Category: Hili Dialogue

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 31, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day, and the last day of the month: March 31, 2026, and a day that will not be celebrated: César Chávez Day  (he was born on this day in 1927).  He was of course credibly accused of sexual abuse and sexual assault. California has renamed today Farmworkers Day,  The AP reports on the rebranding efforts:

Efforts have been swift and widespread to rebrand events ahead of what typically was a day to celebrate the life and legacy of the Latino rights advocate on his birthday, March 31.

In Tucson, Arizona, last weekend’s celebration was instead billed as a community and labor fair. In Grand Junction, Colorado, it’s now the Sí, Se Puede Celebration. El Paso, Texas, will mark Tuesday as Community and Labor Heritage Day.

Lawmakers in Minnesota voted this week to end the César Chavez holiday in their state, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed a bill to rename César Chavez Day as Farmworkers Day. In Colorado, lawmakers were considering a bill to rename the voluntary state holiday there to Farm Workers Day.

Renaming efforts also are underway for dozens of schools, streets and other locations across the United States that are named for Chavez, including the national monument in Keene, California.

The resulting conversations have been anything but easy as supporters grapple with conflicted feelings while sorting out how best to honor what was a pivotal labor and civil rights effort in the United States.

The sorting out so far has involved simply taking off Chávez’s name from everything.

It’s also Eiffel Tower Day, International Taco Day, International Transgender Day of Visibility, National Clams on the Half Shell Day, National Tater Day, and National Crayon Day (does Crayola still make Burnt Umber?).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 31 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Here’s this morning’s NYT headlines, emphasizing All the Bad News That’s Fit to Print.  It’s pretty much all about oil and gas prices.

*And here’s the war news yesterday from It’s Noon in Israel (their bolding):

It’s Monday, March 30, and the thirty-first day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $115, up two percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:

  • Spain has closed its airspace to US planes involved in attacks on Iran, going a step further than its earlier decision to deny American forces use of jointly operated military bases. The closure forces US aircraft to bypass Spain when flying to Middle East targets, though exceptions apply in emergencies. Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo said the move reflects Spain’s stance of not participating in “a war initiated unilaterally and against international law.”
  • For the first time in his nearly 20 years as Prime Minister, Netanyahu successfully passed a budget in an election year—a milestone that secures the government through the end of its term. Even if the ultra-Orthodox were to withdraw from the coalition in the next legislative session and elections were called, the earliest they could be held would be September, making this the longest-serving government Israel has had since 1969. This historic budget came at a steep price: millions of shekels allocated to the Haredi sector.
  • IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has ordered the early removal of a battalion from Judea and Samaria, following an incident in which soldiers allegedly detained and assaulted a CNN crew while preventing them from filming at an illegal outpost. Soldiers were caught on camera stating that they were acting in revenge for the killing of settler Yehuda Sherman days earlier. The chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has demanded that Zamir reverse his decision.
  • President Isaac Herzog has responded to the Pardons Department’s recommendation regarding the pardon for Netanyahu. The department concluded that granting the pardon was inappropriate, but Herzog inquired politely—and firmly—whether it was legally possible despite its inappropriateness.

Now, on to the details.

Israel has invited the United States to relocate some of its regional bases from countries such as Qatar to Israel. But that raises a question:

Why is the U.S. regional headquarters in a country that actively sponsors terrorism?

It’s a relatively recent development. For decades, Saudi Arabia served as the U.S.’s regional headquarters. It was from there—not Qatar—that the U.S. assembled forces and ultimately launched the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait. After 9/11 and the Iraq War, the U.S. sought a host with fewer political constraints and a location that would recruit fewer jihadists by being farther from Islam’s two holiest sites. Qatar fit the bill: no political complications, billions of dollars in subsidies, and the ready-to-use Al Udeid Air Base.

Now, more than twenty years later, Israel is positioning itself as the U.S.’s new home away from home. The Israeli security establishment sees an opportunity to “reshape the map” of U.S. military positioning in the Middle East.

And more waffling by Trump, who’s claiming that there has been “great progress” in talks with Iran but also threatening Iran with bombardment of their power infrastructure if no agreement is reached. Further, he suggested yesterday that regime change had already been completed because whoever is in charge now is “much more reasonable” than the previous theocrats:

Though Iran’s clerical and military establishment remain in control of the country, and its most hard-line factions may even have emerged strengthened, Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “We’ve had regime change.”

“The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead,” he said. He suggested that Iran had moved onto its “third regime,” and that American negotiators were speaking to “a whole different group of people,” who have “been very reasonable.”

*On Wednesday the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of “birthright citizenship“, the Constitutional provision that ensures American citizenship for all people born on American soil.  Trump has challenged this provision of the 14th Amendment by stating that people born when their parents are in the U.S. illegally, or if they are on temporary visas, are not entitled to citizenship. This was the object of one of Trump’s notorious Executive Orders, and the administration is being sued in New Hampshire by “a group of expectant parents and their children who would be subject to the order.”  To me the case seems cut and dried: if you’re born here, you’re a citizen. But the NYT says that some legal experts dissent.

For generations, most legal experts and the courts have agreed that the Constitution guarantees citizenship to nearly all babies born in the United States.

But ever since Donald Trump issued an executive order to eliminate so-called birthright citizenship for the infants of undocumented immigrants and temporary residents, some conservative legal scholars have begun re-examining the history of the 14th Amendment, long understood as the source of the birthright guarantee.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the legality of Mr. Trump’s executive order, and some conservative legal experts say that, in light of new scholarship, it might be a closer call than once thought.

“A lot of people, when Trump first started talking about it, thought this is crazy,” said John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, who was a top lawyer in the George W. Bush administration. “But in the intervening years, a lot more serious people are taking it seriously.”

Even as the legal debate has grown more robust, many legal experts, including Professor Yoo, remain confident that a majority of justices across the ideological spectrum will rule against Mr. Trump’s quest to redefine citizenship. Doing so would mean another major defeat for Mr. Trump in front of a court that includes three of his own nominees. Last month, the court invalidated the president’s sweeping tariffs on imports from major U.S. trading partners.

The issue:

The debate over the bounds of birthright citizenship moves from law review articles to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, in a historic case that will test the president’s power and the common understanding of what it means to be an American.

The Trump administration is asking the court to reinterpret the 14th Amendment, which was added to the Constitution in 1868 after the Civil War. The amendment reversed the Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Dred Scott, which in 1857 had denied citizenship to Black Americans. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” the amendment declared.

The key question for the justices is what it means for a person to be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, a phrase that courts have for more than 125 years interpreted as meaning nearly everyone born on U.S. soil.

But the Justice Department says the passage has been misread for decades to grant citizenship to the children of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, incentivizing foreigners to travel to the U.S. to have babies.

I’ll put my money on the court ruling against Trump.

*Iran has 1000 pounds of enriched uranium sitting somewhere, and now Trump has announced that he’s pondering using American ground troops to kidnap it.

President Trump is weighing a military operation to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium from Iran, according to U.S. officials, a complex and risky mission that would likely put American forces inside the country for days or longer.

Trump hasn’t made a decision on whether to give the order, the officials said, adding that he is considering the danger to U.S. troops. But the president remains generally open to the idea, according to the officials, because it could help accomplish his central goal of preventing Iran from ever making a nuclear weapon.

The president has also encouraged his advisers to press Iran to agree to surrender the material as a condition for ending the war, according to a person familiar with Trump’s thinking. Trump has been clear in conversations with political allies that the Iranians can’t keep the material, and he has discussed seizing it by force if Iran won’t give it up at the negotiating table.

. . . Before Israel and the U.S. conducted a series of airstrikes on Iran in June last year, the country was believed to have more than 400 kilograms of 60% highly enriched uranium, and nearly 200 kilograms of 20% fissile material, which is easily converted into 90%-weapons-grade uranium.

. . . The president and at least some of his allies have said privately it would be possible to seize the material in a targeted operation that wouldn’t significantly extend the timeline of the war and still enable the U.S. to be done with the conflict by mid-April, according to the person familiar with the discussions.

I wouldn’t want to be part of that operation. There’s not only the danger of radioactivity, but the U.S. has already signalled to Iran that it may go after the uranium. So of course they’re going to guard it extra closely.

*According to the FIRE Substrack site Expression (article by Sean Stevens), cancellations on U.S. campuses reached a record high in 2026. We’re talking about successful cancellations;  because 2026 over yet, we don’t know about the final number of cancellations. But the success rate is over 90%, and that’s disturbing (h/t Luana).

Only three months into the year, campus deplatforming is already on pace to set a disturbing new record, and if current trends hold, 2026 won’t just be a bad year for campus free speech. It’ll be the worst year on record for campus deplatformings.

FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database tracks efforts to stop public expression on college campuses — disinviting speakers, canceling performances or film screenings, removing art, or disrupting events while they are happening. In just the first three months of this year, there have been 70 such attempts. Even worse, 65 of those attempts succeeded — the highest success rate we’ve ever recorded in any year with 10 or more attempts.

Here is the success rate of deplatforming (speakers prevented from speaking or appearing) since 2000, followed by the graph of number of deplatforming attempts over the same period.  (Note that we’re only three months into 2026.)  Everything is creeping up.

A couple of examples from this year:

This week, the University of Southern California scrapped a gubernatorial debate after excluded candidates complained about the race of those invited — they were all white. [See tweet below.] This shut down what should’ve been one of the clearest examples of a university serving as a forum for democratic exchange. Universities often claim to prepare students for civic participation. Canceling a debate involving major political figures because the controversy “created a significant distraction from the issues that matter to voters,” sends the opposite message. Namely, that even core political discourse can be treated as too difficult or too risky to host.

At New York University, the administration reportedly told student organizers that they could not invite certain music performers to a concert because the performers were affiliated with the No Music for Genocide boycott of Israel. That decision illustrates an especially troubling dynamic: universities are not only reacting to speech after the fact, but increasingly preempting it.

The University of North Texas removed an art exhibit after an anonymous tip alleged the show included artwork denouncing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. UNT also just revoked approval for a drag show after the university system lifted its systemwide pause on drag performances last August.

The Catholic University of America rejected requests from the campus chapter of Students Supporting Israel to host Randy Fine and Dany Turza at two separate events because the discussions would not feature a “balanced presentation” of views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So much for freedom of speech. If you want to see everthing FIRE has recorded over the years, and who did the deplatforming, go to FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database. So far this year most of the deplatformings have come from the political right—a change from a few years ago when the Left did most of the censoring.

*The NYT has a semi-animated article on all the problems with Trump’s rush to remodel the East Wing of the White House into a giant ballroom. The normal scrutiny and approvals applied to such renovations have been almost completely neglected. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, directed by Carol Quillen, has sued the Administration about this matter:

The National Capital Planning Commission is scheduled on Thursday to take a final vote approving President Trump’s ballroom, clearing the last review for a major addition to the White House that was publicly unveiled in detail only in January. Last month, another panel led by the president’s allies, the Commission of Fine Arts, discussed the ballroom for 12 minutes before unanimously approving it.

The hurried reviews, with construction cranes already swiveling above the White House grounds, are an abrupt departure from how new monuments, museums and even modest renovations have been designed and refined in the capital for decades. And the ballroom will be worse off for it, architects warn.

“Even if we are slow and we make mistakes and we fight, that process has meaning to us,” Ms. Quillen said. No project belonging to the public should be the vision of just one man, she said.

That is, however, how the ballroom has often been described.

“President Trump is the best builder and developer in the entire world, and the American people can rest well knowing that this project is in his hands,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. Past administrations and presidents have wanted a ballroom for more than 150 years, he said, and Mr. Trump will accomplish it.

But in the sprint to complete it before the end of his term, the addition appears to have compressed the normal design evolution for any project.

As recently as October, the president was still increasing the ballroom’s capacity, the kind of decision needed at the concept stage. And the White House has said it plans to begin building in the spring, a timeline that would mean construction documents would have to be prepared even as the design was still under review. (Before a judge demanded in December that the project seek review by these two commissions, the administration appeared poised to skip them entirely.)

No, I don’t rest well knowing that Trump is the best “builder and developer in the entire world,” but, like so much of what Trump does, the deed is done before the process is vetted and adjudicated. So it goes.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there’s a three-way conversation in the kitchen—about food, of course.

Andrzej: What are you doing here?
Hili: We’re waiting for appetite to rise again.
Szaron: She’s always talking like that.

