Category: Szaron

Monday: Hili dialogue

April 20, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Monday, April 20, 2026 and Big Word Day. My big word is probably the same as last year’s: “ratiocination.” It’s a word I learned from Hitchens and don’t usually remember what it means, so here we go from Merriam Webster:

Ratiocination:

1: the process of exact thinking : reasoning
2: a reasoned train of thought

By all means add your big words (and meanings) below.

Today will be a truncated Hili as I have touring to do.

It’s also Boston Marathon Day, Chinese Language Day, National Cheddar Fries Day, National Cold Brew Day (I’ve never had it), and National Pineapple Upside-down Cake Day, one of my favorites sometimes made by my mom when I was a kid.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 20 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The U.S. attacked and then seized an Iranian ship that would not surrender.

A U.S. Navy destroyer on Sunday attacked and seized an Iranian cargo ship that defied an American blockade of Iran’s ports, President Trump said, posing a fresh threat to the fragile cease-fire that is set to expire this week.

Mr. Trump announced the attack hours after a White House official said the U.S. was dispatching a high-level delegation including Vice President JD Vance to peace talks in Pakistan, even as Iranian state media said Tehran had not yet agreed to a meeting.

The guided missile destroyer USS Spruance fired on the cargo vessel in the Gulf of Oman, Mr. Trump said on Truth Social, “blowing a hole” in its engine room before Marines took possession of the vessel. The president said the ship was under U.S. sanctions because of a “history of illegal activity” and that U.S. forces were “seeing what’s on board!”

Mr. Trump did not say whether there had been any casualties. Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency reported that U.S. forces had fired on an Iranian merchant vessel, but said naval units from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had forced the Americans to retreat.

The attack occurred in the Gulf of Oman, south of the Strait of Hormuz, the economically vital waterway that has become a flashpoint in negotiations. Iran imposed a blockade on the channel itself, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil normally travels, and the U.S. countered by blocking traffic to Iranian ports. On Saturday, Iran attacked two Indian vessels attempting a transit, acts Mr. Trump described earlier Sunday as a “total violation of our cease-fire.”

The fate of the strait is top of mind for American negotiators who Mr. Trump said would travel to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, this week for talks. The stakes for the negotiations, should they happen, are high: failure would risk reigniting the fighting and extending the global economic upheaval wrought by the war.

Here’s a tweet from Jay showing how it was done:

*From It’s Noon in Israel: a split in the Iranian regime:

It’s Sunday, April 19, and according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei, “The statements by American officials are filled with contradictions and lies”—a sign, he claims, of their “desperation and helplessness.” Israel and the U.S. must have eliminated all the adults in the Foreign Ministry, because Baghaei is effectively playing a geopolitical game of “I know you are, but what am I?”

Despite Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi’s announcement on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz was “completely open” to commercial traffic, the IRGC Navy attacked several commercial vessels the very next day, declaring that no vessel of “any type or nationality” is permitted passage. This jarring disconnect may be a sign of something more serious than desperation: a coup d’état.

It is quite the allegation, but let’s look at the evidence. Beyond the strait’s schizophrenic travel regulations, the Foreign Ministry confirmed that new talks will occur, even though a date has not yet been set. Meanwhile, IRGC-affiliated media simultaneously announced that Iran has refused to participate in another round of negotiations with the United States due to “excessive” U.S. demands.

Furthermore, the institutions of the Iranian state seem to be picking sides. The Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters—roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff—has released a statement defending the IRGC attacks in the waterway. The Supreme National Security Council joined the chorus, declaring that Iran will control the strait until the war ends.

The split runs along a well-trodden divide: On one side, the political leadership, represented by President Masoud Pezeshkian, Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf; on the other, the men with the guns, led by an IRGC firmly under the control of Ahmad Vahidi.

. . . If there is a coup underway, its most immediate effect will be on the negotiations. Despite his denials, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf is the official on the phone with the Americans. But even if he agrees to terms, the current power struggle does not bode well for his ability to hand over regular Iranian dust, let alone the nuclear enriched powder.

I’m not a pundit, so all I can do is report this speculation.

*The NYT reports that Hamas is ready to hand over some of its weapons, but only a small allotment, and not near the total disarming demanded by the ceasefire:

Hamas is ready to relinquish thousands of automatic rifles and other weapons belonging to its police force and other internal security services in Gaza, according to two officials of the group.

Such a step would be a remarkable concession from Hamas, which until now has publicly resisted giving up any of its arms.

The officials said Hamas would be willing to turn over these weapons to the Palestinian administrative committee that has been set up to govern Gaza by the Board of Peace, the international organization led by President Trump to oversee the cease-fire.

Hamas has said previously it is willing to turn over the burden of providing public services in Gaza to the U.S.-backed committee. But the group has not disbanded its battalions of armed fighters, suggesting it wants to maintain influence in the territory despite Israeli and American opposition.

The proposal from the two officials falls well short of the full disarmament and demilitarization of Gaza — a core demand by Israel and a pillar of Mr. Trump’s peace plan for the territory. That plan would also remove Hamas from power and bar it from any role in governing.

Asked whether the committee would also be able to confiscate weapons belonging to Hamas’s military wing, the two officials did not provide a clear answer.

This is not nearly a “disarmament,” and Hamas remains firmly in command of southern Gaza. And it has expanded its influence into areas supposedly controlled by the Palestinian Authority, namely the West Bank. Remember that among all Palestinians, Hamas is far more popular than is the PA, which is one reason Israel is worried about the West Bank. If that area becomes a Hamas-run enclave, then we have another terrorist Gaza situation, but one embedded within Israeli territory.

*And another mass killing, this one especially bad because a man killed seven of his own children, and one not his own before he died in a shootout with the cops (it’s not clear whether he killed himself:

Eight children ranging in age from 1 to about 14 were killed here Sunday in a shooting that police described as a domestic disturbance. It was the deadliest mass killing in the United States in two years, data shows.

A spokesman for the Shreveport police, Chris Bordelon, told reporters Sunday that seven of the children were believed to be “descendants of the gunman” and that two other victims survived. “This is an extensive scene unlike anything most of us have ever seen,” Bordelon said.

Later Sunday, police identified the gunman as Shamar Elkins. Public records show that Elkins was a 31-year-old Shreveport resident. Elkins served in the Louisiana Army National Guard from August 2013 to August 2020, according to an Army statement. He did not deploy while with the National Guard and left the Army as a private, an entry-level rank.

Elkins’s brother-in-law, Troy Brown, who lived with him, said Elkins’s wife had recently sought a divorce. Brown said Elkins acted normally on Saturday, the last time they saw each other, but had been distraught in a recent conversation about his marriage breaking up.

“After the first argument about the divorce, he acted like he was losing his mind,” Brown said late Sunday after leaving a Shreveport hospital where he had visited Elkins’s wife and two of his own family members who were injured in the shooting. “He was upset about it. I would talk to him and he would tell me, ‘Bro, I don’t want to lose my wife.’”

Police said the gunman stole a car after the shootings, leading to a police chase into neighboring Bossier City that ended with his death.Louisiana State Police are investigating Elkins’s killing.

A whole family and their futures wiped out.  Another day in America.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is playing Pinker, and Hili his critics:

Hili: I dream of the return of the past.
Szaron: I can smell the present.

In Polish:

Hili: Marzę o powrocie przeszłości.
Szaron: Czuję zapach czasu teraźniejszości.

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

From Stacy:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Masih: the regime killed an Iranian nurse who tried to help wounded protestors, and then tortured her husband, both psychologically and physically. He tried to kill himself:

From Luana; I haven’t checked whether this “miracle drug” is really a cure for cystic fibrosis. It does appear to produce amazing results in 90% of patients–the ones with the right mutations.

From Simon on the Strait of Hormuz:

From my feed: a nice man:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

. . . and one from Matthew. Translation:

A soft little chirp, a gentle glide,
through waves that stretch the bounds of yesterday.
One brown heartbeat, eleven tiny hearts—
how beautiful pure existence can be.

Ein leises Pieps, ein sanftes Gleiten,durch Wellen, die das Gestern weiten.Ein Herzschlag braun, elf Herzen klein –so schön kann pures Dasein sein. 🤗

— Ellen (@ellenisback.eurosky.social) 2026-04-19T18:06:23.223Z

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

April 15, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Середина недели” in Russian): April 15, 2026, and for American’s it’s Tax Day (also known as Income Tax Pay Day), when your federal and state income taxes are due.

It’s also Anime Day, Jackie Robinson Day, honoring the first black player in major league baseball, who was neither born nor died on April 15, McDonald’s Day, celebrating the first McD’s, opened in Des Plaines, Illinois on this Day in 1955), National Banana Day, World Art Day, and Titanic Remembrance Day (the ship sank on this date in 1912).

Here’s a world map showing al the countries that have a McDonald’s (colors indicate the date the first one opened); gray countries lack McD’s, and black ones, like Russia and Iceland, have apparently ditched them. Africa and the Middle East are also bereft, though South Africa, Egypt, and Morocco have the cheap burger.  But McDonald’s is not the world’s largest chain restaurant. According to Wikipedia, that honor goes to the Chinese chain Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, with 45,000 stores!

Own work, original work by:Original: Astrokey44 & Hexagon1Derivative work: Szyslak, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 15 Wikipedia page.

Posting may be light for about ten days as I’m going out of town for a week on Saturday; I have tasks to do before that, and there’s an imminent duckling hatch. Persistent insomnia is impeding my ability to write. Bear with me; I do my best.

Da Nooz:

*The U.S. blockade of Iran has begun, but it seems pretty leaky, as some ships from Iranian ports appeared to have gone through the Strait of Hormuz.  The U.S. stipulation was that all ships would go through freely save Iranian ships or any ship that was headed for or leaving Iranian ports.

Questions over the status of the U.S. military blockade in the Strait of Hormuz persisted on Tuesday, as tracking data showed that several ships had passed through the waterway, including some that had departed from Iran.

The blockade, which began Monday afternoon local time, applies to all maritime traffic entering or exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas, the U.S. military said. It remained unclear how American naval forces would enforce the prohibitions, which are aimed at cutting off Iran’s oil income after the United States and Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war. The two sides are observing a two-week truce set to expire April 21.

