Sunday: Hili dialogue

February 8, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Sabbath for goyische cats: it’s Sunday, February 8, 2026, and National Pork Rind Appreciation Day. And today the Big Game kicks off at 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time, because of course it’s Super Bowl Sunday, with the Seattle Seahawks playing the New England Patriots And Bad Bunny, whoever he is, will perform at halftime.

It’s also Boy Scouts Day (scouting came to America on this day in 1909), National Molasses Bar Day, National Potato Lover’s Day (again they misplaced the apostrophe, implying that we’re celebrating only one person who loves potatoes), Opera Day, and Super Chicken Wing Day (thighs have more meat).

In honor of Opera Day, here’s another famous aria: “Vissi d’arte” from Puccini’s Tosca. This is a lovely rendition by Kiri Te Kanawa:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 8 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The latest hamhanded move by the Trump administration is posting a political video, set to the tune of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, showing Trump as a triumphant lion and his opponents as other animals, with the worst part being the depiction of the Obamas as apes (see below). The video was deleted after about 12 hours, and Trump won’t apologize for it.

President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, but he insisted he had nothing to apologize for even after he deleted the video following an outcry.

The clip, set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and was among a flurry of links posted by Mr. Trump late Thursday night. It was the latest in a pattern by Mr. Trump of promoting offensive imagery and slurs about Black Americans and others.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Mr. Trump said he only saw the beginning of the video. “I just looked at the first part, it was about voter fraud in some place, Georgia,” Mr. Trump said. “I didn’t see the whole thing.”

He then tried to deflect blame, suggesting he had given the link to someone else to post. “I gave it to the people, generally they’d look at the whole thing but I guess somebody didn’t,” he told reporters.

Still, Mr. Trump offered no contrition when pressed. “No, I didn’t make a mistake,” he said.

The White House response to the video over the course of the day — from defiance to retreat to doubling down — was a remarkable glimpse into an administration trying to control the damage in the face of widespread outrage, including from the president’s own party.

The clip was in line with Mr. Trump’s history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women and immigrants, and he has for years singled out the Obamas. Across Mr. Trump’s administration, racist images and slogans have become common on government websites and accounts, with the White House, Labor Department and Homeland Security Department all having promoted posts that echo white supremacist messaging.

But the latest video struck a nerve that appeared to take the White House by surprise. The depiction of Mr. and Mrs. Obama as apes perpetuates a racist trope, historically used by slave traders and segregationists to dehumanize Black people and justify lynchings.

At first, the president’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, brushed off criticism of the video and made no attempt to distance the president from it.

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Ms. Leavitt said on Friday morning. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

Finally, after outrage mounted, including among Republicans (the Senate’s only black Republican, Tim Scott, also objected), they pulled the video. But really, a rational and aware president would have apologized for this profusely. If Trump wants to maintain any credibility among his own party, he should start behaving himself. The fact that he seems not to realize the odious history of these monkey tropes is disturbing.

Here’s the full video, though I thought the Obama bit came at the end:

*After struggling for something to say about the voluminous Epstein files, Andrew Sullivan wrote a column called, “Notes on Epstein,” with the subtitle, “On an American elite that’s self-dealing, self-obsessed, and long past good and evil.” Well, that a bit hyperbolic, but Epstein did deal largely with the elite. Some quotes:

I’ve been struggling to write about the Epstein case — and the eponymous “files” — because, to be honest, I’ve been struggling to figure out what to think about them. I’m not a big conspiracy buff; my thoughts are far too complicated to say anything simple; and, well, sometimes life is too short to comb through acres of skeevy emails by many of the rich and powerful people I’ve spent the last 30 years desperately trying to avoid.

But here goes!

The following, it seems to me, is what really matters: an email from an Epstein friend in 2014 (long, long after Epstein’s conviction for sex with a minor):

Thank you for a fun night …

Your littlest girl was a little naughty.

No proof of an actual crime here but, in the broader context of what we know about Epstein, the mind reels at the way so many in our elite were able to ignore the abuse of minors happening in the wings. Money, glamor, and connections easily trumped any moral qualms. I guess if Catholic Cardinals can look the other way, so can Larry Summers and Brad Karp.

