his campaign. Jon Favreau, who served as Mr. Obama’s speechwriter, and Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser, have been in communication with the Democratic strategist Morris Katz, among Mr. Mamdani’s closest aides.

David Axelrod, who served as Mr. Obama’s chief campaign strategist and senior adviser, was also curious. Last month, he stopped by Mr. Mamdani’s campaign headquarters, then in the Flatiron neighborhood of Manhattan, to meet the candidate and his staff, and see things for himself.

“What I found when I went over to that office was a familiar spirit that I hadn’t seen in a while of just determined, upbeat idealism,” Mr. Axelrod told me. “You may not agree with every answer he’s giving, or every idea he has, but he’s certainly asking the right questions, which is how do we make the country work for working people?” He said Mr. Mamdani’s ability to inspire young Americans, who feel economic uncertainty acutely, was critical and something the party at large needed to reckon with.

Mr. Axelrod was introduced to Mr. Mamdani by Patrick Gaspard, another Obama insider. Mr. Gaspard — Mr. Obama’s 2008 national political director, and later the U.S. ambassador to South Africa — has been serving as an informal adviser to Mr. Mamdani.

The interest from the closely guarded world of Mr. Obama and those around him is the clearest sign yet that Mr. Mamdani is likely to be embraced by the Democratic mainstream, whether the party’s leaders and donors like it or not. It comes at a time of dueling visions among voters, Democratic politicians and donors over the future of the party.

I don’t trust the guy, for his statements on the Gaza conflict are unsettling and his plans to make NYC affordable dubious.  He will not be the Democratic candidate for President in 2028, if for no other reason than he won’t have had time to show his chops as Mayor. If he’s a sign of “The New Democrats”, we’re losers again.

*The AP reports that a guy who threw a SANDWICH at a Customs and Border Patrol Agent has not only been fired from his government job, but has been charged with a FELONY. Was it an explosive sandwich?

A man charged with a felony for hurling a sandwich at a federal law-enforcement official in the nation’s capital has been fired from his job at the Justice Department, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a social media post Thursday.

A video of Sean Charles Dunn berating a group of federal agents late Sunday went viral online as the White House ramped up a surge in law-enforcement patrols in Washington this week. Dunn was arrested on an assault charge after he threw a “sub-style” sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent, a court filing said.

Dunn, 37, of Washington, was an international affairs specialist in the Justice Department’s criminal division, according to a department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter.

“This is an example of the Deep State we have been up against for seven months as we work to refocus DOJ,” Bondi wrote. “You will NOT work in this administration while disrespecting our government and law enforcement.”

. . . The Justice Department still employs a former FBI agent who was charged with joining a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol and cheering on rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, siege. The former FBI supervisory agent, Jared Lane Wise, is serving as a counselor to Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin Jr., who was a leading figure in President Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election.

. . .Around 11 p.m. on Sunday, Dunn approached a group of CBP agents, pointed a finger in an agent’s face and swore at him, calling him a “fascist,” a police affidavit says. An observer’s video captured Dunn throwing a sandwich at the agent’s chest, the affidavit says.

“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted, according to police.

Note the second-to last paragraph, but of course this is Trump’s world now. I just want to know what kind of sandwich it was. A misdemeanor, perhaps, but a felony?

Here’s the video; it looks like a Subway sandwich; those things can be dangerous! (LOL)

Here’s Bondi’s tweet. She’s always making threats.

*As I reported yesterday, the Toronto International Film Festival “had canceled its invitation to screen a documentary about the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, due to ostensible copyright concerns stemming from the fact that the filmmakers did not receive permission from the Hamas terrorists whose clips are featured in the film.”  The real reason, I thought, was simply cowardice that pro-Hamas people would make trouble at the venue.  Now I think I’m right because, as reader Williams Garcia noted in the New York Post, public pushback forst the TIFF to rethink its cancellation. Now the film is on again. From the paper:

In a stunning reversal, the Toronto International Film Festival will “ensure” the screening of a documentary about Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel after initially booting the film because the terror group hadn’t given permission to use its footage.

