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Steven L. Taylor
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

Comments

  1. Kathy says:

    Discovery’s season finale: meh.

    On the other hand, you have to respect how Trek sticks to tradition: that was some big reset button.

  2. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Robert De Niro denied leadership award after speaking out against Trump

    Film actor Robert De Niro was scheduled to accept a leadership award from the National Association of Broadcasters, but the group has rescinded the award after the celebrity spoke out against Donald Trump outside his criminal trial in New York this week, the Hill and the Huffington Post report. The National Association of Broadcasters did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    A spokesperson for the group told The Hill on Thursday that their event was “proudly bipartisan” and said: “While we strongly support the right of every American to exercise free speech and participate in civic engagement, it is clear that Mr. De Niro’s recent high-profile activities will create a distraction from the philanthropic work that we were hoping to recognize. To maintain the focus on service of the award winners, Mr. De Niro will no longer be attending the event.”

    Yeah, they’ve got their heads up their asses.

    4
  3. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Via Anne Laurie over at BJ comes this jewel:

    Jean-Michel Connard 좆됐어
    @torriangray

    It’s 2028. Trump’s funeral was 3 years ago. Gateway Pundit electrifies MAGA with posts about Trump sightings. People send in blurry photos of shambling orange figures in the distance. One man collects a lock of hair he found in the bushes. Locals claim the hair healed them.

    A man in Fresno finds an image of Trump in the an oil slick that leaked out of his 1984 Dodge Dart. Jim Bakker visits the oil spill and says it’s been touched by the hand of God. He offers onlookers survival buckets of Mac and cheese at a significant discount.

    Visitors leave stones at the oil slick. By 2030 those stones are used to build a small chapel. Don Jr is buried there when he passes from cocaine induced cardiac arrest that same year. Followers, now wearing orange face paint, insist he was secretly vaccinated.

    Eric attempts to claim the throne as the true successor to to his father, but followers stone him to death when he accidentally implies black people have souls at an event in Council Bluffs. They parade his corpse through the streets before dumping it in a YMCA pool.

    By 2040 referring to him by his full name is seen as a sin. They whisper “the Donald” in hushed, reverent tones. A splinter group believes he must only be referred to as The Once and Future President, Son of Fred, Child of God. The groups routinely battle in Walmart Parking lots.

    By 2050 many his followers have walked away from society. On the Day of Shrugging, they all put down tools and remotes and wander into the wilderness. Within 5 days 70% of them have died of exposure or animal attacks.

    Those who remained in the cities spend the rest of their days walking the path of reverence, visiting the Trump holy sites: Mar-a-Lago, Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Atlantic City, and for some reason Shoji Tabuchi’s former theater in Branson, Missouri.

    By 2100 the countryside is littered with MAGA chapels created to service the pilgrims. Each chapel has a Trump relic and most have repurposed Rockafire Explosion robots that just repeat CROOKED HILLARY over and over until they die.

    7
  4. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Idaho jurors mull death penalty for man convicted over ‘doomsday’ killings

    After reading that, all I can say is “WTF???”

    1
  5. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Good news:

    Doctors are hailing “off the chart” trial results that show a new drug stopped lung cancer advancing for longer than any other treatment in medical history.

    Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor.

    More than half of patients (60%) diagnosed with advanced forms of lung cancer who took lorlatinib were still alive five years later with no progression in their disease, data presented at the world’s largest cancer conference showed. The rate was 8% in patients treated with a standard drug, the trial found.

    The results are the longest progression-free survival (PFS) outcomes ever recorded in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, the world’s most common form of the disease. They were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco) in Chicago on Friday.

    “To our knowledge these results are unprecedented,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Benjamin Solomon, a medical oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia.

    8
  6. DeD says:

    And the active, malicious GOP attempts to squelch access and the right to vote continues…

    https://apnews.com/article/voting-rights-kansas-supreme-court-0a0b5eea5c57cf54a9597d8a6f8a300e

    3
  7. Michael Reynolds says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    NAB is basically Sinclair at this point. Late stage buggy whip industry.

