The butt end of the week has arrived: it’s Friday, October 18, 2024, and cool fall weather has finally hit Chicago.

National Chocolate Cupcake Day, which is a good flavor if you must pay the inflated prices for cupcakes they charge these days (compared to real cakes, that is, like the famous “Tuxedo Cake” from Costco—read the review—highly recommended for parties or private gluttony). Here’s the Tuxedo Cake, which, at about $16, is not cheap for Costco, but it is a true gourmet cake and well worth buying. I imagine it will serve about eight people at a party.  Eschew the pricey cupcakes!

It’s also World Student Day, National Mammography Day, National No Beard Day (I hate shaving but I do it), and World Menopause Day. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 18 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The big news is that the world’s most wanted terrorist is dead. Yes, Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, has been killed by the IDF. Here’s the headline from the NYT (click to read; article archived here):

The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that Yahya Sinwar, the powerful and elusive militant leader who has been the No. 1 target for Israel since the beginning of the war, had been killed in battle.

Mr. Sinwar was viewed as the architect of the brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel that set off the 13-month war that has plunged the Gaza Strip into a humanitarian crisis and began a wider conflict that now includes the fighting in Lebanon.

After a firefight in Gaza on Wednesday with Hamas forces, Israeli soldiers retrieved a body that appeared to be that of Mr. Sinwar. On Thursday, after “completing the process of identifying the body,” the military said that Mr. Sinwar, who was in his early 60s, had been “eliminated.”

Since launching the assault on Hamas in Gaza last October in retaliation for Hamas’s cross-border raids, in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 abducted, Israeli officials have repeatedly said that their goal was nothing less than the destruction of the militant group.

But no target loomed larger for Israel than Mr. Sinwar himself. Over his past year in hiding in the devastated enclave, he was believed to still be closely overseeing Hamas military operations.

Mr. Sinwar’s death raises hopes for an end to a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Gazans and plunged many more into a humanitarian crisis.

Here’s an IDF video of what purports to be Sinwar’s last moments. Covered with dust, sitting in a chair, and missing a hand, the man throws a stick at the drone that’s looking at him. Then, according to the IDF, it was lights out:

Raw footage of Yahya Sinwar’s last moments: pic.twitter.com/GJGDlu7bie

— LTC Nadav Shoshani (@LTC_Shoshani) October 17, 2024

In a comment yesterday, someone said that this could turn out  badly for the hostages, and it could: Hamas could just decide to slaughter the 30 that supposedly remain alive. But then they are dooming themselves, as there is no reason for Israel to make a peace deal. I hope to Ceiling Cat that the hostages will be okay. There is some trepidation on the part of the hostages’ families:

For the families and supporters of the scores of hostages remaining in Gaza, the elimination of Yahya Sinwar, their chief captor, brought both a moment of satisfaction and deep trepidation for the fate of the captives.

“We’ve closed the account with the archmurderer Sinwar,” said Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker and one of the most vocal and prominent campaigners for a hostage deal, in a video statement. “But now, more than ever, the lives of my son Matan and the other hostages are in tangible danger.”

Remember also that both Biden and Harris (the latter vociferously) told Israel that they could not go into the area around Rafah, and that is precisely where Sinwar was killed (it was thought he was in the area).  This is one reason why we shouldnt let the U.S. direct Israeli wara strategy.

I don’t like being joyful over anyone’s death, even someone as evil as Sinwar. But life in an Israeli prison without parole would not solve the problem, for he would continue to run Hamas and plot terror from jail.  So let’s just say that I’m not sad that he’s dead. And fingers crossed for peace and a hostage return!

Here’s a 12-minute video with Tom Gross on Spectator TV about the significance of Sinwar’s death:

*Kamala Harris finally agreed to a non-softball interview—with Fox News! I haven’t seen it yet [UPDATE: I did ant it’s below.]. The NYT reports, and of course they criticize the reporter for cutting Harris off, even though she takes forever to answer questions (and rarely answers them), frequently beginning with an anecdote from her childhood. From the NYT:

Vice President Kamala Harris may not get another debate with former President Donald J. Trump, but on Wednesday, she got one with Bret Baier.

In an interview that turned contentious almost the instant it began, Mr. Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, repeatedly pressed the Democratic presidential nominee on illegal immigration, taxpayer support for gender-transition surgery and other areas that closely aligned with Mr. Trump’s regular attacks against her.

At one point, Mr. Baier wondered if the vice president considered Mr. Trump’s supporters “stupid.” (“I would never say that about the American people,” she replied.) At another point, he asked if she would apologize to the mother of a murdered 12-year-old Texas girl whose death is frequently invoked by Mr. Trump because two recent Venezuelan migrants were charged with the crime.

Mr. Baier’s aggressive demeanor was consistent with the kind of tough coverage of Ms. Harris that blankets Fox News’s daily programming. Lots of viewers were surely eager to hear how she would respond when confronted head-on.

Frequently, however, Mr. Baier did not give viewers that chance. Instead, looking frustrated, he cut off several of Ms. Harris’s answers aft

May I please finish responding?” Ms. Harris asked at one point. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re making, and I’d like to finish.”

Well, maybe if she’d answer questions straightforwardly without rambling (her way of avoiding giving answers), she would have been cut off less. I wish other interviewers had pressed her to give straight answers. The WSJ gives several examples of her answers:

Asked when she first noticed that Biden’s mental faculties were diminishing, Harris didn’t directly answer: “I have watched him from the Oval Office to the situation room, and he has the judgment and the…experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people.” Asked about Biden again, she changed the topic to Trump’s fitness.

. . . . Harris reiterated her plan to appoint a Republican to her cabinet and create a bipartisan panel to advise her on policies. “The coalition we have built has room for everyone who is ready to turn the page on the chaos and instability of Donald Trump,” she said. “And I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans.”

, , , In her testy interview with Bret Baier, marked by frequent interruptions, Harris more clearly separated herself from Biden than she had previously. “Let me be very clear, my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” Harris said. “I represent a new generation of leadership. I, for example, am someone who has not spent the majority of my career in Washington, D.C.”

That is not an answer, nor did she give one; she needs to say not that she’s a “new generation”, but how her policies would differ from those of Biden. But of course she did not answer that, because it would alienate some Democrats. And how is that “separating herself from Biden,” except that she’s not younger?

But heres the whole interview; judge for yourself:

*John McWhoter’s latest column in the NYT, “Ta-Nehisi Coates and the myth of black fragility“, defends those people who were criticized for saying, “Yes, it’s okay that CBS asked Ta-Nehisi Coates tough questions.”  An excerpt (there’s a lot more):

The debate revolves around Ta-Nehisi Coates, who went on the “CBS Mornings” program to promote his provocative new book, “The Message,” and was greeted with a series of tough questions from the co-host Tony Dokoupil. As you have already heard, some of Dokoupil’s colleagues complained that his interview had gone too far and he had pushed too hard, and he was summoned to a meeting with the standards team and something called the Race and Culture Unit, which is assigned to monitor “context, tone and intention.” Executives later announced that the interview had not met the network’s editorial standards.

Since then there’s been no end of discussion about journalistic ethics and personal bias. But the outrage and concern generated on Coates’s behalf doesn’t help him. It brutally condescends to him.

The idea that Coates should not have been asked such tough questions reflects a pernicious image of Black people, and Black men in particular, that first gained traction in 2020 and 2021, when antiracist virtue signaling too often transmogrified into an extreme grotesque. In a new book, the scholars Craig Frisby and Robert Maranto describe it as part of a worldview in which “whites are inherently oppressive, and African Americans (and by extension all ‘people of color,’ or POCs) serve only as victims around whom whites must walk on eggshells to avoid triggering deep emotional pain.”

