Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, July 26, 2024
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106 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus 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
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BlueSky.
Writeup on J D Vance, Teneo and Leonard Leo. Lots of links in the piece:
https://www.propublica.org/article/jd-vance-alex-jones-leonard-leo-teneo-maddow-video
snip
Meanwhile, over at LGM, the post on couch sex is up to 1165 comments, mostly couch jokes.
The headline of the day- French rail lines disrupted by ‘coordinated sabotage’ ahead of Paris Olympics opening ceremony
The Florida headline of the day- Child made 20 swatting calls regarding bomb, mass shooting threats to multiple Florida counties, sheriff says
@Bill Jempty:
Next obvious question …. Has the person or persons who paid the child been apprehended?
@Bill Jempty: Kids these days.
HEY, YOU! GET OFF OF MY LAWN!!!!!
@charontwo: I don’t think I understand the Vance spectrum ideas. I agree that there are “real biological, cultural, religious, spiritual distinctions between men and women,” and I would add that many of these differences exist between you and me, between you and some other person, between all of us. This means we should work to respect one another and not be shoved into only two categories. The whole idea that there’s only men and women and that each of them must conform to some single standard of being a man or a woman is wrong.
@OzarkHillbilly:
You mean don’t step on the weeds*?
*- 5 Brownie points if OH knows what I am referring to.
@Bill Jempty: Sorry, no idea.
@OzarkHillbilly:
There was an episode of the Munsters that before going on a trip somewhere, Grandpa puts a sign out on the front lawn- “Don’t step on the weeds”
According to Eugene Robinson of the WaPo, Trump is miffed because Harris is getting more media attention than he is.
It shouldn’t matter whether he was hit by a bullet or a fragment of something, except it matters a lot to the former President. He was shot at, wounded, and nearly hit by several bullets, and that should be enough. But he hasn’t allowed his treatment and physician’s records to be released, and now Wray’s testimony on Wednesday that the FBI doesn’t know what hit him has really set things off.
The Times is now saying their analysis suggests it was a bullet. But that analysis also says “the crack of the bullets are heard as they pass the microphone that Mr. Trump speaks into.” Really? I’d have said that the shots are heard when the sound from the muzzle reaches the microphone, which is about 1/4 second after the bullet passed the same point. It also appears fairly obvious that people in the crowd behind him react to the first gunshot by looking to their right and back again before he reacts to being hit in the ear. I must be missing something.
@Eusebio: Bullets from rifles like this travel at maybe Mach 2. Faster than the speed of sound, as you indicate. Which means they create a sonic boom as they travel. I think that this is what is referred to – the “crack of the bullet as it passes by” – not the sound of the powder exploding when the rifle fires.
@Eusebio:
Whether I like a person or not, I respect their right* to medical privacy.
* I was a Navy hospital corpsman and then a x-ray technician after leaving the Service for over 25 years. For the last 15 years I have been dealing with Stage IV cancer.
@Jay L Gischer: Does any of this really matter? To my way of thinking, the real story is that Trump went from wearing a flesh colored bandaid in a pre-convention picture to a white gauze pad folded over a different and larger part of his ear at the convention. (I’m sorry I don’t have the pictures.)
ETA: How insecure IS this goober, anyway? (Maybe Jack or JKB can enlighten us.)
@Jay L Gischer:
Yeah, supersonic travel and sound get weird.
In a Mythbusters ep where they tried to determine whether sonic booms can break glass, they had a Navy F/A-18* do low passes at various Mach speeds, It’s weird in that you see the plane rather low in absolute silence, then get the sonic boom and the engine sounds only after it passes by.
Some bullets do travel faster than sound. You may have seen in war movies a soldier gets hit, and then there’s the sound of the rifle firing. This is mostly accurate, as the bullet arrives before the sound does, but questionable whether the shot would be heard at that distance.
*No, really. They tacked on the low supersonic passes to a Blue Angels training exercise. It’s astonishing how much cooperation the entertainment industry gets from all sorts of government authorities at all levels.
@Bill Jempty: I concur. Then again, I don’t care about the extent of his injury. He was unqualified on the Trump Tower elevator, on the day of the shooting, continues to be today, and will still be unqualified next week/month/year.
@Bill Jempty:
Sure, but if the Convicted Felon is making a spectacle off his minor injury, then he should back it up shut the f**k up.
“He’s a hero because we was shot at? I like people who weren’t shot at.”
I noted this in the Vance thread but as that seems to be dead it’s worth repeating here…the “unhappy childless cat ladies” thing is but a small sample of his particular brand of GOP crazy. He also thinks that married couples with children should pay a lower tax rate (despite using more resources, and no word if, say, the Buttigiegs would qualify), and that married couples with kids should have weighted voting.
An @ssh0le and crazy, so on-brand for the GOP.
While the whole “JD Vance fucked a couch” thing was fun, and I’m sure whichever crass, juvenile commentor put it out there had a good time, it did arise from an unsourced myth. That is, it’s false.
This interesting story, however, is sourced and raises the question: do they not do oppo research during Senate campaigns?
Did JD Vance accidentally reveal he searched for inappropriate video of a woman and a dolphin?
