Thursday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to MAY!  Yes, we’re here at last, on May 1, 2025.  Here’s Julie Andrews celebrating the Lusty Month of May in “Camelot”:

and May from the illuminated manuscript Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1412-1416):

Besides May Day, it’s also Law Day, Mother Goose Day, Save the Rhino Day, Global Love Day, National Chocolate Parfait Day, National Salad Day, International Workers’ Day, and the National Day of Reason.. Here’s a Workers’ Day poster from the 1980s that you can buy for $200. It is of course from California:

There’s also a Google Doodle today; click on image to see where it goes:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Attention First Amendment supporters!  The Supreme Court may deal all of us a blow in the coming months by allowing public funding of religious charter schools. (h/t Luana). Article is archived here.

The Supreme Court appeared open on Wednesday to allowing Oklahoma to use government money to run the nation’s first religious charter school, which would teach a curriculum infused by Catholic doctrine.

Excluding the school from the state’s charter-school system would amount to “rank discrimination against religion,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said.

The justices appeared to be divided along the usual ideological lines, with the court’s Republican appointees largely sympathetic to the school and its Democratic ones quite wary. But Justice Amy Coney Barrett was recused, raising the possibility of a tie vote if a single Republican appointee joined the three Democratic ones. That would leave a state court decision rejecting the school intact.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who asked questions supportive of both sides, seemed to be the most likely member of such a potential alliance.

• The school: The school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, aims to incorporate Catholic teachings into its activities. A powerful conservative Christian legal group, the Alliance Defending Freedom, is representing it.

• Oklahoma fight: After the state’s charter school board approved the proposal to open St. Isidore, the state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, a Republican, sued to stop it. He said a religious public school would violate the First Amendment and the State Constitution’s ban on spending public money to support religious institutions.

And indeed, using public money to fund a Catholic school is indeed a violation of the First Amendment. But if the Supreme Court rules it okay, I see no way of overturning this violation. This is what you get when you allow charter schools that are paid for in part by public money. What’s next: schools funded by the public that teach creationism?

*Fires are raging around Jerusalem and other parts of Israel, certainly prompted by a call from Hamas to burn the country.

Terrorism is suspected in the wave of massive fires that have triggered a national emergency across parts of Israel, according to an unnamed Israeli security source speaking to The Media Line. The fires erupted on Tuesday, as the country marked Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism and prepared to transition into celebrations for its 77th Independence Day.

The source confirmed that several arrests have been made in connection with the suspected arson attacks, but declined to provide further details due to the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation.

The fires, intensified by strong winds and dry conditions, have led to the evacuation of numerous communities. Emergency services are battling to contain the blazes, which have already caused widespread property damage and forced road closures. No fatalities have been reported so far, but officials have warned that the situation remains dangerous and unpredictable.

“This is being treated as a national emergency,” the source said, pointing to evidence that suggests the fires were set deliberately and in a coordinated manner. The timing—on a day of national mourning followed immediately by celebrations of statehood—has raised concerns that the attacks were intended to provoke panic and undermine the national morale.

Hamas posted a message encouraging Palestinians to “burn whatever you can of groves, forests, and settler homes,” on Telegram on Wednesday.

“Youth of the West Bank, youth of Jerusalem, and those inside Israel, set their cars ablaze… Gaza awaits the revenge of the free,” the terrorist organization wrote.

Earlier, the Jenin News Network Telegram channel called on Palestinians to “burn the groves near the settlements” in a post on Telegram on Wednesday.

As the wildfires continue to burn across central Israel, the channel posted a photo of a masked person setting fire to a field as a town burns in the background, with the text “Settlers’ homes will be ashes under the feet of the revolutionaries” and the hashtag “Burn settlers’ houses.”

The wildfires broke out in the Judean Hills on Wednesday morning and spread across the Jerusalem area as the day continued.

I’m wondering if any other countries will send firepeople to Israel to help stop these first. They are, of course a war crime, and are aimed deliberately at civilians, but nobody is going to criticize Hamas for this except for petulant people like me.  (Imagine what would happen if Israel called for setting fires to Palestinian houses in the West Bank!) I did find this in the Jerusalem Post:

International aid from the global community — including neighboring countries Greece, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, and Bulgaria —  is not expected to arrive until Thursday morning, as fires continue to rage across the country on Wednesday.

*More evidence that RFK Jr.’s appointment as Secretary of Health was not only deeply misguided, but dangerous. (NYT article archived here.) In an interview with Dr. Phil, the benighted Kennedy (Jr.) was ambiguous about vaccines:

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. advised parents of newborns to “do your own research” before vaccinating their infants during a televised interview in which he also suggested the measles shot was unsafe and repeatedly made false statements that cast doubt on the benefits of vaccination and the independence of the Food and Drug Administration.

Mr. Kennedy made the remarks to the talk show host Dr. Phil in an interview that aired Monday on MeritTV to mark the 100th day of the Trump administration. He said, as he has in the past, that “if you want to avoid spreading measles, the best thing you can do is take that vaccine.”

