Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Sunday, January 26, 2025
·
69 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
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
Couple weeks back they did a helicopter removal of big equipment off of a roof a block from me. (Watching it was awesome btw.) They did it really early on a Sunday morning to reduce community impact.
I witnessed the dumbest street closing allocation of resources ever. They closed Grand Ave from 5th to 8th. The contractors deployed closed the streets ass backwards.
They put up the “Street Closed” signs and barriers at the end of one-way streets. You were allowed to drive north on 8th to Grand, but it was blocked at the end. So dutiful citizens had to do a u-turn and drive back down a one way street in the opposite, illegal direction.
A block north they’d fucked it up again. They’d set up the barriers to prevent people from turning south onto a one-way that only goes north. Meaningless action.
Someone made that plan and told the crews to go forth and execute. At those intersections.
I walked east down to the center and past to the east edge of the zone. One-ways north and south the entire grid. They’d fucked up every intersection wrongly.
I was astounded. How could an engineer sign off on that stupid madness? Literally, every block was done wrong from a traffic control perspective. It was maddening.
They’d blocked the wrong intersections at the wrong point for the entire procedure. It was kinda funny.
Not many people are awake at 5:45 am on a Sunday morning, but I was. I witnessed the biggest traffic chaos inducing fuck-up. I think whoever signed off on the plan misinterpreted how one way streets work.
This was the result of one huge fuck-up not properly vetted by knowledgeable and competent colleagues.
It was funny until I saw drivers not knowing how to behave. Being forced to drive illegally wrong way to get out of a dead end.
THEY PUT THE “ROAD CLOSED” SIGN AT THE WRONG INTERSECTION! REPEATEDLY!
@de stijl:
Things like that happen regularly on some streets near work. I’ve had to detour the past month when returning to work from the bank, or I get caught in such a closure.
One time they were repaving part f my street at home, so I had to go the wrong way on the other side of the median. They helpfully divided that side with traffic cones, but put the closure too far in so you had to backtrack to be able to cross the median.
It’s a solid stretch of apartment buildings on that street. Can’t they get one resident to help them figure out how best to place the closure signs?
Say, if the rapist felon in chief does designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist, will he then go after the American gun manufacturers and dealers that supply these terrorist groups with weapons?
From an article on how to have better online discussions
U.S Air Force removes course that included videos of Tuskegee Airmen, female WWII pilots
Oh, FFS. What nimrod made this decision. Should be fired immediately. Took a general directive and decided this is the action that needed to be done to comply. I could go on in rage but I would just sputter at this time.
So now Trump is “asking” the king of Jordan to accept a million and a half Palestinian refugees from Gaza, because apparently accepting refugees is just what a country does.
While he is sending the army to our border to repel immigrants and shutting down entirely our refugee asylum programs.
Wonder if the king mentioned this to him…
@Kathy: “Say, if the rapist felon in chief does designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist, will he then go after the American gun manufacturers and dealers that supply these terrorist groups with weapons?”
Not if they give him money.
In fact, it might be a wise idea for the biggest cartels to start buying Trump meme coins and Truth Social stock. They’d become freedom fighters faster than you can imagine.
@wr:
In other words, aiding and abetting Israel’s ethnic cleansing
@MarkedMan:
Good advice. Attention is one of the most potent reinforcers known to humans. Catch them being good. Ignore most of the rest. Occasionally, take the opportunity to help them do better. (And surround yourself with people who will do the same for you.)
Makes me think of this recent essay: Arguing is Bullshit.
I especially appreciate these two entries:
When studying history, you often come across the term “presentism.” This means evaluating or judging history by present standards, rather than by the standards of the time under study. Most historians warn against this*.
I think originalism is a version of this. That we should judge and interpret the law by the standards of the past, rather than by present standards and, more important, present needs and social, technological, and scientific developments, and the modern understanding of the world.
The difference is those against presentism don’t want to force anyone to live under the strictures of the dead past.
*I disagree with this, but that’s a thread for another day.
@Mimai: That’s good stuff.
@Kathy: And not coincidentally, “originalism” anchors in a past defined by rule of an elite few rich white guys. It’s hilarious* how quickly the originalist Supremos abandon originalism for utilitarianism when originalism doesn’t provide the answer they want.