In Polish:

Ja: Co tu robicie?
Hili: Czekamy na zmartwychwstanie apetytu.
Szaron: Ona tak zawsze.

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

From Barry. I think this is a real sign but don’t want to think what’s behind it:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Give Me a Sign:

From Masih, who is in Germany calling for European nations to help Israel and the U.S. eliminate the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

Larry the Cat is posting again:

Re the FIRE report above, apparently Bill Maher tweeted a new rule just for that:

Two from my feed.  First, a real hero:

This is TRUE!:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

The debate over the bounds of birthright citizenship moves from law review articles to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, in a historic case that will test the president’s power and the common understanding of what it means to be an American.

The Trump administration is asking the court to reinterpret the 14th Amendment, which was added to the Constitution in 1868 after the Civil War. The amendment reversed the Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Dred Scott, which in 1857 had denied citizenship to Black Americans. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” the amendment declared.

The key question for the justices is what it means for a person to be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, a phrase that courts have for more than 125 years interpreted as meaning nearly everyone born on U.S. soil.

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But the Justice Department says the passage has been misread for decades to grant citizenship to the children of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, incentivizing foreigners to travel to the U.S. to have babies.

And two from Dr. Cobb, who will be in Lyme Regis for a few more days. He hasn’t had a vacation this long in 15 years.  I migfht have posted this first one but it’s worth seeing again. Elephants do indeed get drunk from this fruit (they also make a human cordial out of marula in South Africa).

Drunk elephants are real 🐘😂They just love Marula fruit and eat them when they’re fermented (with alcohol levels similar to beer) so end up hilariously tipsy! Reminds me of the Mead Hall on a Saturday night

— LadyFluffyOrca 🫍📎 🇵🇸🇬🇧🇺🇦 (@ladyfluffyorca.bsky.social) 2026-03-28T10:42:25.803Z

Of this one Matthew says, “Old but droll and true (I checked Snopes)”:

A new contender for best headline

— Will Kerslake (@wkerslake.bsky.social) 2026-03-29T19:22:41.739Z

Monday: Hili dialogue

March 30, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the penultimate day of the month: March 30, 2026, and National Hot Chicken Day. celebrating a fad that begin with Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in Nashville, Tennessee. Wikipedia even has an entry on “hot chicken” that includes this salacious lore:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that spicy fried chicken has been served in Nashville’s African-American communities for generations.  The dish may have been introduced as early as the 1930s; however, the current style of spice paste may only date back to the mid-1970s. It is generally accepted that the originator of hot chicken is the family of André Prince Jeffries, owner of Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. She has operated the restaurant since 1980; before that time, it was owned by her great-uncle, Thornton Prince III.  Jeffries says the development of hot chicken was an accident. Her great-uncle Thornton was purportedly a womanizer, and after a particularly late Saturday night out, his girlfriend at the time cooked him a fried chicken breakfast with extra pepper as revenge.  Instead, Thornton decided he liked it so much that, by the mid-1930s, he and his brothers had created their own recipe and opened the BBQ Chicken Shack café.

Hot chicken, indeed. Here’s a video (the higher degrees of hotness are apparently incendiary; I think this is a form of masochism):

It’s also Holy Monday and Turkey Neck Soup Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Part of yesterday’s war news from It’s Noon in Israel:, titled “Hezbollah begs for peace“:

It’s Sunday, March 29, and the thirtieth day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $112, up four percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:

  • The USS Tripoli and its Marine Expeditionary Unit have arrived from Japan, including the forces on the USS Boxer and reinforcements from the 82nd Airborne—this marks the largest U.S. military deployment to the region in over 20 years. Trump has extended his ultimatum on the Strait of Hormuz to April 6, while the Pentagon weighs sending up to 10,000 additional troops and prepares plans for limited, weeks-long ground operations focused on targets like Kharg Island rather than a full-scale invasion.
  • Iranian missiles and drones struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, damaging refueling aircraft and wounding 10–12 U.S. personnel, some critically, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. The aircraft seem to have been stationed on the tarmac when they were struck, in violation of U.S. Air Force protocol. Open-source imagery verified the attack, while the Pentagon has yet to comment.
  • According to Iran International, the president of Iran and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are in “deep disagreement.” The president warned that without a ceasefire, Iran’s economy could face total collapse within three weeks to a month.
  • Over the weekend, the Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel for the first time since the October 2025 ceasefire with Hamas. This marks their partial entry into the war. So far, they have refrained from attacking U.S. forces, limiting their attacks to Israel. The Yemen-based group has also yet to declare the closure of the region’s other oil chokepoint, the Bab al-Mandab, which would be a significant boon to Iran and mark their full entry into the conflict.
  • The IDF’s Alpinist force recently climbed from the Syrian slopes of Mount Hermon to Mount Dov in southern Lebanon in an operation against entrenched terrorist organizations along the Lebanese border. This marks the unit’s first cross-border operation in its more than fifty-year history—unsurprising given that Israel and the region are not known for an abundance of snow and cold weather.

At this point in the war, the question is less whether there will be a ceasefire and more what kind it will be—negotiated or unilateral. The reality Israel has understood from the outset is that the war in Iran is Trump’s to decide. When he is done, so is Israel—but the question is whether that principle applies to Lebanon as well.

Hezbollah is aware of this question. Behind the scenes, the group is pleading with Iran to be included in any negotiated agreement. Even a unilateral ceasefire—which would likely involve some degree of coordination behind the scenes—Hezbollah wants to be part of it.

*According to the NYT, “Iran is flooding the internet with disinformation and propaganda in an attempt to undermine support for the U.S. and Israeli attacks.” An excerpt:

The videos and posts relentlessly mock President Trump or vilify him as a bloodthirsty leader who strikes civilian targets indiscriminately. They make up content about attacks on American and Israeli targets, including one on Wednesday that featured a fabricated video of a missile striking Liberty Island in New York Harbor. They regularly mention Jeffrey Epstein.

Iran is waging what researchers have described as a sophisticated information war, aided by Russia and China, that is spreading content designed to exploit worldwide opposition to the U.S.-Israeli military campaign and deflect from the country’s considerable losses on the battlefield.

Nearly a month into the war, Iran’s state media outlets and covert operatives are producing a steady torrent of propaganda, overstated narratives and outright disinformation. They are often wielding generative A.I. tools to create increasingly realistic-looking images and videos, according to human rights organizations and research groups studying foreign influence.

Much of the false content has been debunked, but not before reaching millions of people on X, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms.

The information war, the researchers say, has given Iran’s beleaguered leadership a weapon almost as potent as its ability to disrupt the world’s energy economy by throttling shipments of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. While the impact of the information war can be difficult to measure, experts said it appeared to have stoked popular anger and unease about the conflict in the United States and beyond.

“They’re winning the propaganda war,” Darren L. Linvill, a director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, said of the Iranians. “They were prepared for it more than the administration, because they’d been preparing for this entire conflict for 50 years.”

. . . Many of the posts appear to come from accounts controlled by humans, rather than automated bots. Researchers at Clemson identified a furtive network of at least 62 accounts on X, Instagram and Bluesky that spread pro-Iranian content.

The Clemson site shows photos of a number of these fake accounts; I was amused to see that several of the bogus accounts were on Bluesky, the site that is supposed to be beyond hatred, showing hateful content:

*The Times of Israel reports that Tehran harbors a priceless collection of contemporary art, largely collected by Iran’s last queen, Farah Pahlavi, with much of the art unable to be shown because it violates Islamic standards.

This time last year, art enthusiasts in Tehran were celebrating an extraordinary event. A masterpiece by Pablo Picasso, “The Painter and His Model,” went on display in the city for only the second time in decades. It was shown at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in an exhibition entitled “Picasso in Tehran” — a rare highlighting of a different face of Iran, with similarly rare approval from the Islamic regime.

The 1927 painting was described by Bloomberg last week as “arguably the most important canvas in the world that cannot be visited or seen.” The work that helped inspire Picasso’s “Guernica,” which showcases the destruction caused by the Spanish Civil War, it sits in what Bloomberg called “one of the world’s most dangerous cities.”

But the current war is only the latest factor preventing the piece from being made available to the public, with little known about the museum’s current fate. (Its website, like many others in Iran, has been down, possibly due to internet disruptions in the country. Some users on social media have shared posts showing artifacts in some museums put away or wrapped in protective materials.)

Like dozens of other masterpieces in the museum, “The Painter and His Model” has spent virtually all of the 47 years since the Islamic Revolution shut away in TMOCA’s vaults, considered too inappropriate by the ayatollahs for display.

. . . Like dozens of other masterpieces in the museum, “The Painter and His Model” has spent virtually all of the 47 years since the Islamic Revolution shut away in TMOCA’s vaults, considered too inappropriate by the ayatollahs for display.

Deeply passionate about art, the queen took advantage of the soaring prices of oil to bring to Tehran some of the best modern and contemporary art, acquiring works by Picasso, Andy Warhol, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock, Vincent Van Gogh and dozens more, including Jewish and Israeli artists such as Marc Chagall and Yaacov Agam, and gay ones like Francis Bacon. In 2018, the value of the collection was estimated at $3 billion.

It’ll be all up and open if the theocracy falls. In the meantime, here’s a YouTube video of the Picasso in Tehran exhibit. That is one hell of a diverse group of Picassos!

And here’s the 1927 “The Painter and His Model” from Wikiart:

*Is the “Revival of Christianity,” much touted by religionists, a non-event—fake news? That, at least, is what the Guardian reports for a survey of Christanity in England and Wales (h/t Alan).

A YouGov survey showing a significant rise in church attendance in parts of the UK has been withdrawn after some respondents were found to be fraudulent.

The poll was central to a Quiet Revival report, published by the Bible Society last year, which prompted news stories about an apparent resurgence in Christianity, particularly among young people.

But YouGov, which carried out the research in 2024, said on Thursday that the data sample was flawed, with “a number of respondents who we can now identify as fraudulent”.

The pollster’s chief executive, Stephan Shakespeare, said: “YouGov takes full responsibility for the outputs of the original 2024 research, and we apologise for what has happened.

“We would like to stress that Bible Society have at all times accurately and responsibly reported the data we supplied to them. We are running the survey again with Bible Society to get robust data on this topic.”

The report had claimed 12% of adults in England and Wales were attending church once a month or more in 2024, which YouGov described as “a significant increase from 8% in a previous 2018 study”.

The data also purported to show a rise in young people’s attendance, from 4% of 18- to 24-year-olds attending monthly in 2018 to 16% in 2024.

So YouGov screwed up, but believers were eager to spread the news. The point is that, given the continual decrease in Christian belief in the last several decades, a rise would need explanation, and there’s not a good one. Nevertheless, even when the Christians were told they had been misinformed, they tried to turn it into a good thing (bolding is mine):

The Bible Society insisted there remained “a very positive story to tell”. It said in the past year, “we have seen an unprecedented public conversation about Christianity, with countless stories of a spiritual awakening among Gen Z”.

The chief executive of Humanists UK, Andrew Copson, said the withdrawal of the data was “both validation and vindication”.

“We need to be absolutely clear: there is no revival of Christianity in Britain,” he said. “For almost a year, Humanists UK has taken a rational, evidence-based approach, repeatedly and rigorously explaining why the Bible Society’s claims do not stand up.”

The “public conversation” is due almost entirely to Christians touting the revival of Christianity!  It’s an example of the kind of self-deception that Bob Trivers wrote about..

*And from the UPI’s odd news site, we have the world’s largest carrot cake:

A British Columbia cafe owner celebrated his 80th birthday by baking and assembling a massive carrot cake measuring 17 feet by 17 feet.

Ted Martindale, owner of Granville’s Coffee in Quesnel, teamed up with multiple local bakeries to assemble his birthday cake, which contained over 1,760 pounds of carrots, 700 pounds of butter, thousands of eggs and nearly 2,000 pounds of icing.

Martindale said it took over a month to bake the 430 individual cakes that made up the final product.

The cake was served Wednesday at Martindale’s birthday party at the local senior’s center.

The current Guinness World Record for the largest carrot cake is held by a Surrey, British Columbia, bakery that assembled a 4,574-pound cake in 2016. Martindale said his cake weighed in at about 6,044 pounds, but evidence must still be reviewed by Guinness World Records for him to officially take the record.