. . . If only the CBS employees and their managers had had the same kind of faith in Coates. If it had been a white author in the hot seat that day, I find it impossible to imagine that anyone would have sounded any internal alarms. Certainly no one would have summoned the Race and Culture Unit. But why does the mere fact that the host is white make the interview a racial incident?

As depressing as all this may be, there’s reason for optimism — and evidence that we really have left the era of “peak woke.” The CBS correspondent Jan Crawford had the guts to speak up in defense of Dokoupil, arguing he had done nothing wrong. Shari Redstone, head of CBS’s parent company, said Dokoupil’s censure was a mistake. Even Coates has said that he can take care of himself.

That’s as it should be. Acting as though Black people can’t hold their own in a challenging discussion — as though they can’t speak up for themselves and therefore need others to speak up for them — isn’t antiracist, it’s demeaning. Blackness is not weakness. We need to stop coddling sane, self-sufficient Black people — like Coates — and move on.

I agree totally with McWhorter on this one. The defense of Coates—not his views on Israel, but on the fact that he was grilled too hard—is deeply condescending to African-Americans.  Yes, it may smack of hero worship of Coates, but if a Presidential candidate should be allowed to field tough questions, why not Coates. I think a lot of it is, as McWhorter notes, attributable to Coates’s ethnicity. Even if you believe in affirmative action, and that kind of differential treatment of races, it’s just not right to go easy on someone as famous and accomplished as Coates when he writes something controversial.

*The University of Chicago News has announced the reopening of Botany Pond. (There is video, too.)

Botany Pond, a beloved campus landmark and a popular and peaceful oasis for the University of Chicago community, has reopened following an extensive restoration designed to maintain its historical character and keep it flourishing for future generations.

Originally envisioned by renowned botanist John Merle Coulter as an outdoor research laboratory more than a century ago, Botany Pond is now a more sustainable habitat for both wildlife and visitors following the project. Work over the past year has improved the landscaping surrounding the pond to provide for universal access and views of the water, while native plantings have been mixed in with exotic historical specimens that date to the turn of the 20th century.

“The students, faculty, staff and visitors who return to Botany Pond will be able to marvel at new views of the changing Midwestern seasons, and see science and sustainability reflected in this restoration,” said Katie Martin Peck, UChicago’s associate director for campus environment.

Yet some of the biggest enhancements are under the pond’s surface. UChicago faculty consulted with sustainability and wildlife experts on an innovative, natural filtration system that uses microorganisms and layers of rocks to provide a better habitat for the aquatic life, mitigate the long-term buildup of sediment and ensure water clarity. The system is more energy-efficient, requires less maintenance and provides multiple ecological benefits as well.

Prof. Emeritus Michael LaBarbera, one of six UChicago faculty members who advised the project, is helping lead the establishment of a balanced ecosystem. Previously, water leakage and sediment build-up had affected the pond’s ability to support fish and other aquatic life.

“One of the most difficult aspects of this restoration is the necessity to recreate a functional ecosystem from scratch,” said LaBarbera, a renowned UChicago evolutionary biologist. “In natural systems, components of this ecosystem arrive over the course of several years via water inflow and by hitchhiking on migratory animals. Since this wasn’t possible for Botany Pond, I volunteered to stand in to restock the pond’s diversity.”

LaBarbera said the next steps will include adding mud and zooplankton—free-swimming, microscopic animals like rotifers, water fleas and copepods—to establish the next levels of the ecosystem.

“By next spring, we have high hopes that Botany Pond will again be both an aesthetic gem in the center of campus and a fully functional ecosystem,” he said.

and. .

Next year, larger pond inhabitants like native fish and turtles, which have been locally fostered, will be introduced. Martin Peck also said they anticipate ducks will return to the pond as part of their annual migration patterns.

The new layout provides spaces designed for ducks, turtles and other wildlife, including boulders and plantings to provide refuge; stepped boulders for access in and out of the water, which is particularly important for ducklings; and fish habitat and terrestrial areas strategically located with specific plantings.

Of course the ducks will return, though perhaps not Honey. . . . 🙁  I went over the duckling egress steps with the contractor yesterday, a very nice lady, and we talked about some tweaks to the pond to allow access to ducks and ducklings.  And we have some herpetologists who inspected the turtle-worthiness of the pond and will make some recommendations to allow sunning, egress, and hibernation. I am hoping for a good season and some ducklings—but not too many! Kudos to Facilities, Mike LaBarbera, and to the contractor and her team, who redesigned the pond despite some annoying difficulties, like leakage. There will no longer be incoming and outgoing water, but recycled water.

Here’s Honey eating from my hand:

*From the AP “Oddities section”, a ONE-TON pumpkin, weighing nearly as much as a female hippo!

A Minnesota horticulture teacher remained the reigning champion Monday of an annual pumpkin-weighing contest in Northern California where his massive gourds have won the top prize four years in a row.

Travis Gienger, of Anoka, Minnesota, beat his closest competitor by 6 pounds (2.7 kilograms) to clinch the victory at the 51st World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.

His winning gourd came in at 2,471 pounds (1,121 kilograms), falling short of the world record he set last year with a pumpkin weighing 2,749 pounds (1,247 kilograms).

Gienger, 44, said that as he has done in the past, he focused on having healthy soil and well-fed plants but that a cold fall with record-breaking rain likely impacted his pumpkin’s growth.

“We had really, really tough weather and somehow, some way, I kept on working,” Gienger said. “I had to work for this one, and we got it done at the end, but it wasn’t by much.”

Gienger and his family drove his gargantuan gourd for 35 hours to California.

You can see a photo at the link; it is HUGE. I wonder what they’ll do with it since it’s not a pie pumpkin. Carve it for Halloween?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili won’t let Andrzej sit in his computer chair. After all, Hili is The Editor:

A: May I sit down here?

Hili: Take a stool. This is a chair on which I shoulder all the burden of responsibility.

Ja: Czy mogę tu usiąść?

Hili: Weź stołek, to jest fotel, w którym dźwigam cały ciężar odpowiedzialności.

And a photo of Baby Kulka, who’s now a big kitty:

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

From The Dodo:

From Cat Memes:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs. What is this label about?

From Masih, marking the death of Yahya Sinwar:

Yahya Sinwar, the man behind planning October 7th, is reported dead. Let’s not forget that October 7th was a coordinated attack on civilians by the Islamic Republic, and @khamenei_ir recently praised it as “legal and logical.”

Ultimately, those who fan the flames of war will… pic.twitter.com/M8Oo7Ee7yw

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 17, 2024

From Luana, a bit from Harris’s interview with Fox News two days ago:

BRET: “More than 70% of Americans feel the country is going badly.”

KAMALA: “Donald Trump has been running for office”

B: “But you’ve been the person holding the office”

K: “You and I both know what I’m talking about”

B: “I actually don’t. What are you talking about?” 🤣 pic.twitter.com/rslwSkysBR

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) October 16, 2024

From Barry, who calls this “The Balrog of Meowgoth”:

From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak, I fought him, the Balrog of Meowgoth. Until at last, I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the meowntainside. pic.twitter.com/Szjm5sguZH

— JRR Jokien (@joshcarlosjosh) October 10, 2024

A cartoon sent in by Simon:

About last night: #TrumpTownHall #CatLadies pic.twitter.com/9jpmnpg6Ox

— Dave Whamond (@DaveWhamond) October 15, 2024

From Bryan, sent in by astronaut Chris Hadfield; the “chopstick” arms that helped retrieve the SpaceX booster the other day:

The arms that grabbed the @SpaceX Starship rocket out of midair, with people on top, for scale. https://t.co/eCdemyuc4d pic.twitter.com/QxAap140Zv

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) October 16, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

Gassed to death upon arrival. She was about six years old. https://t.co/dkZ66dO4NM

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 18, 2024

Two tweets from Doctor Cobb. First, cats, and I’ll report on this in an upcoming Caturday Felid post:

https://t.co/qofgkO8dDq Cats beat babies at word-association game
Study suggests our feline friends are listening to us more than we think

— LabLit (@lablit) October 17, 2024

Matthew says, “Carter: his vote counts in Georgia even if he dies!”  And it’s true, though I don’t know how he could vote; I thought he was in a coma before Harris became a candidate. At any rate, Georgia is of course a swing state:

If your spirits are down, lift them with this thought:

Jimmy Carter lived long enough to vote for Kamala Harris today. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/rODaa8Yzlp

— Steven Senski 🇺🇦 🌈 🥥🌴 (@StevenSenski) October 15, 2024

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.