TIFF’s turnaround comes only as the festival faced outrage over reports that “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue” wouldn’t be screened, because the filmmakers used footage filmed by Hamas but didn’t obtain the rights for the clips.

GIVE ME A BREAK!

“I want to be clear: Claims that the film was rejected due to censorship are unequivocally false. I remain committed to working with the filmmaker to meet TIFF’s screening requirements to allow the film to be screened at this year’s festival. I have asked our legal team to work with the filmmaker on considering all options available,” Bailey wrote on social media.

If ever there was a lie, this is one.  Can you seriously believe that they debated about the copyright of Hamas on its slaughter films? On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of threats against theaters who should movies sympathetic to Israel.  And if there are copyright issues, why did they reverse themselves?  Fricking liars and cowards. Here’s a public post by Qanta Ahmed on Facebook:

*Trump meets Putin in Alaska today, discussing a possible cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine. The WaPo tells you “what you need to know” (how patronizing!):

The facts

  • The summit will be at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, a White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive planning details. Trump and Putin will have a one-on-one meeting, followed by a meeting between U.S. and Russian delegations, U.S. and Russian officials said Thursday.
  • European leaders have urged Trump not to give away any Ukrainian territory, after he suggested a territorial swap “to the betterment of both” countries. The White House has downplayed expectations for a deal in recent days, although Trump has warned of “very severe consequences” if Putin doesn’t agree to end the war after the meeting.
  • Zelensky called Ukraine’s exclusion a victory for Putin, while European allies said Ukraine must be involved in any discussions on its future. Russian officials and commentators hailed the meeting as a diplomatic coup.On Thursday, Trump said the meeting could set the table for a second meeting, which would include Zelensky.

What will happen at the meeting?

The summit will start in Alaska on Friday at around 11:30 a.m. local time (3:30 p.m. Eastern) with a one-on-one “conversation” between Trump and Putin with interpreters present, Yuri Ushakov, a Putin aide, said Thursday. The two leaders are expected to say a few words before the start of the meeting, Ushakov added.

Negotiations will then continue over a working breakfast, which will include Russian and U.S. delegations with five representatives each, accompanied by experts, Ushakov said. He added that the Russian members were himself, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, and special economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the one-on-one talks would be followed by a “bilateral lunch” and a news conference. “What comes after that meeting is up to President Trump, and that’s part of the reason he is going,” she said on Fox News on Thursday morning. The U.S. delegation has not yet been named.

The host base, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, has 5,500 military and civilian personnel and has been in use as a military airfield since 1940, according to the Air Force.

Ukashov said the Russian delegation will fly back as soon as the talks are over.

Looks like Zelensky won’t be at this meeting, though Trump implied that that might happen. It won’t. Nor will it happen within the next year, or so I predict. It would make Putin look weak, and that he doesn’t want.  I don’t want Russia to get one square inch of Ukraine, but I guess that isn’t in the cards.

*The stock market may be up, but so is inflation, as reflected in the consumer price index. I noticed some higher prices just a few minutes ago when I was making out my grocery list for the week. The WSJ gives the details:

Stocks fell Thursday after new data showed factory-gate inflation picking up, introducing fresh question marks over the outlook for interest rates.

The producer-price index showed prices rose by a much stronger-than-expected 0.9% in July, the largest monthly increase in more than three years.

A day earlier, futures markets suggested investors were highly confident the Federal Reserve would cut rates in September, after Tuesday’s reassuring consumer-price index. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had talked up a larger, 0.5 percentage-point cut.

From the NYT:

A key measure of underlying inflation rose in July as President Trump’s tariffs intensified price pressures across a wider range of consumer goods and services, although the overall increase was likely not significant enough to deter the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates at its next meeting in September.

The Consumer Price Index stayed steady at 2.7 percent compared to the same time last year. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.2 percent from June. But an important gauge tracking consumer prices that strips out volatile food and energy prices accelerated more rapidly.