But Mr. Kennedy also made clear, as he has in the past, that he believes it is up to individuals to decide. In suggesting vaccines are unsafe, he contradicted decades of advice from public health experts, including leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I would say that we live in a democracy, and part of the responsibility of being a parent is to do your own research,” the health secretary said, in response to a question from a woman in the audience who asked how he would advise a new parent about vaccine safety. “You research the baby stroller, you research the foods that they’re getting, and you need to research the medicines that they’re taking as well.”

The phrase “I did my own research” became a cultural and political touchstone during the coronavirus pandemic, when proponents of vaccination, mostly on the political left, used it to denigrate those who had chosen not to get vaccinated. It became an internet meme and popped up on mock tombstones in Halloween-themed graveyards in liberal neighborhoods.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Kennedy’s comments came amid the largest measles outbreak in about 25 years in the United States, which has included the deaths of two young children and an adult.

Seriously, “Do your own research” really means “read online,” and if you know who to trust, then that’s okay. But you know what kind of stuff about vaccines you can find online. Kennedy, by not affirming that vaccines are the best way to protect against measles, is being lax; he speaks only about “spreading measles” but not “getting measles”.  He is abnegating his responsibility as the nation’s chief health official. It’s like telling someone with diabetes, “do your own research on insulin.”  At some point one has to trust experts, and what Kennedy has shown is that he is neither an “expert” or a person to be trusted. His behavior is reprehensible.

*The Free Press has a collection of short takes on the “100 Days of Trump“. Participants include Bill Maher, Nellie Bowles, Sam Harris, Coleman Hughes, and Mike Pompeo. I’ll give four (Nellie Bowles is off the mark and I won’t put her bit).

Coleman Hughes on Trump’s Squad:

If the first 100 days of Trump’s second term have taught us anything, it’s that it really matters who Trump is surrounded by.

Though I’ve never supported Trump, I have often drawn comfort from the fact that his first term included several massive policy victories, from the Abraham Accords to Operation Warp Speed and the First Step Act. Such victories seemed to indicate a well-intentioned and rational actor hiding behind the bully we see on TV.

But there was a competing theory behind those policy wins as well: that Trump’s insanity sometimes works well when his impulses are filtered through the sieve of the “adults in the room,” people like H.R. McMaster, Jared Kushner, and many others.

Now that the adults in the room have been replaced (with notable exceptions) with cranks and yes-men, the results have been starkly different. From tanking our economy with tariffs to using executive orders to retaliate against law firms that represented his rivals to mucking around with due process, we can now say with some confidence that Trump’s first-term policy wins were probably not the result of a decent man existing underneath the mask. They were the result of a madman restrained.

Bill Maher on Bad Things:

In a word: shitshow. I said after he won the election, I’m not going to pre-hate anything. But after 100 days, there are probably 100 things to legitimately hate, starting with disappearing people, the inefficiency of DOGE, ignoring the Supreme Court, killing people overseas with drastic aid cuts, firing the guy in charge of his election-integrity office because he won’t say 2020 was rigged, tariff-related market collapse, America no longer being seen as a safe place, the third-term talk, suing the media, Andrew Tate. . . I mean, I could just keep going. And I want to emphasize: None of my disapproval for any of this comes from reflexive Republican opposition. On all these issues, it’s just objectively bad. And they know that, too.

Yet Maher is still getting crap for saying that Trump was gracious at dinner in the White House. Once you say that, you’re marked for life.

Sam Harris on Bullshit:

In the run-up to the 2024 election, Trump’s defenders assured us that there was nothing to fear from a second Trump term, because there had already been a first one, and nothing too terrible had happened.

Many people knew this was bullshit at the time, and it was revealed to be bullshit even before the second inauguration. Trump and his ravenous family launched their meme coins, skimming hundreds of millions of dollars from the MAGA cult and creating a mechanism by which supplicants, aspiring crooks, and foreign agents could purchase influence with the new regime.

From this moment, it was clear that a second Trump presidency would degrade our country in ways that few had imagined possible. One hundred days later, it is hard to overstate just how much damage has been done to America’s standing in the world. When the history of this period is written, it will be widely acknowledged that the second Trump administration was stunning as much for its incompetence as for its corruption. Those who remained silent will find no shelter in the claim that they did not know how bad things were at the time. Everyone knows what everyone knows—and everyone knows you know it.

John McWhorter on Megalomania:

Trump has revealed himself in these first 100 days to be the smallest person ever to occupy the office, despite standing six-foot-three. Only two things drive him, both grievously inappropriate as prime movers of a national leader.

One is revenge. Against DEI because it threatens his white maleness. Against campus protests—not out of philosemitism but a desire to punish, à la Richard Nixon’s revulsion at “hippies.” The stunning absurdity of his cabinet picks pokes a stick in the eye of the “deep state” of his fantasies. His tariffs are crackpot economics that allow him to get back at the whole world.

