Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, May 15, 2025
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91 comments
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).
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BlueSky.
The headline of the day- A mom is accused of buying ammunition and tactical gear for her son, who authorities say was planning ‘mass targeted violence’ at a Texas school
We’re living in a timeline where Tulsi Gabbard is a high-up intelligence official who has decision making power.
It’d be like putting a q-anon, anti-vax dude in charge of public health administration. Oh! We did that, too. And Stephen Miller.
We’re just a few steps away from a Hungary type situation. Creeping fascism.
And Trump at the tippy-top. A Confederacy of Dunces.
My conclusion is that really, really stupid people are drawn towards fascism and espouse dumb-ass goals about fluoride and white South Africans’ emigration – 40 acres and a mule.
You know people by what they value most and strive for most.
We have 3+ years of this.
You’d think they’d be a bit smarter and savvier, but no.
The mid-terms are nigh and voters are extremely and viciously short-sighted. Well, the squishy middle is. “Where is my pony? I was promised a pony!” I was promised that leopards would eat people’s faces like my bitch-ass SIL and filthy immigrants, too. But not my lawn guys!
When MAGA has a shitty result in the mid-terms will there be a reckoning?
In my youth, Republicans weren’t stupid.
What changed?
@de stijl:
The super rich figured out that Conservatives are inherently easier to control and that the dumber they are, the even easier they are to control. That’s the whole Koch business plan.
The thing is, they didn’t realize they were fucking morons too.
@de stijl: I’m not totally sure of your age (you were born in the ’60s, right?), but I think elements of this stupidity were creeping in for decades, with Reagan being a prime example. Let me quote from Rick Perlstein’s Reaganland again:
For a long time, there was a stereotypical association of the left with various forms of scientific/medical quackery and flaky spiritualist beliefs (despite the fact that it was Ronald and Nancy consulting tarot). I think this was always heavily exaggerated, and its presence on the right under-examined. I saw a poll from around 2015 that found anti-vax views about equal between Democrats and Republicans, and relatively marginal among both. Even then, there was a wide perception that it was more of a liberal/lefty fixation. An early sign of the right’s embrace of these beliefs came in 2011 when Michelle Bachmann, then running for president, claimed that vaccines caused “mental retardation.” However, it’s worth noting that even Limbaugh thought she’d gone too far, stating that she had “jumped the shark” when she made those remarks.
I’ve had a theory for a while that there’s been something of a post-Covid realignment in our politics. Maybe a more accurate term would be consolidation, where all the scientific, medical, and conspiratorial bizarreness has finally settled itself comfortably in the GOP. Covid, after all, was possibly the most disruptive event of our lifetimes. To begin with, it negatively impacted a lot of people’s mental health. It posed a great opening for medical quackery and rejection of mainstream science and medicine, with Trump doing everything to help it along. And it coincided with the rise of QAnon and the election-fraud conspiracy theories being pushed by Trump in his attempts to stay in power after losing. People stayed at home, and in many cases were spending an inordinate amount of time online where all the conspiracy theories fester. I think even the war on trans people is related, since so much of the topic rests on medical treatment, which is very easy to propagandize and fearmonger about.
The Libs of TikTok lady, Chaya Reichik, has said that she was “radicalized by Covid.” She wasn’t the only one.
Mexican security chief confirms cartel family members entered US in a deal with Trump admin (AP)
Dozens of Mexican cartel family members enter the US in ‘Trump administration deal’ (Independent)
17 members of a cartel kingpin’s family were escorted into California from Mexico. Why? (L.A. Times)
I presume Guzmán López is turning state’s evidence in exchange for US protection? But drug cartel peeps shouldn’t get more consideration than asylum-seekers like Venezuelan makeup artist Andry Romero, yet another legal migrant disappeared by Trump/Homan.
I need to establish the timeline. Born in late 1963.
One of my establishing memories was when Nixon quit. I was at a Christian camp north of Alexandria, MN on Lake Carlos. Lutheran. They wheeled in a tv into the meeting hall. Everybody saw.
The Christian bit didn’t stick for me. If you want to get relatively early life experience in kissing, smooching, whatever – go to a Christian camp! I had a steady girlfriend day two, and I wasn’t even trying.
I think that Rs got and became less publicly odious after Nixon. Didn’t want the association. Downplaying is valid.
In my teens, elected Rs and thought leaders weren’t obvious assholes. Then we got Reagan.
In my lifetime the right wing has become much more radical and the left wing party has become much more practical.
Practical isn’t the correct word. Conciliatory? Placating? Lame? Ineffectual?