Some of the vessels that passed through the strait on Monday — both before and after the 10 a.m. Eastern deadline when the Trump administration said the blockade had gone into effect — had departed from Iran, were carrying Iranian products or were under U.S. government sanctions, according to the trade analysis firm Kpler. It was not immediately known whether the ships that had departed from Iranian ports fell within a “grace period” around the deadline, had gained permission to pass or had somehow bypassed the blockade.

Christianna, a Liberia-flagged cargo ship, exited the Persian Gulf through the strait on Monday night, after leaving the Iranian port city of Bandar Imam Khomeini, Kpler said. It said the ship was not carrying any cargo.

Elpis, a methanol carrier, traversed the strait roughly around the time that the U.S. blockade began, according to ship-tracking data. Kpler said that the vessel had been at the Iranian port of Bushehr. The United States had placed sanctions on the ship last year under an earlier name, Chamtang, over its connections to the Iranian oil trade.

Ship tracking data from Bloomberg and Vesselfinder shows movements of several other vessels in and around the strait over the last two days.

I’m curious why the blockade is leaky. On the one hand, we can totally blockad an entire island–Cuba–but aren’t successful in this narrow strait. Why? And how do we enforce a blockade if a ship refuses to obey it. Are we going to shoot it? Board it? Details are missing here, but inquiring minds want to know.

UPDATE: The NYT’s report still does not clarify if the blockade is working as planned:

The U.S. military said early Wednesday Iran time that it had completely stopped all commercial trade to and from Iranian ports less than 36 hours after implementing a naval blockade.

President Trump had ordered the Navy to stop any ships from transiting the Strait of Hormuz after weekend peace talks in Pakistan ended with no agreement. But ship trackers showed that several Iran-linked vessels had traveled through the strait after Central Command began its blockade operation on Monday. It was not immediately clear from independent sources if there was any Iranian shipping traffic in the region on Wednesday morning.

U.S. Central Command said more than 10,000 American forces with over a dozen warships and dozens of aircraft were enforcing the blockade, while allowing vessels traveling to or from non-Iranian ports to transit the waterway.

Iran has mostly choked off the strait, a vital passage for global oil and gas supplies, in retaliation since the war started in late February. There are few signs that it is fully reopening despite repeated threats from Mr. Trump.

The president reiterated on Tuesday that Iran was keen to negotiate a deal. He told The New York Post that new talks could take place over the next two days in Pakistan. And he said in a Fox News interview that the conflict was near its end. “I think it’s close to over, yeah, I mean I view it as very close to over,” he said when Maria Bartiromo asked if the war had ended, speaking in a clip from the interview posted on Tuesday night.

*Saudi Arabia, which I believe urged the U.S. to finish the job with Iran, is now telling the U.S. they should back off the Iran blockade lest Iran block other vital shipping routes.

Saudi Arabia is pressing the U.S. to drop its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and return to the negotiating table, fearing President Trump’s move to close it off could lead Iran to escalate and disrupt other important shipping routes, Arab officials said.

The blockade is aimed at raising the pressure on Iran’s already crippled economy. But the officials said Saudi Arabia has warned Iran might retaliate by closing the Bab al-Mandeb—a Red Sea chokepoint crucial for the kingdom’s remaining oil exports.

The pushback is a sign of the risks and limitations of U.S. efforts to pry open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran shut early in the war by attacking ships in the waterway, cutting off around 13 million barrels a day in oil exports and sending futures prices above $100 a barrel.

Time for a geography lesson. First, from Wikipedia, the nature of this strait: “The Bab-el-Mandeb acts as a strategic link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Most exports of petroleum and natural gas from the Persian Gulf that transit the Suez Canal or the SUMED Pipeline pass through both the Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz.”  Here’s an enlarged bit of a map from the same article. The blue dot shows the Bab al-Mandeb, with the Strait of Hormuz to the right, off the map.  Wikipedia adds this:

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is 26 kilometres (14 nautical miles) wide at its narrowest point, limiting tanker traffic to two 2-mile-wide channels for inbound and outbound shipments

Wikimedia maps | Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Back to the main article:

Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen control a long stretch of coastline near the Bab al-Mandeb and severely disrupted the waterway for much of the war in the Gaza Strip. Iran is putting pressure on the group to close the chokepoint again, Arab officials said.

“If Iran does want to shut down Bab al-Mandeb the Houthis are the obvious partner to do it, and their response to the Gaza conflict demonstrates that they have the capacity to do it,” said Adam Baron, an expert on Yemen and fellow at New America, a policy institute in Washington.

Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian paramilitary group that now controls the Strait of Hormuz, said a blockade could lead the country to close the Red Sea gateway.

Gulf states don’t want the war to end with Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz, their economic lifeline. But many including Saudi Arabia are pressing the U.S. to resolve the issue at the negotiating table and are scrambling to restart talks, regional officials said. Despite the public hard line from both sides, the two combatants are actively engaging with mediators and open to talks if each shows enough flexibility, the officials said.

It’s a damn shame that there are these quirks of geography that happened to be controlled by Iran or its proxies.  Every day there’s a new cause for anxiety, and no clear resolution.

*At It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal summarizes the talks between Israel and Hezbollah:

“We’re not about to release the peace doves,” an Israeli official told The Times of Israel. As Israel prepares for its most senior in-person engagement with Lebanon in its 78-year history, expectations are being managed.

There is one problem preventing the flight of those doves—the actor that would inevitably attempt to shoot them down, and its continued ability to do so: Hezbollah. The threat the terror group poses was summarized well by a BBC headline this morning: “Lebanon seeks peace, but Hezbollah needs to be convinced first.”

Almost a year and a half after Israel agreed to a ceasefire on the condition that Hezbollah disarm, and three months after the Lebanese Army declared “mission accomplished” in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah remains very much a threat. The Lebanese government still lives in the shadow of its civil wars, fearing that a confrontation with the Shiite terror group would fracture Lebanon’s delicate ethnic coalition.

Whether the negotiations will succeed depends on one question: Is Lebanon entering these talks wishing to reclaim its sovereignty, or is it merely looking to avoid the consequences of having surrendered it?

The talks are a consequence of the latter. After escalating Israeli airstrikes in the country, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun made a public appeal for talks, and with some pressure from a U.S. administration wishing to avoid the disintegration of the ceasefire, Israel accepted. Yet, short of lending these floundering discussions a few more days of life, the bilateral talks will achieve nothing unless a solid plan and an ironclad commitment are made to disarm Hezbollah.

The UN Security Council Resolution 1701 demands that Hezbollah disarms itself. There are several thousand UN forces in Lebanon tasked with enforcing it. They do nothing. Hezbollah broke what cease-fire there was by firing missiles at Israel.  The UN should do its job and envorce 1701.

Also, yesterday Israel marked Holocaust Remembrance Day:

It’s Tuesday, April 14, and Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day. For the past two years, the wail of a siren has signaled a frantic scramble for shelter in Israel. This morning, however, the nation froze. In their cars, on bustling street corners, and within the quiet of their homes, Israelis stood in absolute silence for two minutes to honor the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

Here’s a video showing everything coming to a stop:

*Health and science reporter Benjamin Ryan has an informative article in the Free Press: “The medical establishment is tearing itself apart over youth gender surgeries.” It’s a long ‘un, but here are a few excerpts (article not paywalled):

Does the American Medical Association (AMA) support or oppose the medical gender transition of minors? An ambiguous statement from the prestigious group in February has set off a firestorm of accusations within the AMA and prompted threats of an investigation for consumer fraud by Republican state attorneys general.

The uproar began on February 3, when the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) became the first major U.S. medical association to issue a policy statement recommending against gender-transition surgeries for minors. The surgeons’ statement cautioned that there is little quality research on the long-term consequences of performing transition surgeries on young people, such as double mastectomies and genital alteration. The society cited “emerging evidence of treatment complications and potential harms” of such interventions.

In covering this development, The New York Times reported that while the AMA continued to support treatment for minors seeking gender-related care, it also endorsed the plastic surgeons’ position: “In the absence of clear evidence, the AMA agrees with ASPS that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood,” read the AMA statement.

For the two months since The New York Times published the AMA’s statement, no matter what the medical society has done—stay silent, deflect, deny, reiterate—the controversy has multiplied.

. . . In the U.S., advocates for medical gender transitions for minors have long cited the mantra that such interventions are supported by every major medical organization. But now two major medical societies have expressed serious concerns about the practice. This comes at a time when some Western countries have sharply restricted medical transition of youth, after first ardently embracing it.

It also comes at a time when the Trump administration is seeking to end this medical practice and has threatened to cut access to federal funds to hospitals that perform such transitions. In response, gender clinics and programs at multiple major children’s hospitals have closed recently.

The ongoing controversy at the AMA over what exactly their position is demonstrates how divided the medical field has become over this issue. According to internal video and documentation obtained by The Free Press, the organization’s own top brass can’t even align on its official public stance.

. . .On March 29, Aizuss wrote on the group’s message board that he had addressed the matter “with senior management” and would be discussing it further at the April board meeting. He said that “there continues to be a discrepancy between what the New York Times states they were told and what our communications people say they said.” He added: “If our spokesperson said that the AMA agrees with the ASPS, that was a clear error and was not authorized by the board. He unfortunately does not recall if he used those words.”

For now, as politicians and medical professionals from both sides of the political spectrum are pushing the AMA to take a declarative stand on gender care for minors, the medical society remains in limbo on the matter.

This is a mess, and a mess for one reason only: gender ideology.  The AMA statement about deferring interventions until adulthood is based on evidence—or rather, the lack thereof. The controversy at the AMA is ginned up by gender ideologues who simply must have transition surgeries approved for minors, even if the long-term results aren’t in.  Is there a mensch in the AMA?

*The WaPo reports that the world’s oldest gorilla has turned 69. (Wikipedia says that “Gorillas tend to live 35–40 years in the wild,” but this is a captive animal, living in the Berlin Zoo.) And there are two species; Fatou is a Western Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), and, moreover, a member of the Western Lowland Gorilla subspecies, which is Gorilla gorilla gorilla. 

