Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, February 28, 2023
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83 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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Working for oneself has its plusses and minuses, but overall I am very happy with my decision to be self-employed. Especially when I read stories like this:
Why Are Job Interviews Suddenly So Terrible?
Going through three rounds of interviews and THEN getting an email to schedule SIX MORE rounds is insane. Good grief.
You just keep on digging Rupert.
Trying this again…
West Virginia, Florida make moves to undermine science education
@Mu Yixiao: Brawndo, the Thirst Mutilator. It’s got what plants crave!
@OzarkHillbilly:
Imagine having your very own propaganda channel with ~2.3 million viewers every night, and the Oligarch-owner of that channel feeding your opponents campaign ads to you ahead of their airing…and you still get your ass kicked by 4.5 percentage points…and then deciding you are still the savior of the party?
Can you say chutzpah?
So in other words, her lawyer is scamming the scammer. (I assume s/he gets paid first from any $ she might be awarded, maybe I am wrong about that)
Here is video of MTG haranguing Parkland Shooting survivor David Hogg.
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/resurfaced-video-shows-marjorie-taylor-greene-confronting-parkland-survivor-david-hogg-in-2019
Here is a tweet from MTG complaining about citizens haranguing her.
https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1630409650360180742
@Mu Yixiao: Soon, degrees from red state universities won’t be worth the paper they are printed on.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Not if the lawyer’s doing it on contingency.
The real problem with the Murdoch/Fox revelations is that the people who need to see them won’t because they are ensconced in the Fox bubble.
Emphasis, mine.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/energy-department-covid-19-report-origins-lab-leak-debate/
The DOE joins the FBI who concluded the same, in 2021, with “moderate” confidence.
Four other Agencies and an Intelligence Panel stand by their position that the virus likely started with natural transmission. The CIA remains undecided.
Here is how the right-wing anger-tainment channel is reporting these “moderate” to “low confidence” inconclusive reports.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1630409986193981442
https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1630380064100560897
What has always befuddled me about this; why does it matter. Yes, we should understand what happened. But knowing that will not bring back the hundreds of thousands of people Republicans killed through their incompetence. So why does the GOP see this as a political winner???
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/02/11/trumps-policies-resulted-in-the-unnecessary-deaths-of-hundreds-of-thousands-of-americans-lancet-report/?sh=3fdac29a77e8
@Jen:
This is actually a common practice at some top-flight private secondary schools, where you have to be interviewed by the department head, a few faculty, the sports director, and the chaplain, plus have lunch with a few selected students.
@Jen:
Yikes! Sounds like corporate America is suffering from approach-avoidance issues.
Besides the reality that the extended interview process results in diminished returns, a larger issue is that the person that you want and have know you wanted from the first interview, won’t there at offer time, since they’ve taken another job.
Thinking about it for a moment, this maybe the result of corporate America’s obsession with metrics. Hiring managers, like everyone else are now rated on a seemingly endless list of performance indicators. Hiring the wrong or not the best person probably gets significant demerits, so it’s better to spread the blame around.
When I was selling technology, we had a joke that no IT manager was ever fired for buying IBM, even when they knew that other products were better suited for the problem to be addressed. But there was risk there.
@CSK: Well, I was thinking they got their cut first. but IANAL and could well be wrong.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
As far as prevention, containment, treatment, and so on, it doesn’t matter at all. I’ve said this many times, too.
But if it did leak from a lab, and even assuming an innocent accident, then China has much more to answer for. We know they were late in reporting the outbreak and person to person transmission. If they knew which virus it was and were it came from, they could have saved much time by releasing all the info they had on the trump virus.
More important, if it did leak is how it happened. Did people not follow certain safety protocols? Were such protocols insufficient? It’s like any other industrial accident: how did it happen, and how do we keep it from happening again. There are many other biolabs in the world dealing with dangerous pathogens.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
It matters the same way any fatal industrial accident matters – why did it happen and how can we stop it from happening again? If it turns out someone effed up and millions died, someone should be held accountable. We’d think that if it was an chemical spill, an explosion or release of dangerous materials. It shouldn’t be any different in a lab.
