Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, May 27, 2025
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93 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
An NYT gift link:
“NYT Gift”
A long piece that winds up here:
@charontwo: @charontwo:
I guess I’ll have to read the entire article, because I’m not convinced that the annual deficit or the overall total debt is impacted by US consumers proclivity to purchase goods inexpensively.
Two candidates for deportation from OTB Nation.
On the Sunday Forum (May 25, 2025) dated Monday, May 26, 2025: Lara King
On today’s Tuesday Forum (May 27, 2025): Adolfo Alvarado
Maybe they can be disappeared to the internet ether.
Politico has a piece outlining who might be good in a Democratic “Shadow Cabinet.”
Some good names/ideas on that list.
@Bobert:
What about the big tax cut included in the new budget resolution that has just gone to the Senate?
I do not see where the thrust of the NYT piece has much to do with consumer proclivities.
How the Trumpists are moving Trump loyalists into high level positions at the State Department:
A likely template for taking control of other Federal agencies:
“Drezner”
https://www.benfranklinfellowship.org/
“Politico re above”
Drezner:
@charontwo:
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Trump plans to order all federal agencies to terminate their contracts with Harvard.
Whack-A-Mole!
Take a hike Eva!
So, there’s an election next Sunday to pick judges at all levels.
I intend not to vote.
Reasons: 1) I’ve no idea who most of the candidates are, what they stand for, or whom/what they represent.
2) We shouldn’t be doing this at all.
3) The federal government, meaning the president, will tout this election as a huge success for her reforms, bolstered by a high turnout. So, I’ll help keep the turnout low. I’ve been urging others not to vote, not even to cast blank ballots. There’s very little enthusiasm to begin with.
4) I’ve better things to do. I think the mashed potato air fried cakes (which were balls, actually) have potential, but instant dehydrated potato flakes was not the way to go (too creamy). I also want to test out a glaze on chicken thighs.
Is everyone simply too depressed and dispirited to comment much?
@Kathy:
Electing judges is of a piece with the claim Trump won the election so judges shouldn’t have any authority over him. The tyranny of the majority. On the other hand, letting Trump appoint judges subject to approval from a GOP Senate doesn’t seem like a good idea either.
It’s a long time since I read Dr. Taylor’s book, A Different Democracy, but IIRC he noted only the U. S. and one South American country elect judges, and they only for a few minor positions, not state supreme courts.
@Kathy:
Is it a retention ballot or just vote for who you want?
I’m fairly used to voting for judges both on the retention and their first shot. I’m in agreement that we shouldn’t be voting for judges on their first shot.
Retention however is a great way to get rid of a crappy judge. Cook County has frequent lawyer lead rebellions to get rid of egregious judges. I wish it was easier to get rid of them. That would rule.
I have a friend who is fond of noting that it would only take about 2 million people to sign up for the NRA to completely change the organization, fire its leadership, and end its activities.
Of course, some other organization might crop up in its place.
The same sort of thing seems to apply to the BFF. Why not just join it and dilute the meaning of its signal? Might that be possible?
@CSK:
I know I am. This all sucks so much.
I’d be much less depressed and suicidal if I had the meds I need (Vyvanse for ADHD and Wellbutrin for depression). The worst part of a late in life ADHD diagnosis and treatment is that now I don’t have the meds I can see just how bad I fucked up my life.
Like, before I didn’t know any better. I just couldn’t understand how people could remember things like band member names or song lyrics. I couldn’t understand how people can just do work. Now I know, my brain just doesn’t work right.
I tried to read an article today and had to re-read the same paragraph 6 times. I just caught myself staring out the window for a couple minutes while typing this.
I saw how good things could be. When I was with friends, had a functional job, and had the right medication. It was great. I don’t want to live like this.
The nice triage nurse at the NHS GP told me that because my medication is a controlled substance, I had to get a referred to the local “mental health board” and that my INITIAL screening would be in 6-12 months. Didn’t matter that I have all the reports and diagnostics from the U.S. I have to start all over again and hope that the Drs eventually, maybe if I jump through the hoops right I’ll get the meds I need. But honestly, because I’m trans, there’s a high likelihood that I’ll get refused on that alone.