*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.

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

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.

“If you’re still alive, it’s because we haven’t wanted you to die yet”
Tweeted by the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards to Israeli leaders after 200 failed missile strikes that took the life of a Palestinian worker.
This is the Islamic Republic’s ‘victory’ ; death,… pic.twitter.com/D1vzbSvzgr

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 2, 2024

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

Convincing people that there is an exception to freedom of speech called “hate speech” has been one of the greatest marketing successes of the anti-free speech movement. I’ve been fighting it on campuses for almost 24 years now and it’s a justification used all the time to target… https://t.co/ioHUdDng6Z

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) October 2, 2024

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

Why do free speech advocates eye roll whenever they hear “shouting fire in a crowded theater”?

A bit of history … The story of the phrase began on August 17, 1917, when the executive committee of the Socialist Party of Philadelphia resolved to distribute 15,000 leaflets… https://t.co/GNpQgyLyWX

— Nico Perrino (@NicoPerrino) October 2, 2024

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.)

At elite colleges like Columbia, many students are showing up unprepared to read full books. It’s not that they don’t want to, @rosehorowitch writes. Middle and high schools have stopped teaching them how: https://t.co/mC5JpaC15M

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) October 1, 2024

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

Thank heavens for community notes pic.twitter.com/LzAaLD9iKq

— Stephen Hopkins (@phil_lol_ogist) October 1, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

He lived but a week in the camp before he died–most likely gassed or shot. https://t.co/E6dXMkiKwJ

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 3, 2024

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

Ohhhh Molto bello

The main roads in #Pompeii were constructed with slabs of larva that had pieces of white marble interspersed – the latter reflecting the moonlight to help nocturnal travellers #PavementGeology @pavementgeology pic.twitter.com/8M7BijPMrd

— Dr Erica McAlister (@flygirlNHM) October 1, 2024

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:

🇸🇾Idlib, Syria
A region not under Assad’s control is probably celebrating the attack on #Nasrallah pic.twitter.com/JWmLGPNfcb

— Uncensored News (@Uncensorednewsw) September 28, 2024

Patriotic Iranians gathered outside the Israeli embassy in London to thank the Israeli army for taking out #Nasrallah and were singing the Iranian monarchy anthem.#TnxBBfromIran🍾🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/7tmFkOzf1r

— 𓄂✺Yaar – يار ‌‌دبستانی🎗️ (@YaarDabestaani) September 28, 2024

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.

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:

Running scared.
Following the elimination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Islamic Regime leader Ali Khamenei has been moved to a secure site in Iran according to Reuters.
With the suspicious deaths of Ebrahim Raisi, Ismail Haniyeh, and now Nasrallah, Khamenei and senior… https://t.co/GwIIVfi6zU

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) September 28, 2024

Cat television sent in by Merilee:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mona 🌹🐱🌷😸🌟 (@alqemzi_12345)

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!

F*ck. Give this a watch and a share @elicalebon just did one of the biggest Mic drops on the Israel / Hezbollah conflict

Straight facts. Every word.

pic.twitter.com/8OWyKghhDI

— Kosher🎗🧡 (@K0sher_C0ckney) September 25, 2024

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

But Senator Sanders, Cornell can’t deport anybody!

Cornell should follow its procedures, and then act to protect the rights of everyone on its campus, including those who wanted to attend the career fair that Momodou Taal and others disrupted. pic.twitter.com/CXdltIHnfV

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 27, 2024

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

That’s why it was a great day in Louisiana. https://t.co/pHqnK1CBqp

— Karen DaltonBeninato (@kbeninato) September 25, 2024

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

29 September 1944 | A Czech Jew, Pavel Friedman (b. 1921), was deported to #Auschwitz from Theresienstadt Ghetto. He did not survive.

On 4 June 1942 in the ghetto he wrote a poem titled “Butterfly” (click to see the whole thing):

—

The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps… pic.twitter.com/0y2wiJRcQH

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) September 29, 2024

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:

A thread on the raccoon dog DNA found at the Huanan market, and what those samples can and can not prove about covid’s origins:

— Peter Miller (@tgof137) September 19, 2024

Matthew’s comment on this is “Lol”:

Lmao https://t.co/ebPfLofYbI pic.twitter.com/N81Qmhwgsw

— Sam Sanders (@DreamSong77) July 30, 2024

Welcome to another damn week: it’s Thursday, September 26, and National Pancake Day.  Here are some Polish pancakes (with sour cream and cherries) I had for dessert while on a 2010 seminar trip to Danzig (Gdansk), Poland:

And I’ll add some blue corn pancakes with piñon nuts I had in 2018  at the Plaza Cafe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They were terrific, but the quantity defeated even me!

It’s also National Key Lime Pie Day, National Better Breakfast Day, Johnny Appleseed Day (the birthday of John Chapman in 1774), National Dumpling Day, and Lumberjack Day, which reminds me of a video:

Da Nooz:

*The war in Gaza is getting less attention now that things are heating up between Israel and Hezbollah. Contrary to my predictions, there may be a ground war in the offing.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi says the military is preparing for a ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, telling a group of soldiers that their “military boots will enter enemy territory.”

“You can hear the planes above, we are attacking all day. Both to prepare the area for the possibility of your entry [into Lebanon], and also to continue causing blows to Hezbollah,” Halevi tells troops of the 7th Armored Brigade during a drill simulating a ground offensive in Lebanon.

“Hezbollah today expanded its [range] of fire. Later today, it will receive a very strong response,” he vows, after the terror group fired a missile at central Israel this morning.

“Today we will continue, we do not stop, we continue to attack and continue to strike them everywhere. The goal is a very clear goal, to return the [displaced] residents of the north safely,” Halevi continues.

“To do this, we are preparing the [ground] maneuver,” he says to the soldiers.

“Your military boots,” Halevi says, “will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hezbollah has prepared as large military outposts, with underground infrastructure, staging points, and launchpads into our territory [from which Hezbollah intends] to carry out attacks on Israeli civilians.

“Your entry into those areas with force, your encounter with Hezbollah operatives, will show them what it means to face a professional, highly skilled, and battle-experienced force,” he goes on. “You are coming in much stronger and far more experienced than they are. You will go in, destroy the enemy there, and decisively destroy their infrastructure. These are the things that will enable us to safely return the residents of the north afterward.”

Well, that’s pretty explicit! It is, after all, the IDF’s chief of staff. And from the NYT:

The Israeli military said on Wednesday it had shot down a Hezbollah missile fired at Tel Aviv, the first time that the Iranian-backed militia had taken direct aim at the city and a reminder that Hezbollah can still reach deep into Israel’s urban core even after a string of attacks had killed some of the group’s commanders.

