Thursday: Hili dialogue

34 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

1. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
   The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. -John Adams, 2nd US president (30 Oct 1735-1826)

   1. Well, that was a nice thought while it lasted…

2. “So that’s that, and I will take great pleasure in telling my friends with extreme TDS that no, this joker will be gone as of January, 2029. Our energies should be finding a good Democratic candidate to replace him.”

   Getting strong “Trump will concede gracefully” vibes from this one.

   For reference: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/if-he-loses-trump-will-concede-gracefully-11604772109

   1. I don’t know what you’re trying to say; I’ve always said that Trump won’t try to run for a third term, though he made his usual intimations.

      I’m sorry, but that comment is not very polite. He’s already conceded (if you believe him).

      Please brush up on your civility.

      1. FWIW, the way I took Denial’s comment was that the prediction in 2020 (the Mulvaney 2020 WSJ article given at the link) was that Trump would “concede gracefully” were he to lose that election. And we all saw how that turned out.

         In other words, I think the point of the comment was that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

         1. In the 2028-29 transition season there will be nothing to concede. President Trump will not have been a candidate. There will have been no electoral loss for him to concede (not that “concession” on Election Night is any more than a matter of good grace anyway.) The only person with a customary expectation to concede will be whoever lost the election, and it won’t be Trump.

            His “concession” now that he can’t run for re-election has even less bearing on anything. It’s nice that he seems to agree that getting around the 22d Amendment won’t be possible — he also said that his running as VP and then taking over when the President abdicates would be “too cute” to be acceptable to the American people. (It would also be unacceptable to an ambitious young man who had hoped to govern as President himself for eight years. He would have wasted one of his allotted two elections.) That turns down the temperature and reduces the amount of spittle landing on phone screens. But even if he changes his mind, the important thing is that he can’t get on the ballot. He won’t run, because no one will be able to vote for him. That’s not down to his “conceding” and being a nice guy. It’s the law.

            The TDS crowd especially here in Canada where we’re almost all TDS seems to think that he can just defy everyone and run, win, then intimidate the electoral apparatus into declaring him the victor. He can’t. So the best response to TDS people is just to remind them of that. No need to be sitting around with constricted sphincters (as Spiro Agnew once advised his audience as he took the lectern) for three years worried that he might run. Just relax.

         2. Me, too. This was in response to Larry’s comment about Denials’s comment.

3. I hate ai. I use Wikipedia as A source in general not THE source in researching an issue. When I do not go further and use it as a simple single source in a conversation, I qualify my statement with “according to wikipedia” or something equivalent. I much prefer to use my wetware to vet the Wikipedia information against other sources than trust a dumb neural network trained automaton such as a Grokipedia to spit out its project 2025 approved results. You can complain about Wikipedia’s left-wing bias from its editors, but there will also be a thumb on the Grokipedia scale. I hate ai!

   1. Is there, as yet, evidence that Grokipedia is also biased? It seems pretty neutral to me (though it’s early days yet and I’ve only looked at a few articles).

   2. Jim, I see you are using lower-case letters for A.I. Am I right in guessing that you, like me, were tired of all these stories about some guy name “AL” in a san-serif world?

      1. Good catch DrB. But, nah, I just, in my own little mind, think that the lower case diminishes the importance of the field if I write it that way. Interesting story: as I wrote my little paragraph this morning the editor that monitors our comments kept trying to capitalize it. It took me several tries to get it to stay lower case. I hate AI! See DrB, it did it again…I typed lower case.

4. Hamas support in Gaza and West Bank has moved between 85%-65% …this century. This number neglects the support of Islamic Jihad, which is an equally insane apocalyptic jihadi group. Look at it from the other side – where is the Pal peace mvt or group? Are they in the room with you? Can you give me their phone number, please? Mmm. Didn’t think so.

   Damn would Westerners get into our heads that other cultures value DIFFERENT THINGS than we do? We don’t all want “the same things”.
   Some want jihad, religious purity, the “Dar al Islam”, dead Jews (oh, and Christians and Hindus, atheists) and the end of everything but Sharia. And nearly all of them want it, actively or just to get along there.

   Bargouti is a mass murderer – and Pal’s favorite boy. He will never be released.

   Shalom,
   D.A.
   NYC @DavidandersonJd

   1. From the Jerusalem Post:
      Seized Hamas documents show terror group inflated its support rates [in public opinion polls], IDF says. 30 August 2024
      https://www.timesofisrael.com/seized-hamas-documents-show-terror-group-inflated-its-support-rates-idf-says/amp/

      1. Peter – I’m going by various surveys, chiefly a Pal group in the west bank as well as every other survey and study in political science I’ve seen and I’ve been watching this for a painfully long time.

