Thursday: Hili dialogue

September 11, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, September 11, 2025, and National Hot Cross Bun Day (aka “Bunday”).  Here’s from Wikipedia:

A hot cross bun is a spiced bun, usually containing small pieces of raisins and marked with a cross on the top, traditionally eaten on Good Friday in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, India, Pakistan, Malta, United States, and the Commonwealth Caribbean. They are available all year round in some countries, including the UK.

The bun marks the end of the season of Lent and different elements of the hot cross bun each have a specific meaning, such as the cross representing the crucifixion of Jesus, the spices inside signifying the spices used to embalm him and sometimes also orange peel reflecting the bitterness of his time on the cross.

Note that Jesus was embalmed with 75 POUNDS of spices, including aloe and myrrh. Note as well that Lent was March 5-17 this year, so why today is Bunday is a mystery. Here are some buns, but ideally the cross should be made with icing (symbolizing, I suppose, the sweetness of Jesus’s love):

jules, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Remember Freedom Day, Make Your Bed Day (I did, as I do every day; it gets the day off to an orderly start), National Emergency Responders Day, and Patriot Day, remembering the crash of two planes into the World Trade Center on this day in 2001.  Here’s a short video of one strike and its aftermath.  Don’t watch if you don’t want to see the crash. 2,996 people died (excluding the 19 terrorists who perished).

There’s a Google Doodle today and, like yesterday’s one on the quadratic equations, there’s no anniversary to inspire it. They’re up because they are educational and because it’s back-to-school time.

And here is a funny, which i made up.

You know that Wheaties are called the “breakfast of champions,” but I devised the name of a cereal for hippies that truly is the breakfast of baseball fans.

I will call my cereal “Stan Muesli”. I’ll be here all year, folks! (Of course no young person knows who Stan Musial was, but he was one of the all-time greats, batting like a fiend and NEVER questioning an umpire in his entire career.)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 11 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was killed yesterday with a shot to the neck while he was speaking at Utah Valley University. The shot apparently severed his carotid artery, so he bled out very quickly.  Although I diverge from Kirk in virtually everything he believed, he had a wife and two children, and killing (and celebrating death) for political reasons, which seems increasingly common, is simply not on.

Before Kirk’s death was announced, and it was thought he was still alive, some people without empathy apparently wished that the shooter had used better equipment (presumably to finish him off), but after his death was announced some of those people realized the bad optics of wishing for a death, and revised their public sentiments.  I have no words for such horrible people.   Think of Kirk’s wife, kids, friends, and family and how they feel!

*As you know, Israel struck Qatar yesterday in an attempt to assassinate Hamas leaders. The sequelae are beginning. And one of them is that Trump is angry because he was informed of the strike by the U.S. military, not by Netanyahu. (See also these articles in the Free Press: here and here.)  Actually, I’m not sure that he didn’t know beforehand; someone in the U.S. had to okay this.

After nearly two years of walking a diplomatic tightrope, Qatar was caught in the crossfire of the very conflict it was attempting to mediate. An Israeli airstrike on Doha on Tuesday targeting members of Hamas’s political office upended months of talks to end the conflict in Gaza and could complicate Qatar’s role in helping to negotiate a ceasefire between the two sides.

As a mediator, Qatar hosted dozens of rounds of ceasefire talks, facilitated hostage and prisoner swaps, and supported humanitarian aid deliveries. In recent weeks, Israeli and Hamas negotiating teams had reported progress toward a ceasefire for a hostage release deal backed by the Trump administration.

But the delicate diplomacy — often carried out in the background — also opened the tiny, wealthy Persian Gulf nation up to fierce criticism. Repeatedly, when ceasefire talks would stall or break down, Qatar would come under fire for not exerting enough pressure on Hamas. Last year, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for Qatar to expel the Hamas office, a move some at the time warned would make negotiations with the group even more difficult.

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told reporters Tuesday that Qatar would continue its efforts to mediate between Israel and Hamas.

“Mediation in Qatari diplomacy is part of our identity and will continue, and nothing will deter us from continuing this role,” Mohammed said. Still, he admitted that the current ceasefire talks may no longer be viable. “When it comes to the current talks, I don’t think there is something valid right now right after we’ve seen such an attack like this.”

And from the NYT:

President Trump said on Tuesday that he found out about Israel’s airstrike in Qatar from the United States military, rather than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he often describes as both a friend and his strongest ally in the Middle East.

It was a familiar surprise. In June, Israel launched a 12-day war with Iran with minimal notice, initially drawing a rebuke from Washington until Mr. Trump decided to join in on what he saw as a winning campaign.

Mr. Netanyahu has made use of his relationship with Mr. Trump to exercise bold attacks like the one on Hamas leadership on Tuesday, often using American weapons with little or no notice to Washington. And each time, he has learned that Mr. Trump and his administration will grumble about it as they did on Tuesday, but ultimately decide to let it pass unpunished.

