Wednesday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to the last day of April, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, and a Hump Day (“Aho ‘o e Hump” in Tongan). It’s also National Bubble Tea Day, a clever invention which I much like (I love chewing on the tapioca balls). It was invented in Taiwan in the 1980s, but has now spread throughout the world.

It’s also Adopt a Shelter Pet Day, Mr. Potato Head Day (the first toy advertised on television), Bugs Bunny Day (he first appeared in a cartoon on this day in 1938), Denim Day (check the link), International Jazz Day, National Oatmeal Cookie Day, and National Raisin Day.

In honor of Jazz Day, here’s Bird and Diz in 1952, playing “Hot House”:

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

Da Nooz:

*Although I was glad that Trump favors Israel and criticized universities for creating a climate of antisemitism, I never though hard about why on earth he was worried about it. After all, Trump isn’t really notable as a Friend of the Jews. Now, the NYT’s Michelle Goldberg is explicit in saying, “I can’t believe anyone thinks Trump actually cares about antisemitism.” And I should have realized what she did:

Trump’s treatment of L.G.B.T. people should have been a lesson to anyone tempted to take his campaign against antisemitism seriously, when it is screamingly obvious that it’s just a pretext to attack liberal institutions. Trump and his allies, after all, have mainstreamed antisemitism to an astonishing degree. Elon Musk, to whom Trump has outsourced the remaking of the federal government, is perhaps the world’s largest purveyor of antisemitic propaganda, thanks to his website X. (My “for you” feed recently served me a post of a winsome young woman speaking adoringly of “the H man,” or Hitler.) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, once said the unvaccinated had it worse than Anne Frank. Just last month Leo Terrell, the head of Trump’s antisemitism task force, shared a social media post by a prominent neo-Nazi gloating that Trump had the power to take away Senator Chuck Schumer’s “Jew card.” Trump himself, of course, dined with the Hitler-loving rapper Kanye West and the white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

Yet I’ve been astonished to learn that some people believe that when the administration attacks academia for its purported antisemitism, it’s acting in good faith. Speaking on CNBC last week, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, cheered Trump’s attempt to exercise political control over Harvard, saying, “It is a good thing that President Trump is leaning in.” In a shocking interview with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, the Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, who served as a special envoy to combat antisemitism under Joe Biden, praised Trump’s assaults on academia and its attempts to deport some pro-Palestinian activists. While in some cases she thinks the administration has gone overboard, she suggested that those who don’t give the president credit for standing up for Jews suffer from “Trump derangement syndrome.”

But then she says this:

It seems to me that there’s another sort of derangement at play here, rooted in the way Israel’s defenders conflate all but the mildest criticism of Israel with antisemitism. There have certainly been incidents of crude anti-Jewish bigotry in the protests that followed Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But too many backers of Israel can’t seem to imagine a reason besides antisemitic animus for impassioned opposition to Israel’s merciless war on Gaza. This leads them to vastly overstate the scale of antisemitism on the left and, in turn, to rationalize away Trump’s authoritarianism as he attempts to crush progressive redoubts.

“Merciless war on Gaza?”  When Gaza has been shooting rockets at Israel for years, and finally conducted a brutal attack.  And put the “merciless” part (if that’s the way you construe it) at the door of Hamas, who has forced Israelis to fight them when they’re embedded among civilians. If Ms. Goldberg thinks Israel should provide material support to the enemy (Hamas gets most of the food), then she should also give her solution to the conflict. Would she want Hamas to stay in power? If not, how should Israel destroy it?

I’m not rationalizing away Trump’s authoritarianism, which is absolutely evident, and I do agree with her that Trump isn’t going after, say, colleges because he loves Jews, though I think there is an antisemitism problem on some campuses. But I do disagree with her when she implicitly blames Israel for what has happened to Gaza. Plenty of mercy was given by the IDF, which has produced the lowest ratio of civilian casualities to combatants in any modern war.

*Many of my friends are saying that Senator Chuck Schumer should resign because he voted along with Republicans to prevent the government shutdown. Someone even told me yesterday that he reads his speeches, which means that he’s too old!  But I’m not convinced of that, and I think voting to keep the government running was the right thing for him to do. The thought of him being replaced by AOC, who desperately wants more power, also makes me queasy.  But the WaPo describes how much pushback he’s received from that vote.

But even at one of his most vulnerable moments in eight years leading Senate Democrats and more than four decades in Washington, Schumer, 74, remains convinced he was right.

In an interview in his office this month, Schumer defended his handling of the showdown with Republicans and imagined the flood of complaints he would be fielding if Democrats had forced a government shutdown.

“I would’ve said: ‘It’s a shutdown. You can’t do anything,’” Schumer said as the sun set behind him on the National Mall. “And then they would’ve said, ‘Why’d you let that happen?’ So I felt I did the right thing.”