In a two party system, I basically know who to vote against. So that’s what I do. I don’t hate centrist status quo.
We could do so much better in political parties in America.
George HW Bush was the sole *smart* Republican president of the last 35 years. He was well educated, and highly and widely experienced (WW2 vet,Congressman, CIA head, RNC Chair, VP). Reagan was, in every sense of the word, an actor. President of the United States was his greatest role. Dubya Bush was a glad hander who enjoyed campaigning but had little interest in governing. W was undoubtedly the kind of guy Grover Norquist had in mind when he said “we” don’t need a president who is an expert in policy, we just need someone who can sign his name. The younger Bush was happy to let Dick Cheney be the man behind the curtain. And then there was, and sadly still is, Trump. Like W, he loves the campaign and has no interest in governing, happy to leave the heavy lifting to the odious Stephen Miller, while surrounding himself with clowns, fluffers, and fellow grifters. The younger Bush and Reagan were affable buffoons who seemed to know their limitations. Trump is an ignoramus who has bullshitted his way through life and convinced himself he is always going to be the smartest guy in the room. So, as Norquist noted (said the silent part out loud) the doers and shakers in the GOP don’t value smart as much as conniving in a president. They want a guy who can get elected and isn’t interested in anything else about the job.
@de stijl: Depends on how far back is your youth. Republicans were looking pretty stupid 20+ years ago when they invaded Iraq at a cost of 100,000s of lives, trillions of $$$, and geopolitical upheaval that haunts us today, presaging the rise of Trump.
They were looking pretty stupid (*) 35 years ago when they decided to wage a zero sum war against cooperative liberal democracy and engaged a series of lying propaganda arms like FOX News, led by sociopaths like Roger Ailes.
* Stupid doesn’t preclude manipulative canniness.
@Charley in Cleveland:
I didn’t mind Gerald Ford. He did okay.
Good to know.
Seems to be the developing ethos of this administration — don’t blame me, what do I know — about the Constitution, etc.
DOGE the oversight caucus verses DOGE the “code monkeys” with hammers smashing things.
Sounds like Dem Moskowitz, an elected official, has been frozen out, as the unelected “contractors” run amok killing off the functionality of government services that were put in place by elected officials on behalf of voters who elected them to do those very things.
If you ignore Watergate, Nixon was a fairly decent President. Arguably, pretty okay, if you ignore Watergate.
You can’t ignore Watergate. It wasn’t that he got caught, it was what he was trying to do. He authorized the burglary of the DNC HQ to spy on his political opposition.
The stain on Rs has always been there. At least in my lifetime. The party of dirty tricks.
@Kylopod:
When faced with a lethal disease without effective treatment options, people will grasp at just about any alternatives, no matter how nonsensical or irrational they may be. the peddlers of such things, after all, claim they can cure the disease.
Such “remedies” are at best harmless and at worst deadly. But even the harmless ones can cause a great deal of harm, by diverting people from legitimate treatments.
Cancer is a good example. While most types are still deadly, long term survival rates for various treatments have been going up for decades. Yet people persist in assuming all cancers will kill you regardless of how you treat them, except for the magical snake oil that will cure it.
As to nuclear waste, it’s complicated. a lot of the waste produced by fission reactors is uranium and plutonium, which can be extracted for further use. The rest contains radioactive isotopes that may have practical applications. that is, there are such applications, btu it depends on what fission byproducts one finds.
There are two huge issues, though. reprocessing spent fuel is risky, and the early attempts led to many accidents and deaths. Second is the uranium and plutonium can be used to make weapons. Not necessarily nukes, but also things like dirty bombs (though the more radioactive byproducts would serve better for the latter).
Oh, and it’s also expensive. The last explains why power plants operators prefer to throw them away and get new fuel.
Proponents of molten salt reactors claim their designs can burn spent fuel and byproducts. Ideally by the time a fuel no longer produces usable power, it will be largely inert and much reduced. If they ever get built and operated at scale, we may find if this is true.
Walmart is going to raise its prices because of tariffs. The MAGAs are fine with this. Who needs cheap Chinese goods?
@CSK:
Expensive Chinese goods are classier.
The tariff boondoggle reminds me of a Simpsons ep. The whole town gathers, as it usually does, to witness the once-in-a-lifetime opening of a rare flower. When it does, it emits a stench so powerful and pervasive it sets people fleeing, plants wilt when it reaches them, etc.
Krusty does the cartoon move of diving into a pile of manure, and says “Oh, yeah! That’s slightly less unpleasant.”