On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Trump emphasized that the Israelis had left the United States in the dark again. “I was very unhappy about it — very unhappy about every aspect,” he said. “We’ve got to get the hostages back. But I was very unhappy about the way that went down.”

Trump is walking a tightrope here: apparently supporting two of our allies, one of which has just bombed the other. But it appears he’s more on the side of Israel’s action than he is sympathetic to Qatar. And that’s the right way to think, as Qatar houses and supports terrorists.  I agree with what Israel did, as it has to get rid of Hamas (of course at the expense of as few civilian lives as possible), but Trump may be motivated more by his desire to be known as “The Great Peacemaker,” ultimately winning a Nobel Peace Prize.

What is clear is that Netanyahu is fed up with the peace talks, and Trump seems to realize that they’re going nowhere, either. As the WSJ headline says, “Israel’s strike on Hamas in Qatar shows Netanyahu is done talking.” Seriously, do you think there’s any condition under which Hamas would release all the hostages? They are either killing them or letting them starve to death, for they won’t even tell Israel or the U.S. how many hostages are left alive.  My guess is that whenever this war is over, there will be none.

Here’s Natasha Hausdorff putting it in perspective, arguing that such strikes are not violations of international law.

*Gail Collins has a fairly hard quiz in the NYT about Trump’s actions since the last election: “Eight months of Trump, one quiz.” I can’t resist quizzes on almost anything, and I bit. This one was hard: there are fourteen questions, each with three answers about what Trump said or did about something. The problem is that he’s all over the map and says crazy stuff on a regular basis. But I do read the news, and I was pretty proud to have gotten this score:

Well, I’d like to be at 14 out of 14, but I’ll take 11 (79%). That would be a “C” at William & Mary, for they usually didn’t grade on a curve. Put your score in the comments.

*In her new book, Kamala Harris is for the first time publicly critical of Biden’s decision to ponder, egged on by Dr. Jill, whether he should stay on as President, eating up time as Democratic alternatives vanished. From the AP:

Former Vice President Kamala Harris says it was “recklessness” for Democrats to leave it to President Joe Biden to decide whether to continue seeking another term last year, but she defends his ability to do the job, according to an excerpt of her new book.

Harris, in an excerpt of “107 Days” published Wednesday in The Atlantic, writes that as questions swirled about whether the then-81-year-old Biden should seek reelection, she and others left the decision to him and first lady Jill Biden.

“Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” Harris said.

The remarks are the first time Harris has been publicly critical of Biden’s decision to run again — an ill-fated decision that saw him drop out in July 2024 after a disastrous debate performance, leaving her to head up the Democratic ticket and ultimately lose to Republican Donald Trump.

“The stakes were simply too high,” Harris writes in the book. “This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”

Biden’s office did not immediately have a comment Wednesday.

Throughout the campaign and in its wake, Harris had avoided much criticism of the president she served beside and defended him amid questions about his mental acuity.

In the book excerpt, Harris continues to defend Biden’s ability to do the job but describes him in 2024 and especially at the time of his “debate debacle” as “tired.”

“On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best. But at 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles,” Harris writes. “I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser. I don’t believe it was incapacity.”

Harris also blames those close to Biden for unflattering media coverage throughout the time she served as vice president and throwing her under the bus to boost Biden’s public standing.

I don’t think that Biden was tired, for every President is tired, and Trump is nearly as old as Biden (he may eat McDonald’s food all the time but he seems pretty vigorous). Granted, Trump is 79 to Biden’s 82, but I’m betting Biden has some sort of dementia.  As for Harris’s book, I’m 100% sure it’s designed to exculpate her. Will I read it? Do you think I just fell out of a coconut tree?

*For the first time, Russian weapons have entered NATO airspace, in this case Poland, which, with the help of NATO allies, shot down the trespassing drones.

Poland said on Wednesday that at least 19 Russian drones breached its airspace over the course of seven hours, in what leaders across Europe are calling the most serious violation of NATO territory since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began more than three years ago.

The Polish military described the incident as an “act of aggression” and said the drones were brought down with the help of NATO allies. Dutch F-35s intercepted several of the aircraft, and German Patriot missile batteries in Poland were placed on alert. NATO confirmed it was the first time alliance forces have engaged potential threats inside its own airspace during the war.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk told parliament that the drones came not only from Russian territory but also from Belarus, where Russian and Belarusian forces are preparing for large-scale military exercises.

Yes, that’s not a typo: the Polish Prime Minister is named Donald Tusk.

Local officials reported drone debris across seven villages in eastern Poland. In one case, a house lost much of its roof when it was struck. No casualties were reported, but Poland temporarily closed parts of its airspace and suspended flights from Warsaw’s main airport during the attack.

Russia denied that it had targeted Poland, saying its strikes were aimed at Ukrainian defense industries. Belarus suggested the drones “lost their course” after being jammed, an explanation dismissed by many European leaders.

NATO consultations were triggered under Article 4 of the alliance treaty — a clause allowing members to call urgent discussions but not activating the collective defense provisions of Article 5. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte vowed that the alliance “will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

Analysts say Russia’s goals may have included testing NATO’s air defenses and political response.