    4
  8. DeD says:
  9. Stormy Dragon says:

    Waiting to fly home from a two week vacation around the southwest US (Denver, Colorado Springs, Phoenix, Grand Canyon, Zion, Las Vegas)

    PS: I’m not sure what the cause of Las Vegas’s escalator maintenance crisis is, but I think I’ve seen more broken escalators the last three days than in my entire life up until then.

    1
  10. Mister Bluster says:

    If I were the Governor of The Sunflower State (full disclosure, I am not) I would follow the lead of the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress ask the United States Supreme Court to “step in”.

    2
  11. Stormy Dragon says:

    @Stormy Dragon:

    PPS: I walked a total of 72.73 miles over the course of the trip

    7
  12. OzarkHillbilly says:

    So the Saga of the Spider Bite from Hell continues.

    To fill in some gaps, let me recap:
    Monday- A Doc on the Block in Washington. Given antibiotics.
    Tuesday: My wife saw her doctor in Sullivan. Given more antibiotics.
    Wednesday: Went the ER. Given intravenous antibiotics.
    Friday: Went to the ER again. More intravenous antibiotics and admission to the hospital.

    All along it has slowly turned uglier and uglier and uglier, to the point where it occurred to that maybe the spider she killed was not the one that bit her, that maybe she was bit by a brown recluse. The light bulb moment came to me after I left the hospital last night and kept pondering where I had seen such a wound before. Finally I placed it as the scar on a friends thigh that she had been given by a brown recluse. Either that or my wife is allergic to spider bites in addition to wasp stings.

    Anyway, heading back to the hospital in a bit in hopes of bringing her home. Lord knows, the dogs are bereft with out her. They are used to me disappearing from time to time, but not her.

    To top it off, she’s not used to being a patient and is not taking it well. Keeps telling me how that is MY job, not hers.

    9
  13. Stormy Dragon says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Sorry your wife is having such a bad reaction. I hope she turns the corner soon and then recovers quickly!

    3
  14. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Men and other mammals live longer if they are castrated, says researcher

    Whether it is the fountain of youth or the elixir of life, men have travelled the world looking for the key to increasing their longevity.

    They should be looking a bit closer to home, according to one leading researcher – although after they do, they might end up taking the years God intended for them.

    When it comes to increasing the lifespan of any male mammal, “there is one way you can intervene”: castration.

    Cat Bohannon, the celebrated author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, said men went through life “smuggling two little death nuggets”, with research suggesting an orchiectomy can lend a few more precious years.

    Keep yer dirty hands off my death nuggets.

    5
  15. CSK says:

    @DeD:

    I assumed this would happen, as I’m sure you did.

    2
  16. Stormy Dragon says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I wonder if, uh, chemical “castration” helps too…

    1
  17. Eusebio says:

    DeD: “And the active, malicious GOP attempts to squelch access and the right to vote continues…”

    The state Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and therefore allowed to stand a measure that “requires election officials to match the signatures on advance mail ballots to a person’s voter registration record.“

    This can be expected—further efforts to implement signature matching rules that give election officials the ability to reject mail-in ballots that, in their judgment, do not qualify.

    2
  18. Jen says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yikes, but also interesting.

    Males die at a higher rate than females from in the womb right through to old age. I’ve always found this strange.

    1
  19. Stormy Dragon says:

    Flight delayed two hours because American apparently forgot to pick their flight crew up at the hotel.

    Oh to be as free from the consequences of gross incompetence as a large US corporation…

    5
  20. MarkedMan says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: For myself and I’m sure for the rest of this ramshackle commentariat, we are all rooting for her!

    4
  21. CSK says:

    @DeD:

    There’s more here. These people are deeply, deeply crazy:

    http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-threats-courts/

  22. just nutha says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: I hope that her doctors decide to explore the possibility that her reaction was allergic. If it was, that’s a whole nutha treatment protocol. (Says the guy who’s had allergies for 71 years so far.)