The world’s oldest gorilla in captivity turned 69 on Monday, celebrating with a vegetable feast and a shoutout from Guinness World Records.

“In human age, she would be more than a hundred,” said Philine Hachmeister, a spokesperson for Zoo Berlin, where Fatou has lived for more than six decades, becoming a mother and grandmother.

Legend has it that Fatou, a western lowland gorilla, was brought from Africa to the port of Marseille in France in the late 1950s by a sailor who traded her to settle a bar bill. She ended up with a French animal trader, who sold her to the Berlin zoo.

“She’s one of the very few and very old animals that still came from the wild,” Hachmeister said. ​“Nowadays we send the animals back to the wild and not the other way around.”

While the zoo has been unable to confirm the stories about Fatou being traded in a tavern, they said she arrived at the zoo in what was then West Berlin when she was around 2 years old in 1959.

Decades ago, she was already one of the oldest gorillas in the world, so zookeepers picked a date to celebrate her birthday: April 13. Fatou was first recognized by Guinness World Records as the World’s Oldest Gorilla in 2019, and her story was highlighted again on her birthday.

Hachmeister noted that Fatou has some health challenges in her old age. Her eyesight is weaker, though she can still hear well. She has arthritis and no longer has teeth, so her food (mostly vegetables) is cooked to make it easier to eat. She can no longer eat some of her favorite snacks (blueberries, raspberries and strawberries) because the fruit is too high in sugar.

Fatou’s health is closely monitored by a team of veterinarians and caretakers who have worked to keep her comfortable and happy decades beyond the typical life expectancy of a gorilla in the wild, according to the zoo.

These days this critically endangered species would never be removed from the wild, and I suppose the gorillas in zoos are now bred in zoos. That’s a shame, because these are highly intelligent and social animals whose genes are all about living in the wild.  I’m glad they’re taking good care of her, but nowadays these animals should not be on display, even if, as the Berlin Zoo argues, seeing them and their closeness to humans will promote their conservation. That’s bushwah.

Here’s a video of Fatou on her birthday:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron appear to be at odds, even though they’re friends:

Hili: You’ve stepped over the red line.
Szaron: Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize it was there.

In Polish:

Hili: Przekroczyłeś czerwoną linię.
Szaron: O przepraszam, nie zauważyłem jej.

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

From Give Me a Sign:

From The Language Nerds:

From This Cat is Guilty:

From Masih; Maryam Tahmashi has now been arrested. pending deportation hearings:

From Luana, but it’s a sin to wake up a sleeping duck. Remember the story of Muhammad and his cat Muezza!

From Malcolm; cat vs. black swan:

Two from my feed. The first one is from Turkey, of course:

I have no idea if this is AI, but it’s cute:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, a palindrome:

No lynxes in unisex nylon.#palindrome

— Anthony Etherin (@anthonyetherin.bsky.social) 2026-04-13T13:59:41.633Z

I’m too dumb to understand how this was taken:

The NASA live stream is terrific but low on visuals for the mo (nearly 600k ppl watching and the audio is fab). So great to see this brief image of an iphone picture of the moon taken by one of the astronauts.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-04-06T20:52:41.976Z

Thursday: Hili dialogue

April 9, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, April 9, 2026, and National Chinese Almond Cookie Day. These are good, but I’ll digress a bit and show what’s inside their partner: fortune cookies. BuzzFeed has a page showing 41 funny fortunes, and here’s one:

u/JessLovesNaps / Via reddit.com

It’s also Appomattox Day, marking the surrender of Robert E. Lee to Ulysses Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia in 1865, Jenkins’ Ear Day (look it up), National Gin and Tonic Day, National Pimento Cheese Day, and National Winston Churchill Day (Churchill was neither born nor died on April 9, and nobody likes him anymore, either, I suppose because he’s considered a white supremacist and a defender of the British Empire).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 9 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

Everything in the Middle East is a dumpster fire this morning. First, a short summary from It’s Noon in Israel:

It’s Thursday, April 9, and Operation Roaring Lion is over. For the last time, here are the latest developments while you were asleep:

  • President Donald Trump ordered U.S. naval, air, and ground forces to remain deployed around Iran, describing the posture as “armed monitoring” and warning of a “bigger, and better, and stronger” response if the ceasefire is breached.
  • Vice President JD Vance will lead the US negotiating team in Islamabad this Saturday, joined by envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Iran is said to prefer Vance at the table, having accused Witkoff and Kushner of misrepresenting Tehran’s positions in previous rounds.
  • Hours after a two-week ceasefire with Iran came into effect, Israel launched its largest wave of strikes against Hezbollah, codenamed “Eternal Darkness”—50 fighter jets dropping 160 bombs on 100 targets across Beirut, the Beqaa Valley, and southern Lebanon within ten minutes. Targets included command centers, intelligence headquarters, rocket and naval units, and assets of the elite Radwan Force.

*Iran kept the Strait of Hormuz closed in response to Israel’s continuing attacks on Hezbollah, which tells you that Iran still bolsters terrorism: they want to protect Hezbollah, which by UN mandate is to lay down its arms (UN Security Council Resolution 1701 from 2006).

The cease-fire between the United States and Iran entered its second day on Thursday despite confusion over the status of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway that Iran has effectively blockaded, and over Lebanon, where Israel continued attacks against the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah.

On Wednesday, Iran said Lebanon was included in the cease-fire and accused the United States of not upholding its end of the deal. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said Washington had to choose between a cease-fire or continued war via Israel. Pakistan, which mediated the truce, said the deal covered Lebanon, a claim disputed by the White House.

Israel, which said that the cease-fire did not extend to Lebanon, attacked more than 100 targets there on Wednesday, and Lebanese officials said 180 people were killed and 900 were injured. Hezbollah said on Thursday that it had targeted Israel with a rocket salvo in retaliation, and that it planned to continue attacking until Israeli aggression against Lebanon ceased.

Late Wednesday, President Trump wrote on social media that the U.S. military ships, aircraft and personnel would stay near Iran until a “REAL AGREEMENT” is reached between the two countries. If not, he said, fighting would resume “bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has seen before.”

Peace talks hosted by Pakistan were scheduled to begin in Islamabad on Saturday morning, and Vice President JD Vance was expected to travel there with a group that includes Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law.

. *Elliott Abrams gives his take at The Free Press:

Well, there is a ceasefire. Or perhaps not. It includes Lebanon. Or it doesn’t. Iran’s 10-point plan is an acceptable working document for the United States. Or it isn’t the one U.S. negotiators saw. The Strait of Hormuz will be open. Or passage requires Iranian approval and a toll.

All this confusion is unsurprising, because the only meeting of the minds between President Donald Trump and whoever is ruling in Tehran was that the United States would stop attacking Iran. In return, Iran would stop attacking all its Arab neighbors and Israel—though not immediately, we soon learned. My own guess is that at the end of two weeks allotted for negotiations, two more weeks will be allotted, and then two more. There may never be much more than a ceasefire agreed, given the distance between Iranian and American demands. (A random thought: Trump could never have done this if Iran had captured the second crew member. It would have been a display of weakness of the kind that he’s avoided.) A simple ceasefire may be far from the worst outcome, because it avoids U.S. concessions that might be part of any detailed bilateral agreement.

An accounting of gains and losses for the United States is therefore temporary and incomplete. If the ceasefire really breaks down (for instance, because Iran insists that Israel stop responding to Hezbollah attacks, which Israel will not do) the president will have to do something more than the air attacks of last week. That will mean a broader bombing campaign which, though it will not destroy Iranian civilization, will destroy a number of bridges and power plants. That should not be surprising or unacceptable, because Iran spent the first hours after the ceasefire announcement attacking power and desalination plants and oil sites in the Arab Gulf countries. Or, Trump might decide the time has come to seize some islands in the Gulf. This would all be unwelcome for Trump, who wants the war over, the stock market up, and oil prices steadily (if slowly) descending. He will only do it if the Iranian regime leaves him no other choice.

They might. We know little about how decisions are being made in Tehran, except that they are not being made by the new Supreme Leader, who may be in a coma. Until Mojtaba Khamenei speaks to the nation, it’s fair to assume that every word issued in his name is a product of the opaque group running the country. And that group may at some point decide that another round of fighting would be useful—to head off an internal uprising, for example.

Whatever we may say about the ruling group, it consists exclusively of hard-line regime survivors, mostly from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or closely tied to it. Trump’s and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s claims that there has been regime change because new thugs have replaced older ones are absurd, and this lie undermines everything else they say about the war. The new group of top apparatchiks overlaps with the older one—the one that killed over 30,000 unarmed fellow citizens in January.

The last paragraph shows how duplicitous–and Nineteen Eighty-Fourish—the administrations claims of “regime change in Iran” are. The New Boss is the same as the Old Boss.  Given the Iranian demands (see next item), Abrams is probably right that we should prepare for a long series of extended American deadlines.  As of right now, the only goal the US has met is to destroy much of Iran’s military, which can be rebuilt.

*The WSJ lists Iran’s ten demands for a ceasefire. When you read them, you’ll see that if Trump accepts them, we’ll have lost this war.

President Trump said Iran has put forward a 10-point peace plan that, in a social-media post, he said “is a workable basis on which to negotiate.”

Nour News, an Iranian publication backed by Iran’s Supreme National Supreme Council, published this list:

1. The U.S. must fundamentally commit to guaranteeing non-aggression.

2. Continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz.

3. Acceptance that Iran can enrich uranium for its nuclear program.

4. Removal of all primary sanctions on Iran.

5. Removal of all secondary sanctions against foreign entities that do business with Iranian institutions.

6. End of all United Security Council resolutions targeting Iran.

7. End of all International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions on Iran’s nuclear program.

8. Compensation payment to Iran for war damage.

9. Withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region.

10. Cease-fire on all fronts, including Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Right off the bat I can see several items that the US should not accept, or, if they do, it’s dire: items 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (depending on what they mean by “the region”).  I have a sinking feeling, as I write this on Wednesday afternoon, that the war will end leaving Iran damaged but pretty much where it was before: a center for terrorism, oppressing its people, and busily working to enrich uranium to bomb Israel.

