Good morning on Monday, Sept. 11, 2023: 22 years from the demise of the Twin Towers.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, I suspect the “previous excuses” came from me.
Hili: Do you really not have a cat?
Sarah: I can’t. I’m travelling a lot.
Hili: I’ve heard such excuses before.(Photo: Sarah Lawson)
Hili: Naprawdę nie masz kota?Sarah: Nie mogę, dużo podróżuję. Hili: Słyszałam takie wykręty.(Zdjęcie S.L.)
Da Nooz (truncated):
Here’s the upper-left corner of today’s NYT, where the reader’s attention is naturally drawn. More and more this section is becoming a tabloid, or at least having nothing to do with real news but rather with clickbait:
My reaction (from reader Kamil):
*In a NYT op-ed, Democrat Michael Bloomberg suggests “How Biden and Congress should fix the immigration crisis in our cities.” It’s not a call for restricted immigration at all—that “fix” isn’t even mentioned, though his views on it should have been included—but for a rationale and humane way of treating immigrants:
For starters, current federal law prevents asylum seekers who have already been admitted into the United States from immediately working. The process of receiving a work authorization can take a year or longer. In the meantime, how are asylum seekers expected to pay rent and feed themselves and their families? This amounts to state-enforced poverty and vagrancy — against people who have shown extraordinary fortitude and grit in journeying here, often at great risk, for the opportunity to work and build a better life.
In New York City, denying people the ability to work is especially taxing because of a 1981 legal settlement, in which the city agreed to provide shelter to all homeless residents seeking it. That agreement was never intended to be a blanket guarantee of housing for an unprecedented flow of refugees, but that is what it has become.
The city has done an admirable job of finding, in short order, shelter for the more than 100,000 asylum seekers who have arrived since last spring. Currently, the city is housing about 60,000 in some 200 sites, which has forced it to take over more than 140 hotels. According to the Mayor’s Office, the cost to taxpayers, at $383 a night, is running into billions of dollars a year. The New York City mayor, Eric Adams, has been pleading for months, to little avail, for federal support to deal with a flood of asylum seekers.
New York is hardly alone. Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Denver and other cities are also experiencing an influx of asylum seekers who have no housing and no means of legally earning money. Meanwhile, the federal government is failing to provide the resources necessary to hear asylum cases in anything approaching an expeditious fashion. It can take six or seven years for an applicant’s case to be resolved.
Think about it: We have a system that essentially allows an unlimited number of people to cross our borders, forbids them from working, offers them free housing, and grants them seven years of residency before ruling on whether they can legally stay. It would be hard to devise a more backward and self-defeating system.
Indeed. Kamala Harris was supposed to be in charge of the fix, but what has she done? You know the answer to that. (She could even have urged Biden to do the fix, but she has too few neurons.)
*In a Quillette piece that will surely inspire a lot of discussion (and rancor), “Academia’s missing men,” Lawrence Krauss argues that parity has now been reached in the treatment of women and men in academics, though women haven’t yet made up the gap produced by the disproportionate number of senior academic men who were hired decades ago. Have a look at his statistics and see if we need to continue academic affirmative action for women, or, as Krauss urges, to “take our thumb off the scales.”
*WSJ op-eds are almost 100% conservative but are still worth scanning. Here’s one which rings true, about an issue we read about two days ago, “Democrats start to panic about Biden.” And it’s true: they are and they should. Why? From the WSJ:
• His age and decline. The press has tried to cover for Mr. Biden, but voters trust their own eyes. Some 73% of registered voters in the latest Wall Street Journal poll say Mr. Biden is too old to run for President. Mr. Biden turns 81 in two months, and aging can accelerate at any moment. The White House will attempt to repeat a Rose Garden version of the 2020 Wilmington basement strategy, but it may not work.
• Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Biden chose her as his running mate in 2020 to meet his party’s identity politics demands. But it has backfired as she has shown little capacity to be Commander in Chief and is often embarrassing in interviews. Everyone knows a vote for Mr. Biden in 2024 is probably a vote for President Harris, and Republicans will make the point through Election Day if she stays on the ticket.
• Hunter Biden and the family business. House Republicans have already exposed enough details to confirm the President’s son’s use of the Biden name—“the brand,” as business partner Devon Archer put it—to enrich the family. The press can say there’s no evidence that Joe Biden received a check, but Democrats don’t know what remains to be uncovered.