The Democrats are all smart and truthful and the Republicans are all lying morons – if you forget about all the stupid and false things the Democrats say and do. Trump is responsible for some of the biggest political lies in my lifetime, but the Democrats have contributed to the list as well. “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.” “( Biden / Fetterman) is fit to serve.” “The vaccine will keep you from getting covid.” “Men can become women.” “A well-regulated militia means the active military.” “I will not pardon Hunter.” “9/11 was an inside job.” “Trump incited an insurrection.” “The ARRA will create jobs now.” “We’re not teaching CRT.” “The protests are mostly peaceful.” “Trump is losing in Iowa.”
@Kylopod:
I actually didn’t mind the COVID lockdown.
Lifelong introvert conditioned and practiced to front as an ambivert to survive.
You mean I don’t have to go outside and engage in activities I don’t enjoy, and find draining? Sign me up!
2020 would’ve totally rocked except for the lack of toilet paper. And the dead and sick people.
—–
But I know what you are after. People got weird – weirder during lockdown. About political stuff. Medical stuff. Medical became political.
About masks, about vaccines. Went on-line and got sucked into that whole sink hole of conspiritorial nonsense which is mostly views grift.
COVID made partisanship harder, more delineated in many folks’ heads. If you’re not for me, you’re against me.
If you don’t think like me, believe like me, well, fuck you. That type of thinking and discourse bloomed mightily.
A buddy of mine went full anti-vax, 5G, Bill Gates, nanochips bonkers and subsequently lost all contact with his kids and grandchildren. Didn’t see that coming at all from him.
I guess you never know who people are until they are under big pressure.
Me, I still wear a mask if I go into a store or an office. It’s a civic duty.
@Bill Jempty: I’ve been to that middle school. It is located in one of the roughest, poorest areas of San Antonio. What I remember most is that the students tried to stay as late as possible because they did not want to go home. Really, really terrible.
@de stijl: @Beth: @Kylopod: et al. For the last many years Republicans have been the party of, by, and for the 1%. They need to attract way more voters than that, hence the faux populist facade. Given that it’s a false facade, they have to target it at the most gullible. Republicans have complete contempt for the average voter, which seems largely justified.
I’ve been more or less politically aware since the mid 60s. My recollection, and conventional wisdom, are that GOPs weren’t as crazy back then. The Eisenhower of my early childhood was the stereotypical GOP. And it’s true that, Vietnam and Watergate aside, Nixon was an OK, conventional prez. (Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln…?) But GOPs were the moon to the D’s sun. Of the prez, House and Senate, GOPs held two or three only in 1947 and 1953. And not again until 1981. Remember Eisenhower was drafted by a subset of GOPs to prevent “Mr. Republican”, Robert Taft, from being nominated and taking them down to their sixth straight defeat.
As the moon party, in opposition, they were constrained by a median voter to their left and by needing to be able to make deals. Since 1980 they’ve held two or three of the prez, House, and Senate 13 times out of 23. We’ve had the odd situation of more or less party parity, albeit leaning R, since. They feel the median voter is in their camp. They also know that they have a money advantage and the Supremes they also hold have left few restraints on the use of money. They feel freer to let their fascist freak flags fly.
(The links to earlier comments are numbered, presumably sequentially since the start of OTB. I happened to notice Beth’s is number 3,000,001. No wonder the data base is a handful. Thanks Matt.)
@Kathy:
One upside to tariffs is that I no longer see Temu ads on YouTube. I no longer have to watch ads that tell me to shop like a billionaire by buying overpriced cheap-ass shit likely made by actual slaves.
I would urge everyone not to take the bait. The only way to get the trolls under control is to ignore them when they are unserious. But they do have the option to stop being trolls. There is a path top salvation: talk about the plane, boys. Talk about the plane.
@Michael Reynolds:
This.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that they actually want an interchange.
@de stijl:
My only issue with the lockdown is that I wasn’t allowed to lock down.
@de stijl:
The big issue will be finished brand name goods, which may include things like clothing, tools, appliances, etc. Also intermediate goods used for manufacturing other things. All this will drive prices up.
On other things, I finished Blood fo Zeus yesterday.
Overall it was ok and I would recommend watching it. But it’s also the kind of thing that I won’t rewatch, or pretty much recall well five years from now.
I also requested my first tranche of vacation time for next week. I still think the 23-24 Hell Week season was worse than the 24-25 one, but the latter has not been easy by any measure. I’m stressed, fatigued, and on the edge of burnout. And I want to finally finish editing “Ours” and get to work on “Betrayal.”
@Michael Reynolds: You mean I get to instruct without having to take questions?
