Category: Hili Dialogue

Sunday: Hili dialogue

October 6, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Sunday, October 6, 2024, and National Noodle Day. There are no noodles like handmade noodles, and here’s how they’re made at one place in New York’s Chinatown:

It’s also International African Diaspora Day, National Badger Day, National German American Day, Garlic Lovers Day, and National Orange Wine Day (it’s not rosé; see below);

A video about orange wine, which is made sort of like rosé, but apparently with more skin contact:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Most Americans favor Roe v. Wade, and I suspect are unhappy with the Supreme Court which, throwing the issue of abortion to the states, has led to widespread restrictions on abortion, some of them unconscionable (i.e., no abortion in cases of rape, incest, or a viable fetus). And that, according to the Washington Post, is why Republicans are running away from the pro-life stand like rats leaving a sinking ship.

In the final stretch before Election Day, Republicans are ramping up efforts to distance themselves from the restrictive abortion positions that have defined their party since the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade — scrambling to soften, or appear to soften, their hard-line positions.

The group includes former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and House members and gubernatorial candidates, and the efforts come as nearly two-thirds of Americans say they believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

In Tuesday evening’s vice-presidential debate, Vance — who during his 2022 Senate run described himself as “100 percent pro-life” and ran on a platform promising to “end abortion” — said he and Trump were working to earn “the American people’s trust back on this issue” and implied that he supported the decision by an unnamed friend in an abusive relationship to terminate her pregnancy.

“I know she’s watching tonight, and I love you,” he said.

That same evening, Trump — who regularly claims credit for overturning Roe — wrote in an all-caps post on social media that he would veto a federal abortion ban, writing “it is up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters (the will of the people!).”

A small group of House Republicans and Republican candidates have also shifted their tone on the issue and are espousing a surprising stance — support for abortion rights — while not necessarily backing legal protections proposed by Democrats. In one example, Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) recently described himself to The Washington Post as “pro-choice,” despite earning positive ratings from antiabortion groups because of his voting record.

In the final stretch before Election Day, Republicans are ramping up efforts to distance themselves from the restrictive abortion positions that have defined their party since the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade — scrambling to soften, or appear to soften, their hard-line positions.

And several Republican gubernatorial candidates have released misleading ads that try to gloss over their past support for abortion restrictions and instead cast themselves as more moderate on the issue. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (N.C.) released a new ad claiming he supports the state’s current law — which bans nearly all abortions after 12 weeks — because of his and his wife’s “very difficult decision” three decades ago to have an abortion.

“When I’m governor, mothers in need will be supported,” he says in the ad.

But his previous statements have gone much further than the state’s existing law, including saying he preferred “a six-week bill” — which would ban abortion before most women know they’re pregnant — and describing abortion as “killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”

“Republicans are seeing the polls, and they know that their hostility to abortion is dragging them down, they know that the public is not enjoying the post Roe v. Wade world, so they are desperately scrambling to reverse those trends by lying about their stance,” said Emily Martin, chief program officer at the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund, an organization devoted to gender justice in law, policy and culture. “But it is a little shocking that there is such a shameless attempt to rewrite recent history.”

Martin is on the money here. But what can be done?  I doubt that a federal law permitting abortion can be passed, even if the Congress turns Democratic, since it would be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.  All we can hope for is that the GOP, realizing the people’s sentiments, which translate into votes, will infuse red states with Roe-v.-Wade-like laws.

*There’s an op-ed in the NYT from Benny Gantz (Israel’s former defense minister): “What the world needs to understand about Iran.”

A year [after Oct. 7, 2023), one must ask: What were Hamas’s leaders hoping for, and what are Iran’s leaders seeking to achieve?

What the Israeli military and political establishment failed to understand, in part, was the extent to which Hamas was driven by the goal of waging religious war. “The intel was there, but I underestimated the jihadi component of Hamas’s and Sinwar’s calculus,” a senior Israel Defense Forces intelligence commander told me early in the war, referring to Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader.

We also failed to act on the warning on the extent to which Hamas interpreted Israel’s domestic instability as a weakness that would impede Israel’s resolve and ability to respond to an attack. Intelligence has since shown how the heads of Hamas believed that at our weakest, we would not be capable of uniting.

According to Hamas’s plan, after its attack on Israel, the remaining components of Iran’s axis of evil — Hamas in the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Shiite militias in Syria, Iraq and Iran — would join in a regional war with the ultimate goal of destroying the one and only Jewish state. A secret Hamas document reportedly uncovered in Gaza testified to such assertion: Written by the Hamas leader on Jan. 8, 2023, in it he claimed to have received a commitment from Iran that the axis would join the attack against Israel once Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood plan to invade Israel was activated.

So three rationales stood behind Hamas’s attack: jihadi fanaticism, an assessment that Israel was at a point of weakness and loyalty to Iran and its axis of evil. It is for these reasons that Oct. 7 and Iran’s subsequent attacks on Israel must serve as a stark warning to the region and the world regarding the Islamic republic’s uncompromising intentions and its outlook on the West.

. . . In a post-Oct. 7 reality, it is clear that Israel must — and the world should — be proactive and determined in the face of the threat the Iranian regime poses to Israel’s existence and the region’s future. The world cannot overlook Iran’s role in the strangling of freedom of navigation and the harming of global commerce in the Red Sea or its technological and military support for Russia in Ukraine. The regime and its axis must face a strong and united Middle East, led and supported by the United States, that is ready to take the initiative to prevent the realization of the Iranian vision of a regional Oct. 7. Now is the time to bolster regional cooperation and make a broad effort to confront Iran.

. . .Israel experienced its most painful tragedy on Oct. 7 but also underwent a ringing awakening: A fundamentalist terrorist state cannot acquire lethal capabilities and be expected to act rationally, as we once expected of Hamas. As someone who has served as Israel’s minister of defense and the 20th chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, I believe Israel is the strongest nation in the Middle East, fighting a just war for the nation’s future and its citizens, and that’s why it will emerge victorious.

Israel learned the lesson of Oct. 7; we now bear the responsibility of sharing the lesson with the world. The time to act against Iran is now. It’s not only a matter of necessity for Israel but also one of strategic imperative for the region and moral clarity for the world for the sake of peace and prosperity in the Middle East.

What can I say? The man is right. But seeing this in his very own newspaper will give Thomas “I Am Ignorant” Friedman a heart attack. Nicholas Kristof, too, is now touting cease-fires and restrictions of US arms shipments to Israel.

*The WSJ beefs about the exorbitant pay of “rock star lawyers” (not lawyers who defend rock stars, but high-priced lawyers).  I myself have beefed about this on the rare occasions I need a lawyer, especially when they charge you for very brief phone calls.  This is why there are so many lawyer jokes:

Big companies around the world are pushing back against rapidly rising legal bills, railing against hourly lawyer rates they say are the product of law-firm excess.

Lawyers’ hourly rates rose almost 9% in the first half of 2024, according to data from Wells Fargo legal specialty group, which surveys large law firms quarterly. That’s on top of an 8.3% increase in rates last year. Historically, fees would rise about 4% each year, Wells Fargo says.

Lawyers’ pay is skyrocketing. Brutal poaching wars for talent are now common, and top lawyers expect to be paid like investment bankers and private-equity principals.

“You don’t negotiate with those guys. You aren’t going to bet the company,” said Matthew Lepore, general counsel for chemical giant BASF. “Clients aren’t doing as well as the law firms are doing, and it’s not sustainable.”

In certain specialties, such as merger counseling, regulatory compliance, tax and private equity, corporate general counsels say there is only a small pool of firms to choose from. Companies venturing into high-stakes deals turn to the most elite firms, with the hopes that the high price tag promises the best outcomes. Hourly rates can run $2,500 or more for the most sought-after attorneys, and are expected to keep rising, according to legal recruiters and court filings.

“The market is driven by the top end. The top firms are spending money to compete for the best rock-star talent. That’s what is driving this,” said Alan Tse, chief legal officer at global commercial real-estate firm JLL. “Obviously not enough of us are saying no. Clients are part of the problem.”

The top law firms have grown in size and seen their revenues shoot upward as they’ve become one-stop shops for corporate clients for deal work, litigation, and tax advice. The legal industry has shifted its compensation structure, and only a few firms still have a classic lockstep pay system that rewards based on seniority. Instead, firms pay up for stars and based on productivity. The flexibility increases the cost of talent.

Law firm revenue growth was up 11.4% in the first six months of 2024, outpacing expenses, according to a Citi Global survey of top law firms.

Remember, $2500 per hour is more than $40 per minute, or roughly a dollar a second. Here’s a lawyer joke:

A lawyer opened the door of his BMW, when suddenly a car came along and hit the door, ripping it off completely. When the police arrived at the scene, the lawyer was complaining bitterly about the damage to his precious BMW.

“Officer, look what they’ve done to my Beemer!” he whined.

“You lawyers are so materialistic, you make me sick!” retorted the officer, “You’re so worried about your stupid BMW, that you didn’t even notice that your left arm was ripped off!”

“Oh my god,” replied the lawyer, finally noticing the bloody left shoulder where his arm once was, “Where’s my Rolex!”

*The NYT profiles the pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, headed by Nerdeen Kiswani. It’s a small group but an influential one, able to shut down Grand Central Station last July simply by posting an online notice for supporters to meet at the location at 5:30 p.m. (the cops shut it down and sent drones and helicopters up). But it’s much more militant than similar groups, calling for violence in such explicit terms that even Meta shut it down (I note with pride that I have more followers on Twitter than does this group).  An excerpt:

Ms. Kiswani bills herself as part of a bolder, new generation of Palestinian American activists who are calling for what she says earlier generations also wanted, but feared to say in public: the replacement of the state of Israel with a state called Palestine, covering all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

“We may look more moderate, or whatever, if we talk about a two-state solution,” she said. “But that’s been dead on arrival for years now. It’s already a one-state solution. It’s a state that’s controlled by Israel in every sense.”

There was no point in softening her message, she said. “People from our community who tried to appease politicians, they were still marginalized. They were still called terrorists,” she added. “So if we’re going to receive that backlash regardless of what we say or do, then we might as well make the full demands of what we want for our people, which is complete and total liberation.”

Ms. Kiswani and the groups that protest with her helped inspire last spring’s campus protests that bedeviled and led to the departure of multiple university leaders. (Ms. Kiswani showed up to the Columbia University encampment on her wedding day in April, still wearing her traditional red and white dress.)

They have also become a concern for Democrats who fear divisions over the war in Gaza might chip away at voters during a presidential election with tight margins.

“They tell us voting for the lesser of two evils is the right thing to do,” Ms. Kiswani told a crowd in August, standing atop a stack of police crowd-control barricades outside a campaign event for Vice President Kamala Harris in Harlem. “So we divest from this system.”

And this is bogus: if the state of Israel exists and was established by the UN, then calling for its demolition is simply antisemitism:

Ms. Kiswani insists she is not antisemitic. Instead, she says she opposes Zionists, those who believe Israel should exist as a Jewish state in its ancient homeland. But Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League say that distinction is a smoke screen, because Zionism is a core part of the identity of most Jews.

Anti-Zionism is simply anti-Semitism used as a euphemism, and if you have ears to hear, you recognize it. Yes, there is a handful of Jews who are real, practicing, and believing Jews, not antisemitic Jews, who are anti-Zionist, but they’re a tiny minority.  Have a listen to this eloquent closing of a debate about whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism by Natasha Hausdorff, who argues “yes, they’re now the same”. Her analogy, starting at 3:05,  is great. (Her debating partner on the “yes” side was Douglas Murray, and the pair won.)

*From the reliable AP “Oddities” section, we have some news about the controversial 2-year-old Massachusetts rescue beaver named Nibi.  Nibi was rescued as a tot, brought up in captivity, and may well not be able to survive in the wild (see bit that I bolded below). Despite that, wildlife officials demanded that Nibi be released because “wild animals belong in the wild.” I agree with that as a rule, but Nibi (and many domestically-raised wild animals) are exceptions. Nibi may be one (see below), and she was allowed to stay in captivity as a rescue beaver who will be used in an educational enterprise to teach people about beavers.

The question of whether a 2-year-old beaver named Nibi can stay with the rescuers she has known since she was a baby or must be released into the wild was resolved Thursday when the Massachusetts governor stepped in to protect Nibi.

The state issued a permit to Newhouse Wildlife Rescue for Nibi to remain at the rehabilitation facility and serve as an educational animal.

“Nibi has captured the hearts of many of our residents, mine included,” Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said Thursday. “We’re excited to share that we have issued a permit for Nibi to remain in Newhouse’s care, continuing to educate the public about this important species.”

Nibi’s fate had made it all the way to the state courts before Healey stepped in.

A judge on Tuesday had said that Nibi would be allowed to stay in her home at the rescue center in Chelmsford, located northwest of Boston. A hearing had been set for Friday in a case filed by the rescuers against MassWildlife, the state’s division of fisheries and wildlife, to stop the release.