There are two things I want to know. First, is it kosher to put together 430 individual cakes and call it one whole cake? Second, is the frosting made with cream cheese? If not, it shouldn’t count.  Here’s a video:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej note the signs of Spring:

Hili: You can feel spring everywhere.
Andrzej: Yes, the forsythia has begun to bloom, and in the newspapers scoundrels are in full bloom.

In Polish

Hili: Wszędzie czuć wiosnę.
Ja: Tak, zakwitała forsycja, w gazetach kwitną łajdacy.

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

From Mark, a goth walker:

From My Cat is an Asshole:

From Give Me a Sign:

From Mash, apparently with Kristen Welker on NBC, speaking eloquently about why American should finish the job in Iran.  Masih is quite passionate and yet eloquent when speaking off the cuff:

From Pamela Paresky, but it sounds like the kind of witticism that Andrzej would make (h/t Jay):

Larry the Cat is back tweeting! Yay!  He asks an important question here, but I’m sufficiently anal that I change my stove and microwave clocks the day after the time changes:

From Luana, who says to excuse the politically incorrect word “retarded”:

Two from my feed.  This cat is either mesmerized or hypnotized:

And this kid (yes, it’s a child) is amazing!

Here’s the whole piece that someone posted in the thread; her name is Alexandra Dovgan, and she’s now 18.  I believe she was eleven when she did this piece:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

One from Dr. Cobb, whose hols in Lyme Regis are coming to an end, and he posted some of his holiday snaps:

Scenes in and around Lyme Regis

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-03-28T11:45:50.205Z

Sunday: Hili dialogue

March 29, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Sunday, March 29, 2026: Sabbath for goyische cats. We are hurrying towards April, and today is National Vietnam War Veterans Day  Here is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, designed by novice architect Maya Lin and erected in Washington, D.C. in 1982. It is a moving memorial, with over 58,000 names of the dead inscribed on it.  When I visited it, I can’t help thinking of those young American lives lost in a war that should not have taken place (no comments about Iran, please). This shot shows Christmas decorations.

Mariordo (Mario Roverto Durán Ortiz), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day, Palm Sunday, and Piano Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*War News from the WSJ and Times of Israel: U.S. Marines have arrived in the Middle East, and the Houthis fired a missile at Israel (it was intercepted). A ground war may be in the offing:

WSJ:

The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit has arrived in the Middle East, giving President Trump more options in a conflict now entering its second month.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants claimed responsibility for a second attack on Israel after entering the war this weekend. Their involvement is an unnerving prospect for the oil market, raising fears of disruption to Red Sea shipping in addition to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz.

ToI:

The US Department of Defense is preparing options for ground operations in Iran, which would fall short of a full-scale invasion but could involve thousands of troops and take weeks or months, The Washington Post reported late Saturday.

According to the report, which cited unnamed American officials, US President Donald Trump has not greenlit any of the plans yet.

The White House, asked for comment for the report, said the Pentagon works to give the president “maximum optionality,” but that this “does not mean the President has made a decision.”

According to the Post, the potential operations could see a mixture of special forces and conventional infantry sent to conduct extended raids into coastal areas near the Strait of Hormuz, including seizing islands controlled by the Islamic Republic and holding them for an extended period of time.

Experts have warned that holding territory would put American soldiers in significantly more danger than they’ve faced so far in the war, which has already seen 13 US servicemembers killed in action, and more than 300 wounded.

In for a penny, in for a pound. I don’t think there’s any way to bring down the Iranian administration—and is victory possible without that?—save sending in ground troops.  Trump keeps vacillating between saying the war is winding down and saying the war will last for a while

*From the NYT; the partial government shutdown continues as there is no funding for Homeland security, though TSA workers will get paid by an executive order.

  • House Republicans rejected the Senate-approved bill to pay T.S.A. workers, which would have eased some of the stresses of the partial shutdown while still withholding funding from ICE.
  • The House passed its own bill to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security into May. But the bill is a nonstarter in the Senate, which just began a two-week recess.
  • The White House ordered the D.H.S. to pay T.S.A. workers using existing funds. They could get checks as soon as Monday.

House Republicans angrily rejected a bipartisan deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security and pushed through their own plan late Friday, putting themselves on a collision course with the Senate and extending the agency shutdown that has crippled U.S. airports.

Revolting over an agreement their own party struck with Senate Democrats to end the crisis, which had passed the Senate before dawn on Friday, House Republican leaders — with President Trump’s backing — refused to take it up. They derided the Senate plan for hewing too closely to Democrats’ position by omitting money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the two agencies responsible for carrying out Mr. Trump’s deportation crackdown, which are operating under previously approved funds.

“House Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference on Friday afternoon. “This gambit that was done last night is a joke.”

Mr. Johnson called the Senate-passed deal engineered by Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, “ridiculousness,” and instead teed up a stopgap measure to fund the entire department until May 22.

I don’t remember in this administration the House Republicans allied against the Senate Republicans. And, as far as I know, the Democratic bill doesn’t “stop immigration enforcement,” but merely makes ICE workers adhere to reasonable behavior, wear bodycams, and stop wearing masks.

As for when the long lines at TSA will stop, it may take a while, especially since some of them have simply quit their jobs to take more reliable positions.

*A Title VI settlement against Berkeley ruled that “anti-Zionism” is equivalent to antisemitism, and cannot be used to discriminate against students.

After years in which Jewish and Israeli students at University of California, Berkeley were told that their exclusion was merely the product of political disagreement, a Title VI case brought by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has reached a settlement. It requires the university to end student group practices that excluded “Zionists,” and finally affirms that what Jewish students experienced was, in fact, discrimination.

The settlement forces the university to confront what it had long denied: that Jewish students’ experiences of discrimination and harassment were real. Though the problem accelerated after Hamas’s genocidal massacre on October 7, Kenneth L. Marcus—founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center, which brought the suit—accused Berkeley law students in 2022 of having“institutionalized an ancient ideology of hate, incorporating it into the legal DNA of their major identity groups.” He listed clubs as diverse as women’s groups, Asian and Pacific Islander, African American, LGBTQ, and Middle Eastern student organizations, all of which had altered their bylaws to exclude “Zionist” members and speakers.

In Marcus’s words: “Daniel Pearl, a Zionist victim of beheading, would have been constitutionally banned during his lifetime from speaking to any of these groups. His anti-Zionist murderers would not have been.”

The case comes in the wake of StandWithUs v. MIT, which was dismissed by a Massachusetts district judge who held not only that anti-Zionism constitutes protected speech, but that there is no basis for presuming it to be antisemitic—unless it explicitly employs recognizable antisemitic tropes.

The UC Berkeley case is an important victory. But it seems clear that much more work remains to produce lasting institutional change capable of protecting Jewish and Israeli students from anti-Zionist discrimination in the future. Law, as always, follows culture—and nothing less is required than a sea change in how we understand anti-Zionism.

Anti-Zionism transforms the very meaning of Zionism, reconstructing “Zionism” as a form of racial supremacy rooted in Jewish chosenness. This draws on a longer anti-Judaic tradition, running from Hasan Sa’b’s propaganda text Zionism and Racism—a key entry in the Palestine Essays series edited by Fayez Sayegh, the PLO propagandist who coined the term settler colonialism, and which recast Jewish peoplehood as inherently oppressive—to the Soviet-backed “Zionism is Racism” resolution of 1975 that continues to infuse the toxic discoursearound “Zionism,” despite its formal repeal in 1991.

The Berkeley stand was shameful: they totally bought into the view that anti-Zionism was a “political stand,” when in fact Zionism is simply the recognition that Jews should have their own state, WHICH THEY ALREADY HAVE.  If you’re Jew who lives in Israel, or reccognizes Israel’s already-designated right to exist, you can be damned as a Zionist. Is there anybody fool enough to think that “Zionist” is something other than a euphemism for “Jew”?

*The Free Press documents what happened in Chicago when they paid gang members and other locals to defuse conflicts on the street. It was a total disaster, and an expensive one. Who had that dumb idea?

The idea of fighting crime by paying ex–gang members might be new to you, but this sort of program, which often goes under the name of “community violence intervention,” has become the norm in blue cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City over the past decade.

Proponents of this approach argue that, rather than relying on policing to prevent gang violence and reduce shootings, some amount of police work can be replaced with state-backed, man-on-the-street initiatives. In Chicago, that includes hiring former gang members to counsel current ones and resolve disputes. The programs go by different names: violence prevention, violence interrupters, Peacekeepers.

In recent weeks, I’ve investigated whether this strategy is working—or whether taxpayers and philanthropists are inadvertently funding gang violence in Chicago. Randle is one of many outreach workers, South Side residents, and donors we spoke to who say they’re losing confidence in community violence intervention.

Over the past decade, taxpayers and private donors have spent around $1 billion on community violence intervention (CVI) programs in Chicago, according to an analysis by The Free Press.

CVI is backed by some of the biggest names in Chicago—and the country—including mega-philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire wife of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, and Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, a progressive who has helped secure funding for these programs. But not all city leaders have bought in.

. . . In 2018, CRED helped launch what would become the most controversial arm of the city’s CVI apparatus: a program called FLIP (Flatlining Violence Inspires Peace). Young locals—many of whom have criminal records or are “justice-involved,” as CRED puts it—are paid to de-escalate conflict, monitor social media for gang tensions, and participate in daily check-ins regarding hot-spot activity. They eventually got rebranded as Peacekeepers. They wear neon vests and are meant to hang out in contested areas. When gang violence explodes, more than 1,000 Peacekeepers are sent to hot spots throughout the city to intervene. What began as a privately funded program under CRED is now a state-funded program, which received $33 million for this fiscal year.

. . . .Since January 2023—when the Peacekeepers program expanded from a summer initiative to a year-round operation—The Free Press found 28 additional arrests involving people who identified themselves as Peacekeepers or “violence interrupters” or wore Peacekeeper vests. The charges range from drug possession to violent assault.

In one case, police arrested a man for alleged heroin possession and unlawful possession of a firearm after finding him naked under his bed with $50,000 in cash nearby (he was later acquitted). In another, officers allegedly discovered 24 suspected ecstasy pills on a man who identified himself as a Peacekeeper who had been arrested for battery and resisting the police. Another police report describes a man who said he worked as a Peacekeeper who allegedly beat a woman unconscious, leaving her hospitalized with a brain hemorrhage. Another Peacekeeper, who told police he was a member of the Satan Disciples gang, was arrested twice within the span of 10 days.

Here’s a figure from the Free Press article showing the increase in public funding of the program over time. It ain’t working:

Pritzker is an okay governor, and may even be a candidate for President in two years, but he’s too woke for his own good, and too enamored of harebrained schemes like this.

*Speaking of woke, Mara Gay is a woke NYT op-ed columnist (among many others) who loves Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists (have a look at her list of columns; nearly all of them praise Mamdani). This week she continues her osculation of Hizzoner (ignoring his downsides) with a column called, “Mamdani shows what it looks like when generational change actually takes place.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani was on his way to Gracie Mansion this winter when he asked his driver to pull over to help fellow New Yorkers dig their cars out of the snow. He picked up a shovel. So did his press secretary. Members of his security detail did, too.

It was just the kind of scene that had endeared Mr. Mamdani, 34, to voters. It also hinted at a governing style that resembles the scrappy, high-octane feel of a political campaign — and relies on the hustle of a group of young staff members to keep up.

Mr. Mamdani, New York City’s youngest mayor in about a century, has filled City Hall with people who are also in their 30s, or even younger. The mayor’s chief of staff, Elle Bisgaard-Church, is 34. His communications director, Anna Bahr, is 33. Joe Calvello, his press secretary, is 33. His closest outside adviser, Morris Katz, 26, is so young that for several months last year, he told reporters he was a couple of years older than he was.

The arrival of these young Democrats at the helm of one of the most prominent offices in the country has meant all kinds of changes for New York politics, from the congressional primaries in which Mr. Mamdani has involved himself to who holds the political capital in New York.

Then there’s the way they run the government, with a management style that youth allows: working all the time. Mr. Mamdani is younger than most prominent Democrats, needs little sleep, enjoys working weekends and likes to be highly visible in the city he leads, every day. Some of his closest aides haven’t had a day off since Jan. 1, when the mayor was sworn into office. Work calls can begin as late as 10 p.m. Some veterans say the approach is notably intense, like Karen Hinton, who was Mayor Bill de Blasio’s press secretary and said she struggled to imagine her former boss shoveling snow. “He wouldn’t have gotten out of his car,” she said. “He would have called someone.”

