Wednesday: Hili dialogue

This is the first “Hili dialogue” post without a new Hili dialogue. I don’t want to recycle old ones, at least today, and don’t know if I’ll retitle these posts, which have been going for over a decade.  What do you think.

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Środek tygodnia” in Polish): Wednesday, November 4, 2026, and National Candy Day. Below you see a box of the apotheosis of affordable American quality chocolates: See’s.  One of my great pleasures is going into one of See’s brick-and-mortar shops and picking out a pound, chocolate by chocolate (they let you do that, and even give you a gratis chocolate to eat). I believe some kind reader sent this box to me a decade ago:

It’s also Eat Smart Day, National Chicken Lady Day, and National Skeptics Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 4 Wikipedia page.

UPDATE: Democrats won nearly everything yesterday, taking both Houses of Congress. See my early-morning post here. The news below was written yesterday afternoon.

Da Nooz:  (Excuse me if the news is truncated, as I’m sluggish today because Hili died.)

*Trump just announced a cutoff in military aid to Israel, largely as a last-minute way of defusing a talking point that the Democrats are using (that this is seen as a positive talking point tells us where we are.)

President Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. would cut off military aid to Israel by the end of the year, suggesting the phaseout of grants to the U.S. ally could occur much faster than expected.

“We won’t be paying anymore to Israel,” Trump said during an interview with Fox News on Election Day. “We’ve already agreed that by the end of this year, we won’t be paying Israel.”

The phasing out of direct U.S. military aid to Israel has been under discussion for months, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly saying the country should eventually wean itself off U.S. assistance. Netanyahu had previously proposed eliminating direct military aid over the next decade.

The White House and an Israeli government spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“As far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year and we made a deal months ago that we’re stopping and they’re fine with it,” Trump said. “They’ve become a very successful country. They don’t need it.”

According to the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. has provided Israel with about $174 billion in military assistance and funding through May 2025.

Trump cast the decision as a political calculation, arguing that ending the aid would deprive Democrats and other critics of Israel of a political talking point. “Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like El-Sayed when they don’t need it? It’s a bad talking point,” he said, referring to Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee. “The left uses the $4 billion payment…as a signal of unfairness. It’s almost too easy a target.”

El-Sayed has campaigned on ending unconditional grant payments to Israel.

It’s a shame Trump had to say it’s a way to go after Democrats, which is an insult to Israel’s autonomy and suggests that his alliance with Israel is paper thin or nonexistent.  He’s being an opportunist at the expense of the Jewish state. If the Israeli government is okay with this, then fine: it’s probably for the good that Israel wean itself away from the U.S. in this way. But remember, nearly all the money that the government gives to Israel for military aid is required to be spent buying weapons and other stuff from American companies. In the end, it’s one way the government has to funnel money from American taxpayers to the “military-industrial complex.”

*It’s a little earlier than I predicted, and it’s not clear how much of an escalation this is, but on Monday Trump ordered strikes on Iranian targets in the Gulf of Hormuz.

The United States launched strikes on Iranian targets, a U.S. official said, in what appeared to be a limited operation on the eve of Tuesday’s crucial midterm elections.

Iranian state media reported explosions being heard on the islands of Qeshm and Hengam in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, and in the nearby mainland area of Bandar Abbas. Unlike earlier in the war, the strikes were not publicly announced.

President Donald Trump previously said the U.S. wouldn’t launch strikes on Iran before the midterms. The unpopular war and the resulting impact on U.S. gasoline prices and other parts of the economy have been a vulnerability for his Republican Party as it tries to keep control of Congress.

A U.S. official, who wasn’t authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Monday that the strikes targeted Iranians using surface-to-air missiles against the U.S. in the strait. The move came as Iran said it had a two-day plan to reopen the critical waterway, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil supply flowed during peacetime, and resume nuclear talks with the United States.

. . .Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed for another wave of strikes on Iran after the U.S. elections, according to two regional officials and a third person familiar with the matter.

A return to full-scale war with Iran could help Netanyahu form an emergency government after he and his far-right allies lost their parliamentary majority in last week’s elections. Trump has alternated between threatening major strikes and pushing for a deal with Iran.

The two officials said diplomatic efforts have made progress and that mediators are trying to advance a framework for Iran to cease its attacks in the Strait of Hormuz in return for the U.S. lifting its blockade on Iran’s ports.