I told the tirage nurse that I probably won’t make it 5 months like this. Her response was that 6-12 months is better than it was. It apparently used to be 4 years. Then she offered to text me the number of the suicide hotline. Guess I’ll die.
I’m starting to come around to the idea that healthcare is a human right and that the way to make things better for everyone is to provide actual healthcare on a societal level. While I understand that rationing and triage would have to be a huge part of that, both the U.S. model (rationing through ruinously high costs) and the U.K. model (rationing through ruinously long wait times) are simply human rights abuses.
ETA: Oh, I almost forgot, we have some private health insurance through my partner’s company. I had an appointment with them where the GP told me she wasn’t allowed to prescribe Vyvanse and that I would need to see one of their in-house shrinks. She said it would take 3 business days to check the policy. They came back with a denial saying that my ADHD was not covered because it was a “pre-existing condition”. Fuck.My.Life.
I am feeling less stressed than I was a couple months ago. That may be due to a personal situation resolving reasonably well, though. At the same time, there are signs that while MAGA is going to make the lives of myself, my family and friends miserable, it doesn’t look like they have a long-term agenda. For instance, they seem determined to persuade Mexican-American voters in Texas to vote Blue.
I have a friend that teaches English to native-Spanish-speaking high-schoolers in Houston. He says they are all terrified of getting picked up and deported, in spite of being here legally.
Meanwhile the “big beautiful bill” if enacted, would create chaos in financial markets, and put the hurt on many, many voters. I think they will notice. My best guess is that they don’t expect the Senate to pass it without modifications, and that there is a lot of posturing and bargaining positions being staked out.
I’m not saying I’m going to like the end result. I’m saying that if it were passed as it stands, it would be very, very bad for everyone, including the Republican Congressional Caucus.
The Court is not doing everything I might hope for, but it isn’t doing nothing, either. Apparently, suspending habeas corpus is a line they don’t want to cross. That’s really minimal, but not nothing.
@Beth: Please keep telling us about what’s going on with you. I am pulling for you. I know others are, too. Much love…
My circular approach to prognostication and political analysis:
1) There is no single cause of any human action. Because:
2) Our lives and characters are shaped by four forces: DNA, experience, free will and random chance. The answer is never just DNA, never just free will, a human mind is a web not a single line of toppling dominos.
3) Any debate about human behavior, including political behavior, which comes down to, ‘is it A or is it B or is it C?’ will be mostly pointless because the answer will always be D: All or at least most of the above.
4) When did person X become this, that or something else? The answer is easy. How old is person X? That’s when the process of becoming this, that or something else, began.
5) If you wish to analyze any human behavior correctly, embrace complexity and ambiguity even though:
6) There will never be a single answer because: see (2) above.
7) If you wish to prognosticate with a reasonable degree of success, step back far enough to see the flow of the river, not just the nearest whirls and eddies.
8) And don’t just step back from the river, step back from your own preferences and ingrained beliefs which you should already have hauled out of storage and examined critically. Get as close as you can not to objectivity, which is impossible given that you are a subjectivity, but rather get as close as you can to a state of presuppositionlessness.
9) Humans are in a state of superposition, they might be here, or they might be there, they might be still or in motion. Which is why:
10) All systems which attempt to predict human behavior will be wrong. Including the above, because of the above.
11) Not-withstanding 1-10, express your opinions forcefully because it encourages opposition and moves you closer to the truth. Also, it’s more fun.
@Beth:
I’m so, so sorry. I can’t believe you can’t get the meds you need without going through an unbelievably lengthy rigmarole, particularly since you already have all the necessary documentation.
Hang in there. You’re a tough girl. I have faith in you.
@gVOR10:
@Beth:
It’s electing every judge in the country, from supreme court all the way down.
I’m sure it’s not a good idea.
@CSK: Probably saving up their energy to talk about the Israeli Embassy workers’ killing.