The foiled missile strike came as the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, told soldiers stationed at the northern border with Lebanon that the airstrikes Israel had launched since Monday were intended “to prepare the terrain” for a possible ground incursion. The Israeli military also called up two brigades of reservists and sent them to the border.

Of course, if this happens the yammering ignoramuses will criticize Israel for defending itself. After all, Israel is never allowed to win a war.  Those ignorant people don’t seem to realize that, without provocation of “settler colonialism”, Hezbollah has been committing war crimes against Israel for nearly a year.

*Bret Stephens always seems to have a reasonable take on the war, but that of course is because I agree with him. His latest column is called “Hezbollah is everyone’s problem” (archived here, too). He starts by mentioning the origin of UN Security Council Resolution 1701:

*On September 16, the Boston Globe published a rather unhinged editorial by business columnist Shirley Leong, who, judging by this article alone, needs a trip to the woodshed.  Anyway, read about the “so white” (and “so Jewish”) accusations Leong makes about Harvard (click to get archived version).

But at his Substack site Carolina Curmudgeon, “Robert Goodday” takes apart Leong’s entire column sentence by sentence, showing that her arguments are not only racist but antisemitic. It’s a fantastic dismantling of Leong’s arguments, and well worth reading (have a look at the other articles on the site, too, and subscribe if you like them). I’ll reprise just a few of “Goodday’s” arguments.

A few criticisms, starting with the title (excerpts from the article are in italics):

‘Where DEI went to die’: With Claudine Gay gone, Harvard leadership is so white

Six of the seven major appointments at the university since its first Black president resigned in January have gone to white people. ‘It feels like a step backwards,’ said one professor.

The above is the op-ed’s headline. And yes, I know – someone other than Ms. Leung probably wrote the headline. But whoever wrote the headline works for the Boston Globe, and the headline is so bad that it’s cringeworthy. “So white”. Who uses “so” as a descriptor in this kind of context? Certainly not anyone with any decent writing skills. When “so” is used in that kind of construction, it needs to be followed by a phrase beginning “that …” to be at all informative. To provide another example: “The writer of the headline is SO poor at writing THAT they should never have been hired.”

LOL, I love grammatical corrections. But Goodday gets tougher:

. . . . . ,In three instances, white people replaced Black people. Michelle Williams headed the Chan school for seven years, and Bridget Terry Long ran the school of education for six years. And like Gay, Williams and Long each broke barriers as the first Black women to lead those schools.

Four of these new appointments are Jewish. In recent months, Harvard has taken steps to address concerns about growing campus antisemitism in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.

Aha! So there we have it. Not only is it problematic that the new admins are white, but what makes the appointments particularly unpalatable to Ms. Leung is that they are Jewish – and the reference to the Hamas-on-Israel war makes clear that Ms. Leung thinks these two facts – the hiring of four Jews and the university’s concerns about being called out for its antisemitism – are related. There is only one way to interpret this short paragraph; Leung believes the Jewish admins were appointed to their positions in part BECAUSE they are Jewish, as a means of assuaging the concerns of wealthy Jewish alums. In some circles (all those with 360 degrees), that kind of claim, referencing a classic antisemitic trope, would be considered — antisemitic. Because it is.

. . .Let’s hope Garber and Harvard get back on the right side of history. We’ll all be watching.

A couple of points here because, given all that came before it, this final section of the op-ed borders on the bizarre.

For Leung to characterize her own views about the reasons why Harvard’s top administration is now “so white” as being perhaps “too generous” makes one wonder what she would have written if she were not in such a generous mood and if she were not so willing to give Garber and others the benefit of the doubt – where giving the benefit of doubt here involves claiming that Garber deliberately took race into account when making new administrative appointments and did so by preferring to appoint administrators who are white and Jewish. The mind reels imagining what Leung might have claimed if she were not in such a generous state of mind.

Of course, and I think ironically, it is, in fact, Leung who is arguing that Garber SHOULD take race into account when making future appointments – which would be racist AND illegal.

Finally, who exactly is the “we” that Leung is referring to when making her barely veiled threat in her final “we’ll all be watching” sentence? Is it simply the royal we – referring solely to Leung herself? Or has she anointed herself to speak on behalf of the entire Boston Globe? Does the “we” here refer to all readers of the Boston Globe, or “all” who share Ms. Leung’s progressive political views? Whomever Leung might be referring to here with her use of the word “we”, one thing is clear; she sure has a high opinion of herself and full confidence in the rightness of her views, which she knows reflect the “right side of history”. So I guess Garber better do what Leung wants, or else … Ms.Leung might write another racist, antisemitic, and poorly reasoned op-ed.

Yep, Goodday ripped Leung a new one, and he’s right. I love these dissections (I do them myself, but not as well), and wish there were more of them. But where could you publish them except on Substack?

*In the WaPo (not archived), Jennifer Rubin answers readers’ questions about the upcoming election. A couple of interesting exchanges:

Do you support the National Popular Vote compact? Is this a good idea?

Kirk

The National Popular Vote bill is an interstate compact that seeks to ensure that the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes nationwide is elected president. When a state passes legislation to join the National Popular Vote Compact, it pledges that all of that state’s electoral votes will be given to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote nationwide.

Jennifer Rubin

Opinion Columnist
I do. The Electoral College is a relic, one that has perpetuated disproportionate minority rule by rural, mostly White, conservative states. Moving to a popular vote system would help correct one of the many mechanisms that give these sparsely-populated states disproportionate power.

 

Why isn’t the media talking about the tight Senate race in Nebraska?

Em Kate

In the very red state of Nebraska, Dan Osborn (I), a veteran and former union leader, is giving the incumbent Senator, Deb Fischer (R), a real run for her money. Right now, it’s a toss-up.

With control of the Senate hanging so precariously in the balance, why isn’t the media talking about this important race?

Does the Senate face trouble ahead?

Sonnerboomer

I’m concerned about an immovable, obstructive Republican majority in the Senate for the near future. I’m afraid demographics won’t catch up to the undemocratic structure of the Senate as dual-party Senate representation vanishes. That would be a disaster for any progressive legislation and probably for even moderate judges being confirmed.

 

Jennifer Rubin

Opinion Columnist

The race for control of the Senate is very tight. If Democrats do get a majority, they will be under extreme pressure to alter or dispense entirely with the filibuster, which as you point out gives disproportionate power to thinly-populated, rural and right-wing states. There is no filibuster for judges, so a simple majority (combined with stronger leadership in the Judiciary Committee to do away with delaying tactics) should suffice to pass Harris-appointed judges. With a GOP Senate majority, however, we would face gridlock, obstruction and a slew of bogus investigations.

*The Chicago White Sox baseball team is on the verge of setting the worst season record in modern baseball history, and yet, this being Chicago, the fans are rooting for the team to set that record. Right now the Sox are tied with the 1962 Mets with the miserable record of 37 wins and 120 losses (a win percentage of 23.5%, but there are still five games to go.

After rallying for a 3-2 home victory against the Los Angeles Angels on Tuesday, the White Sox moved to 1-94 in games in which they have trailed after seven innings.

By doing so, Chicago (37-120) remained tied with the expansion 1962 New York Mets for the most single-season losses in MLB since 1901. The White Sox will try to ward off a foothold on futility when the series with the Angels (63-94) continues Wednesday night.

Stymied by Angels rookie right-hander Jack Kochanowicz for seven innings, the White Sox overcame a 2-0 deficit with three eighth-inning runs Tuesday.

. . . A crowd of 17,606 largely supported the White Sox but also wasn’t shy about directing ill will toward club owner Jerry Reinsdorf, frequently breaking into chants of “SELL THE TEAM!”

“It’s been a long season,” Benintendi said. “I think that, you know, people here tonight were maybe trying to see history, but they’re going to have to wait one more day. Maybe.”