They said more talks are planned for this week

I give up on any more predictions, including about what the U.S. is trying to do with Iran. Perhaps there’s a secret plan, but Trump hasn’t seen fit to make his objectives clear to the American people.  Initially they were to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons, with a brief mention of the people taking back the government, but we’ve heard precious little lately.

*Over at the Free Press, James Kirchick writes about Haley Stevens “treasonous defection” from the Democratic Party in a piece called, “When ‘Country over Party’ goes only one way” (the subtitle is “Haley Stevens is being called a traitor, but by reversing her endorsement of Abdul El-Sayed, she is showing exactly the kind of courage moderate Democrats once cheered.”) h/t: Barry. The article starts off with a comparison between Stevens and Liz Cheney:

Running for Senate two years ago, Michigan Democratic congresswoman Elissa Slotkin proudly accepted an endorsement from her former Republican colleague Liz Cheney. “It is a privilege to be here in Grand Rapids, the hometown of former President Gerald Ford,” Slotkin said to a room full of people holding “Republicans for Slotkin” and “Country over Party” placards. The 38th president, who also happened to be a Republican, “was a leader who understood courage in public service and putting your country over your party.”

Fast-forward to the weekend before the 2026 midterms, when another of Slotkin’s congressional colleagues, this one a fellow Democrat from Michigan, decided that she too could no longer stomach the burgeoning extremism in her party.

“Anyone who makes an election this important about themselves, and not Michiganders and our democracy, should think hard about whether they are serving the greater good,” Slotkin posted on X with respect to her fellow Michigander Haley Stevens, who had earlier that morning revoked her endorsement of Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and thrown her backing to Republican nominee Mike Rogers.

As we know, Stevens was disinvited as a supporter of El-Sayed because he refused to condemn two ads (not one), at which point she endorsed the Republican.

Compared to her fellow Democrats, Slotkin was mild in her rebuke to Stevens. “A despicable betrayal,” thundered Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer. “She’s evil,” seethed far-left shock jock Mehdi Hasan. “This person stands for absolutely nothing but herself,” fumed former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau.

Stevens’s switch was easily preventable. After losing the primary to El-Sayed by a single percentage point this August, Stevens immediately endorsed him. Earlier last week, however, a PAC run by progressive podcast host Cenk Uygur released an online advertisement, the message of which could have been lifted straight from the crusty pages of Der Stürmer. A couple is shopping at a supermarket when the wife tells her husband to “put those eggs back” because “we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.” When the husband points out plaintively that Israel has “universal healthcare,” she replies, “We’re paying for that too, probably.” Even the noted white nationalist Richard Spencer was embarrassed by this clumsy foray into fascist propaganda, lambasting Uygur for his “clownishly antisemitic” ad. All that was missing was a black screen at the end with the slogan Die Juden sind unser Unglück—the Jews are our misfortune.

. . .Since mounting his Senate bid, El-Sayed has given decent Michiganders across the political spectrum ample reason to believe that they too do not belong in his campaign. There was his callous remark after a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist rammed a car into a Jewish day school in a thankfully failed attempt to murder 120 children and their teachers: “hurt people hurt people.” There was his refusal to acknowledge the death of Ayatollah Khamenei because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad.” There was his decision to campaign multiple times with Hasan Piker, the Mao- and Castro-loving useless idiot who recently compared suburban Jewish Michigan voters to the KKK. There was his outrageous statement that Israel represents a threat to the United States as great or even greater than Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and a regime with the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands. There was his courting voters at mosques whose imams cursed this country as the “House of Satan” and called for the “final annihilation of Jews.” This is a man who should never get a security clearance, never mind a seat in the United States Senate.

In an attempt to distract the electorate from these clear disqualifications, El-Sayed’s defenders would have us believe that expressing concerns about them is “Islamophobia.” It’s true that President Trump and others have made bigoted remarks about El-Sayed and his faith, and for that they should be condemned. But it’s not Michigan’s mosques that are under 24-hour security, nor is it Michigan’s Muslims who are being instructed to “sacrifice” their “own safety” and “future” in support of a candidate whose beliefs and associations represent a clear and present danger to them.

. . .But the question in this election actually has very little to do with those things. The question is El-Sayed’s radicalism. So important is his antisemitic worldview that El-Sayed is willing to lose a winnable seat rather than simply admit that, no, the Zionist lobby isn’t responsible for the rise in the cost of bananas, or your skyrocketing healthcare premiums, or the dismal student-teacher ratio in your child’s school.