* “Hilarious” isn’t quite the right word here, given that this portends the end of American democracy, but you know what I mean.
This is what I’m talking about when I say our approach going forward is Fuck The Billionaires. Jesse Eisenberg on Bill Maher:
We have been brainwashed to accept bottomless greed as normal. It’s not. It is immoral.
I wrote the other day that White vs. Non is a 60/40 split, gender is a 50/50 split, and billionaire vs. normie is 99.9 to .1. This is the unifying issue. Not race, not gender, not left or right, not educational attainment, not city mouse vs. country mouse.
We’re doing our last preparations before leaving for India tomorrow.
Since we’re getting on the road for the airport around 830 in the morning, almost all preparations need to be done today.
Dear Wife just left to attend mass for the second time today. It is up in West Palm Beach and being said for our son who died 22 years ago today. The priest saying the mass is also the same one who baptized my son.
When DW gets home we’ll be taking our cat up to our neighbor Miriam. Miriam took care of Misay when DW and I went to Australia and NZ last year.
When DW and I get to India, it will be two days after we leave Florida. I get tired just thinking of the time changes.
India has never been high on my places to see list but I’m certain tour guides will make it worth my and DW’s time. We could have visited the set of the other movie made of one of my books but that was in 2021 and the COVID 19 pandemic was going strong and I didn’t feel safe traveling at the time due to my health.
My role in the movie made of one of my books is me playing a priest. I’m seated on a flight next to my main character* and a flight attendant asks me if I want champagne or orange juice. I reply= ‘Can I have coffee please’.
DW will also be in a airport scene but not in a speaking role.
This is all scheduled for shooting next Friday or Saturday.
DW is talking us maybe taking a detour on the way home so we can visit Rome/Vatican City. I’d rather do a dedicated trip just to Italy if we were to make one. My father’s side of the family is from the Florence area and I’d like to visit there also and DW and I have to be home before Feb 25th since I’m having a kidney biopsy that day.
My muse is still on vacation. I haven’t written 100 words in the last two weeks.
Oh I got my 1962 strat-o-matic replay finished. Yes I’m taking my computer baseball on the trip. It will be the 1963 season.
I won’t be around here too much the next three weeks. Have fun while I’m gone.
*- My main character looks like the identical twin of a well known actress (A fictional one) and is often mistaken for her and the Flight attendant does this also. There’s a reason for the character being an identical twin…
This second rate book of mine being so popular never fails to amaze me.
@Michael Reynolds:
Because they see themselves as the hunters who look for the weak and unlucky in the herd?
It is hard for people with empathy to comprehend the motivations of those who have none.
@wr: And shouldn’t Trump be trying to provide for them to stay there to rebuild rather than move if a ceasefire is in the works? Have we reached the ethnic cleansing portion of the program? (Just without the body bags, in this case,)
@just nutha: To some of us, ethnic cleansing, i.e. ridding Gaza of Palestinians and moving in “safe” Israelis, was always the objective. I think some really don’t want it to be true, and let that desire cloud their vision. Some, like Michael, acknowledge the truth but believe it inevitable. (Is that fair, Michael?)
@Bill Jempty: Part of your comment struck me funny. I find language fascinating in that it’s the way we communicate, and so often fail to communicate. Examples of such failure abound in current politics. Forty five years ago Douglas Hofstadter published Gödel, Escher, Bach about which Scientific American‘s book reviewer wrote, “Every few decades, an unknown author brings out a book of such depth, clarity, range, wit, beauty and originality that it is recognized at once as a major literary event.” I regard no one’s education complete if they have not read it. Much of it deals with recursion and self-reference and the contradictions and pitfalls therein.
Which is a long way of explaining why my very weird sensibilities got a chuckle out of writing you hadn’t written a hundred words in the middle of (per Word) 447 words. Enjoy the trip, enjoy the filming, I hope the kidney biopsy shows no problems, and may royalties be abundant.
@MarkedMan:
And others were called liars for saying so.