I failed to mention the part where the Times analysis suggests the first of eight bullets was responsible. That’s what makes the timing of the crowd’s reaction relevant. And really trying my best to not sound conspiratorial.
I do absolutely respect people’s medical privacy, but this is different—a public figure not releasing the basic outcome of an assassination attempt. Similar to how he made the treating physician cite HIPAA when he had Covid as President.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8TeM2m0ook
George Conway ad re: Trump above
More Conway: https://www.psychopac.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8TeM2m0ook
George Conway ad re: Trump above
More Conway: https://www.psychopac.org/
A bunch of Trump supporters are big mad that they got towed and had to pay $380 to get their cars back after parking illegally (The Law & Order Party (TM), remember) at the Trump rally in NC.
Whomp whomp.
“ElonMusk”
As it seems like JD’s Couch Fucking Extravaganza seems to be leaking out to more normie places, has anyone who does the Mother’s work of looking at RW websites seen any reactions there. I’m morbidly curious to know what they are doing with a taste of their own medicine? I can’t bring myself to go to those places cause I know it’ll be too damaging for my mental health.
ETA: So, I am friends with a few cocaine aficionados (no judgment from me) and the video of Jr coked out of his mind was shared in our group chat. The coronation is that he was WILDLY coked out of his mind in that interview.
For the record, I don’t do coke. Not for any moral reasons. I just know myself and I know there is absolutely no way I could take it safely, responsibly, or stop. I’d be dead in a weekend. It’d be a glorious wide awake weekend, but I’d be dead.
It is officially too late for me to either die young, or even die before my time. I hit 70 today, much to my surprise. Life has been far better to me than I deserve, and as I’ve said many times, if I drop dead an hour from now, I will have no complaints. Thank you life, you’ve been very kind.
@Neil Hudelson:
I like the story for two reasons, because: (1) it seems like Democrats are taking the fight to the Trump ticket in the same manner that they routininely take the fight to Democrats, and (2) I hope it’s true.
Let them explain their way our of these type of allegations.
@charontwo:
I adore her. Bad ass woman. Mouthy trans women of the world unite! and piss everyone off.
@Michael Reynolds:
Happy Birthday, Daddy Reynolds.
JD Vance has tipped into punchline territory.
@Michael Reynolds: Happiest of birthdays!!
Happy birthday, Michael!
@Beth:
I checked MAGA Central, aka Lucianne.com, and there’s not a peep about Vance and the couch. They must be regarding it as Fake News.
@Michael Reynolds:
Happy 70!!!
@just nutha:
I kind-of care, Trump is not just any Tom, Dick, or Harry. However, improbable this scenario is, did the bullet actually hitting him (even what seems like just a “flesh wound” glancing blow) effect his hearing or something like that?
Picture this, he is all alone in a room with Putin, and Putin knowing Trump might have hearing issues softly makes a comment, Trump nods, thanks him for his time, praises him as a great leader, says great…see you next month. A couple weeks later Ukraine has a tactical nuke dropped on them and Nato is scrambling to get to a war footing in a matter of hours vs days, weeks, months. And we had no clue this was about to happen.
I think less people are rolling their eyes at the above scenario I laid out than I might think, as Trump has met with Putin alone in the White House (it was the White House, correct?).
Also, Bill (and anyone else who agreed with Bill)…your big concern with Biden was his health and whether or not he was up to the rigors of being President, so it is a bit weird that you think we should all not care about Trump’s health and whether or not he is up to the rigors of the job.
Not to mention, he is making his health an issue by trying to silence everyone by saying, look…I, Donald Trump, survived an assassination attempt, but as you can see I am fit as a fiddle and ready to break a boulder in half with my bare hands karate chop style, so just stop talking about my health and mental acuity, because I said so.
Yikes, no. I will not just take his word for it. Did you take Biden’s word for it that if he had not been asked to step away from running for President that he was still sharp enough to become the leader of the free world for another for years?
@Michael Reynolds: Happy Birthday!
@Michael Reynolds: Happy Birthday!
@inhumans99:
Please find the post of mine where I asked that Biden’s health be divulged.
What I was doing was giving what opinion of what his mental health was and is where it is going.
@CSK:
I guess I’m slightly surprised. It’s pretty funny and they are supposed to be the ones who aren’t “triggered” by everything. Hell, I would have thought a number of them would have joined in.
So as not to divert another thread with a sidetrack, nothing much is made of Carthage or Carthaginians after the third and final Punic War.
Quick recap: Carthage started as a Phoenician colony on present day Tunisia. In time it grew into a rich commercial empire. And eventually it went on to butt heads with another growing empire in the region, the Roman Republic.
It bears remarking the second Punic War left the Romans traumatized. The Carthaginian general Hannibal not only invaded Italy, but kept control of parts of it for a long time, all the time repelling the Roman legions sent to remove him. Rome prevailed only after Scipio Aemilianus quit trying to remove Hannibal, and instead took a force to invade Carthage.