There’s something darker here too. The abuse of minors turned into a joke — long after Epstein’s first conviction:

Redacted: Where are you?
Jeffrey: Paris with Woody Allen
Redacted: For les pedophile convention?
Jeffrey: I think pedophilee is the plural
Redacted: lol

Lovely. Then there’s the quite obvious inference from the entire dump: these people really do look after themselves first, don’t they? This is elite network heaven, the trading of favors, the mutual backslapping, with private planes and desert islands as lubricant: catnip for populists. I don’t see a vast pedophile conspiracy in these files. I see a status-seeking parvenu with a sex addiction to underage and barely legal girls, collecting the rich and powerful as a kind of insurance for his compulsive vice.

. . . When historians review this, they’ll see the historical context: our post-Cold War Gilded Age. So much money held by so few. That’s what keeps these people buzzing around Epstein, one senses: proximity to the new mega-rich. You wonder if the sense of utter impunity they all express would be possible in an era other than our own.

. . . Which brings me to the courageous anti-anti-Semite, Keir Starmer. Trump will survive all this, but Keir very well may not. The reason he made Peter Mandelson ambassador to the US is precisely because “Mandy” is a slimy, amoral, networking sleaze — and Keir thought that was a good match for Trump. Too good, it turned out. I watched Prime Ministers’ Questions on Wednesday and could feel the tides turning. Keir knew Mandy had kept in touch with Epstein long after his conviction and appointed him anyway. He says now he just didn’t know the extent of the bond. That’s almost certainly not good enough.

So far, the only people who have actually suffered serious consequences from this are Ghislaine Maxwell, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (former prince), Peter Mandelson — who now may face criminal charges for leaking classified material — and Keir Starmer, who might be forced to leave office entirely. All Brits. Quite a contrast with the American elite, no? If only there was a smidgen of similar accountability here.

At least Sullivan called Starmer an “anti-anti-Semite.” In the UK, Mandelson’s missteps are reason enough for the PM to resign. Pity he is Labour, which of course has been ridden with antisemitism. It’s the British liberals who seem to dislike the Jews. And yes, nothing any Trump appointee could do would be enough to get the President to resign. That is inconceivable.

*The U.S. Olympic team was booed as it marched in Milan’s opening ceremonies, as was VP Vance as he appeared on the big screen.

In a gleefully kitschy Opening Ceremony that featured ancient Romans, dancing espresso pots and a number by Mariah Carey, Italy threw open its arms to welcome the entire world to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

Well, nearly the entire world.

In an unmistakable sign of Europe’s rapidly dimming view on America, the U.S. delegation entered the San Siro stadium here on Friday night to a chorus of boos and disapproving whistles from the international crowd of more than 65,000. The jeering only intensified when Vice President JD Vance appeared on the big screen during Team USA’s arrival.

The only other team to receive similar treatment was Israel.

Olympic organizers had braced for the possibility of anti-American sentiment inside the stadium. Small protests had already cropped up on the streets of Milan against the planned presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the city. Asked before the Games on how the Americans might be received, IOC president Kirsty Coventry said she hoped that the occasion would be “seen by everyone as an opportunity to be respectful.”

Even the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee recognized that its athletes might not be the most popular guests at the party—and made sure to warn them about the potentially frosty reception.

“We have done a ton of Games-readiness preparation with the athletes to ensure they feel comfortable and are not walking into an environment that is uncertain,” USOPC chief executive Sarah Hirshland said.

It’s okay for Europeans to boo Vance, as he’s part of a disastrous Administration, but it’s not fair to boo the American team. It not only violates the spirit of comity that’s supposed to pervade the Olympics, but it’s bigotry, pure and simple. At least half of Americans—and probably most of the American athletes—can’t stand Trump, and it’s mean to boo them. When I travel, I am tired of explaining, after I say I’m American, that I detest the Administration. Do Brits apologize for having a bad Prime Minister?

Europeans should lay off the U.S. athletes, who, with the exception of a faux anti-Trump urination in the snow (no, men can’t write like that with pee), haven’t made political gestures.

This is from American skier Gus Kenworthy’s Instagram page.   (No, it’s impossible to write in the snow like this when urinating.  Every guy has tried such writing, and we know this is bogus). Ten to one he used a squeeze bottle with yellow liquid and pretended that he peed:

*The first set of talks between Iran and the U.S. are over, and they’ve pretty much failed, with both sides standing firm on their initial positions.

Tehran stuck to its refusal to end enrichment of nuclear fuel in talks Friday between senior U.S. and Iranian officials, but both sides signaled a willingness to keep working toward a diplomatic solution that could head off an American strike.

According to Iranian state media, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told his U.S. counterparts that Tehran wouldn’t agree to end enrichment or move it offshore, rejecting a core U.S. requirement.