@CSK: I can’t speak for others, but I’ve been oddly busy with random miscellaneous things lately, which has me offline for large chunks of the day. Also, it is finally sunny and nice here so we have been tackling projects.
And yes, the news is constantly depressing.
All, this is a really cynical and quite gross attempt to exploit a tragic crime to score cheap political points on a blog.
Don’t bite.
@Steven L. Taylor: All! It must be important not to talk about it.
@Jen: de stijl thought it was really funny I was busy on Friday.
@Kathy:
There’s been studies that show that elected judges tend to be far more punitive than appointed judges, and that punitive bias falls primarily on minority defendants
@Jen:
There are some good news here and there. For instance, Texla is not doing well in Europe, amid rising sales of EVs.
@charontwo: “I do not see where the thrust of the NYT piece has much to do with consumer proclivities.”
The GOP is doing what it does: cut taxes on the rich, spending on the rest of us, and blowing up the deficit.
The NYT is doing what it does: blaming anything other than GOP policy.
@CSK: I learned early in my schooling that I was better at riffing from other people’s ideas than creating my own. Trump sucking the air put of the zeitgeist “room” currently is limiting everyone. But no, I’m neither depressed not dispirited above levels common for me. America’s been pretty pathetic every way except economically quite a bit of my adult life.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Sometimes I yearn for the thumbs down button.
@just nutha:
Trump sucking all the air out of the room is a wonderful metaphor for the way he makes non-MAGAs feel: deprived of sufficient oxygen.
@Fortune: you aren’t talking about it either, you’re just talking about people not talking about it.
Anyway, I’m really not loving this new Disney era of Doctor Who. 8 episode seasons, with each episode being a bit shorter than in the past just doesn’t give the show space to breathe. And for a “jumping on point” it really is bogged down in lore.
Stories are very simple — the shorter run time doesn’t give time for any interesting character changes, and there’s always about another minute used for the season mystery box. (The Mrs. Flood mystery box annoyed me more than anything. The mystery didn’t serve the story well — if we knew who she was before the grand reveal, there would have been a little tension as she appeared over and over near the Doctor, but then maybe she would have had to do something more meaningful than pick up her prescriptions)
I don’t think we’ve really gotten to see this Doctor’s character enough that out-of-character moments have as much impact. And the companions are even less fleshed out.
It’s all the weaknesses of the revival era, with a lot fewer of the redeeming bits. On the plus side, it’s really making me appreciate the 13th Doctor stories (deeply flawed in different ways)
I really miss the stand-alone stories that were the bread and butter of the franchise, but which are now a semi-rare exception. I want more bases under more sieges, more silly monsters, and maybe a quarry or two.
@CSK: While I agree in principle, the downvote button had the same kind of effect here that poll taxes and literacy tests had in the Jim Crow South.
Certainly different in degree and dramatically different in effect given that our microcosm is insignificant. But we need to remember that the downvote button was removed on the determination that it was mostly used to gang up on specific categories of people and ideas in much the same ways that voting rights tools were used to disenfranchise blacks back then. Significantly different, yet cut from the same cloth, I think.
@CSK: I’m more of a sidekick than a main character. I just follow the vibes of the room, so if it’s quiet I’m quiet.
Gus is a dog name, and it fits me well.
@just nutha: it also gave certain people the attention they craved.
@Gustopher:
A sidekick? You certainly make your presence felt for a mere adjutant, 🙂
@just nutha:
Yes, I know. Even so…
Commenters can reply to other commenters with two words, Thumbs Down.
U-Haul is becoming the preferred mode of transportation for Nazis. Nazis will just crowd into the back, drive somewhere, drop off a protests worth of Nazis, and when they’re done they pile back in and drive away.
All to try to keep people from tracking the specific Nazis back to their cars and recording their license plates. They wear masks, they cover their tattoos, they desperately want to avoid the consequences for their actions. This is not the behavior of people confident in their power.
Anyway, I’m rooting for potholes and speed bumps. Maybe a well placed bollard.
