Sunday’s Forum

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
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. charon says:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/health/kids-covid-diabetes-cdc.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

    Children who have recovered from Covid-19 appear to be at significantly increased risk of developing Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday.

    A heightened risk of diabetes has already been seen among adults who recovered from Covid, according to some studies. Researchers in Europe have reported an increase in the number of children being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes since the pandemic started.

    This disease damages pancreas and kidneys, thus, going forward, expect increased morbidity and mortality rates among COVID-19 survivors.

    3
  2. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Acyn
    @Acyn

    Acosta: They aren’t going to be doing the fighting themselves. We’ve already seen what happens when the going gets tough for Ted Cruz…These instigators will send others into battle.. and for what? the orange headed love child of Rupert Murdoch and David Duke?

    Heh.

    6
  3. Jim Brown 32 says:

    @charon: This gibes with a conversation I had with the head medical advisor of a fairly large organization.

    He said the way the Covid spike proteins attacked T-Cell…he expected a lot of immune deficiency related illnesses and conditiins over the next 10-15 years as non vaxed survivors aged.

    3
  4. OzarkHillbilly says:

    As a leading art historian, Christopher Wright has uncovered several old master paintings in public and private collections over five decades. Now he has discovered that a copy of a painting by Sir Anthony van Dyck, which he bought for himself for £65 in 1970, may actually be an original by the 17th-century Flemish court painter to King Charles I.

    “I bought it from a jobbing dealer in west London,” he said. “I was buying it as a copy, as an art historian. I took no notice of it, in a strange way. The syndrome is the cobbler’s children are the worst shod. So the art historian’s collection is the least looked at.” Wright estimated the painting might be worth around £40,000, although some Van Dycks have fetched seven-figure sums.

    ………………………………
    He looked at the infanta’s portrait more closely only after it caught the eye of a visitor to his home, Colin Harrison, senior curator of European Art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. “He comes to see me. We chat. He says, ‘I really think your picture is by Van Dyck,’’’ said Wright.

    “When you own something, you don’t take any notice of it. It was the sitter’s hands that set it off. That’s what Colin noticed.”

    Harrison recalled: “In the normal way of a museum curator, Iimmediately was looking around the walls. It seemed to me that this was an interesting and possibly good picture [and] that, if you got the hands right, Van Dyck may very well have painted them.”

    When buying it, Wright had assumed that it was one of numerous copies of Van Dyck’s infanta portraits in various formats, including full, three-quarter and half-length versions. His is half-length, an oil on canvas measuring 81.5cm by 70.5cm.

    Makes me wonder how good he is at his job. In his defense,

    “It was dirty and had yellow varnish, but it was in decent condition,” he said. “The whole thing looks absolutely magnificent now.”

    If you’re looking for 2nd hand rubbish, that’s what you’ll see.

    1
  5. CSK says:

    The New Hampshire (or Cow Hampshire, as Sleeping Dog is wont to call it) legislature has eliminated the “gay panic defense.” In other words, you will no longer be permitted to plead to manslaughter if your victim is LBGTQ, on the grounds that you freaked out and went into a homicidal frenzy because the person you slaughtered was not a cis het.

    Murder is murder.

    6
  6. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @CSK: Overdue, that correction.

    3
  7. Sleeping Dog says:

    @CSK:

    Since I haven’t looked at who voted for this, I’ll still speculate that the religious right has once again been betrayed by the libertarians. But then again, it’s tough to mount a religious crusade when 3/4’s of the population only familiarity with the inside of a church comes from pictures.

    4
  8. CSK says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Yes.
    @Sleeping Dog:
    It was a House vote of 223-118. It now goes to the NH Senate.

    1
  9. Steve says:

    A lot of right wing claims are out that states like NY, MN and even Utah are prioritizing minorities over sick, old white people for MABs and other treatments. I went and read over the guidelines for those states. The one for NY is vague and says that race may be a factor, but Utah and Mn are quite specific. Based upon the data from within their own states they found race to be a separate risk factor even after account for co-morbidities. Utah has an explicit post scoring scale.

    Of note, both Utah and MN also list male as a separate risk factor even after accounting co-morbidities. I have yet to see a singly person from the right decry the decision to prioritize men using the same basis for prioritizing race.

    Steve

    4
  10. Sleeping Dog says:

    @CSK:

    Yup, those libertarians and RINO, small biz Rs were at it again.

    1
  11. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Heidi Fleiss, who achieved fame as the “Hollywood Madam” when she was accused in the mid-1990s of running a Los Angeles prostitution ring, has said she is moving out of a southern Nevada town where she has lived for about 15 years.

    Fleiss told the Pahrump Valley Times she was angry that someone shot one of her cherished pet parrots with a pellet gun just before Christmas.

    Fleiss told the paper she contacted Nye county animal control officers and kept as evidence a pellet that a veterinarian removed from the bird’s leg. She said she would pay up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest of the shooter.

    Fleiss said she had bought a property in Missouri, where she plans to relocate her exotic bird collection by the end of February.

    Missouri? I don’t think she’s really thought this through.