This is what led Cato the elder to close all his speeches in front of the Senate for years with the line “In my opinion, Carthage must be destroyed.” And that pretty much sums up Roman public opinion as well. The war was won, the invaders expelled (finally), but control over the Mediterranean remained contested.
The third war was part payback, part dealing with the Carthaginians once and for all. It was brutal, even by the standards of the time, and ended with a long siege of the city of Carthage, followed by razing the city to the ground.
Next in histories you read the survivors were taken or sold as slaves, and that’s the end of Carthage and Carthaginians.
The territory the city-state occupied and controlled was taken over by the Romans, incorporated into the province of Africa, and kept in the fold until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century CE.
So maybe no one cares about Carthaginians today, because there aren’t any left. Or maybe because they sacrificed children to one of their gods. Or because they didn’t pay their mercenaries.
@Jen:
Jen,
You’re leaving out half the story. The towing company’s license is suspended. So it had no right to do what they did.
Law and Order, right?
@Neil Hudelson:
The AP has retracted their article debunking the couch fucking.
https://www.mediaite.com/news/ap-takes-down-fact-check-of-jd-vance-couch-claim-after-article-by-passed-editing-process/
@Gustopher:
Eh, it was not even wrong.
@Bill Jempty: This makes the whole thing even funnier.
@Jen:
No it don’t. The funny part is how hideously bad you jumped to conclusions without doing a five second google search. You mocked (Whomp whomp) someone whose property rights were violated just because you don’t like their politics. Property rights are for everyone. Is your skull too thick to understand that or are you full of hate for people you can’t even name? There were plenty of examples of that last century. Nazis for Jews, Southerners for Blacks….
Nobody deserves to get their car towed by someone without a license to do so and made to pay for it.
@Gustopher:
I guess Vance likes “sectional healing.”
@Bill Jempty: You’ve sort of skipped the part about how they shouldn’t have been parking there IN THE FIRST PLACE. It was clearly signed.
They violated the restaurant’s posted signage.
Don’t do that.
ETA: Also, calm down. It’s completely unnecessary for you to call me names over this.
@Jen:
Car towing for parking violations in Mexico is handled by the police. But if it were done by a private company with an expired license, I’d call the police to please help me retrieve my car from the impound lot, as it was illegally taken. I wouldn’t pay the fees and fines.
And the failure to do so makes the whole thing even funnier.
If you haven’t kept up with the Wounded Knee thread.
Bad day.
Anyway, I suppose you all haven’t had exposure to agitated Kurtz in a while. So, let me direct it toward some present day people, specifically the House.
Nancy Mace: called on Harris to invoke the 25th Amendment. Claimed to be filing the resolution the next day.
House GOP: votes to ‘rebuke’ Harris over border policy
Andy Biggs: filedarticles of impeachment against VP Harris. (again)
Also, everyone really wants to know what happened to that $20k+ he raised to establish a memorial garden for dead children, in honor of his stillborn baby.
Maybe Biggs actually is George Santos in the most daring dual role in history. The makeup artist deserves not just the Oscar, but for the award to renamed in their honor.
Joseph Morelle: introduced constitutional amendment to reverse SCOTUS immunity decision
And finally: Mike Johnson, failed to exert effective leadership on his own caucus.
Oh, right, too many of them are chimps throwing feces. You couldn’t even get them to stop saying racist shit for 10 minutes. Definitely worse than some in the above list, but can’t let anyone off the hook.
He got the job for which you should never have applied. Should have asked Boehner first.
Here is a thought for these overpaid, lazy children:
Do your damn jobs. Don’t make me come back there. I will turn this car around. (jk, they are driving this clown car; we are all stuck in it.)
Find a way to fix problems instead of introducing shit that either has no purpose other than grandstand or has zero chance of going anywhere.
@Jen:
And you’re not forgetting
What happened shouldn’t have happened. Period. You support it. Which shows either hate or an appalling lack of intelligence. If you didn’t show the second, you would have retracted your boneheaded mockery of innocent* people instead of digging a deeper hole.
*- Remember those little things protected by the 14th amendment.
@Bill Jempty: When I was a kid, probably around 12 or so, my family went out for dinner and my father decided to park in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot that was clearly signed that non customers would be towed. After finishing the meal, we went out, and yep, we’d been towed.
They have a business to run, and a lot of it depends on the ability of people to get in and out fairly quickly. When a whole lot of people park and eat up spaces for hours, it can impact business.
That you are so willing to write off the fact that they shouldn’t have parked there in the first place is odd. They wouldn’t have been towed at all if they had just followed the rules (and yes, I know that some are claiming that the manager said it was fine, but ultimately it is the franchise owner’s call).
I am officially done with this now. Have a nice weekend.
@Jen: That was amazing!!! Thanks for sharing.
While I’m here, Birthy Happday (or is that Burpy Hapthday, I always get them confused) to MR.
@Bill Jempty:
I read the article. And I agree about property rights. Because of that, I’m interested in this part of the article:
Trumpers have no right to ignore the property rights of the restaurant. They did. And they got towed. The license status of the towing company is only germain in that the restaurant would’ve had to contract with another company to enforce their property rights. But that doesn’t change the fact that the company that owns that lot has a right to enforce their property rights.