MAGAts and conspiracy theorists will scream intentional attack but the more frightening reality (if true) is it was likely stupid human error. The idea that one dude can haven oopsie, mess up one thing and a huge chunk of humanity dies is *terrifying*. If sloppy protocols or just plain negligence happened or is still happening, we kinda need to know so we can, you know, plan for the next disaster.
@Kathy:
@KM:
Understood, and agreed…as I said, we should understand what happened.
But, ultimately, it is the GOP’s politicization of the virus that killed the greater chunk of Americans. When they pay a price for the people they killed then we will be making real progress against future outbreaks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-misinformation.html
@KM:
IMO, political fanatics tend to take their cues, and adopt the attitudes, of their party leader, especially one such as Benito who insults and denigrates those who disagree with him.
For El Cheeto, nothing seems to matter more than his image. If the trump virus leaked from a Chinese lab, on purpose or not, then nothing that happened can possibly be his fault.
So, all the deaths, the long COVID victims, the economic losses, the psychological damage of pandemic conditions, don’t matter at all, because it’s someone else’s fault.
It’s as twisted and sick as that. Pathological narcissism.
The lab leak is definitely plausible, but you have to at least account for why the first cases are (right now) traced back to the wet market. 50% of the lab leak theory rests on the common-sense connection of the lab to the Wuhan. But you can’t be like what are the odds, and the ignore completely (which is what the lab leak theory does) the connection between the first cases and a place filled with animals.
@Kathy:
I fail to see how a lab-leak absolves Mar-a-Lardo.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I doubt if this goofball would have the financial wherewithal to pay a lawyer a retainer. She probably signed an agreement giving whoever it is between 30 and 50 percent of the recvery money.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
It absolves the people who were immediately angry and threatened by the first few months of Covid. Even if there was a lab leak, it wasn’t like a terrorist attack or something an enemy would do. If you take a certain type of person and expect them to care about people they don’t know, they need a war or a crime as license to do it. Covid wasn’t either of those, and this fact drove a huge portion of this country into crazy places.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
That may be because you reason rather than rationalize.
@CSK: As I read it, “rounds” can include interviews with multiple people. So, the first round is a screening call with HR to make sure you’re not a robot. The second may be a zoom call. The third may be in-person with multiple people.
The ’rounds’ correspond to the number of invites, not the number of people.
When I interviewed at a large PR agency, I went through a number of rounds–HR (screening call to make sure I was qualified), then I interviewed in-person with the department head. After I passed those, a few weeks later I had to speak with the head of the department (again), and each of the managers in the division (3), along with a few people who would be peers. I talked to a total of 7 or 8 people that day, but I wouldn’t consider that 7-8 rounds. It was the third (and final) round before they hired me.
@Sleeping Dog: Agreed. The whole thing is a bit strange, really. A good friend of mine has had this happen to her a few times over the last couple of years. I don’t have many friends who are currently looking for jobs, so I just kind of filed it in the back of my head as weird, so reading this piece was an “oh….so this is a thing now” moment for me.
She kept getting called back to the same places, over and over–with interview processes stretching out over MONTHS. I thought maybe it was some kind of due diligence necessary at her salary level (she’s a hot shot and worth every penny!), but it really felt like the work version of dating a guy with commitment issues.
@Jen:
Sounds to me like a massive, collective covering of asses.
@Jen:
“…dating a guy with commitment issues.”
That’s a great analogy. I recall going through a similar process at the Harvard Business School. I forget how many interiews I had–at least four–strung out over six weeks.
@Kathy:
Local CCP functionaries are notorious for withholding bad news from their superiors, hoping to clean up the mess without drawing Beijing’s attention. It is quite possible that if it were a lab leak, that the lab followed a protocol that started with reporting it to the local CCP authorities, who sat on it.
We’ll never know the truth.
