Wednesday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to a Hump Day (“منتصف الأسبوع” in Arabic): Wednesday, August 5, 2026, and National Oyster Day. The ones we eat can be of several different species, but oysters cultivated for pearls are not considered “true” oysters (don’t ask me why).  Here’s an oyster producing a lovely black pearl:

It’s also Green Peppers Day and National Underwear Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

UPDATE RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES: Although the “progressive” Democrat, Abdul El-Sayed, was and still is expected to win the candidacy for the Democratic Senate seat from Michigan, as of 5 a.m. the race is too close to call, with El-Sayed and moderate Haley Stevens in a virtual tie. (Still, El-Sayed probably win):

An acrimonious and expensive Democratic Senate primary in Michigan that divided the party remained unresolved early Wednesday, with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official, clinging to a narrow lead over Representative Haley Stevens, a moderate.

The contest reflected sharp divisions in the party over Israel and drew dueling endorsements from prominent elected officials. Michigan, one of the country’s biggest battleground states, could determine control of the Senate this fall.

Dr. El-Sayed’s edge on Wednesday morning was much narrower than what the most recent polling had shown. Both candidates took the stage after midnight to sound optimistic notes to supporters as the vote tally continued.

“We knew this was going to be a close race, and that’s exactly what we’ve got: a close race,” Ms. Stevens said. “But friends, I am feeling good about this race. I am feeling fired up.”

All you need to know about this guy is that he’s endorsed by both AOC and Bernie Sanders, has campaigned with the odious Hasan Piker, and detests Israel. Such is the far left of toady’s Democratic Party, and I have no idea why this happened so quickly.  Oh, and it’s even worse. From the NYT morning newsletter:

Left-wing candidates have won plenty of primaries this year, despite seemingly endless Democratic hand-wringing about their ability to court mainstream voters come November. But their victories have been largely confined to highly educated and heavily blue areas in urban America. El-Sayed wants to break that trend.

At least one progressive candidate scored a decisive win last night: Down ballot in Michigan, the left-wing organizer William Lawrence prevailed in one of the most competitive House districts in the country after his two centrist opponents, each refusing to drop out of the race, split the moderate vote. When I interviewed Lawrence over the weekend, he told me it was his priority “to stop these stupid wars around the world that are wasting trillions of our dollars, including for war crimes committed by Israel.”

*A “deal” may be in the offing to open the Strait of Hormuz, but it’s not a deal Trump would like: it’s being discussed only by Oman and Iran, and would involve payments by passing ships. (Article is archived here.)

Iran and Oman are closing in on an agreement to reopen shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian and American officials, but if the accord goes into effect it could come at a high price — ratifying Tehran’s control over what, before the war, was an open, international waterway.

As described by officials familiar with the emerging accord, vessels heading into the Persian Gulf will transit a channel controlled by Iran, and close to its coast. Ships leaving the Gulf will travel on a channel near Oman.

Iranian officials say that while there will be no tolls charged the agreement includes a “service fee” to cover the environmental impact of the shipping, security for the cargo ships and tankers, and staffing. Revenues would be divided equally between Iran and Oman, two Iranian officials said.

But a U.S. official familiar with the negotiations said on Monday that the Iranian account was “not accurate,” and said that any “temporary” routes established through the strait would not involve approvals or permissions by Iran, and would involve no tolls.

For President Trump, the deal, if it happened, could address his most urgent political problem allowing ships to flow again. For their part, Iranian officials said the strait would remain closed, despite any agreement, until the U.S. lifts its naval blockade against Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf and both countries return to the 14-point plan laid out in the Islamabad memorandum of understanding.

The U.S. could ease the market pressure even further, some officials said, if it decided to issue exemptions on sanctions against Iran so it could legally sell and deliver oil.

But if, ultimately, Iran asserts continued control over the passageway, the opening might come with a geopolitical cost. Iranian officials say they are designing the accord to ratify their capacity to control the strait and therefore retain strategic leverage that they did not employ before the war.

What is described is in fact a toll–what else could it be? And if Trump agrees to this odious arrangement, there’s a good claim that Iran is better off after the war than before. This does not include Trump’s almost inevitable failure to get Iran to stop enriching uranium to make bombs (of course, they could lie and will if they must).

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal says that the Gaza “deal” between Israel and Hamas has been settled: Hamas must disarm first, and only then will Israel withdraw from part of Gaza.