Then there is the sandcastle-kicking megalomania: wanting to annex Canada and Greenland, the adoration of dictators, the contempt for the leader of Ukraine as a loser, the Gulf of America.

At around this time in Theodore Roosevelt’s first term, the British ambassador to Sweden said of his enthusiasm and energy, “You must always remember that the president is about six.” For the next 900 days or so, our country will be run by someone who, mentally, actually is.

There are also people who are excited about Trump, including Chritopher Rufo, but I’m quoting people who have featured in these pages recently.

*Another one from the Free Press, which reports that two janitors held hostage by pro-Palestinian protestors during a Columbia building takeover are suing the protestors for a number of crimes (see also this article at the New York Post).

he Columbia University janitors who were held hostage during the violent takeover of a campus building last spring are suing their alleged captors for battery, assault, and conspiracy to violate their civil rights, according to a copy of the suit reviewed exclusively by The Free Press.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court on Friday evening by Torridon Law and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on behalf of Columbia janitors Mario Torres and Lester Wilson. It alleges that over 40 Columbia students and “outside agitators,” some but not all of whom were arrested by police following the takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last April 29, “terrorized” both Torres and Wilson “into the early morning of April 30th, assaulted and battered them, held them against their will, and derided them as ‘Jew-lovers’ and ‘Zionists.’ ”

The occupation of Hamilton Hall occurred almost exactly a year ago, and both Torres and Lester say they have been struggling to cope ever since. The lawsuit statesboth men suffered physical injuries the night of the occupation, and that they have also been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that has required ongoing medical care. Neither has been able to return to work, and are instead “subsisting on interim Workers Compensation payments” which are “inadequate” to pay for their basic needs and medical bills, according to the suit.

“Mario and Lester are decent, honest, hardworking men who have been through hell. None of this ever should have happened,” said Tara Helfman, one of the Torridon lawyers on the case.

The lawsuit describes the protesters, the majority of whom “donned masks and hoods to conceal their identities,” as “reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan.” It claims they “are part of a broad pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic network of organizations, groups, and cells that are connected through a largely untraceable underground communications system. They promote and resort to violent and illegal tactics, and are motivated by invidious discrimination against Jews and supporters of Jews.”

The Brandeis Center also filed a federal lawsuit late Friday on behalf of two students, a professor, and a rabbi at the University of California, Los Angeles, alleging that several groups, including National Students for Justice in Palestine, Faculty for Justice in Palestine Network, American Muslims for Palestine, and Westchester People’s Action Coalition, engaged in “a coordinated campaign of egregious acts of racial exclusion, intimidation, and assault” to “intimidate Jewish students, faculty, and staff.”

This is one reason why Columbia got nicked for allowing an antisemitic atmosphere to develop:

Over 40 protesters, including Carlson, were arrested and charged with trespassing in the days after the Hamilton Hall occupation. But Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office dropped the charges, claiming the charges would have been “extremely difficult” to prove because the protesters wore masks and covered security cameras.

But there could have been University discipline, and there wasn’t.  Trespassers taken into custody have to show IDs.  And, in fact, the article gives several names of people who occupied the building.

While Torres and Wilson are not Jewish, the lawsuit alleges that antisemitism played a central role in the harm inflicted upon the janitors, who the protesters knew were likely to be in the building that night. The lawsuit states that “the Occupiers were motivated by perceptions that Mr. Torres and Mr. Wilson supported Jews and presented potential obstacles to the execution of their plot to take over and occupy Hamilton Hall.”

Yep, the non-Jewish janitors were called “Jew lovers” and “Zionists”. So much for the faux distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Throw the book at them. Free speech, yes, vandalism, tresspassing, and holding people hostage, no.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is chilling:

A: Oh, here you are.

Hili: Yes, I took a short break from politics.

Ja: O, tu jesteś.

Hili: Tak, zrobiłam sobie krótkie wakacje od polityki.

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From Strange, Silly, or Stupid Signs:

From Another Science Humor Group:

Masih’s book has been translated into Arabic. Let’s hope some copies find their way into Iran:

3/ Because as @AlinejadMasih says,

“Fighting compulsory hijab is about much more than hair—just as Rosa Parks refusing her seat was about more than an unjust seating policy. It’s about fighting for what’s right.”

That’s the threat: the fight for dignity, not dress. pic.twitter.com/6SsKvPCcJI

— Ideas Beyond Borders (@IdeasB2) April 30, 2025

From Luana: These moronic thugs brag about their recent vandalism at Columbia University, which seems to be completely impotent in the face of this kind of stuff.

Anonymous submission:

Overnight, an autonomous group acted against Amerika’s repression of the Palestine movement. The group attacked one of Columbia University’s border checkpoints — structures created to surveil and suppress the student movement. Security equipment was… pic.twitter.com/ZdAZwSrYoG

— Unity of Fields (@unityoffields) April 30, 2025

From Simon, who calls this “All Presidential at the Pope’s funeral”. But I can’t say that I would have stayed awake!

— Someone needs a nap. It’s me. I’m someone. Read More