Araghchi, however, said it had been a good start, and he and Oman’s foreign minister said the parties aimed to meet again.

“We likewise had very good talks on Iran,” President Trump told reporters Friday. “Iran looks like it wants to make a deal very badly.”

The two sides didn’t meet face to face but instead held alternating discussions with Omani diplomats. Neither moved much from their initial position, people familiar with the discussions said.

Regional officials and many analysts had low expectations going into the talks, given Iran’s unwillingness to end nuclear enrichment and the U.S. insistence on including Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for regional militias in the negotiations.

Trump has signaled that he wants regime change in Iran, but he doesn’t seem to realize that he won’t get that through diplomacy, for Iran will never agree to give up its desire to make nuclear weapons. Trump must either decide to attack or he’ll decide to let the Iranian regime keep killing protestors. That is the choice he has.

*UPI’s “Odd News” reports that the world’s longest wild snake has been found in Indonesia:

 Guinness World Records confirmed a massive reticulated python [Malayopython reticulatus] discovered in the Maros region of Indonesia is officially the longest wild snake to be formally measured.

The record-keeping organization said it reviewed evidence confirming the female snake measures 23 feet and 8 inches in length.

The snake is currently in the care of conservationist Budi Purwanto, licensed snake handler Diaz Nugraha and natural history photographer Radu Frentiu.

Nugraha and Frentiu said they went out in search of the impressively long snake after hearing of rumored sightings. They dubbed the serpent Ibu Baron, or “The Baroness.”

Reticulated pythons typically grow to an adult length ranging from 9 feet, 10 inches to 19 feet, 2 inches.

Here’s a video and that’s one gynormous snake! I’m glad they didn’t kill it, but why is it so still in the video?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is spooked, but Szaron calms her down:

Hili: Either I’m imagining things, or something’s there.
Szaron: We live in a world of illusions.

In Polish:

Hili: Albo mi się zdaje, albo coś tam jest.
Szaron: Żyjemy w świecie złudzeń.

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

From Cats that Have Had Enough of Your Shit; a thieving moggy:

From Now That’s Wild:

From The Language Nerda:

Merilee sent a hilarious video from Carcass Acres. The woman is a hoot!  (You may have to go to the original site to see it.) The animal names are great: Chicken Elizabeth Nugget and Debbi from Accounting!

From Masih, who rebukes Mehdi Hasan and Zohran Mamdani while showing the photo of an Iranian protestor who was flogged by the authorities. I can’t embed this, so click on the screenshot to see the whole tweet:

From Larry: a circus cat:

Speaking of Mamdani, here he is touting Islam (and adding “peace be upon him in Arabic after mentioning Muhamad); tweet provided by Luana:

From Malcolm, lovely life goals:

One from my feed; are we sure the pup isn’t just scratching his belly?

I haven’t checked this, but it may well be true:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, a pheasant who thinks he’s stuck but he isn’t:

He’s been stuck like this for ages. My dude. Just reverse. Truly, achingly vacant.

— Dr Laura Eastlake (@victorianmasc.bsky.social) 2026-02-06T16:03:31.143Z

Matthew calls this “fabulous and apt”:

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

— Omg. WTF is Happening? (@lalahaenzy.com) 2026-02-05T11:50:02.422Z

 

38 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. The discussions between US and Iran are about Iran giving up nuclear weapon ambitions. Why would Iran giving up nuclear ambitions lead to regime change? The possible military strikes you mention have the same object, destroying Iran’s capacity for nuclear weapons. Why would that lead to regime change?

    1. This is what I said: “Trump must either decide to attack or he can decide to let the Iranian regime keep killing protestors.” If the strikes lead to regime change, then the protestors won’t be attacked any more.” I’m not sure what’s unclear about that.

      1. I was not clear. I understood your point that if the strikes lead to regime change, that is to the good. I was wondering if you think that a strike is likely to lead to a regime change, and if so why.

  2. “But really, a rational and aware president would have apologized for this profusely.”

    A rational and aware president would never have posted this trash in the first place.

    1. Kurt, I think that he is fully rational and aware, but from a totally amoral life and perspective.

      1. I can’t disagree with you! I go back and forth between thinking this guy is mentally ill and thinking he is a grifter who has pulled off the ultimate con.

        1. It depends on whether one considers sociopathy a “mental illness” or just a “personality disorder”. Potato, potahto.

      2. Note that his mouthpiece averred that the Dems in the video were just characters from The Lion King. Just good fun!
        There are no apes in the film, as several people have pointed out.