    2
  23. CSK says:

    Trump said yesterday that he was “very upset” with how his lawyers handled his case, and that he wanted to testify.

    If he wanted to testify, there was nothing and no one to stop him.

    7
  24. just nutha says:

    @Jen: Is the higher rate adjusted to account for deaths in warfare?

  25. Kathy says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Allergies are the worst. I hope things turn out well.

  26. Joe says:

    @Eusebio: I have been told that in my county all mail-in signatures are checked by two election judges – one Democrat and one Republican – sitting in front of a projection screen that throws up the record signature and ballot signature side-by-side as soon as the ballot comes in. Any challenged signature is returned to the voter with opportunity to rectify. This works. It doesn’t have to be so hard.

    7
  27. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Jen:
    In evolutionary terms males are more disposable. Human females give birth to a single baby for the most part, but males can impregnate any number of women. If you want the species to survive you give the females the upgrades and leave the males with basic contractor-grade stuff from Home Depot.

    5
  28. Kathy says:

    @CSK:

    Two things:

    1) Most important of all, Convicted Felon Orangefuhrer is still guilty*.

    2) This is classic Convicted Felon Orangefuhrer stuff. Take weeks or months to prepare or negotiate, agree on what’s to be done, do it, then complain that he wanted to do something completely different. Come, he just did that a few weeks ago with the bipartisan immigration bill negotiated in the Senate.

    All he hasn’t done is blame someone else. But it looks like he’s setting up his lawyers for that.

    *For those who miss the reference, watch this

  29. CSK says:

    @Kathy:

    Trump has already blamed his lawyers.

    1
  30. MarkedMan says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: “You’ll have to pry my nuggets from my cold dead hands”

  31. MarkedMan says:

    @Jen: Among other reasons, the Y chromosome can almost be considered a defective X, meaning that men only have one copy of a number of genes.

    1
  32. CSK says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    He was sentenced to death.

  33. EddIeInCA says:
  34. EddIeInCA says:
  35. DK says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    After reading that, all I can say is “WTF???”

    Have been following this case for years. Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow are the epitome of evil.

    I am ambivalent on the death penalty. But Daybell deserves it if anyone does.

  36. CSK says:

    @DK:

    He got it.

    1
  37. Gustopher says:

    @MarkedMan:

    Among other reasons, the Y chromosome can almost be considered a defective X, meaning that men only have one copy of a number of genes.

    The Y Chromosome is literally just an X Chromosome where one of the little legs fell off.

  38. Kathy says:

    Weird go-around at Zurich from a United 767

    There’s vide about halfway down the piece.

  39. CSK says:

    @Kathy:

    I’ve never been in a go-around, but I have flown in a British Airways jet, one of the rear doors of which swung open about a mile above Heathrow. That was…distressing.

  40. Kathy says:

    @CSK:

    It’s far more common for a go-around to begin well above the runway. One common reason is if the plane isn’t following the correct glide slope, or if it’s not aligned with the runway. Another is ground operations.

    One time flying from Atlanta to Orlando, the plane leveled off, increased power, and climbed away. The captain informed us there was another plane on the runway, and we’d have to go around. So, I’ve been in one. But we were still a few minutes from landing.

  41. SC_Birdflyte says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: So eunuchs back in olden times lived longer than the mighty ones they served?

  42. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Jen: I’ve always found this strange.

    If you knew some of the men I’ve known, it would make perfect sense. Sometimes I wonder how I’ve survived this long.

    @SC_Birdflyte: Of course They weren’t trying to impress the girls.

    1
  43. dazedandconfused says:

    @Kathy:

    He decided there wasn’t enough room to stop at the speed they were moving relative to the ground after touchdown. Committed to air and tried to drag if off, but no luck. Had to stick the nose down to reduce drag so he would get enough.

