Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, September 15, 2024
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59 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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The author doesn’t address in enough detail (for me, anyway) the political pressure to ignore the misinformation coming from the Trump White House. I think that was the biggest hindrance to national health officials getting out proper and timely information. Trying to placate an idiot holding a match and a leaky gasoline can.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/09/covid-political-polarization-public-trust-vaccine/679806/?gift=uSl1q9M95MAeGuZMpRtvf8NWJY2_JPGNAGsqJMTwsDg&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Staying with Ohio for a moment, has any citizen of Springfield Ohio made an official police report about animals being stolen and eating by Haitians?
(Filing a false police report attaches significant consequence, while spreading a rumor does not)
I have been hearing Springfield Ohio* described as a small town. 50,000 plus people live there. That’s not a small town in my book.
For 30 years I lived in Lantana Florida. Lantana has a population of 12 or so thousand. I wouldn’t consider it a small town either.
What is a small town? I have driven across the country multiple times. Much of Kansas, West Texas, Montana, etc etc are full of what I’d define as small towns.
@Bobert:
Both the mayor of the city and the governor of the state have said there is no such pet-eating activity going on and it’s all a fantasy. The police have several times said the same thing.
I posted something in yesterday’s comments from the woman who started the whole clusterf*ck by putting something on her facebook page; she regrets the whole thing and now denies it happened.
Only Vance and Trump are claiming it happened. How much more denial is needed?
@Bill Jempty:
Easy: any town with less than double the number of people I pass driving across Mexico City. I estimate this means a town of less than 2 million people.
We often discuss, here in the comments, the need for solid news in place of the slushy mixture of some news, op-eds, lifestyle articles, and other non-news that the big name news outlets provide. If you share that sentiment, I’d recommend becoming a regular reader of the Associated Press, which does focus on actual news. The AP also provides a lot of international news, which has faded a bit in the electronic pages of the NYT and WP.
For example, here are five stories in a row from the AP that I just read:
Congo court sentences 3 Americans and 34 others to death in coup attempt
Kenyan evangelical leader accused of murder in the deaths of over 400 church members
Residents of a Mexico City suburb have been living with sewage-filled floodwaters for a month
More women in Iran are going out in public without hijabs
The Russification of Belarus continues
It was a nice cadence of one piece of one actual news after another, on important topics that get downplayed or not covered at all in the informational murk of the prestige press, so I thought I’d share.
@Bill Jempty:
If you’re a reporter based in New York City, Washington DC or Atlanta, GA, everything else is small.
WRT Springfield, Ohio: With 3 days of bomb threats, closures, etc., why are we not calling this domestic terrorism? We’ve brought stupid teenagers on Facebook up on lesser charges.
@Not the IT Dept.: LGM had a post with this tweet:
link
@Monala:
He’s achieved what everyone thought was the unachievable: he’s made Trump look like the rational half of the ticket. The only real news churn Trump made in the last couple of days was speculation about whether or not he’s boffing Laura Loomer.
This is going to turn out very very badly for Springfield and when you consider that Vance is a senator for Ohio it’s really incredible.
@Bill Jempty: I was raised in ND in a town of 3,000, literally one stop light. The big city for us was more than an hour’s drive to Minot, population now smaller than Springfield, and even smaller then.
Interview with a cat (from Houston Chronicle)
I’m a cat. Stop politicizing us. We don’t care about you humans.
Where are all the NYT, WaPo, LA Times, Chicago Tribune articles titled “Deranged old man peddles nonsense while threatening violent deportation of immigrants” ?
Funny how that stopped once Biden left the race.
It’s almost like the press supports Trump.
And of course.. when one of the few sane NYT employees [Jamelle Bouie] puts out an article correctly calling out the Republican “Blood and Soil” rhetoric… the NYT editors change the listed article title from properly referencing that Blood and Soil.
Because if there’s one sane political party in the US [the Democrats]…. by the transitive property, there must be an equal and opposite one somewhere! And if there isn’t one, the press will fantasy them into existence in their head because the two just have to be equal because I said so!
Whatever you do, though, don’t call the press conservative. That hurts their feelings, and they need a safe space.
Jd Vance is on Face the Nation and doubling down on crazy. He’s expanding his targets to include Dayton and “Africans” and dead geese. He basically called the gop mayor of Springfield a liar.
Vance has embraced the “Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness” mindset with gusto.The host had a hard time hiding her contempt for him. He is a facile liar, unlike trump, but just as vile.
I currently live in a town with no stoplights, around 5k people. That said, I went to college in Springfield OH, and compared to Columbus, Cincinnati, or even Dayton, it’s small. It’s been decades since I have been back, but I have to imagine that the small, private, and rather expensive liberal arts college there is not enjoying this type of attention.