Whomp whomp.
@Bill Jempty: Might I suggest you try decaffeinated coffee?
@Bill Jempty: Just sos you’ll know, mental health and geriatric-issues health (because dementia isn’t–or shouldn’t be–a mental health issue in the same sense as, say, paranoid schizophrenia) is also covered under HIPAA.
@Bill Jempty:
I’m not sure how violated their rights were.
If the suspended company was contracted to enforce parking ordinances by towing cars illegally parked, or of business owners can legally have cars towed off their premises for violating parking policy, or obstructing access, then the only problem is the towing company wasn’t supposed to this while under suspension, not that having their cars towed was an illegal violation of their rights.
Suppose a MAGAt robs a store at gunpoint to feed his fentanyl habit*. Now suppose he’s stopped and arrested by a cop who’d been suspended and couldn’t legally arrest the perp.
Would you claim the MAGAt’s rights were violated?
If these people had no right to park where they did, or the business in question had a legal right to get the cars towed, then no rights were violated. The matter of the tow company suspension fall in what the media often calls a technicality.
So, yes, that company shouldn’t have been towing cars. But the outrage should be they were illegally parked, not that they were towed.
*I think this is called malice aforethought.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
How am I or are doing that? I don’t provide medical care to Biden?
@Jen:
Back in 1985, my mom had surgery in both feet (I forget why) in Houston. She temporarily needed crutches and a wheelchair to get around. My parents assumed this entitled them to park their rental car in handicapped spots.
This does makes logical sense, so they weren’t abusing the availability of such spots, but legally they couldn’t, because their car’s plates were not so marked. They should have asked at the rental agency what the rules are, and if they could do something about it (like maybe get handicapped license plates, or some sort of temporary permit or something).
It was a case of nothing ever happens, until something happens. They got a ticket eventually.
@Beth:
Was this recent? If so, do you have a link?
@Kathy: Very simple, Kathy.
Both North Carolina and Charlotte law require the property owner to give notice before towing.
The law is for everybody. Again.
@Bill Jempty: There was sign. A sign is notice. Just out of curiosity, what the heck are you arguing about? These people parked in the lot of a restaurant, preventing customers from parking there. There was a sign that said words to the effect, “Customers only, others will be towed”. They got towed. End of story.
Now, if you are objecting to the gloating over others misfortune just because they are Trump supporters, I can understand that and even agree to some extent. But if that’s what you mean, say it.
@MarkedMan: Not doing your homework again. A notice has to be put on THE VEHICLE.
Commenters are gloating. Reverse the situation, they’d be screaming bloody murder.
@Bill Jempty: Just me, but I think that not knowing the whole story (because X–FKA Twitter) may be different from leaving out part of the story (because a news story was updated 17 hours later), unless you’re really accusing her of having access to both and withholding the additional information.
Is that what you’re doing? Tell the truth and shame the devil (as my mom used to say).
§ 20-219.20. Requirement to give notice of vehicle towing.
(a) Whenever a vehicle is towed at the request of a person other than the owner or operator of the vehicle, the tower shall provide the following information to the local law enforcement agency having jurisdiction through calling the 10-digit telephone number designated by the local law enforcement agency having jurisdiction prior to moving the vehicle:
(1) A description of the vehicle.
(2) The place from which the vehicle was towed.
(3) The place where the vehicle will be stored.
(4) The contact information for the person from whom the vehicle owner may retrieve the vehicle.
If the vehicle is impeding the flow of traffic or otherwise jeopardizing the public welfare so that immediate towing is necessary, the notice to the local law enforcement agency having jurisdiction may be provided by a tower within 30 minutes of moving the vehicle rather than prior to moving the vehicle. If a caller to a local law enforcement agency having jurisdiction can provide the information required under subdivisions (1) and (2) of this subsection, then a local law enforcement agency having jurisdiction shall provide to the caller the information provided under subdivisions (3) and (4) of this subsection. The local law enforcement agency having jurisdiction shall preserve the information required under this subsection for a period of not less than 30 days from the date on which the tower provided the information to the local law enforcement agency having jurisdiction.
(b) This section shall not apply to vehicles that are towed at the direction of a law enforcement officer or to vehicles removed from a private lot where signs are posted in accordance with G.S. 20-219.2(a).
(c) Violation of this section shall constitute an infraction subject to a penalty of not more than one hundred dollars ($100.00). (2013-241, s. 1.)
@Bill Jempty:
I won’t say you’re moving the goalposts, but it’s clear most of us don’t live in the incident city and are not familiar with its parking ordinances, nor care enough to go look them up. If you’re going to cite them, please link to the relevant statute, or copy and paste it, so we can have a nuanced conversation.
Towing illegally parked cars is common in many cities around the world, along with towing and impound fees on top of a fine, whether done directly by police or contracted with some private entity. Posting signs to warn drivers not to park at certain places is also commonplace throughout the world.
Paying parking fines and fees for illegally parking is not misfortune, but justice. Unless such restrictions are unfair, capriciously enforced, or targeted only at certain groups of people. If you told me cars parked illegally there don’t usually get removed, but hey were this time because they were deplorable fans of the the cult of the Convicted Felon, that would be completely different.
