Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, September 29, 2024
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27 comments
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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.
CBS is going to let the VP candidates fact-check each other, apparently, rather than *moderate* the debate.
For me, that means the entire debate is now about furniture lovin’.
I’m Jewish, but even I know the idea that Trump and Vance are Christians is a perversion of the term Christianity. The Trump plan to deport millions of people at once will “maximize compassion”, according to Vance. The Old Testament God is a pretty vengeful dude. If that part is true, Vance better watch out, and definitely should not venture outside during a lightning storm. Below are Vance’s sickening comments when he spoke at Lance Wallnau’s election season revival tour. A couple of decades ago Vance’s appearance at this lunatic’s hatefest would have ended his political career, but now it just shores up his credentials with his base. Any Christian who votes for Trump is a CINO (Christian in name only). When Vance says you shouldn’t be mean to other people, what the fuck does he think he’s doing when he demonizes Haitians? Tell me this guy wouldn’t have fit in perfectly in Germany in the 1940’s as a guard in a Concentration Camp. But don’t worry, he would have been a “compassionate guard”
Citing a “Christian idea that you owe the strongest duty to your family,” Vance said Christian leaders should likewise be concerned first about protecting their country, not citizens of other nations. “It doesn’t mean that you have to be mean to other people, but it means that your first duty as an American leader is to the people of your own country,” said Vance, a Roman Catholic.
He insisted that supporters of former President Donald Trump “should not let Kamala Harris claim the high ground on compassion,” calling President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris’ immigration policies “a disgrace” and saying the Trump-Vance campaign’s plans for immigration policy, which include a pledge to enact the “largest deportation” in U.S. history, will “maximize compassion” compared with the Biden administration.
Helene looks to be ready to blow up in the news cycle. 64 dead. Serious impact in swing states GA and NC. And the remnants are pouring down on Western PA. TVA has their dams from Knoxville down running full flow to make room for the runoff coming on the lesser impacted Western side of the Appalachians.
https://twitter.com/emzanotti/status/1840367978350612642
John Kerry against the First Amendment
@JKB:
That’s not against the First Amendment. It’s an acknowledgement that people who push disinformation (just like you, JKB!) are protected and therefore have to be defeated at the polls.
There is an actual, real genocide taking place right now. Muslim Arabs are slaughtering Black Africans because they are Black and because they are not Muslims. I would guess that the ratio of words written in support of Palestinians to Sudanese is 10,000 to 1. Maybe 100,000 to 1.
Our good friends, the Emirates are bankrolling this genocide. We have bases in the UAE. We sell weapons to the UAE. We support the UAE diplomatically. And what do the campuses have to say on the subject? Not a fucking word. I guess no one wants to play dress-up and pretend to be a Black Sudanese. Or maybe the fact that Arabs are raping and murdering en masse, shooting children in front of their mothers, raping daughters and mothers, conflicts with the message of support for Palestinian Arabs.
But an actual genocide, a racist genocide, not a ‘genocide’ that pauses for polio vaccines, is being completely ignored by the same people who become hysterical over Israel’s actions in Gaza.
One Palestinian child killed by a Jew as collateral damage in an attack on terrorists is 10,000 times more important than the deliberate genocidal slaughter of Black children deliberately targeted and massacred by Arabs supported by an American ally.
From Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin: News that I think everyone already knew (or at least suspected):
@JKB: The destruction is mind-blowing. A work colleague has a summer place in NC where his parents were staying and are now physically trapped because bridges are out, etc. Luckily he had set up a Starlink internet connection so they are able to communicate.
Anyway, nature and water are powerful. I hope that someday we, collectively, realize what we are unleashing.
I don’t know what is more disgraceful: This anti-democratic, fascistic theist pushing this authoritarian agenda, or USA Today allowing it to be published in its pages.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2024/09/29/harris-trump-project-2025-heritage-foundation/75289229007/
This is just bizarre. And I do mean bizarre.
http://www.rawstory.com/trump-adopted-daughter/
@Michael Reynolds: Rationalize any way you wish to Michael. It just doesn’t matter anymore. You’ve declared your side. ETA: Months ago.
@Not the IT Dept.: Defeating liars at the polls because they spread misinformation is a total violation of the liars’ rights. Don’t you know anything about the konstitution?
@Just nutha ignint cracker: but don’t you understand that there is a worse genocide? And that this excuses all other less worse genocides*?
Israel has killed about five hundred or a thousand Lebanese in the past week. Surely it doesn’t matter if I kill 30 or 40 Californians next week. That would just be a drop in the bucket!