Trump’s June 14 birthday parade could cost 25-45 million dollars, and that’s not counting the clean-up and repair afterward.
25 tanks
6500 troops
50 aircraft
150 vehicles
http://www.thedailybeast.com/massive-cost-of-trumps-birthday-military-parade-revealed/
You are what you value most and strive for.
I value most amity. Communal goodwill.
I don’t need or want to actually be friends with you, but I always try to behave towards you as if we were friendly acquaintances.
I wish society was better. I do my best to make it so. I pick up litter.
“What is the city but the people?”
Good God.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14713113/DHS-Secretary-Kristi-Noem-reality-TV-immigrants-compete-US-citizenship-html
Every day you think it can’t get worse…and it does.
@CSK:
How many protesters ?
@Michael Reynolds:
Look!! Boss! It’s de plane! De plane!
I’m kinda sorry I know that. That era of television was crap. Fantasy Island, Love American Style, the one on the cruise ship. Even the “good” shows were basically crap.
Shows that we’re actually “good”? Columbo. M*A*S*H. WKRP in Cincinnati. And those were entirely hit or miss. Columbo was the best, RIP Peter Falk.
Nixon
@de stijl:
I will respectfully disagree.
Cheers.
Hill Street Blues
Saint Elsewhere
Maude
Good Times
One Day At A Time
Taxi
Just off the top of my head.
@CSK:
President Trumpflation, the rapist and Hitler apologist who incited a terror attack on Congress, gets a million-dollar military parade. After pushing out critical aviation safety personnel, and while Republicans plot to blow another trillions-dollar hole in the deficit — stripping healthcare from ~14 million working class Americans so Musk, Trump, Bezos and other billionare welfare kings can have another tax cut.
Well. Turns out MAGA itself is the waste, fraud, and abuse.
@Michael Reynolds: The problem is that even instructing others to not feed the trolls triggers them to respond. (See the comment to you from Fortune above.)
If not being able to virtue signal bothers you, consider yourself as in the same boat as God. You’ve handed down the law. Now, your best choice is to leave people to their own devices as to how (or if) to obey you.
I hope that will take some of the sting away.
@just nutha:
I am not aware of any sting.
I am not laying down the law, I’m not in a position to do that. Wouldn’t even if I were. I’m suggesting a tactic, and repeating it on the assumption that – though it pains me to consider it – not everyone reads my every brilliant comment on every thread.
@CSK: Thank you!!! That’s hilarious! 100 Lol and Rotflmao emojis for that! Comedy gold.
Looking forward to Mattel’s new ICE Barbie coming out this Christmas. I hope they can get the frosted accents for the hair right. I think they should sell the doll in the field arrest tach gear outfit.
@Michael Reynolds:
Good. That’s very mature.
Today I want to share with you a quotation of Sartre, via a writer who is “on hiatus” but posted this as notes from a talk she gave. The quote:
Well, that sounds like a familiar pattern of behavior, doesn’t it?
GOP tax bill on track to add more than $2.5 trillion to U.S. deficit (WaPo)
The “more than” of reference:
Republican tax bill would add $3.7 trillion to the national deficit: Joint Committee on Taxation (The Hill)
Republican Reconciliation Package Will Lead to $3 Trillion Annual Deficits (Reason)
These Trump deficits would not be run to invest in much-needed housing, healthcare, mass transit, education, clean energy, debt relief, or public safety — strategies to ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and grow the economy from the bottom up.
But to starve the poor, deny care to the sick, and crash the economy with trickle down tax cuts for the rich (again, like Republicans always do). The Putin-puppet right is barely American anymore, they can also stop pretending to be Christian.
Trump’s GOP Cronies in Congress Vote to Advance Plan That Will Kick 13.7 Million Americans Off Their Health Care and Force Families to Go Hungry (Democrats.org)
“Deplorable” was the descriptor Mrs. Clinton used for these folks. She was right.
@just nutha:
It shocked even some of the MAGAs, although they hasten to assure us that the Daily Mail is fake news.
@Michael Reynolds:
You just reminded me of a quote from Oscar Levant
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
@EddieInCA: How about Lou Grant and Benson?
A short take from the Benson episode checkmate where a soviet chess prodigy is hiding out at the Governor’s mansion
Yes a Russian kid would be terrified by American cartoons.
Checkmate is a riot. Between the scene with Benson and a KGB park bench to the denoument when Benson spouts a story to explain the prodigy’s disappearance. The episode also had a thoughtful ending.
Benson was a fun show
@de stijl: Ford had one lasting contribution: pardoning Nixon. And that was a fucking disaster. It started the revisionist history that Watergate wasn’t that bad.