Mr. Mamdani is trying to enact a sweeping leftist agenda in a moment when trust in government is exceedingly low. He is the city’s first Muslim mayor. And he came to office promising to champion working people in a moment when those Americans are struggling.

That may be why this mayor seems to approach everything he does with a sense of urgency. If it seems like Mr. Mamdani is everywhere, it’s because he is. So are his exhausted staffers. It’s a group of young and hungry progressives out to prove to voters that the left can govern.

What about his accomplishments? Well, his promise for free daycare has met with some approval with the governor, as it must, so there may be free daycare for two-year-olds within a year. But as for free public transportation and those city grocery stores—criekets.  And then there’s Mandami’s antisemitism, which goes with progressivism and the Democratic Socialists. Nobody seems to care much about that.  As one of my readers wrote me, ” I think Mamdani would expel all Jews from the city if he could. I think he would bankrupt the city and drive anyone with money from its borders.”  But the column, of course is only about the energy he and his young, deluded supporters bring to the city.

Also, my friend Orli Peter, a therapist who works with trauma, has been in the Middle East treating both Israeli and Palestinian trauma survivors. She wrote an article for a Swedish newspaper addressed to Mamdami’s wife, “An open letter to New York City’s first lady,” which is in Swedish but can be automatically tranlated into English by Google. Orli takes Rama Duwaji to task for her approbation for Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Here’s the ending:

As the First Lady of New York City, you are in a public position to inspire a movement for Palestinian rights and security. The survivors I treat are still trying to rebuild their lives from what they witnessed. Palestinians also deserve to be freed from the same sadistic movement that terrorizes them.

Public gestures matter. When someone in a position of influence treats atrocities as liberation, the signal is sent far beyond a social media post.

The evidence is clear. Admit you were wrong and withdraw your support for the lie.

Some of us spend our days helping survivors rebuild the lives that Hamas shattered. The least the rest of the world can do is stop condoning mass sadism and tell the truth about what was done to the victims of Hamas’s cruelty.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has anomie:

Hili: I watch as the present turns into the past.
Me: And?
Hili: I will probably get bored of it soon.

In Polish:

Hili: Patrzę jak teraźniejszość zmienia się w przeszłość.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Pewnie zaraz mi się to znudzi.

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

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Jesus of the Day:

From CinEmma:

From Masih, another peaceful protestor arrested (along with his mom) and tortured.  Iran now has a shoot-to-kill order in dealing with protests:

Good news: diabetics who inject themselves with insulin daily may be able to go to a once-per-week regimen:

From J. K. Rowling, celebrating the IOC’s decision to allow only biological women to compete in women’s sports:

Pinker prefers written rather than video instructions, as do I, and for the same reasons:

One from my feed:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was five years old. Had she lived, she would have been 87 yesterday.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-03-29T14:30:35.433Z

And two from Dr. Cobb, relaxing in Lyme Regis. Look at this lovely siphonophore (a cnidarian):

whoa. stunning siphonophore by @schmidtocean.bsky.social ! youtube.com/shorts/G218j…

— Chris Mah (@echinoblog.bsky.social) 2026-03-26T18:47:13.329Z

I remember this rescue, and now there’s a statue!

A viral dog rescue from 2016 is now immortalized with a statue in Kazakhstan. When a dog fell into the Sayran reservoir, bystanders formed a human chain to pull him to safety. The statue is a reminder of the value of unity, solidarity and collective action. 14/10 for all

— WeRateDogs (@weratedogs.com) 2026-03-25T20:29:25.732Z

Saturday: Hili dialogue

March 28, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday,  March 28, shabbos for Jewish cats. It’s also, fortuitously, National Respect Your Cat Day, and here’s an appropriate meme from Kitty Litterposting:

It’s also Eat an Edy’s Pie Day (these were formerly known as Eskimo Pies but the name was changed to reflect the name of a cofounder. But why don’t they call them “Inuit Pies”?), National Black Forest Cake Day, and Weed Appreciation Day (no, not that weed).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

The NYT continues to put up only bad news or criticism of the war on its “news” page. Here’s the upper-left corner of the online site yesterday:

Man, I’ll miss those raspberries, which take a lot of fuel to produce.

*The latest war update from It’s Noon in Israel:

It’s Friday, March 27, and the twenty-eighth day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $109, up 51 percent since the start of the war. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:

  • While Trump claims he’s working on a negotiated end to the war, the U.S. is considering deploying up to 10,000 additional ground troops to the Middle East, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The force would likely include infantry and armored vehicles, supplementing the 82nd Airborne Division already in the region, in order to give Trump additional “military options.” Analysts suggest the 82nd Airborne is positioned with Iranian strategic assets—specifically Kharg Island—in mind. It remains unclear where the additional forces would be stationed.
  • Yesterday, Hezbollah fired over 100 rockets at Israel. Uri Peretz, 43, a father of four from Nahariya, was killed after not making it to a shelter in time. A man in his 50s was seriously wounded, and 13 others were lightly injured by shrapnel.
  • Sergeant Aviad Elchanan Volansky, 21, from Jerusalem, was killed recently when an anti-tank missile struck a tank belonging to the Golani Brigade’s combat team. Four additional IDF soldiers—two officers and two fighters from Battalion 77—were lightly injured in the attack. Aviad was the cousin of Elhanan Klein, may his memory be a blessing, who was murdered at the start of the war. He was named after his uncle, who was killed in the 2002 terrorist attack in Eli. IDF fatalities during this war have risen to 5.
  • Naftali Bennett gave his first interview in months last night, attacking Donald Trump’s pardon initiative, the Haredi draft law, and the conduct of the current war. “We’re not winning on any front—not in Gaza, not in Lebanon, and with Iran, we’ll see,” he said. Bennett also used the opportunity to map out his coalition red lines: he will not serve under Netanyahu, will not ally with Ben Gvir, the Arab parties, or the Haredim. He said he would consider Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist party—but only if Smotrich takes a hard line against ultra-Orthodox draft exemptions

. . . and a bit more:

For all the theatricality of the war, the idea of an abrupt ending is surprising—if not a bit disappointing. It seems the Pentagon agrees, if for strategic rather than presentational reasons. According to reports, the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command are developing plans for a “finishing blow” against Iran.

Four main options are reportedly on the table:

  1. Invading or blockading Iran’s oil chokepoint Kharg Island.
  2. Seizing Larak Island, which anchors Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz;
  3. Taking control of Abu Musa and two smaller islands near the strait’s western entrance.
  4. Intercepting Iranian oil tankers on the eastern side of Hormuz.

The military has also prepared plans for ground operations deep inside Iran to seize enriched uranium from nuclear facilities.

After that kind of operation, Trump has options: he can go back into negotiations, dangling new assets, or call an end to the war unilaterally, with something major to show for it.

All of that takes time to prepare—time the global economy doesn’t seem willing to give Trump after his energy ultimatum. If only there were a way to calm the markets—perhaps by letting negotiations drag on and extending the deadline while the military prepares.

I have no idea what Trump’s going to do, since he’s postponed action against Iran’s power and oil infrastructure twice. See next article:

*Trump has decided to give Iran an extra ten days before the U.S. and Israel strike Iran’s energy infrastructure.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would delay attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure by an additional 10 days — extending for a second time his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, as he cited progress in negotiations with Tehran.

Talks “are going very well,” Trump wrote in a post on social media.

In the same post, Trump said he was halting further strikes on Iran’s energy assets. Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Iran last weekend, saying he would “obliterate” the country’s power plants, beginning with the largest, if it did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital conduit for global energy supplies that has been effectively shut by the war. On Monday, Trump issued a new five-day timeline, saying negotiations to end the war had begun.

U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran have killed members of the country’s senior leadership and destroyed military infrastructure, but it’s unclear if the attacks have made Tehran more willing to compromise and accept a ceasefire deal with the United States.

Trump’s pursuit of a settlement to the war comes as the conflict approaches the one-month mark and financial markets seem rattled. Stock indexes fell Thursday, as oil prices again rose above $100 a barrel. The S&P 500 lost 1.7 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 2.4 percent, ending the day in correction territory — off 10 percent from its recent high. Markets in Asia were down again on Friday, reflecting continuing unease after Trump’s latest announcement.

In a sign of the Trump administration’s deep concern about spiking oil prices, the Treasury Department last week lifted sanctions on 140 million barrels of Iranian oil already at sea.

Again, I’m just waiting stuff out. I have no idea what they’re negotiating for, as Trump’s 15-point “peace plan” and Iran’s demands are very far apart. And remember, these agreements have a way of being breached. For example, Hamas is still in full military control of areas of Gaza not occupied by the IDF.  The cease-fire agreement stipulated that Hamas was supposed to lay down its weapons. And I doubt that the Iranian military will.

*What a way to treat an ally! The WSJ reports that Iran turned back two Chinese ships approaching the Strait of Hormuz.

In an unusual move, two container vessels belonging to China’s state-owned Cosco Shipping were turned back from crossing the Strait of Hormuz on Friday morning, according to ship tracker MarineTraffic and Chinese crew members near the strait.

The two ships—CSCL Indian Ocean and CSCL Arctic Ocean—made U-turns near Larak Island, about 20 miles from the port of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran. In recent days, some ships have transited the strait via the narrow channel between Iran’s Qeshm and Larak islands, including those signaling Chinese owners and crew members.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Friday that it had turned back three containerships of various nationalities trying to cross the strait, adding that all ship traffic to and from ports of supporters of the U.S. and Israel was prohibited, according to Nour News, which is affiliated with the country’s Supreme National Security Council.

Containership owners told the Journal that the only vessels that can now cross the strait are those with cargoes of Iran-destined household goods, cars, clothing and pharmaceuticals.

In the past week, Iran has allowed four ships loaded with grains to cross the Strait of Hormuz in the other direction, after waiting nearly three weeks in the Gulf of Oman, according to brokers who arranged the cargoes. The bulkers unloaded at Iran’s Bandar Imam Khomeini port, where three-quarters of the cargo handled is grain imports mainly from Russia and South America.

Here’s the WSJ’s figure showing the paths of the two ships as they turned around. The Strait is about 25 miles wide at its narrowest point, with a two-mile-wide shipping lane.

Control of the Strait may well be the dealbreaker for any negotiations going on between the U.S. and Iran, and it is Iran’s trump card.  Absent their control of this straits, they might already have been bombed to the point of surrender.

*More administrative narcissism: Trump has decided to sign his name on all American paper currency, the first time a sitting President has had his signature on U.S. bills. This is supposed to be in honor of our 250th anniversary as a country, but we know better than that, don’t we?

The U.S. Treasury Department plans to put President Donald Trump’s signature on all new U.S. paper currency, the agency announced on Thursday.

The move would be a first for a sitting president, since traditionally, U.S. paper currency carries the signatures of the Treasury Secretary and the Treasurer, not the president.

It’s the latest instance of Trump putting his name and likeness on American cultural institutions, following his renaming of the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Kennedy Center performing arts venue and a new class of battleships, among other tributes.

And the plans come in tandem with an ongoing effort to get Trump’s face on a coin, which has also drawn criticism since federal law prohibits the depiction of a living president on U.S. currency.

Earlier this month, a federal arts commission approved the final design for a 24-karat gold commemorative coin bearing Trump’s image to help celebrate America’s 250th birthday on July 4. The vote by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, whose members are supporters of the Republican president and were appointed by him earlier this year, was without objection.

Treasury says the plan to include Trump’s signature on all new paper currency is intended to honor the nation’s 250th birthday, and that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s signature would also appear on the currency.

Bessent said in a statement that “there is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country” than with U.S dollar bills bearing Trump’s name.

Michael Bordo, director of the Center for Monetary and Financial History at Rutgers, said the move will undoubtedly come with political pushback, “but I do not know if he has crossed any legal red lines” since the Treasury Secretary may have the authority to decide who signs the currency.

That’s another good reason to avoid using cash (in fact, I don’t think I’ve paid for anything using real money in months). And presumably that signature will disappear when a Democrat gets elected in 2028 (knock on wood).   The signature we may well see, which is illegible:

*As usual, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column at the Free Press, called this week, “The truth of the conspiracy of the conspiracy.”

→ Just for a little taste of the streets: You should probably know what is being said in those fun progressive pro-peace protests happening all over the place. Here’s a great example from a protest in Philadelphia this week. A man stands in front of a boisterous crowd: “Until we have done everything in our power to bring the United States to its knees, let us not lose sight of the enemy!” Ok, me too, peace and love,man. He continues: “For every U.S. soldier who comes back in a casket, we cheer!” The crowd cheers.