@Mister Bluster: Steven L. Taylor disccourages all from engagement.
@Fortune:
Exactly how much energy did you sacrifice to acquire this warped sense of the intent of other people? It appears reflexive—like the groundstroke of a person who has played tennis from the day they could walk.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Cynicism requires some modicum of self-awareness—context in one’s social and political environments. What about @Fortune’s contributions leads you to the conclusion that they are inclined to such an effort?
@Gustopher: True, but at the cost of having to listen to them whine, sometimes justifiably, about being singled out for abuse simply because “I’m saying things you don’t want to hear and consider” and “I’m not the one in the echo chamber, you are.” A Faustian bargain at best.
@CSK: It’s been a looooooong time since I’ve done any of this but isn’t there a trope or something about a character who believes himself to be the sidekick, but he actually isn’t? It may be a variation on the unlikely hero.
@Jay L Gischer:
Jay, that’s a good idea as far as it goes, but that’s not very far. The members do elect the board, but they are only allowed to vote for candidates selected by the board. They are set up like the Soviet communist party used to be.
Per NBC, Tommy Tuberville, the chief ignoramus of the Senate, has launched his quest to become governor of Alabama. He should have no trouble getting elected. A football coach sits next to God, and may even supersede Him.
Sorry, Dean Taylor. Tuberville is, as I once called him, a fucking moron, and I know you agree with my assessment.
@CSK: “Per NBC, Tommy Tuberville, the chief ignoramus of the Senate, has launched his quest to become governor of Alabama. He should have no trouble getting elected. A football coach sits next to God, and may even supersede Him.”
To me, that’s the first happy political news in ages. If people in Alabama are dumb enough to elect him, then they deserve to have him — but we don’t deserve to have him foisted on us. So much better he’s governor rather than polluting the senate.
Rick Derringer has passed away at 77. RIP.
@Kurtz: 1 Taylor has said any topic is allowed in the daily forum. 2 Taylor has also said there’s a variety of opinion on Outside the Beltway. 3 Taylor felt the need to tell “all” not to respond. You must have noticed it’s odd.
Also, it’s a major story and I don’t remember seeing a single article or mention of it. Sure the authors of the site have freedom, and there are only so many hours in the day, but not even a mention? But it’s not just this site, the left in general has been very quiet about the killings. So a better question is how can you ignore the obvious intent?
@wr:
Oh, I agree. Best to have him off the national stage. But I do feel badly for Dean Taylor.
I wonder if Tuberville will insist on being called “Coach” rather than ” Governor,” just as he insisted on being known as “Coach” rather than “Senator.”
I am bemused by the reverence in which Deep South college football coaches are held. I couldn’t tell you the names of the Harvard, Boston College, UMass, etc. football coaches are if you held a gun to my head. I doubt one out of 1,000,000 million residents of Massachusetts could, either.
@CSK: Look at it from the glass-half-full perspective. He can’t be Governor and a Senator at the same time. One small step forward for America.
Sure, it may be a giant leap backwards for Alabama, but how much more damage is one additional buffoon (and one who is mostly in it for the celebrity?) in office going to do there? It may turn into a win-win. Who can tell? What’s Tuberville going to do that any other Republican wouldn’t? Is he the type of “grand vision” guy that will be able to turn the state into something it isn’t already?
ETA on another topic (and thinking of no one in particular): A drive-by, arcane comment does not constitute a “topic” suggestion.
@CSK:
@wr:
Hopefully he’ll win (apologies to the people of Alabama for saying something so vile), and confine his harm to one state (and again my apologies for saying this).
It may be a move to seek the presidential nomination later on. I don’t think college coaches are nearly as popular in other states, especially those with NFL teams.
@Kathy:
It may be a move to seek the presidential nomination later on.
Oh, dear God. What a truly appalling prospect. That hadn’t occurred to me.
@Beth:
Yes all pulling for you.
Do you still have an prescription back in USA? Can it be filled without using insurance? Do you have a friend that you could authorize to pick up?