The breach also drew a reaction from U.S. President Donald Trump, who posted on Truth Social: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” His administration has yet to outline any immediate policy response, though officials emphasized they are closely monitoring the situation with allies.

I’m willing to believe that this was a mistake, but when you consider that there were 19 drones over Poland, that becomes a little bit harder to believe. Come to think of it, those may well have been drones sent to Ukraine, but sent over Poland to save time but mainly to test how NATO would respond.  Whatever the case, this is not going to help Putin get a peace with Ukraine, as it’s just pissing off Trump more. But Putin doesn’t really seem to care about a truce: my theory (which is mine) is that he wants all of Ukraine.

*Finally, from the AP’s reliable “oddities” section, we learn about a loose undocumented moose running amok in Austria, where they’re not native:

For weeks, sightings of a rare immigrant have been keeping a corner of Austria on its toes.

A moose [Alces alces] that has come to be known as Emil appeared nearly three weeks ago in Lower Austria, a province in the country’s northeast that surrounds Vienna, and it doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. Sightings of the animal have drawn curious onlookers, and by Monday a Facebook fan page for him had 10,000 members.

It’s been an eventful few days for Emil. The moose showed up late last week in a suburb of the provincial capital, St. Pölten. On Saturday evening, he found his way onto the tracks at its main railway station — prompting a several-hour closure of the Vienna-Salzburg main line, which passes through the city.

Moose aren’t native to Austria. Emil is believed to have come from Poland via the Czech Republic, Austria’s northern neighbor.

The local animal protection organization says people should avoid feeding him or approaching him for photos and videos. It urged people to leave the animal in peace and not to make a special trip to see him — moose, it said in a social media post, “don’t need closeness to humans.”

Emil’s whereabouts weren’t clear on Monday — he was believed to have wandered northward out of St. Pölten. Police reported no new deployments related to the moose, the Austria Press Agency reported.

Here’s the only YouTube video I could find on Emil, which is in German. But you don’t need to understand it; just look at Emil. He seems to be young:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a question:

Hili: Who invented journalism?
Andrzej: Cavemen, around the fire on winter evenings.

In Polish:

Hili: Kto wymyślił dziennikarstwo?
Ja: Jaskiniowcy, przy ognisku w zimowe wieczory.

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

From The 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails:

Speaking of Jesus. this is from Jesus of the Day:

From Meow:

Masih made a new tweet. She speaks in Farsi but there’s a long explanation in English.  I hadn’t heard about this incident, but of course that’s her point:

. . . but now I’m hooked on JKR’s humor and snark.  Robert Galbraith is the pen name Rowling uses for her non-Harry-Potter mystery novels.

Here’s a screenshot from the video that nobody will show you and that I haven’t seen: the murder of 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant Iryna Zarutska, stabbed to death on a Charlotte, NC train by a mentally ill man who had been arrested 14 times previously.  And yes, coverage has been very light.

I found this as an ancillary from the post above. It’s very dark humor, but also a ludicrous example of whataboutery.

From Malcolm; an adorable kitty:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Czech Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was 11 years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-09-11T11:10:13.857Z

Two posts from Matthew, who’s headed to Oslo.  The first gives his mission:

To Oslo, for my daughter Lauren’s PhD defence! A second Doctor Cobb and the third in the family!

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T07:28:41.844Z

. . . and a really nice tracking shot of an ancient tomb. You can read more about the tomb here and here.

Let’s go inside Bryn Celli Ddu Neolithic passage tomb!Built about 5,000 years ago to align with the rising sun on the Summer Solstice! 🌅 Look for the stone pillar inside the burial chamber, like a tomb guardian keeping watch from the shadows!Anglesey, Wales 🎥 by me#Archaeology

— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2025-09-10T10:16:04.705Z

Here’s a 4.75-minute video of how it was built:

88 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    Patriotism is like the love that a parent has for a child; nationalism is akin to believing that one’s child can do no wrong. -Robin Givhan, writer and editor (b. 11 Sep 1964)

  2. In FIRE’s annual university free speech data dump the other day, perhaps the most shocking graph to me was the one showing what was rarely but nevertheless acceptable to prevent speech you don’t like. A full one out of three (34%) of uni students supported violence! So there you go.

    In saner news, I remember Stan the Man well from the fifties, but did not know of his quiet acceptance of umpire calls. Must have been the spirit of taking self-responsibility in those times. I once complained to my father about calling a third strike on me when he was umpiring one of my pony league games…blaming him for my strike out. He quietly replied that had I hit either one of the first two strikes, I would not have put myself in position to strike out at all: it was my fault…he was right..carpe diem.

    1. Musial did question/protest an umpire’s strike call one time. The umpire was so surprised that he whirled and threw Musial’s manager out of the game.

        2. Wait, my attestation isn’t adequate?
          I read the story in a Bill James Baseball Abstract long ago, say in the 80’s.
          I would add that Bill James told many an anecdote about players in his books, the great, the average, and the insignificant. But he never provided documentation, so I guess we’ll have to take his word for it, like St. Matthew.

