Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Friday, September 27, 2024
·
60 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
The J.D.Vance dossier (Trump campaign oppo research):
Click on the link halfway down the page to the PDF:
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/read-the-jd-vance-dossier
(Found via LGM, https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/09/the-worst-people in the comments)
Sounds like Trump will win his appeal on the NY fraud case. From the trial:
Sauer added that none of Trump’s lenders and business partners were harmed by the discrepancies on the financial statements, an argument Trump’s lawyers have made throughout the case.
“There were no victims, no complaints,” Sauer said.
So now fraud is legal if there aren’t victims? I can misrepresent myself on legal documents so long as no one loses money? I’ll take a wild guess that if I lie on legal forms I could still get in trouble. But big companies? They can go for it. No wonder the Supreme Court legalized bribery.
IF I engage in conspiracy to commit murder and get arrested before the murder, can I use the “no one got harmed” defense?
A poor person can end up in jail for jumping a turnstile, but inflating your building values by 500% to get better loan terms is just being a smart businessman because “no one got hurt”.
Delaware County man pleads guilty to killing, eating a dog (WIVT/WBGH, New York):
In this case not an immigrant, not Haitian, not transgender.
@Lucysfootball: I don’t think this is right. The legal guys I trust who live-skeeted the hearing on Bluesky seemed pretty unanimous that the overall verdict would be upheld 4-1 with some reduction in the amount of the fine (and maybe a reversal on the attorney sanctions).
Example:
Air France flight goes nowhere relatively fast.
Diversions, even back to the origin airport, are not that uncommon. Most tend to be due to weather, and few happen so close to landing. Imagine you’re almost there, and instead you’ll take another 3.5 hours or so to get back where you started.
That’s pretty much my nightmare when flying, especially for business.
This really sounds like a bad episode of Law & Order, except they’d have to really jack up the dollar amounts.
Evidence included money orders (WTF??????), texts and emails.
Seriously, doesn’t anyone have any self respect anymore? $63k??? C’mon, folks, ex-con Luddite left $180k cash on the table because it wasn’t enough, and that was in 1980!
The old joke about the biggest problem with being a crook is the company that you have to keep is still true.
https://abc7ny.com/post/retired-judge-stewart-rosenwasser-kills-campbell-hall-orange-county-home-fbi-arrive-arrest/15348982/
@Kathy:
My personal nightmare involving aircraft would be my plane (single engine float, IIRC) returning to departure point of King Salmon AK, circa late 1981/82
@Flat Earth Luddite:
ETA the $180k episode was 81/82, not 80.
ETA 2, what a cute little edit box!
Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
It’s probably foolish to think a NYC mayor will successfully translate into being a national political figure, but I still think Eric Adams would be in my top 5 for “who will be the next Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden?”.
5:56 PM · Jan 3, 2022
Dame Maggie Smith, 89, has died. A great actress. RIP.
@Kylopod:
It’s this kind of rhetorical brilliance that certainly would have catapulted Adams into the Presidency.
Dateline: Vienna IL—
In keeping with the tradition of native son, former Illinois Secretary of State, Paul Shoebox Powell, another Vienna local, Justin Vaughn, has been charged with bilking the government.
I was driving the Carbondale Yellow Cab when Powell died and the scandal broke. I remember one of my fares, an older woman, being indignant about it all. “People shouldn’t get upset because the man had a little extra money when he died.”
@Kingdaddy: My favorite Adams nugget is “Let your haters be your waiters when you sit down at the table of success.” Whoever first wrote that line—whether it was Adams himself or one of his speechwriters, or if he cribbed it from some other source—I’m sure he thinks it’s the cleverest zinger imaginable.
@Mister Bluster:
It’s the petty, loose-change-in-the-couch nature of this stuff I find so offensive. $100k over 6 years*? $63k as an Orange County DA? As Nero Wolfe frequently said, “Pfui!”