I find the timing of the whole “hmm, maybe it *was* a lab leak” thing interesting. It’s coming right on the heels of China dabbling with the idea of supplying Russia with weapons. Has a “hm, all y’all really want to be a pariah? We can help with that” vibe to it.
The lab leak was always plausible, it was always a bit much to assume that the presence of a major lab in Wuhan was coincidence. I assumed folks were leaning into the natural transmission cause to keep the loonies from shooting up Asian neighborhoods, and to avoid making it a diplomatic crisis with China.
@Sleeping Dog:
If it was a lab leak though, the inital cluster would have been people working for the lab, not people working in a random meat market on the other side of the city
In a world full of Bobo’s be a Jamie Raskin.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1630609204842201088
@Michael Reynolds: @Michael Reynolds:
Remember too that at the time Trump was trying to do business with China, including a slew of patents for his incest baby-gurl.
@Michael Reynolds:
It wasn’t a coincidence. The lab was in Wuhan because of the city’s proximity to the viruses the lab studied.
When nature and death is concerned, people want to believe in villains. For example, Randy Shilts famously got everything wrong when he invented Patient Zero (Gaetan Dugas) for HIV. But HIV wasn’t spread by a single person. It just happened because humans are part of nature. The logic of a human villain though appeals to morality. Same goes with the lab leak.
@Modulo Myself:
All true. But there was never any compelling reason to dismiss the lab leak theory. As evidenced by the the way conclusions are now drifting toward, rather than away from, the theory.
@Stormy Dragon:
Which is why the person above who stated the wet market theory can’t be dismissed is correct. One thing we do know is that local CCP operatives did not report the outbreak to Beijing until it became too large to deny and Beijing was slow to take action after they knew.
As @Michael Reynolds: points out the lab leak theory is plausible and until more information from the Chinese becomes available we’ll never know what the truth is. I’m not holding my breath on that. Plus, knowing how the plague started isn’t particularly important.
As I said the other day, I think the Republicans should just resign themselves to losing in 2024. If Trump is the presidential candidate, he’ll lose. If he isn’t the candidate, he’ll sabotage whoever it is.
http://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/28/trump-voters-republican-primary-00084652
@CSK: Which is what I’m talking about.
@daryl and his brother darryl: You need to destroy more brain cells. Once you do that it will all become clear.
@Michael Reynolds:
I would guess politics have as much as anything with the drift.
Most everyone has concluded that the evidence is inconclusive, but the far-right continues to press for the answers they want.
One thing I’ve learned from the Trump era that disturbs me is the number of MAGAt’s in our Government.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m killing them as fast as I can!!!
@daryl and his brother darryl: Faster faster Faster!!!
Dems are not having it.
Stay to the end, it’s worth it.
https://twitter.com/Sky_Lee_1/status/1630613301825622017
More of this, please!!!
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m not sure what a leak about a ‘low-confidence’ belief means…and given how many of the lab-leak proponents seem to be most angry about how they were treated on social media and not the millions dead, I’m suspicious.
Not totally related but I saw an interview with John Mearsheimer where he said there’s no evidence for Russian imperialism and there’s plenty of evidence for NATO expansionism.
This kind of crazy is everywhere now, and when the lab-leak hypothesis attracts the same crazies as the Russia was forced to invade Ukraine and they all look respectable.
February is Black History Month
@daryl and his brother darryl: What @Kathy: said. Like blaming Biden for East Palesteen*, it doesn’t have to make sense. FOX/GOP will keep pushing the lab leak story until, like the failure of masks and teaching CRT in kindergarten, it becomes “everybody knows”, despite any lack of evidence.
* J. D. Vance (R-Thiel) made a big point of saying it’s pronounced steen in his stupid Op Ed in WAPO a couple days ago. Makes it sound like an outtake from Young Frankenstein.
@gVOR08:
I don’t quite recall whether it was Eegor, or Eyegor.
The senator from Q, though, does support my view that image and appearances are of the utmost importance to his bunch. If they called the town East Palestine, they might appear to be in favor of Islamist terrorists, or worse even, in their eyes, of Muslims,
@Kathy:
@gVOR08:
There are so many instances of bizarre pronunciations in these United States.