What’s shocking isn’t Haley Stevens’s decision to wash her hands of El-Sayed and his rancid campaign, but that so few other Democrats have had the moral courage to emulate her. “Country over Party,” apparently, only goes one way. For those calling Stevens a “despicable” “traitor,” I have four words for you:

Hurt people hurt people.

Ouch! But “hurt” here means hurt feelings, not physical injury.

*The NYT reports that, in violation of the law, medical insurance companies are simply refusing to pay for some emergency care. It begins by recounting how the insurance company Anthem has stopped paying “Flight for Life,” an organization that flies patients who need immediate care to hospitals. This stoppage is against the law.

. . .The insurer’s willful nonpayment is the latest in a cascade of unintended consequences brought about by a widely supported law that was intended to protect patients from surprise medical bills.

The law, which took effect in 2022, calls for arbitrators to decide appropriate levels of reimbursement, and it has already triggered millions of disputes between medical care providers and insurers. Doctors have prevailed overwhelmingly, winning arbitration settlements that sometimes far exceeded the usual insurer rates.

Now, fed up with what they consider unfair outcomes, insurers are fighting back by refusing to pay.

The law, the No Surprises Act, was enacted with a large bipartisan majority to ensure patients never got excessive bills in situations, like emergencies, where they could not pick their doctors.

The arbitration system set up by the law was supposed to resolve billing disputes when health care providers and insurers could not agree on a price: An arbitrator reviews a proposed dollar amount from each side and decides which one is most reasonable. Insurers are required to pay that amount within 30 days, and billing patients for anything beyond that is prohibited.

Lawmakers expected the system to be used rarely and to produce reasonable payments. Instead, doctors and other health care providers have been swamping arbitrators with millions of claims, often for amounts that far exceed what is customarily paid for a service. And they have won the vast majority of their cases — sometimes receiving sums such as $440,000 for a breast reduction, $73,000 for an ankle X-ray, or $125,000 for assisting on prostate surgery.

Insurers have sued doctors and lobbied Congress to change the law, contending that the large awards and lopsided results are driving up health insurance premiums.

But with Washington moving slowly, they have adopted the strategy of simply declining to pay.

Everyone is at fault here: the doctors who overbill, the insurance companies who refuse to pay, and the government, which is moving too slowly. Since the law was a bipartisan bill, an important task of the new government should be to simply speed up the system. Here’s the NYT’s list of the frequency with which various insurance companies pay arbitrated settlements. Anthem and Cigna are by far the worst offenders, and remember, this is after the arbitration figure is set:

*A WaPo op-ed by Columbia biology professor Stuart Firestein emphasizes that the uncertainty of scientific results is not a bug in science, but a feature, for uncertainty is an essential part of science.

If you are worried about the world’s uncertainties, science has an answer for your anxiety. In fact, uncertainty is an essential part of science. It is what makes science the most powerful system for accumulating knowledge that humanity has ever devised. In science, revision is a victory.

This is not the science that you were taught in school, where there was a single right answer to every question on the test. But it is the real practice of science.

There is a tendency to ask: “How can uncertainty lead to knowledge?” But that’s the wrong question. Uncertainty is knowledge. To make progress, scientists depend on the fact that there is always the potential to improve existing knowledge, and they know that any scientific finding — no matter how powerful — can be refined. This is the nature of the scientific method, the process by which scientists collect data and test their hypotheses. In fact, a good scientific finding always acknowledges its limitations — which then point to what needs future investigation. Understanding and appreciating uncertainty for the possibilities it presents, in other words, are the keys to successful science.

If the world’s uncertainties are raising your blood pressure, you are in luck: You can take one of nine different classes of medication for hypertension, each working through a distinct pathway — despite the fact that scientists are still uncertain what regulates blood pressure in the first place. Roughly 90 percent of hypertension diagnoses are idiopathic, meaning a doctor cannot identify its root cause. Yet, here as elsewhere, imperfect knowledge means the potential for progress: Better drugs, or alternatives to drugs, may emerge as understanding improves. In the meantime, these medications have already prevented millions of premature deaths since their introduction 50 years ago.