*Really? Three counties? Six years? Out west, 911 operators could rack up double that in all-you-can-eat overtime due to short staffing over that time period.
When Trump was asked if he’d withdraw his endorsement of Mark Robinson, Trump replied: “I don’t know the situation.”
Really??? Everyone else does.
@CSK: Trump always takes the Sgt. Schultz route when he’s unsure how to answer something.
@Kylopod:
Soon he’ll be describing Robinson as some guy who may have brought the coffee.
@Flat Earth Luddite:..Pfui!…
Out of 102 Illinois’ counties per capita income, Pope is ranked 87, Hardin is ranked 95 and Johnson (where Vienna is the County Seat) 101, next to last.
You have to work with what you’ve got.
@Mister Bluster: When reading this story, please know that the town’s name is pronounce Vie-Anna, cause we are in Illinois.
@DK:
Not in possession of their marbles either.
@CSK:
Cough…cough… I don’t.
I’ve seen the headlines about Robinson but my curiosity for details has failed me here.
Maybe I’m too buy writing a recognition code my next book.
Do you know the way to San Jose
Just follow the yellow brick road
We may end up wasting away in margaritaville then
@CSK:
Dame Maggie was a two time Oscar winner. For the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and California Suite. I remember her for those, her portrayal of the Mother Superior in the Sister Act movies, among others.
About a year ago I watched the Alec Guiness version of John Le carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In it, and the book, is the important character Moscow gazer Connie Sachs.
I always thought Maggie Smith would have been perfect for the role even though Beryl Reid won a BAFTA for it. RIP.
@Bill Jempty:
Yeah, well, you didn’t publicly endorse Robinson for the governorship of No. Carolina, nor did you stand on platforms with him.
Anyway, if you saw the headlines, you know more than Trump claims he knows.
@CSK:
I sat next to Nell Carter on a airplane once. She looked familiar to me but I didn’t realize who she was till a flight attendant addressed her as Ms. Carter.
@Kathy:
That reminds me of this-
I love the Marx brothers.
@Joe:..we are in Illinois.
One of the first jobs that I worked in 1973 for the General Telephone Company as a construction cable splicer was rearranging the telephone cable along Illinois State Route 146 east of Vienna to accommodate the then under construction Exit 16 of Interstate 24. Since then I have covered the Vienna telephone exchange for GTE and later Verizon Communications (not Verizon Wireless) many times as recently as 2009. Much like Eldorado (El doe ray doe) and DuQuoin (Du Coin), two other telephone exchanges that I covered, I picked up the local jargon for those place names right quick.
@DK:
But we can still deport him, right???
@CSK: Why would Trump know anything about some nKKKLAAAANNNGGGG um, black dude in NC? Just because Trump endorsed him doesn’t mean he keeps track of the details. (You liberals are sooooooo unreasonable in your demands. 😉 )
@Flat Earth Luddite: Say what you will, zeeb, $100k in theft over 6 years is significantly more noteworthy than $63k in discount graft over 20 feckin’ years.
And unless you embellished the story you told me, it was a quarter million you turned over to accounting instead of taking the grocery sack full of cash to the airport.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Aren’t we just? 😀
@Mister Bluster: While I will go with DuQuoin as peculiar spelling-wise, the pronunciation is probably just what you’d expect. /doo- kwoin/ or maybe /due-kwoin/ would only be remarkable pronounced with a “Lawn Guyland” accent–and even then, not much.
In this article, Melania appears to refer to her hubby as “a zit celebrity.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13894391-Melania-Trump-barron-donald-assassination.html
I heartily agree that he’s a walking pustule, but really, isn’t this a bit too, uh, blunt for the wife of a presidential candidate when describing her spouse?
@Bill Jempty:
but probably a gun owner.
@Bill Jempty: My favorite of her roles is the grand dame of the family in Downton Abbey.
@Bill Jempty:
I love the Marx Brothers. Is that from Monkey Business?
