Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, September 6, 2024
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43 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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This is gonna be great! I can see the headlines now. Black .. woman .. saves democracy! The crowds are going wild!
Seems we’re starting out strange this morning…
Georgia shooter’s dad arrested on multiple charges, including murder:
“Colin Gray, 54, is facing four charges of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight of cruelty to children. Officials said on Thursday evening the charges were directly connected to his son’s actions and “allowing him to possess a weapon”.”
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wj0vyl8xko (easier to read, fewer ads better laid out than American sites)
And apparently the kid was on the FBI’s radar before the shooting:
“The suspect was a student who investigators from Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia interviewed last year after receiving information from the FBI about threats posted on Discord, an online gaming chat site.
His father had told police his son did not have access to his hunting guns. A source told CNN that the AR-15-style gun used in the killing was purchased as a Christmas present after the FBI’s visit.”
Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/09/04/four-people-killed-in-georgia-high-school-shooting/
Dad is going to have a lot of explaining to do to the neighbors over this.
@Not the IT Dept.: Good. Only the father should be tried as an adult. We try kids as kids because they are kids – their brains are not fully developed, even if that goes against our sense of retribution.
I, too, have a dream.
That one-day punishment will cease to be the primary objective of our justice system, in favor of healing and rehabilitation. That we no longer see our people as disposable, but instead value them, educate them, care for their health, employ them with dignity, house them, create opportunities for them, and give course corrections only when needed.
This is my dream.
@Not the IT Dept.: While I’d like to think that it’d be gob-smackingly unbelievable that a parent would be so irresponsible as to purchase a weapon like that for an obviously screwed-up kid who had already made threats, IIRC, Adam Lanza’s mother took him to gun ranges. It’s almost like these parents have sh!tty judgment or something.
Parents absolutely need to be charged in situations like this. And insurance companies need to start really jacking up homeowners rates if there are guns in the house with kids.
@Jen:
Almost??
JD Vance is saying that these school shootings are just a fact of life and the only answer is more security. Yeah, like having cops or security personnel in the school has ever prevented mass shootings ever. He’s calling for the usual thoughts and prayers and says it’s all very sad and terrible.
There’s info coming out about the Gray family’s home life, and apparently dad Colin has a bad temper and routinely verbally threatened and bullied his wife and kids until the wife packed up the children and left. So I’m wondering if Colt (interesting name there, dad – your idea?) wasn’t just another weapon dad Colin was using against society as a whole. I think this is going to turn into an ugly domestic narrative. I hope they keep Colt as far away from dad as possible in jail.
@Jen: I have been saying to my wife that because it is going to be so hard to regulate guns with the current SC, we should push for required firearm insurance. A separate policy for each gun (like cars). Let the insurance companies set pricing based on owner, gun type, etc.
Hey Matt
I wasn’t sent to purgatory. Thanks for working to fix that.
Where’s Ozark? Did I miss him telling us it was granddaughter week or that he was going to see his sons or something? He’s usually one of the first up in the mornings!
You all have just had a Goldilocks number for employment – not hot enough to cause Central Bank to rethink rate cut (capital markets pricing in – you should see helpful cut [w Orange howling about this] at Sep mtg) while just good enough to not give traction to attacks as a bounce up from July
So unfair to the Orange one….
@Sleeping Dog: Tongue planted firmly in cheek. 😉
I@Jen:
… who buy assault weapons and “tactical gear” as toys and talk about “2nd Amendment Solutions” might be sending a warped, weird and dangerous message to their kids.
And yes, outside of military or law enforcement, assault weapons are toys. Weird and dangerous ones, but still toys. Spare me the “hobbyist”, “collector” and “hunter” BS.
Trump keeps badgering Harris to prove she worked at McDonald’s. Why is this an issue for him? Who the hell cares?
@CSK: It’s the game of equivalency. A minor falsehood is equal to a Trump whopper.
@CSK:
And I have to imagine that she continues to ignore Trump’s whining about wanting proof she worked at Mickey D’s. I read that link provided yesterday to the Balloon Juice piece that notes that Kamala is not playing Trump’s game and ignores his taunts. If she responds it gets Trump back in the news cycle, big time and she knows it.