        1. Who shall be brave enough to point out to The Orange One that his Lion King parody has granted the Obamas the status of most intelligent animals save for humans? And definitely smarter than a lion.

      3. I think that Trump’s personality is driven by extreme narcissim. Which manifests is an extreme craving for attention. Both of those are so extreme, in my opinion, that they leave little to no room for other traits.

        I also think that someone who is so driven by those characteristics could not really fit into a moral framework. Amorality, in any societal context, is a natural consequence in such a person.

        That would not necessarily prevent that person from doing the right thing, given that it brought him more attention. But it would also result in behavior that is outrageous, even if it did not benefit him, other than focusing attention to him

  3. I am one U.S. curmudgeon with no interest in the souper bowl…I will be reading Matthew’s “Brain” book during the extravaganza to help me understand the second half of “Crick” in retrospect…though I do look forward to watching some of the “Puppy Bowl” beforehand (its a good cause) and perhaps the eight +/- ship airplane flyover before kickoff.

    And while I am commenting, please allow me to recommend one of Coleman Hughes’ latest youtubes in which he takes on antisemitism including the extreme left and its post modern turn and contrasts today with 60’s civil rights era with martin luther king. A very good program. Taught me some new thinking. Url should be

    1. Hi Jim. I watched Hughes’s piece while pounding away on “my” cardio machine at the gym. It was good. Thank you for bringing it to everyone’s attention.

      Hughes rightly claims that the American civil rights movement in the U.S. isn’t analogous to the situation in the disputed West Bank but, sadly, I don’t think that this matters to young Americans. As Hughes says (I’m paraphrasing), their minds glom onto the U.S. civil right struggle—their model of the oppressor-oppressed “struggle”—and they apply it uncritically. It’s what they know. One can only hope that their thinking matures over time.

      Living in the Seattle area compels me to watch the Super Bowl. It’ll be fun. The seats at home are super comfortable, the company will be better, the view is better than at the game, and the beer is cheaper. Also, at home, I can turn the volume way down for the half-time show, which will most likely be uninspiring. (But I’ll watch a few minutes of it just in case. Maybe I’ll be surprised.)

      1. I think that his content on the US civil rights movement of the 60’s versus what Einat Wilf calls Palestinianism is very useful in educating the little shits that continue to demonstrate “globalize the intifada” and the like. A couple of years ago, I would take them on regarding who seemed more indigenous: the people from the 9th century BCE united kingdom of Israel or the imperial, murderous, moslem colonists of the 7th century CE? Canaanites aside of course…. Seriously, I thought he laid it out quite well and I will fold it into my education for the masses story.

        Enjoy the game, good chair, and popularly priced beer!

  4. “He then tried to deflect blame, suggesting he had given the link to someone else to post. “I gave it to the people, generally they’d look at the whole thing but I guess somebody didn’t,” he told reporters.” Can anyone determine what time this was posted wherever he posts things? Because I’m having this fantasy about some poor techie waiting in an antechamber at 2 a.m. for Trump to summon him to make a post. I thought Trump made these posts himself, but I could be wrong.

  5. The Elect inhabit a cosmic drama of rupture, exile, and repair, in which centers of power are empty husks — marginalized sparks conceal truth.

    Trauma authenticates truth.

    Diagnosing the rupture is the defining action of Elect Gnostics. This gives power to define true humanity, and sublate the false center of power using that truth – while negating false humanity – in a dialectical transformation :

    Summon collective consciousness
    Collect the marginalized truths
    Repair the world in Unity Consciousness

    “… they feel the irresistible power of their own inner Spirit [..] the agents of the World-Spirit [..] When their object is attained they fall off like empty hulls from the kernel.”

    -G.W.F Hegel
    The Philosophy of History
    1837, posth.

    “We cannot repeat too often that men do not lead the Revolution; it is the Revolution that uses men.”

    Joseph de Maistre
    Considerations on France
    1796

    As Above, So Below
    Principle of Hermetic alchemy

    1. Comment by Greg Mayer

      Fide the Independent, the booing was for Vance (not the American team), and fide the Guardian, journalists in the stands and other media (Canadian, BBC) could hear it. I watched the NBC tape-delay broadcast, and did not hear the booing, but it evidently was audible to attendees and on other broadcasts.

      (The WSJ article was by two men– who is the female commentator?)

      GCM

  7. A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:
    Life without industry is guilt, industry without art is brutality. -John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (8 Feb 1819-1900)

  8. “The Stranger’s Case,” beautifully acted by McClellan, reminded me of an article on the same subject that I recently read, “The Stranger: A Christian and Constitutional Case for Protecting Those Who Come to America.”