Schumer was determined from the start to prevent a shutdown. He believed one could last nine months or longer, giving President Donald Trump and Elon Musk freer rein to slash the federal workforce. But Schumer, who prides himself on his ability to see around legislative corners, was surprised that House Republicans managed to pass a funding bill written without Democrats’ input despite the GOP’s perilously narrow majority. The House vote put Senate Democrats in a jam, giving them only days to decide whether to back a bill that included billions of dollars in cuts — or block it and risk triggering a government shutdown.

I think he’s right: the party held responsible for the shutdown creates bad “optics” for itself, which Democrats don’t need at a time when their optics are bad anyway.  I don’t want Schumer as President, but I see no issues with him staying on both in the Senate and as minority leader. Others will likely disagree.

*Trump has sort of reduced the tariffs on imported cars, but it’s too little and too late.

The Trump administration said it plans to announce measures as early as Tuesday to ease the effects of tariffs on imported cars and car parts to give automakers more time to relocate production to the United States.

Tariffs of 25 percent on imported vehicles and on auto parts will remain in place. But the tariffs will be modified so that they are not “stacked” with other tariffs, for example on steel and aluminum, a White House spokesman said. Automakers will not have to pay tariffs on those metals, widely used in automobiles, on top of the tariffs on cars and parts.

In addition, automakers will be reimbursed for some of the cost of tariffs on imported components. The reimbursement will amount to up to 3.75 percent of the value of a new car in the first year, but will be phased out over two years, the spokesman confirmed.

A 25 percent tariff on imported cars took effect April 3. On Saturday, the tariffs are set to be extended to include imported parts.

“President Trump is building an important partnership with both the domestic automakers and our great American workers,” Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said in a statement. “This deal is a major victory for the president’s trade policy by rewarding companies who manufacture domestically, while providing runway to manufacturers who have expressed their commitment to invest in America and expand their domestic manufacturing.”

So what we have is a reduction in “stacked” tariffs, and perhaps a 3.75% reduction of value of the car, but there’s still a 25% tariff on the car as a whole, and you can bet that most of that will go directly to ther buyer.  I’m just glad my 2020 Honda Civic is still running now, as the prices of both new and used cars, already very high, is going to go up thousands of dollars more.

*Amazon was originally going to display the cost of tariffs when a consumer checked out, which could be considered a political move but I think was a move to let customers know that the company wasn’t raising prices to bilk them. Now however, and for reasons that might be obvious, they’ve decided not to implement that decision:

Amazon was forced to play down a report that it was considering displaying the impact of tariffs during its online checkout process after President Trump called company founder Jeff Bezos and the White House said such a move would be “a hostile and political act.”

The e-commerce giant said Tuesday it had considered displaying how much import charges would increase prices on its ultracheap shopping website Haul, but said the idea “was never approved and is not going to happen.”

Amazon also said it hadn’t considered the idea for the main Amazon site, and no changes had been implemented on any Amazon properties.

Yet the company’s response was too late to avoid White House involvement. Trump called Bezos to raise concerns after Punchbowl News reported that Amazon was planning to display the impact of tariffs during its online checkout process, according to people familiar with the matter.

Criticism from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sent company shares down in early morning trading.

“This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” Leavitt told reporters. “Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years.”

Amazon declined to comment on the phone call between Trump and Bezos.

The company considered displaying import charges ahead of the Trump administration’s planned change starting May 2 to a popular tariff exemption, known as de minimis, for small shipments from China, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Trump can bully his way out of everything like this, and clearly Amazon is afraid of what Trump could do to them. Yet the effects of tariffs are going to linger for years, and, as you know, prices are sticky downward.

*From the AP’s reliable “oddities” section, we learn about German finger wrestling. Have a look at the photos in the article!: Men dressed in lederhosen, seated on opposite sides of a table,  hold onto a circular leather loop, with just their middle finger and try to pull their opponents over the table:

Men in short leather pants and embroidered suspenders risked dislocated digits as they vied for the top prize at Germany’s championship in the sport of fingerhakeln or finger wrestling.

Around 180 competitors took part in Sunday’s 64th German championship in Pang, which is about an hour’s drive southwest of Munich.

It’s thought that finger wrestling, popular in Germany’s Alpine region and neighboring Austria, originated as a way to settle disputes. The earliest depictions of the sport date to the 19th century. Participants wore the traditional Bavarian dress known as tracht.

Here’s how it looks:

What a world! What a world!

And this came up as the next video. I couldn’t resist. I missed 2 out of 25.  Take your chances and report below!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej makes a botanical pun, but the adjective and flower names are both derived from the Greek myth

Hili: Not many of these narcissuses in the garden.

Andrzej: They know that I don’t love narcissists.

Hili: Mało tych narcyzów w ogrodzie.

Ja; One wiedzą, że nie kocham pięknoduchów.

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From I Love Cats:

From Richard:

From Things With Faces, an angry turkey:

Masih is back, highlighting the plight of an Iranian political prisoner (see here) about to be executed. His mother’s plea:

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