An online petition to save Nibi from being released into the wild has received over 25,000 signatures, lawmakers have weighed in, and earlier this week Healey pledged to make sure Nibi is protected.

“We all care about what is best for the beaver known as Nibi and all wild animals throughout our state,” Mark Tisa, director of MassWildlife, said in a statement Thursday. “We share the public’s passion for wildlife and invite everyone to learn more about beavers and their important place in our environment.”

Jane Newhouse, the rescue group’s founder and president, has said that after Nibi was found on the side of the road, they tried to reunite her with nearby beavers who could have been her parents but were unsuccessful. After that, attempts to get her to bond with other beavers also didn’t work.

“It’s very difficult to consider releasing her when she only seems to like people and seems to have no interest in being wild or bonding with any of her own species,” she said.

Nibi has a large enclosure with a pool at the rescue operation, and will also wander in its yard and rehabilitation space, Newhouse said. “She pretty much has full run of the place. Everybody on my team is in love with her,” she said.

Here’s a video of Nibi. Ceiling Cat bless the governor of Massachusetts for taking such an interest in a single rodent.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are hunting and obeying the dictates of their genomes:

Hili: We have to attack.
A: Why?
Hili: We have no choice.
In Polish:
Hili: Musimy przejść do ataku.
Ja: Czemu?
Hili: To poprawia samopoczucie.

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

From Malcolm:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Things With Faces by Deborah Pirettei:  Due melanzane depresse (Two depressed eggplants):

A stirring call from Masih, with interpolated video from Iran, calling for action against the Iranian regime (in Farsi but with English subtitles):

From Luana re MSNBC. I doubt the guy is lying:

From Barry, a science experiment. It’s a miracle!

From my feed; a bird who needs to learn to eat on its own:

Another from my feed; live and learn!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

Two tweets from Matthew. Somehow this picture is off!

I never thought about this, nor have I watched trampoline competitions during the Olympics:

Saturday: Hili dialogue

October 5, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, October 5, 2024, and National Apple Betty Day, celebrating the dessert. It used to be called “brown betty”, but times being what they are, the color has been deep-sixed.

It’s also World Teachers’ Day, Do Something Nice Day, Rocky Mountain Oyster Day (them’s testicles!), and Global James Bond Day, celebrating the day in 1962 when the first Bond film, “Dr. No,” opened in London. 

Here’s the scene from the movie in which Bond meets Honey, played by Ursula Andress:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 5 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Everybody’s dispensing advice about what the Presidential candidates should be doing to win in November, and Peggy Noonan at the WSJ is no exception. Though she’s a conservative, she’s no Trump-osculator, and has advice for both candidates:

If I were a Trump supporter I would be worried about what Trump supporters have worried about since he came down the escalator, that he is squandering it away every day. Voters and observers have spent a decade saying “he’s getting crazier,” “he’s going too far,” and they’re always right and are right now. He’s selling $100,000 watches and having Truth Social meltdowns, free-associating about movies and dribbling away arguments. Ms. Harris insists almost to the point of credibility that the Biden-Harris administration didn’t let the border be overwhelmed, the Biden-Harris administration tried to control the border and put forward the toughest bill and Donald Trump stopped it. And she’s getting away with it! With the Jan. 6 filings released this week, his focus is sure to return to the endless murk and mire of personal grievance.

What should both sides be watching now? John Ellis, in his Political News Items Substack, notes an intriguing sidebar from a recent Gallup survey. “Nearly identical percentages of US adults rate Donald Trump (46%) and Kamala Harris (44%) favorably in Gallup’s latest Sept 3-15 poll.” But both candidates have higher unfavorable ratings than favorable. Mr. Trump’s unfavorable rating is 7 points higher than his favorable—and Ms. Harris’s is 10 points higher. Her favorable numbers have “moderated” since her rise to the nomination, while Mr. Trump’s are up 5 points since last month.

Look at the numbers involving independent voters, Mr. Ellis continues. Majorities of independents view Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris unfavorably, but he holds a favorability edge over her with independents, at 44% vs. 35%. More: “Assuming the poll is accurate”—he does—“the fact that 60 percent of independents have an ‘unfavorable’ opinion of Harris is surprising.” In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump among independents, 52% to 43%.

Back to the Harris campaign. It’s odd that some political professionals think nobody cares if she does an interview with some newspaper. When all the public sees is scripted stuff, punctuated infrequently by an interview with a highly respectful and sympathetic interviewer, they pick it up. They get a sense that something is being hidden from them. Well-produced rallies with good enough speeches and softball interviews won’t really cut it. In Hollywood they used to try to soften the picture of a star losing her luster by putting a coat of Vaseline on the camera lens, to soften the focus. The Harris campaign is using too much metaphoric Vaseline, and it feels not like an attempt to soften but to obscure.

It would be better if she’d done interview after interview from day one of her candidacy, and better if her campaign had accepted the wobbles, accepted the imperfections, gotten people rooting for her, and helped her get more at ease, more confident, and let her build. That they didn’t implies they didn’t think she could build.

Hiding in plain sight works for a while but not forever.

*Bret Stephens, though somewhat of a conservative, is one of the few NYT columnists who has gotten the import of the Gazan war correct. In his latest op-ed, “The year American Jews woke up” (archived here), he first notes that all American Jews were aware of the rise in antisemitism, but it wasn’t driven home until Oct. 7, 2023—and driven home by American behavior:

After Oct. 7, it became personal. It was in the neighborhoods in which we lived, the professions and institutions in which we worked, the colleagues we worked alongside, the peers with whom we socialized, the group chats to which we belonged, the causes to which we donated, the high schools and universities our kids attended. The call was coming from inside the house.

It happened in innumerable ways, large and small.

The home of an impeccably progressive Jewish director of a prominent art museum was vandalized with red spray paint and a sign accusing her of being a “white supremacist Zionist.” A storied literary magazine endured mass resignations from its staff members for the sin of publishing the work of a left-wing Israeli. A Jewish journalist scrolled through Instagram and recognized an old friend from Northwestern gleefully tearing down posters of Hamas’s hostages while saying “calba” — dog in Arabic — to the pictures of kidnapped infants and elderly people. A leading progressive congresswoman was asked during a TV interview about Hamas’s rapes of Israeli women and called them an unfortunate fact of war before quickly returning to the subject of Israel’s alleged perfidy. An 89-year-old Holocaust survivor petitioned the Berkeley City Council to pass a Holocaust Remembrance Day proclamation in light of the resurgence of antisemitism and was heckled by demonstrators. An on-campus caricature depicted an affable Jewish law school dean holding a knife and fork drenched in blood. A Columbia University undergraduate posted on Instagram: “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” Tucker Carlson platformed a Hitler apologist. Trump warned Jews that he is prepared to blame them should he lose the election.

All these stories became public, but what could be at least as upsetting were the stories you heard about only over meals with friends and acquaintances. A publishing executive who wanted to promote a novel set during the Holocaust but faced internal resistance from staff members who saw it as “Zionist propaganda.” A college freshman with a Jewish surname being the only person in her dorm to have anti-Israel leaflets pushed under her door. A student who suggested to me, during a give-and-take at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, that Israelis should heed the words of the Book of Matthew and turn the other cheek. It reminded me of Eric Hoffer’s quip that “everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”

At some point, an awakening of sorts occurred. Perhaps not for every American Jew, but for many. I’ve called them the Oct. 8 Jews — those who woke up a day after our greatest tragedy since the Holocaust to see how little empathy there was for us in many of the spaces and communities and institutions we thought we comfortably inhabited. It was an awakening that often came with a deeper set of realizations.

Stephens notes three realizations that many of us have had:

One realization: American Jews should not expect reciprocity.

Few minorities have been more conspicuously attached to progressive causes than American Jews: Samuel Gompers and labor unionism; Betty Friedan and feminism; Harvey Milk and gay rights; Abraham Joshua Heschel and civil rights; Robert Bernstein and human rights. A proud history, but whatever we poured of ourselves into the pain and struggle of others was not returned in our days of grief. Nor should we expect much understanding: In an era that stresses sensitivity to every microaggression against nearly any minority, macroaggressions against Jews who happen to believe that Israel has a right to exist are not only permitted but demanded.

. . . A second: “Zionist” has become just another word for Jew. Anti-Zionists deny this strenuously, because a vocal handful of Jews are also anti-Zionist and because outright antisemitism is still unfashionable and because they’d like to believe — or at least tell others — that their objection is to a political ideology rather than to a people or a religion.

But when the wished-for dire consequences of anti-Zionism fall directly on the heads of millions of Jews and when the people the anti-Zionists seek to silence, exclude and shame are almost all Jewish and when the charges they make against Zionists invariably echo the hoariest antisemitic stereotypes — greed, deceit, limitless bloodlust — then the distinctions between anti-Zionist and antisemite blur to the point of invisibility.

. . . . And a third: This isn’t going to end anytime soon.

It won’t end because anti-Zionism has a self-righteous fervor that will attract followers and inspire militancy. It won’t end because politics in America are moving toward forms of illiberalism — conspiracy thinking and nativism on the right, a Manichaean view on the left that the world is neatly divided between the oppressors and the oppressed — that are congenial to classic antisemitism. And it won’t end because most Jews will not forsake what it means to be Jewish so that we may be more acceptable to those who despise us.

I’d reproduce the whole column if I could, as it’s one of Stephens’s best (it’s archived here). Maybe that’s because I’m a secular Jew, but it does echo my own feelings, and at least tells non-Jews how many of us feel.

*This being Rosh Hashanah, and Nellie being somewhat of a pious Jew, the weekly news summary at the Free Press is written by Katie Herzog, and is called “TGIF: Justice for Bear 402“. I’ll steal three of Katie’s items:

→ Fat Bear Week postponed after fat bear murdered: Fat Bear Week, the annual celebration of animal obesity at Alaska’s Katmai National Park & Preserve (an event commonly confused with San Francisco’s Pride Parade), was delayed this week after a male bear, identified as 469, fatally attacked a female bear, known as 402, in a shocking display of toxic masculinity and male violence that was captured on the park’s widely viewed livestream. In response to the tragedy, park officials said that they have no plans to enact justice for 402, stating that this is simply part of what bears do. When reached for comment, Bear 469 stood on his hind legs and growled. Voting for the fattest bear resumed on Tuesday.

→ Trump pens boring op-ed in Newsweek: Okay, there’s no way that Trump himself wrote this thing because RANDOM WORDS were not PRINTED in ALL CAPS. But either a human being or mildly sophisticated AI did publish an op-ed under his name in Newsweek, and it was mostly a repetition of the economically illiterate tripe he’s been pushing for years about how tariffs on foreign goods will somehow benefit American citizens. Trump is a moron (sorry, comments section, it’s just true), but you’d think even he would be able to understand that taxes on goods get passed on to the consumer. But don’t take my word for it (again, libtard). Take Grover Norquist’s. Or Chuck Grassley’s. Or the Tax Foundation’s. Or the Cato Institute’s. Or Goldman Sachs’. These are not poor people or Marxists or socialists in disguise. These are free-market capitalists who love money, want the economy to grow, and who realize what Trump somehow does not: Tariffs are not taxes on foreign countries. They are taxes on the American public. That’s you, commenters. Actually, when you put it like that, tariffs don’t sound so bad.

→ Helene could spell disaster for the world: You’ve probably never heard of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, but you almost certainly depend on it. The two-street town is home to around 2,200 people and the most important quartz deposits not just in the U.S. but in the world. The mines in Spruce Pine produce up to 70 percent of the high-purity quartz used to manufacture semiconductors globally. And what the hell is a semiconductor? Honestly, no clue, but I hear they’re extremely important to the manufacture of solar panels, cell phones, AI, and more. And now those mines are, to use a technical term, royally fucked by Hurricane Helene. Manufacturers will also have a much harder time moving this resource out of Spruce Pine. What’s this mean for the rest of us? Our global semiconductor shortage will get even worse. If this means a slowdown of AI development, may I gently suggest we press pause on those portraits that look real until you start counting fingers? Let’s start there. Thanks.

*If you’ve eaten Breyers Natural Vanilla ice cream in the last eight years, you’re probably in for some money:

If you’ve enjoyed vanilla-flavored Breyers ice cream over the last eight years, you may be in line for a sweet treat—a cash refund.

Breyers is paying out a nearly $9 million settlement as part of a class-action lawsuit filed against Conopco, Inc., and Unilever United States, Inc. The lawsuit claimed Breyers’ labeling of Natural Vanilla ice cream gave consumers the impression the dessert contained vanilla flavor derived only from the vanilla plant and not from non-vanilla plant sources.

The lawsuit also alleges that the ice cream contained non-vanilla plant vanilla flavors.

The $8.85M settlement fund notes eligibility for anyone who purchased Breyers Natural Vanilla ice cream in any size between April 21, 2016 and Aug. 14, 2024.

Per the agreement, settlement class members who submit a valid and timely claim form by Feb. 19, 2025, will be eligible for cash payments.

Settlement class members may also submit claims with or without proof of purchase.