    What’s unexpected about the article is that the author is Ammon Bundy, a notorious far-right anti-government militant and activist. Despite that fact, he is totally opposed to the actions of ICE on constitutional and Christian-libertarian grounds and wrote this article to explain why. He’s a surprisingly good writer, and I don’t think you have to be a Christian (I’m atheist, myself) to be moved by the case he makes for welcoming ‘strangers’.

    If I have any criticism, it’s that I am more in favor of reasonable limits on immigration than he is. It’s an odd illustration of how the far-right and the far-left can sometimes converge on the same position, albeit for entirely different reasons.

    1. Libertarians are for open borders for very different reasons than the establishment Dems and Repubs are. As for myself, I would be very cautious in letting strangers into my home – extensive and careful vetting would be required at best.

    2. Mr. Bundy — yes he writes well — cherry-picks the Constitution and finds no authority for restricting immigration. He should first explain why he thinks The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 is unconstitutional and then why the US Supreme Court has not struck it down and declared open borders.

      Everything ICE is doing, including the apprehension and detention of illegal aliens long in non-criminal hiding which upsets so many people, is contained in the INA. Which illegal aliens ICE should attempt to deport as a priority, and which they should not deport at all, is contested by millions of Americans who wish the law said something else. They hope to influence ICE to enforce it more to their liking. But that is a matter of executive policy, not popular opinion. Which groups ICE shall deport — everyone not lawfully in the country — and what tactics they may employ are matters of the law. Issues around warrants, habeas corpus, and use of force are certainly fair to dispute. Those are the tactics of enforcement, not what is being enforced.

      In arguing that the Constitution (with The Bible) is the only law of the land, Mr. Bundy sounds like those sovereign citizens who claim the Constitutional “right to travel” exempts them from having to have drivers licences or register their vehicles to “travel” on public roads.

      He also runs into a contradiction. He admires the Colonists for defying King George’s Royal Proclamation forbidding them to settle the Ohio Valley after 1763, (which led to the Revolution.) Later he criticizes “Native clearances” as one of many xenophobic unChristian measures Americans ought to be ashamed of. Yet the Royal Proclamation was intended to prevent the Colonists from doing that very thing: clear the Natives out of the former New France and dispossess them. So which is it? Defy the King who tells you not to clear the Natives, and then clear them anyway and feel guilty. Guess it doesn’t matter: you have Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and the Natives don’t. (Neither do the British!)

      (This Royal Proclamation and the “Honour of the Crown” it holds his heirs and Ministers to remains formally a part of Canada’s written constitution especially as regards our obligations to aboriginals. The Crown is only ceremonial today but it casts a long shadow.)

      1. Sections 8 and 9 of Article I of the US Constitution give Congress plenty of authority to restrict immigration as they set fit. The immigration laws of the 1920s were not successfully challenged in court.

  9. Loved all the cat posts today, especially the cat who has such a collection of underware.

    You (PCE) wrote, “The fact that he seems not to realize the odious history of these monkey tropes is disturbing.” Oh, I’m sure he realizes the history of the ape tropes–the motivation of this administration is the same on many fronts: the cruelty and denigrating are the point.

  10. I think there might be a bit of confusion about what Trump (or his staffer) posted on Truth Social. The “Lion King” video everyone is referring to isn’t the clip he shared. What was posted was an entirely unrelated clip about voting machines. At the end of that one-minute clip, the first second or two of the “Lion King” video appears. While someone could have intentionally added it, it looks more like an accidental capture from a screen recording. (Have you ever been annoyed by YouTube or ESPN autoplay jumping straight to the next random video in the queue?) Careless or racist? Unacceptable at that level, either way.

    I’m confident that Trump doesn’t edit and upload videos. Regardless, both he and his press secretary handled the situation inappropriately. Kaizen Asiedu—a young black man who leans right, Harvard philosophy major, Emmy winner—has a reasonable take on the matter.

    https://x.com/thatsKAIZEN/status/2019935340778422396

    1. Trump probably doesn’t edit and upload videos. He’s got plenty of like-minded staff to help there. But if Trump didn’t approve of the video he should have promptly apologized and removed it.

  11. It’s true. Men…I mean…boys can’t write their names in pee. Believe me, my buddies and I tried. We tried because
    1: Why not?
    2: We were told by girls that it was the only thing boys could do that girls couldn’t.