My sense of humor runs from Marx Brothers, to George Carlin, to David Letterman. I was a Letterman fan from his aborted daytime show on. Never liked Three Stooges, or Abbot and Costello, though Laurel and Hardy were great. Just learned (in a book! A reading rainbow…) that Groucho was very pro Civil Rights, from all the way back in the ’30’s, while Bud Abbot was a hardcore Joe McCarthy guy.
@CSK:
Dang, not Prof. McGonagall!
Time to binge Downton Abbey for the 3rd time. Compilations of Maggie Smith’s zingers as the Dowager Countess are ubiquitous on social media, here’s one example. She was hilarious in this role and bemused at TV making her more popular than ever, at the end of her career. Here’s a famous clip of Smith quipping about this phenomenon on Graham Norton’s talkshow.
Downton is just a big budget period soap opera. Its silly storylines were parodied perfectly by SNL. The writers we’re forever painting themselves into a corner, solving plot dilemmas with deus ex machina like a sudden death or unexpected inheritance. But the acting and dialogues are so perfect, and the set, costumes etc so sumptuous, you forgive the dumb plots. Of course, a third Downton movie is coming wring more money out of its global fanbase next September. The fans will not let go even though there’s no more story left (Smith’s character died of old age in the last movie.)
I’m a doctrinaire liberal, but always drawn to nostalgia shows that romanticize conservatism, a la Leave It To Beaver. They’re like comfort food, a vision of a world that never was but should have been. Downton’s denizens are who you wish conservatives were. Yes, they venerate tradition, private property, wealth, empire, and marriage. But while they are suspicious of change and often bewildered by modernism, they ultimately learn to adpat their rightwing worldview to accomodate progress. They are not just angry reactionaries like today’s right.
Republicans like to complain that liberals dominate culture. They could cut into that if they were capable of producing content as good as Downton Abbey. Frankly, the modern American right doesn’t have the wit, talent, joy, or intelligence. Audiences don’t want their doom, gloom, hate, and negativity.
@Michael Reynolds:
It is from a night at the Opera.
The only time I watched Carlin was when he did an HBO special in the late 70’s. A line from that special is still unforgettable to me over 45 years later. He is doing a news broadcast.
Terrorists threaten to blow up the world at 10 pm. Highlights at 11.
Due to Channel 11/WPIX in New York City showing their movies every Sunday morning at 11:30, I grew up watching A&C. I was born and raised on Long Island till I was 15 aka 1976.
We’ve had some discussion of what FTFNYT means. Dan Froomkin writes What if the media has the election all wrong? and links to Drew Magary at SFGate for the best succinct explanation I’ve seen of what’s wrong with the NYT.
Trump is threatening Google with criminal prosecution because their search engine only returns “bad stories” about him and good ones about Harris.
I mean, is there anything good to say about him?
@gVOR10:
Harris tried a legacy media interview once with CNN/Dana Bash and was met with gotcha inanities like explain why your fracking position is different than it used to be.
Seriously, how many real life voters care at all about the answer to that? Or, Donald Trump said whatever what’s your response?
That interview stands as a great demonstration of why she is stiffing the NYT and WaPo. She is trying to reach actual voters with real information, not waste her time on such BS.
@Mister Bluster:
Secretary Powell was under investigation when he died of a heart attack in a Vegas casino/hotel. His nickname came from investigators finding shoeboxes full of cash in his room. He was under investigation because of an incident in Champaign, maybe Urbana, while I was at Illinois. The school paper, the Daily Illini reported on an odd incident the night before. A bunch of uniformed cops raided the big off campus frat bar. They checked IDs and detained several students, but not in city or county jail, at the local Sec O State license office. The paper checked with the city, county, and state cops, who professed ignorance of any raid. That led to a lot of “who the hell were those guys?” and it turned out they were Officers of the Secretary of State Police. Who knew there was such a thing?