The deadline to exclude yourself or object to the settlement is Oct. 31, 2024.

You can claim up to eight purchases of this flavor without receipts (unlimited with receipts, but who keeps grocery receipts for eight years), and I’ve certainly made at least that many in the last eight years.  If you want your rebate, which won’t be munificent, just fill out the forms at this site.

*The theocratic head of Iran (disliked by many of his people) is taking the hard line with respect to Israel, though I don’t think he’s going to strike again unilaterally.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a rare Friday sermon defending this week’s missile attack on Israel that deepened fears of a regional war, while praising the “logical and legal” Hamas-led October 7 invasion and massacre in southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza and fueled violence throughout the Middle East.

Speaking in front of tens of thousands at a mosque in the capital Tehran, Khamenei said Iran-backed armed groups in the Middle East “will not back down” even after Israel recently killed a spate of terrorist leaders.

In his first public Friday sermon in nearly five years, Khamenei spoke in Arabic to discuss fighting against Israel by the Iran-aligned “axis of resistance,” including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestinian terror group Hamas.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a rare Friday sermon defending this week’s missile attack on Israel that deepened fears of a regional war, while praising the “logical and legal” Hamas-led October 7 invasion and massacre in southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza and fueled violence throughout the Middle East.

Speaking in front of tens of thousands at a mosque in the capital Tehran, Khamenei said Iran-backed armed groups in the Middle East “will not back down” even after Israel recently killed a spate of terrorist leaders.

In his first public Friday sermon in nearly five years, Khamenei spoke in Arabic to discuss fighting against Israel by the Iran-aligned “axis of resistance,” including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestinian terror group Hamas.

“The resistance in the region will not back down with these martyrdoms, and will win,” Khamenei told the crowd at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla mosque, where supporters carried portraits of slain Hezbollah and Hamas leaders.

“Israel will never defeat Hamas and Hezbollah,” he declared.

He hailed the terror groups’ “fierce defense” against Israeli forces over the past year, referring to Hamas’s brutal October 7 onslaught against Israel and the subsequent solidarity attacks by Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and militia groups in Iraq and Syria.

The Tehran-backed terrorists were engaged in “logical and legitimate” action against Israel, Khamenei claimed, and “no one has the right to criticize them.”

This is an evil, terrorism-financing dude who needs to be deposed or destroyed. Israel now has two real choices: go after Iran’s oil and gas fields, which will cripple the country economically (but leave its nukes program) or go after its facilities for enriching uranium and making bomgs.  The former will have a greater temporary effect, but if Iran gets the bomb it’s bye-bye Israel.  I don’t know which it will choose, but it really has to do something about the nukes. I predict that reprisal from Israel will come within ten days—the time it will take them to work out the logistics. And no, Israel should not listen to Biden, who for some unaccountable reason wants Israel to keep its hands off Iran’s nuclear program.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is looking for peace:

Hili: I’m worried about this quiet.
A: Why?
Hili: Something may disrupt it.
In Polish:
Hili: Niepokoi mnie ten spokój.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Coś go może zakłócić.

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

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

From The Dodo:

From somewhere on the internet, found by a reader. It’s hilarious!

From Masih, a woman without a hijab watches a pro-terrorist parade in Iran.  Sound up: you’ll hear whom they’re praising.

From Malgorzata. No, you won’t see it in the MSM:

From Simon, a bit of Carter humor (he was born in 1924):

From my feed. Sound up, of course. Both of these do a good job.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, great video of wolves taken by a trailcam:

Matthew says of this one, “Better them than me!” My feeling exactly. Sound up.

Friday: Hili dialogue

October 4, 2024 • 6:45 am

We have made it through the first week of October: it’s Friday, October 4, 2024, and it’s Cinnamon Roll Day. I love a good, giant cinnamon roll for breakfast, but I haven’t had one in ages. Doesn’t the one below look good? (It needs more icing.)  Wikipedia describes the history of the bun, including its Swedish heritage:

[Cinnamon] later began to be used in Swedish pastries, with the modern kanelbulle (lit. ‘‘cinnamonbun‘‘) being created after the first world war. Since 1999,  October 4 has been promoted as Cinnamon Roll Day (Kanelbullens dag), a national theme day, acknowledged by a significant portion of the Swedish population.  Swedish kanelbulle dough typically also contains cardamom (powder or buds), giving it a distinctive flavour.

This is a Swedish cinnamon bun; it looks good, but I’d prefer icing on top. If you’re in Sweden, please tell us what’s happening today with respect to cinnamon buns.

Kritzolina, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Taco Day (cultural appropriation), World Animal Day, National Diversity Day, National Vodka Day, Ten-Four Day, and National Denim Day. 

There will be no Readers’ Wildlife post today as I am down to about four contributions and must conserve them. If you want to see wildlife photos and have some good one, please send them in.

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

Da Nooz:

*The longshoreman’s strike has been suspended after management offered a 62% pay increase over six years, a generous offer compared to the first one. Union members will operate under the current contract until January 15 to forestall damage to the economy and interruption of the supply chain during the holidays. But the strike could continue after that. The new offer gives the workers $63 per hour from the present $39.

*The Special Counsel (and judge) involved in the criminal against Trump for criminal conspiracy in trying to get his election reversed has revealed some details of the case.  The judge adjucating this case had the “Trump is immune while President” claim sent back to him by the Supreme Court, which mandated complex standards for the judge to consider when ruling on Presidential immunity.  The prosecution has given some of its arguments about why Trump is both guilty and has no immunity from prosecution.

When told by an aide that Vice President Mike Pence was in peril as the rioting on Capitol Hill escalated on Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump replied, “So what?”

When one of his lawyers told him that his false claims that the election had been marred by widespread fraud would not hold up in court, Mr. Trump responded, “The details don’t matter.”

On a flight with Mr. Trump and his family after the election, an Oval Office assistant heard Mr. Trump say: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

Those accounts were among new evidence disclosed in a court filing made public on Wednesday in which the special counsel investigating Mr. Trump made his case for why the former president is not immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

Made public by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington, the 165-page brief was partly redacted but expansive, adding details to the already extensive record of how Mr. Trump lost the race but attempted nonetheless to cling to power.

The brief from the prosecution team led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, asserts that there is ample evidence that Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office were those of a desperate losing candidate rather than official acts of a president that would be considered immune from prosecution under a landmark Supreme Court ruling this summer.

“The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct,” prosecutors wrote. “Not so. Although the defendant was the incumbent president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one.”

The brief was unsealed three months after the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, less than five weeks from Election Day and one day after Mr. Trump’s current running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, declined during the vice-presidential debate to say that Mr. Trump had lost in 2020.

Mr. Smith’s brief was initially filed under seal last week. It was designed to help Judge Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, to determine how much of the indictment can survive the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in July granting Mr. Trump a broad form of immunity against prosecution for many official acts while in office.

The prosecution has essentially been on hold since late last year, when Mr. Trump began making the legal argument that he should be immune. Judge Chutkan is now determining how much if any of a revised indictment filed by Mr. Smith can go forward under the complex standards set by the Supreme Court.

So the argument turns on whether Trump’s acts were “official ones normally performed by a President” or “private acts that rose to the standards of possible criminality.”  It seems to me that this is NOT official conduct, and that case should go forward. However, it won’t go forward until after the election. Will these revelations hurt Trump? Probably not, given that the indictment and court activity have been known for a while, and a conversation with Mike Pence won’t change the minds of MAGA-ites.  It’s a pity that none of the verdicts will come down before the election, as then, even if a “guilty” verdict doesn’t drive away Trump voters, it would surely tie up the courts with deciding how to deal with a convicted President.

*Israel is clearly fed up with the machinations of the UN’s secretary-general, who is clearly not nonpartisan, but a staunch hater of Israel and defender of Hamas and Palestine. The Jewish country, in what may be a first, ruled that Antonio Guterres won’t be allowed to enter Israel (not that he wants to!):

Israel’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that he was barring U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from entering the country because he had not “unequivocally” condemned Iran’s missile attack on Israel.

Guterres on Tuesday issued a brief statement after the missile attack condemning “the broadening of the Middle East conflict, with escalation after escalation.” Earlier on Tuesday, Israel had sent troops into southern Lebanon.

Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said Guterres’ failure to call out Iran made him persona non grata in Israel.

“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel, as nearly all the countries of the world have done, does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil,” Katz said.

“Israel will continue to defend its citizens and uphold its national dignity, with or without Antonio Guterres.”

Well, what are you gonna do with someone who condemns Israel for defending itself (and defends UNRWA), but won’t condemn Iran for an unprovoked and brutal missile attack?  But of course the UN. has to caution Israel about this act:

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric described the announcement as political and “just one more attack, so to speak, on U.N. staff that we’ve seen from the government of Israel.” He said the U.N. traditionally does not recognise the concept of persona non grata as applying to U.N. staff.

During a Security Council meeting on Wednesday Guterres said: “As I did in relation to the Iranian attack in April – and as should have been obvious yesterday in the context of the condemnation I expressed – I again strongly condemn yesterday’s massive missile attack by Iran on Israel.”

Now that looks weird, no? Guterres says he DID condemn the attack, but when you dig a bit deeper, you find out that he did so ONLY after Israel barred him. He did not condemn the latest attack before that. The BBC clarifies:

The United Nations secretary general has condemned Iranian strikes on Israel, after earlier being banned from the country for his initial response.

Speaking to the UN Security Council, António Guterres said it was high time to stop what he called the “deadly cycle of tit-for-tat violence” in the Middle East.

In an earlier statement, Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared Guterres persona non grata and an “anti-Israel secretary-general who lends support to terrorists”.

The comments were issued in response to Guterres initially calling for a ceasefire, but not specifically mentioning the Iran attack.

Addressing the council, the UN secretary general said he had condemned the attack in April, and “as should have been obvious yesterday in the context of the condemnation I expressed, I again strongly condemn yesterday’s massive missile attack by Iran on Israel”.

Guterres, then, is being mealymouthed, saying we should have sussed out his condemnation from what he said in April. “It should have been obvious.”  What a jerk!  He is a long-time Israel hater and shouldn’t be the UN’s secretary-general. But after all, they’ve had an ex-Nazi in that position.

*From the Free Press‘s morning newsletter;

The University of Wyoming’s women’s volleyball team forfeited a game against a team from San Jose State University that included a biological male. They are the third team this season to refuse to play against San Jose State, while one member of San Jose’s women’s team is suing the NCAA over its current gender policies. San Jose administrators say they are complying with NCAA rules, but that’s not the point. The problem is those rules don’t keep the game fair and women safe. Read Suzy Weiss’s 2022 dispatch about the transgender swimmer Lia Thomas: “Watching Lia Thomas Win.” 

The Wyoming woomen’st volleyball team (“The Cowgirls”) issued this statement:

After a lengthy discussion, the University of Wyoming will not play its scheduled conference match against San José State University in the UniWyo Sports Complex on Saturday, Oct. 5. Per Mountain West Conference policy, the Conference will record the match as a forfeit and a loss for Wyoming. The Cowgirls will host Fresno State on Thursday, Oct. 3 at 6:30 p.m. in the UniWyo Sports Complex.

More from Wyofile:

The University of Wyoming women’s volleyball team will forfeit its game with San José State this weekend amid criticism over the rival team’s transgender player.

The Cowgirls are the third in a group of teams to forfeit games to the currently undefeated California squad, following similar actions from Boise State and Southern Utah universities. The San José State player Blaire Fleming’s transgender status was publicized in April, and afterward another  team member joined a suit over NCAA rules allowing trans athletes under certain circumstances.

. . . UW had originally decided to go forward with the game following talks between the athletic department, coaching staff and the team, according to Cowboy State Daily.

Following the decision, Wyoming Equality released a statement calling the forfeiture “yet another troubling instance of politics overshadowing fair competition in collegiate sports.”

“Athletics should be about fostering teamwork, growth, and healthy competition — not about discrimination and exclusion,” spokesperson Santi Murillo said in a press release. “We believe every athlete, including transgender athletes, deserves the opportunity to compete and play the sports they love. This is personal to me, as the first transgender athlete at UW I experienced the best of Wyoming, a focus on playing sports, not politics. Taking away opportunities to compete hurts all athletes.”

That’s a rationale for allowing men who identify as women to compete against biological women in any sport. It’s wrong, and it’s unfair. But the site blames the decision on the legislature:

The decision came as state lawmakers circulated a letter pressuring UW to cancel the game. It was addressed to UW President Ed Seidel and Athletic Director Tom Burman.

“The Legislature has been very clear that the University of Wyoming, being a publicly funded land grant institution, should not participate in the extremist agenda of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) or propagate the lie that biological sex can be changed,” the letter, circulated by Sen. Cheri Steinmetz (R-Lingle), states. “We all know it cannot.”

That was an apparent reference to the Legislature voting to cut UW’s block grant by the amount it took to fund the university’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Lawmakers also voted to ban the use of state funds for anything to do with DEI, though Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed part of that budget footnote.