I miss the great feminist blogs of Pandagon/Feministe/Feministing/Shakesville that inspired the Orwellian comment policies here at OTB.
@Paul L.:
I’ll bite: what is Orwellian about our commenting policies?
Also, please include your definition of what Orwellian means. I mean, other than saying anyone cannot say whatever they want without consequence. Which, for the record, isn’t Orwellian.
@Kathy: Indeed! While I taught at Luther University, I lived in Yong-in. A small farming community between Seoul and Suwon. Population: 675,000. (And only 4 universities of which Luther was the smallest at roughly 2,000 students.)
Everything IS relative. (And in its own way, too.)
ETA: @Not the IT Dept.: Nope. That’s where I draw the line. There IS no RATIONAL HALF of that ticket. Only completely crazy and completely crazier.
AETA: And check out pictures of Loomer and tell me that she doesn’t resemble both Melania AND Ivanka. Temu Melania is spot on! I can totally believe he’d boff her. But I do wonder why she would. That’s just icky.
@Matt Bernius:
Orwellian = anything that hurts the fragile wittle feefees of the racists who are screaming about black people eating cats and dogs.
MAGA cultists have followed felon Trump’s lead in taking responsibility for nothing while whining and playing the victim, all day, every day. That the Trump right is now widely viewed as unlikeable, unpopular, extremist bigots and weirdos is everybody else’s fault.
When your preferred Republican candidate has lost Dick Cheney, the most prominent living Reagan staffers, and almost all of his own former White House officials — it might clue you in that the problem is your shitstain candidate. But that kind of thinking is only for normal people. For deranged far right nutjobs is just another excuse to whine, cry, and boo hoo about how they and Trump are all innocent, blameless martyrs.
H/T to Balloon Juice for sharing the “Project 2025 Song,” a Schoolhouse Rock-esque breakdown.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Well, I did say “look like the rational half of the ticket.” That’s not saying he is.
@Matt Bernius:
Surely, by now, Satan has added another level to Hell for trolls who waste people’s time. Perhaps the punishment for them is to struggle their way through an endless jungle, never finding someone willing to listen to their spurious nonsense.
TIL that the spot where Mussolini was strung up is now a McDonalds.
@Kingdaddy: one of the troubles I place at the feet of the Industrial Revolution.
If people like JD Vance would actually have to spend most of their days grubbing in the dirt in order to grow enough foot to eat, they wouldn’t be spending their days making up stories about their fellow humans in attempts to gain power.
I’m starting to think that trolls who deliberately make up stories just for mischief should be thrown into a valley with a fence around it and no technology more recent than 1776. They can’t be trusted to behave properly.
The Taylor Swift endorsement hasn’t made a measurable impact in polls yet, but I wonder if the 400,000+ newly registered voters are even reachable by pollsters.
On Vance, I need his “I tell lies for the benefit of real Americans” to blow up in his face, hard.
@Monala: I do hope that Tim Walz asks him about this during their debate: “You’ve admitted you’re lying to the American public to get the press to do your bidding — will you continue to lie to us if you’re elected as long as you think it will get you results?”
@Scott: What Alexandra Petri does is really hard and those without her talent should think long and hard before trying it in public…
@Paul L.: “I miss the great feminist blogs of Pandagon/Feministe/Feministing/Shakesville that inspired the Orwellian comment policies here at OTB.”
Hey, look — our little friend Paul thinks it’s now been long enough since the debate that he can show up here without being asked to defend his leader’s performance or to defend the outrageous lies about immigrants.
No soap, chuckles.
@Grumpy Realist:
This morning’s bit on CNN would indicate he has more than enough foot to eat.
@Paul L.:
You should probably pay more attention to self-owns: Whining about feminism = Can’t get laid.
@Matt Bernius: Do you really want to agitate the guy who has a disturbing fixation on rape?
According to the Trump campaign, someone fired shots in the vicinity while he ws on his golf course in West Palm Beach.
He was “rushed” to safety and is unharmed.
@CSK:
Apparently it was two guys shooting at each other. Trump was never the target.
@CSK: In my experience if you hear the bangs of the gun you’re not the target. If you hear the zipping of the bullets though….
This has to be playing havoc with Trump’s psyche. I bet he’s dealing with some PTSD from the whole original incident and he’s probably too stubborn to seek help.
@Matt:
I thought the MAGAs would make a big deal of this, but so far, nothing really.
@Not the IT Dept.: There’s no rational half. He barely even looks less insane. But yeah, some will mistake FG for being the “mature elder statesman” of the team. That’s how bad the system is broken. 🙁
@Matt:
Now CNN is reporting that Trump WAS the target. Fox is calling it an “assassination attempt.”