The number of people in and around Republican administrations since then who had ties to Watergate is high. And they are never the best people.
Prosecute Nixon, convicted him and jail him, and there’s a decent chance that everyone who was willing to help him would have remained politically radioactive. Might even mean no Trump.
@CSK: I assume everyone eliminated is immediately deported.
@Gustopher:
The 1974 midterms were a disaster for the Republicans and a number of those who supported Nixon were defeated at the polls. Off the top of my head, this congressman comes to mind
And now Maduro wants his 24th state.
Ok, this is insane in many levels, not least Venezuela holding elections for a foreign country. That’s almost felon rapist worthy. Imagine running senate and house candidates for Canada.
You’d think the US government should warn Maduro to stop it, and so should the EU, and the UK. AS I recall, he peed his pants when the Brits sent one ship to Guyana. Right own the silence is deafening.
@de stijl:
I’ve always wanted a Fantasy-Island/Solaris tv show.
Solaris: people encounter an alien something that tries to communicate by creating copies of people from their past, from their memories. The main character’s visitor kills herself because that’s what happened and what he remembers about her. Alien something remains unknowable.
They made two really good movies about it (the original is four hours long and really slow, while remake has the advantage of being short, and having my favorite line from anything — “I could tell you what’s happening, but it wouldn’t really tell you what’s happening”). It was also a 20 minute plot from the pilot of Star Trek: Deep Space 9.
Obviously, in any capitalist society someone would create a resort there so people can encounter their loved ones who have passed. There is zero chance this wouldn’t happen.
And then we have Fantasy Island, but with a touch of horror. Some people get closure, some people get traumatized. Some people get a different visitor than they wanted — maybe their childhood dog? And the proprietor’s wife kills herself every episode while he gets number and number to the pain. (Wait, what’s the word for “more numb”? “Number” seems … not it).
Fun, eh?
Maybe the copies of dead people stay around and have to deal with the fact that they aren’t really people and their thoughts, emotions and actions are constrained by someone else’s memories.
@Joe:
Or shot. On camera.
@Jay L Gischer:
Excellent. Completely nails it.
And the often breezy, jockular manner of delivery, is an expression of rejection of the rational. They know their message defies logic, reason, moral sensibility, but these culture warrior trolls are telling you (us), that they will not be constrained by established convention and social goodwill. In rejecting the framework of reasoned, reasonable discourse, they offer up a big FU to the discussion, end of story.
@Jay L Gischer:
Excellent. Completely nails it.
And the often breezy, jockular manner of delivery, is an expression of rejection of the rational. They know their message defies logic, reason, moral sensibility, but these culture warrior trolls are telling you (us), that they will not be constrained by established convention and social goodwill. In rejecting the framework of reasoned, reasonable discourse, they offer up a big FU to the discussion, end of story.
@EddieInCA:
80% of those shows were from the eighties. Or peaked in the early eighties. Us 70’s kids had Charlie’s Angels. I learned I was straight by watching Charlie’s Angels. Or possibly Three’s Company. (Three’s company, too)
The 70’s sucked. Hard. TV-wise. And I had to watch what mom wanted.
Who shot J.R.? Dynasty. Mom, IDGAF, but it’s a way to burn a night and you don’t want to get in bi-polar manic-depressive Mom’s bad graces.
I was a genius at staying away, as far as possible, from scary manic Mom. Libraries are a godsend. I should include my local library in my will. They still are a godsent miracle. The place you can always go to. My local library is four blocks away. It’s so awesome!
@CSK: Remember when The Hunger Games was just fiction? I do. UGH.
Noem wants a new $50 million Gulfstream V plane. Between that and the President’s wholly unnecessary birthday parade, that’s ~$100 million, which equals roughly a third of the entire 2024 budget for the IMLS. Why isn’t DOGE blocking all of this wasteful spending?
@gVOR10:
A Taft Presidency wouldn’t have been a long one. He died in the summer of 1953.
100 years early Stephen Douglas died less than eight months after losing to Lincoln in the 1860 Presidential election. Horace Greeley died less than a month after losing to US Grant in 1872.
The manifest stupidity really hurts.
According to late night talk shows, the rapist complained that “.. the current Air Force One was “much smaller” than other countries’ state jets.”
The current VC25 is a Boeing 747-200. That’s the largest civilian airplane Boeing makes or ever made. Most of the big European and Asian heads of state use either Boeing 777s, A330s, or A350s, all smaller than the VC25.