The Angels have lost four of five on a seven-game road trip. One more loss for them will tie a franchise record for the most in team history. They lost 95 games in 1968 and 1980.

SELL THE TEAM!  The white Sox have been mediocre, though 19 years ago they won a World Series—their first such victory in 88 years. The only advantage in having them in town is that the field (yes, “Guaranteed Rate Field”) is nearby, attendance is sparse so you can often move to a box seat in about the third inning, and you can see good teams in the other American League franchises who play the Sox.  The Cubbies aren’t doing so well, either, but at least they’ve won more than half their games (they now have a .513 average).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is hurt:

Hili: I feel excluded.

A: Why?

Hili: Somebody hissed at me again.

Hili: Czuję się wykluczona.

Ja: Czemu?

Hili: Znowu ktoś na mnie syczał.

And a picture of Baby Kulka (who probably hissed at Hili), presumably taken by Paulina:

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From The 2024 Darwin Awards/Epic Fails:

From Duck Lovers:

From Masih, who attacks the Iranian regime to the Free Press. (She was one of the “warmup acts” for Dawkins’s Final Tour, by the way):

The same Iranian regime that has blinded scores of innocent women is now providing medical aid to Hezbollah operatives who lost their eyesight in last week’s pager explosions.

Iranian dissident @AlinejadMasih says the hypocrisy couldn’t be clearer. pic.twitter.com/sEfMzlRKEV

— The Free Press (@TheFP) September 24, 2024

The hate has spread to Canada. Now a Jewish bookstore gets picketed:

HAPPENING NOW: Mob gathers to incite hate, intimidate, and spread lies at a Jewish-owned book store in Toronto.

It’s Wednesday afternoon.

Even Neanderthals led more evolved and productive weekday afternoons than these Waahvolutionists.😭 pic.twitter.com/QneZVWKcwp

— dahlia kurtz ✡︎ דליה קורץ (@DahliaKurtz) September 25, 2024

From Malcolm: mother cats and baby cats:

Mom cat and baby cat 🥰🥰 pic.twitter.com/E0zNxz8ths

— Posts Of Cats (@PostsOfCats) September 18, 2024

From my feed. I much admire the Dutch love of bicycles:

*North America installs a single bike rack next to a train station*

Meanwhile in the Netherlands: pic.twitter.com/WhWSGvV3Zo

— Hayden (@the_transit_guy) September 24, 2024

Another two from my feed:

Lynx: “Ur my kitten.”

Cat: “I’m full grown-”

Lynx: “KITTEN.” pic.twitter.com/bMZifOXv7c

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) September 24, 2024

I get the same royalties whether you read them or burn them. Enjoy your marshmallows! 😘 pic.twitter.com/OJrJIoY6uE

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 24, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

26 September 1936 | A Dutch Jewish girl, Anne Groenteman (right) was born in Amsterdam.

In 1942 she was deported to #Auschwitz with her mother Lena and siblings Jeanette & John. All were probably murdered together in a gas chamber. pic.twitter.com/EeyQq8U5Zp

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) September 26, 2024

And a tweet from Matthew: a rare triple play clinches a postseason spot for the San Diego Padres. It was close at first!

A TRIPLE PLAY! TO SECURE A SPOT IN THE POSTSEASON! UNREAL! pic.twitter.com/NfbCRgt0Y6

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) September 25, 2024

Welcome to CaturSaturday, September 21, shabbos for all Jewish cats and National Chai Day.  Remember, posting will be light this weekend due to Dawkins being in town on his Farewell Tour and various events occurring.  Tonight: the Final Talk in Chicago. See you there!

It’s also International Red Panda Day, National Pecan Cookie Day, World Alzheimer’s Day (props to my good friend who has contracted this ailment), International Day of Peace, International Eat an Apple Day, National Beef Stroganoff Day, and National Sponge Candy Day.  Here’s a cute but educational video about red pandas (Ailurus fulgens; the sole living members of the mammalian family Ailuridae):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the Sept 21 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*If Hezbollah has an appetite for war, now would be the time for it to attack the Jews, for Israel has been mopping the floor with Hezbollah, injuring thousands in targeted strikes involving sabotaged beepers and walkie-talkies, knocking out a hundred missile-launchers, destroying missiles, and now killing the military commender of Hezbollah after having killed his predecessor a few days ago.  In fact, the war between Israel and Hamas actually began on October 8, when Hezbollah launched missiles at Israel after the October 7 butchery of Jews, so be aware that Hezbollah started it.  More carnage is in the offing. If Hezbollah would stop firing missiles at Israel, none of this would be happening:

The Israeli military on Friday carried out an airstrike in Beirut that it said killed a senior Hezbollah commander wanted by the United States for his role in bombings in the 1980s that killed hundreds.

Hezbollah did not immediately confirm that the commander, Ibrahim Aqeel, had been killed in the strike.

It was the second Israeli strike in two months that was intended to kill a top Hezbollah official in Lebanon’s capital, and it came amid a flurry of attacks by both sides that have raised fears of another full-scale war erupting in the Middle East.

The Israeli strike on Friday flattened a residential high-rise building in the heart of Dahiya, a densely populated suburban neighborhood south of the city’s center where Hezbollah holds sway, according to local residents. Residents described a chaotic scene as ambulances raced through the streets. Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 12 people were killed and dozens more were injured, including children.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, told reporters that Mr. Aqeel was meeting other senior commanders underneath the building in an attempt to “use civilians as human shields.” The New York Times could not independently verify that information.

In a statement, the Israeli military described Mr. Aqeel as the chief of Hezbollah’s military operations directorate and the de facto commander of the Radwan force, an elite commando unit. The statement claimed Mr. Aqeel had plotted a never-implemented Hezbollah invasion of northern Israel similar to that of the Hamas-led assault of southern Israel on Oct. 7.

Israel and Lebanon have been on edge for days since pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members blew up en masse this week, killing at least 37 people and injuring thousands in Lebanon in attacks widely attributed to Israel. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had vowed retribution for the explosions.

Now you’re going to hear people wringing their hands about how a “wider war” is happening, but what is really happening is that Israel has had enough bombardment (Hezbollah was firing missiles every day at Israel for months, and much of northern Israel), and is fighting back. Even the idiot Blinken is calling for peace; he, among all Biden administration officials, has been the person most responsible for tying Israel’s hands and trying to prevent the IDF from winning. Israel has every right to attack Hezbollah, and it’s done a pretty good job so far, avoiding killing civilians with those targeted beepers and bombing military sites. It’s salutary to remember that a binding UN resolution proscribes Hezbollah from doing what it did since last October 8 (unprovoked attacks on Israeli civilians), and the UN, with thousands of UNIFIL troops stationed in Lebanon, is supposed to stop this. It angers me deeply that the UN doesn’t enforce its own resolution, and that people keep forgetting that Hezbollah has been committing daily war crimes on the Israeli populace for nearly a year. Where is the accusation against Hezbollah in the International Court of Justice?

*Well, I’ll be. After sanctioning miracles for years, including the apparitions that draw gazillions of Catholics to Fátima and Lourdes, the Vatican has decided that it will no longer grace the appearance of such apparitions with the notion of “reality”.  This is because a half dozen kids claim they saw the apparition of the Virgin Mary in Bosnia and Herzegovina (article archived here), and the Vatican isn’t fully buying it:

In June 1981, six children between the ages of 10 and 16 claimed that the Virgin Mary had appeared to them on a stony hilltop near the village of Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The children said she had shared messages of peace and prayer with them.

