Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, August 10, 2024
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39 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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The headline of the day- Brazilian plane crash outside São Paulo kills 61, says airline
Yes, Trump Was in a Scary Helicopter Ride. But Not With That Politician.
Heh.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Whoa! If I live to be 95 I just hope I can still deliver a line like that!
@MarkedMan: Same here, tho I’d say “when I’m 75.” Who am I kidding? I can’t do it now.
@MarkedMan: @OzarkHillbilly:
Trump still insists it was Willie Brown and that he’s going to sue the NYT for saying otherwise.
@CSK: He can never admit a mistake because he is perfect in all ways.
@CSK: Is that true or are you being sarcastic? With Donnie “Loser” Trump it is so hard to tell
@MarkedMan: It’s true.
From the NYT:
Outside trustee formally sought for New Orleans church bankruptcy as costs soar
…………………………….
Yes, they are sooooooooo concerned about his sterling reputation.
Because, of course.
@Jen: You know, as trivial as this is, it’s a perfect example of the fundamental difference in world view between someone like me and your typical trumper. I see this refusing to admit he got the story wrong as the squawking of a buffoon and more proof that he is a rancid child. If I found myself doing something like this I would be humiliated and ashamed, seeing it as pathetic weakness appparent to one and all. OTOH, I’m willing to guess that our resident trumpers are cheering him on, “Don’t back down, Donnie! Never give an inch to the bastards!”
From the NYT (gift link):
Harris Leads Trump in Three Key States, Times/Siena Polls Find
She’s been the candidate for what, two weeks? Tim Walz has been on the ticket for all of four days.
Iraq is trying to give our christian nationalists ideas:
@Jen: Also from the same NYT story:
“When asked to produce the flight records, Mr. Trump responded mockingly, repeating the request in a sing-song voice.” And tens of millions of Americans still want this toddler in the Oval Office.
@Mikey:
Well, Trump fights, you see.
@CSK: Well, you know, this reminds me of the “suckers and losers” controversy where there are named witnesses (John Kelly, for one) who verified that Trump said that. During the debate with Biden, Trump repeatedly said he had 19 witnesses to the contrary. Has any journalist ever asked for that list of witnesses? Not to my knowledge.
He lies, media outlets report on it, thus furthering the lie, then he waits until everyone forgets about it without ever backing up his claim.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
I saw a Trump fundraising ad on YouTube last night. It must have been a blanket buy, because how dumb must they be to target me.
Contrariwise, I’ve been seeing Biden and now Harris fundraising ads for the last four weeks nonstop. They are pretty good. I think Harris is getting coaching because she is strongly improving her vocal quality and delivery.
The Trump ad featured the usual complaining and whining. He led off with “We beat Crooked Joe Biden, and they put someone new in.” Not a terrible spin. We had a detour in “they let men participate in women’s boxing in the Olympics, isn’t that awful?” Because that has something to do with being president of the US. Also, “these guys use the DoJ against their political enemies”, yada, yada.
The oddest thing is that he was sitting down in what kind of looked like a campaign bus or something. Not sure what it was.
So, maybe they think these YouTube ads are the secret of Harris’ success. But they predate the switchover, and they weren’t helping Biden that much.
I just visited Alaska. Salmon numbers have crashed. Fishing for king salmon (chinook) has been stopped. Fishing for silvers (coho) has been severely curtailed. Numbers of chum are down. Alaska king crab declines have resulted in $100 per pound prices.
In the Pacific Northwest, there are multiple forest fires again. The smoke has affected many cities.
Why are our politicians not talking about these obvious problems? Helicopter rides with James, er Willie, er Jerry Brown are irrelevant. Can we have a conversation about the real problems confronting us?
@Slugger: I think that the salmon thing is old news. The once-mighty salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest are now completely gone, and this has changed the habits of resident orca pods. The state of Washington is working to reintroduce salmon to their historical habitats, but progress seems slow. It was overfished, and now the only salmon you can get is farmed salmon.
This was all the inevitable result of overfishing. Maybe some habitat destruction, too. But it’s old news to the people in those places.
@Slugger:
The answer is no.
Tom Nichols’ at the Atlantic
Covering the Felon begs the question, where is the 21st century Hunter Thompson when you need him/her?
Asinine story of the day:
Sorbo then leaned into more criticism of Harris’ race and tweeted, “If Kamala really is black, have her say the N-word, let the people decide for themselves.”
This is Kevin Sorbo of Hercules fame, who is a consistent lunatic far-right fringe tweeter. I’m trying to understand how a black person using the n-word solidifies their “blackness”. I’m Jewish and I have never been asked to use the k-word to prove my Jewishness.