  3. The power of “big bun” is amazing. As you note Hot Cross Buns are Good Friday food (and make up my entire religious component of easter).

    However, the cross is made from flour/water paste and goes on before they are baked. You can glaze them lightly while still warm as needed but an icing cross should be beyond the pale 🙂

    1. Agreed. The cross is easy to make and pipe on. The essential ingredient for them to taste authentic is “mixed spice” which is hard to find in Canada (it’s a Brit thing), but easy to make if you have a spice grinder. It contains:
      • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
      • 2 teaspoons ground allspice
      • 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
      • 1 teaspoon ground cloves
      • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
      • 1 teaspoons ground coriander
      • 3/4 teaspoon ground mace

      But how on earth did Hot Cross Bun Day end up in September? They were once a seasonal food limited to Easter, and have only recently been available all year as part of the infantilisation of our diets.

  4. I read the news about the murder of Charlie Kirk last evening before going to bed. Against my better judgment, I read and watched some of the reactions on Bluesky and X. I got no sleep tonight, I was so sickened and enraged by the gloating and celebration at display. Some of the news coverage has been despicable as well. I’m at a loss for words. At least, I’m thankful for this website, it’s a beacon of rationality and humanity in a dark world.

    Yes, I’m feeling quite depressed today.

      1. Unfortunately I can’t read the Bluesky entries as the type is too small (I only have an iPhone). But I’ll take your word for it. Sad that people would react that way.

        Over at Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack, the commenters are not celebrating but there are a disturbing number advancing conspiracy theories.

        There are suggestions of a deliberate hit, perhaps ordered by Trump himself to distract from Epstein.

        My comment is that these killers are usually crazy lone nuts. I find these conspiracy theories pretty wild.

    2. And to think that the Blueskyians decided to leave Xitter to protest how toxic it was only to head over to the other side and react to Kirk’s murder in the most vile and toxic way.

      My Xitter feed only contained 3rd party toxicity so my random sample of anecdotes proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the toxicity they fled was actually their own.

  5. I loathe much of what Charlie Kirk stood for, but that is no reason to celebrate his death. As you say he has family but, sadly, both sides of the debate seemed to be exploiting him. The left dancing on his grave and the right using him as an excuse to imprison the left. I don’t have much hope that the current rifts will ever heal.

    1. What is it about Kirk that you loathe? I don’t know much about the guy so asking legitimately…what specific viewpoints did he have that made him so wicked?

      1. Kirk was best known for openly discussing the issues, going onto campuses and trying to have open and civil discussions with anyone who disagreed with him. It’s amazing how much hatred many on the left had for him as a result.

        1. Kirk was dedicated to respectful dialogue and debate with the campus left. That is why he was targeted for assassination – he seemed so sincere and sensible in debate that he won over many students to his side.

          A clip going around in the wake of his murder shows Kirk debating a trans “woman” on some campus. Kirk asks “what if I started wearing a sombrero, spoke with a thick Mexican accent, and identified as Hispanic, would that make me Hispanic?” The trans “woman” answers “no, because you were born a white man in white culture”. Kirk responds “And you were born male.” Touche!

          1. “Kirk was dedicated to respectful dialogue and debate with the campus left. That is why he was targeted for assassination.”

            You have no idea why he was targeted. Or do you have a reliable crystal ball?

          2. My bad – I left out the word “probably” before “why”.

            Addendum: the photo of the suspect depicts what looks to me like a typical skinny white Antifa clown/loser. I could be wrong of course.

          3. I’m not impressed with Patel. Like all of Trump’s picks for major positions, bootlicking sycophants, all, and there is much floundering- no surprise. Unqualified “leaders” like RFK, Patel, Hegseth, Noem, what could go wrong? Federal government as reality tv show.
            Patel, without any evidence, told the world “we got the suspect”, only to retract it soon after. That’s not normal FBI protocol, is it? It’s irresponsible and typical of Trump acolytes, always prioritizing faux success, drama and flash- reality tv show antics. I wouldn’t be surprised if the photo doesn’t depict anyone of interest. And you think the fuzzy photo depicts an Antifa clown/loser? I thought Antifa wore masks and black attire (like ICE), not t-shirts with American flags and baseball caps. Again, we don’t even know if that’s a person of interest. He looks like an incel, QAnon addled white Christian nationalist to me. Not really, just trying to illustrate how ridiculous it is labeling someone from a photo like that. Patience.

      2. The first three paragraphs of the Turning Point USA Wikipedia page should explain that. Doxxing people is wrong, whatever your good intentions.

        Of course I also think that the same type of behaviour from “the left” is just as bad. Politics should be discussed in schools, but I have concerns when it is pushed by groups with a lot of money that can be used to influence disproportionately. Just because you have money, it doesn’t mean that your views are correct.