Some of the frat boys families had connections and the Chicago Trib started looking into it. This led to investigating the SoS Police Chief, one Frank (Porky) Porcaro, and interviewing his wife in Springfield. And his wife in Chicago. Further digging led to corruption charges and started an investigation of his boss, the aforesaid (Shoebox) Powell.
Also, when we lived in Cincinnati we’d fairly often drive up I-75 past Versailles OH. Ver sales.
@gVOR10:
Yeah, Joshua from Wargames had it right all along, the only winning move is not to play.
I and many others over the year have always groaned that many politicians, especially Democratic politicians, need to resist the urge to play the game of ingratiating themselves with the big media outlets or newspapers like the Washington Post and the NY Times because it does nothing for them, and can only harm them.
What is different about Kamala is that it does not just feel like talk that she is not interested in playing nice with the NYT, she seems to have understood what many folks have been saying for years now, to resist the urge to give in and do many interviews with reporters from the NYT because that is the expected thing for any serious candidate for President to do, and it will help her with voters who want to see her answer very serious hard hitting questions.
Maybe there was time 30-50 years back when I would say that yes, doing these types of interviews was a must if you wanted folks to notice you and vote for you, but Kamala seems to have studied how Trump has been playing the game and in emulating some of how he operates (such as taunting/belittling his opponents with name calling) has in turn caused Trump great distress. He even complained out loud that she is ripping off his moves as a candidate.
That is what really stresses Trump out, he knows that his schtick works, and expects Kamala to behave on the campaign trail like most Democratic candidates would, so seeing her co-opt some of his schtick. I can picture him screaming at the tv, or at an article he has read for Kamala to stop doing that! After all, calling someone weird, taunting folks, baiting someone into losing their cool, that is something only Trump has been allowed to do until this point in time.
@CSK:
If there were, wouldn’t Google know about it?
Came home from the grocery store, stored everything away in its proper place. I forgot one item – ice cream. Spied it two hours later just sitting there on the counter
I guess I will figure out later whether refrozen unfrozen ice cream is worth eating.
@inhumans99:
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So, we can conclude El Weirdo doesn’t want sincere flattery, but rather the fake, made-up kind.
Also, I can imagine that when DeSatanis or Haley see Harris effectively whittling down the Felon, they must want to kick themselves for not having done the same to him when they had the chance.
@Kathy:
I’m sure Google would. You can’t find what’s not there.
@CSK:
This is like the criticism of David Muir over the debate. They fairly fact checked the big whoppers from both sides. Trump happened to drop three and Harris none. IIRC Glenn Kessler tried hard to do his bothsides routine but all he could come up with in Harris was a couple of she said billion but it was only really only 700 million trivia.
@de stijl:
During my grocery run I heard an overhead piped in song meant to complement the shopping experience – a feel good experience essesntially – modern day elevator music. If you’re focused on shopping you barely notice.
I was in the chips and cookies aisle and Rush by Big Audio Dynamite (aka BAD) kicked in on the overhead speakers. A pretty solid song, kinda like it, always have. Two things:
1. Never was that popular even back then. Although an alternative “hit”. Why would it be chosen? An fairly obscure song choice.
2. Mick Jones, the singer, famously previously sang Lost In The Supermarket for The Clash.
I was wandering around kinda lost in the supermarket to Mick Jones as overhead speaker gen x overload. I nearly burst with generational pride.
I heard Mick Jones sing in a supermarket. Better yet would be Lost in the Supermarket in a supermarket.
@Mister Bluster:
I was to DuQuoin in 1973 to watch the Hambletonian Stakes Race. We stayed in Carbondale.
When I used to write stories for free, I wrote a The Fugitive fan fiction set in DuQuoin. Dr Kimble is cornered by the police there but a old acquaintance of his from Stafford provides a magic way for him to disguise himself.
My old editor Steve Z who worked on it, said my tale only had two possible endings. Steve said I came up with a clever unanticipated ending.