In response, UW has eliminated its DEI office, though it retained all staff and aimed to keep programming situated under that entity. Most of those programs didn’t match what lawmakers stated they wanted to root out, UW Board of Trustees members said.

I am betting that the team itself voted on this issue, and the involvement of the legislature wasn’t dispositive. Or so I hope. My position on this issue is clear: men should not be playing in women’s sports, even if the men claim that they are women, whether or not they’ve had medical treatment.  And it’s not just Wyoming, but also Idaho and Utah. San José State is now 10-0 in volleyball, far better than that team has ever performed.

*Ta-Nehishi Coates, who has the status of a god among activists, has a new book, which is a collection of three essays.  But it’s making news because the longest essay—100 pages—is about the perfidies of Israel (he doesn’t mention terrorism or October 7). While the NYT gave the book a positive review, singling out the anti-Israel stuff for special praise, Coleman Hughes takes the book apart in the Free Press in a review called “The Fantasy World of Ta-Nehisi Coates” (archived here).  Remember, Hughes, like Coats, is black, but he’s a heterodox black along the lines of John McWhorter (though more passionate than McWhorter, I think).

That silence [since 2015] has now broken—though this is hardly something to celebrate. His new essay collection, The Message, is a masterpiece of warped arguments and moral confusion. But it is important to take it seriously, not because Coates’s arguments are serious, but because so many treat them as if they are.

Coates’s overarching themes are familiar: the plundering of black wealth by the Western world, the hypocrisy at the heart of America’s founding ideals, and the permanence of white supremacy. If The Message departs from his earlier work in any way, it’s that his desire to smear America has been eclipsed by his desire to smear Israel—an exercise that takes up fully half the book. (More about that, which Coates has declared “his obsession,” in a bit.)

. . . His final essay is called “The Gigantic Dream,” a reference to one of Theodor Herzl’s diary entries, in which the founder of modern political Zionism explains how he came to the conclusion that the Jews needed a state. Coates begins by describing his visit to Yad Vashem, the magnificent and horrifying Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.

It quickly becomes clear, however, that acknowledging the Holocaust is but a throat-clearing exercise before the main event: over one-hundred pages of the most shamelessly one-sided summary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I have ever read.

. . . For example, I was waiting for Coates to mention a single instance of Palestinian terror, but the moment never came. He does, however, find the space to mention so many of the Israeli policies that were implemented specifically to prevent the terror attacks that murdered so many innocents during the Intifadas—checkpoints in the West Bank, for instance.

Though Coates didn’t look into Israel-Palestine until his 40s, according to his recent New York profile that may be his “greatest asset”—a pair of fresh eyes, as it were. But far from an asset, Coates’s hasty research is a liability, resulting in errors that always come at the expense of Israel. For instance, as an example of Israel’s Jim Crow–like “two-tier society,” he asserts that “Jewish Israelis who marry Jews from abroad needn’t worry about their spouses’ citizenship,” whereas the state “tracks Palestinian noncitizens through a population registry” and “bars Palestinian citizens from passing on their status to anyone on that registry—abroad or in the West Bank.”

The implication conveyed by this sentence—that Israeli law treats Arab Israelis differently than Jewish Israelis—is simply not true. The law in question is neutral as regards the race of the citizen attempting to naturalize his or her foreign spouse. The restriction is instead based on the nationality of the spouse.

It goes on. How can someone judge Israel’s behavior without mentioning terrorism? (The NYT piece also says that.) I haven’t read much Coates, only his famous essay on reparations. And I wouldn’t dream of telling people not to read this collection. But I probably won’t, for the sake of my digestion, I may, however, read his first two books. But if you’ve read it, or are contemplating reading it, or simply want to get an idea of what it says (granted, though the eyes of someone who likes Israel), do read Hughes’s review.

*Lord, does Biden want Israel extinguished? Everything his administration has done around Iran has been to try to negotiate the country out of producing nuclear weapons, Yet any fool knows that this is a fool’s errand, and that once Iran gets nukes, it’s pretty much all over for the Jewish state. And so we have another article, this time from the Times of Israel, about Biden warning Israel about attacking Iran’s nukes.

US President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he opposes Israel striking Iran’s nuclear facilities in retaliation for Iran’s ballistic missile attack, telling reporters that Jerusalem has a right to respond but that it should do so “proportionally.”

Biden did say that sanctions would be imposed against Iran and that he discussed the idea with the leaders of the G7 countries in a joint call earlier Wednesday.

“We’ll be discussing with the Israelis what they’re going to do, but all seven of us agree that they have a right to respond but they should respond proportionally,” Biden told reporters before boarding Air Force One. “Obviously, Iran is way off course.”

Israel is reportedly mulling an attack on Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities as part of the retaliation for Tuesday’s attack, which saw Iran fire 181 ballistic missiles at Israel, sending most of the country into bomb shelters and causing considerable damage but only one known fatality — a Palestinian man in the West Bank.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared soon after the attack that Iran had made “a big mistake” and would “pay the price.”

Speaking to reporters in Washington, Biden urged Israel to respond “proportionally” to the attack. Asked whether he backs a strike on Iranian nuclear sites, Biden responded: “The answer is no.”

Well isn’t that special? What, exactly, does Biden mean by “proportional”? Should Israel be allowed to fire just 150 missiles at Iran, not killing anyone? (Biden apparently thinks that Israel’s response to Hamas’s attack, in terms of civilian death toll, was “disproportionate”. He doesn’t seem to realize that the death toll is a) reported by Hamas, b) includes Hamas fighters among the dead and c) is a death toll that Hamas has deliberately elevated by both wanting the death toll to be high and making it so by embedding terrorists in the civilian populations. Frankly, I’m tired of an ignorant President trying to control Israel’s response to being attacked.  He doesn’t seem to realize that Israeli’s feel, and rightly so, that they’re are in an existential crisis. If he realized that, perhaps he’d be less likely to withhold weapons from Israel.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron, who likes reality, is scared:

Hili: What frightened you?
Szaron: An abstract idea.
In Polish:
Hili: Czego się wystraszyłeś?
Szaron: Abstrakcyjnej idei.

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

From Malcolm. It may be photoshopped, but who cares?

A nice coffee mug from Jesus of the Day.

From The Dodo, a badass cat:

From Masih; I hope I haven’t posted this before. Iran pretends that its populace is celebrating Iran’s missile attack on Israel. Too bad the strike was a total dud.

From Luana, a satirical video featuring Greta (note: it’s labeled “satire” and thus NOT GENUINE!). But now that she’s become a loud pro-Palestinian activist, Greta is fair game for satire.

From Malcolm; I’m not sure that this is interspecies love, but it sure ain’t interspecies hate!

From my feed: the feel good tweet of the month. You MUST read the thread to see all the companies who chipped in to give this pair a fantastic wedding and honeymoon (and an expensive ring!)

Also from my feed; cat owners will understand:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. The Greek Islands have become way overtouristed since I first visited them when they were relatively un-inundated in 1972. Now I wouldn’t go near Crete or Santorini. But maybe I can go to Sifnos. .

Matthew’s response to this tweet, and the only one possible for a Brit, was “Crikey!”:

Thursday: Hili dialogue

October 3, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, October 3, 2024. It is the 124th birthday of  writer Thomas Wolfe, born on this day in 1900 and who died of tuberculosis at only 37. He is an underrated writer because he sometimes overwrote, but he captured the colors of America better than any writer I know of—even if that opinion subjects me to ridicule from my English Studies friends.

It’s also the first full day of Rosh Hashanah, which ends tomorrow evening, Global Smoothie Day, National Boyfriend Day, National Butterfly and Hummingbird Day, National Soft Taco Day, and National Caramel Custard Day.

There will be no readers’ wildlife photos today as I’m conserving the handful I have. If you wish to see this feature often, please contribute.

Here’s a short documentary on Wolfe. I hope his childhood home, shown below, survived the hurricane that devastated Asheville, NC:

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

Da Nooz:

*I didn’t listen to the Vice-Presidential debate, having grown tired of politics, but the NYT didn’t cover it much except in the op-ed section, where most of the writers concluded that Vance won, as this figure shows. But even those on the right side of the graph qualified their answers. A few takes:

Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor of Reason Vance won. Compared with the candidates in the presidential debates, both vice-presidential candidates performed admirably. But if you watch enough “Love Is Blind,” you can forget that Jane Austen exists. Vance was facile and light on his feet, but this debate will not go down in the annals of great political rhetoric.

Daniel McCarthy, editor of the periodical Modern Age Vance won with a stronger start, then Walz lost with a closing statement boasting of a Harris coalition “from Bernie Sanders to Dick Cheney to Taylor Swift.” Socialism, endless war and manufactured teen feelings are the last things voters want or need in November.

Peter Wehner, contributing Opinion writer Vance. He was sharp and in command and proved he’s an excellent debater. At times he tried too hard to appear likable; I came away more convinced that he’s a hollow man, radioactive and incendiary one day, conciliatory and agreeable the next. But the “good Vance” did a lot to repair his tattered image.

Ross Douthat, Times columnist For Vance, it was a commanding performance. For Walz, it was a nervous ramble. For the audience, it was the most civil and substantive debate of the Trump era.

Jamelle Bouie, Times columnist It’s a pretty straightforward verdict: Vance won this debate. It’s not hard to see why. He has spent most of his adult life selling himself to the wealthy, the powerful and the influential. He is as smooth and practiced as they come. He has no regard for the truth. He lies as easily as he breathes. We saw this throughout the debate. He told Americans that there are 20 million to 25 million “illegal aliens” — a lie. He told Americans that Mexico is responsible for the nation’s illegal gun problem — a lie. He told Americans that Trump actually tried to save the Affordable Care Act — a lie. If Vance had to sell the benefits of asbestos to win office, he would do it well and do it with a smile.

The Washington Post surveyed 22 voters from swing states, with nearly 2/3 of them saying Vance did better.

And the take of Oliver Wiseman from The Free Press:

Like the previous two debates, this one had a clear winner: J.D. Vance. The 40-year-old Ohio senator arrived at the CBS studio with a clear plan: to tie Kamala Harris to the status quo and contrast the Biden-Harris years with the Trump years, especially on the economy and foreign policy. That has always been Trump’s best pitch to voters, albeit one the former president has been unable to stick to. Last night, Vance showed the discipline and clarity his boss lacks—and he reminded those watching of the political talent that got him to that stage.

As for Walz, he and his party had managed expectations ahead of the debate by admitting that the Minnesota governor was “nervous.” And that wasn’t spin. Walz seemed unsure both of himself and the message he wanted to communicate to voters. But if Walz seemed muddled, then so does the Harris campaign. Does she want to capitalize on the purported success of the Biden administration, or be the change candidate? She doesn’t seem to know, so it’s no surprise Walz doesn’t either.

Walz’s worst moment came when he was asked about a lie he was recently caught in over his trips to China and Hong Kong. (Walz said he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was actually in Nebraska.) “I’m a knucklehead at times,” he said during a long, rambling answer.

When Harris interviewed Walz for the spot on the ticket, he reportedly warned her that he was a “bad debater.” Based on last night’s performance, that was not false modesty.

This is the point in the analysis where I am duty-bound to inform you that VP debates don’t matter very much. They’re the equivalent of the bonus material on the second DVD that only superfans watch. And most of those superfans have probably made up their minds by now.

But in an abbreviated and close contest, Harris’s one big decision was her running mate. Watching Walz on the debate stage last night, it was hard to see how, exactly, Harris’s choice has boosted her chances of victory in November. And if anyone in the Pennsylvania governor’s residence was watching, they were probably wondering the same thing.

Here’s a video of the full debate, and I’ll listen to it later as much as I can.  But Wiseman is right: Vice-Presidential debates don’t have much influence on the final election.

*Israel is pondering its response to the Iranian attack on Tuesday. There’s absolutely no doubt, at least in my mind, that it will respond, but there are several options.

Israel may respond to Iran’s major Tuesday ballistic missile attack by striking strategic infrastructure, such as gas or oil rigs, or by directly targeting Iran’s nuclear sites, media reports said on Wednesday, citing Israeli officials.

Targeted assassinations and attacks on Iran’s air defense systems are also possible responses, Axios reported.

An attack on Iranian oil facilities could devastate the country’s economy, and any of the considered responses could mark another escalation, almost one year into the ongoing war that began when the Hamas terror group attacked Israel in October 2023.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a meeting with Israel’s security chiefs at the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv Wednesday, his office said in a statement.

The meeting — held hours before the Rosh Hashanah holiday, marking the Jewish New Year — was expected to discuss potential responses to the attack, which consisted of some 181 ballistic missiles fired directly at Israel from Iran, almost all of which were intercepted as Israelis nationwide gathered in bomb shelters.

Netanyahu declared after the attack that “Iran made a big mistake tonight, and it will pay for it,” vowing, “whoever attacks us — we will attack them.”

In April, the Islamic Republic fired some 300 missiles and drones at Israel, after an airstrike killed several Iranian generals in Damascus. Though Israel’s alleged response to that attack was restrained, analysts told media outlets Wednesday that Israel is likely to be more aggressive this time around.