         The idea that the poor ewok victim Pals have been exploited by the evil Hamas.. is false. Whatever you say about them, they REPRESENT.
         They, and the entire Pal mvt spends a lot of time shouting, in English and Arabic.. that they are only interested in a One State solution. Guess who survives in their view.
         I rarely listen to Hamas’ “takiyya” opinions.

         Further… the 2nd part of my article below (it isn’t really about Trump’s plan)… explains the EXACT Hamas plan – with all their big shots at a conference – in 2022 for Israel. (syndicated variously.)
         https://themoderatevoice.com/so-what-of-gaza-trumps-plan-and-some-context/

         regards,
         D.A.
         NYC @DavidandersonJd
         D.A.

5. Garry Kasparov weighs in against Mamdani. Reader comments are about evenly split pro and con. He’s certainly an extremely polarizing figure.

   https://www.thenextmove.org/p/the-mamdani-effect

   Duckling zoomies are adorable!

   1. Thanks FK, I’ll read that tonight. Kasparov is an incredibly bright, valuable guy. Big fan.
      D.A.
      NYC

6. Our energies should be finding a good Democratic candidate to replace him

   Good luck with that.

   As you know, one of the guys with his hat in the ring is Gov. Newsom. A couple of days ago, he was filmed in a podcast saying:

   “All this anti-woke stuff is just anti-Black. Period. Full stop.”
   source

   I won’t go on about my disgust at being called a racist by this man, or my contempt for his obliviousness to the fact he encapsulated what is wrong with wokeness in that one line. The reason I bring it up is to highlight the implications:

   At this point, Newsom is not only courting voters; he’s courting the Democratic party big wigs, since no candidate has a chance without their support. And since we can take it for granted that he’s got the inside line on what they are looking for in the next nominee, the fact he is signaling his uncompromising allegiance to wokeness suggests to me that the power brokers in the Democrat party not only aren’t going to relent on their support for woke policies in the interests of winning, they’re doubling down.

   I will openly admit that I’m trying to prepare myself psychologically for the worst that can happen, since I was pretty shocked by Trump’s win. But I don’t think it’s entirely irrational to fear that we’re doomed to President f*cking Vance in 28.

   1. Brooke O’Neill,

      My guess is Gavin N. will be the Democratic nominee in 2028 and that he will win. He has the huge advantage of not being well known to the American people (Trump had that advantage in 2016). Kamala H. thinks she is going to be the Democratic nominee in 2028. My guess is that she is wrong. None of this is advocacy on my part.

   2. I don’t think Gov. Newsom is conceding to wokeness, Brooke. I think he’s just conceding to blackness. Anti-woke means anti-black because anti-woke is anti-DEI, and DEI-anti-racism is fundamental to black electoral politics, leading as it does, they dream, to slavery reparations. The calculus must be that increasing black turnout in battleground states with large black populations by ginning them up with the promise of free cash (not the delivery because President Newsom can’t just issue a decree) will tip those states away from the rednecks. I don’t think Newsom or the Dem bigwigs care what white voters think about woke. The ones who will turn away from them over DEI have “black fatigue” and aren’t likely to vote Democrat anyway. It’s not about alienating you as a classical liberal. It’s a turnout juicer in black polling precincts.

      Alternatively, if the Dems did throw their black bloc off the train it would split the Party asunder. You can’t just abandon your base and the people in the party leadership who live off it. They may lose to Vance in 2028 will but they’ll want to live to fight another day as they did after McGovern and Carter.

7. Grokipedia is a collaboration between Elon Musk and AI? No thank you. Ugh.

   1. I have not explored it. But do have a more substantive objection than just ugh? Is there anything that’s wrong, or that you see as biased?

   2. Grokipedia is great, a breath of fresh air! Here, for exampe, is a comparison from the initial paragraphs of each on Imane Khelif:

      Wikipedia: “Following Khelif’s victory over Italy’s Angela Carini during the 2024 Olympic Games, misinformation surfaced on social media about her gender and eligibility to compete. False claims that Khelif is male were fueled by Khelif’s disqualification from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships, organised by the Russian-led International Boxing Association (IBA) after she allegedly failed unspecified gender eligibility tests. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its Paris Boxing Unit stated Khelif was eligible to compete in the Olympics and criticized the IBA’s previous disqualification as “sudden and arbitrary” and taken “without any due process” Khelif was born female, and no medical evidence has been published to indicate she has XY chromosomes or elevated levels of testosterone.”