Some conservatives actors have whined about not getting roles because they are outspoken about their politics. Here is one actor who really shouldn’t get roles because of what he tweets.
@Sleeping Dog:
Thank you. Over in the Trump helicopter thread I mistakenly attributed that to Brad DeLong. It certainly seems to fit the press’s compulsion to try to make sense of what Trump says. I’ll save your link for future reference.
In Thinking, Fast and Slow the author, Daniel Kahneman, makes a big point that if what he calls System 1, the fast unconscious intuition system, puts together a coherent story, we will strongly believe it. Coherence drives credibility. It’s even possible that Trump’s System 1 put together bits of recollection from various times and places into this helicopter ride story and Trump actually believes it.
For all the ST fans out there in case you missed it, Patti Yasutake ‘Nurse Ogawa’ on TNG passed away this week. She was 70. RIP.
Yesterday Trump also claimed that his Jan. 6 speech drew a bigger crowd than did MLK’s “I have a dream” speech.
@Slugger:
Or Hal, Kevin, Mike, Dave, or Jumbo Brown. Who are those guys? Some baseball player in a Strat-O-Matic replay.
Of course its irrelveant or irrelephant if you want to know. Did any of these Browns ever live in or go to Tuscaloosa? Maybe James knows. He is a big Alabama football fan.
@OzarkHillbilly: For some reason, I’m not sure that male guardianship would make a difference in this situation, but maybe I’m too cynical.
@Michael Reynolds: I think the question was rhetorical, but still, no, we can’t.
@Lucysfootball: Apparently Sorbo’s not the problem you imagine him to be. According to Fox News, whatever he’s doing now is self-financed, and he’s complaining that he’s being silenced because of his faith. Apparently, his spiritual guides have no knowledge of what the Bible teaches about real or imaginary suffering. If they did, he’d know what to do when people don’t want his message.
@Bill Jempty:
It’s far too early to say what happened. But there are two exceptions:
1) video of the plane shows it to be in a flat spin, meaning it stalled somehow. And here “somehow” does a lot of work, meaning the entire investigation.
2) It happened during cruise, albeit close to approach, and that makes it very rare. as I’ve mentioned like seven million times already, cruise is the safest part of the flight.
There’s speculation about icing, based on reports of icing conditions at the cruise altitude of the plane. But we’ll know when the investigation takes place.
mistermix at Balloon Juice made a crack that’s a good follow up to yesterday’s discussion of short sentences and today’s (and every day’s) discussion of political coverage,
For which see my regular complaints that WAPO and NYT no longer do news stories, they do essays about the news. I suppose it’s a way to get more column inches out of the same few facts.
Sesame Street has been sporadically parodying Donald Trump since the 1980s, usually as Ronald Grump.
https://youtu.be/yQyTpPu0gvc?si=lQAg9SvX-rP3Glav
“He has his name on every piece of trash in town”
Elon Musk has….within the last few days made comments about how the Cybertruck is too expensive, now followed by….deciding to not accept orders for the lowest-priced trim version and immediately slapping a $20k hike on the prices of all the other higher-priced trims. So he has effectively raised the price of getting a Cybertruck by $39k, which is what the vehicle was originally supposed to cost.
Can anyone tell me what Musk is huffing, because this looks like Musk is deliberately trying to trash the “car manufacturing company” part of Tesla as quickly as possible. If I had a Tesla, I’d be seriously considering getting rid of it ASAP, because the chances that Tesla will be supporting my vehicle five years down the line are getting less and less.
Trump must be peeved at Maggie Haberman for insisting on some proof the helicopter thing actually happened as he said it did, because in a typical display of Trumpian “maturity” he is referring to her as “Maggot Hag-erman.”
@Mikey: That’s what I think in my head every time I think of Harriet Hageman. 😉
@Mikey: And don’t even get me started on all of Cunthia Lummis’s posts on social media (Erkel voice: Ohhhh, did I spell Cynthia wroooong?!) All I can think is “Fuck Off”.
Some may call it a crime. I call it poetic justice.
The Felon’s campaign’s server was hacked.
And leaked.
Ok. It is criminal. But I just can’t get upset about it while I’m laughing so hard.
@Kathy: The jump to suspecting icing is probably based on the recent history of incidents with the ATR. Three crews lost control for bit. All turbo props have some degree of limitations with ice, but the ATR is particularly vulnerable.
@Lucysfootball: The response by Lucy Lawless was gold.