The NYT discusses the basic demands in the list above, item by item, though their list has the ending of fighting in the Middle East, including Lebanon. (their item #3)

Note that the Times of India has a different list, most notably involving stipulation #1, given by the paper as this:

  1. Complete cessation of the war on Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.

It is this that has kept the Strait of Hormuz closed, as Israel is still at war with Hezbollah—not the government of Lebanon. Nobody seems to be sure whether Lebanon is part of Iran’s demands; Iran says it is, the U.S. says it’s not.

*More information on the deal comes from the Associated Press, and it’s not propitious.

Trump has suggested there has been “regime change” in Iran after U.S. and Israeli strikes killed the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war and a slew of other top officials and military leaders thereafter.

. . . The political class devoted to maintaining Iran’s Shiite theocracy remains intact. Many Iranians are angry at their leaders, but there has been no sign of an uprising since authorities crushed mass protests in January, before the war.

. . . All of Iran’s highly enriched uranium remains in the country, likely entombed at enrichment sites bombed by the U.S. during a 12-day war last June. Iran hasn’t enriched since then but maintains it has the right to do so for peaceful purposes and denies seeking nuclear weapons.

. . .Before the war, ships freely passed through the Strait of Hormuz, in the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. Since the war, Iran reportedly has been charging as much as $2 million a vessel to allow them to pass.

Iran and Oman are working on a proposal to split fees in the waterway, and Tehran insists it will maintain military control there, potentially granting itself a new source of revenue in the face of international sanctions.

Trump says America will be “hangin’ around” to ensure traffic passes. The U.S. and other countries are likely to oppose the new system, setting up a potential flashpoint.

. . .Gulf Arab nations can’t be happy about how the war has turned out.

Iranian attacks caused widespread damage to oil and gas facilities, airports and other sites, piercing their carefully cultivated image as stable business and tourism hubs. Qatar, one of the world’s top natural gas producers, has said it will take years to restore its output.

Gulf countries’ distrust of Iran has never been deeper and their faith that the U.S. will defend them has been shaken. U.S. bases across the region suffered direct strikes, but there’s no indication of any American withdrawal, as Iran has demanded.

It’s a right mess; I tell you that!  I don’t see any satisfactory conclusion to the war that doesn’t involve U.S. boots on the ground, as that’s the only way I can see to effect regime change. But that solution will not be satisfactory to the American people who already oppose the war by a substantial majority.  I still see this as a just war to eliminate terrorism, but it’s turned into a quagmire.

*Over at the Free Press, Eli Lake extols the ceasefire, claiming that “Trump’s madman act delivers in Iran.”

President Donald Trump just saved his war in Iran. On Tuesday evening, he announced that the planned bombing of Iran’s power plants and bridges would be called off for at least two weeks after the regime’s envoys had agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

. . . Now that Trump has postponed his threat to end Iranian civilization, America has won twice. First, the Iranians agreed to end their attacks on shipping through the Strait if the U.S.-Israeli military campaign stopped, according to a statement from Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. That will greatly diminish the prospect of an oil shock and help keep markets calm. More importantly, Trump will not go forward with an insane atrocity against the people he promised to liberate.

As I wrote on Sunday, bombing Iran’s power grid would be an act of unspeakable cruelty. Aside from being a war crime that would almost certainly lead to the diplomatic isolation and censure of America and Israel, it would also kill the prospect for a color revolution down the line. People do not organize demonstrations when they are deprived of the basic necessities for life.

. . . . All of that said, Trump’s threat just may have worked. His high-stakes brinkmanship—an update to Richard Nixon’s strategy to persuade the Soviet Union and China that he was a madman—forced the Iranians to blink.

To be sure, Iran’s rulers are presenting their capitulation as a victory. The AP reported that Oman and Iran would begin collecting fees from ships passing through the Strait. As of this writing, Iran was still firing missiles at Israel and its neighbors.

And yet, if this is the deal, Iran didn’t get much. Trump did not accept the terms of their vaunted 10-point proposal, which would have enacted a permanent peace deal, lifted international sanctions, and ended Israel’s war against Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy. Trump merely agreed that the Iranian proposal, along with a 15-point U.S. plan, would be the basis for future negotiations. In other words, Iran is opening the Strait for two weeks in exchange for a maybe.

. . .On Tuesday, China and Russia vetoed a watered-down UN Security Council resolution demanding Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But last month, Iran’s two most important allies abstained from a resolution that condemned its attacks on Gulf allies. China also pressured Iran to accept the terms of the ceasefire in negotiations brokered in Pakistan this week.

All of this leaves Iran’s battered regime in a difficult position. It has survived for now. But it’s never been poorer, weaker, or more isolated. Trump’s domestic critics may crow that he has once again chickened out. But that barb doesn’t sting. Considering the alternatives, TACO Tuesday has never been sweeter.

Nope, not a maybe; as of Wednesday afternoon, the Strait is still closed. Lake’s ebullience is unwarranted. If Taco Tuesday is so sweet, why do I feel so sour?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the two downstairs cats are worried about the upstairs d*g:

Hili: You’re also not certain whether that dog is shut in.
Szaron: No, but all signs point that way.

In Polish:

Hili: Też nie jesteś pewny, czy ten pies jest zamknięty.
Szaron: Nie, ale wszystko na to wskazuje.

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

From Now That’s Wild:

From My Cat is an Asshole:

From The Language Nerds:

:Masih must be going nuts what with all the rapidly-changing news about the war. Here’s a tweet from yesterday, in which she talks about a ceasefire inside Iran (there isn’t one):

Two from Luana. If you want to know the dangers of affirmative therapy, read this account.  The upshot: kids don’t get enough information, but are pushed onto the one-way treadmill ending in puberty blockers, hormones, and perhaps surgery:

And the poor guy testifies himself:

And two from the Number Ten Cat

This was in response to someone’s cat named Miles whose watching of the Artemis launch came to the attention of NASA, which responded with the “pspsps.”

One from my feed; cats will be cats, and cats have always been cats.

One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Jewish boy was gassed to death along with his mother upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was one year old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-04-09T10:17:34.266Z

And two from Dr. Cobb. He says of this first one “Some pecksniffs say it’s AI but the reasons they give don’t hold for me. Notice the carpet moving slightly under the dogs feet at the end.”  Sound up!

I couldn't breathe because I was laughing so hard. That bird's an asshole! 😂😂😂😂😂Best with volume up.

— Fergi Jo Lisa 🏳️‍🌈 (@lolafaglana.bsky.social) 2026-04-08T01:50:28.551Z

Sound up for this one, too:

Common loons call out in the morning quiet: 🔊 #AGoodPlaceSource: http://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFu…

— Michelle says: Be kind. Always. ❤️ (@snarkysillysad.bsky.social) 2026-04-08T10:59:51.588Z

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

April 7, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the cruelest day: Tuesday, April 7, 2026, and National Beer Day, celebrating the day that Prohibition (of beer) was ended in 1933. FDR was elected with the promise to repeal Prohibition, and he did. In December all alcohol was legalized.  But weak beer was okay on April 7, and here ar e the good things that happened:

The Abner-Drury Brewery sent a guarded truck to the White House at a minute past midnight with two cases of beer for Roosevelt, though when it arrived, it became apparent he was asleep. The Marine guarding the beer opened the first bottle and drank it, allowing the press to photograph him. Roosevelt later sent the cases of beer to the National Press Club. People across the country gathered outside breweries on April 7, some of whom camped outside the night prior. An estimated 1.5 million barrels of beer were consumed,  with an estimated $5 million of beer being sold in Chicago alone. Hundreds of breweries, bars, and taverns could reopen and expand again, hiring workers and buying new equipment, while restaurants could sell alcohol again. In the four months that followed, manufacturing grew by 78%, automobile and heavy equipment sales by almost 200%, the stock market by 71%, and approximately four million people found employment, with approximately 500,000 more jobs being created in related industries. Prohibition officially ended on December 5, 1933 with the passage of the 21st Amendment.

Banning alcohol is a dumb thing to do and also cannot be enforced.

It’s also International Beaver Day, Metric System Day, National Coffee Cake Day, and World Health Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 7 Wikipedia page.

And here’s an old Jesus and Mo cartoon that reader Peter found and sent along. It’s about mythicism, the view that Jesus was one of many people claiming to be a savior:

Da Nooz:

*The astronauts successfully made it around the Moon yesterday, and Artemis II is on its way back to Earth.

On the sixth day, 248,655 miles from Earth, four people ventured farther from home than any human being who has ever lived.

Embraced by the moon’s gravitational pull, four astronauts accelerated Monday afternoon on a path to swing around the lunar far side, five days after launching on the Artemis II mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“Today, for all humanity, you’re pushing beyond that frontier,” said Jenni Gibbons, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut who was the main point of contact for the crew at mission control in Houston.

In response, Jeremy Hansen, a fellow Canadian who is a member of the Artemis II crew, hailed the space pioneers who had preceded them.

“We most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived,” he said.

A few hours later, Mr. Hansen, along with Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch of NASA, became the first humans in more than half a century to slip behind the moon.

At 6:44 p.m. Eastern time, video transmission from Artemis II blinked out, and the astronauts were cut off from the world’s other eight billion people. As the spaceship they named Integrity passed over the far side of the moon, they reached their greatest distance from Earth — more than a quarter-million miles — and their closest proximity to the moon at a bit over 4,000 miles.

After 40 minutes of silence, the astronauts reconnected with humanity. From their windows, they watched as a thin crescent of sunlit Earth reappeared.

There’s a lot of emotionality (and some God talk) being emitted on the radio from both Houston and Artemis: more than I remember in previous space shots.  The Christian emissions come mainly from pious astronaut Victor Glover, but we also heard this from commander Jeremy Hansen in his Easter address:

“No matter your faith or religion, for me the teachings of Jesus were always a very simple truth of love, universal love. Love yourself, and love others.”