@wr: I wrote above @gVOR10: about failure of language. We pretend we use language to think, consciously making logical connections between real world concepts, represented symbolically by language. Mostly we unconsciously make emotional connections between murky concepts. If you drill down into conservative lizard brains, these actions are entirely consistent. Closing our border and driving the occupants out of Gaza are both excluding brown people from a perceived white nation. But as this is mostly unconscious, they’ll reject any implication of racism.
@MarkedMan:
The Australian Open tennis tournament just ended. Djokovic resigned from a semi with a leg injury. Djokovic is the most successful player ever. Some of us find it hard to root for him as he’s demonstrated he’s a massively self absorbed asshole. But that drives his success. I’ve been reading a behind the scenes book about auto racing, The Formula. Some of the really successful drivers have deliberately crashed out a rival to ensure a championship, even a teammate. But it drives their success.
A lot of the rich are driven by a similar self-absorbed obsession with getting rich. As Eli Wallach once said, “If God didn’t want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.” And they’re so ego driven they expect us to admire their skill at shearing.
@gVOR10:
Perhaps. But how far away are we really from people “speaking common sense” and stating outright that some races are more deserving/intelligent/civilized, etc, than others?
Speaking such things aloud is not something from our distant past, it’s just under the surface, and it’s not just a black/white thing. My parents came over from Ireland as adults and so had full on brogues. When they got married in 1955 they drove cross country from Chicago to Estes Park, Colorado. My father had a list of hotels and restaurants that were Irish owned or known to be accepting of the Irish. Until the day he died he would never venture into the Deep South because of the Klan, and the stories of humiliations and beatings from those who had tried.
More recently some friends were talking and they were mourning the fact that Baltimore’s Little Italy had fewer and fewer Italians and the newer restaurants opening up there were Jamaican, Chinese, etc. I didn’t say anything as it was a light conversation, but the reason towns had Little Italys, China Towns, and places that had no name but definitely had a specific ethnicity (the Irish Channel in New Orleans comes to mind), was because they would not be rented to anywhere else. Hell, when a friend bought his first house in the early 1980’s, in the Meadowbrook development, built by Kodak for its employees in a suburb of Rochester, NY. He showed me a copy of the covenants that went with ownership. Italians were specifically excluded along with “colored persons”. He was of Italian descent and marveled at those ancient times. In reality both his parents were alive when those houses were built, and couldn’t have moved into those homes when he was born in the 50’s.
@MarkedMan:
I think prior to Hamas’s attack it was probably a wet dream for the most extreme elements of Israeli society. After the attack Israeli moderates had nothing left to offer. Hamas killed the Israeli Left.
And I believed people demanding we cut off smart weapons were fools because in the absence of smart weapons the Israelis would use dumb weapons, which kill more civilians. Israel could buy 155 mm shells and dumb bombs anywhere. And American abandonment of Israel would have cut the last fragile restraint, which would have given wings to ethnic cleansing.
I also said the campus Gaza freak-out, in addition to leaving them with nothing to give to the issues they should have fucking been supporting, would help to elect Trump, which would give Netanyahu a free hand.
I also said that yelling ‘genocide’ was an anti-Semitic trope that was clearly nonsense since a) people don’t pause genocides to give out polio vaccinations, and b) all Israel had to do, then or in the future, to commit genocide, is cut off water and everyone in Gaza would be dead a week later.
I did not anticipate that Israel would in short order massacre Hamas, destroy Hezbollah, humble Iran, allow Assad to be taken down, resulting in dramatic expansion of Israel’s physical position and power, and as a bonus, cause the expulsion of Russia from the Eastern Med. The Iran to Hezbollah weapons flow has been stopped, and I believe it was Hezbollah who fed weapons to Hamas.
The American Left accomplished absolutely nothing screaming about Gaza, but to help Trump and Netanyahu, while ignoring trans, women’s and environmental issues that actually impacted the lives of Americans and would affect their own futures.
Now Gaza is entirely dependent on Israel for any sort of rebuilding. The people of Gaza are left to sift through the rubble and hope to god the Israelis have enough humanity to keep water and food flowing.
Israel now stands unchallenged, the regional superpower, indifferent to any outside voice. And the campuses will have fuck all to say because they’ve reached the limits of their attention spans.