@Bill Jempty: It’s disingenuous to criticize the health of someone and then deflect about someone else on that same topic.
ETA: You seem to be taking a lot of hits today. Maybe you should reflect on how people are reacting to your thought process and the conclusions you draw because of it.
Happy Birthday Michael! To many more!
@Jen:
I’m sure Bill’s apology and acknowledgement that he didn’t “do his homework” will be forthcoming.
Comment removed by cracker. Better answers above. Suggest we stop beating up on Bill and that he slink away quietly.
Fat chance either will happen.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Thinking about it more, though, the incident does raise an interesting legal question. The cars were not impounded illegally–they were parked in a lot that was posted as a potential tow away zone and qualified for towing. The problem may be that the owners were charged a release fee from by an entity that did not have the right to charge one given that it did not have a license to tow at the time. It would seem that the car owners may be* entitled to sue in small claims court for whatever portion of the fee is related to the towing charges, but can they also recover the part of the fee for impound and storage? Enquiring minds want to know. Lawyers?
*But it’s also possible that they are not so entitled because of what are sometimes called “clean hands” principles. (In much the same way that you can’t sue the drug dealer for stepping on your coke, you can’t sue someone for illegally towing your illegally parked car. Law and Order indeed!)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
We could move on to something completely different.
Like: against my better judgment, I read yet another piece on the “Fermi Paradox.” This one claimed to bring up geology for an explanation.
It was a little bit different, but not quite worth reading. The gist is that life requires water (duh!) and a system of plate tectonics. The reason for the latter as a requirement for life is complicated, so I’ll boil it down to: water circulating through a hot mantle brings up nutrients to the surface (ie minerals).
Ok. that’s fair. But we simply don’t know how prevalent plate tectonics are. Mercury, Venus, and Mars, appear to have none. but it’s not that simple. Venus might have had them in the past, or might have something like local rather than global tectonic activity. Mars certainly experienced geologic activity in the past, producing mountain ranges and volcanoes.
It gets worse. The piece suggested adding liquid surface water and plate tectonics to the Drake equation. Sure. But how? We’ve found several rocky worlds among exoplanets (we can tell by measuring diameter and mass, which yields density). How the bleeding hell can we say whether they have active plate tectonics or not? We may detect water if we find more than trace amounts of water vapor in their atmospheres. I’m not sure how advanced the measurement of exoplanet atmospheres is at the moment.
Last, Earth may not have had active global plate tectonics from the start. In fact, there’s much controversy on when these began and how. Now, did life arise before or after plate tectonics got going? We did have surface liquid water from the start, at least since the crust cooled down.
So, interesting, but not very useful until some future developments allow more detailed knowledge of exoplanets.
@Kathy:
Even if you could get life without plate tectonics (which is likely, consider Europa subsurface ocean for example), it’s hard to see a technological civilization developing without metal ores, which would not be there without plate tectonics.
@Kathy:
Even if you could get life without plate tectonics (which is likely, consider Europa subsurface ocean for example), it’s hard to see a technological civilization developing without metal ores, which would not be there without plate tectonics.
@Kurtz:
Agitated is not the same thing as passionate. You have a dog in the fight.
However, I was a bit surprised at how easily you dismissed, ‘hostile Sioux Indians.’ I dated (and lived with) two Assiniboine* girls, sisters, (don’t judge) both of whom were quite capable of being hostile. And their mother, sweet Jesus.
*I gather the Assiniboine aren’t quite Sioux but these young ladies (and their demon mother) self-identified as Sioux.
@Kathy:
As an aside on the topic of towing lots, one of our warehouses is next door neighbor to one, an impound specialist. The office I use when I have to be there (fortunately seldom) overlooks it and about twice a day, at least, there is the loud spewing of of vile and sometimes highly original insults. They have a large sign over the office, “Founded in 1975”, which spurred this reflection:
Fifty years in business, not one happy customer.
In an almost completely unrelated incident, I once got a ticket for parking in a “No Parking” zone. I was not towed. I was fined $45. Thing is, all my research and observation was that the spot was legal to park in, although there is a sliver of ambiguity.
Since this is California, and parking enforcement is privatized (can you say conflict of interest?), I ended up in Small Claims Court trying to reclaim my fine. The opposition didn’t show, so I got a summary judgement. I told the judge I would like to know definitively whether it was legal to park there, but she said she couldn’t do that without them being there.
I don’t go there much any more because covid. But I see that people are rarely parking there. Maybe I should write a letter to the City Council.
@Michael Reynolds:
“Happy birthday to you,
happy birthday to you,
happy birthday dear Michaaaell,
happy birthday to you!”
And count yourself lucky you can’t hear me actually sing that. 🙂
Rep Ronny Jackson traveled to be with the former President after the shooting and has been acting as his wound dresser and spokes-physician. Jackson himself had not been at the PA rally, but some of his family members were there in the “friends and family pen.” Jackson’s nephew was injured as a result of the shooting, but thankfully not seriously.
Saturday evening, Jackson said his nephew had been grazed by a bullet.