He also says: “Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, all of the resistance forces we celebrate. These popular forces on the ground spend every waking moment in direct confrontation with Zionism and they rely on a strong Iranian state to maintain their fighting capacity.”

It’s just like Woodstock. Just kids swaying, wishing for a better world.

→ And in news of the Jews: A Michigan Democrat campaigning for a U.S. Senate seat opened up about how it was “a risk” for him to condemn the local attack on a synagogue full of small children. But he did it anyway. “It was a risk,” Abdul El-Sayed said. “All of our team was really worried about saying something, but leadership is being willing to say the thing if you believe it to be true that nobody else is going to say.” Which is a nice point about leadership, I guess, but can we go back to that part where everyone was worried about you condemning an attempted mass casualty event on children? To understand how fast the rhetoric has shifted toward mass murder of American Jews, this is what counts as a brave stance now.

Interesting to note:

→ English-speaking countries are very sad:

This is a new World Happiness Report 2025.Why the hell are the Finns so happy?

You got me.  The most atheistic countries in the world are the happiest! But we’ve long known that there’s a negative correlation among countries between religiosity and happiness. The most religious countries are the ones that are the worst off.

→ Kristi Noem’s questionable budget: Remember that anti-border crossing ad Kristi Noem did while heading the Department of Homeland Security? The one that got her in trouble for the big budget? Well, we’ve gotten details. Renting the horses for it cost $20,000. That’s the headline haunting poor Kristi, who just wanted to feel like a real-life cowgirl for a day. What did you want her on, a donkey? She also spent $3,800 on hair and makeup—which, as someone married to a woman who regularly has to dress up—that’s entirely reasonable.

→ Speaking of women on budget journeys: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent nearly $19,000 of campaign funds on a psychiatrist who specializes in ketamine therapy. Caveat: We don’t know who was being treated, and we cannot say it was with ketamine. But let’s imagine for a moment. First of all, aren’t we glad that women are in public office now? Men spend campaign funds on one thing and one thing only: paying off prostitutes. Sometimes it’s paying off people who paid off prostitutes, and probably buying prostitutes. But women with a bucket of campaign funds? Women get creative. Women give us variety. A man never spent 20 grand on horses, or 20 grand on therapists who will give you an IV of horse tranquilizer so you can finally forgive your dad. You know this is just the tip of the iceberg. Botox, special appliances, ecstatic dance lessons. You know it got crazy.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a bad encounter with the pebbles again:

Andrzej: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m pretending I’m comfortable here.

In Polish:

Ja: Co ty robisz?
Hili: Udaję, że mi tu wygodnie.

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

More impetus to respect your cat, also from Kitty Litterposting:

From Now That’s Wild, an excellent birthday present:

From CinEmma:

A tweet from Masih. Put yourself in this Iranian kid’s shoes:

I thought Larry the Cat was dead because he hadn’t tweeted in over a month. Here he explains:

From Bryan. Go here to sign up for the show:

From Luana, with a LOL:

One from my feed. I’m not sure where it is from, but it’s great

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Italian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was seven years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-03-28T10:11:13.224Z

And two from Dr. Cobb, taking a vacation in Lyme Regis:

Lyme Regis

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-03-27T17:03:19.687Z

Lyme Regis is, of course, where Mary Anning did her fossil work. Here’s a statue of Anning and her dog. Matthew says, “Look at the hem of her dress.”

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-03-27T17:09:07.173Z

Friday: Hili dialogue

March 27, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the last Friday of the month: it’s March 27, 2026, and National Spanish Paella Day.  When I gave a talk in Valencia (the Home of Paella) in 2011, I was taken to a small building out in the country that was supposedly the best place to get paella in that paella-famed town. There was an old man cooking the paellas over wood, constantly moving about to tend them and the fire. Here’s a photo of the man at work and the finished product that we ate:

It’s also International Whisky Day, World Theater Day, and Quirky Music Song Titles Day.  Here’s one of those:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 27 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Today’s war news from It’s Noon in Israel:

  • The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command are developing plans for a “finishing blow” against Iran, according to four senior American officials and sources familiar with internal discussions. Four main options are on the table: invading or blockading Kharg Island; seizing Larak Island, which anchors Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz; taking control of Abu Musa and two smaller islands near the strait’s western entrance; and intercepting Iranian oil tankers on the eastern side of Hormuz. The military has also prepared plans for ground operations deep inside Iran to seize enriched uranium from nuclear facilities. Donald Trump has not made a decision, and the White House describes all ground options as “hypothetical”—but sources say he is prepared to escalate if diplomatic talks fail to produce results soon.
  • Trump claimed this morning that despite Iran’s public posture of merely “looking” at the U.S. proposal, Tehran is privately “begging” for a deal. He closed with a warning: Iran had better get serious about negotiations, because once it is “too late” there will be “no turning back.”
  • Iran’s ambassador to Japan made clear today that Tehran will not accept a U.S.-imposed peace plan. “It’s not the Americans who will determine anything. It’s Iran,” he said, adding that any unilateral imposition is “not acceptable.” The statement comes as Tehran continues to publicly deny that negotiations with the United States are even taking place.
  • Staff Sergeant Uri Greenberg, 21, from Petah Tikva, a fighter in an elite Golani Brigade unit, was killed in battle in southern Lebanon. Israel’s military fatalities have now risen to three.

As we approach the weekend the war has come to a crossroads. Donald Trump has three paths available:

  1. Continue with his current direction and we end this war with a negotiated settlement.
  2. Return to his original plan and continue pounding the regime.
  3. Walk away altogether, a unilateral ceasefire.

The article considers #2 the most likely, and so do I. If Trump has any military brains left, #1 and #3 should be off the table. Only unconditional surrender and the dismantling of the regime are acceptable. Despite the view that Iranians value victory more than their lives, they aren’t gonna get victory and member of the IRGC continue to leave the country.

*At The Free Press, Yoav Gallant (a former IDF officer and later Israel’s Minister of Defense) wrote an article I couldn’t resist reading, “How to finish the job in Iran.”

And yet, Iran has found a way to fight back. How? By closing the Strait of Hormuz, and shifting the battlefield from military targets to the global economy.

Roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and a significant share of liquefied natural gas pass through that narrow waterway. Iran brought traffic to a near standstill not with formal naval blockade, but via selective drone strikes on tankers, the threat of mines and anti-ship missiles, and the resulting collapse of insurance coverage. Tanker movement has dropped by more than 90 percent. Brent crude has surged to as much as $120 a barrel. One of the largest disruptions to global energy supplies since the 1970s is now underway.

This was a predictable move. Iran has threatened to close the Strait for decades, and the logic was always clear: If the regime is struck hard enough, it will use its geographic position to inflict economic pain on the entire world. The question was never whether Iran would try. The question is what we should do about it.

. . . You must take from Iran something it cannot afford to lose.

Kharg Island is a small strip of land in the northern Persian Gulf, roughly comparable in size to lower Manhattan, sitting about 25 kilometers off Iran’s coast and several hundred kilometers northwest of the Strait of Hormuz. The main terminal for close to 90 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports, Kharg Island is the economic backbone of the regime. It is also, critically, the primary source of hard‑currency revenue for the military and security services, which control and sell a significant share of those exports.

Disrupting energy operations on Kharg Island is regarded by analysts as a doomsday scenario for Iran’s economy, with far‑reaching consequences. Iran’s economy depends in practice on two main sectors: oil and gas. Disruption would trigger a chain reaction throughout the energy system, creating acute shortages of gasoline and diesel inside a country that sits on some of the largest hydrocarbon reserves in the world. Iran would also lose billions of dollars a month in oil income. Without the flow of dollars and yuan, the central bank would struggle to defend the rial, driving hyperinflation and eroding the savings of an entire society.

Economic pressure on this scale would dramatically increase the likelihood of popular unrest. Iran’s population has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to take to the streets. The demonstrations of January 2026 were one of the most significant since the 1979 revolution. A regime that cannot pay its security forces or fuel its own economy faces a fundamentally different internal reality.​ Its ability to support proxies and sleeper cells throughout the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. would also be compromised.

Of course this “solution” will impose hardship on the Iranian people for a limited period—a lack of energy and oil revenue.  What is crucial here is that the Iranian population must still have the “willingness to take to the streets,” despite the regime’s promise to shoot them on sight. All we can do is wait.

*According to the Times of Israel, Israel has struck down another Iranian military bigwig, this time the head of the Revolutionary Guard Navy, the man responsible for blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Other targets have also been “neutralized”:

Israel said Thursday that the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, Adm. Alireza Tangsiri, had been killed in an airstrike, the latest senior Iranian official targeted in a relentless hunt-and-kill campaign. The Israel Defense Forces later said all of the IRGC Navy’s key commanders had been killed in the strike.

However, Israel took Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf off its hit list after Pakistan requested that Washington not target them, a Pakistani source with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters. Qalibaf is reportedly the “top man” with whom US President Donald trump said Monday he has been indirectly negotiating on terms for ending the conflict.

“The IDF eliminated the commander of the IRGC Navy, the person directly responsible for the terror operation of mining and blocking the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said during a morning assessment with military officials.

Katz said the strike was a “message” to the IRGC: “The IDF will hunt you down and eliminate you one by one.”

“We will continue to operate in Iran with full force to achieve the objectives of the war,” he added.

Later, the IDF confirmed the killing and said that in addition to Tangsiri, the strike also killed the IRGC Navy’s intelligence chief, Behnam Rezaei, and the rest of the navy’s top leadership. The military did not immediately name other top commanders killed in the strike.

Tangsiri was targeted in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas while meeting with senior commanders of the IRGC Navy, according to the military.

“Over the years, Tangsiri was responsible for attacks on oil tankers and commercial vessels and personally threatened the freedom of navigation and trade in the Strait of Hormuz and the international maritime domain,” the IDF said.

During the current war, the IDF said he “led efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz and advanced terror attacks in the maritime domain, one of the primary figures responsible for disrupting the global economy.”

I am amazed at Israel’s ability to track these people down, but that, and the fact that Israel can confirm the deaths, suggests that they have reporting sources inside Iran (they used street cameras for getting rid of the last Ayatollah). The other IRGC bigwigs, as well as politicans, must be very apprehensive.

*Also at the Times of Israel, human-rights attorney Gerald Filitti writes, “Harvard got sued. Why it deserves it.” , subtitled, “The Trump Administration’s new Title VI complaint is more legally serious than its critics will admit, and Harvard’s own record makes the case for them.” This refers to the very recent lawsuit filed against Harvard by the administration for allowing antisemitism to pervade the campus.

The government’s theory has two distinct prongs, and both are well-constructed.

The first is deliberate indifference. Under Davis v. Monroe County, a federally funded institution violates Title VI when it has actual knowledge of severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment and responds with deliberate indifference. Harvard’s own Presidential Task Force – commissioned by Harvard, staffed by Harvard, published by Harvard – concluded that Jewish and Israeli students faced “dire” conditions, were subjected to “social exclusion,” experienced “widespread” discrimination by peers and professors alike, and that Harvard’s complaint mechanisms lacked even “foundational awareness” of how to handle antisemitism reports. Harvard’s own task force said that. The government didn’t manufacture that record. Harvard produced it.

The second prong is more interesting and, in some ways, stronger: intentional selective enforcement. The complaint documents a pattern of Harvard enforcing its rules vigorously against everyone except those targeting Jews. In 2017, Harvard rescinded ten admissions offers over offensive private Facebook messages. In 2022, it canceled a lecture by a feminist philosopher over her views on transgender identity. When a gay law student was assaulted, Harvard sent a campus-wide email condemning the attack the same day. When a Jewish student was assaulted – physically attacked while trying to film a demonstration – Harvard awarded one attacker a $65,000 fellowship and named the other a Class Marshal. That is not indifference. It is the inverse of indifference.

Under Arlington Heights, discriminatory intent is established through circumstantial evidence of exactly this kind of differential treatment. The complaint’s factual record on selective enforcement is, frankly, devastating. And it draws almost entirely from Harvard’s own documents.

. . .Here is what most of the coverage will miss entirely: this complaint is not the same legal action as the funding freeze Burroughs struck down last September.