@CSK:
While I get your point, I think that’s a false comparison. The Auburn football program is significantly more renowned than the programs of Harvard, Boston College (especially post Hasselback or post Flutie), U Mass, etc. Moreover, it’s certainly not true that all college football coaches are equally revered in the South, or even Alabama. For example, I suspect that the coach at University of South Alabama, Alabama-Birmingham, Alabama-Huntville, Samford College, or any number of other schools would be in any danger of winning the Governorship just because of their status as a coach. ETA: Or be likely to be able to be correctly identified by one person in a million in their state, for that matter
Yeah, it’s ludicrous to think that he would be considered as a viable candidate for Governor. It’s as silly as thinking that the citizens of California would elect a B-movie actor to that office.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Sure, but it’s the reverence in which Tuberville and Nick Saban are held that confounds me. It’s as if being coach qualifies them for anything, no matter how demanding.
@Michael Reynolds:
Ah, “The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!”
Particularly liked #7. A lot of data these days is from question polls and focus groups, both usually tainted by what people want to be perceived as which isn’t the same thing as what they are. Eddies in the river.
@Fortune: Do you have something to say about the events you despair no one else talking about, or do you just join those who do not talk about it?
I think many people are motivated by spite when you say “you’re not talking about this topic over here!” to simply not discuss it.
Anyway, I think Peter Capaldi’s second and third seasons were the high point of modern Doctor Who. His first season was a bit shaky, but his ability to give a speech can make you forget for a moment that you’re watching “Kill The Moon,” so it’s not all bad.
@CSK:
There’s a little more than 7 million people in Massachusetts, so I figure the coach’s players, family and employers might be enough for that 1 in 1,000,000. Unless you mean their real names — the ones they keep private and hidden so fae, fairies and goblins cannot steal their bones.
As far as Tuberville going from the Senate to the Governor’s mansion… I’m sure the Republicans will find someone equally bad to run for Senate, and that Gov. Coach will be no more awful than the standard current Republican governor. Just shuffling about the grift.
@CSK:
At the end of the day they are in the entertainment industry. You could question why anyone listens to the political views of singers, actors, etc
The most pro-disease administration in history is stepping up attacks on vaccines. Covid vaccines no longer recommended for children or pregnant women.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/27/rfk-jr-covid-vaccine-kids-pregnant-women
@Fortune:
So, you consider the silence of OTB, both the hosts and commentariat, a major story? Or, to be charitable, the broader ‘Left’?
I ask for clarification, because that is the topic of your sentence. And if you really want to go into the weeds, your sentence places the attack as an object, not the subject.
The inclusion of a dig at the community, at all, suggests the intent of your post was not discussion, but an opportunity to land a jab.
Is the casting of the sentence suggestive of your true attitude toward Israel, as a theater for American domestic political conflict rather than a tragic event in a tragic war? There is more reason for a dispassionate observer to conclude that about you than there is for them to conclude that Taylor or anyone else here is deliberately ducking the issue for some nebulous reason.
If you wanted to start a discussion, there are a number of ways to do it without the baggage of invective toward the community you chose to join.
Do you need me to make you a little cheat sheet with polite conversation starters?
@Gustopher:
You noticed that, too?
Some unusual goings on around the lake lately. Sadie and I were confronted by a kettle* of black vultures feeding on a very flat turtle in the middle of the road.
You would think that seeing a rather large intimidating potato on four legs would scare them off but no no no. They stand their ground.
So I pull Sadie up close on the leash and tell her to mind her own business and we proceed to walk slowly through them like that scene in Hitchcock’s The Birds with Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor. Pretty dang creepy.
*yep, that’s what you call a bunch of vultures
@CSK: He is easily the dumbest member of the Senate, if not the Congress, that I can think of. And that includes Boebert and MTG, and even George Santos.
Getting him out of the Senate is a plus, but he is going to make me miss Kay Ivey. Ugh.
Actor Ronald Regan “let the blood flow”. Is lionized as a moderate Republican today. Maybe Trump should consult an astrologer instead of his crew of asskissers.
