Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, February 9, 2025
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63 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).
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Omg. That night was the stuff of legends. Phew. 6 am in Chicago. I am doomed
Here is some background on one of Musk’s cyberkiddies’ past associations:
“Link”
The piece continues with lots of names and links.
Some of this stuff is mentioned in the Ukraine post last night over at Balloon Juice.
I wish them luck. Shades of the 60s.
UT-Dallas students launch alternative newspaper after clash with administration
Blowhard blowback a hard blow for for the low-blow set.
@Scott:
RE: reprise of the underground newspaper.
A path forward against the accelerating oppression of Trump’s authoritarian fever dream.
This has so much potential to backfire on Democrats. Sure, these Democrat state legislators, like the ones in Mississippi, are trying to make a joke, but this legislation as written is discriminatory given it only goes after men and then only heterosexual men, even exempting bisexual men. They go after semen, not sperm. Again Democrats demonstrate their ignorance of the human reproductive system since it is sperm that has fertilizing capability.
And the real reaction should this somehow go forward is for men to bank sperm and then get a vasectomy for their casual sex years.
Another one bites the dust.
When the whole “sane washing” thing started, I went to the Rollcall factbase to look at actual transcripts of what Trump said. Short answer – the press was 100% sane washing him. Virtually every interaction where he wasn’t reading straight from a teleprompter (scrums at Air Force Two, interactions as he was coming or going somewhere) had at least one nonsensical and/or bizarre statement. I’m not just talking about political things – even when he was trying to engage in casual conversation it frequently spiraled off into fantasyland. Yet the print media routinely plucked the most normal and then further sanitized them, often ascribing meaning that just wasn’t there in the original. Television media was perhaps even worse, as they would pull the most normal 3 or 4 seconds things out of the soup and then “summarize” the rest.
But for the past week the Rollcall transcript site has been empty. Their entire library is just gone. There’s a small square in the corner that says “Sorry, we’re having a little trouble” and that’s it.
Truth and facts are the enemy of the Republican Party and their patrons, so it must go.
In 1940 the French Army was superior to the German Wehrmacht in numbers and in gear. And they were fighting defense which should have been an advantage. The French Army collapsed in six weeks.
In the aftermath I can well imagine that French officers sat around in a circle jerk reassuring each other that they had done nothing wrong. Nope, the tactics, the strategy, the training, the logistics, all of it was right, right, right.
This is the OTB commentariat today. Denial and impotent outrage. Look, Hitler is bad! Look again, still bad! Oh no, Himmler also bad! What should we do about it? What can we do to protect the people we are meant to protect? Well, let’s keep pointing out how bad Hitler is.
And when De Gaulle started pointing out that the French Army might have done better had they followed his tank tactics – the ones he wrote about in a book that was read primarily by Wehrmacht officers – he was attacked as an English stooge.
We need to stop pretending we did nothing wrong, because if we did not do anything wrong then we cannot learn and adjust. We badly need a De Gaulle. And I have one in mind. (No, not me.) AOC.
I’m on her mailing list and let me summarize her approach: pivot to class. Name check the laundry list of constituencies, but pivot to class. The culture war is over, for now, let the class war begin.
It’s the billionaires, stupid.
The horror that useless administrators won’t be able to take 30+% off the top and now will have to cover their bloated bureaucrats some other way while monies for the actual research will grow. Oh, I know, they can cut their very expensive DEI staff
Huh. Who knew the troll would not understand the irony of trying to legislate someone else’s body? Maybe nobody has any business trying to legislate control over someone else’s body.
@Michael Reynolds:
Link?
WRT to the NIH cutting indirect funding to research facilities, “take 30+% off the top” is not at all what’s discussed in the linked article. The subject is indirect costs, which are significant concrete costs that are necessary for any research facility.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yep. The billionaires have underwritten the notable vulture-culture warriors: Leonard Leo, Dennis Praeger, Bannon, Roger Ailes, Ted Cruz, JD Vance, Clarence Thomas (and company, etc., etc., etc.
@Kathy:
It’s a text, and occasionally an email, I’m afraid. If it’s linkable it’s beyond my limited abilities.