“”They heard the shots, and everybody dropped to the ground,” Jackson explained. “And I don’t know if you guys have the picture or not, but he was grazed in the neck. A bullet crossed his neck, cut his neck, and he was bleeding.””
Two days later, at the RNC,
“Jackson said his nephew suffered a minor injury after “a bullet or a fragment of a bullet or something grazed his neck.””
I don’t blame him for being initially a bit hyperbolic or perhaps just misinformed with regard to his nephew, but I think Ronny Jackson revealed himself years ago to be not a credible source.
@Kathy: I used to play with this stuff with my students occasionally. My take is mostly deconstructive (I think, if others disagree, well and good). “Life requires water (duh!) and a system of plate tectonics.” May be true, may be false, depends on how one defines “life.” Maybe our definition of life is deficient. Maybe it’s erroneous. Maybe it’s incomplete. Maybe we don’t understand life (except experientially) to begin with and can’t define it at all, much like pornography. My point as a teacher of composition was that everything depends on definitions and acceptance of specific conditions. Mathematically, the world is flat provided that the measurement of slope is restricted to distances of less than 0.01 of a degree and such distances are defined to have no slope. It’s all in the definitions. Fermi’s Paradox isn’t a paradox as much as it is a denial of ignorance. If we admit that we don’t know, there’s no paradox at all.
@charontwo: But is it TRUE that you can’t have metal ore without plate tectonics or do we only not know whether it’s possible or not? (And if it is TRUE, then why do we imagine that we can mine asteroids?)
@dazedandconfused: I LOVE IT!!!!
@Michael Reynolds:
Yes, we do identify as Sioux. Small world. Actually, crazy that small world is.
Though, perhaps I was clear. I am glad you were surprised, because it means I have been mostly clear about things throughout my time here.
I wasn’t dismissing it, at all. I was attempting to use it as an example of retconning, as it was in Joyner’s OP. That post was written too quickly, and yes in a state of agitation, but not about this. One sec, on that.
Meaning, that describing it that way, as apparently, the Army does, reverses the roles of aggressor so that the “hostile Indians” are hateful toward the poor, defenseless settlers. If you prefer, the more accurate term would by myth-making or more bluntly, self-serving dishonesty. But because the Army describes these things retroactively, I kind of felt it fit how you seemed to be defining retconning.
I take your point about passionate vs. agitation. I’m not unhappy with how I approached the topic, at least right now. My last post on that thread, I could edit and edit. I made a small addition or two and ended it. But I am, as you know, prone to letting other issues seep into comments here. And because I had to work very hard for years to learn to control a bad temper, so I am know I am always at risk of going overboard. In fact, all of you, strange as it may sound played a role in my figuring out how to overcome it. So thank all of you for it.
Anyway, I just got some shitty news today. Not world-ending. And not unexpected, but I knew that if it turned out as expected, that it would not resolve anxiety and tension stemming from the waiting.
ETA: I say “we” reflexively, which speaks to the difficulty I wrote about in my last post.
What is also oddHere is something interesting, historically the Assiniboine or Nakota were enemies with the broader Sioux peoples.@MarkedMan:
Let’s see if this works. I don’t know how to work Shitter and I had to pull the link off Snapchat. Here we go:
https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1816607972803371009?t=I2zM4Js04coRFvNwFQvfzw&s=19
I’m not going to gang up on Bill, but if you wanna read about a real towing scandal check out these guys:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Towing_Service
NYC has nothing on Chicago when it comes to actual predatory towing. It happens so often that I couldn’t remember the name of Lincoln Towing.
Hope Kurtz is around, as this is rather long-winded reply to his question yesterday re. my unhumble opinion on UK politics 1900-14.
Had to go to bed then, lol.
@Kurtz:
The basis of the crisis was Ireland.
For more than fifty years, the Liberals had become increasingly convinced that only Irish Home Rule could resolve the problems of the Irish/British relationship.
While the Conservatives equally became increasing fixedly against it, partly on the principle of “union” but also because it was obvious an Irish Parliament on even a vaguely democratic franchise would enact land reform, which the Conservatives were determined to resist.
Under Salisbury Ireland had become a touchstone of Tory doctrine, and also led to the split in the Liberal Party in 1886, when the Liberal Unionists bolted, and merged witht the Conservtive (formal union 1912).
Which is why, to this day, the official name of the Tories is “The Conservative and Unionist Party”
In 1906 the Liberals won the election by a landslide. They ten moved forward (slowly) with plans for Irish Home Rule, and (quickly) with welfare reforms. The Conservatives blocked both in the House of Lords. Cue constitutional crisis.
In 1914 the British army in Ireland had a major mutiny at the Curragh, when numerous officers announced they would no obey any order to put down an Ulster Unionist Volunteers rebellion by force.
While in Britain, some groups of conservatives had been forming militia “volunteers” and declaring they would resist attempts to create new peers en masse to overturn the Tory majority in the Lords.
The Lords despite being coerced to give up elements of their blocking power continued to delay and amend legislation
Meanwhile, the Labour Movement was itself running out of patience (as were Irish nationalists)
leading to the “Great Labour Unrest”
Lloyd George said:
The outbreak of war in 1914 brought the political situation off the boil in Britain.
