Thursday’s Forum

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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. Gavin says:

    I’m just glad to see Trump admitting he isn’t going to lower the cost of groceries, cut money from the government budget, or end the Ukraine conflict.
    It’s almost like every single thing out of his mouth is a lie!
    Well, except for the blaming problems on people with neither money nor power and tax cuts for rich people. You know, just like every Republican ever.

    10
  2. Kathy says:

    So, Lex launched his rocket successfully. At least it achieved orbit. The booster wasn’t recovered, and is believed to reside now somewhere in the known universe. No word on a date for the next launch. NASA has hired Blue Origin to launch a probe to Mars. So, there’s that to look forward to.

    I’d have welcomed this flight more before Lex decided to kiss the orange ass’s ass. But it’s good to have competition in the great oligarch space race. The question now isn’t whether Lex can surpass Xlon, but whether his heavy lift rocket can find enough business.

    2
  3. Kathy says:

    This sounds faintly ridiculous: Moon added to list of threatened cultural sites for first time

    On the other hand, if you pay for a crewed Moon mission, and you aren’t NASA, how can you make money off it? You can only bring back relatively small amounts of stuff; the six Apollo missions brought back under 400 kg of lunar samples. How much could you sell the Apollo 11 flag for? The retroreflectors left on the surface? Pieces of the LEM’s descent stage? The plaque Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin placed on the surface? The original Fallen Astronaut?

    Likely not enough to cover your costs. But think of the massive headlines and scandal! Investors will beat a path to your door! And is it even illegal to remove artifacts abandoned on the Moon decades ago?

    Some years back, Lex Bezos spent millions to find and retrieve Saturn V first stages out of the bottom of the Atlantic. Other oligarchs might as well pay large sums for Apollo memorabilia.

    2
  4. Mister Bluster says:

    Bob Uecker 90
    RIP

    3
  5. Rob1 says:

    Junior’s pop-up Potemkin village.

    Trump’s people ‘bribed’ homeless and socially disadvantaged people with hotel dinners to play Trump supporters

    But several sources now tell DR that a portion of the people who appear in the video from Trump’s campaign people and in the video that Ekstra Bladet has recorded with the dinner guests are homeless and socially disadvantaged, who often find themselves outside the Brugsen in Nuuk (Brugseni, ed. ), which is located directly opposite Hotel Hans Egede.

    They are being bribed, and it is deeply distasteful.
    Tom Amtoft, resident of Nuuk

    https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/udland/kilder-til-dr-trumps-folk-bestak-hjemloese-og-socialt-udsatte-med-dyr-hotelmiddag

    (May require readers to hit the translation feature.)

    1
  6. Rob1 says:

    @Kathy:

    This sounds faintly ridiculous: Moon added to list of threatened cultural sites for first time

    a). Is something a cultural site if our only physical connection is some abandoned space junk, a famous selfie, and generations of poetic reference?

    b). Who’s going to enforce the regulation?

  7. Kathy says:

    @Rob1:

    It’s not all abandoned. three missions left retroreflectors behind. Those are still in use. Astronomers shoot laser beams at them and time the trip time. This allows for a precise, frequent measurement of the distance to the Moon. Some other instruments, like seismographs, kept reporting for a while.

    The flags, the commemorative plaque, and the fallen astronaut figurine are mementos left there on purpose.

  8. CSK says:

    Trump has announced that there will be no place in his administration for Nikki Haley, Mark Milley, John Bolton, Jim Mattis, Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney, Paul Ryan, and Mitt Romney, and Mark Yesper.

    I wonder how long it’ll take him to decide that all the “top people” he’s hired are fools and traitors?

    2
  9. CSK says:

    Per ABC, Nancy Pelosi won’t be attending Trump’s inauguration.

    2
  10. CSK says:

    Trump’s official inaugural portrait has been released: glowering, surly, and belligerent. The MAGAs love it because he looks so “commanding.”

  11. Michael Reynolds says:

    I am a big supporter of space exploration, and we should certainly send probes to Mars. But we are never going to have a colony on Mars. OTOH, if Elon wants to go there I vote no one tells him he’s gonna die.

    3
  12. Mister Bluster says:

    David Lynch 78
    RIP

    4
  13. Mikey says:

    @CSK:

    The MAGAs love it because he looks so “commanding.”

    A weak man’s idea of a strong man.