BTW, do you follow this guy Mentour? He’s got a warning about another safety problem with 737. It’s a bit deep in the weeds for me, but I thought you might enjoy it.
@Rob1:
This concentration of wealth must be de-normed, there should be a stigma attached to hoarding capital. The fact that we think it’s normal for individuals to have more wealth than millions of regular people combined, is a result of brainwashing. We’ve been sold a lie. We’re as credulous and passive as Russian peasants who insisted the Tsar loved them and would help them if only he knew.
Flood the zone with apartheid friendly.
@Michael Reynolds:
Extraordinarily false:
The French had zero none nil mechanized infantry, French soldiers moved exclusively by marching. The Germans had 10 divisions of either Panzer divisions with attached mobile infantry or mechanized infantry divisions. The French infantry were utterly incapable of getting to where they were needed.
French military doctrine saw tanks as support to be attached to infantry units, rather than organized into panzer divisions, thus dispersed and unable organizationally to get where needed.
The French had better tanks (German tanks in1940 were crap) but so what? The Stuka dive bombers were very effective tank killers and the Germans controlled the air with more and better planes.
ETA: Consider chess. All the pieces are equal in strength and can capture each other (except the King). The queen is by far the most valuable piece because it has the greatest mobility.
@JKB:
Are you interested in having a legit discussion about NIH indirect costs? The pros/cons and history.
If so, I’m open to to it. And I pre-commit to being an honest, informed, and level-headed interlocutor.
@Michael Reynolds:
It might be this one
I watched the oil smoke issue ep yesterday. I was a bit upset, as Capt. Peter went a long several minutes before naming the very important issue with the 737 MAX. Partly this is how he usually does his accident videos, which is marketing ploy to get people invested in the video and they may stick through to the end. But for something like this, he should have begun by naming it, then illustrated with the actual incidents.
What I find more disturbing is the solutions proposed. The proposed AC pack configuration still leaves toxic smoke in the cabin, which perhaps won’t kill everyone in 39 seconds. And that is only if the configuration of the packs gets included in the pre-takeoff checklists.
The latest coming out on health care is that the CDC will be cut entirely and the NIH and FDA will face major cuts in the 50% range. So first, the Trump admin keeps leaking stuff to either distract or as test trials so we will need to wait to see what really happens. However, this would very much be in line with the beliefs of RFK and a large chunk of the right wing base. Note that in RFKs book he questions the theory of the germ disease of illness and the need for antibiotics. Consuming the proper foods, like raw milk, will keep you healthy. It’s really not a coincidence that Dr Oz was a GOP Senate nominee and that nearly every right wing radio and TV show relies heavily upon ads for superfoods, supplements and vitamins.
The very bad part about this is that in the short run the effects of these cuts will be small. Drug approval might be slower. or they could just order the FDA to approve drugs without needing to prove they work. Absent a pandemic we wont miss the CDC much in the short run. State public health agencies can probably handle local outbreaks and when stuff crosses state borders it will take longer to respond but it wont get much press coverage. At the end of Trump’s and RFK’s 4 years they will likely be able to claim there wasn’t a huge worsening of US health. However, the loss of 4 years worth of research and the lack of an infrastructure to cope with any major health challenges will cost us a lot in the future.
Steve
@JKB: Hello from your friendly neighborhood professional accounting instructor.
One of the ways that managerial accountants split up project or service or product costs is between direct and indirect costs. The direct costs are costs like direct labor and materials where it is both possible and cost-effective to measure and apply that cost to each project being worked on or unit produced and sold or service provided. Literally anything and everything that is relevant to that project / unit / service is considered an indirect cost.
The cost of the electricity to run the factory? Indirect cost.
The cost of the security system for the facility? Indirect cost.
The cost of the paying the cost accountant who tracks the project / unit / service costs and the purchasing professional who negotiates the pricing contracts and the receiver on the loading dock and the janitor who maintains the facility? Indirect costs.
Literally anything that is not a material component (in the sense of ‘relevance,’ not ‘an ingredient’) that can be directly traced to one specific unit / project / service (the steel in the automobile, the hour of work by the baker or welder or tax preparer, the fish that goes in the taco) is an indirect cost with respect to the activity being measured.