The visionaries, as the group became known, say that the Virgin has been returning to Medjugorje (pronounced mehd-JOO-gor-ee-yeh) ever since. Their claim has drawn millions of the faithful from around the world, transforming the once tranquil farming village into a major pilgrimage site.

From the outset, though, the alleged apparitions have polarized Roman Catholic opinion. Millions of believers say they have found spiritual solace in Medjugorje, with dozens of reports of miraculous healings, conversions and religious callings. Others dismiss the sightings as a hoax, in part because they have continued so long and occurred with clockwork regularity.

After years of commissions, analyses and pronouncements from the Vatican and local officials, the Vatican issued a document on Thursday “to conclude a long and complex history that has surrounded the spiritual phenomena of Medjugorje.”

Acknowledging the “positive encouragement for their Christian life” that many pilgrims receive at Medjugorje, the Vatican has decided to authorize public worship there.

But the document, signed by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the head of the Vatican’s doctrine office, stressed that its decision was not meant to verify the presence of a supernatural phenomenon at the site.

Given that apparitions or other sightings are private experiences for individuals, the church does not require the faithful to accept the authenticity of such sightings. In this case, the document states that “the faithful are not obliged to believe in it.”

The new guidelines, which some Catholics oppose, are evidence based, and of course it would be hard (but not impossible: you could use photography and the like) to give fairly convincing evidence that the Virgin Mary really showed up. But there are the new Vatican Roolz:

According to the new rules, the church will no longer issue declarations that accept the supernatural origin of such phenomena, as the Vatican had at Fátima, in Portugal; and Lourdes, in France, two important shrines dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

My question is whether they’ll apply these rules to apparitions of the past, especially like those at Lourdes, which still draws 5 million people a year, many hoping to be cured because Mary supposedly showed up there. This is all religious quackery, of course, but given the crowds and money, the Vatican is NOT going to re-examine Lourdes. But why apply empirical standards to the past that they now have abandoned? It’s faith, of course: you don’t want to shake the faith of someone with a fatal disease who can no longer hope for cures at Lourdes.

And sticking to empirical standards, the Vatican would also need to decommission a number of saints. For to become a saint, one must posthumously have caused two documented miracles. (The “devil’s advocates” are there to question those miracles. You may remember that Hitchens was one of the devil’s advocates when the Vatican beatified Mother Theresa in 2003. He failed, of course.) If there were no evidence of the supernatural, the Catholic Church, and most Christian denominations, would simply go out of business.

*Shohei Ohtani, who entered American professional baseball after becoming a star in Japan, may now become the greatest player in the history of baseball, though he needs to keep up his accomplishments for a longer time (he’s 30). He was a terrific starting pitcher and an excellent fielder (he’d pitch one day out of four or five and then play in the outfield the other days), and was also a powerful hitter. Yesterday, playing for the Dodgers against the Miami Marlins, he set a record that nobody else has ever attained—and the season isn’t near being over. He had six at bats, six hits, three home runs, ten runs batted in, and, for the first time in the history of the game, joined the 50/50 club: 50 stolen bases and 50 home runs for the season:

Perhaps the most talented player ever to step onto a baseball field put the ultimate exclamation point on a season unlike any other in a way that only he could: by delivering what might have been the greatest game in major-league history.

Shohei Ohtani, the Los Angeles Dodgers two-way superstar with abilities rivaled only by Babe Ruth himself, woke up Thursday morning with 48 home runs and 49 stolen bases. It had been clear for weeks that he would soon become the founder and sole member of the 50/50 club, an accomplishment that was all but inconceivable before he arrived.

*As usual, I’ll steal three items from the incomparable Nellie Bowles’s weekly news digest on the Free Press. Yesterday’s column was called “TGIF: No one ate Miss Sassy” (that must be a cat). The page is archived here.

→ Hezbollah has to give consent: Israel planted explosives in thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies that were then sold to Hezbollah—and this week, Israel detonated those explosives remotely, destroying Hezbollah’s communications system. The international community is aghast! Yes, Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets into Israel for almost a year now. Yes, Hezbollah bombed a youth soccer game in Israel, killing 12 Israeli Druze children in Majdal Shams (Hezbollah denied involvement). But that’s not starting war. No. That’s solidarity. When Israel hits back at Hezbollah, that’s starting war.

As Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur put it: “Israel hasn’t been defending itself for months, this is just an offensive war that Israel is starting all over the Middle East.” Again, guys, I’m being really clear: The soccer field bombing was mere Hezbollah self-defense. You have no idea how hard a Druze teen kicks a soccer ball.

Here’s UN chief António Guterres: “I think it’s very important that there is an effective control of civilian objects, not to weaponize civilian objects.” Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has this to say: “This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines US efforts to prevent a wider conflict.” It’s only odd because she didn’t say anything about Hezbollah bombing that Israeli kids’ soccer game. She’s actually never tweeted about Hezbollah before. Odd. Weird. Civilian objects, like the pagers that terrorists use, are sacred. . . .

AOC, like Ugyur and Guterres, is out to lunch.  This is the first tweet she’s ever made about Hezbollah, and she’s defending the terrorists, ignoring the fact that Hezbollah has been violating international humanitarian law for a long time, firing missiles into Israel at civilians for months. Did AOC mention the 12 Druze (Israeli) children killed on a soccer field by a Hezbollah missile?  Nope. Her empathy is strictly limited to Hamas and Hezbollah.

AOC’s tweet and a response:

→ No one ate Miss Sassy: Not to go so hard on J.D. Vance but he has continued going hard on the idea that all these Haitian immigrants are coming in and eating your pets. Asked for proof, J.D. Vance has been pointing to the twisted tale of Miss Sassy. Springfield, Ohio resident Anna Kilgore noticed that her cat, Miss Sassy, was missing. She suspected—nay, she knew—it was the Haitian neighbors. And with smells of cooking spices so rich and foreign, it could only be the flesh of one Miss Sassy. She filed a police report. It was written about locally. J.D. grabbed on. Later, after J.D. gave this to The Wall Street Journal as evidence of Haitian pet-eating, the paper looked into Miss Sassy. It turns out she is alive, all her perfect drumsticks attached to her juicy, roastable body. That fluffy bag of white and dark meat was just relaxing in Anna Kilgore’s own basement, waiting for some hot sauce. (Sorry, I just get hungry at the thought of cats!)

The WSJ also describes what happened next in that little Ohio town in this strange saga, which ought to have stayed local: “Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.” Might J.D. do the same?

→ Abortion stories are not going away: This week brings the harrowing tale of Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year-old mom who died of sepsis. Thurman arrived at a Georgia hospital in the middle of a miscarriage. She had to wait 20 hours while doctors hemmed and hawed on the vague language around the state abortion ban’s medical exceptions. A group of expert doctors with the state deemed her death “preventable.

Until red states can figure out how to prevent horror stories like that of Amber Nicole Thurman, they’re not exactly selling the country on pro-life legislation. It’s like trying to sell me on a government-run health system when Canada is right there. No one is fooled. We know how this goes.

*And since it’s Saturday, let’s turn to the reliable “Oddities” section of the AP. This is an animal story that sounds dire but turned out well:

It’s a good thing seals aren’t on a humpback whale’s menu.

A photograph by a whale-watching naturalist captured a seemingly bewildered seal in the mouth of a humpback whale after the giant marine mammal accidentally gulped it last Thursday in the waters off Anacortes, Washington.

The food mix-up began while a Blue Kingdom Whale and Wildlife Tours boat spotted birds flying over a school of fish and a humpback whale swimming toward it, Captain Tyler McKeen said. He said the humpback then used a lunging feeding technique, where the whale opens its mouth wide and takes in small fish and water. But instead of remaining underwater afterward to filter through its baleen, it surfaced and began opening and closing its mouth.