Now, someone tell me where I’m wrong.
What I expect now is that Israel will begin to section Gaza, break it up into smaller enclaves by driving defense corridors through the strip, putting every square meter under the shadow of Israeli defenses. Would I be surprised if settlers started moving in? Not in the least. And who is going to stop them? Trump just gave carte blanche to West Bank religious nuts to ramp up attacks in the WB.
Once again, as so often in the past, Palestinians chose the stupidest, most delusional and most self-destructive path. The American and European Left egged them on, as they always do, and now will lose interest in them, as they always do, so Gazans are left to beg handouts from Israel until such time as Hamas finds some new way to commit suicide.
@Bill Jempty:
Bill, I had not known about your son’s death. My deepest sympathies to you and your wife, even after all this time.
Per NBC, Colombia, like Mexico, is turning away deportation flights from the U.S.
@CSK:
So. . . parachutes?
Anyone who thinks that’s insane is not paying attention.
Hmmm. Maybe the ultimate goal should be to bring back Republicans committed to power sharing coexistence and having some sort of moral center.
Things that I can’t remember.
Who was the black, female author that I heard interviewed likely on some NPR broadcast sometime in the last ten years.? Maybe more.
She was telling about how when she was a young child that she answered the front door and a man was standing there.
“Is he white or colored?” her mother called out from the kitchen.
“I had never heard my mother say that before,” the author said in the interview, “I did not know what she meant.”
@Michael Reynolds:
I was thinking Trump could just order the deportees thrown out of the plane, whether over land or water.
@gVOR10:
Pretty sure that Senna, Schumacher and Verstappen were names of drivers who crashed into a competitor to maintain an advantage.
@gVOR10:
I can’t imagine a circumstance where Eli Wallach would be motivated to say such a thing, though I admit to knowing nothing much about what made him tick. Are you sure it was him and not the character he was portraying in some play? Just curious, but the difference may be significant.
@Mister Bluster:
Jacqueline Woodson maybe?
@Michael Reynolds: Does the plane have a name, and is it St. Louis by any chance? Lotta potential here.
@Michael Reynolds: It’s a fact of human nature that most people strike out at who they feel safest with, not who is most likely to harm them. The college protesters harassed Democrats, went after Harris and Biden, but left Trump and other Republican leaders alone. I remember in 2016 when Black Lives Matter protesters surrounded then candidate Hillary Clinton, screaming at her, yet it never even occurred to them to go after Trump and the other overtly racist, Back the Blue, Republicans.
Children scream “I hate you!” at their parents when they feel life is unfair, parents come home and yell at the kids when a boss or scary coworker has treated them badly, adult siblings shout at each other across the Thanksgiving table about random stuff when their lives are crumbling.
@just nutha:
The sheep shearing line is from the Magnificent Seven, 1960. A reworking in the American west of Kurosawa’s, Seven Samurai.
@Michael Reynolds:
I don’t think anyone anticipated that chain of events, not even Netanyahu who at times appeared to be clinging to power by a thread. This was a unexpected gift” of unintended consequences.
But in fairness to those who raised their voices against the complete decimation of Gaza and the state sanctioned killing of 40,000+ people (including families and children), the moral transgression of Israel does not go away just because of the optics of political opportunism.
Gaza can be erased as a geographical reality, Kusher can build a multi-billion dollar seaside resort there, but the obscenity remains, and the corporate memory of the dispossessed will live on to provide fuel to animus held by those in the Muslim world who are so moved. Same as it ever was.
I’m glad that Russia has been taken down a peg, that Lebanon is less shackled to Hezbollah, and that Iran has suffered a blow to its proxy-ism. But what of the Palestinian people themselves?
It is easy to now dismiss the Gaza protesters here in the U.S. , as visible as our media had made them, but they are not the cause of Trump’s win, any more than the push for transgender civil rights, or any other misdirection by the Republican narrative.
But those Gaza protests both here and in Europe showed the degree to which sentiment has shifted in the West, with large members of non-Muslims joining the fray for the first time in my memory. Probably the result of decades of migration from Muslim countries and most importantly, the building of cross cultural ties among the younger generations. It would be wholly unwise to ignore this fact, this shift, as it pertains to the future.