@Gustopher:
The Moffat Era (Smith-Capaldi) is, in my view, the very best of modern Who.
There are things I like about the current series, but it is definitely not fully hitting the mark.
@Connor:
Or, one listens to how a person speaks about issues over time and determine whether they have a basis for their views.
Many entertainers read a lot. Many of them also graduated from the most selective institutions in the country.
I mean, you have a point, but let’s not get carried away.
Anyway, if one were to use your maximal logic, one would also conclude that being a successful business man has fuck-all to do with being good at the duties of political office.
Yet, you support one who speaks less coherently than Ozzy Osborne on the third week of a coke binge.
Care to justify that odd carveout?
@Fortune: You are free to talk about it all you like.
Feel free.
My admonition was aimed at people falling for your schtick, which we all kind of did anyway, to a point.
I will note that you are proving, yet again, that you don’t know how to engage in a conversation, but instead just talk around things and disrupt. Hence, my admonition.
I am sure the attention made your day. So, you’re welcome!
@CSK:
Some people love thumbs down more than thumbs up.
@CSK:
It’s because a lot of people have been conditioned to believe they are in a war, a battle for survival. They thereby look for leaders who have shown they can win something, what that was doesn’t seem to matter.
@CSK: Saban is definitely held in reverence (because of all the winning).
Tuberville doesn’t not have that status, not even close. He is simply a celebrity who ran for the Senate at the right time.
@CSK:
Sometimes I consider drawing one in black sharpie on the monitor…
It strikes me as a great way to ruin an expensive screen.
@Kathy:
Nah, just scribble some dry erase marker over the sharpie marks. Wipe.
Well, I know that works on a dry erase board. The TV panel likely has coatings that mean it won’t work or will damage the panel.
Let me know what happens.
@Kurtz:
It can’t be worse than the whiteout used on all DoD screens since the lush took over.
@Steven L. Taylor: I also noticed that and had even written a comment about it (though I don’t think mine was as good as Gus’). But I followed your advice and deleted it in the hopes that by not encouraging a quarrel, we might be spared being pulled into one.
But it seems that even your comment was enough to trigger the quarrel. Lesson learned.
@Steven L. Taylor: Best case scenario, a conversation about the incident. Second best, a conversation about why the incident wasn’t mentioned. Worst, another conversation about my style, so no, I’m not happy.
I, for one, am too exhausted to be thinking about murder. As CSK posits at the beginning of this thread, we’re discouraged and dispirited. School shootings barely make the news. The Wikipedia page on 2024 mass shootings has a map with red dots looking like a real bad case of measles. I’m not talking about murders because nothing is ever done about them. Murder in the USA? Just live with it.
@Kurtz: 😀 😀 😀
@Slugger:
I think about this all the time. There have been numerous mass shootings that have gone uncommented upon here because I am not sure what else there is to say.
Guns are too easy to get, and therefore, shootings happen with far too much ease. It is utterly dispiriting.
I would note, too, that none of us has said a word about the horrors in Gaza that have been unfolding. It doesn’t mean no one cares. It means that we don’t have anything new to say at the moment (or simply don’t know what to say).
@Kurtz: An entertainer only has to know how to make emotional connection, a businessman has to know how to run something. The funny thing is Trump’s biggest failing is he’s an entertainer rather than a businessman.
@Fortune: Against my better judgment, I am going to point out that you, yourself, have not said one actual goddam thing about the event.
Even when pretending to want to talk, you don’t actually engage in conversation.
The emptiness of your participation is laid bare by the interchange, such as it is, in this thread.
If you want to talk about something, you have to actually be willing to do so.
I am hopeful that people are seeing all of this for what it is.
I used to hope that at some point you would see it for what it is, too, but I long ago gave up on that hope.
@Steven L. Taylor: I didn’t want to speak to you either, and I don’t expect anything from you. You engaged first, telling everyone to not engage with me, no less.