    After a winter of failure it occurred to me the one thing we could do that girls can’t. So I challenged them. I told them to try, while standing, to pee straight up. Ha! Got you there, Lark! I still remember the look of “eewww” on her face*.

    *I wonder if she ever tried? I should look her up.

  12. Andrew Sullivan is wrong. There have been consequences on this side of the Atlantic. Let me quote from Wikipedia

    “On November 17, 2025, Summers agreed to step back from his public commitments such as his role in the advisory group of The Yale Budget Lab, his role in the advisory group of The Hamilton Project (an economics policy arm of the Brookings Institution), his fellowship with the Center for American Progress, and his role as chair of the Center for Global Development. On November 18, 2025, Summers also ended his role as a paid contributor to Bloomberg News.

    On November 19, Summers resigned from the OpenAI board following the release of the Epstein emails. Summers had also been on the advisory board of SandboxAQ since August 2024; as of 19 November 2025, he was no longer listed as an advisor.

    On December 2, 2025, the American Economic Association (AEA) imposed a lifetime ban on Summers, prohibiting him from holding membership in the association or participating in any AEA-sponsored events, including attending or speaking at its activities.”

    1. He also got his dates wrong. Epstein’s first conviction was in 2008, which definitely affects Sullivan’s reasoning.

      He shouldn’t even comment on the subject since he seems to know little about it.

  13. Though not as much fun as a barrel of anthropomorphic monkeys, the python was quite impressive. It was still because it was either dead or nearly so. Wild reticulated pythons are fierce, much more so than the puppy tame Burmese pythons we have here in Florida. One that size could, and would, eat a person. There is no question that in the fairly recent past retics grew far larger than they do today. I once met an elderly Headhunter in Borneo who actually used the phrase “Ten bob a knob” to describe the taking of Japanese heads. He told me that in his youth he and three other young men encountered a gigantic reticulated python struggling to kill and eat a full sized wild boar. They waited until the snake was incapacitated by swallowing the boar then killed it. It was so big that it took all four strong young men to carry a one meter long section back to the village.

  14. My guess is that the Epstein scandal will have little impact in the US. Why?

    Epstein is dead.
    Ghislaine Maxwell is behind American (not British) bars.
    B. Clinton is implicated.
    Many other Democrats are implicated.
    Ashley’s diary.
    The worst of Epstein was probably decades ago.

    The US has suffered worse scandals. Crédit Mobilier and Teapot Dome come to mind . The worst scandals in US history are little known. The VA/Harding scandals are not remembered these days.

  15. The Israel-hating Islamist Mamdani says Islam is a “religion built on a narrative of migration”. No, it is a religion built on conquest, colonization, mass murder and enslavement. Like others in those respects, but worse. The Palestinian Arabs are the descendants of Islamic invaders and colonizers from Arabia and he knows that, yet considers them “indigenous” in place of the indigenous Jews of historic Judea/Israel.

  16. Great actor! I saw Sir Ian McKellen in Richard III. Didn’t like it much. But I remember waiting for his ‘My kingdom for a horse’ line. It came when his jeep got stuck.

    1. IMO one of the few Shakespeare modernisations that successfully combined accessibility, political relevance, and art. (And FWIW we now know that the actual king was not nearly the evil deformed scumbag portrayed in WS’s historical drama. Even the current royals have removed “usurper” from their official description of him.)

  18. I don’t know if Keir Starmer will be forced (by the opaque internal machinations in the Labour Party) to resign. I predict firing Mandelson will suffice to avoid a non-confidence motion passing in the House, which would force an immediate election. Labour has 411 seats out of 650. Epstein isn’t the Suez Crisis (Anthony Eden), the Iraq debaqle that terminated Tony Blair, or the Brexit blunder that did in David Cameron. Mandelson isn’t even a Cabinet Minister responsible to Parliament. But the British political parties do often force out sitting Prime Ministers just because they can. This leaves the Government Party still in power, giving the new guy, whomever the insiders pick, time to find an opportune moment to call an election in two or three years.

    U.S. Presidents can be removed only by impeachment or by the 25th Amendment. So there is no reason, including turpitudinous Cabinet Secretaries, for a President to resign unless Congress makes a credible threat to him that he is unwilling to brazen out and dare them to try. Since impeachment has never succeeded and only one has resigned, all bets should be on the President. There is no other internal private process for even the Republicans to force him out. So Trump won’t resign, not (just) because he’s Trump. His office is designed to be less fragile than a Parliamentary Prime Minister’s and doesn’t depend on the forbearance of those who could do him in, not to.

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