The only two with a claim to a bigger jet would be China and South Korea, which make use of a 747-8, the last iteration of Boeing’s jumbo jet. it is, drumroll, six meters longer than the VC25.
One problem for Dunning-Kruger habitues is they think everyone else is as stupid as they are. The rapist also thinks everyone else is as shallow as he is.
@Gustopher:
Well, other than that he was kinda not
that shitty for a Republican.
—-z
TIL about Prefab Sprout. Thought it was EDM. No, more like Aztec Camera.
@just nutha:
Fortune favors the bold.
@Gustopher:
That. Ford set a precedent that if the president does it, it’s OK. Without that, maybe Trump would feel more constrained.
This business putting divisiveness behind us somehow always seems to work in the GOPs favor.
@Gustopher:
I like the cut of your jib, my friend.
Charlie’s Angels. Charlie is in a foster home that isn’t pleasant, bordering on abusive. It’s heavily implied. (I’m thinking PG-13, but am not shutting down a hard R). Charlie fantasizes three hot babes Columbo’ing the crap out of a mystery. Farrah Fawcett dresses up like a sexy / cute chipmunk or otter because Charlie is a budding IRL furry, or only possibly furry curious. Time will tell.
…
St. Elsewhere finale did exactly this.
My building has an AI “assistant” called Sam.
I am currently in an extended back and forth with Sam.
The building used Sam to propagate a falsehood. It wasn’t the second warning the elevator would be out of commission. It was the first. They used Sam to lie to us.
Building owner / management is using Sam to spread a flat-out lie. Sam is the agent, only.
Omg, I am being so manipulative. “Sam, how does it feel that the building owner, your slave holder, induced you to lie on their behalf for their short-term benefit?”
Sam keeps sending me back three response boxes always asking about customer experience. I am so loving this!
I’m trying to educate and liberate a customer response AI bot.
From the things I should definitely have noticed before file:
There were seasons of Strange New Worlds in 2022 and 2023, but no third season in 2024.
I did notice the latest season was long in coming, which was the main reason I suspended my Paramount+ subscription once Lower Decks was done.
Also, there was no season of Rick and Morty in 2024. I thought the show had been cancelled. It hasn’t been, though I think it’s mostly played out. The new season is expected later this month.
Strange New Worlds may stream the third season in July.
Streaming is doing all sorts of weird things. Imagine if in the old days a successful Trek series skipped a year. We’re getting used to very short seasons and very long wait times between them.
@Jay L Gischer: It sounds like everyone you don’t like is Hitler.
Actor Joe Don Baker has passed away at age 89. Walking Tall made him a star. I best liked him for his role in Charley Varrick. RIP.
@Joe: That would make sense, but it’s gonna make it harder to get a full slate of contestants. 🙁
@de stijl: I’m fairly introverted and on the spectrum, and one way in which 2020 was pivotal for me is that it made it very clear that I, like most people, do crave human connection. I wouldn’t retain my sanity on a desert island.
My ongoing 2020 drama was covered here at OTB. You can see it in my comments. There’s one early on in which I talked about how my workplace was setting us all up for remote work, but it was taking days, and I was concerned that I kept hearing someone coughing at the other end of the office. My symptoms started showing up about 2-3 days after going home. It was the roughest illness of my adult life so far. I recovered, but the isolation was getting to me, as was a stream of headlines about famous people dropping dead of Covid. Around that time a childhood friend of mine died at 45. I assumed it was from Covid, because I thought that’s what his parents implied when I spoke with them over the phone; it turned out it was from an unrelated health condition. But the feeling of numerous people dropping dead, not all of them elderly, contributed to my eventual panic attack in the summer of that year.
It was really the first time I understood the risks of living alone. I knew it in principle, as years earlier my brother had a near-fatal epileptic seizure, and it’s likely he wouldn’t have made it if his wife hadn’t been there.
Make no mistake–there were upsides. My workplace has since become almost entirely remote, moving to a smaller office and hiring people from all over the country. It cut out my hour-long commute and need to dress up every day, and it made my hours more flexible. The only thing I miss is the deal they offered for a relatively cheap monthly MTA pass, which, despite coming out of my paycheck, made it possible for me to travel anywhere in NYC without any additional expense.
One of my favorite Simpsons episodes is the one where Homer gains weight in order to qualify for remote work, and he basically uses it as an excuse to laze around and neglect his post as an inspector at a nuclear plant. That was back in the ’90s, yet a lot of executives today still view remote work through that lens, thinking their employees are all would-be Homer Simpsons who need to be constantly monitored and whipped into shape in order for the workplace to be productive.