After the whale went back underwater, photographs and videos were checked by whale watchers.

“It only took a couple seconds for everybody to pull up the frames and zoom in,” McKeen said. “That’s when we saw the seal. It was a funny, funny moment for everybody. I mean, it probably wasn’t that funny for the seal.”

A photograph by Brooke Casanova shows the seal, which presumably was also hunting the fish, emerging from the bottom of the whale’s mouth. McKeen recorded a phone video where the seal is getting flushed out.

Here’s a tweet showing a bewildered-looking seal sitting in the mouth of a humback whale. I don’t think a baleen whale could swallow a seal anyway, but I might be wrong:

Seal Takes a Ride in Humpback Whale’s Mouth https://t.co/JHuZAWu5IJ

— ExplorersWeb (@ExplorersWeb) September 18, 2024

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is mad at Kukla. Why? Malgorzata explains: “Andrzej was discussing something with Kulka and Hili got jealous.”

Hili: Do not anthropomorphize Kulka.

A: Why?

Hili: She is just a cat.

Hili: Nie antropomorfizuj Kulki!

Ja: Dlaczego?

Hili: To tylko kot.

And a picture of poor Baby Kukla, who was dragged hard by Hili:

More:  Reader Divy’s cat Jango sent a romantic email to Hili (below), and Andrzej also featured it on Listy:

Translation: “Meanwhile, from across the ocean, Hili received a friend request. (Original Polish: “Tymczasem zza oceanu Hili otrzymała zaproszenie do przyjaźni.” Here’s Jango’s email; love is in the air!

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

*From Cat Memes:

*From the 2024 Darwin Awards/Epic Fails:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Masih, Pelosi on one side, an attacked Iranian woman on the other (it looks like an acid attack):

Today, I’ll be speaking at @TheAtlantic Festival, taking the same stage where Nancy Pelosi, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Jamie Dimon have spoken.

I hope they hear my voice and the voices of millions of women who have lived under Islamic states, telling the U.S. government that… pic.twitter.com/GH8rjnXSZg

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) September 20, 2024

From Simon, who says this:

”The letter excerpt here is amusing although i think blaming feminization for the change in the approach taken by administrators is overly simplistic”:

Letter from the administration of Wadham College at the University of Oxford in 1968 shows how universities dealt with student protesters before the feminization of academia pic.twitter.com/cQJhU9AYaH

— Nathan Cofnas (@nathancofnas) September 19, 2024

From Thomas, who says,  ”You need this cat.”  I do!

This device reduces your headache..🐈🐾😂 pic.twitter.com/taXMy5Y2eH

— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) September 18, 2024

I suspect this is a leucistic fox. And of course it was I who first classified foxes as Honorary Cats!

I swear foxes are dogs and cats at the same time pic.twitter.com/3OaYhkBvRG

— Nature is Amazing (@AMAZlNGNATURE) September 19, 2024

A geeky double-entendre chemistry joke:

Excellent chemistry meme.
I hope it goes chiral! pic.twitter.com/00HtiNRtC0

— Prof Alice Roberts💙 (@theAliceRoberts) September 19, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, two French siblings (the girl was nine) gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz:

21 September 1932 | French Jewish girl, Florette Dawidowicz, was born in Paris.

She was deported from #Drancy to #Auschwitz on 24 August 1942. She was murdered in a gas chamber after arrival selection with her younger brother Simon. pic.twitter.com/ArYtDhwkZr

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) September 21, 2024

Two tweets from the lately-retired Dr. Cobb. First, from SMBC, Matthew says ”Genuine LOL in fourth panel.”

Bonus comic on https://t.co/djxjgI7VZG pic.twitter.com/Fs5W7g0ywL

— SMBC Comics (@SMBCComics) September 20, 2024

And a geeky but cool inside science joke:

“I accept you without revisions” https://t.co/zqehsFrtdH

— Dr Amanda Moehring (@FlyBehaviour) September 20, 2024

Good morning on Tuesday, the Cruelest Day, July 23, 2024, and National Lemon Day.  You can keep lemons in your fridge for an entire year and it’s easy (this video shows you how):

It’s also National Vanilla Ice Cream Day, and Peanut Butter and Chocolate Day, a combination best sampled in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 23 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*There’s no doubt that Harris is going to be the Democratic candidate now, as the NYT implies when listing the “key endorsements” she gets:

Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday made her first public appearance since President Biden dropped his re-election bid and endorsed her, praising Mr. Biden’s “deep love of our country” as she moved swiftly to clear a path to the Democratic presidential nomination.

Ms. Harris spoke at a morning event at the White House after scooping up endorsements from would-be challengers, including Governors JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Wes Moore of Maryland, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Tony Evers of Wisconsin. Several of them have been talked about as possible running mates.

She faces the daunting challenges of taking over Mr. Biden’s campaign structure, fending off opposition to her rise to the top of the ticket and defining herself for the American public before Republicans and their nominee, former President Donald J. Trump, do.

The vice president started off with a tremendous burst of excitement from Democrats willing to put aside past doubts about her. Party members are anxious to end the divisions that have torn the party apart in the weeks since Mr. Biden’s halting debate performance persuaded many that he should not remain in the race.

While some party leaders like former President Barack Obama and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi have not endorsed her, suggesting the need for a competition, Ms. Harris sought to defuse complaints of a coronation by emphasizing in a written statement on Sunday that she intended to “earn and win this nomination.”

Once again, although I’m a Democrat and have always voted that way, I would prefer a “competition”. Remember the days when eight Democrats or Republicans would duke it out onstage, whittling away the weaker candidates until it was all decided either right before the convention or at the convention?  I don’t think Harris should be automatically entitled to the nomination, though she does inherit Biden’s campaign contributions. Rather, I’d like to see them all struggle for the nomination by making their best case onstage. And I’d be rooting for Whitmer. But that’s a vain hope; Harris has it locked up.

*NYT columnists and writers rated the “10 best” Democratic candidates, rating them on electability and how exciting they were. Here are the results: my fave Whitmer tops everyone, though Shapiro and Kelly rank as marginally more likely to beat Trump. But Whitmer is not going to run.

Just the “most exciting and “most electable” candidates:

Whitmer: Most exciting

Josh Barro Electable: 7 • Exciting: 6

Whitmer has twice won races for governor in a swing state by a roughly 10-point margin both times. She is likable and down-to-earth, with a demonstrated ability to outrun “generic Democrat” in the Rust Belt. She’d be the ideal nominee for a race that’s likely to come down to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Jamelle Bouie Electable: 7 • Exciting: 9

The governor of Michigan has a lot of fans (“Big Gretch”), and she is clearly a politician of presidential caliber. But I will not be surprised if she endorses Harris in short order as well.

Jane Coaston Electable: 3 • Exciting: 4

She’s a very successful politician in Michigan in part because the Michigan G.O.P. is a box of rabid cats locked in a closet. Not sure how she’d do nationally.

Ross Douthat Electable: 7 • Exciting: 7

Probably the sweet-spot candidate in terms of both exciting the party’s voters and winning the key swing states; she would almost surely win a secret ballot of party insiders.

Michelle Goldberg Electable: 7 • Exciting: 8

The incredibly effective and telegenic governor of a must-win state, Whitmer would be my dream candidate if we were starting from scratch. But we’re not, and besides, lots of candidates have looked amazing on paper but floundered on the national stage. She’d make a thrilling V.P. choice, though.

Patrick Healy Electable: 7 • Exciting: 8

Trump’s team worries a lot about Whitmer. She’s got a good record, political message and personal story, and she’s a fresh face with a Midwest base. She would not own Bidenomics and Gaza like Biden-Harris. But would her Michigan appeal scale up nationally? You don’t know till you know.