When the administration unilaterally froze $2.6 billion in Harvard’s research grants, it skipped the mandatory Title VI enforcement process. There was no notice, no investigation, no opportunity to respond, no judicial involvement. Burroughs correctly found that violated both the statute and the First Amendment. That ruling was about how the government acted, not about what Harvard did. It was a ruling about process, not about the merits.

Today’s complaint is the opposite procedural posture. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) opened its investigation in February 2025. It issued formal findings of violation in June 2025. It met and conferred with Harvard in July 2025. It negotiated for eight additional months. When those negotiations failed, it filed in federal court and asked a judge to order relief. That is textbook Title VI enforcement. Same statute. Right procedure. The Burroughs ruling does not govern this case, and treating it as dispositive is an error.

As for what comes next:

The case is assigned to Judge Richard Stearns, a Clinton appointee who handled Shabbos Kestenbaum’s Title VI lawsuit against Harvard and is known as a careful, precise jurist without an ideological axe to grind. He will read the Burroughs opinion. He will also be aware that this complaint followed the procedure Burroughs said the prior action violated. The legal question before him is narrower than the culture war questions the press will insist on litigating: did Harvard violate Title VI, and did it breach its contractual compliance certifications? On those questions, Harvard’s own record is its worst enemy.

. . . . But here is what should not get lost in the noise: Jewish students at the most prestigious university in the world were spat on, stalked, and physically assaulted. They hid their yarmulkes under baseball caps to walk across campus. They reported their assailants, and their assailants were promoted. They asked Harvard’s diversity office for help, and its staff had locked the door.

I think that summary is about right.  You can go to a pdf of the complaint by clicking on the screenshot below:

*Reader Loretta pointed me to this article in the Washington Post, “The Mideast pushed out the Muslim Brotherhood. Here’s where it landed.” She noted this: “I’m surprised the Post published this piece, given their own biases, but I’m glad to see it.  There don’t seem to be any comments yet, but I’m sure the usual progressive baying crowd will chime in.” 

Arab states spent decades learning to contain the Muslim Brotherhood. Europe has yet to begin. The result is a dangerous irony: As the radical Islamist group’s influence wanes in the Middle East, it is growing stronger in Europe by the day.

For years, security experts in the United States and Europe have warned about the organization. And yet, outside of Austria, no E.U. state has taken decisive action. Most Western states tolerate the group’s political wings, citing its peaceful integration into political systems. In the United States, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations. But there has not been a concerted Western effort to counter the movement’s ideological threat.

In Britain, the United Arab Emirates cut scholarships for Emirati students, concerned they could be radicalized by Islamists in the country. In Belgium, neighborhoods have become parallel societies. In Germany, despite the government raising concerns, the group continues to grow in its cities. In Sweden, the Qatari-funded affiliate has turned the country into a hotbed of Islamist ideology.

. . .Last year, a French government report on the Brotherhood called out the danger and warned of the group’s spread in European society. The report was picked up and repeated in European capitals, where academics and civil society dismissed it as alarmist.

Why the complacency? Western conventions against interfering with religion are one reason. But that bias for tolerance has served to give mosques tied to the Brotherhood free rein to spread messages of intolerance and hate, including some that exalt jihadist violence, in many Western cities. The group’s spread also threatens the cohesion of European states by exacerbating racial tensions and establishing alternative social structures based on its interpretation of sharia.

The modus operandi of the Brotherhood is patience — it waits until it is confident in its strength, then moves against the established state structure.

It’s considered “Islamophobic” everywhere to be wary of the erosion of a culture in favor of Muslim culture, but who wants Islamism (the politicization of the faith) when it’s authoritarian, ridden with religion, and misogynistic, as well as intolerant of non-Muslims, atheists, and especially apostates.  This is also happening in the U.S. (viz., Minnesota), but “progressives” would rather die than call attention to it.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being a real Princess:

Hili: Could you lay a carpet here.
Andrzej: A red one?
Hili: Whatever, as long as it’s soft.

In Polish:

Hili: Mógłbyś tu położyć dywan.
Ja: Czerwony?
Hili: Wszystko jedno byle był miękki.

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

From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From The Language Nerds:

Masih tells us that Iran can now recruit soldiers as young as twelve years old:

Luana sent this one; I hadn’t heard about it on the local news, but that’s because it was late last night:

From Emma.  The relevant article from the International Olympic Committee is here, and announces this:

  • Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females, determined on the basis of a one‑time SRY gene screening.
  • Evidence‑based and expert‑informed, the policy – applicable for the LA28 Olympic Games onwards – protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category.

The policy is not retroactive, but this is a move in the right direction.

The announcement from the IOOC:

Two from my feed. First, some great dancing:

You’ll want to watch the pair here, too. This may be my favorite Astair pairing. I’ve watched it a million times and could watch it a million more times.

And I had to post this one:

Lagniappe: a great video from Science Girl:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

. . . and two from Dr. Cobb. First, catroaches! But don’t squash ’em!

How to get disowned by your family.Available on Amazon for $13.94.

— Rav (@rvbdrm.com) 2026-03-26T03:50:18.082Z

Three liters of vodka? Seriously?

Not a fan of defacing works of art, but the picture is hilarious. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/article…

— Meepy (@floweroflondon.bsky.social) 2026-03-25T13:23:22.921Z

Thursday: Hili dialogue

March 26, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, March 26, 2026, and National Nougat Day, a genus that apparently includes Nutella. Remember that the first two ingredients in Nutella are sugar (50–55%) and palm oil (~20%), so be careful out there!

It’s also National Spinach Day, Spinach Festival Day (aren’t they the same?), and Science Appreciation Day (science helps explain children’s aversion to spinach):

Spinach happens to be one of the few vegetables I like, and never bridled at being served it as a kid. (I think kids don’t like it because they perceive it as bitter, and we have evolved to avoid bitter plants since they often contain toxins—though spinach doesn’t). Here’s a compendium of Popeye cartoons in which he gains strength from spinach. The first one is from 1933: the first time Popeye ate spinach on the screen.

Reader Will reminded me, along with someone else, that it’s National Science Appreciation Day, and sent a photo with this caption:

Attached is a picture of my wife Sara and me at the March for Science in 2017 with our Keeping It Real Since AD 1021 sign.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A summary of yesterday’s war news from It’s Noon in Israel:

  • Iran has set an extremely high bar for ceasefire negotiations. The IRGC’s demands include the closure of all U.S. bases in the Gulf, reparations for strikes on Iran, a Hormuz transit fee arrangement, an end to strikes on Hezbollah, the lifting of all sanctions, and the preservation of its missile program. A U.S. official called the demands “ridiculous and unrealistic.” The two sides are not in direct contact—messages are passing through Arab intermediaries.
  • Yesterday, Lebanon declared Iran’s ambassador persona non grata, ordering him to leave by March 29 and canceling his diplomatic status over interference in Lebanese internal affairs. The Lebanese government also recalled its own ambassador from Tehran for consultations. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s leadership and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri personally asked the Iranian ambassador to stay.
  • The Times reported last night that the British Navy will lead the “Hormuz Coalition” to reopen the straits. Britain will also deploy mine‑clearing capabilities alongside the United States and France.
  • According to The New York Times, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has urged Trump in recent days to press on with the war against Iran, calling it a “historic opportunity” to reshape the Middle East. In a series of conversations over the past week, bin Salman pushed for accelerating military action—including strikes on energy infrastructure and possible ground operations—arguing that only regime change could eliminate the “long-term threat” to the Gulf.
  • After pressure from Washington to take action on the issue, the government will approve the establishment of a unit in the Ministry of Defense to deal with the hilltop youth, with a budget of 130 million shekels for the next three years.

Now, on to the details. (Their bolding.):

When Netanyahu walked into Donald Trump’s office for the first time during the former’s second term, he brought a small gift: a golden beeper embedded in a piece of cedar, dedicated to “our great friend and greatest ally.” Trump was delighted. What followed was a warm meeting, described by the Israeli delegation as “beyond our expectations and dreams.” The lesson? Trump likes gifts.

Of all the Israeli lessons, and Israel has taught them many, Iran seems to have taken this one to heart. Trump revealed yesterday that Iran had sent him a gift—and that he liked it. They know their recipient, he said, because “it’s worth a lot of money,” and is supposedly related to oil and gas. But here is the most important part: the gift, he suggested, showed him that he is “talking to the right people.” Unless that box contained the comatose body of Mojtaba Khamenei, I’m skeptical.

Given Trump’s vacillation on the war, as with everything else, who knows that’s going on, and whether his intend to the the war is serious. At any rate, the next piece shows that Iran won’t end the war except on its own terms.

*The WSJ reports that Iran is playing “hardball” with the U.S. as a lot of countries are trying to broker an end to the war.

Mediators from Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan are pushing for a meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials, but Tehran has displayed defiance over the possibility of diplomacy and both sides remain far apart.

The U.S. sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war, which centers largely on previous Trump administration demands of Tehran. Iran’s state-run Press TV broadcaster said Tehran had rejected the U.S. proposal and set out its own conditions for a deal, including reparations and recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

Gulf Arab states are growing alarmed by Trump’s eagerness to do a deal. The leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are lobbying Trump to stick with the war until Iran is sufficiently weakened that it won’t pose a threat.

Separately, authorities suspect Iran recruited individuals online for terror attacks in Europe, and set up a bogus terror group to claim responsibility for attacks on Jewish schools, synagogues and companies linked to Israel.

Here’s their summary of Trump’s 15 point plan:

The document, sent through intermediaries, calls on Iran to dismantle its three main nuclear sites and end any enrichment on Iranian soil, suspend its ballistic-missile work, curb support for proxies and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to the officials.

In return, Iran would have nuclear-related sanctions lifted, the officials said, and the U.S. would assist—while monitoring—the country’s civilian nuclear program. The plan broadly reflects the U.S. proposal discussed with Iran before the war started Feb. 28, when President Trump accused Tehran of not negotiating in good faith. Iran’s new, harder-line leadership says it now has higher demands of Washington, such as seeking reparations for weeks of attacks.

And here’s Iran’s demands:

Iran is demanding an end to attacks by the U.S. and Israel as well as concrete guarantees preventing the recurrence of the war, Press TV quoted the official as saying. The country also wants recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and financial compensation for damages caused by the weekslong conflict. Tehran also wants Israel and the U.S. to stop attacks on its allies across the region, the official said.

Those two demands are so far apart you could drive a gazillion trucks through them. Iran’s demands are even stronger than the demands that Trump rejected before the U.S. and Israel started their attack.

Note that the Saudis and UAE leaders don’t want a deal; they want the Iranian regime destroyed. for they know what that a revived theocracy will not only expoort terror, but perhaps keep striking targets in countries like those two.  I think the U.S. terms are too easy, and I don’t want this war to end without surrender and regime changes. Is that unrealistic? Maybe, but it’s a just ending to a just war.

*Two authors at the WaPo (Karen Kramer, deputy director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, and Esfandiar Aban, the center’s director of research) tell us what we need to know: “Iran is already ramping up its next war. Guess who the ‘enemy’ is.” Surprise: it’s the Iranian people themselves!

The bombs are still falling, and the Islamic Republic’s future is uncertain, but one thing is already clear: The Iranian regime is preparing for its next war — against its own citizens.

In the past few days, three young men arrested for participating in the January protests have already been executed — a chilling signal of what may lie ahead.

The danger to the Iranian people cannot be overstated. Confronted not only with external conflict but also with a population that has repeatedly taken to the streets in defiance, the regime is determined to settle scores with its domestic critics and extinguish any internal challenge to its rule.

Its willingness to inflict violence upon its own people has been demonstrated time and again over the past 47 years. But never has it been more intense than during the nationwide protests in January, when security forces gunned down thousands in the streets over a matter of days. Now facing an existential threat, the regime is angry and armed and sees enemies all around.

That’s correct: the regime has said more than once in the last several weeks that any protestors will be summarily shot in the streets. More:

The warning signs are unmistakable. Armed Basij patrol neighborhoods. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has sent text messages to citizens warning that “a blow even stronger than that of January 8” awaits those who protest. Hundreds of arrests have taken place across the country since the current conflict began, according to research by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). The detained include not only January protesters tracked down by the authorities but also activists, students, members of religious and ethnic minorities, and ordinary citizens. Sources inside Iran report checkpoints in Tehran, Mashhad and other cities, where security forces stop individuals, confiscate their phones and search for “suspicious” content.