I’m not 100% sure what you think an indirect cost is, but it seems like you think it is some sort of amount that goes to covering non-project / service / manufacturing costs. Which is not the case at all.
@JKB: Tell us you don’t know what you are talking about without just telling us that.
@Eusebio: @Mimai: I wrote a whole post about this, so feel free to weigh in. (JKB too).
@Gromitt Gunn: I second this comment.
@JKB: Do you have any idea as to how medical research works? I do, my wife is on board for a foundation (she has a fairly rare condition called blepharospasm that affects the muscles around her eyes). The foundation helps fund research projects. The projects that it helps to fund receive the majority of their funding from the NIH. Here is a simplistic example: Let’s say you have a project with a budget of $1 million. That might pay for a lead researcher, two assistants, an administrative person responsible for tracking expenses, scheduling trials, ordering supplies. You also have expenses for supplies, compensation for participants in the study, and expenses for those participants (these costs can be very significant, often you need to fly in subjects from other parts of the country and house them at the NIH facility). Can you shave a few percent of costs without substantially affecting the project? Probably. Shave off 15%? No chance at all. This is what happens when you have people who don’t understand a process, and don’t care at all about outcomes.
This is a big joke to Musk and his toadies. He is targeting anything that he thinks is liberal, and obviously medical research is a liberal thing. They don’t understand that administrative costs are a necessary part of medical research, and they don’t even want to understand.
Notice that there is no interest so far in tackling the largest budget item other than entitlement. The defense budget is where you probably could find billions in waste and fraud.
By the way, one piece of collateral damage is that the NIH will start to lose many of their best people. Why would a top doctor or scientist want to have RFK as a boss? They can go work for J&J or one of the other firms and make twice the money.
This is just scary:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/watch-trumps-faith-adviser-rages-against-demonic-confederacies-against-him-and-speaks-in-tongues/
@JKB: Showing, clearly, that you have NO idea what you are talking about. Have you ever managed a grant? Applied for one? Administered one?
I’m guessing no. Now go read Dr. Taylor’s post on exactly this issue.
@charontwo:
In 1939 the French Army was the most powerful in Europe. And remember that when French-German hostilities broke out, the Germans already had occupation forces in Poland, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. (Both powers of course had colony-based troops as well but I don’t know how to disambiguate them.) And let’s not forget that the Brits had ~400,000 men there.
French tanks were over all better than German tanks, and so were their anti-tank weapons. The French did have a pair of light armored divisions, but definitely too little and too late – though it is important to recall that mechanized infantry is mostly a tool of attack, less so defense, and the French were defending. German bombers were better but their heavies were not effectively deployed. The Stukas were quite good for their limited purposes. And the Kriegsmarine played no significant part.
It is wrong to assert that French forces were unable to move. They had a rail network, and they had the advantage of interior lines. The rule of thumb is that an attacking force needs a 3 to 1 advantage, and by that metric the French were, if anything, OP.
That the French were ineffective due to strategic and tactical (and social and political) mistakes was, of course, one of my points. But let’s not pretend that their defeat was inevitable. They made a series of mistakes – which, again, is my point as it relates to US politics.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think this naïve belief is going to come roaring back with vengeance. So many Trump supporters who are going to get screwed will be saying if only Trump knew about what was going on, he would put a stop to it.
For what it’s worth, I first became aware of this phenomena years and years ago when I started reading deeply into the life of Joan of Arc. It’s a long story, but the bottom line is that the whole reason she started her war was to get to the Dauphin (essentially, a prince) because if he knew how badly the area around her village was being pillaged by ex soldiers coming back from theCrusades, he would definitely put a stop to it. So she set off to reach him, and one thing led to another. Of course, as we know now, it was the Dauphin himself who sent the Crusaders there because he was fearful they would do the same in Paris.
@Mimai:
I see what you’re trying to do. And to
be fair, there is a difference between @JKB and the other two. But I’m skeptical that the difference matters in reality.
The well was poisoned long ago.