Here in CT we have a Thames River that is pronounced as it reads, and not as the Brit’s pronounce it.
Covid: the lab leak vs wet market.
Why not both?
If a new viral strain had been detected from sampling at the local markets or their sources, and was being investigated before anyone fully realised what a b@satard it was, the Wuhan labs would be the obvious place to do pathology work.
And if their containment procedures were sloppy, *boom* new point of radiation.
This is just me WAG-ing without bothering to checking on viral descent data. But it seems plausible enough.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Isn’t Versailles, Kentucky pronounced “Ver-sales”?
@Kathy: What hump? We tend not to be very scrupulous in pronouncing names of foreign origin like Ver-sales (Versailles) OH or My-lin (Milan) MI.
@gVOR08:
It’s BERlin and New BERlin in Wisconsin (pronunciation changed in early 1942) 🙂
Lawrence from Lost in the Pond on YouTube has a series where he attempts to pronounce a dozen or so cities in each state (he’s still in the early part of the alphabet). There are a lot that I get wrong.
@gVOR08: Versailles MO and Milan, MO are both pronounced that way, along with Chouteau Ave. (Show-tow) in St. Louis, and the Courtois River (pronounced Cot-away).
@daryl and his brother darryl:
I understand in WWI, the British soldiers pronounced Ypres as Wipers.
Faves:
De-MOYNE (Des Moines), Iowa
Cay-row (Cairo), Georgia
@gVOR08: I used to work with someone from Cairo, GA. It’s pronounced “Kay-row.”
@Mikey:
Isn’t there a Cairo/Kay-ro, Illinois as well?
Calais, ME Cal-es
Calais, Fr Ca-lay
and if your in Maine and don’t want to be corrected, don’t use the French pronunciation, which is odd given that the predominant surnames in the Calais area are French.
Apparently there’s a “Ver-Sales” NY, PA, OH, IN, IL, KY, MO and TN. I like to think it was one real sumbitch settler founding towns then getting kicked out of them.
Some other odd pronunciations we have here:
MontiSELLo (Monticello)
La-Go-Tee (Loogootee)
Mont-Peel-Yur (Montpelier)
@Neil Hudelson:
Same for the Capital City of VT
@CSK: Yes, there’s a Kay-ro in Illinois. And a Mar-SALES (Marseilles) and a NU-bur-lin (New Berlin) and a MontiSell0 and AY-thuns (Athens) and a number of other similar local pronunciations. (A favorite story was having a representative of a national company correct my local client, introducing herself from a company whose name was eponymous with Mar-SALES: “Oh no, its MarSEY.”)
As JohnSF can attest, we have nothing on the Brits:
Cholmondeley = Chumly
Featherstonehaugh = Fanshaw
We have a MA-drid here in New Mexico. Quite a charming ex-coal mining town.
Sigourney Street in Hartford, CT…nothing like Sigourney Weaver.
Sig-un-ee (pronounced with a hard g)
Now and then you get a mildly pleasant surprise.
I got an email from HBO Max saying the subscription price would “change.” As I’d subscribed under a “lifetime” 50% discount, I figured that was about to end.
Well, no.
The price went up, but the discount still applies.
@CSK: @Long Time Listener: There is indeed a Cairo IL, pronounced , as you say, like Karo syrup. As a result, the southern part of IL is called Little Egypt. Cairo is right at the tip of IL, where the Ohio flows into the Mississippi. From riverboating days Little Egypt had a pretty rough reputation. Everybody I met from southern IL said Little Egypt started just a little south of them. I swear people from the south side of Cairo said Little Egypt was a little south of them.
@CSK: IIRC St. James is SIN-jin.
For Kathy’s amusement I tried to come up with a badly pronounced Spanish based place name, but didn’t come up with one. Kathy? Anybody?
@gVOR08:
He is probably in the grip of terror: At any moment the press might refer to those people as “Palestinians”.