Pamela Paul Electable: 6 • Exciting: 8

Whitmer is moderate and reasonably likable, but she doesn’t come across as a superstar. Her politics are more attuned to the national electorate. I see her as a V.P. candidate to a candidate other than Harris or as a presidential candidate in 2028.

Shapiro: Most electable

*The Washington Post has a useful article about where Harris stands on key issues, and I’m in line with her on most things, including climate change, the economy, and abortion (but can she effect any change in that given the Dobbs decision?).  But one issue worries me about her,. though it won’t worry others:

Israel and Gaza

A large part of a president’s job is dealing with foreign policy, and Harris is remarkably undefined on this front. But that could be to Democrats’ benefit, said Democratic strategist Matt Duss, because Biden’s low points in polling have come from issues largely tied to foreign policy. Biden’s staunch support for Israel, especially at the start of the war in Gaza, has been a particular wedge in the Democratic Party coalition.

In foreign policy circles, Harris is believed to have a more critical view of the Israeli government’s handling of the war in Gaza than Biden, even pushing to get lines about the need for humanitarian aid to Gaza in key speeches.

“We have also been clear that far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed, that Israel must do better to protect innocent civilians,” she said at an address earlier this year.

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Harris has been “pushing for a more sympathetic policy toward Palestinians,” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said after Biden’s announcement Sunday, adding that she can “build a broad coalition around the issue.”

“Even if she doesn’t announce an intention to dramatically shift foreign policy, I think she’s going to have an easier time than Biden, because she hasn’t been the one driving it,” Duss said.

And here is where the Republicans are going to go after her:

The Border

Early in Biden’s presidency, Biden asked Harris to try to address the root problems of migration at the border by focusing on countries in Central and South America.

“Do not come. You will be turned back,” Harris told potential migrants heading to the U.S.-Mexican border during a Latin American trip in June 2021.

It is not clear what she accomplished. She came under criticism from border Democrats for not visiting the border sooner, and migrant crossings, until recently, have been at record highs under the Biden administration, though administration officials have emphasized that her purview was those underlying causes, not what to do with people once they arrived in the United States.

There’s a hot debate about why border crossings have been so high and whether Biden or Harris could do much about it. But polls and voter groups show voters blame Biden rather than Republicans, even though Biden has cast Republicans as unhelpful when they scuttled a bipartisan border security bill because Trump wanted to run on the issue.

“We will skewer her for her border performance,” said Stephen Moore, a Trump adviser.

If she wins, it will be interesting to see how she deals with the border, though I really do fear about her abandoning Israel. Not enough to vote for Trump, though!

*Everyone is going after Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service because of the assassination attempt on Trump, and she was just grilled by Congress:

 Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said Monday that her agency failed in its mission to protect former President Donald Trump during a highly contentious congressional hearing with lawmakers of both major political parties demanding she resign over security failures that allowed a gunman to scale a roof and open fire at a campaign rally.

In her first congressional hearing over the July 13 assassination attempt, Cheatle repeatedly angered lawmakers by evading questions, citing ongoing investigations. She called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades. Cheatle acknowledged that the Secret Service was told about a suspicious person “between two and five times” before the shooting.

Yet, Cheatle gave no indication she intends to resign even as she said she takes “full responsibility” for any security lapses at the Pennsylvania rally. Cheatle vowed to “move heaven and earth” to ensure that nothing like it ever happens again.

“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13th, we failed,” Cheatle said.

Lawmakers peppered Cheatle with questions about how the gunman could get so close to the Republican presidential nominee when he was supposed to be carefully guarded and about why Trump was allowed to take the stage after local law enforcement had identified Thomas Matthew Crooks as suspicious.

. . . Asked about why there were no agents on the roof where the shooter was located or if the Secret Service used drones to monitor the area, Cheatle said she is still waiting for the investigation to play out, prompting groans and outbursts from members on the committee.

Yes, I know that the boss bears responsibility for her underlings, and that “the buck stops here.” But surely Cheatle didn’t micromanage the arrangements for Trump’s appearance. If she’s been a good director, and a factotum screwed up, on what basis should she resign. (Granted, if Trump were killed or seriously wounded, she’d have to resign, even though her responsibility would have been exactly the same.)  But when there’s a failure like this and it’s not due to an oversight of Cheatle, who didn’t write the playbook for the Secret Service, why is she supposed to resign? Perhaps someone can enlighten me here. For now, I’m a bit baffled by automatically firing someone for an error that they bore no responsibility for. Perhaps the buck doesn’t stop at the top.

*Finally, I’ll probably be writing less about American politics and more about other stuff for a while (and in August I won’t even be around to follow it); I’m finding it exhausting both intellectually and emotionally to follow the roller-coaster-ride that is Election Year, and I’m not any kind of pundit.

So instead of a news piece here, I just want to say that I feel really sorry for what Joe Biden has gone through.  Yes, I disagreed with a fair amount of what he did, but he was infinitely better than the Republican alternative, and now he surely feels cast aside (there were reports that he was angry and hurt when Democrats began asking him to resign).  Before the man is consigned to the judgment of history, let’s remember that he’s a human being, and a good one, and though he should have resigned earlier, we don’t know what it’s like being inside his skin.  I hope he can play some kind of role as “elder statesman” to the Democratic party, though he does seem ill and Obama has claimed the ES role some time ago.  Best of luck, Joe!

Here is Biden’s letter of resignation, curiously sent on his personal stationery rather than Presidential stationery, even though it’s a Presidential letter:

pic.twitter.com/RMIRvlSOYw

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024

Biden probably feels like this:

The video goes harder than the written statement… pic.twitter.com/Yy1dYMSrvm

— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) July 21, 2024

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili wants a night out on the tiles:

A: Are you coming home?

Hili: No, I slept all day, it’s time for some activity.

Ja: Wracasz do domu?

Hili: Nie, spałam cały dzień, pora na trochę aktywności.

And a picture of Baby Kulka:

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

From The Dodo Pet:

From Cat Memes:

From Jesus of the Day. That tomato needs exorcism!

There’s nothing from Masih today, but here’s something that J. K. Rowling retweeted. By “men”, I think Grover means transgender women.

Men have been included in an inquiry about pain specific to women, rendering the whole thing completely useless unless you want to how women feel when hit in the balls. 🤷‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/uKdXDRWGEo

— Sall Grover (@salltweets) July 21, 2024

From my feed:

I just discovered that baby owls sleep on their stomachs cause their heads are too heavy and I can’t stop laughing pic.twitter.com/uJPiNR2U6e

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) July 21, 2024

From Barry: a thinking cat!

He’s got his thinking cat on..🐕🐾🎩😅 pic.twitter.com/G6vku8920I

— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) July 21, 2024

From Malcolm: a FB video of a fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus):

Yep, they are very strong:

Russian photographer Andrey Pavlov takes the most mind-blowing macro photographs of ants that you will ever see. pic.twitter.com/4VE4CbLVAF

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) July 22, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

A 14-year-old French girl, gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. https://t.co/Sgwa4Ya1Ws

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 23, 2024

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. The first one he calls “Shellebrity”:

On Friday (19 July), there was a trespasser of an unusual nature on the tracks at Ascot as an escaped tortoise called Solomon was moving ‘at pace’ (according to the incident report) towards Bagshot. pic.twitter.com/MJJXEUkZ7O

— Network Rail Wessex (@NetworkRailWssx) July 22, 2024

The Big Chill in French government:

Newly elected members of the French parliament refusing to shake hands with the far right is extremely satisfying. A particular shout out to the rock paper scissors gag. pic.twitter.com/shyBc1cx75

— Brendan May (@bmay) July 21, 2024