Do we need this stuff broadcast from space on a trip funded by people who don’t think Jesus was a messiah? Can’t they keep their faith to themselves? And why didn’t Glover add that the teachings of Jesus included an admonition to follow him lest you be damned to a fiery eternal torment in hell?

*War news from yesterday’s edition of It’s Noon in Israel:

It’s Monday, April 6, and the thirty-eighth day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $108, down less than a percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments that occurred while you were asleep:

  • A source told Reuters that Pakistan’s army commander spent the night in direct contact with U.S. Vice President Vance, envoy Witkoff, and Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi. The emerging proposal calls for an immediate ceasefire and reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, followed by direct talks in Pakistan within 15–20 days to reach a broader agreement. An Iranian official responded to the report, saying they are reviewing Pakistan’s proposal, but Iran would not agree to open the Strait of Hormuz for a temporary ceasefire.
  • Four bodies were recovered from the rubble of a Haifa residential building struck by an Iranian ballistic missile yesterday, with rescue teams still searching for two additional missing people, including a child and an elderly person. An 82-year-old man who was seriously wounded has undergone surgery and remains sedated and ventilated; his 78-year-old wife is hospitalized in good condition. A 10-month-old baby was among the lightly wounded.
  • Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have confirmed the killing of Major General Majid Khademi, head of the IRGC’s Intelligence Directorate, in a U.S.-Israeli strike. Khademi, who had served in Iran’s intelligence and security apparatus for nearly five decades, was responsible for surveillance of Iranian citizens and for orchestrating attacks against Jews worldwide.

And one news item (there’s more at the site):

Donald Trump has issued a 24-hour extension, giving the regime until tomorrow at 8 p.m. ET to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The extension appears to be tied to the prospect of negotiations. According to sources familiar with the talks in Islamabad, the United States and Iran are discussing terms for a potential 45-day ceasefire (though Reuters puts it at 15–20 days) that could lead to a permanent end to the war.

The mediators are discussing a two-stage framework:

  • Stage One: A 45-day ceasefire during which negotiations would take place to end the war.
  • Stage Two: A final agreement to officially end the conflict.

This proposal strikes a somewhat dissonant tone. For the past two weeks, reports of negotiations have spanned from outright denial to thoroughly unenthusiastic. Apart from Trump’s triumphalist rhetoric claiming Iran is begging for peace, there has been very little indication that a deal is actually forthcoming. The sources familiar with the talks are largely in harmony with previous statements: according to them, the chances of reaching even a partial agreement in the next 48 hours are low.

So far there is no movement towards agreement between the U.S. and Iran (see next item).

*Iran has rejected Trump’s cease-fire plan ahead of the deadline for opening the Strait of Hormuz (8 p.m. tonight):

Iran on Monday rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal and said it wants a permanent end to the war, even as Israel attacked a major gas field and U.S. President Donald Trump’s ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz loomed.

“We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press. He said Iran no longer trusts the Trump administration after the U.S. bombed the Islamic Republic twice during previous rounds of talks.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said Tehran conveyed its response through Pakistan, a key mediator.

And yet a regional official involved in talks said efforts had not collapsed. “We are still talking to both sides,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door diplomacy.

Ferdousi Pour said Iranian and Omani officials were working on a mechanism for administrating the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped in peacetime. Iran’s grip on it has shaken the world economy. Tehran has refused to let U.S. and Israeli vessels through after they started the war on Feb. 28.

Iran’s rejection came after Israel struck a key petrochemical plant in the South Pars natural gas field and killed two paramilitary Revolutionary Guard commanders.

The gas field attack aimed at eliminating a major source of revenue for Iran, Israel said. The field, the world’s largest, is shared with Qatar. It is critical to electricity production, but the strike appeared to be separate from Trump’s threats.

An earlier Israeli attack on the field in March prompted Iran to target energy infrastructure in other Middle East countries, a major escalation.

Trump has warned Iran that the U.S. could set the country “back to the stone ages.”

Word of Iran’s rejection of the ceasefire proposal came while Trump addressed an Easter event on the White House lawn, and it was not clear whether he was aware. But he also was scheduled to hold a news conference later Monday.

“If they don’t cry uncle, no bridges, no power plants, no anything,” Trump said of Iran. “But they will.”

He also threatened to go further. “If I had my choice, what would I like to do? Take the oil,” he said, suggesting it could be done easily, but “unfortunately the American people would like to see us come home.”

Asked if Tuesday at 8 p.m. Washington time was his final deadline for Iran, Trump replied simply, “Yeah.”

I doubt that a permanent end to the war can be cobbled together before tonight, and so the bombing will go on. I can’t believe that Iran doesn’t want an end to the war, but the U.S. wants the Strait opened and nuclear material destroyed with a promise that Iran will stop making bombs. And how will we guarantee that Iran stops exporting terrorism? I don’t think we can, and I don’t really see any agreement that will make the U.S. successful in its aims, which at one time including regime change to free the Iranian people. But that was then. . .

We should not be destroying the infrastructure that the Iranian people depend on—the very people to whom Trump promised freedom.

*The Jerusalem Post reports that a U.S. court has reinstated  $655 million judgement against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization for damages to American citizens during the second intifada.

The federal Court of Appeals in New York has reinstated a 2015 judgment that ordered the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority to pay $655.5 million in damages to victims of terrorism from the period of the Second Intifada.

Last week, a federal Court of Appeals judge ruled to reinstate the original 2015 decision of Sokolow v. the Palestinian Authority.

This reverses the decisions of the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in August 2016, which ordered the $655.5 million terrorism case to be dismissed, saying that the court system had no jurisdiction over the PA or its sister organization, the PLO, and the US Supreme Court in April 2018.

Since then, Shurat Hadin – Israel Law Center, which led the legal charge and hoped the US Supreme Court would uphold the original district court decision, has been fighting to have the original decision reinstated.

Their central argument is that the PA’s ‘pay for slay’ policy, which rewards Palestinians terrorists and their families for crimes against Jews, incentivizes terrorism and makes the Authority responsible for such acts.

If you don’t know about the “pay for slay” policy, you should read Wikipedia’s euphemistic article, “Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund, which describes all the goodies Palestinians and their families get if they attack or murder Israelis.

The PA spends nearly $350 million per year on ‘pay for slay’, but just $220 million for its other welfare programs for the rest of its citizens.”

While under Trump the U.S. has cut its aid to the Palestinian Authority so that no money will go to this fund, in reality U.S. aid can readily be redirected to the fund.  This means that we’re still supporting terrorism.

The award to the victims is about three times the annual budget of the Pay for Slay program, but there is no mechanism I can see for the PA to pay off this judgement, and so it remains symbolic.

The Sokolow case started in 2004, when the families of victims of the Second Intifada filed a lawsuit against the PLO and PA, led by Shurat Hadin.

Among the victims were members of the Gritz, Coulter, Blutstein, and Carter families, who lost their children in the bombing of the Hebrew University Cafeteria in 2002; the Goldberg family, which lost the father in the bus No. 19 bombing in Jerusalem; and victims including Shaina Gold, Jonathan and Alan Bauer, Shaul Mendelcorn, and Mark Sokolow, who were injured in various attacks on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem.

The basis for the Sokolow case was the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), which was passed by Congress in 1992. In it, the families argued that the PLO and the PA financed and orchestrated seven separate attacks, and that these specific organizations were responsible for the terrorist attacks between January 2001 and February 2004.

. . .Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder of Shurat Hadin, said the ruling marks a “historic turning point in the fight against terrorism.”

“Not only does it restore the ability of American victims of terrorism to obtain compensation after years of struggle, but it also changes the rules of the game: from now on, US courts will be able to hear cases that previously could not even be brought before them,” she said. “This is a day of great victory in our determined fight to cut off the financial lifelines of terrorist organizations.”

Again, largely symbolic.  The PA will not lose a shekel because of the judgement.

*More Jew news, this time highlighting a big but somewhat amusing foulup, and I’ll put up the headline below (click on it to see the article; h/t Norm):

An excerpt:

When readers of the Atlanta Jewish Times opened their Passover edition last week, they saw something surprising: a fluffy challah.

The leavened bread, forbidden for Jews to consume during the holiday, appeared in an ad placed by Nathalie Kanani, a candidate for state Senate in a Metro Atlanta district.

“Have a blessed Passover,” the ad said, over an image of a challah draped in an Israeli flag alongside two towering candles. “Wishing you a Passover rich in divine love and blessings.”

The ad quickly drew ridicule online, particularly after Greg Bluestein, a Jewish Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter, tweeted about it on Saturday, writing, “It’s the thought that counts, I guess.”

That night, Kanani issued an apology, calling the inclusion of challah in the ad “an oversight that should not have happened” and saying that her campaign was instituting new processes to prevent similar snafus in the future.

“My intent was to honor our Jewish neighbors and friends. We are all human, and even with the best intentions, honest mistakes can happen,” she wrote. “I believe in meeting those moments with grace and using them to bring people of different cultures together, not tear them apart.”

Kanani added, “While this content was created by a consultant working with my campaign, I take full responsibility for everything shared in my name. We are implementing stronger review processes to ensure this does not happen again. As always, my campaign stands for inclusion, respect, and bringing all people together.”

The incident is also spurring potential reforms at the Atlanta Jewish Times. “The ad should not have passed proofing checks,” Michael Morris, the newspaper’s owner and publisher, wrote in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Sunday.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the two cats are plotting against Andrzej:

Hili: He has already gone to bed.
Szaron: We will start tormenting him in a moment.

In Polish:

Hili: On już położył się do łóżka.
Szaron: Zaraz zaczniemy go dręczyć.

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

From Stacy:

From The Language Nerds:

From CinEmma:

Masih announces the execution of another Iranian protestor by the government—the government that Trump says has undergone “regime change”:

From Luana. It’s unbelievable that murals of the murdered Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska are being defaced, and the vandalism must surely involve “reverse racial differences”, since she was white and her killer was black (but also mentally ill).  I presume that’s what the “Hmmm” means.