    I’d like to know what the wind was doing. Such events are sometimes caused by the appearance of a sudden tailwind, and such sudden shifts are associated with rain squalls…and the runway was mighty wet.

  44. Kathy says:

    @dazedandconfused:

    The piece mentions the runway was wet and that there was no crosswind. It says nothing about tail wind one way or the other.

  45. DrDaveT says:

    @EddIeInCA:

    A similar share believes Trump committed a crime.

    While I agree that in context this is good news, in the larger picture “Trump convicted on 34 counts, 60 more indictments pending including the one for incitement to insurrection that everyone watched live on TV… 54% of Americans believe he committed a crime” is just pathetic.

    1
  46. DrDaveT says:

    @SC_Birdflyte:

    So eunuchs back in olden times lived longer than the mighty ones they served?

    Often by just a few hours…

    1
  47. Flat Earth Luddite says:

    @Kathy:

    I don’t know if it’s a factor of Luddite’s advanced age or what, but I find the idea that 767’s have been around 32 years to be absolutely mind-blowing. I mean, I know there a common aircraft, but it doesn’t seem that long to me. Obviously, this is further proof that I did, in fact, inhale.

    ETA my personal worst incident involving aircraft included a Cessna float, King Salmon AK, and a mid winter landing there.

    1
  48. CSK says:

    @DrDaveT:

    “…insurrection…”

    No, no, no. You’ve got it all wrong. The Trumpkins were just peaceful patriots touring the Capitol. All the mayhem and injuries and deaths were caused by Antifa and BLM in disguise, who were in league with the Communist globalists and the Capitol Police.

  49. Kathy says:

    @Flat Earth Luddite:

    The bad news is the 767 has been around 42 years.

    Production of passenger types ended in 2014. But it’s still in production as the KC-46 tanker, and I think also for freighter types.

    On the other hand, the 737 entered service 56 years ago. It has undergone more generations and modifications, but the type should have been retired long ago.

    1
  50. OzarkHillbilly says:

    They moved my wife to a long term room. Not sure what to make of that. Other than now I am scared.

    2
  51. CSK says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Did her doctor give any explanation?

    Everyone here at OTB is with you.

    3
  52. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Flat Earth Luddite: Still, your part of that story wasn’t all that bad. After all, your plane wasn’t the one that had flipped over while landing–thus the Cessna float, upside down, in the harbor.

  53. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @CSK: Not that I know of, but my take is she’s not getting out tomorrow. I have had more than a little experience with this hospital and it’s doctors and they don’t F around. One time I was in there, they did not hesitate to send me up to St Lou because they weren’t sure they were up to the task.

    As of right now, all I know is it does not look good, and I have seen enough to know when doctors are not sure… and maybe a little worried.

    Tomorrow will tell the tale.

    1
  54. Jax says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: OMG, I hope everything is ok! I got bit by a brown recluse on my eyebrow at my aunt’s house when I stayed the night in her basement, and it was almost a month of antibiotics and fluids before my face became normal. It was almost 20 years ago, but you can still see the scar.

    Many good vibes to you and Mrs. Ozark!

    1
  55. Franklin says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m sorry you and your wife are going through this. The only mildly similar experience was full-body swelling to a yellow jacket sting when I was a kid. The doc told us to head straight for the hospital if I was ever stung again in case my throat swelled too much. Bees never caused that reaction, before or after.

    Anyway, sending positive thoughts. Good luck tomorrow.

    1
  56. DrDaveT says:

    @Franklin:

    The only mildly similar experience was full-body swelling to a yellow jacket sting when I was a kid.

    Me too. Happened when I was on a Boy Scout campout. Scoutmaster drove like a maniac to the nearest hospital, the ER nurse took one look at my swollen-shut face and jumped me to the front of the line ahead of the kid with the broken leg, they shot me full of benadryl, and I’ve carried an epipen ever since.

    1