        Neither pure left wing, nor pure right wing, politics will fix the world. The solution is somewhere in the middle. I’m a socialist, but I’m not naive enough to think that socialism is ideal. There are some things that should be run by capitalists, but capitalism in health care, essential utilities and basic housing leaves a lot of people at the bottom of the ladder.

        1. I wasn’t/am not familiar with Charlie Kirk or his Turning Point thing. I’d just remind people that wikipedia has some very slanted write ups. Remember their telling of the Imane Khelif saga.

          1. I don’t trust Wikipedia itself. I used to be part of a skeptic group that edited it to add facts and challenge lies, but there are so many ‘woke’ editors now that is hard to add the truth as they just keep removing it.

            But Wikipedia can be very handy when you check the links in the citations and go to the original sources, it is possible to see the raw information without any slant from the editor.

    2. The Beeb reports that Kirk’s wife and children were at the event in Utah where he was murdered.

      I appreciate Jerry linking to archived versions of those posts at The Site That Shall Not Be Named rather than directing traffic there. In the updated version, it’s noted about Kirk’s murder that “This is bad news. Not only does no one deserve to be murdered, but this is going to be used to blame everyone the Right hates.”

      My twitter feed is full of similar takes: no thought for Kirk or his family or the awfulness of the murder, but concern about backlash. Lots of other folks breaking out that old Norm Macdonald tweet.

      https://x.com/normmacdonald/status/809637479674281984

      [edit to add: They may have a point if this WSJ report is true and it points to a trans anti-fascist as the shooter.]

      https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/charlie-kirk-shot/card/ammunition-in-kirk-shooting-engraved-with-transgender-antifascist-ideology-sources-pdymd1sXXMSlVRhpvR4b?mod=e2tw

      1. It’s the same as after the slaughter of October the 7th. My feed was full of concerns over what the Israeli response would be, with sympathy for those butchered by Hamas added as an afterthought, if at all.

      2. I’m sorry to say that the original report (based on slang phrases written on the rifle cartridges) was close to correct: the accused shooter Tyler Robinson does not seem to be “trans” himself, but he viewed Kirk as a fascist, and was in a romantic relationship and shared an apartment with a “trans” male Lance Twiggs. The incredible irony is that at the moment he was killed Kirk was in debate with an audience member about recent mass shootings by “trans” people (Audrey Hale, Robin Westman). The boyfriend Twiggs is cooperating with investigators. Many sources reporting that story today (Saturday).
        https://www.axios.com/2025/09/13/kirk-suspect-transgender-roommate

  6. Kirk was debating ideas at a university when he was gunned down. I see this as an attack on civilization itself.

  7. I saw a 4 minute clip of Abby Phillip on CNN where the commentators discussed whether or not the murderer should have been allowed in open society. When it was argued he had no business being free, Abby and another guy became rather incensed. Abby said he did his time for his previous crimes and was furious at the suggestion he should not have been free. They seemed more concerned about dehumanizing people with mental illness. Mental illness is awful and these people need help, but how dumb do you have to be to not understand the right move here? Society should have ways to screen for people that are dangerous lunatics and it should not be controversial that they are separated from society. As far as the limited coverage, it may be political correctness run wild. Some of it may also be as Cathy Young suggested. She tweeted that media outlets may be concerned about igniting right wing narratives. Regardless, Democrats need to state that protection of civilians obviously takes tremendous precedence over some nutjobs’s freedom.

    1. If Cathy Young said that, she’s wrong. We can’t criticize stuff because it might ignite the right wing. That’s the same dumb song I heard during the election when I criticized Kamala Harris. These people must have fallen out of a coconut tree.

      1. 9/10/25 1:54 am
        Several things can be true:
        – DeCarlos Brown should not have been out on the street
        – National media may* have stayed away from Iryna Zarutska’s murder for fear of stoking right-wing narratives
        – Right-wing grifters are shamelessly using her death to score points (& race-bait)

        *”may” was italicized. I’m not sure she was defending the position so much as listing possible reasons it was avoided. Hopefully I did not misrepresent her. And I agree with you that it is insane to not universally condemn the psycho as well as any woke avoidance of the issue.

        2. “– Right-wing grifters are shamelessly using her death to score points (& race-bait)”

          The fact is that young black males commit a disproportionate amount of crime compared to their overall percentage of the population. They are something like 2% of the population and yet commit like 60% of the murders in America or something crazy like that. And yet simply stating that fact will get you branded as racist. We as a society can’t even begin to think of solutions to a problem if we can’t even acknowledge it exists. The only people who will talk about this problem openly want to “solve” it with “Black people bad. Bring back segregation,” which isn’t a realistic or humane solution at all.

          1. ISTM the important stats that inflame White racist fears are the ones for Black-on-White crime. I don’t have them handy (i.e., can’t be arsed), but they are very much lower than 60%.

          2. Corrected stat: Blacks in the US are 12.5 percent of the population but commit 51 percent of murders and 52 percent of robberies in the country. They are the most likely victims of homicide too.