I might have posted this before, so sue me if I did. It’s a new genre: Irish cowboy dancing:

Larry the Number Ten Cat really doesn’t like Trump:

One from my feed; another Gem from Science Girl:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. He calls these mantas “Gentle giants unless you are plankton”:

Take a break from doomscrolling with a coupla giant mantas flying in formation. 🦑 🤿

— Joshua Holland (@joshuaholland.bsky.social) 2026-04-06T02:22:51.215Z

A tortoise scam tweeted by Matthew (Jonathan was falsely declared dead. He’s 144 years old, blind from cataracts, and has lost his sense of smell, but he still gets around.)

Amazing that he could come up with such a scam, but I guess he’s had a long time to think about it.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-04-02T07:00:44.341Z

 

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 31, 2026 • 6:45 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Da Nooz:

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

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

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

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

Now, on to the details.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The issue:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A couple of examples from this year:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Polish:

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

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

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

From The Dodo Pet:

From Give Me a Sign:

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

Larry the Cat is posting again:

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

Two from my feed.  First, a real hero:

This is TRUE!:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A new contender for best headline

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

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 24, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, March 24, 2026, and National Cheesesteak Day, celebrating a fine sandwich and exemplar of American cuisine.  It’s best sampled in its home, Philadelphia. Here’s a one-day attempt to find the best cheesesteak in Philly (Pat’s is touted as the city’s best version, but how does it rate here?). John’s and Dallesandro’s are tied for the top spot.

It’s also National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day and National Cocktail Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 24 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*NOTE: See below. Trump put a five-day hold on the bombing of infrastructure. It looks like Israel and the U.S. are about to striking Iranian infrastructure, including power plants, as per their promise if the Straits of Hormuz remained closed by Monday evening (US time). . And the new Ayatollah is out of action. From It’s Noon in Israel: (bolding is theirs)

  • The Washington Post reported that Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is injured, isolated, and unresponsive, according to intelligence officials from both Israel and the United States. Despite his apparent incapacitation, Israeli officials say the remaining clerical leadership and the Revolutionary Guards have managed to consolidate their grip on the country. Both the U.S. and Israel assess that Mojtaba is still alive; intelligence indicates that senior Iranian officials have attempted to arrange face-to-face meetings with him—efforts that have so far failed, reportedly for security reasons.
  • Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz have ordered the destruction of all bridges over the Litani River in an effort to cut off Hezbollah’s supply and movement routes. The IDF has more than doubled its troop deployment along the northern border, expanded ground operations—eliminating dozens of fighters and seizing weapons—and is conducting targeted raids on evacuated villages to dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure.
  • Trump’s ultimatum expires at 7:44 PM EDT (1:44 AM Israel time). Iran must fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or the United States will begin striking its power stations.

It seems that after securing concessions over the Panama Canal, Trump has developed a fondness for critical waterways. Israel and the United States have now settled on a new war goal: ending the conflict with the Strait of Hormuz under American control—not just temporarily.

The operation appears to have two parts. The first is seizing Iran’s most valuable card—the small island in the Persian Gulf that processes over 90 percent of its oil exports: Kharg Island. The second is securing the strait itself.

The question is how. The plan seems to combine Marine forces expected to arrive on Friday, ongoing airstrikes targeting Iran’s naval and drone capabilities, and advanced monitoring technologies to prevent any disruption to shipping.

The operation is expected to take roughly two to three weeks. That gives Israel enough time to complete the destruction of the remaining military industry and regime targets.

According to the NYT, there are already blackouts in Tehran:

Residents reported blackouts across large parts of Tehran, the Iranian capital, after heavy airstrikes struck multiple areas of the city early Monday. The outages came shortly after Israel announced it would target infrastructure in Iran.

But wait!  On the other hand, the NYT now reports “productive” peace talks between the U.S. and Iran:

President Trump said Monday that the United States and Iran were negotiating a “total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East,” and that he would postpone American attacks on Iranian power plants by five days after the two countries traded threats over the weekend.

Iran did not immediately comment. It was unclear what kind of communication might be taking place and who might be mediating; Iran has previously denied seeking a cease-fire. Mr. Trump had threatened on Saturday to bomb Iran’s energy infrastructure within 48 hours unless Iran agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, a critical shipping route for the global oil trade.

Mr. Trump did not elaborate on the details of the talks, but analysts have said it is difficult to see a straightforward offramp for the American-Israeli air war with Iran, which began on Feb 28. and has morphed into a wider conflict in the Middle East. Despite Mr. Trump’s calls for the ouster of the Islamic Republic and his vow to help Iranian protesters overthrow their leaders earlier this year, the Iranian government is still very much in place, as is much of its nuclear program.

The Truth Social announcement:

Back and forth, back and forth.  The erratic and contradictory pronouncements of Trump make this military action confusing and distressing. Whatever he does, he has to create regime change, which was originally one of his goals. And he has to stop the enrichment of uranium and the ongoing program of Iran to create nuclear weapons. Apparently Iran denies that these talks are even going on.

*The Times of Israel reports that a March 13 anti-Zionist rally in NYC, taking place near a pro-Israel rally, accused the Jews of—wait for it—eating babies! It’s one of the oldest blood libels: the accusation that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish children to make Passover matzos.

On Friday, at an Al Quds Day protest in Times Square, a protest leader directed the crowd to chant “Stop eating babies” toward a handful of mostly Jewish counter-protesters.

As surprising as it was to hear the charge that Zionists “eat babies” in New York City in 2026, equally surprising was the willingness with which the crowd took up the chant. There was no confusion or hesitancy about the outlandish allegation — the hundreds in attendance repeated the chant with enthusiasm, without skipping a beat.

“Stop eating babies! Stop raping kids!” they chanted toward counter-protesters holding Israeli flags across the street behind a line of police officers and metal barricades, recalling the age-old blood libel that says Jews murder and consume children for ritual purposes.

The rally illustrated how anti-Israel activists incorporate historical manifestations of anti-Jewish discrimination under the guise of anti-Zionist political activism, from the blood libel to Nazi-era tropes, mixed with contemporary academic theories. Anti-Zionism acts as a container for these historical tropes, blending them together with progressive talking points.

A cadre of scholar-activists has argued that anti-Zionism is the third major iteration of discrimination against Jews. The first was anti-Judaism, based on religion, the second was antisemitism, focused on race, and the third, anti-Zionism, is a hatred of Jewish peoplehood, the activists say.

The worst part of all this is indeed the crowd joining in.  What the hell are these people thinking?  And is there any doubt that this is antisemitic?  Eating babies? Is it only Israelis who eat babies, and not Jews in America? Or is it only Zionist Jews who eat babies?  And what is this about “raping kids”? That’s something I haven’t heard in these protests.

I couldn’t find that chant online, but here

*At Chicago’s Cook County Jail, a place I visited when I was helping public defenders with DNA evidence, inmates are falling ill—and even dying—after ingesting drugs smuggled into the jail soaked onto paper.

The body lay slumped on the jail floor, curled around a metal toilet.

Investigators found no evidence of homicide, just a few scraps of rolled-up paper, singed and scattered on the floor like scorched confetti.

For months, inmates had been falling ill at the Cook County jail in Chicago. Officials said they had heard rumors that extremely toxic drugs were infiltrating the facility, delivered on something so ordinary that it seemed impossible to stop.

Then the body appeared, and “something clicked,” said Justin Wilks, the head investigator at the jail.

The paper itself must be the culprit — and it was deadly.

More overdoses soon followed. The next month, in February 2023, another inmate died from smoking paper laced with mysterious new drugs. In April, one more.

“People were dying so fast,” Mr. Wilks said. But when officials at the jail told their law enforcement colleagues about it, they said, some found it hard to believe.

By year’s end, at least six people had died of overdoses, putting the jail at the vanguard of a new kind of drug war, one in which extraordinarily powerful drugs can be invented faster than the authorities can identify them.

And where something as ubiquitous as paper can become lethal.

The drugs are new synthetic drugs, dissolved in a solvent that is then used to soak sheets of paper that were smuggled in.

. . . . . Today, fringe chemists are ushering in a total transformation of the illicit drug market. Operating from clandestine labs, they are churning out a dizzying array of synthetic drugs — not only fentanyl, but also hazardous new tranquilizers, stimulants and complex cannabinoids. Sometimes, several unknown drugs appear on the streets in a single month. Many are so new they are not even illegal yet.

Nearly all of them are harder to trace than conventional drugs, less expensive to produce, much more potent and far deadlier, according to scientists and law enforcement officials across the globe.

After that first death in the Cook County jail in January 2023, it took months for Mr. Wilks’s team to realize that these mysterious new drugs were being sprayed onto the pages of the most innocuous-seeming items: books, letters, documents, even photographs.

The sheets of drugs, worth thousands of dollars a page, were being torn into strips and smoked by inmates who went into crazed, exorcistic fits, as if possessed by a phantom narcotic the authorities could not see, much less stop.

Just figuring out what the paper had on it was maddening. The specialized labs needed to run the tests often took months to send back mind-boggling chemical formulas that left some officers scratching their heads.

There are chemists out there synthesizing new compounds similar in structure to existing compounds. But some may be toxic, and were. And the prisoners are the guinea pigs.

*We’re several weeks into the partial government shutdown in which Democrats won’t give additional money ICE unless stringent conditions are imposed on officers’ behavior, Republicans won’t put up with it, and the Coast Guard and TSA agents are still not getting paid. (ICE, however, has a comfortable backlog and is still operating.  Now Trump is demanding that any compromise be tied to voter-identification legislation.

President Trump has rejected one of the possible offramps for the standoff over funding the Department of Homeland Security, leaving an impasse unresolved that has led to hourslong lines at some airports as security staff don’t show up for work.

White House staff briefed the president on an idea to fund all parts of DHS except for the agency responsible for enforcing immigration law, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Republicans could separately fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement through a procedural move—known as reconciliation—that would allow the money to clear the Senate on a simple-majority vote instead of requiring the 60 votes needed to pass most legislation. But not all Republicans think this is necessary because ICE received billions of additional funding in Trump’s sweeping tax cuts and spending bill passed along party lines last year.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) walked Trump through the strategy in a weekend conversation, the person said, but Trump rejected the idea. Some top Senate Republicans had met on Sunday with White House liaison James Braid to discuss ideas for ending the shutdown. The conversation between Thune and Trump was reported earlier by Punchbowl News.