I have no doubt that you are probably better in practice than I at generosity and patience.
Good luck.
@Mimai: When I first visited the site long ago, JKB occasionally engaged other members of the community in extended discussions of his views. As he got his…
… let’s go with hat…handed to him over and over, he cut back on extended discussions.
ETA: The interesting thing to me was that his views in the past were not “bad” as much as “inflexible.” Add that his writing (and thinking I have to assume) suffered from weakness at connection to his main point, and his attempts frequently failed because his conclusion would end up off point.
@Kathy:
Follow-up. This is AOC’s latest text:
Pure class warfare, which IMHO, is what we need, and where we should have gone long ago.
@Kurtz:
@just nutha:
Like everyone else, I comment here for my own benefit. And it benefits me to practice giving people repeated opportunities to be better.
@JKB: “this legislation as written is discriminatory given it only goes after men and then only heterosexual men, even exempting bisexual men.”
God damn right, JKB. Everyone knows that we should only pass legislation that is discriminatory against women — and maybe minorities — not against our natural rulers, white men.
@Mimai: I’m simply extending a theory as to why JKB may not capitalize an opportunity to be better. Frankly, I wish he would. Comments that argue based on solid, clear reasoning and conclusions improve debate and critical thinking even when they’re wrong. Sometimes, especially when/because they are wrong.
@Rob1: Someone should start running ads in Florida and other heavily latino areas. “They said they were only going after criminals. But they’re deporting anyone who looks Hispanics. No refugees from anywhere. Except for these guys. Wonder what the difference is…”
@wr: Does JKB believe that?
@just nutha: Did you know JKB’s a racist sexist? Why do you want to interact with him anyway? He’s just a sexist racist.
@Kathy:
As to the French in 40, here’s a good paper.
To the idea of mobility, De Gaul was forward-looking and correct, but we must bear in mind the problem of defense in depth. It’s the ancient art of “Feigned Retreat” really. You entice the enemy to stick his neck way, way out and then, with mobility, chop it off. But it’s one thing to plan to have the enemy go deep into your country for the military people, but another to have the public, specifically all those within 50-100 miles of the border, support a plan that puts them in the battle zone. This is a political problem that strongly influenced our Cold War deployments, btw. Everything had to be right up against the Iron Curtain for political reasons.
Having all your forces right up to the border like that is an offensive configuration, not a defensive one, which contributed to Soviet paranoia. As if they didn’t have enough of that already…but I digress.
I would not use this as a good example for a fight against Trump. On one hand Michael is advocating a defense in depth by citing this aspect of De Gaulle in ww2, but at the same time he seems to be advocating a Maginot Line. A strident, up front, give-no-ground type action by citing AOC as the ideal leader.
So if the Department of Education is “abolished”, does that mean we are saved from the indignity of having Linda fucking McMahon confirmed as it’s leader?
Ahhh, who am I kidding, I’m sure there’s still grifting that can be done. (Eyeroll)
Kathy, Trump is going with the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl.
@Jax:
Trump nominated McMahon to destroy the DOE. He has said he hopes she puts herself out of a job.
@Fortune: Why are you trying to pull me into interlocutions with you? I’ve already acknowledged that our worldviews are so divergent as to make interaction pointless.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: If your worldview is similar to wr’s you should talk to him, because he just accused you of saying that racism and sexism aren’t bad.
@Fortune: “Does JKB believe that?”
More importantly, do you? Do you believe in anything? Does anything actually matter to you? Or is the sum total of your intellectual and moral capability tied up in posing bullshit rhetorical questions and pretending they mean something?
But just in case you actually wanted an answer to your question, my advice is to ask him.
@Fortune: ” he just accused you of saying that racism and sexism aren’t bad.”
Seriously, are you twelve years old?
@CSK:
We already knew he has terrible tastes.
@dazedandconfused:
The usual histories blame the reliance on the Maginot line for France’s downfall, as no doubt everyone knows. In particular leaving other avenues of invasion under- or un-guarded. I lack a good background on military matters to say whether this is so, or has merely stuck as whatever the French did it was clearly not enough to repel the trumpian invasion.