Everyone benefits from scientific advances. I cannot imagine that anyone would prefer to be sick 25 years ago rather than today. Yes, some scientific progress has produced unintended, or even regrettable, consequences: The chemistry behind anesthetics advanced from research on the atomic bomb. But either way, it is not so much the shiny products of progress that have had the greatest effect. It is the ideaof progress, which has altered how human beings see the world.

Asking science to be definitive is making the wrong demand. Science gives the best answer, or answers, available — not the final word, but a provisional answer, with some indication of how dependable it is.

. . . Uncertainty in the practice of science is optimistic. Yes, optimistic: the optimism of possibility, of being able to imagine that things could be otherwise. Don’t wait around for the final answer that will never come. Take your blood pressure medicine. Act on the nearly correct science we have now.

Unsettled science is not unsound science. It is the real science.

Well, all scientists know this, but perhaps the lesson needs to be given to the public each generation. But the author neglects a very important point: some scientific knowledge is as close to absolute truth as you can envision. Examples: every normal water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.  The Earth revolves around the Sun, and is smaller than the Sun. Whales evolved from terrestrial mammals. And so on. Any of us would bet our life savings on the veracity of these statements, and that is close to absolute truth as you can get.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being laid to rest, presumably in the garden.

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

From The Absurd Sign Project Uncensored:

From Wholesome Memes:

From Meow:

From Masih: an actress who gave up everything: her career, her health, and her freedom—just for posting one photo of herself without a hijab:

Shocking…
This is Taraneh Alidoosti. The actress who represented Iranian cinema to the world, the star of the film that won the Oscar. What did she do? She posted one photo without the hijab during Woman Life Freedom uprising in 2022 to show her solidarity with the People of Iran .

That is all. She said no to executions, no to the crackdown. That same week they came to her home and took her to Evin prison. When she was released, she was no longer the same Taraneh. Doctors diagnosed her with a rare illness that made her skin fall off and ravaged her body. She is still under treatment.

They say it was caused by drug interaction. Which drugs? What did they give her in that prison? No one answers. Today this photo is going viral across Iran because people want to see the price of one photo without hijab. To the regime it was just a photo.

To us, Taraneh is a woman who gave up everything: her career, her cinema, her health. And even now, in silence, mourning her father, she has not bowed. Taraneh, you did not just remove the hijab. You tore off their mask. We are your voice.

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) November 3, 2026

Did you know that Hasan Piker, who campaigned not only for El-Sayed but also for Zohran Mamdani:

The most successful streamer and young media capitalist today is Hasan Piker is worth $40M. He makes >$4M/year.

His business model? Denouncing capitalism, praising Fidel Castro, dressing like Mao Zedong.

He campaigned extensively for Abdul El-Sayed. https://t.co/c5jn28h5WZ

— Kevin Bass (@kevinnbass) November 2, 2026

From Malcolm: a man speaking fluent cat:

A cat totally freaked out by a human speaking cat language🐱 https://t.co/45beXAFiu1

— The Meow Cats (@TheMeowCats) October 20, 2026

The Number Ten cat is not just Labour, but a Democrat. Here he talks to Trump:

Donald Trump likes to talk but today it’s time for him to listen. Make sure he hears you, America.

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) November 3, 2026

Two from my feed. First, a real hero:

WATCH🚨: Knife to the flight attendant’s throat—she’s crying, screaming for her mama. Then a passenger steps up: ‘My turn.’ He swaps in, strips the blade, drops the attacker, and hands him to police.

Bravest airport move of the year. Absolute hero. 👊🏿✈️🔪 https://t.co/YEZsKrCogp

— Whiplash437 (@MrWhiplash_) November 2, 2026

A brave moggy:

Cats are cold blooded psychos. This lunatic just stared down 4 wild racoons like it was nothing. https://t.co/0uIi2FU3qD

— Mr_Fireside 🔥 (@Mr_Fireside) November 2, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auchwitz. He was 12 years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-11-04T12:30:00.741Z

And one from Dr. Cobb. There’s an informative thread about this snake, which is a hybrid species that produces only clones of the mother from unfertilized eggs:

This 'earthworm' has a flickering tongue! And that's because it's NOT an earthworm, it's a Brahminy blind snake (Indotyphlops braminus).They live in the dirt, eating insect larvae, harmless to humans.Let's talk about this ALL-FEMALE SPECIES & their genetics.(📷: thezenhenandthehoneybee, IG)

— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2026-11-03T13:59:54.286Z