    3
  12. CSK says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Unless she really is out of the life, yes, it will be a difficult row for her to, uh, hoe.

    http://www.crozierlaw.net/blog/its-hard-out-there-pimp-kansas-city-missouri/

    2
  13. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @CSK: I was referring to her thinking that her exotic birds would be safer here.

    2
  14. CSK says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    My word. That didn’t even occur to me.

    1
  15. Sleeping Dog says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Well, Misery did finally make bestiality a crime, what 15-18 years ago so there’s that.

  16. Mister Bluster says:

    @Sleeping Dog:..bestiality…

    Which state is it out west, Montana, Wyoming, where the men are men and the sheep are nervous?

  17. CSK says:

    Marjorie Taylor Greene has accused Joe Biden of murder because Ivermectin can’t be purchased over the counter.

  18. Kylopod says:

    @CSK: Wormergate.

    3
  19. Michael Reynolds says:

    Every now and then you get evidence that you did something well as a parent. Driving to work at 4 AM my youngest daughter had a flat tire, drove to the nearest well-lit service station, pulled over and changed the tire. Like her father taught her.

    Work ethic and tire changing. I’ll take it.

    12
  20. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Mister Bluster: All of them.

    Reminds of the story of the vet who can understand what animals say. He goes out to a farm to check on the farmers cow.
    He walks up to the cow, asks, “So what seems to be the issue here?” and holds his ear to the cows mouth. After a few seconds he turns to the farmer and says, “They don’t like this last batch of corn you got, it seems to have turned a little. Also they’d like to spend more time in the pasture.”

    The farmer is astounded. “She told you that?”
    “Yes she did. As long as I’m here, how’s about I check your horse?
    “Sure, go right ahead.” said the farmer

    The vet repeats his performance with the horse.
    “Your horse says the hay is a little moldy and asks if you can get him a fresh bale?”
    “I’ll get right on it.” said the farmer.

    Next he goes to the pig sty.
    “The pigs are downright delighted with the slop you’ve been giving them but would like a little more straw in the sty.”
    “Sho nuff, said the farmer.

    The vet notices some sheep out in the field and says, “I’ll go see how the sheep are doing.”
    “Whoa now,” said the farmer jumping in front of the vet, “Them sheep lie!”

    4
  21. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Mister Bluster:

    Utah! And we all know that line because U. Utah Phillips made it so. Though his line was to the effect Utah, the only sheep that you can get virgin wool from are those that can out run the Mormons and the Republicans. That always sounded about right to me.

    I had a guy who worked for me that grew up on a ranch in western Utah, he told me once that his best friend in high school told him that the friend’s father knew more than one ewe intimately.

    1
  22. Mister Bluster says:

    TRIGGER WARNING!

    @OzarkHillbilly:..Them sheep lie!
    One of the veteran cab drivers I met when I hacked 50+ years ago was Pistol Lingle. A self described dirt farmer.
    He told me that any farm boy who said that he never fvcked a farm animal was lying.

    2
  23. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Mister Bluster:
    It’s the worst sort of employee harassment, a downright hostile workplace. “Bend over, Maisy, or I’ll make mutton out of you.” #BaaToo

    2
  24. Mister Bluster says:

    Vote Stealing!

    It’s happened before and it is happening again!
    Click on a thumbs up and an upvote registers. Leave the page. Return to the page and the upvote is gone! Click on the thumbs up again…nada.
    I demand a congressional investigation!

    3
  25. JohnSF says:

    The Webb Space telescope mirror is now fully deployed.

    Next step is mirror segment activation and alignment, then switching on the instrumentation.
    14 days and some 200,000 miles to L2 insertion.
    Hooray!
    Congrats to NASA.

    4
  26. CSK says:

    @Mister Bluster:
    The upvote wanders off arm-in-arm with the edit function for a drink.

    3
  27. Mister Bluster says:

    @CSK:..The upvote wanders off arm-in-arm with the edit function for a drink.

    If I were in New York City I guess I would look for them here.

    2
  28. Stormy Dragon says:

    @Mister Bluster:

    Have you tried reloading the page? I’ve noticed sometimes if you leave a page and come back, it displays the cached copy from the last time you were there unless you manually reload it, so any new upvote or comments don’t show up until you manually reload (“but it showed the upvote before I left!” you say. The upvote plugin probably only updated it in the “Document Object Model” and not the underlying HTML file, so when you leave and come back, it’s restarting from scratch)

    1
  29. MarkedMan says:

    @Mister Bluster:Here’s how I’ve interpreted it: an upvote is not displayed upon reload unless a new comment has appeared in the interim. If I’m right, then any upvotes made after the last comment in a thread is for naught.

    1
  30. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Mister Bluster:

    A great place for an OTB get together!

    1
  31. CSK says:

    @Mister Bluster:
    That’s unquestionably right where they’d head, those lil devils.

    1
  32. Mu Yixiao says:

    A month of short work weeks combined with watching Alex Steele blacksmithing videos on YouTube inspired me to get off my ass and do something today.

    As I was cleaning up the basement a bit, I had to pick up one of my dad’s old toolboxes to sweep around it–and that when I decided to do something.

    Here’s how it looked on the cabinet.