But meant the Irish Home Rule Bill, passed in September 1914, only passed with a provision of possible exclusion for Ulster (to be determined) and implementation was suspended until the end of hostilities.
This with the inclusion of Conservatives in the war coalition in 1915 drove some Irish nationalists to despair of Home Rule, and to mount the Easter Rising in 1916, with all the consequences of that.
Perhaps Britain avoided civil war at the cost of the end of the old United Kingdom, and civil war in Ireland instead.
All things considered, the Conservatives/Unionists from 1900 to 1914 were insanely reckless, driven to such by their fury at the Liberals and Irish challenging their assumed right to dictate the limits of policy re Ireland, constitutional law, taxation, social welfare, labour rights etc.
If they had been more reasonable, a lot of blood and sorrow in Ireland could have been averted, and a lot of the bitterness of class-conflict on Britain in the 1930’s as well.
At least the Conservative Party after WW1 and esp WW2 largely sobered up, and accepted that the old aristocratic hegemony was done.
But then, they’ve lately reverted to assuming that their sectional obsessions and insouciance about pragmatic governance must be shoved down the nation’s throat.
Hopefully, their recent massive electoral defeat will make them wake up.
But then, it didn’t in 1906; and a lot of the Tory right is continuing to get high on their own supply even now.
May take a couple of election cycles for them to either come back to Planet Real, or get replaced.
@charontwo:
Well, we don’t know there’s life in Europa. We also don’t know anything about its inner surface, which I assume is some kind of rocky type. For all we know, it’s got lively plate tectonics.
@dazedandconfused:
I think the customer is the municipal government. They might be happy.
I’ve never had my card towed away, but twice I had to call a tow truck to get the car to the shop. I was satisfied both times.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Life usually means “life as we know it.” We’ve gotten a lot of it wrong throughout history, but the water requirement is not one of them. Life, as we know it, it’s mostly made of water (between 45-75% for mammals).
@charontwo:
@Beth:
I have to wonder how much of cisgender Xlon’s irrational hatred of his daughter has to do with his great replacement or population collapse fetish.
Miss Wilson doesn’t say, but unless she saved some of her gametes, and has since had bottom surgery in addition to hormone therapy, she won’t be able to have children of her own.
This is perfectly fine. There are alternatives like adoption and surrogacy, and in any case it’s her business and her partner’s, if any, and no one else’s.
But it’s the kind of thing that would really bother a delusional narcissist like cisgender Xlon.
@JohnSF:
I assume that by “land reform” you mean taking land from the English aristocracy and distributing it to the Irish?
@Beth: I have no experience to speak of with cocaine, and absolutely no first-hand experience, but at best, he sounds manic. And as a wearer of a hearing aid (my other ear is too far gone for one to help), I have to say I have almost no idea of what he was saying. It all flew by in a blur too extreme for me to decode*.
*I’m assuming that, as a special ed “client” during your school daze, you will either be familiar with the term or able to suss out what part of the hearing process “decoding” is.
@Beth:
Basically, in re absolute land rights.
But a lot of the proposals of the IPP (Irish Parliamentary Party) were well short of confiscation: secured tenancy, rent limits, right to buy, rent-to-freehold conversion over time, etc.
If the landlord lobby had been willing to meet the IPP on reasonable terms, they’d have done a lot better than they did in the end
@Kurtz:
Put in a reply to your question yesterday about my p.o.v. re UK p[olitics inthe 1900’s
One other towing experience that just blurbled up in my memory. Would have been about 2001ish. I was in a terrible, mutually abusive relationship with this woman and I was desperate to find my way out of it. I was, what, 22ish? Anyway, I had met a different girl and was blown away by how awesome she was* but the first night I met her I didn’t get much of a chance to hang out. Well a couple nights later a mutual friend called me and told me to come to a bar to hang out with her and the girl. Sweet.
For some reason, I drove my soft top Jeep into the Loop and, unable to find a real parking space, like a (horny, desperate) idiot, I parked in a tow zone. I came back the next day to find my Jeep had been towed to Chicago’s central pound by the City. That pound is on Lower Lower Wacker. For those who don’t know, this is what Lower Wacker used to look like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMagP52BWG8
Until they started rebuilding it in 2001. Lower Lower Wacker still looks like that. Basically you have to descend into Hell to get to the pound. You leave all sunlight and good vibes above you and you drop down to where the homeless won’t go. To make matters worse, the Jeep was titled in the name of my Dad’s business and he was pissed that I missed a day of work so he told me to deal with it myself. They weren’t going to release the Jeep back to me because of the title issue, but I was able to talk them into giving it to me. I come from a long line of insane bullshit artists. I don’t know how I pulled that one off. But, got the Jeep back, unharmed, with a binder full of CD’s still in it. Lost a couple hundo though.