One is cautioned to stand back from any final assessment of outcomes. Humans will not be denied, and that region has a long history of illustrating such.
@Michael Reynolds:..Jacqueline Woodson
Thank you for the tip. I will see what I can find.
@Sleeping Dog:
Seven Samurai – a stellar cinematic work of art, and always worth rewatching.
@just nutha: Wallach was highly motivated to say those lines. It’s what he was getting paid for. No aspersions against Eli Wallace intended. Just thought Wallach would trigger recognition with more readers than Calvera.
@Rob1:
.
We lost Michigan by about 1.4%. But that’s not the end of the damage. The Gaza protests took over news shows and front pages, taking attention away from issues that matter to Americans. So, yes, the Gaza protests did help to elect Trump. Just as the anti-war protests in Chicago 1968 helped elect Nixon. The difference being that at least in 1968 the protesters were facing the draft.
I get the psychology of kids attacking where it’s safe and can be seen as a parental thing. So yes, they are stupid and immature. I just don’t have much patience for people who believe they’re right but are also blind to the consequences and incapable of prioritizing.
There’s no way to know how things might have been different if we’d seen campuses alive with protests in defense of trans rights, or abortion, but one thing is undeniable: the students sure as hell didn’t help, and we really could have used their help.
Democrats cannot move forward until they come to terms with their own complicity in Trump’s re-election. We can’t craft a message so long as large numbers of Dems still think they did everything right.
@Rob1:
Also, it’s 64 years since Paul Newman played Ari Ben Canaan in Exodus. In the meantime it’s become difficult to regard Israel as the scrappy underdog.
@Rob1:
It does not matter. There’s sentiment, and then there is power. Israel has power, and more than ever now. Does Israel GAF what the Dutch have to say? Do you think the Dutch (picking on them as an example) are going to stop trading technology with Israel? Not a chance. Deals will be done, profits will be made.
It was all sound and fury signifying nothing. Self-defeating and impotent.
Israel doesn’t even have to GAF what the neighborhood has to say. You think Saudi Arabia is upset that Israel gutted Iran’s defenses? Do you think Jordan, an Israeli dependency, GAF? Do you think Lebanese are pissed off that Hezbollah has been knocked on its ass? Egypt is thrilled because they hated Hamas as much as the Israelis did. And Syrians know full well that Israel made HTS’s advance possible. How many voices have been raised against Israel’s systematic dismantling of Assad’s weapons or its occupation of Mt. Hebron?
The only power that has the ability to say anything about Israel now, is Turkey. That’s it. And they’re busy murdering Kurds.
@Rob1: There are so many unforgettable scenes in The Seven Samurai but my favorite is the villager picking up spilled rice grain by grain while Toshiro Mifuni explains angrily to the samurai how much of a sacrifice the villagers are making.
Well, Trump is getting his revenge against Colombia for them refusing to let the deportee planes land: emergency 25% tariffs, travel restrictions, and financial sanctions.
And this is just the beginning, Trump vows.
Just when we thought Jewish Space Lasers was as weird as it gets
I’ma just tip-toe away now…
@Sleeping Dog: Thanks! That’s what I thought. So the quote is attributable to Calvera, as portrayed by Eli Wallach.
@gVOR10: Yes, but it triggered false recognition the way you expressed it. As a metaphysical principle, Eli Wallach didn’t say it. Eli Wallach doesn’t exist in The Magnificent Seven. Forgive my inability to read what you intended me to understand from what you said. I’m really bad at that skill.
@Rob1:
Sadly, I think you misunderstand politics. To quote some past football coach who these days would undoubtedly be electable to the Senate (I actually looked this up but didn’t save the page to cite from), “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” [emphasis added]. It’s okay to destroy the village to save it, it’s okay to throw Beth under the bus to reach out to the moderates, and it’s certainly okay if Israel gets a new Trump resort, offshore oil platforms, and additional land to settle at the low low discount price of a couple of million Palestinian refugees (and it’s not even really ethnic cleansing, there are still Palestinians on the West Bank, right?). We won. That’s what matters. (And a glorious victory it will be, too.) Worrying about moral transgression is for chumps. History’s gonna judge long after we’re gone (and if we’re really lucky, our great grand Senators, Representatives and historians will be writing it anyway).