That’s in part because the attack on Tuesday came some two weeks into a new Israeli offensive against the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, which has devastated the Iranian proxy, lessening its power as a deterrent against strong Israeli action.

There remains, however, the possibility that Iran itself could escalate, including into a full-scale war, if Israel deals it a serious blow.

Nobody knows what Israel will do—either an attack on fuel rigs or on nuclear sites would be appropriate, but I think that if Israel doesn’t stop Iran’s nuclear program very soon, the tiny Jewish state, which could be wiped out by just a handful of nuclear missiles, will be a goner. Bret Stephens in his new column on Iran (archived here) agrees that we shuld hit them in the nukes.

Iran currently produces many of its missiles at the Isfahan missile complex. At a minimum, Biden should order it destroyed, as a direct and proportionate response to its aggressions. There is a uranium enrichment site near Isfahan, too.

Elsewhere, Iran’s economy relies overwhelmingly on a vast and vulnerable network of pipelines, refineries and oil terminals, particularly on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. The administration can put the regime on notice that the only way it will save this infrastructure from immediate destruction is by ordering Hezbollah and the Houthis to stand down and to pressure Hamas to release its Israeli hostages. We can’t simply go on trying to thwart Iran by defensive means only — fighting not to win but merely not to lose.

Critics of a hard-line approach will reply that it invites escalation. Yet for nearly four years, the administration’s diplomatic outreach to Tehran, along with its finely calibrated responses to Iranian aggression, has done nothing to deter it from striking us and our allies. Notice that the Iranians began asking for the nuclear negotiations they spurned for the past three years only once they started to fear that Trump might return to office. Bully regimes respond to the stick.

Biden, of course, has forbidden Israel to touch Iran’s nuclear facilities. Now that Iran is so close to having the bomb, such an order is insane–or perhaps Biden does not care so much whether Iran has the capability to destroy Israel.

*As you probably know, Harvard has an interim President who replaced Claudine Gay, although Alan Garber was given the gig for at least three more years. The WSJ reports the increasing trend of universities to have interim Presidents, due almost entirely to the turmoil of the last year, but also to the fact that being a college President exposes you to flak from all sides:

A slew of college president jobs are held by temporary leaders this fall. It is partly by design.

The leaders of Columbia University, Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania and more than three dozen other schools around the country currently have the “interim” qualifier attached to their titles.

It is a sign of the tumultuous state of American higher education, where student protests, donor discontent, political scrutiny and distrust from the general public have left presidents with a thankless—and very insecure—job. These interim presidents are being tasked with calming stormy campuses and priming the school to attract top-notch candidates for the official role down the line.

They have popped up in the corporate realm, too, including recently at craft chain Joann, BP and Petco Health and Wellness.

School trustees say they are leery about committing too quickly to long-term leaders, particularly in light of the political upheaval of last school year. Interim presidents also hold appeal because they aren’t necessarily gunning for the job on a permanent basis, say search-firm executives and trustees. That frees them up to make difficult or unpopular decisions, like cutting budgets.

For interim presidents, the temporary job can lead to a permanent leadership position—at that school, or elsewhere. Others simply go back to their old job after the temporary position.

College presidents, under mounting pressure from numerous constituents, don’t last as long as they used to. Claudine Gay led Harvard University for six months. Minouche Shafik was president of Columbia for 13 months before abruptly resigning in August. Liz Magill lasted about 18 months at Penn.

College presidents had been in their positions for an average of 5.9 years in 2022, according to a survey conducted by the American Council on Education, a higher education industry group. That is down from 6.5 years in 2016 and 8.5 years in 2006.

Unlike companies, university boards generally can’t unilaterally tap a successor ahead of time, or right after a hasty departure. A shared governance model means faculty, staff and students expect to provide input, a process that often takes months.

This is a shame, for it takes time for a President with a vision to stamp to mold the University to their liking. At the University of Chicago, for example, our free-speech reputation was created by several Presidents, including Robert Maynard Hutchins (1929-1951: 22 years!) and Robert Zimmer (2006-2021, 15 years). I think we’ve seen the end of fifteen-year Presidents, though I hope Daniel Diermeier, our former Provost, will last a long time at Vanderbilt, where he’s carrying on the Chicago tradition.

*Pete Rose, aka “Charlie Hustle” died at 83, after a career marked by great achievements but marred by a huge misstep.

Pete Rose, baseball’s career hits leader and fallen idol who undermined his historic achievements and Hall of Fame dreams by gambling on the game he loved and once embodied, has died. He was 83.

Stephanie Wheatley, a spokesperson for Clark County in Nevada, confirmed on behalf of the medical examiner that Rose died Monday. Rose was found by a family member. The coroner will investigate to determine the cause and manner of death, but there are no signs of foul play, according to ABC News. Over the weekend, Rose had appeared at an autograph show in Nashville with former teammates Tony Perez, George Foster and Dave Concepcion.

For fans who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, no player was more exciting than the Cincinnati Reds‘ No. 14, “Charlie Hustle,” the brash superstar with the shaggy hair, puggish nose and muscular forearms. At the dawn of artificial surfaces, divisional play and free agency, Rose was old school, a conscious throwback to baseball’s early days. Millions could never forget him crouched and scowling at the plate, running full speed to first even after drawing a walk or sprinting for the next base and diving headfirst into the bag.

Major League Baseball, which banished him in 1989, issued a brief statement expressing condolences and noting his “greatness, grit and determination on the field of play.” Reds principal owner and managing partner Bob Castellini said in a statement that Rose was “one of the fiercest competitors the game has ever seen” and added: “We must never forget what he accomplished.”

Rose was banished (and will likely never get into the Baseball Hall of Fame) because he bet on baseball, and, when he was manager, probably bet against his own team, the Reds. That’s unforgivable because it’s a conflict of interest: it was theoretically possible that he arranged things to make it more likely that the Reds would lose. This led to his permanent ban from the game and his permanent ineligibility for the Hall of Fame, which he surely would have entered had he not made those bets.

A 17-time All-Star, the switch-hitting Rose played on three World Series winners. He was the National League MVP in 1973 and World Series MVP two years later. He holds the major league record for games played (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890) and the NL record for the longest hitting streak (44). He was the leadoff man for one of baseball’s most formidable lineups with the Reds’ championship teams of 1975 and 1976, with teammates that included Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan.

“My heart is sad,” Bench said in a statement. “I loved you Peter Edward. You made all of us better. No matter the life we led. No one can replace you.”

. . . But no milestone approached his 4,256 hits, breaking his hero Ty Cobb’s 4,191 and signifying his excellence no matter the notoriety which followed. It was a total so extraordinary that you could average 200 hits for 20 years and still come up short. Rose’s secret was consistency and longevity. Over 24 seasons, all but six played entirely with the Reds, Rose had 200 hits or more 10 times, and more than 180 four other times. He batted .303 overall, even while switching from second base to outfield to third to first, and he led the league in hits seven times.

Here’s a summary of the good bits of Rose’s career: 14 highlights.

*Yearly I report on Alaska’s Fat Bear Contest, and it started yesterday! But a pall of sadness hangs over this year’s contest:

Voting starts Wednesday in the annual Fat Bear Week contest at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, with viewers picking their favorite among a dozen brown bears fattened up to survive the winter.

The contest, which is in its 10th year, celebrates the resiliency of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest corner toward the Aleutian Islands. The animals gorge on the abundant sockeye salmon that return to the Brooks River, sometimes chomping the fish in midair as they try to hurdle a small waterfall and make their way upstream to spawn.

Organizers introduced this year’s contestants on Tuesday — a day late — because one anticipated participant, a female known as Bear 402, was killed by a male bear during a fight on Monday. Cameras set up in the park to livestream footage of the bears all summer captured the killing, as they also captured a male bear killing a cub that slipped over the waterfall in late July.

“National parks like Katmai protect not only the wonders of nature, but also the harsh realities,” park spokesperson Matt Johnson said in a statement. “Each bear seen on the webcams is competing with others to survive.”

“We love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and ample body fat, but the ferocity of bears is real,” said Mike Fitz, explore.org’s resident naturalist. “The risks that they face are real. Their lives can be hard, and their deaths can be painful.”

The bracket this year features 12 bears, with eight facing off against each other in the first round and four receiving byes to the second round. They’ve all been packing on the pounds all summer.

You can vote today; just go here, and you can also Meet the Bears here. The first vote was Wednesday, and you can vote again today starting at noon Eastern time.

I’m voting for #32, Chunk. Look at all the pounds he packed on over the year (they’re laying on the fat for winter hibernation). That’s quite a salmon belly!

Below is the live BearCam from Brooks Falls at Katmai National Park, where the ursids line up to catch migrating salmon. You can scroll back to see amazing scenes:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili knows that Baby Kulka, whom she hates, is behind her, but she pretends not to know:

Hili: Is she still here?
A: Yes.
Hili: Tell her we are not at home.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ona jeszcze jest?
Ja: Jest.
Hili: Powiedz jej, że nas nie ma w domu.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Masih, showing one of the six deaths associated with the Iranian missile attack on Israel: this one poor Palestinian guy and five Iranians whose missile misfired. TRIGGER WARNING FOR VIDEO BELOW: death by rocket fragment strike.

From Luana: a tweet from Greg Lukianoff, the President of FIRE, about a free-speech exchange during Tuesday’s VP debate:

. . . more of the exchange. Walz is dead wrong in analogizing offensive speech to “yelling ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater”:

From The Atlantic, a depressing fact. (When I taught evolution, I found that my own students didn’t want to read On the Origin of Species, even in the abridged version.)

The ultimate Pecksniffery (read the “added context”):

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A tweet from Professor Emeritus Cobb who commented, “What did the Romans ever do for us?”

 

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

October 2, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to October 2, 2024: it’s Wednesday and therefore a Hump Day (“”Siga ni Hump”  in  Fijian).  as well as National Fried Scallops Day.

It’s also National Smarties Day, World No Alcohol Day (not for me!), National Produce Misting Day, National Pumpkin Seed Day, International Day of Non-Violence, and, celebrating what is perhaps the world’s worst vegetable, National Kale Day.  Kale is simply a selected and inferior variety of cabbage.

Here are starving children collecting kale (the Wikipedia caption is “Children collecting leaves of red Russian kale (Brassica napus L. subsp. napus var. pabularia (DC.) Alef.) in a family vegetable garden”.

woodleywonderworks, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 2 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Iran started its “reprisal” attack on Israel, firing ballistic missiles at the country.

UPDATE:  There was appreciable damage to Israel, but, fortunately, no deaths of Israelis, and only one death in total.  The WSJ analyzes the damage:

Despite the widespread assault, health authorities in Israel reported no deaths and only minor injuries. A Palestinian from the Israeli-controlled West Bank town of Jericho was killed after being struck by shrapnel.

Apparently five Iranians were also killed by a missile that prematurely exploded.

Back to the report of the attack:

Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel on Tuesday evening, an attack that could set off a sharp escalation in the long-simmering conflict between Israel and Iran and tip the region further into turmoil and a widening war.

“A short while ago, missiles were launched from Iran to Israel,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

Air raid sirens sounded across Israel, including in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Loud booming explosions were heard above Tel Aviv, and flashes of light from the arcing intercepting rockets of Israel’s air defense system were visible.

The salvo of missiles from Iran came a day after Israeli forces began a rare ground invasion of southern Lebanon aimed at crippling the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah there. Iran backs Hezbollah and Hamas, the two militias currently fighting Israel, as well as the Houthis in Yemen.

A senior White House official said the United States would help defend Israel and warned that a direct attack against Israel “will carry severe consequences for Iran.”

U.S. officials assess that Iran will launch mostly, if not solely, ballistic missiles at Israel in the next few hours, and likely in more than one wave. President Biden and Vice President Harris held a meeting on Tuesday morning with national security officials “to discuss Iranian plans to imminently launch a significant ballistic missile attack against Israel,” according to the White House. They reviewed plans to help Israel defend against the attacks and protect Americans in the region.

This is the big one, folks. Israel will have to respond, and then there will be a three-front war (actually, a seven-front war if you count countries like Yemen and Syria). As Malgorzata told me the other day, “Everybody wants to kill Israel.” As I write the ballistic missiles are heading to Israel from Iran, and the people there are, I’m told, deeply worried.  But, sooner or later, Israel will retaliate, which is one reason why some commentators thought that Iran would restrain itself. It didn’t. I’m glad the U.S. is helping Israel, and I’m also hoping that other countries will as well.

There is a live feed of the attack here.

*Meanwhile, after a couple of forays, Israel made a serious incursion into Lebanon.

Israel launched limited ground raids into southern Lebanon late on Monday night against Hezbollah forces and infrastructure positioned along Israel’s northern border, hours after the security cabinet approved plans for the newest phase of the war against the Lebanese terror group, in a move that the US appeared to warily support.

Announcing the incursion in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the IDF said that “limited, localized, and targeted ground raids” had begun several hours earlier.