Over the weekend, the president said he would send ICE agents to select airports around the country to assist with security lines. Trump on Monday said that move brought Democrats to the table to negotiate, but he told his negotiators to hold firm until a spending bill is paired with legislation requiring proof of citizenship to vote, along with other requirements.

Trump also indicated that he wanted to use the funding fight as leverage to pass what he considers his top legislative priority, the SAVE America Act. That legislation would ratchet up ID requirements to vote in federal elections and mandate proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Trump also wants to add a ban on most mail-in voting and restrictions on gender-transition procedures for minors.

ICE in airports is going to anger a lot of people, who will suspect that they’re really in airports to spot and arrest people accused of entering the U.S. illegally (a Guatemalan woman was apprehended yesterday). But if they’re just there help move security lines, which have extended to four hours in busy airports like Newark and Atlanta, that would be okay. As for showing proof of citizenship to register to vote, I have no problem with that, but I’d have to see the rest of the demands , especially about gender transition, as I think that surgery and drugs should be allowed only for people “of age” (I’m settling on 18).  Mail-in ballots are okay by me; I’ve used them for years, and that’s made me lazy.

*The video of a cat beauty competition in Romania is the most-watched video on the Associated Press site, but fortunately it’s also on YouTube. The AP also has a great page of photos from that competition, though I can’t find any news beyond what is in the videos. (I can’t reproduce the photos because of possible copyright issues, but you can see them at the link, and don’t miss them if you like cats (the huge Maine Coon is spectacular).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili thinks she’s fixing the world:

Szaron: It’s a bit boring here.
Hili: Start fixing the world, you’ll see what great entertainment it is.

In Polish:

Szaron: Trochę tu  nudno.
Hili: Zacznij naprawiać świat, zobaczysz jaka to fajna rozrywka.

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

Reader Pratyadipta Rudra vindicates me on Facebook. His caption:

A couple weeks ago, Jerry Coyne wrote about his “new law”: ” At least half of new medicines advertised on t.v. have the letters “x”, “y”, or “z” in them.”
Obviously, as he argued, this is much higher than their frequency in the English dictionary, or what would happen if letters of a medication name were picked randomly with each letter in the English alphabet having equal probability.Now, what are the chances that I see this at Costco the very next day?
I was a little sad that they did not call it XYZAB.
I was right!

From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Stacy: It’s Larry!!!!

From Masih, speaking on behalf of Iranians who want the present regime out:

From Luana; you can find the details here.

From Sciencegirl via Keith.  Would you drink this coffee? (I’m sure it would be expensive.) I’ve tried kopi luwak coffee made from beans that have transited the digestive tracts of palm civets (it was just ok), but not elephants.  It’s all hype, I suppose:

Two from my feed. First, gimme the cat massage option!

Yes it’s d*gs but it’s heartwarming. Kudo to Chairman Corgi, but I hope the photographer lent a hand as well:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

. . and two from Dr. Cobb. First, a holy moggy:

Here's your moment of zen: A "holy" cat named Coco stands at the entrance of a church in Mexico, seemingly blessing everyone who walks in 🐱

— Laura Martínez 🥑 (@miblogestublog.bsky.social) 2026-03-23T14:26:55.587Z

An itchy duck, but not a dead one:

I promise, I am NOT photographing a dead duck here. 😜This Northern Shoveler just decided to flop over in the water and scratch that itchy chin in the midst of the red duckweed.#BirdOfTheDay #Preeners&Scratchers#MallardMonday📷🪶🦆

— Mstreefrog (@mstreefrog.bsky.social) 2026-03-23T11:55:40.534Z

 

Friday: Hili dialogue

March 6, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first Friday in March: March the sixth to be precise. It’s The Day of the Dude, celebrating the hero of the movie “The Big Lebowski“, released on this day in 1998. Here’s the trailer. And the dude abides.

It’s also Alamo Day (the battle for the structure ended badly for the Texans on this day in 1836),  National Frozen Food Day, National Oreo Cookie Day (they were first sold on this day in 1912), and National White Chocoalte Cheesecake Day.

There’s a special Google Doodle today for the Paralympic Winter Games, which will run between today and March 15. Click below to see the animated page giving details:

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

Da Nooz:

*Late breaking news:, Trump has fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The troubles with ICE was partly responsible, and her poor performance at Congressional hearings,  She also refused to answer questions about whether she had an affair with her chief advisor Corey Lewandowski, who was given powers like the ability to sign government contracts. And she bought an expensive jet with a bedroom and 18 seats that, she claimed, was to be used for deportation of immigrants.

President Trump fired Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary on Thursday and announced plans to replace her with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, concluding a long-building frustration with Ms. Noem that had come to a head this week with her grilling by Republicans at congressional hearings.

Mr. Trump announced the change on social media, along with a new, and previously nonexistent, role for Ms. Noem inside the administration: special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which he said would be a new security initiative for the Western Hemisphere.

The immediate catalyst for Ms. Noem’s firing appeared to be her answers during two congressional hearings this week, particularly her under-threat-of-perjury statements that Mr. Trump had approved of tens of millions of dollars of government ads in which she was prominently featured. Mr. Trump denied that to Reuters on Thursday, saying, “I never knew anything about it.”

Mr. Trump was shown clips of her answers before a Senate panel and was angry that she blamed him for the contentious spots, according to a person with knowledge of what happened who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The ads were part of a $200 million-plus government-funded campaign that included a subcontractor run by the husband of Ms. Noem’s now-former spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin.

She’s now been accused of perjury at that hearing:

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said on Thursday evening that he would press for a perjury investigation into Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary whom President Trump fired hours earlier.

Mr. Blumenthal said that he would call for the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to investigate whether Ms. Noem had lied under oath during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, when she said that Corey Lewandowski, one of her top advisers, did not approve contracts for the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Blumenthal said that Democrats had evidence to suggest that Mr. Lewandowski had done so, and that Ms. Noem’s removal did not protect her from an investigation.

“Her firing doesn’t absolve her or relieve her of potential liability for perjury, and we are going to pursue an investigation of the evidence that she lied, because it relates to corruption in the administration,” said Mr. Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the panel.

But the Republican-controlled Senate is unlikely to hold hearings on Noem, although she can be investigated (though perhaps not indicted) by other means.

*The U.S. Senate rejected a resolution that would have forced Trump to end the strikes on Iran. Voting was pretty much along party lines, with one Democrat objecting (Fetterman, of course, who will not be re-elected), and one Republican (Rand Paul) signing on.

The Senate rejected a resolution Wednesday to block President Donald Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran, declining to halt a war that Trump started without the consent of Congress.

Democrats — along with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) — forced a vote on the war powers resolution over the opposition of most Republicans, who control the Senate. Democrats implored a handful of Republicans to break with their party to end the conflict and reassert Congress’s control over declaring war.

“This essentially is the vote whether to go to war or not,” Paul told reporters.

But Paul was the only Republican who voted to advance the resolution, which failed 47-53 on a procedural vote. One Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) voted against it.

The vote was the latest setback in Democrats’ long-shot strategy to block Trump from ordering military strikes without authorization from Congress. They have forced votes on eight war power resolutions in the House and Senate — a record for a single Congress — since Trump returned to office in an attempt to block him from striking Venezuela, Iran and boats near Latin America suspected of smuggling drugs. All of them have failed.

Republicans in Congress broadly support Trump’s decision to strike Iran, though a few have raised concerns about Congress’s lack of involvement.

“Yes, I wish I would have been consulted,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said in a statement. “I wish my vote would have been asked for before this. But the President did act within his legal bounds to do what he has done.”

Curtis and other Republicans argued that ordering the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the war days after it started would send the wrong message. Sen. Todd Young (R-Indiana) said he wished in retrospect that Congress had done more to assert its authority before the strikes.

“We should’ve been holding hearings and asking probing questions and making the case to get a greater measure of unity around this operation on the front end,” Young told reporters ahead of the vote. “But here we are. We’re at war.”

Democrats countered that it was not too late to halt a war it did not authorize.

Even Democratic Presidents, including Biden, Obama, and Clinton, have struck the Middle East without asking for Congressional approval.  And, in this case when the element of surprise was so important, I think it was risky to put this before Congress in advance, for fear of leaking.  Do we trust, say, members of The Squad not to leak a strike to Iran (you know who I’m talking about)? Given the precedents by Democratic Presidents, it’s not evenhanded for Democrats to make a big deal of this now. The horse is out of the barn.

*An archived article in the Financial Times shows how Israel managed to track down and kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It’s devilishly clever (h/t Jez):

When the highly trained, loyal bodyguards and drivers of senior Iranian officials came to work near Pasteur Street in Tehran — where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israeli air strike on Saturday — the Israelis were watching.

Nearly all the traffic cameras in Tehran had been hacked for years, their images encrypted and transmitted to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel, according to two people familiar with the matter.

One camera had an angle that proved particularly useful, said one of the people, allowing them to determine where the men liked to park their personal cars and providing a window into the workings of a mundane part of the closely guarded compound.

Complex algorithms added details to dossiers on members of these security guards that included their addresses, hours of duty, routes they took to work and, most importantly, who they were usually assigned to protect and transport — building what intelligence officers call a “pattern of life”.

The capabilities were part of a years-long intelligence campaign that helped pave the way for the ayatollah’s assassination. This source of real-time data — one of hundreds of different streams of intelligence — was not the only way Israel and the CIA were able to determine exactly what time 86-year-old Khamenei would be in his offices this fateful Saturday morning and who would be joining him.

The capabilities were part of a years-long intelligence campaign that helped pave the way for the ayatollah’s assassination. This source of real-time data — one of hundreds of different streams of intelligence — was not the only way Israel and the CIA were able to determine exactly what time 86-year-old Khamenei would be in his offices this fateful Saturday morning and who would be joining him.

Long before the bombs fell, “we knew Tehran like we know Jerusalem”, said one current Israeli intelligence official. “And when you know [a place] as well as you know the street you grew up on, you notice a single thing that’s out of place.”