  8. Although I am a conservative, Charlie Kirk was barely on my radar. I didn’t even realize that he was the founder (at age eighteen) of Turning Point USA. I am appalled by his murder. As others are pointing out, all he was doing was expressing his opinions and that’s what Turning Point USA does. Of course, for some, anything conservative, or “right-wing”, is tantamount to fascism and must be resisted to the utmost. Given the logic there, it’s actually surprising that there haven’t been more murders of conservatives. The question is, does the Democratic party stick to labeling conservatives as fascists despite the violence or because of it? One would have hoped that, after two attempts on Donald Trump’s life, cooler heads would prevail. It is possible, though repugnant, that Democrat leaders view this as a victory.

    1. “Of course, for some, anything conservative, or “right-wing”, is tantamount to fascism and must be resisted to the utmost.”

      Agreed…I barely knew who Kirk was, and I constantly see this term “fascist” thrown around to describe people who are not sufficiently liberal. What is it about Kirk that made him like Mussolini, exactly? This is yet another example of folks giving words elastic properties such that they can fit anything you want to criticize…”racism”, “rape”, and “sexism” have also been given this treatment.

      1. I suppose to the hard left, someone who holds conservative viewpoints but wants to debate the issues respectfully is far more dangerous than an idiot skinhead or whatever.

  9. I got 12 out of 14 on the quiz. Some were just good guesses, though, since I hadn’t actually heard that Trump identified himself as a war hero or that Trump tried to bar Rand and his family from a bipartisan picnic. “Immature” is what he is, though that’s the least of it.

    A segment of the right is betting that Kirk’s assassination is a false flag event.

    1. I got 12/14 as well, and one that I missed was one I certainly shouldn’t have. But I did guess at a couple. The sad thing is that this quiz exists at all.

    2. Those same people think everything is a false flag event. Believing such things makes them part of an in-crown, and frames the world in a more orderly, non-random way.

  10. In one of the excerpts from Harris’s book that I saw, she complains that the White House, in relation to her role as Border Czar, did not explain what her role really was and what she accomplished in that role. Apparently, it didn’t occur to her that she might have done that herself at any time. That she didn’t, or couldn’t, is one of the reasons she lost.

    1. “…..Apparently, it didn’t occur to her that she might have done that herself at any time. ”

      She did, numerous times. She pointed out that her role was to lead investigations into the conditions that led people in other countries, especially in Latin America, to leave those countries and try to emigrate to the U.S. Her role was not to be a “border czar.” I’m not sure why I heard that over and over, yet you apparently did not.

      The problem was that Trump and other conservatives insisted over and over that illegal border crossings were Harris’s responsibility. It was a classic Trump strategy, repeating a lie so often that his naive supporters bought it.

      e.g. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-immigration-biden-administration-border/

      and other sources.

  11. The creepers at Pharyngula are pro-assassination, except when Hamas/Hezbollah/ISIS Nazis are assassinated. PZ and the Horde are all deeply upset when actual fascists are killed.

    Anyway, this reminds me, did the rhetoric of PZ Meyers, Hemant Mehta and Nick Fish of American Atheists inspire the assassin… /s

    PS Peezus has put up a “well, all assassinations are bad, acktoollee” post referencing the murders of Minnesota politician Melissa Hortman. But he’s lying here, because we all remember the reaction of PZ and his Horde over Luigi Mangione. They were creaming their pants when that happened.

    1. And I will add that PZ’s horde are speculating that the killing was done to “distract attention” from the Epstein files… That’s a theory popular in far left AND far right circles!

      1. Epsteinology is popular with the low IQ left and right: the idiot’s gift that keeps on giving.

        D.A.
        NYC
        ps Yes… in my X feed a LOT of “Da Joos did it” (for everything, but Charlie Kirk this particular day).

      2. That conspiracy theory is all over the comments at Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack this morning. They’re suggesting Trump ordered it!!

        HCR herself of course suggested nothing of the sort.

    2. It’s tossing a pebble into a deep hole, but the assassin here may have had no political motive whatsoever. I have heard no commenter on the news even bringing that possibility up, even though that is a possibility. Many assassinations and assassination attempts of prominent figures in this country are from deeply disaffected people who want to lash out. They could have done a mass shooting, only they ping-ponged into a different direction.
      We just don’t know the motives yet.

    3. I try and learn about both sides of an issue, but I fail dismally when it comes to PZ. He makes my flesh crawl and I can’t read anything by him. Not since he made a lewd comment from the stage to a woman he didn’t know. .

      1. joolz, I expect you’re referring to a strong emotional brew of surprise, fear, and much anger. I call it moral outrage — how dare they. I’ve more-or-less learned to live with it, but it’s still painful. YMMV.

    1. And yet Charlie Kirk was pro-Israel, just like Trump. That’s one reason other even-further-to-the-right wingers like Nicholas “everyone I don’t like is Mossad” Fuentes hated and trolled him.