@Michael Reynolds: I’m very sad that Ali Alfarajalla is short sighted, but neither you nor I can fix that. Thanks for reinforcing my point all the same.
@Michael Reynolds: And again, thanks.
@Michael Reynolds:
I have to disagree. Demographics are running against Israel and in favor of the Arab countries. Same with resources. Arab and Muslim countries have vast natural resources making bank, enough so they are buying greater influence in Western counties, influencing their policies. And they are buying into ongoing commercial enterprise across the globe. The money at their disposal dwarfs anything Israel can allocate.
The younger voter base is turning away from reflexive support for Israel. And then there is the matter of water resources.
The future trajectory does not look promising for Israel. Hardliner policy in Israel, like hardline policy here, is up against the hard facts of demographics, resources, and sustainability.
In my on-going “get every vaccine possible while I still can” quest, I got my first dose of mpox vaccine today
It also doubles as a smallpox vaccine, which i never had, which is good because if anyone can screw things up badly enough to bring smallpox back, it’s the current President and HHS Secretary nominee…
@MarkedMan:
I try to expose myself to opposite opinions. “Racial realism” is a big thing in certain comment threads. In their lizard brains it’s not racist, it’s just accepting the reality libturds refuse to see. Libturds are the real racists because they can’t see the white guy is almost always the best man for the job.
@Sleeping Dog:
A gold star for Sleeping Dog.
@Michael Reynolds: My formula for both understanding the motivations of the really rich is also my formula for achieving some peace in my own life.
It goes like this: No matter how much you have, there’s always something you can’t have. You can let that bug you, or make your peace with it.
At the time I made this up, my example was, If you are Bill Gates, the thing you can’t have is Google. He wanted it. He tried to buy it. He couldn’t have it.
What’s the thing Elon Musk wants that he can’t have? He wants everyone to do what he says. Because he is smarter.
And so on.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
And I think your take (as well some others offered here) overlooks the fundamental realities that will define future outcomes in the region: water resources, energy, population growth, food insecurity, global warming, and the imbalance of national financial reserves. Israel’s sustainability is cantilevered out over all of that.
Right now there exists a lower ceiling to Israel’s capacity to expand its national output. For a significant portion of the much larger Muslim world, that’s less of an issue. And in that mix, the long burning animus associated with the Palestinian plight will not be forgotten. It never has.
It would be better to work towards some equitable resolution, and not wipe Gaza off the map while simultaneously annexing more of the West Bank.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Unfortunately or not, we as a species are hard-wired to be intensely uncomfortable with unknowns. On the good side it stimulates us to unravel the mysteries, but on the bad it causes us to make stuff up so we feel more comfortable. Religion is an aspect of this, but to the point, it’s the key to why people cling so stridently to conspiracy theories, belief in witchcraft, and recently in our history, aliens from outer space. That someone or something somewhere is running things is preferred to the primal fright that randomness triggers.
@gVOR10:
I know it sounds contradictory but I was referring to my book writing muse.
Between January 29 last year and Jan 12th this year, I completed five books. When 2024 opened, I had four books better than half written and I wanted to finish. The fifth one, a long shelved half written project, wasn’t a priority to me but after a off hand comment to my literary agent, a co-writer was found to work with me. It’s a WWII military and sci-fi tale and while I liked the story I had in mind I didn’t feel expert enough to write the military combat parts of it.
So I finished five books. You could say my muse is overworked or burnt out from all that production. I have some good ideas for future books but I just can’t get into any of them at the moment.
I got some good news last week. Leeanne*, who is editing my Yakuza epic, will when finished with that go to work on my book titled ‘Mishap’. The first editor assigned to Mishap did hardly any work on it and what he did do was mostly unacceptable. Leeanne is pushing 70 years of age. She says Mishap will be the last time she works with me.
My cat has settled in with Miriam already. Misay may hardly miss me and the wife.
Gee whiz. How many words did I write in this post.