The coda to that nonsense was I was finally able to break up with the abusive girl (I am equally at fault) because of the dream girl. Who, turns out had a schlub boyfriend (she was a 10, he was a 3). Looking back at it later, I know the EXACT point in which I could have broken them up and taken her away (to deal with my miserable bullshit instead) but I couldn’t bring myself to take the shot. My theory on why is that my subconscious didn’t think I’d be “safe” with her and thus unable to transition. Thanks brain, you idiot.
@Kathy: The key phrase there is “as we know it,” but I already did my whole schtick on definition, so I won’t repeat it. But I will ask, is it possible that there is life as we don’t know it?
@JohnSF:
The impression I was left with after listening to Duncan’s treatment of the English Civil War (1642-1688*), was that UK politics are massively complex, have too many players, and are very difficult to follow.
They don’t seem to have gotten any easier through time.
*Yes, he took it all the way to the Glorious Revolution.
@Beth:
Some of my coworkers have company-owned cars. Now and then, one gets towed. The police will release it to them, provided they have photocopies of some company legal papers, and a signed letter from a company officer empowered to perform “administrative acts.”
It can be a PITA to get all that, but once they have it there’s no trouble.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
That’s an easy one: we don’t know.
For one thing, we don’t know what life as we don’t know it might be like, since we don’t know any life as we don’t know it. Otherwise it would be life as we know it.
Science fiction is rife with speculation, from silicon lifeforms to plasma beings living in the atmospheres of stars. I don’t think you’ll find any water in the Sun’s corona, certainly not liquid. But there are no known exemplars.
We can even argue silicon life is unlikely. the basis is that carbon and silicon both belong to the same group (column) in the periodic table, and have similar chemical properties. Yet they have very dissimilar physical properties, not the least of which is the distance between nucleus and outer electron orbital, and also mass.
My favorite argument, with one serious flaw, is that silicon is far more abundant than carbon on Earth. In the crust, silicon makes up 28% of it. Carbon is 0.02%. Ergo silicon had more opportunities to react and form compounds, and capture more elements in molecules, than carbon could ever dream of. Yet we have carbon life and silicon rocks.
The flaw is that relative abundance is only one factor. For all we know, hotter planets, or colder ones, or those with large amounts of fluorine, or something else (or more likely may other things else), are teeming with silicon life.
TL;DR We don’t know.
@Kathy:
UK politics: very civilised and peaceful
Right up until it’s not.
Glorious Revolution = Dutch invasion, which we all like to pretend it wasn’t, lol.
I exaggerate, but not by much.
Always amused me that the Orange Order NI “loyalists” were celebrating what was in some respects a foreign coup. 🙂
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Life, pretty much by definition, must involve a replicator.
Which requires chemical complexity for the originator to descendant to be a replication of a chemical pattern.
Due to the nature of chemistry, this means carbon chemistry, because carbon-based molecules are almost uniquely capable of complexity in their linking with other elements and other carbon atoms in structures.
Unless there are some weird atomic bonding possibilities in extreme conditions of matter, only carbon chemistry can support complex replication.
Which means that life is likely to be “as-we-know-it-ish”, at least as a natural, as opposed to engineered, outcome.
Which in turn requires a temperature and pressure range in which carbon compounds can persist, and probably (as the carbon molecule T/P regime is in that area anyway) liquid water as a medium for such chemistry.
@Michael Reynolds:
Forever young, Michael.
Wishing you peace and peace of mind.
Take it or leave it.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
The “Fermi Paradox” has never seemed to me all that paradoxical.
For all but an infinitesimal portion of the record of life on Earth, it was either merrily mono-cellular, or confined to the oceans, or etc.
Average the incidence of “high tech” civ on Earth as a proportion of total time of life on Earth, and then apply that to the likely suitable planets, and you get a very low number indeed.
Fermi counter: it only needs ONE.
But if we were a candidate to be that ONE, how much indication do we show of being inclined to to put the effort in?
@JohnSF:
Yes! I read it, but didn’t get a chance to reply. Thank you. That is fascinating.
I’ve had . . . Let’s say, an active day on here. But concentrated. I had a few irl things to do.
@JohnSF:
Yes. Dennett was good at explaining the idea of simple replicators gradually becoming more complex.
Carbon is the key, at least to life that resembles us. It’s structure allows for single, double, and triple bonds, thus allowing it to bond to itself and many different combinations of other atoms and molecules.
It’s versatility is what enables complexity that developed.
@CSK: Let it go. He didn’t fuck a couch. It was one night stand.
@Beth:..Wacker Drive…
One of my all time favorite films!
IMDb states “A world record 103 cars were wrecked during filming.”
No breakdown on Chicago Police cars, Illinois State Police cars. 12 Bluesmobiles and at least one Ford Pinto.
@Franklin:
I’ll table the discussion.
I want to say “3 years too late.”
Biden to announce plans to reform US supreme court
But I’ll console myself with the old investing adage: “The best time to start investing was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
I give you the late great Steve Goodman. 1948-1984. May he rest in peace.
Lincoln Park Pirates
Encore
I watched the Olympic opening ceremony and Celine Dion. Wow, oh wow. But I’m a couple of years older than her and think I look younger. Her medical condition (stiff person syndrome) makes her look like Odo in Star Trek DS9.