  13. CouldaShouldaWoulda forced Biden out early, during primary season? Since Biden had no intention of stepping aside I don’t see how that was possible, given the structure of how party candidates are chosen. The incumbents get to choose. Attempting to force him out with sufficient pressure from the party would have looked more like an attempt at a coup than anything else.

    1. It used to be a thing that nominations were contestable. I guess functional democracy is now seen to be too risky.

  14. The murder of Charlie Kirk is, I think, the final bit of evidence that we are well and truly doomed. Our society, our republic, our civilization is unraveling before our eyes. The normalization of political violence on both the left and the right is terrible proof of the calamity about to descend on us. Hatred and divisiveness, the chickens of politics and social media, have come home to roost and I do believe they spell the end of our grand experiment. Just to mangle the metaphor even more, I hope I’m being Chicken Little here, but I am deeply afraid for the future.

      1. I wont’ vouch for my own sanity (who’d believe a crazy person anyway 🙂), but I still hold out hope that both major parties might split or otherwise implode. Hopefully-temporary chaos looks to be an big improvement over the current death-spiral.

    3. And the country being saturated by firearms exacerbates the dysfunction and unraveling here. Alas, the Pandora’s box of firearms in the US will never be closed I’m afraid.

    4. The US has always been a politically violent country: Lincoln, J Kennedy, MLK, Garfield, McKinley, and R. Kennedy to name the most prominent. 13 congressman. 4 federal judges..hundreds of local politicians. It is distressing but not out of the ordinary.

  15. Ironically writing this on 9/11 while actually looking at Sth Manhattan out my window here! 🗽 Hmmm I was at home on the Upper East Side that day. I was doing some last minute cramming for an exam next to the WTC that day at 11am, in a building that I’d worked in until a few months prior. The Today Show on NBC was on. (We watched TV then.)

    And then… some planes. Weirdly it was a little cool and the sky was completely clear like right now as I look downtown to the financial district (and new Liberty Tower). We honestly thought the first one was a terrible accident (which had happened several times before in NYC). But not twice, a few minutes or so later.

    Mr. Kirk, a historical note.

    The 19-teens and a bit the 1920s (more in Europe)… and the 1960s, early 1970s were times of political assassinations. (More than just the big few we know about now).
    Because civic violence, suicide and political violence are all mimetic – repetitive, amenable to contagion.

    Let’s hope we’re not in that again b/c historically speaking… it doesn’t take many to start a wave. And a big side effect is it dissuades the best people from becoming politicians… as well as all the blood and fear.

    D.A.
    NYC

  16. Stan Musial was my father’s favorite baseball player as a kid. Mine was the great Mickey Mantle. The Mick.

    Russia’s drone flyover into Poland? I’d like to think it was a mistake, but my deeper concern is that it was purposeful and a test of western resolve. I think that NATO passed the immediate test, but we don’t know how Putin will read the response. If the incursion was purposeful, the west needs to take punitive action in the form of more sanctions. Simply hoping that Putin will go away will not work. The bully will continue bullying, each time discerning a bit more about the response he is likely to receive, until—if we don’t respond robustly and with determination—he decides that he can take more of what he wants. The other news—the attack on Hamas in Qatar and the horrible assassination of Charlie Kirk—will dominate the news for a few days. But we should not underestimate the risk posed by Russia’s most recent actions, and how the west might be forced to respond.

    The assassination of Kirk and the senseless murder of the young Ukrainian emigre in Charlotte have brought me almost to the point of surrender. The one gossamer strand of hope that I retain is that we in the U.S. have finally decided that we’ve had enough.

    1. Whenever I think we in America have had enough, I think of Sandy Hook and realize nothing is tragic enough for serious reflection of our societal problems when firearms are involved. twim (theory which is mine)

      1. Quite true about the blindness over guns. In the two horrible cases this week—the Kirk assassination and the murder of the Ukrainian woman in Charlotte by knife attack—the outrage seems not to be about guns but rather about political violence and crime. I’m hoping that we can have serious reflection over those scourges which, too, are a blight on our society (in the U.S).

  18. (Sorry if this comment ends up appearing twice. I tried to edit the original, and it disappeared.)

    “Although I diverge from Kirk in virtually everything he believed,”

    I appreciate Jerry’s way of framing this. To diverge. I also understand him to be saying, in so many words, that his horror at this death transcends political disagreement. That is a valuable position to take.

    My disagreement is not with Jerry, but with this broader tendency to caveat such things. I have read many well-meaning people who denounce the killing but feel obliged to accompany that with a preliminary statement that they “hate,” “loathe,” “detest,” or “despise” much of what Kirk stood for. Perhaps this is true. But why all these caveats? Why not just denounce the killing? We see a similar phenomenon when people say things like, “I hate Trump, but this executive order might have some merit.” It’s as though people fear their tribal allegiance being questioned more than they hate the killing or applaud an executive order. This hedging simply fuels the division that people profess to be horrified by.