It’s Tuesday, August 4, and “contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the IDF beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators.” Israel appears to have won the battle of diplomacy in Gaza.

Last week, the Board of Peace spoke of the “full withdrawal of the IDF” during the process of disarmament. “This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons and the tunnels alike.” This morning the terms had moved. Senior officials said last night that “we will not withdraw under any circumstances before Hamas is disarmed,” insisting “this was not agreed to in the original Trump framework.” Their interpretation prevailed, and the board removed the word “full” from Monday’s Board of Peace statement minutes after it was published.

A real win, with a catch. The IDF isn’t on the Yellow Line—it’s well forward of it. Israel may have locked in that it won’t fully withdraw before disarmament is done, but the process still has to start somewhere, and starting it likely means ceding some ground.

Meanwhile, the other deal has radically diverging terms. Trump announced on Sunday that American and Iranian officials would meet to discuss reopening the Strait of Hormuz and the nuclear file. Within a day the choreography frayed. Iran’s negotiators had reportedly signed onto a Qatari-brokered scheme—inbound traffic through Iranian waters, outbound through Omani—and were awaiting the IRGC’s blessing. It hasn’t come. A senior figure in the IRGC ruled out a second corridor “under any circumstances,” and IRGC-affiliated media denied that same day that Iran had ever agreed to reopen the strait. The deal exists and doesn’t, depending on which Iranian you ask and on which day.

Gaza and the strait are entirely different theaters. But Gaza has the one thing the Iran front lacks: credibility. Israel said it would not withdraw under any circumstances until Hamas disarms, and the continuing strikes prove it means it. Trump, meanwhile, wanted to give Iran “one last chance before I cut their heads off”—and the heads remain firmly attached. This is his seventh or eighth last chance by now, and the whole threat seems to lift the moment the Saudis pick up the phone.

Trump really is waffling; I no longer believe that his back-and-forth is a strategy rather than repeated shifting of his neuron-deficient mind.  I can believe that Hamas might disarm, but I do not believe that Iran will agree to a completely open and toll-free Strait of Hormuz.

Here is the “yellow line” in Gaza from Wikipedia. First the description,and then a map with the key at bottom:

The Yellow Line is a demarcation line that has divided the Gaza Strip in two since the October 2025 implementation of the Gaza peace plan intended to end the Gaza war.  The line originally separated 47% of the territory in the western area, which is Palestinian-controlled, from the 53% of the Gaza Strip controlled by Israel. Gazans have been displaced to the area west of the line. Since its initial creation, Israel has moved the yellow line blocks further into Gaza

*At the Free Press Charles F. Lehman reports that, for the first time, more Americans use marijuana every day than alcohol or tobacco every day.  But it also reports that, as marijuana use spread, fostered by legalization in many states, some Americans are trying to make it illegal again.

I went viral on X last week by surfacing a remarkable fact: For the first time on record, more Americans consume marijuana every day than smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol every day.

Those results show up in the new data tables for the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the federal government’s big annual drug use survey. By its estimates, marijuana eclipsed alcohol a few years back. That’s significant because, for a long time, alcohol has been the reference point for advocates of legalization. We tolerate alcohol just fine, so the argument goes, and alcohol prohibition failed. Alcohol is a popular recreational intoxicant, just like marijuana. Doesn’t legalization just mean adding another product like—or, arguably, healthier than—alcohol to our culture?

The new data answer with a resounding “no.”

As of 2025, daily users accounted for about 80 percent of marijuana consumption, compared to 90 percent of cigarette smoking but less than half of all alcohol consumption. In fact, marijuana is in many ways analogous not to alcohol, but to cigarettes: something mostly consumed by a small number of chronically dependent users, rather than something widely consumed by infrequent, recreational consumers. Advocates of marijuana legalization have long compared the substance to alcohol, which is widely consumed and perceived as generally harmless—unlike cigarettes. But beyond describing the nature of Americans’ pot consumption, the cigarette comparison raises the question of whether pot legalization is so foregone a conclusion as many assume.

Because pot is getting stronger, and the users are mostly daily users, resembling more those addicted to cigarettes than the common social drinker, Lehman thinks that, like cigarettes in Massachusetts, we may be moving with pot in the direction “a number of Massachusetts towns have moved[—]toward full prohibition through a ‘generational ban’ that prohibits people born after a certain year from purchasing tobacco”:

The moderate path of taxing, regulating, and stigmatizing a substance over decades doesn’t preclude an eventual ban—it lays the groundwork for one.