Not even close. The funny thing (as in sad kind of funny) is that a guy who hasn’t been particularly successful at either (IMLTHO) has been elected as President twice. That’s hilarious. 🙁
The worst thing that I ever heard Ozzy Osborne say was when the Cubs invited him to Chicago to sing “Take me Out to the Ballgame” during the 7th inning stretch and he called the place Wrigley Stadium!
@Gustopher:
That’s the theory, but it turns out it doesn’t work, as it’s pretty easy to subpoena U-Haul to find out who rented the truck, and the fact that they all drove there together makes it hard to claim it was outside agitators and not an organized conspiracy
@Fortune:
Steven did NOT engage you – conspicuously.
—
Entertainers come in all stripes. The most lauded of them are able to engage on much more than an emotional level.
Many of them also have managed or currently manage businesses of various sorts.
—
I doubt Connor sees Trump exactly the same way you do.
Moreover, the romantic view of the American business genius polymath has been supported by a well-funded campaign for at least 150 years.
Sustained myth-making exerts broader influence via default positions (norms of presumption between competing views) than it does manufacturing fanatical true believers or skilled advocates. The latter are merely mavens.
My water bill went up again even though I still use the same amount of water so I’m not happy either.
BOO HOO!
@Kurtz:
A key failing of American culture is that view right there.
Sigh.
@Kurtz:
And indeed.
@Fortune: Truly reaching “troll” status, I see. Just fuck off and find a bridge, already.
There have been a bazillion posts on Israel and Gaza. It never comes to a good end. There is no good end to Israel and Gaza. You don’t get to “require” what the hosts write about, this is a free blog and the hosts write about what they think is important. It’s a blog, dude. A long-standing one. I’ve been here so long I remember a little f Fortune, and he was not you.
So again….fuck off and find a bridge, already.
Hm. It looks like the nazi in chief lost another V-2 (or was it an A-4?)
Seeing as how he’s done an Edsel with the Xybertruck, maybe Xtarxhip will be the new N-1
@Beth: There are places you can order pharmaceuticals direct from the manufacturer, ie, India, though it can take some research to find safe ones. Which is totally not optimal, but would be better than what it sounds like you’re going through. Vyvance might be hard to get, because there’s a world-wide shortage, but Wellbutrin should be possible. And if you’re willing to self-medicate, Concerta is readily available as well.
There’s also https://fourthievesvinegar.org, though that’s still a work in progress. And it sucks that all of this is necessary. So fucking stupid.
@CSK: It’s something that seems unique to Alabama, or maybe Alabama was patient zero, I don’t know. My family moved to Tuscaloosa in the mid-1980s, and one of the things I vividly remember is how much Paul “Bear” Bryant stuff was around. He’d died a year or two before, and there were multiple buildings named after him, and his houndstooth pattern was all over everything. And then I left.
And when I was back in the 2010s to visit my Mom, it was worse, and weirder. Nick Saban stuff was all over the place, and his children had somehow become integral to the town. Somehow his son was involved with a bank or credit union or something, and the family was making million dollar donations to various charities. People look at members of Congress and their families and are rightly offended by the wealth it can engender; it’s worse with football coaches.
I was never much for sports to start with, but growing up with the Bryant worship all around put me off that sort of thing forever. I’m trying to think of a similar level of insanity in the North, and I’m sure it exists, but I’m not sure where. Maybe in some of the political dynasties, though those exist in the south, too. But I’m still baffled as to how being a good coach translates to other areas in life, and especially how it somehow gets passed on to the next generation.
@Gustopher: “His first season was a bit shaky, but his ability to give a speech can make you forget for a moment that you’re watching “Kill The Moon,” so it’s not all bad.”
The first half of that first season was particularly shaky. I do remember one episode about halfway through the season there was a scene between the Doctor and Clara in her classroom where I thought “They just figured out how to write for him.” And from there on it just kept getting better.
@Kevin: I am originally from a football-obsessed state, Texas, and am a lifelong fan of pro ball and have been a serious fan of college ball for decades, and will state that Alabama is off the chain on this topic. I think it infects a lot of the SEC states (especially those without other major sports), with maybe Mississippi being the closest, yet still a lesser example.