      Grokipedia: “Her Olympic success followed disqualification from the 2023 IBA World Boxing Championships, where she and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting were barred from the women’s events after mandatory sex verification tests revealed failure to meet female eligibility criteria, specifically indicating XY chromosomes rather than reliance on testosterone levels alone. The International Olympic Committee permitted her participation under passport-based verification, overriding IBA protocols, which ignited debates on competitive fairness given the physical advantages conferred by male-typical genetic and developmental traits. Khelif’s semifinal bout against Italy’s Angela Carini, who withdrew after 46 seconds citing unprecedented punch force, amplified scrutiny over biological differences in strength and injury risk within female categories.”

      1. Coel,

         The truth is worse than you might imagine. Wikipedia has locked the Imane Khelif web page. Even the Imane Khelif ‘talk’ page is locked.

8. Go Jays! Finally! Like the Raps, another Toronto team that doesn’t suck in the postseason.
   Wait–the Leafs will wake up and skate on to glory this year, right?

   1. Right and right!!

9. Blame. I don’t want to blame one side or the other for the shutdown. Let me just say that I agree with Pennsylvania Senator Fetterman, my mother’s Senator, that the Democrats should support the CR and open the government. With the government again open, the two sides can negotiate health care funding. Keeping the government closed makes any negotiations more rancorous, not less. Oh, and by the way, negotiating at this point without first opening the government means that the government stays closed.

   1. Bingo.

10. As the dialectic is running full blast at this time – in particular, negation – this excerpt seemed worth reviewing (emphasis added):

    “What kind of life? We are still confronted with the demand to state the
    “concrete alternative.” The demand is meaningless if it asks for a blueprint
    of the specific institutions and relationships which would be those of the
    new society: they cannot be determined a priori; they will develop, in trial
    and error, as the new society develops. If we could form a concrete
    concept of the alternative today, it would not be that of an alternative; the
    possibilities of the new society are sufficiently “abstract,” i.e., removed from
    and incongruous with the established universe to defy any attempt to
    identify them in terms of this universe. [..] There can be
    societies which are much worse — there are such societies today. The
    system of corporate capitalism has the right to insist that those who work
    for its replacement justify their action.
    But the demand to state the concrete alternatives is justified for yet another
    reason. Negative thinking draws whatever force it may have from its
    empirical basis : the actual human condition in the given society, and the
    “given” possibilities to transcend this condition, to enlarge the realm of
    freedom. In this sense, negative thinking is by virtue of its own internal
    concepts “positive”: oriented toward, and comprehending a future which is
    “contained” in the present. And in this containment (which is an important
    aspect of the general containment policy pursued by the established
    societies), the future appears as possible liberation..”

    Marcuse
    An Essay on Liberation
    1969
    (Available online, etc.)

    1. I’ll have old-style Russian dressing on that salad, thanks.

       1. +1

       2. Almost as if it is Sophisticated Theology(TM)

11. “It’s been a great run, but I think the president knows, and he and I have talked about, the constrictions of the Constitution, as much as so many of the American people lament that . . . I don’t see a way to amend the Constitution because it takes about 10 years to do that,” Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, said. “As you all know, to allow all the states to ratify what two-thirds of the House and three-fourths of the states would approve. So I don’t, I don’t see the path for that, but I can tell you that we are not going to take our foot off the gas pedal.”

    If Johnson doesn’t see a path for a constitutional amendment, then what does he propose to do while keeping his foot on the gas pedal? Do his and his Republican confreres’ lamentations include acknowledging anywhere that the two-election limit amendment was initiated and brought to successful completion by his Republican ancestors in response to FDR’s four successful elections?

    1. I’m sure that Speaker Johnson and his Republican confrères couldn’t care less that it was now-long-dead Republicans who drove the 22d Amendment. They would wonder why you even brought it up. You make it sound as if hypocrisy is somehow a vice in politics, that it should provide a check on some stratagem. (Oh, wait! We can’t repeal the 22d. It was our side that enacted it! 🤦‍♂️) It’s only we little people who think that way. To politicians, the professionals who play the game of politics, it’s one of the cardinal virtues. How could you manoeuvre for power if you weren’t allowed to forget what you did 75 years ago? Or even last year?

12. Late comment on a Grok development :

    Grokipedia appears to be an under-the-hood component for a new eXtwitter feature.

    To try it, look for the Grok logo (it looks like the black hole from Interstellar) on any post/Xcretion. The AI of Grok will evaluate the post and might be pushing Grokipedia links.

    It just came out and I’ve been trying a few but seems valuable. For instance, someone posted a picture of Mahler and a quote – but Grok found the obscure true source, and recognized the frequent misattribution to Mahler.

    Here’s the …. saying..(?) :

    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

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