Already, we’re seeing this dynamic at play. Ask people who are unhappy with legalization why, and they will point to the social consequences—the shops, the smell, the suspicion that many service workers are stoned on the job. But they will also cite the things that they believe marijuana does to you: makes you unmotivated, shiftless, a “loser.” Fair or not, what they are envisioning is a picture of the chronic daily marijuana user. If that’s the constituency for legalization, then the movement is in big trouble.

Well, I’m still conditioned by the culture I grew up in: one in which people occasionally smoked weed for recreational purposes. I’m not familiar with those who smoke every day—I guess I don’t run in their circles.. I still think it would be a shame if they banned marijuana tout court. It’s not nearly as dangerous than cigarettes, even when smoked daily, and used in moderation it can induce pleasure or, I’m told, even sleep.

*When I saw the title of Kate Andrews’s article in the WaPo—”This is your moment, Kamala Harris. America needs you”—I was afraid it was serious. But it’s sort of a joke, though not that funny. (Article is archived here.) According to Andrews, Harris brought not “joy”, but mirth. (I still feel strongly that those who supported Harris vigorously were misguided, and those who said she brought “joy” to the Democratic Party were completely off the rails.)

What was your first reaction when you heard that Kamala Harris is considering another run for the White House? Be honest.

The sophisticated answer would be that you experienced some kind of recoil — a subconscious impulse that manifested in a shudder, and maybe you blurted, “Absolutely not.”

Curiously enough, many Republicans and Democrats had more or less the same reaction. The former mix mockery with their distaste. There they go again. The latter are overcome with a deep sadness and a sense of lost opportunity. Here we go again.

That’s what you’re supposed to say, anyway. I’m not buying it. When I see Harris’s name leading a new 2028 poll, or get another hint that she may run again, I am overcome with giddiness. It’s an undeniable thrill. Her effervescent, hollow politics have been sorely missing from the public square, and we are worse for it.

Her political resurrection cannot come soon enough.

Washington is not naturally the country’s happiest or funniest place in the best of times, and the past 18 months have been an exercise in extinguishing any remaining joy in the nation’s capital.

The sense of humor that candidate Donald Trump brought to the campaign trail in 2024 has evaporated. The Trump who manned a drive-through window at McDonald’s — that unmistakable international symbol of America’s excesses and freedoms — has been replaced by a miserly Trump who talks about rationing pencils for schools and dolls under the Christmas tree.

. . . There’s no joy to be found in any of that. A little light relief has been in short supply. Not even America’s 250th anniversary celebrations provided respite: What could have been an inspiring, unifying moment for the country turned into a politicized affair, marked on the National Mall by musicians refusing to perform at the Great American State Fair and a soggy late-night Trump political rally masquerading as a Fourth of July celebration.

Some uplifting cheeriness is needed immediately.

. . .Harris’s virtues might seem misaligned with the virtues of leadership, but the latter has been politically obsolete for years. With the former vice president hovering near 30 percent in Democratic primary polls, well ahead of many potential rivals, she is climbing back to political prominence. With luck, that will soon translate into airtime: the return of dripping interviews and the revival of the Los Angeles Times’s “Covering Kamala Harris” beat, launched in 2021 to track “her historic rise.” Losing every swing state in 2024 might turn out to have simply been a stepping stone to greatness.

We will get all the platitudes we deserve.

I don’t know if Ms. Andrews is a Democrat, but if she’s serious about all this she’s a suicidal Democrat, because Harris has no chance of winning the Presidency, and there are many candidates with far more eloquence and leadership skills. Pete Buttigieg may not be a funny guy, but I’d rather have a mirthless President who is smart and can lead.

*You may be familiar with the sad tale of Lindsay Clancy, who, now claiming to have been in the grip of postpartum psychosis, killed her three young children and is now pleading “not guilty” to murder. What it doesn’t say in the AP story excerpted below is that Clancy tried to kill herself after the triple murder, finally jumping out of a window, so that now she’s paralyzed from the waist down.

After an opening week of wrenching testimony and a jury trip to the home where Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children, her murder trial resumed Monday with diary entries from the months leading up to the killings in a coastal Massachusetts town in 2023.