One man is in custody.
@CSK:
There’s something inherently wrong abut a candidate who attracts that many bullets.
WaPo is reporting:
Does anyone who speaks lunatic know what the ceramic tiles are about?
The GoPro makes sense — you want to capture treasured memories. I think the advice of “don’t record yourself doing crimes” doesn’t apply when you’re doing something there is no way you won’t get caught for.
@Kathy: I don’t think you can just stir up the crazy people you want to stir up.
@Gustopher: An AK-47 style rifle with a scope made me laugh pretty hard. AK-103s (updated ak-47) come from Izhmash with sights that don’t adjust past 300 meters because the 7.62×39 round drops into the dirt pretty quickly past 200 yards. 200 yards is well within iron sights or red dot territory. At 300 yards you’re looking at 20 inches of drop and it increases rapidly past that. Also in my experience at 300 yards the bullets are at the mercy of winds. Max hunting range for me was under 200 yards due to the issues with the round past that. According to CNN the shooter was “300-500 yards away”. Trump is incredibly lucky that this one was amateur hour.
I have no idea what the ceramic tiles would be about though. I’d like to know what crazy thoughts resulted in the tiles being brought. Maybe they thought it would work as improvised body armor?
If you get presented very early on with an “investment” opportunity that is quite obviously a Ponzi scheme, shouldn’t you nevertheless “invest” in it? The payoff would be pretty much guaranteed, if the term is short enough, even though the scheme is certain to collapse later on.
The answer is no for various obvious ethical reasons.
But given today’s ethics, or lack thereof, in finance, it may be justified as “smart,” getting a great return with little risk, even if you know you’re getting money stolen from other people.
@Gustopher:
I suppose if you’re trying to blow someone’s brains out, a tasteful backsplash might keep things tidy?
@Gustopher: A backpack full of ceramic tiles would be in the range of 100lbs. My only guess is he thought he was going to sink some evidence in a pond.
@CSK:
We joke about it, but they do seem to need to wait for their talking points, and it takes FOX et al time to write up and approve the spin. They have stories up now, but they seem to be just the facts. One new item I see is a statement the shooter hadn’t fired, the shooting was security at him.
Looking around it seems some preppers/idiots think that since military body armor uses ceramic inserts that any sort of ceramic tiles glued together will work too..
@Matt:
Unless the ceramic tiles were inserts designed for body armor.
The guy who brought an AK to Trump’s golf outing is Ryan Wesley Routh, a 60-year-old white man who is registered as an unaffiliated voter in NC but (drum roll) voted for Trump in 2016.
He seems to have become disillusioned with Trump and was pushing for a Haley/Ramaswamy GOP ticket this time around.
He’s also a crazy anti-vaxxer and back in 2002 barricaded himself in a Greensboro business with a gun.
Some musings on the possibility that the pet eating lies will provide a pretext for paramilitary violence:
https://open.substack.com/pub/othermeans/p/rallying-the-paramilitary-right
@Joe:
A pic which appears to have been how the SS found the position set-up which he fled from.
Weird. But I can see a certain logic in using a couple camo bags, kept spread out with large tiles, to better mask that position in a narrow angle directly to the front.
@Mikey:
The gunman also went to Kyiv in 2022 to offer to fight, but was apparently turned down and then tried to recruit others to fight. There’s a video of him on YouTube giving an interview to Newsweek Romania… didn’t watch, but scanned the transcript–I don’t care to know more about the guy right now.
@gVOR10:
Ever visited Hatton? Rumor has it that the (Lutheran) church that great-grandfather was involved in building is still standing.
In one of their many gun myths, the Mythbusters tested the bulletproof qualities of various objects and materials. This included ceramic floor tiles. as I recall, mixed with cement on a layer at least two tiles deep, they were somewhat effective at stopping or slowing the less powerful handgun rounds. They’d be useless against an AR-15 round, or even a higher caliber handgun round like a .38 or .45
@Eusebio: Body armor inserts was what I thought first. ETA: Wishful thinking that any ceramic would work was my second thought.
I assume Melania and Barron will drop everything in NY and rush down to Florida to be at Trump’s side. No? Gee.
So this guy in Florida has a previous history of criminal behavior involving a gun. I hope that the law comes down heavily on the people who armed him.
@CSK:
Perhaps not. But you need to understand their point of view: what’s in it for them?
@Slugger: It’s Florida, they’re not going to come down hard on him. There’s not even any dead people involved. Even with dead people, Florida DOES. NOT. GIVE. A. FUCK.
Regarding the ceramic tiles found in the suspect’s backpack, there’s this tidbit from a source I wouldn’t normally think to check:
Assassination attempts, just a fact of life we have to accept. Amiright Vance?