    4
  14. CSK says:

    @Mikey:

    Absolutely. Every time Trump attempts to look stern and commanding, the best he can manage is sulky and petulant.

    1
  15. Kathy says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    “Never” is a very long time.

    Odds are if we ever begin to mine, refine, and even manufacture stuff in space, it will be in the asteroids. Their gravity wells are more like jokes. There are plenty of disadvantages to this, but it saves tons of money in fuel.

    We will mine the asteroids or the planets only when 1) there is profit in it, or 2) there is no alternative.

    As to the second: if we need more minerals than can be mined on Earth, if we run out of certain things, we find some super useful unobtainium kind of mineral in the asteroids or Mars or even the atmosphere of the Sun, that occurs nowhere else.

    Other than the above, expect at best an outpost on Mars, not too different from those in Antarctica (only smaller and far more expensive). And that only because we can stand on the Martian surface without dying within seconds.

  16. wr says:

    @Mister Bluster: “David Lynch 78”

    He lived a long and productive life, so I can’t say this is a tragedy, but what a loss to the arts.

    Twin Peaks: The Return is one of the most remarkable things to come out of streaming…

    (And not to besmirch his memory with politics, but when I think of someone dying at 78, I can’t help wondering why this one and not one who’s intent on destroying our lives.)

    2
  17. Modulo Myself says:

    @Mister Bluster:

    I was 14 when Twin Peaks came out, and it blew me away. I ended up renting and watching Blue Velvet with my mom–not something I would recommend to any teenager ever.

    RIP–everything he did–even Dune—was worth it and more. An absolute great.

    2
  18. Mister Bluster says:

    @wr:..(And not to besmirch his memory with politics, but when I think of someone dying at 78, I can’t help wondering why this one and not one who’s intent on destroying our lives.)

    Obviously karma (whatever that might be) is on the side of evil.

  19. Kathy says:

    Funny. Lots of US Tiktok users are flocking to an actual Chinese data mining app based in China, Red Note.

    No danger that the CCP will want to get data from that app, right?

  20. Kathy says:

    Rudy claims to have reached a settlement with Freeman and Moss. I won’t believe it until either of the latter confirm it.

    And I won’t link to it, but will quote this bit by Rudy: “This resolution does not involve an admission of liability or wrongdoing by any of the parties. …”

    Right. That liability was adjudicated in court. that’s why there was a judgment imposed against him. You’d think a lawyer would know this.

    1
  21. Bill Jempty says:

    Bob Uecker has passed away. The baseball player and announcer, actor, comediant was 90. While a familiar face to me, I never watched or heard him all that much. RIP.

    1
  22. DrDaveT says:

    @Modulo Myself:

    I ended up renting and watching Blue Velvet with my mom–not something I would recommend to any teenager ever.

    Not quite that bad, but when I was in grad school in the late 1980s I was home on vacation and my parents asked me to go rent a movie to watch. I had heard really good things about a Swedish film called “My Life as a Dog” so I got that one. It was a very good film, but not one to watch with one’s parents on a random Thursday for fun.

  23. Kathy says:

    President Xlon test flew its Xtarship block 2* a little hiel ago.

    It went very well.

    IMO, the president doesn’t quite know how to build a super heavy lifter, so he decided they may as well destroy several attempts to more quickly advance to a final design that works. It’s Xalcon I all over again, not Xalcon 9.

    Now, I know space launches remains risky, and they handle large amounts of energy in a short time, and that the energies involved are rather explosive. Not to mention that rockets are hellishly complex (just think of the power needed to pump many thousand tons of propellant and oxidizer, then add guidance, maneuvering, communications, etc.)

    Just the same, President Xlon is failing at rates not seen since the early days of the space program, and a lot of these involve things that are well-knosn; like the need for a water deluge at the launchpad.

    Odds are his engineers will figure Xtarship out, eventually. But if they don’t, he can’t just use a bunch of useless rockets as a propaganda tool to get some other dictator elected to high office. not like he did with Xitter after he ruined it.

  24. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @DrDaveT: Capsule movie reviews here are always interesting. Peeks into the minds and aesthetics of our asylum mates.

    I’ve never imagined any circumstances where I would watch either of those movies, but not a Lynch fan and did Ingmar Bergmann in college, so (as Joan Baez might say) I’ve already paid.