Californians too close? How about French or Israeli?
*: based on the UN definitions.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Picking a side in the Israeli / Hezbollah / Hamas / Houthi / Iran struggle for land and dominance strikes me as a pointless exercise. In the end, all are political and religious fanatics intent on ethnic cleansing so they can install their own people and regime on the land. And the 3 H’s murdered every person offering a smidge of integrity or hope on their way to power, with Iran’s backing, and they would murder every soul in Israel or any other group they have designated as “other” if they had their sick and twisted way. That most definitely includes LGBTQ+ as well as Christians, as well as “uppity” women in general. One side being bad does not make the other side good. “The enemy of my enemy” is about tactics, not about justice.
Kris Kristofferson, 88, has died. Great singer. RIP.
@CSK:
He was a great singer but a so so actor. Granted, there wasn’t an actor in this world that could make Heaven’s Gate a good movie. RIP.
@Gustopher:
In 1944 the Allies killed some 40,000 French civilians in the bombings aimed at French railways and bridges.
Not even enemy civilians, but citizens of (by that point) an ally.
They were quite aware that the “transport plan” bombings would kill on that scale.
And did it anyway; because otherwise the probability was the D-Day invasion would have been crushed.
Genocide?
@Lucysfootball:
I remember those days. Would anyone believe back then that the future GOP supports a guy who calls the Iraq invasion “the single worst decision ever made” ?
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/376605-trump-hits-bush-invading-iraq-the-single-worst-decision-ever-made/
Would anyone in those days believe that a future candidate for president would be hawking sneakers and watches? Yet here we are. I still have a hard time accepting that this is our new reality. I keep hoping that it’s just a phase we’re going through that will end soon but I realize that I’m naive. Things don’t seem to be getting better despite my desires.
@JKB:
Serious question here, what do you think about the watches, sneakers, NFT, etc.?
@JohnSF: I’m at the point where I welcome any rationalizations and split hairs people want to offer. I’m just amazed at what people will reach for to justify what they do. It’s like we’ve all become evangelicals or something.
@just nutha:
Evangelicals? *meh*
As I’ve said before, I’m an “Anglican agnostic”, to whom the doctrine of “absolute depravity” is a pile of Calvinist bollocks, from either the modern Anglican, or the agnostic, perspective.
It may be growing up in the times and environment that I did.
I knew, not closely, an older brother of a friend of my father, who was an RAF Bomber Command planning staff officer.
He worked on operations that killed tens of thousands of German civilians.
And helped win the war.
Then there were WW1 naval officers, who carried out a blockade aiming at mass starvation.
Or an SOE officer, who carried out assassinations as a matter of course.
Or, on a more conventional scale, WW1 artillery officers aiming at killing enemy soldiers on an industrial scale.
Or infantrymen, tankers, airmen, and submariners, etc, killing on the lower end of the scale of deaths inflicted.
“War is hell.”
It’s best not to open the gates of hell.
If those gates are opened, it’s best to be better at being hellish, because the fate of the defeated is seldom pleasant.
@DeD: so Kevin Robert’s, pres of Heritage, has some very firmly held policies that his organization promotes.
Do they endorse any candidate to persue those ideals?
Do they imagine that Harris will adopt those policies? Probably not
Do they imagine Trump will adopt those policies? I suspect they hope so.
So was 2025 written as a guiding star for Trump to follow? (Cuz it certainly wasn’t written for Harris os Biden)
Answer seems obvious to me, in spite of their protestations.
Can’t get enough of Fargo. Watching it again.
I think part of it is how the snow blown two lane highways remind me of the roads I drove in the winter in northern Wisconsin when I was running trouble tickets for the landline telephone company in the Badger state. Sometimes late at night.
Jerry Lundegaard (Willian H. Macy) is such a sap.
And the dialog is prime: “Go smoke a peace pipe!” Kidnapper Carl Showalter as he is about to be pounded on again by Shep Proudfoot.
I should never rely on my memory.
The actual quote: “You stay away from me, man! Hey, smoke a fuckin’ peace pipe!”
@JohnSF: And yet you sound just like them.
Meh, indeed.
ETA: Be anything you want. To paraphrase, by your fruits we will know you. 😉
@just nutha:
Do I indeed?
I must defer to your judgement, obviously.
By my rotten potatoes, you may judge me.
@CSK:
And songwriter. Now my Sunday evenin’ comin’ down.