*- Who proof and edited stories for me when I posted stories for free. Leeanne doesn’t edit for me for Starbucks gift cards anymore. She’s a published author and sometime editor. I’ve improved my writing greatly due to my work with her.
@CSK:
Thank you.
@Rob1: I think we’re talking past each other. If political decisions were routinely made on the basis of the factors you suggest will be important in the long run, we’d probably be having fewer superstorm hurricanes and wildfires than we’re having.
But I could be wrong, too.
I’ve just finished “Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution” by Elie Mystal.
Some books have an emotional tone. This one is rationally angry, especially as read by the author. Mystal’s premise is that the US Constitution was set up as a means of protecting white supremacy.
He’s not wrong, IMO, but not entirely right, either. White supremacy wasn’t like an alternative or an ideology at the time the constitution was drafted, but rather the norm all over Europe and the Americas, as well as parts of Asia. It seems logical for those who held local power in the British colonies, to want to hold on to state and, with the constitution, national power after independence.
The problem is that it has remained just that after over 2 centuries, and only limited changes are possible through amendments. Not to mention a persistent reactionary faction, whom Mystal identifies as Conservatives, who keep pushing back against whatever modest gains minorities and women may achieve from time to time.
At the end (spoiler alert) he proposes expanding the supreme court (should it ever be reconstituted from the Leo and Crow court) to 29 justices with term limits. This sounds like too many, but it’s the same size as the 9th circuit court of appeals.
Part of the idea is four the supreme court to operate like a circuit court, with panels of justices hearing and deciding cases. And hearing and making decisions en banc (full court) only on occasion.
Seems too complicated, but that’s how several countries do things. Though the judicial systems tend to be different as well.
MeidasTouch BS network strengthening my support for Trump.
Trump THROWS Police UNDER BUS and SLAPS THEM IN FACE
@Michael Reynolds:
It can’t be both self-defeating and impotent.
It also defeated a lot of Americans. The Democratic coalition is sort of a suicide pact — there’s not a lot of room to lose a modestly large group. Hippie punching is fraught with danger if you need those hippies to show up at the ballot box.
The protests were directed more at American politicians than Israeli politicians, because those are the people who should ostensibly be listening to their constituents.
Perhaps the protestors elected representatives and the Presidential candidates should have considered that if they do nothing to address the protestor’s demands, they would stay home, vote third party or vote for Trump?
But, all the protestors heard was “vote blue no matter who” and “there’s nothing we can do” which wasn’t a compelling message.
You want to say “I told you so,” but I would say that the protestors told you so. There was a very clear message of “we won’t vote for the status quo” coming from them. This was what the uncommitted vote was about in the primaries.
Everyone’s right! And everyone loses!
The Palestinians are well and truly fucked, and your trans daughter* gets to live in a country that is now has a federal government targeting trans people.
The Biden and then Harris campaigns and administration had to either get those people on board — policy changes, a real good psa, whatever — or get enough voters from somewhere else to cover the voters they would lose. They didn’t. That’s on them, and their supporters who just didn’t want that.
——
* 99% sure your trans kid is a daughter. If not —eh— I tried to not misgender him/them. I should probably start making a spreadsheet.
Super Bowl LIX
Kansas City Chiefs v. Philadelphia Eagles
B There or B Square!
(I pick Chiefs by 9)
@Paul L.: wow. A rape apologist happy that a dude who trafficked child porn is out of prison. Who would have thought.
@Thomm: Let’s be really real here, Paul L is not a rape apologist. He’s a “rape denial” kind of dude.
@just nutha:
I’d suggest we revisit this topic in 20 years, but by then, if both of us are still alive, we may have important things to discuss like our ongoing war with Europe over Greenland, our A.I. Supreme Court, and the garish addition of Trump’s visage to Rushmore (Look! He’s the only one with painted hair!)
@Thomm:
Am I like Mehdi Hasan who excuses the UK grooming gangs citing the Latin Passion of José Antonio Ibarra and the “Wichita massacre”?
@Paul L.: I dunno. Was he as happy as you that a child porn trafficker got released?
@Jax: or enthusiast. Ymmv
@Thomm:
Was Ross Ulbricht convicted of trafficking child porn?