Clancy described feeling anxious and overwhelmed with motherhood, including her struggles to get her newborn Callan to sleep and constant worries of his being sick. She also expressed concerns about going back to work as a labor and delivery nurse, not being able to breastfeed, and feeling disconnected from her children and her then-husband.

“I’m so desperate to get a mental break from taking care of everyone that my mind is trying to find something physically wrong with me,” she wrote in a Nov. 18, 2022, entry.

Clancy’s defense says she was a loving mother who was overmastered by postpartum psychosis, a dangerous psychiatric condition that afflicts a small proportion of women after childbirth and affects their hold on reality.

AD

Prosecutors contend that she acted intentionally and should be held criminally responsible for the deaths of Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged in age from 8 months to 5 years.

I’ll add one more thing from People:

Because of the nature of her plea, a potential not guilty verdict would not mean she goes free. Instead, she would likely face an indefinite stay in a secure state mental health facility.

This is a tough one.  She’s permanently paralyzed and not a danger to anyone else, I think. (She shouldn’t have any more kids for sure but can that be mandated legally?) Should she be confined just to cure her psychosis, if that’s even possible given that it was circumstantial? And will her confinement deter others?  There’s plenty of evidence that she was not thinking logically. This is a case for my court system: she is found guilty for having done the deed, but then her “punishment” adjudicated by psychologists, sociologists, and others. In fact, that may be what happens, though I’m dubious whether she can get proper therapy through involuntary confinement. Or should she be set free because she’s no danger and has suffered enough? She can hardly engage in more murder if she has no kids and is a paraplegic.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej has a good response to Hili’s pronouncement:

Hili: Prophets never look back.
Andrzej: True, I’ve never come across any reliable statistics on predicted and failed end-of-the-world scenarios.

In Polish:

Hili: Prorocy nigdy nie patrzą wstecz.
Ja: Faktycznie nie spotkałem rzetelnej statystyki przewidywanych i niespełnionych końców świata.

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From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Meow Incorporated:

From TherionArms:

Several readers sent me this AI song, which shows how Jews are guilty of nearly everything that goes wrong in the world (we’re also guilty of causing hot coffee to be spilled on people’s laps).

BRILLIANT 😂 pic.twitter.com/tCq3dJMnAB

— Kosher (@koshercockney) August 3, 2026

From Luana. It’s stuff like this that depresses me about the Democratic Party (though Piker is probably a Democratic Socialist):

Some recent quotes from leftists:

“I am Guatemalan before I am American.” – Delia Ramirez

“America is a fucking disgrace.” – Darializa Avila Chevalier

“America is a shithole built on slavery and genocide and rape and oppression.” – Rashida Tlaib

– “I am ashamed of the U.S.… https://t.co/sOcv6Ifjy6

— Bad Hombre (@Badhombre) August 3, 2026

From Masih; another young Iranian, a kickboxer, is going to be killed as a political prisoner. Do listen to his brother (there are English subtitles):

Urgent:
Iranian kickboxer is going to be hanged very soon after supreme court ruling!

I beg everyone: listen to his brother’s voice in this video and help us stop the Islamic Republic from executing him.

Benyamin Naghdi, is only 26-year-old, and he is a champion from Shiraz.… pic.twitter.com/37MIntsmLG

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) August 4, 2026

 

One from the Number Ten Cat, who makes an excellent joke:

Dai. Or dai not. There is no try. https://t.co/Tu9gwthqDD

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) August 4, 2026

One from my feed (it’s a lie, of course):

Jason Arday is one of the most talented, honest, decent, intelligent human beings I know.

This is a photo of us together on top of Everest. We climbed Everest 18 times to raise money for blind Palestinian orphans.

Jason didn’t even use oxygen. That tank on his back? That’s for… pic.twitter.com/e0mKwZ3JYM

— Climate Warrior🐬 #ClimateJustice🇵🇸🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 (@ClimateWarrior7) August 4, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish girl was gassed to death, along with her mom and younger sister, as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz. Bella was thirteen years old. https://t.co/5YbY5NWZM1

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) August 5, 2026

And one from Doc Cobb, which he excitedly titles “A sprite!” Indeed it is!

🔭 Астронавту Николь Айерс повезло заснять с борта МКС голубой джет – молния, бьющая вверх из облака.

— Старый Ворон/Old Raven (@oldvalravn.bsky.social) 2026-07-28T05:04:23.584Z