    Here’s how it looks a couple hours (and a couple pints of Zip-Strip) later.

    There’s a little chip riveted to the top that says:

    C.A.A.P.
    355
    61-1450
    U.S.A.A.F.

    That marks it as United States Army Air Forces property, dating it from between 1941 and 1947.

    There’s a hand-stamped steel plate that says:

    WJRYBACK
    16244

    I’m thinking that might be the owner (W.J. Ryback) and some sort of identification number.

    It’s not perfect (some of the original paint soaked into the wood, and the steel banding is very rusted along the bottom), but… it’s a nice little piece.

    1
  33. MarkedMan says:

    @Sleeping Dog: I second that motion! (post Covid, of course…)

  34. MarkedMan says:

    @Mu Yixiao: Cool! BTW, the before picture isn’t opening…

  35. CSK says:

    Trump told OANN that a “sacred number” showed up at his January 6, 2021 rally, and that only “a tiny fraction” of them went went to the Capitol that day. Guess all the others disobeyed his instructions to make their voices heard.

    What’s a “sacred number”? 666?

    2
  36. Mu Yixiao says:

    Here’s the before picture.

    Apparently I didn’t actually paste the URL into that first one. Ooops!

    2
  37. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Sleeping Dog:

    But then again, it’s tough to mount a religious crusade when 3/4’s of the population only familiarity with the inside of a church comes from pictures.

    LOL!!!!! Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

    1
  38. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: …yes, it will be a difficult row for her to, uh, hoe.”

    You’re comment reminded me of a fashion merchandising student I had in my research writing class who wanted to know the correct spelling for “ho” as in “ho clothes.” I suggested, though I don’t remember why anymore, that based on popular fiction reading that I had done, the correct spelling might well be “ho'” (with the apostrophe marking the elided letters) but would accept any spelling and not mark deviations as spelling errors. I never found out what she decided as she elected to drop the class. I was sad; the drafts I had read revealed a pretty interesting paper.

  39. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Mister Bluster: WA! It IS happening! I voted for your post (only for the purpose of experimentation), which raised the vote total from “1” to “3.” Then I left to collect my bonus and play two hands at WSOP dot com. When I returned, the post showed zero (!!!!!) votes. Reloading the page returned the comment with a count of 2 votes.

    As soon as the Republiquans retake Congress, they should start an investigation to see if they can blame this on Biden, somehow.

    1
  40. Mister Bluster says:

    @Stormy Dragon:..Have you tried reloading the page…. Yes. More than once. Close and open browser. Restart the computer. Upvotes gone.

    @MarkedMan:..unless a new comment has appeared in the interim… I have made a new test comment. Upvotes gone.

    I am now back at this thread after a brief musical interlude, listening to Led Zepplin in the car on the way to Kroger, and find that the upvotes have returned. Fickle aren’t they!

    I had to do something to rid my brain of the Bears entire season after today’s loss to the Vikings. Ramble On is just what I needed.

    …I smell the rain
    And with it pain
    And it’s headed my way…

  41. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Mister Bluster: And then, just as mysteriously as before, when I returned to the comment after posting my previous experiment results, the votes had returned to 3. Definitely a case for the GQP to investigate! I’ll be waiting at C-Span in breathless anticipation.

  42. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Mister Bluster: Good looking lobster roll in the picture. I wish they hadn’t burned the hoagie while they were toasting it. 🙁

  43. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Sleeping Dog: Not with lobster rolls served on burnt hoagies it’s not! 🙁 🙁 🙁

  44. Muister Bluster says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:..(only for the purpose of experimentation),..

    I approve of anything that supports the advancement of science.

    1
  45. Mister Bluster says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:..(only for the purpose of experimentation),..

    I approve of anything that supports the advancement of science.

    Even when I get the Edit Key, I can’t correct an error in the Name or Email fields.

    1
  46. CSK says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:
    I should have spelled it “ho.” The pun would still have been obvious.
    @Just nutha ignint cracker:
    There’s no lawbsta (as we say in New England) roll on the winter menu.

  47. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: I didn’t look at the menu. I looked at the burned hoagie roll with the chopped pink stuff swathed in mayonnaise in the picture and drew my conclusion from that. The black edges on the roll were a big turn off for me. 🙁

    ETA: (Edit must have come back to do an extra shift) And the pun was fine, it just reminded me of the story. (Maybe I should have noted that she was wondering if “hoe” would be a correct spelling. While I’m here, I’ll ask you; is it?)

    ETAA: Shouldn’t that be “wintuh menu?”

  48. CSK says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:
    Absolutely it should be “wintuh menu.” I saw the photo of the charred lawbsta roll and agree with you about the incinerated bun. No, thanks. By the way, up here in New England, lawbsta salad is always served on a hot dog roll. Everyone up here knows that.

    I don’t think “hoe” would be appropriate to describe a lady of…pleasure. Didn’t Eddie Murphy as Velvet the Pimp on SNL popularize “ho”?

    1
  49. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: Ah yes, the Ve’veteen Jones Skoo’ of TechNOLogy. I loved it!

  50. CSK says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:
    Don’t forget his international bestseller I Wanna Be a Ho.