I remember when Obama tried to provide proof he was qualified to be elected President of the United States and plenty of folks groaned because trying to provide proof that will satisfy Trump and his acolytes is as the saying goes, like trying to teach a pig to sing in that is wastes your time and you just end up with an angry pig on your hands.
I also wonder if since he eats at Mickey D’s that he feels that unless he was served by her at some point in his life that he does not believe she worked there, or something like that.
Truth be told, I actually hope it comes out that Kamala mis-remembered and she worked at Carl’s Jr., or just did not actually have a fast food job growing up, (plenty of folks like me never worked the register at a fast food joint growing up), as that would get the GOP, MAGA Folks, even some folks at the NYT and Post all hot and bothered, especially if Kamala ignored any calls from papers like the Times and Post to explain why she said she worked at a fast food joint when she did not.
I think she remains on a pretty smooth path to be elected President of the United States in November.
@BugManDan: I like the idea of gun insurance. A free market solution, how could GOPs object? /s. Back of the envelope, we see 40,000 or more gun deaths per year. (Gun strokers will object that most of those are suicides. A) It’s no longer most. B) Gun/dead, how is that hard to understand?) Let’s use a round 500 million guns in the U. S. And let me arbitrarily say one million dollars per death. If my envelope back is correct, that would require premiums of $80 per gun per year. But, like cars, that would require something like registration and licensing to enforce. Or draconian penalties for being caught with an uninsured gun. Ain’t gonna happen, for which see GOP. (The NRA would go nuts over a government gun registry, although I’ve read they themselves have a pretty good list at least of first purchasers over the last many years.)
That leaves up-front purchase of insurance on new gun purchases. I see in 2023 there were about 16 million such, which would require an up front premium of $2,500 per gun. Seems to me that would, over time, pretty well solve the problem.
Testing with different WordPress account & email
And with old after playing with WordPress profile.
Nope.
@inhumans99:
Saw something yesterday, that someone in the Harris campaign responded to the McD accusation and noted that she worked at McD in Almeda for a summer between her frosh and soph years. Harris herself didn’t respond and nor was there anything “released,” just a simple answer to a question by a journalist during the day.
“NPR”
@charontwo:
From the NPR piece,
I would’ve expected the Trump team to employ deception, à la the Picard Maneuver.
@Eusebio:
I assume Trump’s operatives were wearing brown shirts at the time.
I went straight to the laptop yesterday without even trying to turn the desktop on.
The laptop had issues. Apart from feeling slower than I remembered it (I’ve used it only a handful of times since the pandemic), I couldn’t get it to open settings. Not by using the button on the start menu, not by way of opening the taskbar settings, not by looking them up in the start menu.
This may be an issue with the mouse (long story), so I’ll try not hooking it up. Past that, it might have been the Windows update utility running in the background. That would be ironic, because I wanted to run settings to make sure the needed updates would be installed.
I also couldn’t run OneDrive or Office 365, but that’s less an issue. I can access OneDrive on the web any time.
On hopeful news, the dead/dying desktop has two HDMI ports in the back. One is marked HDMI IN. Just maybe Murphy* blinked and missed it, and I can use it as a monitor for the laptop. If so, this would let me delay getting a desktop replacement for at least one year, maybe longer if I can force install Win11 in the laptop.
We’ll see.
*I aced Murphy’s Law and Other reasons Why Things Go Wrong 101 back in the day. For instance, once I’m done making the Win10 install media, get the laptop updated, and wasted all Saturday morning doing so, there’s a 72.6% chance the desktop will start normally anyway, rendering the morning’s work unnecessary.
Judge delays Trump hush money sentencing until after election
@Mister Bluster:
And after all that, once the election passes and the orange turd in man’s clothing loses, Merchan won’t even sentence him to a day in prison.
@Mister Bluster:
FWIW, I think that is the right decision.
It’s also another example of how, despite certain people’s beliefs to the contrary, Trump has been treated incredibly fairly by the courts. Now, if only all defendants received that type of treatment.
@Matt Bernius:..Trump has been treated incredibly fairly by the courts.
If it were up to me Trump would have sat in a cage in the courtroom during the trial and upon conviction duckwalked to Rikers Island.