Iranian judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi has made the regime’s position explicit: “Individuals who collaborate with the enemy in any manner are considered part of the enemy’s forces and will be dealt with accordingly.” In practice, the regime defines “collaboration” so broadly as to encompass any form of dissent — activists, lawyers defending political prisoners, doctors who treated wounded protesters, members of religious or ethnic minorities, or simply individuals whose private messages or social media posts run afoul of the state.

For many, the outcome is grimly predictable: They will be arrested, most likely tortured and quickly tried without independent lawyers or due process in special revolutionary courts by handpicked hard-line judges. Many will face espionage or national security charges, which can carry the death penalty.

In this environment, the risk of mass arbitrary detention is acute. Even more alarming is the prospect of mass executions, especially as those arrested face a high likelihood of forced “confessions” extracted under torture. Hundreds of such confessions were broadcast over state TV after the January protests.

*In contrast to the rest of the article in the NYT, Bret Stephens has an optimistic take on the US and Israel vs. Iran. It’s given in his column, “The war is going better than you think” (archived here). And that’s because what you “think” about the war is largely conditioned by the liberal mainstream media, like the anti-Israel NYT! He gives a lot of comparisons:

As Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told NBC’s Kristen Welker over the weekend, “We’ve never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in this country’s history.”

Really? Let’s take a tour of some of the recent history.

  • During the 1991 Operation Desert Storm against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, a campaign that is widely considered a brilliant military success, the U.S.-led coalition lost 75 aircraft, 42 of them in combat. In this conflict, four manned aircraft have been destroyed, three to friendly fire and one in an accident. Not a single manned plane has yet been lost over Iran.

  • The U.S. air and land campaign in that operation lasted a full six weeks. Today it’s remembered as a lightning-fast war. The current conflict with Iran is less than four weeks old.

  • In the 1989-90 invasion of Panama, whose military phase lasted a few days, the United States lost 23 soldiers, with 325 more wounded. So far in this war, U.S. losses are 13 dead. Among the more than 230 wounded, most have swiftly returned to duty.

  • During the Persian Gulf crisis that began with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the U.S. economy went into recession and the Dow fell by about 13 percent before the allied air war began. Since conflict with Iran began last June with Operation Midnight Hammer, the Dow is up by 9 percent as of Tuesday morning.

  • At the outset of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States made a failed decapitation strike against Saddam Hussein and his senior leadership, some of whom became leaders of the insurgency. In this war, much of Iran’s top leadership was killed on the first day and there is still no proof of life from the new supreme leader. Yousef Pezeshkian, the son of the current president, has written that if Iran can’t prevent the continued assassination of its leaders, “we will lose the war.”

  • Between 1987 and 1988, in the final stages of the so-called tanker war, the Reagan administration reflagged Kuwaiti tankers and had the U.S. Navy escort them out of the Strait of Hormuz. An Iranian mine nearly sank an American frigate. The conflict wound down after the United States sank a handful of Iranian navy ships. This time around, we have destroyed almost all of Iran’s navy with no naval losses of our own.

  • In 1991, Iraq fired roughly 40 missiles toward Israel. Hardly any were intercepted despite the deployment of Patriot batteries there. In this war, Israel is registering an interception rate of 92 percent against more than 400 missiles. Iran’s overall rate of fire has dropped from 438 ballistic missiles on the first day of the war to 21 on Monday. Drone fire has also declined from 345 to 75 for the same dates.

  • In the months leading up to the second Iraq war, the George W. Bush administration made a case based on erroneous information that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. In the current war, there is no question that some 970 pounds of highly enriched uranium lies stashed and buried in Iran — possibly enough, with further enrichment and conversion into uranium metal, for 11 nuclear bombs. If the outrage of the Iraq war is that Hussein didn’t have W.M.D. capabilities, is it now supposed to be somehow more outrageous that Iran does?

  • One of the worst mistakes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was the attempt by U.S. administrators to remake societies in both countries — well-intended efforts with some noble results that nonetheless were beyond our grasp. In this war, despite some varying rhetoric from President Trump, the goal has been reasonably clear and consistent: Iran cannot have nuclear weapons or other means to menace its neighbors. As for regime change, we hope the Iranian people use the opportunity of their leadership’s weakness to seize their own destiny. But we won’t do it for them.

There are more, but I’ve left them out. Here’s Stephens’s conclusion:

I am not blind to the Trump administration’s failures in planning, particularly its unwillingness to make a stronger public case for war and get more allies on our side before the campaign began. I am also purposely comparing the war with Iran to past wars of similar scale, rather than our true military fiascos in Vietnam, Korea and the two world wars — in which tens of thousands of Americans died due to poor tactical planning and bad strategy.

Still, if past generations could see how well this war has gone compared with the ones they were compelled to fight at a frightening cost, they would marvel at their posterity’s comparative good fortune. They would marvel, too, at our inability to appreciate the advantages we now possess.

It is good to keep some historical perspective, and that’s pretty much what Stephens does.  What has changed in the last ten years is the anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism of the American Left, which makes people more pessimistic than is warranted. And of course there are those pesky gas prices. . .

*Have you thought about Ukraine lately? Over at the conservative National Review, we hear that “The tide turns for Ukraine” (archived post).

You’ve probably heard cynical observers of the U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic of Iran insist that the only true victor in this war will be Russia. If this is what victory looks like, though, Russia was better off mired in a stalemated quagmire.

It turns out that Ukraine isn’t bereft of any “cards” to play in this war. In fact, it’s got a full deck at its disposal.

“The biggest thing coming out of Ukraine is the rapid pace of innovation,” said Space Force Lieutenant General Steven Whitney in a recent congressional testimony. Kyiv has developed the capacity to adapt, iterating and fielding both new high-tech weapons and low-cost defensive munitions at a rapid pace. “Their level of innovation is out of this world,” he marveled.

That ingenuity has transformed Ukraine, in the minds of its detractors inside the Trump administration, from a charity case and a drag on U.S. resources into a sought-after partner in the battle against Iranian forces and the creator of weapons systems that the U.S. and its Middle East partners only wish they had at their disposal.

And what about the war?

In February, Elon Musk’s SpaceX implemented a whitelisting system that cut Russian forces off from accessing its Starlink satellite-based internet services. All of a sudden, Russian commanders could no longer access live footage of the battlespace and lost communications with troops in the field. The move coincided with a Ukrainian offensive that is still advancing eastward.

“Since then, Ukraine says it has retaken roughly 150 square miles of territory in the southern Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, where Russian forces had previously been advancing rapidly,” the Wall Street Journal reported last week. Indeed, for the better part of a month, while the world’s eyes were locked on the Persian Gulf, Ukrainian forces have managed to advance on several fronts, retaking contested and strategically valuable territory from Russia’s occupiers.

With the onset of spring, Russia, too, is back on offense. But while Moscow’s soldiers are making “some tactical gains at significant cost,” according to the Institute for the Study of War, its strategic objectives remain out of reach for now. And the “cost” of this offensive is steep.

Kyiv-skeptical elements inside the Trump administration are still trying to force Ukraine into a supplicative posture, and Ukraine is still resisting Washington’s efforts to impose defeat on it. But those who saw Ukraine as little more than a freeloading alms-seeker draining the West’s resources toward no greater strategic end must increasingly rely on baseless prejudices to justify that outlook.

Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine won’t end anytime soon, and there will be more twists of fortune to come in a war that’s been full of them. But anyone who told themselves that Ukraine’s defeat was only a matter of time allowed the wish to father the thought.

I was one of those pessimists, and am glad to hear a more optimistic take.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s inspecting the garden:

Hili: I wonder whether this peach will have any fruit already this year.
Andrzej: I’m not certain, but I can’t exclude it.

In Polish:

Hili: Ciekawe, czy ta brzoskwinia będzie miała już w tym roku jakieś owoce.
Ja: Nie jestem pewien, ale nie mogę tego wykluczyć.

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

From Things With Faces, a sad potato:

From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Animal Antics (it should be “lie down”):

And an extra photo from my FB feed, which, sadly, is not real but an AI fake (it is, after all an ad for matzos). But I wish it were real! The ladies, of course, are all Jewish, and Gal Gadot was in the IDF for two years. I didn’t know Pink was Jewish, but that is the case: she had a Jewish mom, ergo by Jewish Roolz say she is one of us. “Pesach” is simply Passover, which this year extends from sundown on the evening of April 1 until Thursday, April 9.

Masih is busy posting against the Iranian regime; she’s clearly in favor of the war against her natal country:

From Luana, not a fan of DEI “ideology” that leads to stuff like this:

Found on Twitter, but not through doomscrolling. People don’t ever think about this comparison:

Two from my feed. First, a kitty who doesn’t want to wet his paws:

Science girl comes through again; this is damn funny:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

. . . and two from Dr. Cobb.  First, beautiful bracelets, nearly five millennia old:

Stunning 4,600 year-old silver bracelets with inlaid semi-precious stones in the shape of butterflies! 🦋🦋🦋🦋They belonged to Egyptian Queen Hetepheres. From her tomb at Giza. Old Kingdom, 4th Dynasty, c. 2613-2494 BC.Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo📷 by me#Archaeology

— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2026-03-25T09:45:55.491Z

Of this Matthew comments, “This is edited by Chuck Workman (no, me neither). V good, but not all great films are from the USA! (Yes, there’s Metropolis and some spaghetti westerns in there, but that’s about it).” I’m not quite sure what he means, but how many of these scenes have you seen?

Cinema will find a way. 💕

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 2025-12-06T15:42:40.642Z

.

 

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

March 25, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Haftanın Ortası” in Turkish): Wednesday, March 25, 2026, and Manatee Appreciation Day. There are three living species of the critter. Wikipedia says this:

There are three accepted living species of Trichechidae, representing three of the four living species in the order Sirenia: the Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis), the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus), and the West African manatee (Trichechus senegalensis). They measure up to 4.0 metres (13 ft 1 in) long, weigh as much as 590 kilograms (1,300 lb), and have paddle-like tails.

Another sirenian is the dugong, found in the Indo-West Pacific.   Here’s a video about them telling you what you need to know!

I have seen them in Florida, and I love these gentle giants. They’re completely herbivorous and keep getting injured or killed by powerboats.

It’s also  the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (a UN holiday), International Waffle Day, National Lobster Newburg Day, and Pecan Day.  Here’s Anthony Bourdain visiting a Waffle House with chef Sean Brock.  At first disdainful, Bourdain is won over. And he eats pecan waffles, which is a celebration of two ot today’s holidays.  This is, I think, one of Bourdain’s better videos.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 25 Wikipedia page.

Oh, I need advice. I want to unsubscribe from Andrew Sullivan’s site, and I don’t care if I have to pay for the rest of the year. Could someone tell me how to do it?  I’m tired of the rantings of that old curmudgeon.

Da Nooz:

*Yesterday’s war news summary from It’s Noon in Israel (I recommend that you subscribe; you can get a bunch of news for free here):

  • Trump extended his deadline for an Iran deal to March 27, saying Tehran has agreed to cease uranium enrichment, relinquish existing stockpiles, and remain “low-key on the missiles.” Netanyahu said Trump told him the U.S. sees an opportunity to “leverage the military achievements of the war” to secure all strategic objectives through an agreement. Meanwhile, Iranian parliament speaker Ghalibaf publicly rejected reports of U.S.-Iran negotiations on X—despite reportedly being the official leading Iran’s diplomatic engagement with Washington. The denial may say more about internal Iranian politics than about the state of the talks: Ghalibaf has quietly consolidated enormous influence since the war began, making him both the man most likely to be negotiating and the man with the most to gain from denying it.
  • Vice President JD Vance will be joining U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in Pakistan to pursue indirect talks with Iranian officials, specifically Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi, with Islamabad serving as both mediator and summit venue. Markets responded immediately—oil retreated below $100 a barrel on news of the pause. Tehran is demanding guarantees, base closures, and compensation, while Israeli officials are warning that negotiations could either buy Iran time or fall short of U.S. red lines.
  • According to the AP, Israel used one of Iran’s oppression apparatuses—its extensive system of street cameras—to track and kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. According to intelligence officials briefed on the operation, nearly all of Tehran’s traffic cameras had been hacked for years, with footage streamed to servers in Israel. Algorithms mapped the daily movements of senior officials—their routes, parking spots, and security details—allowing Israel to plan the strike months in advance and expedite it once it was confirmed that Khamenei and his top officials would be at the leadership compound that morning. The irony is stark: the instrument of Iranian oppression ultimately became the tool to end its dictator.
  • Three suspects have been arrested and indicted following the near-fatal lynching of a Jewish teenager in Huwara in January. On January 25, the Shin Bet received intelligence that the teenager had entered the Huwara area and been violently attacked by local residents—left unconscious, with his attackers believing he was dead. There has been a notable uptick in settler violence; to see my take on it, watch the end of the CNN interview at the end of the newsletter.