I feel like the Kansas City Chiefs are deliberately branding themselves as The Trump Team
@wr: I think you defamed JKB.
@Jax:
Omg. Those two posts are the funniest things I’ve seen all day. I don’t know if I’m still drunk or if I’m just brain dead from dancing for 6 hours straight, but I laughed so hard I cried. What a dingus.
Seriously though, last night was a transcendent experience. I had never seen Miss Kittin perform before and only knew that her music was weird and cool. I was unprepared. I was, finger guns in the air, the single best bisexual experience of my life. Describing it as a freak show on fire doesn’t capture its bizarre wonderfulness. I think at one point she played Vanilla Ice. We all screamed in ecstasy.
It was so beautiful to be dancing and partying with such a whacked out group of queers. Was there a gorgeous woman in latex pants? Phew. Was there a guy in a stove pipe hat making out with a miniature Morticia Addams? You betcha. Adult version of Dipper Pines? Hell yeah. That club had everything, including me voguing in an orange bikini. My next goal is to see her in Paris.
Simply amazing. It’s sad straight people don’t get to experience beautiful love like that. Hmm.
@Fortune: ” I think you defamed JKB.”
How nice for you. I’ll wait for you to find a lawyer to complain to that one pseudonymous poster on a website defamed another pseudonymous poster on a website, and that you demand justice.
Once again, are you twelve years old?
@Beth: “Simply amazing. It’s sad straight people don’t get to experience beautiful love like that. Hmm.”
It’s true. I love your delight when you describe one of your nights out and hope they continue to bring you this much pleasure forever. But for me, they sound like an eternity in hell. And you’d probably think the same about a good night for me!
Six months ago I might have said that this kind of diversity is what makes our culture great. But that was before we had a government that hates everyone other than billionaires and their tech boy minions.
Soooo, we just saw a commercial for whippits right?
As the first half draws to a close, I feel the need to warn: remember the Falcons.
This sounds very insurrectiony. Calling for state governors to go after individuals who acting under the direct direction of the President of the United States for entering federal property.
And then there was the Democrat judge who enjoined the Secretary of the Treasury, THE constitutional officer, in charge of the Treasury from seeing Treasury data. No one in these departments has any authority except as it is delegate from the constitutional officer in charge of the department. Your little GS or SES position doesn’t mean anything except as what is delegated to you by the constitutional officer of that department.
@Kathy:
When the Patriots clobbered them during the last quarter in 2017?
@JKB:
se·men
/ˈsēmən/
noun
noun: semen
the male reproductive fluid, containing spermatozoa in suspension.
sper·ma·to·zo·on
/ˌspərmədəˈzōən,spərˌmadəˈzōən/
nounBiology
plural noun: spermatozoa
the mature motile male sex cell of an animal, by which the ovum is fertilized, typically having a compact head and one or more long flagella for swimming.
—
There isn’t even a bill to look at just a quote from one of the sponsors that says “disseminate semen or genetic material”.
So you’re wrong from all perspectives which is par for the course with you.
@CSK:
There’s no other reason on Earth to remember them.
At least none that I know of.
BTW, no team has ever been shut out in the Super Bowl.
@Stormy Dragon:
Everything Trump touches dies.
@Beth: I think maybe I should come rave with you. I used to rave, back when it was in it’s baby stages in my area. I had the perfect clothes that I (cough cough) stole from my high school theater costume room, they all glowed in the black light. I have since thought that maybe I’m too old for that shit, but it looks like the world is going to collapse under Elon Musk, so I might as well live again!
@Beth:
Indeed. And now we’ve got screwball Elon Musk in the mix. He’s never gonna be able to kick that guy out. Who’s gonna tell the richest guy in the world to fuck off? Trump might as well announce himself as Elon’s bitch and show up in a dog collar on the White House lawn.
10 to 1 the felon won’t invite the Eagles to the White House.
@Mimai:
Fair enough.
@Kathy:
The details are moot. History is history.
It has been said that the worst thing one can do to a fool is let him have his way….at least for awhile. Elon, for instance, is getting out over the tips of his skis.