“Core” C.P.I., which is closely watched by the central bank, jumped 0.3 percent over the course of the month, or 3.1 percent on a year-over-year basis. That is one of the largest monthly increases so far this year and represents the fastest annual pace in five months. In June, core inflation rose 0.2 percent from the previous month, or 2.9 percent from July 2024.

And a graph from the NYT.  Things don’t look too bad here, but the paper, mindful of its ideology and the CPI’s effect on elections, notes that “A gauge of underlying inflation in July showed prices increasing at the fastest annual pace in five months, a sign that businesses are passing along tariff-related costs to customers.”  It’s Trump’s tariffs, they imply.

*Why does anybody watch that nutjob Candace Owens? Her latest schtick is the claim that Brigitte Macron, France’s First Lady, is in reality a man. No matter that she had three kids from her previous marriage.  Coleman Hughes did yeoman work in watching an EIGHT HOUR PODCAST BY OWENS on this very topic. You can read his take (yes, the woman is batty) at the Free Press.

 . . . . thanks to Candace Owens, we have reached new heights. For the past year or so she has been peddling the bizarre theory that Brigitte Macron, the 72-year-old wife of French president Emmanuel Macron, was born male.

This proposition was originally the brainchild of Natacha Rey, a French citizen who first put forth the idea on the YouTube channel of a woman named Amandine Roy, a self-described medium. From there it passed to the independent French journalist Xavier Poussard, who wrote a self-published, book-length “investigation” called Becoming Brigitte—and finally to Candace Owens, who has provided this brainworm with its biggest platform yet.

She said in March 2024 that she would stake her “entire professional reputation” on the idea that Macron “is in fact a man.” And her eight-part video series, also titled “Becoming Brigitte,” has amassed millions of views on YouTube in the past few months.

Among them, apparently, are the Macrons themselves. They are not pleased. The president and his wife have filed a defamation lawsuit against Owens in Delaware, claiming that she has promulgated “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions.”

There is a special irony in the fact that Owens is the one to orchestrate the mass online bullying of an elderly woman. Before she became a political firebrand, Owens was an anti-cyberbullying advocate. Her short-lived website, SocialAutopsy.com—which would have allowed people to dox online bullies—was so ill-conceived that it united critics on the far left and the far right.

In more recent years she has taken up such topics as blood libel, the secret Jewish ancestry of Kamala Harris and Joseph Stalin, and what she alleges was the orchestration of John F. Kennedy’s murder by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). But nothing, perhaps other than Israel, has taken up more of her attention than Brigitte Macron.

The story Owens spins in “Becoming Brigitte” has all the hallmarks of arthouse cinema: Once upon a time in post–World War II France, there was a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux who yearned to be a woman. He socially transitioned and even appeared on a French TV show advocating for trans rights. But French society did not allow legal gender transition at the time.

. . . .If nothing else, Owens’ series is a fascinating window into a mind gripped by extreme apophenia: the human tendency to see patterns where none exist. For instance, in episode 3 we learn that as a teenager, Emmanuel Macron shared with his grandmother a liking for the novelThe Erl-King, which she describes as being about “a mythological creature that chases after children.”

Coincidence? Owens thinks not. For her, it is yet more evidence of the Macron family obsession: pedophilia. Why else would a grandmother be sharing this “quite controversial” book with her grandson? (If you’re wondering how Owensfills eight hours of monologue time without presenting real evidence, it is by loading a bunch of facts like these onto her proverbial corkboard and connecting them with imaginary strings.)

There’s more, including Coleman’s critique of the “methods” used by Owen used to prove Macron’s sex.  Keep your eye on Coleman, as he has a bright future, although it would be brighter ifhe said things that progressives expect to come out of the mouths of a black person. John McWhorter has suffered from the same problem. Black people are supposed to say certain things if they want to be celebrated.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is wheedling for food again:

Hili: I come bearing good news.
Me: What is it?
Hili: You can feed me, because the mice have taken shelter in their cool burrows.