Now, on to the details

A very senior Israeli official told me last night, “It’s highly doubtful that the Iranians’ minimum will meet Trump’s maximum.” To put it simply: expectations in Israel for a negotiated end to this war are currently close to zero—and here’s why.

Trump has said something consistently about Iran for years: they have never won a war, but they have never lost a negotiation. So why would he suddenly leave his home field—the battlefield, where he is the strongest player in the world—to play an away game, negotiations, where the Iranians are world-class operators? He would only do so if there were a great deal to gain.

I think the negotiations will wind up either noexistent or nonproductive.  Trump’s erratic behavior about the war really is disturbing.

*The Wall Street Journal reports on a series of closed-door meetings in Riyadh involving Middle East diplomats, those meetings  that supposedly led to Trump putting a hold on his threatened strikes on Iran (article archived here).

Foreign ministers from Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan gathered before dawn Thursday in Riyadh for talks aimed at finding a diplomatic off-ramp to the war in Iran.

But there was one big problem, according to Arab officials involved in the discussions: finding a counterpart in Iran to negotiate with. Earlier that week, Israel killed Iran’s national security chief, Ali Larijani, who had been considered a viable partner who could engage with the West.

Egyptian intelligence officials managed to open a channel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—the paramilitary group that protects the Iranian regime and is the country’s most powerful security and political entity—and put forward a proposal to halt hostilities for five days to build confidence for a cease-fire, some of the officials said.

Those discussions laid the groundwork for an abrupt reversal more than 7,000 miles away in Florida.

On Saturday night, President Trump, who spent the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago club, gave Iran an ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours or the U.S. military would “obliterate” the country’s power plants. Two days later, as word of the discussions in Riyadh made its way to the White House, Trump reversed course, embracing diplomacy with Tehran and putting his threatened strikes on hold.

Trump’s shift Monday morning followed a series of closed-door discussions—through Middle Eastern intermediaries—that U.S. officials said gave them hope an agreement to settle the conflict was possible. It also reflected a growing desire by Trump and some of his advisers to bring the war to a close, according to people familiar with the matter, as the president faces political and economic fallout from the conflict.

“These are sensitive diplomatic discussions, and the U.S. will not negotiate through the press,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “This is a fluid situation, and speculation about meetings should not be deemed as final until they are formally announced by the White House.”

. . . But Arab mediators privately expressed skepticism that the U.S. and Iran could quickly reach an agreement, noting that the two sides remained far apart. Trump’s assertion that the talks were productive was met with pushback from Iranian officials, who denied that the discussions were taking place.

What’s not clear is whether the U.S. has even had any negotiations with either the Middle Eastern foreign ministers or with Iran. If so, who is negotiating on the part of the U.S.  This is all we have:

Messages continued to be exchanged, with Qatar, Oman, France and the U.K. working their back channels, European and Arab officials said. Among the proposals bandied about was Pakistan hosting a meeting between U.S. and Iranian senior leaders, the officials said, adding that the U.S. quickly warmed to that idea.

The U.S. could be represented by special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, although there was also a possibility that Vice President JD Vance could come if a deal was close, a U.S. official said.

It we negotiate, I think we’ll lose, for the regime will stay in power (do you think Iran would agree to regime change?), and so will the uranium enrichment program. Yes, Trump’s approval rating is tanking, so perhaps that’s pushing him to end the war, but will it be a Hamas-like end to the war, with the terrorists still in power? (Nobody seems to think about what’s going on in Gaza any more. Well, Hamas, sworn to destroy Israel still controls much of the territory, despite having supposedly promised to lay down their arms. LOL.

*Curiously, according to the NYT, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been urging Trump to continue the war with Iran as a way of remaking the Middle East. What? Read the article right above,

Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing President Trump to continue the war against Iran, arguing that the U.S.-Israeli military campaign presents a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East, according topeople briefed by American officials on the conversations.

In a series of conversations over the last week, Prince Mohammed has conveyed to Mr. Trump that he must press toward the destruction of Iran’s hard-line government, the people familiar with the conversations said.

Prince Mohammed, the people familiar with the discussions said, has argued that Iran poses a long-term threat to the Gulf that can only be eliminated by getting rid of the government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel also views Iran as a long-term threat, but analysts say Israeli officials would probably view a failed Iranian state that is too caught up in internal turmoil to menace Israel as a win, while Saudi Arabia views a failed state in Iran as a grave and direct security threat.

But senior officials in both the Saudi and American governments worry that if the conflict drags on, Iran could deliver ever more punishing attacks on Saudi oil installations and the United States could be stuck in an endless war.

In public, Mr. Trump has swung wildly between suggesting that the war could end soon and signaling it would escalate.

Saudi Arabia, with its oil, is probably the most important country involved in this conflict besides the U.S., Iran, and Israel, and its thinking ahead about its oil. Israel is think ahead about whether Iran will pose an existential threat after the war is over. And Trump, what is he thinking about.  Probably Trump himself, and how the world views him. But how can Saudi Arabia be involved in pushing the U.S. to topple the Iranian regime on the one hand and negotiating a non-toppling cease fire on the other?

*An article by Milan Singh at The Argument site  makes “The liberal case for voter ID,” which does not support the SAVE Act but does support the use of IDs (h/t Reese).  The SAVE Act is a Republican-sponsored House Bill, HR 22, which requires people who register to vote have proof of U.S. citizenship. It’s controversial because people suspect that Republicans are doing this because people who would vote Democratic, namely blacks and the impoverished, could not vote because they don’t have access to the documents necessary to prove citizenship. (Presumably you’d have to provide proof of citizenship only once, and from then on just show proof of who you are with a “voter ID” like a driver’s license or state ID card.)

. . . .at its core, this is an argument about election administration: Republicans say the bill is necessary to prevent immigrants from voting illegally. Democrats say this kind of voting fraud is so rare as to be a non-issue and that it will make it more difficult for American citizens to cast their ballots.

But the article argues that in 2024, those who didn’t vote leaned towards Trump and that voters with higher socioeconomic status, and thus more likely to have proof of citizenship, are more likely to vote Democratic.  There’s more: studies show that voter ID laws don’t really suppress many votes, and that voter ID laws are very popular in the US (over 2/3 of people support them).

The upshot is that a strict voter ID law designed to suppress turnout among low-SES voters would probably net votes for Democrats. Specifically, higher-income voters are more likely to own a valid passport, which is one document the SAVE America Act could require people to present when registering to vote for federal elections (the alternative is to present a birth certificate and valid driver’s license).

And taking the sports and youth transition issues off the table [Trump’s trying to make these part of the bill] would also help Democrats, since the party’s stances on both issues are incredibly unpopular.

I do not believe that we should “nationalize elections” or end mail-in voting.2 But I do think there is a case for Democrats to embrace voter ID laws (though not the SAVE Act itself, which is now chock full of poison pills). Not because these laws would suppress Republican votes, but because they might restore trust in the electoral process.

And to the extent that Democrats are resisting voter ID out of concern that it will skew the electorate in a MAGA direction, that’s a fear they should get over.

. . .The final point about conspiracies is important. Voters having faith in the system matters, just as making voting broadly accessible matters.

That doesn’t mean Democrats should swallow the existing SAVE America Act as written; among other things, it would make it harder for married women who changed their last names and students who move out of state for college to vote. But it would make sense for Democrats to work with Republicans to enact voter ID laws that are popular with the public, allow all eligible voters to cast a ballot, and bolster faith in elections.

. . . it’s worth saying that the call for voter ID is defensible, and it’s simply not true that enacting it would give Republicans a daunting advantage — or even any advantage at all — in elections.

Rhetoric from Democrats like Chuck Schumer comparing the legislation to Jim Crow suggests something so abhorrent as to be beyond dealmaking, and it gives a false impression of the stakes — both moral and in terms of electoral outcomes. Democrats should instead give the people what they want on voter ID and start rebuilding faith in the integrity of the democratic process.

I understand the difficulties of getting proof of citizenship, but, really, you have to be a U.S. citizen to vote in U.S. elections. Period. Shouldn’t you have to document that at least once? After that, once you’re in the system, all you have to do is prove that you’re the same person who’s a citizen, and that can be done with driver’s licenses or other documents. And that’s what 36 states already do: after you prove citizenship once, you just have to show who you are.  I may have had to get a copy of my birth certificate to register in the first place (I can’t remember, but I do have a copy), and that required just my name, date of birth, and a few dollars sent to Missouri (I was born in St. Louis). Once I did that, I was good to go, and never had to show proof of citizenship again. So what’s the big deal? Is it all about getting votes for Democrats or Republicans? If so, that’s not a good motive. But you have to be a citizen to vote, and if you don’t have to prove that at least once, it’s pretty bad.

*Antisemitic attack of the day.  Both the BBC (archived link) and CNN report a case of four ambulances from a London Jewish aid service being set on fire on Monday Morning. From CNN:

Several ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer rescue organization were set on fire outside a synagogue in a neighborhood home to London’s largest Jewish community early on Monday, in an antisemitic attack.

Flames lit up the night sky and residents of the northern suburb of Golders Green were woken by loud explosions, as dozens of firefighters rushed to the area.

Counter-terrorism police are leading the investigation into the attack even though it has not yet been deemed a terrorist incident, police said during a press conference on Monday morning.

An Islamist group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia has allegedly claimed responsibility for the attack. It posted a video on Telegram showing the location of the incident and footage of the ambulances in flames.

. . .However, this has not been confirmed by police. At the press conference, Detective Chief Superintendent Luke Williams said: “We are aware of an online claim from a group taking responsibility for this attack. Establishing the authenticity and accuracy of this claim will be a priority for the investigation team, but it is not something we can confirm at this point.”

Earlier, police said the attack was being treated as an “antisemitic hate crime,” adding that some residents had been evacuated as a precaution.

Security camera footage shared with CNN showed three masked people approach an ambulance belonging to the Hatzola Northwest organization and set it on fire.

 

 

Note that the BBC calls it a “suspected antisemitic hate crime” while CNN apparently has laxer standards for proof of hate crimes.  Regardless, the level of antisemitism in Britain is increasing. Some of that may be due to Muslim immigrants, but there are plenty of homegrown Brits joining the protests (though they probably aren’t enacting this kind of violence.  The explosion at the only Orthodox Jewish school in the Netherlands on March 14 has also been claimed by an Islamist group (nobody was hurt, and the claim hasn’t been verified), and that was after an explosion at a synagogue in Rotterdam the day before. Again, how many times have you heard of Jews in Europe attacking mosques or other Muslim-associated buildings or schools?  This all raises the questions about whether we can stop the attacks and the hate without limiting immigration.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is worried about the upstairs d*g:

Hili: It’s spring, don’t let the dog go out.
Andrzej: The dog also needs its freedom.

In Polish:

Hili: Jest wiosna, nie wypuszczaj psa.
Ja: Pies też potrzebuje wolności.

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

From Things With Faces:

From Now That’s Wild:

From Terrible Maps:

An un-embeddable tweet reposted by Masih (click to go to the original). The execrable Mehdi Hasan accused Masih in the second tween of being partly responsible for the war against Iran:

From Barry. Oy!

Elsie was hands down the most affectionate cow at the petting zoo.

— Runs with scissors in the dark (@tevistickles.bsky.social) 2026-03-24T14:49:33.010Z

From Luana, a nonpolitical tweet. She says that as a child she had a cat who did the same thing to her pet rabbit.

Two from my feed. The first one is freaking amazing:

This cat likes veggies with his meat. I thought cats were afraid of cucumbers.

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, the Internet being funny.

— (@wwxwashere.bsky.social) 2026-03-24T12:00:52.153Z

Matthew made this one. The point is that Sagan thought that there might be nocturnal Martian creatures whose footprints you could see in the daylight but you couldn’t see the perps because it was too impractical to put lights on the lander.

Sagan's nightmare was that because they had been unable to put lights on the lander (weight), they would get photos back each Mars morning showing lots of tiny footprints in the sand around the machine… Sadly it didn't happen.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-03-24T13:00:40.653Z