This is again the doing of Mossad, and ranks up there with Beepergate (and the Entebbe rescue) as one of the great feats of Israeli intelligence. It was dumb of the Iranian government to put so many higher-ups in one place at one time. Don’t they have Zoom calls there?

*At the NYT, Bret Stephens and Frank Bruni clash in a conversation about Iran.(article archived here). You already know what sides they’re on.  A few snippets of the conversation:

Bret Stephens: They were among the motivations. A democratic Iran that represented the will of its people would not have spent the past 47 years waging war against the Big and Little Satans — that is, the United States and Israel. It would not have squandered its national treasure financing and arming groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, too. It would not have courted global sanctions through its secretive nuclear program.

That said, if what this war accomplishes isn’t quite regime change — which, I think, has perhaps a 30 percent chance of succeeding — but what might be called “regime modification,” then that also will count as success. By that, I mean an outcome that gets the Iranians to verifiably and irreversibly divest themselves of their nuclear and long-range missile programs and to stop supporting terrorist proxies.

Frank: Accomplishes “regime modification” at what price? And how modified a regime? And why, with all due respect, do I feel that those promoting and defending this war are spreading out a buffet of reasons and goals and asking us skeptics to pick the dish that most appeals to us? You want roast chicken? There’s a wing and a drumstick over here! Oh, no, you craved penne alla vodka? Behold these noodles! I have intellectual and moral indigestion. And a diminishing, not growing, appetite.

Bret: No question President Trump did a terrible job explaining himself. Americans have a right to know why he’s putting service members in harm’s way. But I don’t think the justifications are quite the smorgasbord you suggest.

I’d boil it down to one paragraph:

Iran has been waging a “forever war” against us ever since this regime came to power in 1979. These strikes are an attempt finally to put an end to that war, not to start a new one. We need to do it because the regime has flatly refused to curb its most threatening behavior, even after last June’s war. And we need to do it now for the same reason you try to deal with cancer at Stage 1 rather than Stage 4: Because waiting till they reconstitute their nuclear programs and manufacture thousands of missiles a year would make stopping them in the future much costlier. That they are close allies of Russia and China raises the geopolitical stakes. That they just slaughtered thousands of their own people raises the moral stakes.

To me, that’s a coherent case.

Frank: It’s a case, but is it or was it Trump’s? No insult intended, but your rationale matters considerably less than Trump’s — and as you say, he’s done a terrible job explaining himself. That’s because he has never carefully worked this out in his own mind, and frankly, that’s terrifying. His incoherence on this issue isn’t an asterisk; it’s a devastating tell.

Bret: The best case I’ve heard against the war boils down to one sentence: Do you really trust Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth to fight, and finish, this war? My answer is: The jury is out. But at least the military side of it seems, so far, to have been accomplished with impressive competence.

Both men agree that James Talarico’s victory in the Texas Democratic primary for a Senate seat is a good harbinger for the party, as he seems to be more charismatic and more willing to be bipartisan than other candidates, including his Democratic opponent.

*And Retraction Watch highlights a case of massive medical-reporting fraud lasting 25 years.

A Canadian journal has issued corrections on 138 case reports it published over the last 25 years to add a disclaimer: The cases described are fictional.

Paediatrics & Child Health, the journal of the Canadian Paediatric Society, has published the cases since 2000 in articles for a series for its Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program. The articles usually start with a case description followed by “learning points” that include statistics, clinical observations and data from CPSP. The peer-reviewed articles don’t state anywhere the cases described are fictional.

The corrections come following a January article in New Yorker magazine that mentioned one of the reports — “Baby boy blue,” a case published in 2010 describing an infant who showed signs of opioid exposure via breast milk while his mother was taking acetaminophen with codeine. The New Yorker article made public an admission by one of the coauthors that the case was made up.

“Based on the New Yorker article, we made the decision to add a correction notice to all 138 publications drawing attention to CPSP studies and surveys to clarify that the cases are fictional,” Joan Robinson, editor-in-chief of Paediatrics & Child Health, told Retraction Watch. “From now on, the body of the case report will specifically state that the case is fictional.”

The move came as a surprise to David Juurlink, professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Toronto, who has spent over a decade looking into the claim that infants can receive a meaningful or even lethal dose of opioids via breast milk when their mothers take acetaminophen with codeine. The first such case, published in the Lancetin 2006 by pharmacologist Gideon Koren, was the centerpiece of the New Yorker article. (The Lancet case report now bears an expression of concern.) Koren used that case to claim for years that codeine, which gets metabolized to morphine in the body, can pose a lethal risk to breastfeeding infants.

Follow-up work by Juurlink and others has found the doses claimed in the Lancet report — as well as in two other articles, both now retracted, Koren and colleagues wrote about the case — to be pharmacologically unlikely. As the New Yorker reported, a review of the autopsy data and other evidence points to the baby having been given the pain medication directly rather than having been exposed to the drug through breast milk.

While the instructions for authors for Paediatrics & Child Health has at times indicated the case reports are fictional, that disclosure has never appeared on the journal articles themselves.

“Readers of primary source peer reviewed medical scientific journals have an absolute right to believe that the article being read is as accurate as possible, original, and factual, unless clearly specified otherwise,” said former JAMA editor George Lundberg. “‘Alternative facts,’ as popularized by Kellyanne Conway, have no place in a medical or scientific journal.”

. . . The journal decided when it first started publishing the article type “that the cases should be fictional to protect patient confidentiality,” Robinson told us. “Apart from the case that led to the recent New Yorker article, all or almost all were cases of very well recognized conditions (such as congenital syphilis, fetal alcohol syndrome, serious trauma from ATVs, hepatitis C infection) where a single case report would not generate any interest or ever be cited.”

They try to cover their butts, and it is the case that some of the vignettes were true, with only names changed. But not informing people that published details may be made up is unforgivable. Retraction Watch does science a great service.

*I’m a sucker for Democrats dispensing wisdom about how we should win elections, and this one, “Rahm Emanuel floods Democrats with criticisms and ideas. Will his party listen?” is in the WSJ.  Emanuel has had a lot of experience, serving as a U.S. Representative, White House Chief of Staff, and Mayor of Chicago (people didn’t like him much here). But if he were elected, he’d be America’s first Jewish President. What advice does he have for us?

Asked at a recent fundraiser in this affluent Detroit suburb how Democrats might be able to win back the working-class voters who have defected to President Trump, Emanuel faulted his party in 2024 for being too focused on things such as transgender rights and not enough on pocketbook issues.

“We weren’t very good in this last election at the kitchen table. We weren’t very good in the family room,” said the former congressman, mayor and U.S. ambassador to Japan. “The only room we occupied in the house was the bathroom—and it’s the smallest room in the house.”

Emanuel’s diagnosis is the loudest version of a soul-searching exercise playing out among a few members of the prospective 2028 Democratic presidential field, providing a window into their party’s continuing debate about how to win more broadly again.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear implores Democrats to talk more like “normal human beings” and avoid “advocacy speak” he hears when people use phrases such as “substance-use disorder” instead of addiction and “food insecurity” instead of hunger.

Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has governed one of the country’s most Democratic states, has begun to distance himself from certain progressive stances, including party orthodoxy on transgender rights. He recently said Democrats need to be “culturally normal.”

In an interview, Emanuel said his party grew too complacent during Barack Obama’s presidency, assuming the demographics of a diversifying nation would favor them going forward. He also said Democrats are now too fixated on Trump and it is hurting their chances in future elections.

“We became intellectually flabby and we became intellectually lazy,” said Emanuel, Obama’s first White House chief of staff. “To gain the confidence of the American people, you cannot just be a resistance, you also have to be a renewal. One of the things I’m trying to do is lay out that agenda.”

During an appearance at the Detroit Economic Club, Emanuel said he plans to offer a lot of bluntness between now and 2028. “I don’t give a crap,” he said. “I’m going to tell you what I think we’ve got to get done. You like it, great. You don’t like it, you can join my family and not like me.”

Kelly Breen, a suburban Detroit state representative who attended the fundraiser here, said Emanuel is on her list of potential 2028 candidates, along with Newsom and Beshear, whom she is most interested in so far. “I would prefer to have a steady and knowledgeable hand,” she said.

Well, yes, many Democrats have called the party out for wokeness and for not listening to the average Joe and Jane, but it’s one thing to pinpoint a problem and another to solve it, especially when the Democratic edifice is weakened by “progressive” termites.  Emanuel is starting to sound like James Carville. That’s not a bad thing, but Rahm’s Jewish, and, more than that, he’s known for being abrasive.  I can’t imagine Democrats, who are growing less fond of Jews, would nominate one as their Presidential candidates. But maybe the Party will at least listen to him.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron don’t seem to like attention:

Hili: And once again we find ourselves in the spotlight.
Szaron: Sometimes the secondary characters look better.

In Polish:

Hili: I znów jesteśmy w świetle reflektorów.
Szaron: Czasem postaci drugoplanowe wyglądają lepiej.

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

From Stacy:

From CinEmma. more cat paws:

From Give Me a Sign, and no, I can’t guarantee this is genuine:

Lagniappe: Yesterday’s cover of Charlie Hebdo (h/t Bat).  They never give up:

From Masih, now taking Elizabeth Warren to task:

Some sardonic humor (with truth in it) from The Babylon Bee via Luana:

From actor and comedian Rowan Atkinson via J. K. Rowling:

From Colin. No comment needed:

One from my feed, another great post from Science girl. It’s hard to imagine the evolutionary steps that resulted in this behavior:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. The first one is salacious, and I had no idea!  The lyrics and even a recording is further down the thread:

Praise be! It’s the 91st anniversary of Lucile Bogan recording surely the filthiest song in history: Shave ’Em Dry. She worked in the ‘dirty blues’ genre, known for innuendo-heavy lyrics, but Lucile was the sort of person who knew writers who used innuendo, and thought they were all cowards 🧵

— Odd This Day (@oddthisday.bsky.social) 2026-03-05T09:46:20.473Z

A dad joke (click to go to original):