In Polish:

Hili: Idę z dobrą nowiną.
Ja: Jaką?
Hili: Możesz mnie nakarmić, bo myszy ukryły się w chłodnych norkach.

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

From CinEmma:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Things With Faces; a dancer in the cabbage:

Masih has tweeted again! Here it is, along with a link to a podcast between Masih and “Palestinian-American writer and policy expert Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib”:

From Steve Stewart-Williams, linking to his article, “Faking wokeness to fit in“:

Simon says “this is on point”:

— CAKE (@thebandcake.bsky.social) 2025-08-14T05:28:20.628Z

From Malcolm.  This is just WRONG; it should be the other way around!

From my feed. For some reason I think this is hilarious.

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial.  The figure for gassing was about 865,000 Jews; that doesn’t include POWs, Roma, and other victims.

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was ten. Nearly a million Jews were killed at Auschwitz, nearly all of them by cyanide gas.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-08-15T10:40:42.091Z

This morning we visited the Istanbul cat museum (Mx 61 insisted). 15 lovely cats live there, one temporarily adopted Master 61, and a kitten decided she had a thing for my shoes. Also, they did great coffee.

— The Man in Seat 61 (@seatsixtyone.bsky.social) 2025-08-08T12:21:03.254Z

Some of the comments say this is in Bristol. But why balloons in Bristol? Can a reader explain?

Just the view from my house this morning…

— Phil Syrpis (@syrpis.bsky.social) 2025-08-08T05:55:50.618Z

35 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it alone. -Thomas De Quincey, writer (15 Aug 1785-1859)

  2. Here’s some wasted tongue in cheek bits: why a felony? Maybe they ran the offense through an AI analysis which focused on the “submarine” of submarine sandwich, and classified it as a weapon of war….I hate AI!

  3. I assume the laws governing assault of a law officer do not list all possible things that can be thrown with the penalty for each. It is probably a felony no matter what you throw.

  4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_International_Balloon_Fiesta gives the background – Bristol has a history of ballooning and one of the major manufacturere is/was based there.

    I can clearly remember when someone tried to hold a fiesta in my neck of the woods on the east coast, back in the early 80s – it didn’t go so well and there were balloons coming down all around my house in the fields and on the local industrial estate, it was a case of land now or end up in Norway!

    1. Yes, Bristol is the ballooning centre of the UK, largely due to a balloonist called Don Cameron, who set up a hot air balloon business in Bristol in the 1970s. Cameron Balloons is now about the biggest hot air balloon manufacturer in the world. When I was a student in Bristol in the 1980s you would regularly see balloons taking off from nearby Ashton Court Park early on a summer’s day, and floating over Bristol.

  6. Hot air baloons are rather popular in Europe; in France they are called “montgolfière” in the rest of the world “montgolfier balloons”. Of course the Montgolfier brothers were french https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgolfier_brothers. Something tells me that I’m being pedantic because everyone knows that. Oh well, it’s a risk worth taking. Best

  7. Why would someone think it was acceptable to throw anything at a law enforcement officer performing his duty?

    1. I’m inclined to agree. And the consequences depends on whether the authorities want to make an example or not.

    2. Well, there is the precedent that you can beat a LEO with a flag pole, launch bear spray in their face, crush them between doors, and so much more and get a full pardon – some to be offered jobs in the next administration. So there is that.

  8. This would be the very same Trump (administration) who said that January 6th was a “day of love” and that the 140 law enforcement officers who were assaulted and suffered concussions, fractures, burns, and other significant harm were “very minor incidents”?

    The guy lost his job over this. Leave him alone already.

    1. Pam Bondi cited the sandwich thrower as “an example of the Deep State.” As opposed to the shallow authoritarian state that seeks to ruin someone’s life for throwing a sandwich? Creeps like Bondi are fine with violence when thugs from their team commit it, but they treat a harmless act from anyone else as a felony. Incidentally, “Deep state” was a phrase American right-wingers borrowed from Erdoğan and the AKP party in Turkey. Whether used by Turkish or American right-wingers it denotes the same thing: “we dislike authoritarian governments unless we’re the ones running them. Then you’ll see how deep we can go!”