It said they were focused on “Hezbollah targets and infrastructure” in a number of Lebanese villages along the border that posed an immediate threat to Israeli towns on the other side of the Blue Line.

Ground troops operating inside southern Lebanon were being assisted by air and artillery forces, the military said, adding that the operation was based on plans drawn up by the IDF’s General Staff and Northern Command.

The IDF’s formal confirmation that Israeli troops were operating in Lebanon came several hours after various conflicting reports emerged on social media and in some Arabic media outlets as to whether some troops had already crossed the border.

. . . Lebanese troops had further added to speculation when they pulled back about five kilometers (three miles) from positions along the border late on Monday, apparently opting to stay on the sidelines, as they have done historically in major conflicts with Israel.

Ahead of the IDF’s announcement of the incursion, an Israeli official told the Times of Israel that their US counterparts had been informed that the goal of the limited operation was to remove Hezbollah positions along the northern border, thus creating the conditions for a diplomatic agreement under which the terror group’s forces would be pushed back beyond the Litani River, in line with a UN Security Council resolution.

In an apparent attempt to assuage US concerns, two Israeli officials told the Axios news site that the operation would be limited in both time and scope and was not intended to occupy southern Lebanon.

I predicted that Israel would not send soldiers across the border. I was wrong. But at least—right now—this doesn’t look like a drawn-out engagement. On the other hand, why would Hezbollah allow itself to be pushed north of the Litani River, as UN Security Council resolution 1701 has mandated for Hezbollah?

*In a victory for collegiate free speech, a federal court has ruled that a University cannot charge outrageous “security fees” for speakers to appear on campus. This has largely been a tactic to prevent conservatives from speaking on (mostly liberal) campuses by shifting the burden of security from the University to the organization inviting a speaker.  in this case the speaker is Riley Gaines, who became well known (and widely hated) for speaking out against biological males who identify as females competing in women’s sports.

in a significant free speech victory, U.S. District Judge David Urias has enjoined the University of New Mexico from imposing a $5,400 security fee for former collegiate swimmer and activist Riley Gaines after speaking on campus.

UNM has a history of cancellation campaigns against conservative and libertarian speakers, as previously discussed on this blog.

Gaines has become a national figure in her campaign against biologically male students competing in women’s sports. While it is a position that is supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans, faculty and students have repeatedly targeted Gaines with cancel campaigns and disruptive protests.

In this case, UNM originally demanded over $10,000. The lawsuit brought by the Leadership Institute named UNM President Garnett Stokes and other UNM officials as defendants. Judge Urias was legitimately suspicious of the demand and found that it violated the First Amendment.

In his 16-page order in Leadership Institute v. Stokes(D.N.M.), Judge Urias noted that Gaines travels with her own security (itself a sad statement about this Age of Rage).  The court noted the rather fluid standard applied to Gaines:

[T]he quote of over $10,000 was for every officer UNM employed—thirty-three officers; nearly one for every three attendees the students expected. When TP-UNM asked why Defendant Stump intended to assign every officer to the Gaines event, and whether it was because of the speaker or the inviting organization, he responded that “it’s all based on individual assessments,” that they were looking at the “individual,” and that “there is not a criteria [sic].”

He also told the students that if an organization were to screen the Barbie movie in a venue on campus, he likely would not require even a single officer because the UNM police were “not worried about the Barbie movie.” He then said that security was “consistent” in how it assessed fees “to Turning Point” in the past. He described past TP-UNM events featuring other conservative speakers that generated protests at UNM. A few times during the meeting, he reiterated that UNM assesses security fees on a “case-by-case basis.” …

Notably, the court detailed how fewer than 10 protesters actually showed up and demonstrated outside of the room. Nevertheless, UNM hit Turning Point with the fee for twenty-seven officers at the event who charged for a total of 95.25 hours.

Yes, it is a victory for the angels, for these sanctions aren’t used against left-wing speakers, who, of course, aren’t as subject to student protest.

*Today Mexico gets its first woman President, the accomplished Claudia Sheinbaum, age 62. While Mexico is making a big deal of her sex, people neglect the fact that she’s also Jewish.

Claudia Sheinbaum will take office on Tuesday, the first woman and Jewish person to lead Mexico in the country’s more than 200-year history as an independent nation.

A former climate scientist and Mexico City mayor, Ms. Sheinbaum won in a landslide in general elections in June, and is succeeding her mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as president of the world’s largest Spanish-speaking nation — and the United States’ top trading partner.

Ms. Sheinbaum, a leftist, campaigned on a vow to continue the legacy of her predecessor, and her win was seen by many as a clear vote of confidence in Mr. López Obrador and the party he started, Morena.

In Mexico, a country steeped in machismo where seven in every 10 women have experienced some form of violence, Ms. Sheinbaum’s inauguration is a milestone and a symbol for many of women’s empowerment.

Ms. Sheinbaum’s list of achievements is long: She has a Ph.D. in energy engineering, participated in a United Nations panel of climate scientists that was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and governed the capital, one of the largest cities in the hemisphere.

Ms. Sheinbaum (pronounced SHANE-balm), 62, calls herself “obsessive” and “disciplined.” Her staff describe her as a tough boss with a quick temper who inspires both fear and adoration — someone more comfortable quietly getting things done than selling herself or her achievements.

To many people, she is largely perceived as a thrills-free, almost aloof politician — the opposite of Mr. López Obrador, who founded and built Morena around his outsize persona and undeniable charisma.

The descendant of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews who emigrated to Mexico in the 20th century, Ms. Sheinbaum is also the country’s first Jewish president — a watershed moment for some and a trivial detail for others who have seen her rarely discuss her heritage.

From Wikipedia:

Both of her parents are scientists: her mother, Annie Pardo Cemo, is a biologist and professor emerita at the Faculty of Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and her father, Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz, was a chemical engineer.

EneasMx, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

*The International Longshoremen’s Association is striking for a huge increase in pay, stopping all entry of good into the U.S. at many ports. This will cost the country billions of dollars and all of us are in for more inflation.

Dockworkers at dozens of U.S. ports are digging in for a massive pay increase, seeking to flex their power in a strike that aims to strangle the flow of trade across much of the country.

“This is going down in history what we’re doing here,” Harold Daggett, the head of the International Longshoremen’s Association, told hundreds of dockworkers on the picket lines at the East Coast’s busiest port at New York-New Jersey. “Nothing is going to move without us.”

Daggett rejected an offer late Monday of a 50% wage increase over six years, a boost from an earlier proposed 40% increase in wages, along with other improvements in benefits. The ILA wants to raise the base hourly rate for its roughly 45,000 members to $69 from $39, a 77% pay increase, over six years as a condition to sit down to talks with maritime employers, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

Dockworkers typically earn a six-figure annual salary because of work rules and overtime requirements. In the financial year that ended in 2020, more than half of 3,726 dockworkers at the Port of New York and New Jersey earned more than $150,000, according to a report by the port’s regulator. About one in five dockworkers at the port earned over $250,000 that year.

Dockworkers late Monday gathered in groups several-hundred-strong, outside closed port facilities in New Jersey, blasting rock music, smoking cigars, holding placards protesting the use of automated equipment on the docks and waving American flags.

“I am here to support the union and to support the middle class of America,” said Matthew Dombrowski, a former Marine who now works as a crane operator. “We are fighting to go against automation. We are fighting to keep crane operators.”

I don’t think $150,000 per year means you’re middle class, but this is above my pay grade. It does seem to me that, with the given salaries, a demand for a 77% pay increase over six years is a bit excessive, well ahead of the rate of inflation.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili noticed that Andrzej was going to the grocery store:

A: I’m going.
Hili: Come back with what I’m thinking about.
In Polish:
Ja: Idę.
Hili: Wróć z tym, o czym teraz myślę

And a photo of sweet Szaron, who may have to have an operation to remove his cyst (it’s not malignant, but filled with fluid). He’s on antibiotics for another few days.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Jesus of the Day; a groaner:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy: a “DUH” moment:

From Masih; “Halal” means “permissible” in Islam, while “harm” means forbidden by Islamic law.  A seriously mess-up faith.

From Bryan, a big surprise:

From Susan, two funny tweets with typos:

From Malcolm, an anti-Trump meme:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a girl, age eight, was gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz:

Two tweets from Professor Cobb. First, surely you can name this animal. It’s very hard to see in the wild:

Matthew had a retirement party, and I wasn’t invited!

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

October 1, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first day of October: it’s Tuesday, October 1, 2024, and fall is upon us. As I do every year on this date, I give Thomas Wolfe’s “Hymn to October”, saying this:

I’ve put up the words of Thomas Wolfe several times on October 1 (he was born on October 3, 1900 and died of tuberculosis at just 37). This is a repost from exactly four years ago. The prose is gorgeous and evocative, and of course appropriate to the day. No writer has captured the color and feel of America better than Thomas Wolfe. From Of Time and the River:

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

Now October has come again which in our land is different from October in the other lands.  The ripe, the golden month has come again, and in Virginia the chinkapins are falling.  Frost sharps the middle music of the seasons, and all things living on the earth turn home again. The country is so big that you cannot say that the country has the same October. In Maine, the frost comes sharp and quick as driven nails, just for a week or so the woods, all of the bright and bitter leaves, flare up; the maples turn a blazing bitter red, and other leaves turn yellow like a living light, falling upon you as you walk the woods, falling about you like small pieces of the sun so that you cannot say that sunlight shakes and flutters on the ground, and where the leaves. . .

October is the richest of the seasons: the fields are cut, the granaries are full, the bins are loaded to the brim with fatness, and from the cider-press the rich brown oozings of the York Imperials run.  The bee bores to the belly of the yellowed grape, the fly gets old and fat and blue, he buzzes loud, crawls slow, creeps heavily to death on sill and ceiling, the sun goes down in blood and pollen across the bronzed and mown fields of old October.

The corn is shocked: it sticks out in hard yellow rows upon dried ears, fit now for great red barns in Pennsylvania, and the big stained teeth of crunching horses. The indolent hooves kick swiftly at the boards, the barn is sweet with hay and leather, wood and apples—this, and the clean dry crunching of the teeth is all:  the sweat, the labor, and the plow is over. The late pears mellow on a sunny shelf, smoked hams hang to the warped barn rafters; the pantry shelves are loaded with 300 jars of fruit. Meanwhile the leaves are turning, turning up in Maine, the chestnut burrs plop thickly to the earth in gusts of wind, and in Virginia the chinkapins are falling.

“Autumn Scene” by AcrylicArtist is licensed under CC by 2.0

It’s also the beginning of National Apple Month, International Music Day, Model T Day, Homemade Cookie Day, International Raccoon Day (this is cultural appropriation, since Procyon lotor extends only from Canada through the U.S. and Mexico and into Central America),  National Black Dog Day (that’s for sure!), World Vegetarian Day, International Coffee Day, and World Vegetarian Day. 

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

Da Nooz:

*Kris Kristofferson died at 88.  Rolling Stone gives an obituary:

As the songwriter of legendary compositions like “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” and “Me and Bobby McGee,” Kris Kristofferson transformed lyrics into literature, elevating the craft to a legitimate American art form in a way few had done before. Part Romantic poet, part folk troubadour, part country-music storyteller, Kristofferson died Saturday at the age of 88.

A spokesperson for Kristofferson, Ebie McFarland, confirmed the musician’s death, adding that the “artist, singer, songwriter, actor and activist … passed away peacefully in his home in Maui, Hawaii … surrounded by family.” A cause of death was not immediately available.

Songwriting was merely one aspect to the Renaissance man, who was also a Golden Globe-winning actor, Golden Gloves boxer, Rhodes scholar, author, U.S. Army veteran, pilot, and onetime record-label janitor. But it was his penetrating lyricism that caused a seismic shift in the perception of country music by the late Sixties. Well-educated (with a military discipline) though he was, he quickly fell in with the freshman class of “outlaw” singer-songwriters that would buck the star system and influence generations to come.

The eldest of three children, Kristoffer Kristofferson was born June 22, 1936, in Brownsville, Texas. His father, Lars, the son of a Swedish army veteran, was a pilot and a major general in the U.S. Air Force who went on to work for Pan American Airways. The family moved frequently, settling in San Mateo, California, when Kristofferson was in junior high. A model student who earned the nickname “Straight Arrow,” he graduated from high school in San Mateo in 1954, and went on to study creative writing at Pomona College, winning several prizes in a short-story contest sponsored by Atlantic Monthly magazine. Graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1958, he received a Rhodes scholarship to England’s Oxford University.

Although intent on becoming a novelist, Kristofferson concentrated his studies on the poetry of William Blake, and penned and performed his first songs while studying at Oxford’s Merton College. In England, he cut his first singles (credited to “Kris Carson”) for Top Rank Records, although they went unreleased at the time. After earning a master’s degree in English literature from Oxford in 1960, Kristofferson, who planned to resume his studies there, flew home to California for Christmas break. Reuniting with an old girlfriend, Fran Beir, the couple married and had a daughter, Tracy, and a son, Kris. Instead of returning to Oxford, Kristofferson enlisted in the Army.