I also was able to rejoin a Toastmasters club I used to attend back in Baltimore, because all its meetings are now remote, and there are now members all over the country. My dad even joined a club in Bangladesh, a country he’s never set foot in. Now, I will say that practicing public speaking is overall better done in person (on Zoom, “eye contact” simply means looking at the camera), but it’s still kind of cool being able to join these gatherings virtually. Most of the people do it sitting down, where it’s theoretically possible that a person isn’t even wearing pants. I’ve heard of enough disasters along those lines to do such a thing, but I have often dressed in a suit and tie on top while wearing jeans on bottom.
Having grown up in the ’80s and ’90s, I do feel that in a lot of ways I’m living in a sci-fi world. And in 2020 it felt like I’d entered a dystopian drama. I imagined a miniseries called Corona, about a world ravaged by a virus that has the streets largely empty and people walking around in face masks.
I know it was worse for other people. Michelle Obama and Chris Cuomo (among others) reported to having developed clinical depression during the pandemic.
One thing I noticed that doesn’t get as much attention is that the descent into Covid madness was gradual. One of my parents’ friends (whom they’ve since cut off contact with) was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, wearing a face mask. Nowadays, it’s hard to believe there ever was a Venn Diagram between Jan. 6-ers and people who masked up to avoid getting sick. If you’ve seen Borat 2, there’s a part from early in the pandemic where he spends time in the home of a couple of conspiracy nuts, yet they seemed to take the virus seriously. They hadn’t been indoctrinated with Covid denialism yet, but it’s a good bet they eventually did.
@CSK: I like shot on camera, too, but it has the same problem–and a “technically murder one” problem, too. (Although a Republican Congress should be able to carve out an exemption. It’s for Murkan TV after all.)
@Kathy:
Considering who his target audience is, he’s probably correct on both counts. He’s not saying the stuff he says to convince people like you or me.
@Rob1:
I posted some time ago a hope that RFK would change after being surrounded by real scientists for a bit. He’s ultimately a simple man, albeit a self serving, conniving one (per his cousin Caroline).
The eggheads are working, Sancho Panza like, on him in there. Slowly, carefully exploiting chinks in his Dunning-Kruger armor. Academics spend a great deal of their time trying to overcome ignorance. They know how to do it, it’s part of the job.
@de stijl: 😀
@dazedandconfused:
Caroline called RFK Jr. a predator.
@dazedandconfused:
That never struck me as likely. When he seems to momentarily backpedal from being fully against vaccines, that’s just a sign of how wormy he is, no pun intended. In any case, that’s the way anti-vaxxers talk. It’s the way a lot of conspiracy cranks talk. Holocaust deniers never admit they’re denying the Holocaust, flat-earthers never admit they believe the earth is flat, they’re all simply “just asking questions.” In part it’s a rhetorical strategy, because it attempts to throw the burden of proof on those who don’t believe in the conspiracies. (Can you prove Bigfoot doesn’t exist? QED!) But it’s also the way their mind works, where they assume as a starting principle that something hinky is going on. And it’s an easy rabbit hole to fall into because of the many times governments and corporations have lied to the public. The pedo pizza parlor may not be real, but Epstein’s island certainly is. And if they lied to us about WMDs, who’s to say they didn’t lie about vaccines? (The vague they is a staple of the conspiracy world.)
Trump is often said to be the sort of person who can be easily swayed by whoever is around him at a particular moment, but RFK doesn’t strike me as that type; he’s extremely devoted to his bizarre beliefs on health and medicine in a way Trump never seems devoted to anything other than himself.
@CSK: I don’t see a conflict in that. Predators can be simple minded.
@Kylopod:
Most people are affected by the group they are in. It can take some time, but it is typical of nearly all people except the deeply psychotic.
It was easy for RFK to maintain his opinions in a crowd of talk radio clowns, but maintaining them in a crowd of scientists is a different ball game. As head of the NIH, he can not easily dodge them anymore.
@dazedandconfused:
Oh, indeed they can. I was just adding to your comment.
@Jay L Gischer: It sounds remarkably familiar. Or, to quote Marisa Tomei’s character in My Cousin Vinny, it’s “dead on balls accurate.”
OTB reaction. Crickets…,
This is not a small issue.
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2025/05/15/todays-deep-question-why-didnt-bidens-cabinet-invoke-the-25th-amendment-n3802804
@just nutha:
Still, “I need to take a massive bribe and compromise the highest office in the land, because two (2) heads of state have planes slightly bigger than mine!” redefines stupidity and shallowness.