Mr. Trump will be relentless in prosecuting all of this politically, and the danger for Democrats is that the Biden family influence-peddling will end up neutralizing Mr. Trump’s indictments as a liability. That’s what he did to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
• The economy. The economy has rebounded this year, and third-quarter growth has been strong, but a slowdown is expected in the months ahead. Despite falling inflation, real incomes are still a long way from recovering from the price increases of the last 30 months. If unemployment rises to 5% or 6%, there will be political damage to Democrats and not much ability to counter it.
• The spreading migrant mess. Has there ever been a bigger self-inflicted policy wound than the Biden Administration’s refusal to deter and stop the migrant flood at the U.S.-Mexico border? Mr. Biden refuses to challenge his progressive base on asylum law, and the damage has spread far and wide. Elected Democratic officials are crying for help. Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Biden supporter, is warning Democrats that this will damage the party in 2024 if they don’t act. [See above for what Bloomberg really suggests.]
*The U.S. (Tennis) open has become bedeviled by the odor of weed. The AP report has a cool simile that I’ll highlight.
It’s become a stink at the U.S. Open: a pungent marijuana smell that wafted over an outer court, clouded the concentration of one of the world’s top players and left the impression there’s no place left to escape the unofficial scent of the city.
While the exact source of the smell remained a mystery Tuesday, one thing was clear: Court 17, where eighth-seeded Maria Sakkari complained about an overwhelming whiff of pot during her first-round loss, has become notorious among players in recent years for its distinctive, unmistakable odor.
“Court 17 definitely smells like Snoop Dogg’s living room,” said Alexander Zverev, the tournament’s 12th-seeded man who won his opening match on the court Tuesday. “Oh my God, it’s everywhere. The whole court smells like weed.”
Stung by stories in the wake of Sakkari’s match Monday that made it appear the U.S. Open’s stands are the sporting equivalent of a Phish concert, the United States Tennis Association conducted its own investigation, of sorts, to weed out the source of the smell.
Spokesman Chris Widmaier said the USTA questioned officials and reviewed video of the midday match and found “no evidence” anyone was smoking pot in the stands of Court 17, leading to speculation it may have come from Corona Park just outside the gates of the intimate stadium court.
From the Absurd Sign Project:
From Jesus of the Day, titled, “Smol SQUEE found a warms.”
From Stash Krod, a Doug Savage cartoon:
A woman films her hijab-less and skirt-wearing daughter for Masih:
Iran unmasked: A mother courageously films her daughter without the mandatory hijab and sent me the video, urging other girls to embrace their choice. The Islamic regime’s narrative that the hijab is intrinsic to Iranian culture is false. Don’t be deceived. #WomanLifeFreedom pic.twitter.com/3vLUDrOKmC
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) September 10, 2023
More gender mishigass from Luana:
Two transgender cyclists have destroyed the female competition at the Illinois State Championships.
One of the biological male gold medalists was in a "throuple" with another transgender athlete who was caught shoving a female competitor in 2022.
"Evelyn Williamson" previously… pic.twitter.com/VBoJRFHhiR
— Cassandra MacDonald (@CassandraRules) September 9, 2023
Titania is back tweeting again (about time!), and she has three. Here’s one, with a link to her latest article:
I can think of nothing more empowering for women than referring to a vagina as a “bonus hole”.
My latest column for @TheCriticMag.https://t.co/ugFOenXoIX
— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) September 9, 2023
From Malcolm; I guess this cat’s job is trying to stay on the laptop.
— cats with jobs 🛠 (@CatWorkers) August 31, 2023
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:
A girl, age 12, gassed with her entire family upon arrival. https://t.co/lgwUFy3LRj
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 11, 2023
Tweets from Dr. Cobb. Yes, this could inspire children’s books—so long that the authors are cats:
Thx to #OpenHouse we visited the floating roof gardens of Tower Bridge Moorings (40 years old now!) & met the resident cat. And if THIS photo doesn’t inspire an entire range of children’s books based on the cat & barge community’s city fringe escapades I’ll be VERY disappointed pic.twitter.com/ES224WNJ7Q
— Tim Dunn (@MrTimDunn) September 11, 2023
Yes, it’s ok to laugh—afterwards:
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at this story…https://t.co/qznJfPsXFf
— Dr Sunil Rodger 🇺🇦 @sunildvr@mastodon.scot (@sunildvr) September 7, 2023
Was the cat named STELLLLAAAAAAA!?
Marlon Brando and his Cat (1954) pic.twitter.com/0OW1IYutYb
— Professor Amanda Vickery (@Amanda_Vickery) September 5, 2023