The horror….the horror…
Today in Cop Mayor is totally not a Republican pretending to be a Democrat news:
I see I, @gVOR08: missed @DAllenABQ: with MA-drid. There’s a New Madrid MO which I believe is also mispronounced like that. I tend to go along with calling people and places what they want to be called, so I suppose I should say differently pronounced or something rather than mispronounced.
@dazedandconfused: I would think that would be better than “palace-teenie-ans” but maybe not. Who can tell?
@gVOR08: there is a Buena Vista in VA pronounced Beuna V(short I)sta. Small ex industrial Town in the Appalachias
“And on the eighth day, God made a hero.” (From DeSantis campaign ad IIRC)
A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that after trailing for the last three months, former President Donald Trump has suddenly surged to a substantial lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a two-man matchup for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.Previously, DeSantis led Trump 45% to 41% among Republican voters. Now Trump leads DeSantis 47% to 39% — a net swing of 12 percentage points in Trump’s direction since early February.
“The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away…” (The Book of Job, IIRC)
@Kathy: When we moved to Cincinnati we had cable installed. Signed up for the standard package, lots of channels but none of the premium HBO and such. The billed me like $15 a month. After about eight years we had a problem and someone had to repair the line from the pole to the house. Then they started billing me like $50 a month. (This was some time ago.) I was going to call and bitch ’til I realized they’d been billing me all along for basic, the public service channel and the handful of local stations. Decided not to complain. “You swine have been undercharging me for years and now you expect me to pay the correct amount going forward?!!” didn’t seem a promising line of argument.
Common in the south for a small town to be named for the splendid French Gen’l Lafayette. And to call itself lah-FALL-et.
@gVOR08:
I believe St. John is sin-jin.
Marge Greene, still crazy after all these years.
@gVOR08:
I can’t think of any offhand.
A “late night” post (I’m in bed so early these days).
So… I was invited to Seoul by a friend (on his dime). I booked my flight and hotel right away, no problem.
Last week he messaged me to say “Oh… you’ll need an eVisa”. Umm… what?? I’ve been to Korea twice before and didn’t need a visa. Apparently, it’s a new thing (2019).
Okay. It’s only 10,000 Wan (about eight bucks). Fine. I’ll go to the website and apply.
Holy fuck is that website awful. Hand-applying for a Chinese visa was more clear and more simple.
I was ready with a scan of my passport. But… “TOO BIG”. Okay… exactly what is the size limit I need to shoot for? It’s not listed anywhere. Just “too big!” until, after multiple resizes, it just magically works.
It requires that I enter the zip code of the place I’m staying–but that field is grayed out and won’t allow me to enter anything. Entering the street address (also required) doesn’t get accepted, either. Turns out, you have to enter the street address first (even though it’s placed second) and then click on a search box (I honestly can’t remember how I did it, because it was 5 minutes of randomly clicking on things and hoping it worked).
Oh… I need a passport-style photo to upload? I don’t remember seeing that being listed in the initial instructions.
How did Korea go from being open and welcoming to Americans to insisting on a visa and knowing not only where I’ll be staying, but what my job is, in just 2 years?
@Mu Yixiao:
It was something started during the COVID19 lockdown that never went away
Well, we all played nicely together today without the supervision of our genial hosts.
@gVOR08: I think Martinez, GA is pronounced Martin (like Steve) – ez, but the person who told me that wasn’t from there so…
Two towns just south of Nashville named Fayetteville and Shelbyville are pronounced by the locals as Fet vul and Shebavul.
I grew up in the State of Mississippi pronounced Muhsippi
Vienna, Illinois
Vi (rhymes with eye) enna
Home of Paul Powell. 31st Illinois Secretary of State. 1965-1970. His death.
Powell had been dead awhile when I was sitting in the Carbondale, Illinois Yellow Cab stand after midnight waiting for a call. The dispatcher was asleep with his head on the desk and the old AM radio was tuned to WBAP out of Fort Worth, Texas.
Between songs the announcer came on the air: “And now we have a request from Paul Powell to
Ma Hatchett“.
I about fell out of my chair laughing!