  9. Yes indeed. The good people over at TIFF lied, twice. The first lie was the claim that copyright issues prevented them from showing the film. This is complete BS. The reason that they disinvited the movie was because they were afraid that a film portraying Israelis as victims and Hamas as perpetrators would incite unrest. A second probable reason was that TIFF didn’t want to “platform” an Israeli film. The second lie came when the CEO of the film festival, Cameron Bailey, claimed that the festival never censored the film. Really?

    1. To be fair, Toronto has a large population of Hamas supporters who are disposed to do things like this

      https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/warmington-folks-are-free-to-pray-but-should-that-mean-shutting-down-yonge

      to inconvenience/harass/intimidate their fellow Canadians. The TIFF folks censoring the film then lying about the censoring is wrong but understandable.

      [edited to add: After reading John’s comment @ 10 I wanted to say that the move by TIFF is understandable in the same way it makes sense that a supermajority of university students self-censor their beliefs or values about things like transgenderism. A loud minority willing to engage in intimidation and harassment can accomplish a lot.]

      2. That sort of thing seen in Toronto is very common in Europe – overt intimidatory displays of Islamic supremacism. They know exactly what they are doing.

  10. “ Perhaps most telling: 77 percent said they disagreed with the idea that gender identity should override biological sex in such domains as sports, healthcare, or public data — but would never voice that disagreement aloud…

    And this fragmentation doesn’t end at the classroom door.

    Seventy-three percent of students reported mistrust in conversations about these values with close friends. Nearly half said they routinely conceal beliefs in intimate relationships for fear of ideological fallout…” These kids are either mentally ill or pretending to be victims. I just can’t believe 73% are afraid of their own “close”friends betraying them. It sounds way too Stalinesque to be true. I mean the Financial Times just released that study about Gen Z showing the drop in conscientiousness and increased tendency to be disagreeable. How can someone be so self-censoring and so inconsiderate? FWIW I don’t know any coworker, friend, or relative that is so stupid as to think men don’t have an advantage in sports. None are afraid of saying it either. So I know 0% percent that self-censor on gender beliefs.

  11. Once Putin arrives in America, he should be arrested for war crimes and sent to The Hague. Just a morning fantasy.

    1. Suppose that did happen. What would be the result?

      Regarding who qualifies to be arrested for war crimes, I reasonably take it that you would support the arrest of Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford re: their not objecting to Indonesia’s attack on East Timor.

    2. Since the U.S. does not recognize the International Criminal Court, no U.S. officials will arrest Putin when he is in the U.S.

    1. Would the sandwich thrower cheerfully accept having a sandwich flung at him as a penalty? Or the sandwich thrower throwing a sandwich in his own face at his convenience? Or simply being required to eat the sandwich at such time as he was hungry?

  13. Mamdani will never be president because he was not born in the USA. (He was born in Uganda.)

    Whether he’s a sign of Democrat politics shifting progressive is unclear. He’s active on topics that are important in NYC (like high housing costs.)

    1. Terribly disappointing that people from Obamaworld are helping this antisemitic, communist, LARPing phony. He’s major league phony.

      D.A.
      NYC

      2. When Obama chose to scold black men for not supporting Kamala, he lost much of his relevancy in my eyes. He’s selling the Democratic party short if he sticks with this Mamdani guy.

  14. I love the cat entertaining dog meme and the 3 lion brothers. It’s always the critters that shake me out of my funk.
    Why does anyone pay attention to characters like Candace Owens? Look away!

    1. When she was interviewed on Bill Maher’s podcast, she claimed it was impossible for humans to reach the moon and had never heard of the moon landings. When Maher pointed out that a dozen men have been to the moon, Owens said it had to have been fake because it was not possible.

  15. Re The Assumption, that always brings to mind Firesign Theater’s “Church of the Presumptuous Assumption”.

  16. I’d say that cat is entertaining itself as well!

    The lion brothers made me laugh out loud. Literally. Literally literally.

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