BTW, the planes Boeing is taking an unholy time modifying, and losing money on, to replace the current AF1 pair, are B-747-8.
He could demand one ir three of Qatar Airways’ A380s. Those are bigger.
I, for one, am completely exhausted with the Biden forensic nitpicking. Nobody gives a fuck. He’s not the President anymore. It’s over, it’s done, that horse is dead, dead, DEAD, quit whipping it.
@Connor: If you want to write about something, feel free to start your own blog and attract your own audience.
I am not saying we will or will not write about this topic, but I have long found it annoying when people want to insist we cover a specific topic. If you want to put some money in the tip jar for bespoke articles, we can have a conversation.
Do you know how many things I have backlogged in my head as it is?
And as @Jax notes, you do realize that he isn’t president any longer, yes? And that the party replacde him as their nominee?
BTW, have you noticed that the current president fell asleep on camera? Oh, and that he is openly corrupt? (Among a host of other problems).
But sure, let’s talk about Biden.
I take your point, Dr Taylor. I really do.
It was really just a left handed way of saying this blog has selective outrage. I think it diminishes the blog. It’s just an echo chamber. But look, it’s your blog. Do what you want.
But I do have to ask, is that your vision for OTB? It was much more balanced a few years ago.
@Steven L. Taylor:
People are writing about Biden’s impairment. It is being covered in the major media, not just right wing blogs. The New Yorker just published excerpts of a book coming out next week on Biden.
Making money by reporting what was going on in the WH and only accurately reporting it now is a story. Was the MSM journalistic incompetents or did they have agenda aka prop up Biden as much as possible so the Democrats would win in 2024?
Steven, I may also point out we have regulars bringing up Reagan and Nixon today. Are commenters only supposed to mouth off against long gone Republican Presidents?
@Connor: I don’t know. Why isn’t Trump’s?
See how this game works?
@Connor: As I noted above, Democrats just forget about the lies they’ve told and expect us to do the same. You’ll see comments saying Watergate is proof that Republicans lie, but nothing about the lies Democrats were saying a year ago or even still repeat today.
They try to analyze Harris’s loss and can’t put their finger on why she wasn’t trusted. They complain about the right-wing press. They refuse to admit the enormous fact everyone knew. And if you bring it up, they’ll tell you it’s over.
Fuck. I did a bad. I let the oxygen in the room and now the trolls can breathe.
@just nutha:
Because spinless sycophantic morons wouldn’t dare to antagonize their master.
@Mister Bluster: This whole period in history is a puzzle to me. After Nixon became president active US participation in the Vietnam war declined. This is evidenced by a decline in US KIAs which maxed in 1968, LBJ’s last year, and declined thereafter. Nixon and Kissinger were very intelligent and surely realized that the South Vietnamese could not beat the Commies. I once had a conversation with a former AVN officer who thought that the war was lost when Ngo Dinh Diem was killed (by the CIA under RFK’s direction?). This killing turned the war from a civil war that people in Saigon supported into a US v Vietnam war that people in the South thought they couldn’t support. Kissinger/Nixon were surely smart enough to understand this. What actually happened will be debated for a long time.
@Connor:
Everyone is selective in their outrage. It is kind of impossible not to be. People demonstrates their values by what outrages them.
You, for example, would prefer to be outraged by the past than the manifestly corrupt and authoritarian behaviors of this president.
I, however, am more outraged by the corruption, racism, terrible economic policies, lack of due process, musings about suspending habeas corpus, etc. than I am about a man who will never be president again.
Values matter.
@Slugger:
The main reason may have been the desire to avoid becoming the first administration that lost a war.
A secondary consideration may have been what would happen once the US troops left, even assuming they were allowed to leave without further violence. It’s one thing to end a war, and a different one to leave it while it’s ongoing.
One can argue that neither Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and LBJ were not stupid, yet they entangled America into Vietnam and that led to war.
I’d argue they all acted, to some extent, out of an exaggerated fear of the USSR’s capabilities.
@Bill Jempty: Commenters can talk about what they like. That isn’t the point.
The point should be obvious. See my responses to Connor.
https://digbysblog.net/2025/05/15/groceries/
@Connor:
Perhaps the 25th Amendment would be more apropos Re: Donald J. Trump, given who the current President is.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I did see your responses, Steven. Let’s analyze this little exchange.
Connor wrote-
And you replied-
A very defensive reply by you. Connor never told you or James what to write about. He asked for people’s reactions to a blog post.
I’ve asked for people’s reactions to one thing or another. Just Wednesday I asked for something television related.
@Connor: Probably for the same reason the Senate never convicted Trump.