Anyway that story is never be sold even as a short story. Don’t want to get into legal problems.
@gVOR10:..“Shoebox” Powell…
Per the Illinois State Library Heritage Project:
What’s your source?
Apparently the Illinois Secretary of State Police have been around since 1913.
Source
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Well, yes that’s true. Snohomish Co LEOs always seemed to run more to the Chubby & Tubby level of graft/corruption. Not like Pierce or King County.
In my defense, it was a suitcase, not a paper bag. The old dude who owned the boats was too classy to use a paper bag.
I was always amazed that no one ever jackrolled him. But then again, Seattle was an interesting place in those days, eh?
Maybe it’s the middle of the process and things will change, and I’m aware how imperfect my understanding of economics is. But when you read a headline that says Poverty in Argentina soars to over 50% in an effort to cut costs and reduce inflation, you may get the same feeling as when you hear “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
@de stijl: My experience is that it crystalizes after it refreezes. It’ll all depend on your definition of “worth eating.”
@just nutha:
I’m sorta expecting refozen ice cream is going to have a bad mouth experience. You know what ice cream is supposed to do with mouth feel.
I will go into refrozen ice cream with an open mind. Who knows? New to me. I’ll find out.
@de stijl:
Depends on how desperate you are. In general, no.
I would recommend using it to make milkshakes. That hides most of the nasty crystallized texture.
I am really sad that Schwann’s, now Yelloh, is going out of business. There was no better root beer float than Schwann’s ice cream and A&W Root Beer.
@just nutha:
@de stijl:
I wonder how refrozen ice cream would do if given a ride on a Ninja Creami. For that matter, whether it would be better to let it melt, and run it through an ice cream maker.
Refreezing ice cream does fine if it doesnt go liquid, just goes very soft. With the grandkids I will buy 7 or 8 kinds of ice cream and let them get very soft. In a loaf pan we squish it into ribbons next to each other to make rainbow ice cream. If we cant find a color we want we resort to vanilla plus food coloring. Makes a long loaf like a meat loaf you just slice after refreezing. Lots of fun and it’s tons of fun listening to the kids have very serious discussions about why pink cant go next to orange or some other color.
Steve
@Mister Bluster:
My ex was born and raised in Rochester, MN. Dad was a clinic administrator and mom was a nurse. Dad died during her adolescence and that sorta effed her up.
Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic, is chock full of the recently traumatized professionals. A large portion of adults extant there have witnessed / been party to a horrible death recently. Part and parcel of the job. Rochester is not a big town and nearly every resident has a fairly deep and immediate relation to the hospital.
It’s almost like a medieval shrine destination town. Everything revolves around the clinic and most of the services revolve around the clinic.
Rochester has the oddest hotels unless you are attending to a very sick relative in the hospital. Then, it makes sense. If not, it doesn’t. They have odd amenities.
A suprisingly big town, 120,000. (I was surprised by the pop and I lived half my life in Minnesota.)
It’s kinda like Las Vegas. An entire town focused on one thing.
@Jax:
Dude!
My grandparents lived outside of a small town in NW Wisconsin on a dairy farm with associated fields. Every summer I got shipped off there as basically free labor. I slept in a closet.
A&W was the only branded place in town. Town was 2200 folks.
I have an inordinate affinity towards A&W root beer and an ice cream float. A crappy cheeseburger and limp fries.
Every now and again I buy A&W root beer. It evokes many memories.
@de stijl:
You know you are old when music from your misspent youth is played as soothing, anodyne background music in your grocery store.
Big hat tip to the corporate dj weirdo who chose Rush by Big Audio Dynamite for store play. I approve. Situaution nowhere. Rush from the change of atmospere.
I was transported back in time to a camping trip to outside of Hayward, WI way north, where we hiked, biked, camped, and drank like fiends. I have a specific memory of a place and time.