Kristofferson served as a helicopter pilot while in the Army and attained the rank of captain. During a three-year tour in West Germany (with his wife and daughter in tow), he organized a band, learning the Bob Dylan songs as recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary (his band’s Dobro player gave him the folk trio’s LPs). On leave in the spring of 1965, Kristofferson took his first trip to Nashville. He had been tapped for a position teaching English literature at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point after leaving West Germany, but his two weeks in Nashville scuttled that plan. He became enamored of the songwriting circle, befriending songwriter and music publisher Marijohn Wilkin (“The Long Black Veil”), Bobby Bare (“Detroit City”), and producer Cowboy Jack Clement.

“I came down to Nashville,” Kristofferson told Rolling Stone in 2009. “I’d been playing in an Army band, so people introduced me around like I was somebody. Everybody still called me ‘Captain.’ And I wrote seven, maybe 11 songs that first week. I thought if I didn’t make it as a songwriter I would at least get material to be the Great American Novelist. The people and places I was seeing were more exciting than anything I’d ever come across.”

Kristofferson became a janitor in Columbia Studios, and the rest is history (read the piece, which for now is free).  Below is a video in which he’s talking to David Letterman, and revealing that he dated Barbra Streisand (start that bit at 6:45). Barbra!!!!

*Well, the Chicago White Sox, stink to high heaven and have finally set a Major League Baseball Record. And it’s a shameful one:

The Chicago White Sox fell 4-1 to the Detroit Tigers on Friday for their 121st loss of the season, the most in MLB history. The mark broke the previous record set by the expansion New York Mets in 1962.

Chicago won 93 games and the American League Central division in 2021 but has been in a steady decline since. The White Sox won 81 games in 2022 and 61 last season. They’ve won 39 games so far this season, with two games left.

After the Friday loss, the White Sox posted a picture to social media of a computer desktop with a list of “Things we’d rather do than read comments” and a photo of the team mascot sitting against a wall with the caption “slams laptop shut til tomorrow.”

Offense has been Chicago’s most glaring issue. The White Sox are ranked near the bottom in many major statistical categories, and entered Tuesday last in the MLB in hits, runs, home runs, batting average, runs batted in, total bases, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. (The team is second-to-last in walks drawn, however.)

Here’s where they fall, worse than even the 1962 Mets. They’ve lost nearly 75% of their games!

The team’s owner even tweeted out a written apology to the team’s fans:

*The U.S. is sending more ground troops to the Middle East, apparently to bolster U.S. forces, not to aid Israel:

The US is sending an additional “few thousand” troops to the Middle East to bolster security and to be prepared to defend Israel if necessary, the Pentagon says.

The increased presence will come from multiple fighter jet squadrons, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh tells reporters.

The additional personnel includes squadrons of F-15E Strike Eagle, F-16, A-10 and F-22 fighter jets and the personnel needed to support them. The jets had ben supposed to rotate in and replace the squadrons already there. Instead, both the existing and new squadrons will remain in place to double the airpower on hand.

Yesterday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also announced that he was temporarily extending the stay of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and its associated squadrons in the region.

The jets are not there to assist in an evacuation, Singh says — “they are there for the protection of US forces.”\

Also, yesterday afternoon Israel said that a ground operation against Hezbollah may be imminent, and has informed the U.S. of its plans:

Israel could launch a ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon within hours, CBS News reports, quoting an unnamed US official who says this is the message Washington has received from Jerusalem.

Further, the IDF struck and killed the head of Hamas in Lebanon, who turned out to be (surprise!) a former UNRWA teacher:

Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon and central Beirut overnight killed the top Hamas official in Lebanon and senior members of another Palestinian terror group, the organizations and the Israel Defense Forces said Monday.

Hamas said its leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, was killed, along with his wife, son, and daughter, in a strike that targeted their house in a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern city of Tyre early Monday. A statement from the terror group identified him as a “successful teacher and excellent [school] principal.”

The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security agency in a joint statement confirmed that Sherif, who they described as the “head of the Lebanon branch of the Hamas terror organization,” was killed in the strike.

And the WSJ says that Israel has already made a few ground raids in Lebanon:

Israeli special forces have been carrying out small, targeted raids into southern Lebanon, gathering intelligence and probing ahead of a possible broader ground incursion that could come as soon as this week, people familiar with the matter said.

The raids, which have included entering Hezbollah’s tunnels located along the border, have occurred recently as well as over the past months, part of the broader effort by Israel to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities along the border dividing Israel and Lebanon, the people said. The timing of any ground action could change, the people said.

The Biden administration expects an imminent Israeli invasion of Lebanon, U.S. officials said. Much of the fighting is expected to take place along the Israeli-Lebanese border, though there is concern in Washington that the war could expand geographically and last longer than a short-term campaign.

Note as well that the U.S. is apparently collaborating with Israel in preparation for a reprisal from Iran for the IDF’s killing of Nasrallah:

The U.S. is gearing up for a possible Iranian strike on Israel, CNN reported Sunday night, in response to the assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.

Nasrallah, who headed Hezbollah for the past 32 years, was killed, along with 20 other Hezbollah terrorists, when a squadron of Israeli F-16I fighter jets struck Hezbollah’s underground headquarters in Beirut, dropping over 80 heavy bombs on the complex.

Citing a U.S. official, CNN reported that the Biden White House fears that Iran could attempt a major strike on Israel in retaliation for the killing of Tehran’s senior ally – and a close friend of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The U.S. is working jointly with Israel to prepare for a possible attack, the official said, while declining to specify what kinds of threats are considered realistic, and what preparations are being made.

Finally, Malgorzata sent me this speech of Netanyahu addressed to the people of Iran and added: “I may be totally mistaken but I suspect that this is a preparation of Iranians for an Israeli attack on Iran.”   Note that the PM says that the moment that Iran is free “will come a lot sooner than you think.” and that Israel stands with “the people of Iran.”

Even if you don’t like Netanyahu, have a listen: it’s only three minutes long and it’s a good address. In the end, I think Israel will have to mount some attacks on Iran given its status as a perpetrator of terrorism against Israel and, especially, because it’s close to getting the bomb (“the abyss”, perhaps) and nukes in the hands of Iran spell the end of Israel, for, in my view, the religious fanatics that control Iran and its possible nukes may well be willing to obliterate Israel with a few missiles, while Israel can’t destroy the much larger country of Iran, and the mullahs may be willing to sacrifice millions of their people (if Israel can even retaliate) to destroy Israel.

*One of Tom Jones’s  most famous songs is “She’s a Lady.” But due to the pressure of wokeness, he won’t sing it any more.

Sir Tom Jones, 80, released his single She’s A Lady, one his best selling hits, in 1971. Reflecting on the lyrics, the hitmaker said he will no longer sing the song on stage. The Voice UK coach spilled: “My old song She’s A Lady from 1971 is the only one of my songs I won’t do on stage anymore.

“That song doesn’t sit right any more.”

Tom went on to point out there were other songs of his that “aren’t right” for him to sing anymore, such as Sex Bomb.

“I wouldn’t record Sex Bomb as a dance track like it was on the record if I was to make it now,” he spilled.

The song was recorded in 1998 and released two years later.

In another recent interview, Tom revealed which song he can’t listen to as it reminds him of his late wife Linda.

The latter died after a short battle with cancer in 2016.

The father-of-one has said he can no longer listen to Frank Sinatra’s song The Hungry Years because it makes him emotional.

He explained: “This song is about missing ‘those hungry years’.

Here’s the canceled song:

And a meme:

*A reader advised me to post only lighthearted and happy news to help assuage the anxiety that keeps me awake at night. Well, I can’t really do that given that I’m both lugubrious and a Jew (I think they’re synonyms), but here’s an AP headline that caught my eye (click to read); the article is by Amy Beth Hanson:

An excerpt:

 An 81-year-old Montana man faces sentencing in federal court Monday in Great Falls for illegally using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in Central Asia and the U.S. to illegally create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting in Texas and Minnesota.

Prosecutors are not seeking prison time for Arthur “Jack” Schubarth of Vaughn, Montana, according to court records. He is asking for a one-year probationary sentence for violating the federal wildlife trafficking laws. The maximum punishment for the two Lacey Act violations is five years in prison. The fine can be up to $250,000 or twice the defendant’s financial gain.

In his request for the probationary sentence, Schubarth’s attorney said cloning the giant Marco Polo sheep hunted in Kyrgyzstan has ruined his client’s “life, reputation and family.”

However, the sentencing memorandum also congratulates Schubarth for successfully cloning the endangered sheep, which he named Montana Mountain King. The animal has been confiscated by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services.

“Jack did something no one else could, or has ever done,” the memo said. “On a ranch, in a barn in Montana, he created Montana Mountain King. MMK is an extraordinary animal, born of science, and from a man who, if he could re-write history, would have left the challenge of cloning a Marco Polo only to the imagination of Michael Crichton,” who is the author of the science fiction novel Jurassic Park.

. . . . In 2019, Schubarth paid $400 to a hunting guide for testicles from a trophy-sized Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep killed in Montana. Schubarth extracted semen from bighorn sheep testicles and used it to breed large bighorn sheep and sheep crossbred with the argali species, the documents show.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Todd Kim described Schubarth’s actions as “an audacious scheme to create massive hybrid sheep species to be sold and hunted as trophies.” Kim said the defendant violated the Lacey Act that restricts wildlife trafficking and prohibits the sale of falsely labeled wildlife.

He apparently used semen to artificially inseminatee normal ewe, getting hybrids with Marco Polo sheep, but that wouldn’t work. Cloning would get you back a ram or ewe, but you’d need two to perpetuate the species, and would need to implant the nucleus of a Marco Polo cell into a normal ewe egg.  I can’t believe that he was able to do that, but that’s why you’d need to ship testicles back from Asia.

Wanna see the sheep? First, Wikipedia says this:

The Marco Polo sheep (Ovis ammon polii) is a subspecies of argali sheep, named after Marco Polo. Their habitat are the mountainous regions of Central Asia. Marco Polo sheep are distinguishable mostly by their large size and spiraling horns. Their conservation status is “near threatened” and efforts have been made to protect their numbers and keep them from being hunted. It has also been suggested that crossing them with domestic sheep could have agricultural benefits.

Indeed. And here’s a video. Sadly, virtually every video on this sheep involves hunting and killing them. In this one, one killer says, “We have to kill that big ram no matter what the costs.” Trophy hunting, particularly of a threatened species, makes me sick.  CONTENT NOTE: BRUTUAL EXECUTION OF SHEEP. Go to 16:15 if you want to see the size of a dead ram but want to avoid the shooting.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is upset because, says Malgorzata, “She wants to eat at the table, like we do, from a plate, and not sit alone on the window sill and eat out of a bowl as if she were some ordinary cat.”

Hili: And where is my plate?
A: Your bowl is on the window sill.
Hili: Scandal.
In Polish:
Hili: A gdzie jest mój talerz?
Ja: Twoja miseczka jest na parapecie.
Hili: Skandal.

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From Cat Memes:

From Strange, Silly, or Stupid Signs: 1¢ off!!!

From Science Humor:

From Masih, mocked by a bunch of Iranian cowards:

This is how the Jews respond to pro-Palestinian demonstrations celebrating the butchery of October 7. They go to class and LEARN!

A flying carpet wingsuit, with a safe parachute opening. This is a brave dude:

From Simon, who asks, “Will this ever die?”  I think “Yes, but it’ll take a while.”

From the Auschwitz Memorial; one that I posted. Read the entire original tweet. He was murdered because he was gay.

Two tweets from Doctor Cobb. He says of this first one, “This is not a joke.” Indeed: here’s the book.

Oy! I have plastic in my prostate!

Sunday: Hili dialogue

September 29, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first goyische sabbath of Autumn: it’s Sunday, September 29, 2024, and National Coffee Day. Here’s a photo of the latte I made for myself this morning (it is lightly dusted with cinnamon).

For those who couldn’t find all 20 cats in yesterday’s picture, here’s an annotated and complete reveal by reader MA. Click to enlarge; each cat has a number.

And a reflection of Chicago architecture, taken on the way to dinner with Mr. Evolution:

It’s also Broadway Musicals Day, National Corn Day (in Mexico), World Rivers Day, National Mocha Day, Goose Day, and National Biscotti Day. 

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

Da Nooz:

*Nasrallah is with Allah. Hezbollah confirmed yesterday that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, both Herzbollah’s spiritual and political leader, was killed in an IDF bombing attack. The IDF announced the death earlier, and their announcements are almost 100% reliable, but ultimate confirmation must also come from Hezbollah, and it did.

Israeli airstrikes battered areas near Beirut again on Saturday evening, hours after Hezbollah confirmed that its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah had been killed in an Israeli bombing that flattened residential buildings near Lebanon’s capital the night before.