    Several people above have asked what it is about Kirk that causes people to recoil. The guy was a boilerplate conservative. It is not Kirk who is the political outlier in the history of United States politics; it is the grad-school-educated population that is. Moreover, even today many of his views are shared by more than half of the country. To say one loathes, hates, despises, or detests Kirk leaves them to reasonably conclude you feel the same way about them. Don’t be surprised, then, when they cheer the man who takes a sledgehammer to your cherished institutions.

    2. Sometimes I make those caveats in order to make it clear that you don’t have to agree with the person to abhor his death, and that not everyone on “my side” is gloating.

      But it’s a damn shame I feel I have to do that.

      “Several people above have asked what it is about Kirk that causes people to recoil. The guy was a boilerplate conservative. It is not Kirk who is the political outlier in the history of United States politics; it is the grad-school-educated population that is.”

      True. But we (on the left) have been told for a long time that the things the other side believes will result in untold calamity. The right hear something similar from their politicians and friendly organizations (“legal abortion = genocide!”)

      Catastrophism is a common political strategy, because it works to motivate people. Maybe we should all be more aware and wary of it.

    3. I very much like the term Aldous Huxley (grandson of Thomas) used for such tribal allegiance: herd poison.

  19. “The guy was a boilerplate conservative…”

    That’s a misrepresentation, unless you believe conservatism is about culture wars or conspiracy theories like the “great replacement theory”, and the “stolen” 2020 election. Or simply if you believe Trump is a conservative, as Kirk was MAGA through and through.

    I wish there actually were boilerplate conservatives out there, but they’ve been drowned out. Fiscal responsibility, free markets, small government? MAGA is the antithesis of boilerplate conservatism.

    I do appreciate the main point of your comment and find it thought provoking.

  20. The russians slip up over Poland.
    They (Poland and the Netherlands) deployed multiple fighters to use expensive missles to shoot down relatively cheap drones, of which only about 4 were intercepted.
    NATO are not up to speed imo, exposed thusly, European countries need a few lessons from Ukraine. Putin cannot be trusted in anything save what we already know, he is a common thug and corrupts any human advancement to knowledge.
    We don’t need any more information on war I beleive we know enough.

    I’m surprised no one mentioned that Kirk is on record saying, correct me if wrong “a few gun deaths is worth it to preserve the 2nd ammendment” or words to that effect.
    Make what you will of that. Irony and sadness? no, freedom of speech, sticking to your guns yes sick pun but so is the whole affair, no matter what the cost. His choice I hope his family beleive that to.

    From afar, the US is one big cultural test tube.

    1. I believe his actual point about the 2nd was that on balance it would save more lives to have guns than it would to ban them.

      I believe he was wrong about that, but his point wasn’t “we must save the 2nd Amendment no matter the cost.”

      1. I’ve always wondered why the “well-regulated militia” part of the 2nd has been consistently ignored by those who interpret the 2nd as meaning anyone and everyone should be free to possess firearms. To me, “well-regulated” sounds like wiggle room leaving an opening for strict gun control. But I’m not a lawyer.

        1. “Well-regulated” seems not to have meant in the late 18th century how we use it today. If it did, the Supreme Court might indeed have upheld state regulation of firearms and their owners many years ago. Rather, it refers to the training and practice of troops in musketry drill where the infantry standing shoulder-to-shoulder have to run through the complex steps to load, prime, shoulder, and cock the action of a muzzle-loading musket. At different stages in the process the piece has to be held in a particular orientation. All the soldiers must do the same steps at the same time, taking the same amount of time for each step so all the muskets move in unison, like clockwork, to avoid fouling the man next to him. A unit able to do this efficiently and maintain a useful rate of volley fire was said to be “well-regulated.” (Indeed, adjusting a mechanical clock so it keeps accurate time was called regulating it.)

          So providing that every militiaman could keep and bear a personal firearm to train on at home was necessary for the militia unit to be able to fight in a well-regulated manner when called to arms at short notice. I’m citing long-time WEIT commenter Max Blanke for this insight, and it accords with references to musket drill going back to the era of woodcut illustrations in training manuals, which I have in the military history section of my personal library.

          This doesn’t bear on the larger question of civilian disarmament. I’m only trying to answer your question as to why firearms are not regulated to be used only by uniformed militia/reserve personnel and forbidden to civilians not in the militia. That’s just not what the Second Amendment means by “well-regulated.”

          The more practical problem in disarming civilians is as Mark R. alludes to: too many guns for it to work. Criminals who need guns as tools of their trade simply won’t give them up. They know that law enforcement can’t stop and frisk everyone on the street without probable cause or search every dwelling and every automobile without a search warrant in their efforts to track down and confiscate 200 million now-illegal guns. The incarceration of non-white minorities that would result even from mild enforcement that obeyed the Constitution would be unpalatable to the social justice warriors, who imagine gun control to be a matter of disarming white rednecks who do own a lot of guns but by and large don’t murder people.

  21. I’m doing more interesting things, so haven’t been following the Kirk assassination too closely, but the last I read was that the killer (now apprehended after being turned in) shot him because he thought that Kirk was not conservative enough.

Comments are closed.