But that’s just me.
@Mister Bluster:
If we really had the Russian Show Trials that commenters (and RT payed/played propagandists) talked about, that is exactly what would have happened.
@Matt Bernius: I’m mostly in the “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” camp generally, but yes, the judge made the right decision.
@Kathy: Kathy, I’ve changed my mind. Yesterday I said I wouldn’t advise anyone to change their computer or their operating system. But as your friend (even if only an online one) I think it is time for an intervention! The relationship between you and your computers and your various Windows operating systems is just not working out, and it’s time to move on. They are not treating you fairly or compassionately! They are ill-using your time, which could be spent experimenting in the kitchen! Get an Android tablet with a keyboard and a mouse. Or a 2000’s era Palm Pilot. Or even a Blackberry from the same era. 1997 Nokia phone? Anything is better than this hopeless technological relationship!
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Agree. Shameful though it be, We The People have a convicted felon polling within the margin of error for the job of top law-enforcement officer of the nation, so any sentence might be rendered moot in a couple months.
The courts can’t save us from ourselves.
Asked if Trump’s view on jail time for convicts relates to his own conviction,..
“Of course not fool!”
@Tony W:
I have a dream, too.
I volunteer at a homeless shelter. The biggest in town. Down by the river and the railroad tracks where hardly anyone lives. I hand out towels and personal hygiene supplies in tiny plastic cups to anyone who asks 4:30 am to lunch three or four mornings a week.
There are people who will be permanently unhoused given current circumstances. Either due to mental illness, substance abuse, developmental disability, etc. A substantial subset, but not the whole. Untreated paranoid schizophrenia is a hell of a thing. (Methamphetamine producers and sellers should be summarily shot in a field and left to rot – that shit is straight up poison.)
Many folks are functionally fit to have stable employment and housing and are very ably assisted by the on-site social workers. Some folks just need a social worker to help them along the path, to kick their butt gently, guide them productively, present opportunities. That portion is a healthy subset. With effort (mostly theirs) they can get out. Wednesday morning, a woman got off her phone, climbed on a table and screamed “I HAVE AN APARTMENT!” to all. Most everybody clapped. Gave her a solid fist bump later. It made me cry. Getting the shittiest Section 8 subsidized apartment with vouchers is an onerous task with many hoops – you have to work hard and be committed. Becoming housed when you are currently homeless is very hard work.
And some never will. No money, no job, no address, no credit/bad credit, no current ID, criminal record – you just cannot even try to get housing. Ain’t gonna happen.
Some people will never get out of the cycle of shelter, streets, jail, repeat. That subset is basically perma-fucked. Frankly, they would have a substantially better life experience if they were in jail / prison or committed to a locked down mental heath facility. A roof, a bed, three hots – life on the streets is way worse.
I certainly do not wish for the type of psychiatric hospitals that existed until fairly recently, nor for the debtors’ prisons, but there should be a safe place where the chronically homeless could go. Autonomy with security. I don’t know how to make that happen.
If anything, things are getting worse today and cities are now criminalizing homelessness. Where else can they go?
@MarkedMan:
I’m not sure if you’re doing mockery or comedy.
Find me a 24-27″ Android tablet, at the price of a mid range desktop PC, and I’ll take it.
This does not qualify.
You know Marjorie Taylor Greene has been unusually quiet for a while now. Considering how pro Russia and anti Ukraine she has been I can’t help but wonder if there’s a connection to the recent news out of the DOJ…
On top of the MAX disasters, the Starliner fiasco, the delays with the 777X and MAX 7 & 10, and the lack of a new design in the pipeline, Boeing may well have the machinists union strike next week.
I wish them luck.
@Kathy:
(Poor quality) Comedy. Never mockery, which is only reserved for dishonest.
Sérgio Mendes 83
RIP
Batucada
Dick Cheney says he’ll vote for Harris.
If he really wanted to protect his country, he’d invite El Weirdo Felon on a hunting trip.
@Kathy:
That’s kinda big news. He was de facto President for eight years.
@Kathy: And she wins the Internet today!
@Kathy:
Well, bugger me sideways with a bargepole.
Dick Cheney has his principles.