The assassination, which Israel said hit the Iranian-backed militia’s underground headquarters, was a stunning escalation of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in a conflict that has gone on for nearly a year. Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel on Oct. 8 in solidarity with Hamas, which is also supported by Iran, and Israel frequently responded with its own strikes. But Israel intensified the conflict dramatically over the last two weeks, fueling fears of an all-out regional war that could draw in bigger players like Iran.

Mr. Nasrallah was a towering figure among anti-Israel forces across the Middle East and beyond, and his death struck a tremendous blow to Hezbollah, ending an era in the Lebanese group’s decades-old fight with Israel and raising questions about its future. Mr. Nasrallah played multiple roles in the lives of Hezbollah’s members, serving at once as a religious guide, political strategist and commander in chief.

His death deprives the organization of his vast experience, personal relationships with other militia leaders and the unifying force of his rhetoric and personality. Israel had been tracking his movements for months and decided to strike because it believed it had only a short window before he moved to a different location, Israeli officials said.

The Israeli military strikes on Friday near Beirut were aimed at breaking Hezbollah by killing top commanders, and if successful they would allow Israel to avoid a ground invasion into the country, a senior Israeli official told reporters on Friday. But the fighting with Hezbollah did not seem poised to end.

Other Hezbollah commanders were also killed in this targeted strike, and Lebanon is pretty much in turmoil. As the Times of Israel reports, many Lebanese who don’t like Hezbollah (it is in fact their de facto government, even though it’s not supposed to be) are celebrating, along with Muslims in Syria.

Videos circulating on social media show residents of the rebel-held region of Idlib, in north-western Syria, celebrating the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last night, before the IDF and the terror group announced it officially today.

Residents are shown handing out sweets to passers-by, thanking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and vowing that Syrian President Bashar Assad will be next in line.

Hezbollah has long been an ally of the Syrian regime under the Assad family and helped it in its fight against the Syrian opposition since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011 until 2019. The intervention of the Lebanese terror group was critical in defeating rebels and maintaining Bashar Assad in power.

Here are two tweets, the first with videos. I can’t, of course, vouch that they’re genuine:

*The Wall Street Journal reports that students from the Northern U.S. are increasingly choosing not to apply to “elite” schools in that area, but are heading south where college is cheaper and more “fun.”:

A growing number of high-school seniors in the North are making an unexpected choice for college: They are heading to Clemson, Georgia Tech, South Carolina, Alabama and other universities in the South.

Students say they are searching for the fun and school spirit emanating from the South on their social-media feeds. Their parents cite lower tuition and less debt, and warmer weather. College counselors also say many teens are eager to trade the political polarization ripping apart campuses in New England and New York for the sense of community epitomized by the South’s football Saturdays. Promising job prospects after graduation can sweeten the pot.

The number of Northerners going to Southern public schools went up 84% over the past two decades, and jumped 30% from 2018 to 2022, a Wall Street Journal analysis of the latest available Education Department data found.

At the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, total freshmen from the Northeast jumped to nearly 600 in a class of about 6,800, up from around 50 in 2002. At the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, they increased from 11 to more than 200 in a class of about 4,500 in 2022. At the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, 11% of students came from the Northeast in 2022, compared with less than 1% two decades prior.

This flow of students to Southern colleges promises to impact the region’s economy for years. About two-thirds of college graduates go on to work in the same state where they graduate, according to a recent study from researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and others. The transplants are well-educated, motivated young workers at the least expensive points in their careers.

For most of American history, many high-school seniors have aspired to go to college in the Northeast, home to the Ivy League. Southern academic stalwarts, such as Duke, Tulane, Emory and Vanderbilt, have long drawn their share of students from up North, but the recent uptick of students going to the South is fueled by attendance at public universities.

Though far more students apply to Ivy League schools than in 2002, some of the hottest Southern public schools—including Clemson and Georgia Institute of Technology—have seen even a bigger spike in interest. At Alabama, applications were up more than 600% in the same period—about three times as much as bids to attend Harvard.

For out-of-state students, Southern schools are often a bargain, according to figures from roughly 100 of the nation’s top public research universities. Last school year, such Southern schools charged students from other states a median $29,000 in tuition and fees, the least of top public colleges in any region.

Scholarships often make it cheaper.

Here’s a figure from the article showing where students are going. Look at the spike in Southern schools! (click to enlarge).  But where is North Carolina?

Well, the “fun” part mostly involves sports like football (watching, not playing), and I’m not too keen on that. But I did go to undergraduate school in the South (The College of William and Mary in Virginia), and it was dead cheap for in-state residents and also a wonderful place to get a liberal education. And Duke, Vanderbilt, and so on are excellent schools, too. There’s more to life than Harvard.

*A new WaPo article is titled, on the front page, “Half the U.S. has banned trans girls from girls sports. A mom may be among the first to face a penalty.” (The title at the news site, however, is different.) Here’s the skinny:

Jessica Norton eased her minivan out of the driveway, and she told herself she’d done what any mother would. Her daughter Elizabeth had wanted to play high school volleyball, and Norton had let her. Norton had written female on the permission slips. She’d run practice drills in the yard, and she’d driven this minivan to matches all across their suburban Florida county.

, , , , Until recently, Norton had worked at the high school Elizabeth attended. But last fall, an armed officer with the Broward County Public SchoolsPolice had told Norton she was under investigation for allowing Elizabeth to play girls sports. District leaders banned Norton from the building. They discussed the investigation on the local news, and soon, everyone in Coconut Creek seemed to know Elizabeth is transgender. (Norton asked The Washington Post to use the child’s middle name to protect her privacy.)

In the nine months since, school officials had talked about Elizabeth as if she were dangerous, but Norton knew they couldn’t possibly be picturing the 16-year-old who stood at the edge of the driveway in Taylor Swift Crocs. This girl loved Squishmallows and Disney World. She had long red hair, and she was so skinny, the principal described her to investigators as “frail.”

. . . . Elizabeth didn’t have an advantage, Norton thought. She was a normal teenage girl, and yet her very existence had thrust them into one of the nation’s most contentious debates.

Over the last few years, half the country, including Florida, had banned trans girls from playing on girls teams. Proponents of the lawsargued that they were fighting for fairness, and thedebate had spilled into the stands with an anger that worried Norton. Critics called trans competitors “cheats.” Crowds booed teenage athletes. And somespectators had begun eyeing cisgender competitors for signs of masculinity.

. . . . For all that fury, though, no one had been punished yet under one of the bans. Soon, Norton feared, she might become the first. The Broward County School Board planned to take up her case that afternoon, and the agenda included only one proposed outcome: termination.

For much of her life, all the big sports associations allowed trans athletes to compete, and most states did, too. Some required athletes to show proof they were taking hormones or blockers, but a dozen states, including Florida, had no restrictions at all. As long as a student could show their gender identity was consistent, they could play.

Trans people represent less than 1 percent of the country’s population, and for decades, state lawmakers rarely mentioned them. But as gay people won protections and the right to marry, LGTBQ+ rights groups and right-wing leaders began looking for new issues to galvanize supporters. Both turned their attention to trans rights.

. . . . Over the next few years, Florida and two dozen other states passed nearly identical bans on trans girls in sports. Many Republican lawmakers spoke about trans athletes as if they were all the same — tall and muscular, physically dominant, grown men cross-dressing for the sake of a secondary school athletic win. The bill sponsors didn’t mention trans girls who never went through puberty. They hardly ever talked about children like Elizabeth who tried and failed to make a seventh grade team. By 2023, multiple polls, including one by The Post and KFF, found that two-thirds of Americans agreed that trans girls should not be allowed to play girls sports.

First of all, the trans-in-womens-sports issue didn’t come up because right-wing groups were looking for new issues to galvanize supporters. It came up because many more men were transitioning, there were more men with a woman’s identity participating in sports, and these “trans women” were starting to win. Many of us are left wing and oppose such results on the grounds of mere fairness.  To keep a level playing field, I think that—with the possible exception of elementary-school sports like kickball—segregation of the biological sexes in sports should begin after elementary school.  As for how to create fairness, well, there can be “other” leagues, or everyone of trans gender can participate on men’s teams.  I don’t think mothers should be punished, as Elizabeth was, but I think there should be a ban on men with women’s identities competing against biological women.

*Russia’s foreign minister made a nuclear threat at the UN, though it was veiled:

Russia’s top diplomat warned Saturday against “trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power,” delivering a U.N. General Assembly speech packed with condemnations of what Russia sees as Western machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere — including inside the United Nations itself.

Three days after Russian President Vladimir Putin aired a shift in his country’s nuclear doctrine, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the West of using Ukraine — which Russia invaded in February 2022 — as a tool to try “to defeat” Moscow strategically, and “preparing Europe for it to also throw itself into this suicidal escapade.”

“I’m not going to talk here about the senselessness and the danger of the very idea of trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power, which is what Russia is,” he said.

The specter of nuclear threats and confrontation has hung over the war in Ukraine since its start. Shortly before the invasion, Putin reminded the world that his country was “ one of the most powerful nuclear states,” and he put its nuclear forces on high alert shortly after. His nuclear rhetoric has ramped up and toned down at various points since.

On Wednesday, Putin said that if attacked by any country supported by a nuclear-armed nation, Russia will consider that a joint attack.

He didn’t specify whether that would bring a nuclear response, but he stressed that Russia could use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional assault that posed a “critical threat to our sovereignty.”

The United States and the European Union called his statements “irresponsible.”

The new posture was seen as a message to the U.S. and other Western countries as Ukraine seeks their go-ahead to strike Russia with longer-range weapons. The Biden administration this week announced an additional $2.7 billion in military aid for Ukraine, but it doesn’t include the type of long-range arms that Zelenskyy is seeking, nor a green light to use such weapons to strike deep into Russia.

Hold off on the nukes, guys: that way lies mass destruction and WWIII.  As for Ukraine, I think the U.S. has to support it with all the resources we can muster. It is a democratic country being attacked without cause by an autocracy that wants to absorb it. It is against the principles of America to stand by and let that happen.  On that issue I stand with the Biden administration rather than with Trump, who seems willing to let Ukraine attain “peace” by giving up more of its territory to Russia, as it did with Crimea.

*Francis Ford Coppola has a new movie out called “Megalopolis,” and he’s put everything behind it, including selling much of his famed California vineyard, to make it a success. (I read about the movie in Rolling Stone while waiting for my flu shot yesterday. BTW, you should be getting your flu shot NOW).  The Free Press writes about it in a piece called “In defense of Megalomania.” The movie sounds weird, but hey, it’s Coppola, the man who made “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now”:

Megalopolis takes place in the far future, in a city called New Rome that is very recognizably New York. An opening scene finds Cesar, the architect hero played by Adam Driver, gazing down at the landscape from a precarious perch atop the Chrysler Building. Cesar is the inventor of a substance dubbed “Megalon,” which looks and behaves like gold ectoplasm and can be used to do just about anything—including build cities, which is Cesar’s goal.

His vision: to remake New Rome as a utopia called Megalopolis.

His enemies: the city’s current power players, including corrupt mayor Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito.

The parallels between this story and the current state of American politics aren’t exactly subtle; we are reminded that Rome (the old one) didn’t fall in a day; the decline of a civilization is a slow crumble that starts with people losing faith in their leadership, their government, their democracy.

A title card at the film’s start reads: CAN WE PRESERVE OUR PAST AND ALL ITS WONDROUS HERITAGE? OR WILL WE TOO FALL VICTIM, LIKE OLD ROME, TO THE INSATIABLE APPETITE FOR POWER OF A FEW MEN?

Yes, it is ambitious.

And long before anyone had even seen Megalopolis, a consensus had emerged that Coppola’s four-decade, self-financed passion project was shaping up to be a trainwreck: wildly expensive, weirdly experimental, and proof that the director’s ego had finally spiraled out of control.

So far the reviews have been mixed, with few having the all-out approbation that the first two “Godfather” films got (Part III stunk to high heaven.) But I will see it. Here’s the official trailer:

 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is devoid of prey

A: What do you see there?
Hili: A lack of mice.
In Polish:
Ja: Co tam widać?
Hili: Brak myszy.

And a photo of Baby Kulka:

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

From Stash Krod:

From The Dodo Pet:

From America’s Cutural Decline into Idiocy:

From Masih, the Voice of the Iranian Opposition, who reports that the head of the Iranian theocracy has been moved to a new location. I’m wondering whether Israel is contemplating an attack on Iran, trying to squelch its drive to create nuclear weapons:

Cat television sent in by Merilee:

Malgorzata sent one of the all-time put-downs of an pro-Palestinian spokesman by artist and singer Elica Lebon, an Iranian immigrant to the UK. This was on the Piers Morgan show. I’d sure want her on my side!

From Luana; Bernie makes a boo-boo (you can see the story here; it involves a student risking losing his student visa after expulsion):

From Simon, who calls this “location, location”:

From the Auchwitz Memorial, a nascent poet who died in Auschwitz after living in a ghetto. The poem is deeply moving.

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. He says the first one is a “good balanced thread on Covid origins.” It does favor the wet-market theory for the origin of the disease:

Matthew’s comment on this is “Lol”: