Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, December 14, 2021
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39 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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The military, as they say, is not a democracy.
Air Force discharges 27 for refusal to get COVID vaccine
@Scott: The linked story, as usual, doesn’t seem to mention the denominator. It’s apparently about 330,000 active duty and about 160,000 Reserve and Guard.
@gVOR08: Yes, 27 is an exceedingly small number in the greater scheme of things. Time will tell whether these 27 are the low hanging fruit in ease of discharge.
Hmmm…. Apparently, a link with no additional text runs afoul of the moderation bots. 🙁
@gVOR08: @Scott: OH NOOOOES! However will we repel the invading forces of Ardvarkia???
@gVOR08: @Scott: The Guardian informs us that,
Our armed forces can not possibly recover from these grievous losses.
The title says it all.
http://www.thebulwark.com/fox-hosts-begged-trump-to-stop-the-january-6-attack-on-the-capitol/
@CSK: “The title says it all.”
Actually, it doesn’t. Because it doesn’t include the fact — certainly in the body of the story — that while they were begging Trump to call off the insurrection, they were also going on air and insisting that the rioters were actually Antifa and BLM…
The headline alone can’t sufficiently describe what scum these people are.
@Scott:
@gVOR08:
I’d ask a related question: how many active Air Force personnel have died or been disabled by COVID?
@wr:
Did that–Fox people claiming the rioters were Antifa and BLM–actually happen on January 6, or did it take place a few days later? Not arguing here, but my memory is that the shrieks of “all the bad guys were on the other side” didn’t start happening till after the rioters (the True Patriots, as they like to style themselves) started getting arrested.
The past couple of days the Boston Globe has been doing a deep dive into the condition of Maine’s lobster fishery.
Climate change threatens the livelihoods of Maine’s lobstermen
Federal rules protecting whales put lobstermen’s jobs at risk
In many ways, this is a story climate change giveth and climate change taketh away. But these families are going to lose a prosperous livelihood sooner or later.
An explainer: Today lobster traps are set using 2 methods, the first is that each trap has a line between it and a buoy (marker) that is color coded to let the lobstermen know whose traps are below. This method is used by small boats that are crewed by only one or maybe two people and the traps are being hauled manually or with a small winch.
In the second method a dozen or so traps are tied together in series with a line at each end rising to the surface attached to a buoy. This is the common method on larger boats.
This article focuses on commercial lobstermen, those who are setting and harvesting hundreds of traps. There is also a culture of non-commercial lobster fishing. In NH and Maine, residents of coastal towns are eligible to request a non-commercial lobster license that allows them to set and harvest up ten traps (in NH), during a restricted season, typically summer and also restrictions on the sale of that catch.
@Kathy: Couldn’t find AF only stats but worldometer.info had total of 621 deaths out of 398K cases.
@wr: @CSK:
Yes, wr, you’re right. I checked. I don’t watch Fox, so I wasn’t aware that Ingraham and Co. were yelling about Antifa and LM on Jan. 6.
Ooooopps.
@CSK: I’ve been reading that it was simultaneous, but I can’t claim independent knowledge…
But as they used to say at the Weekly World News — home of the Bat Boy and the Space Alien — we don’t believe in fact-checking a good story to death.
@wr:
You seem to be correct about your initial assertion, as I noted here @CSK: .
Yep. Scum. All they were worried about was Trump preserving his “legacy.”
@CSK: Well, they may or may not be scum regardless, but if I were going to try to convince Trump, I would tell him how what’s happening would harm him. I wouldn’t try to, you know, appeal to his compassion for others, or idealism.
@Jay L Gischer:
Well, you’d be right that the only way to budge Trump is to appeal to his self-interest or vanity. But would that have worked in this particular case? He seems to have been enthralled by the television spectacle of people invading that Capitol in order to make him president.
What an ego-boost! You could hear him thinking that “these people are rioting for me!”
White privilege?
Pennsylvania Man Who Planted Explosives After BLM Protest Sentenced to Probation, Thanks to Judge Who Was Convinced ‘He Had a Breakdown’
So a domestic terrorist who planted three bomb (which fortunately did not explode) was having a difficult time around the time he planted the bombs. His attorney, Ken Haber said “I think the judge was somewhat convinced that he had a breakdown,” Haber said. The attorney said. Michanowicz was stressed at the time that he planted the devices and didn’t intend for them to detonate or harm anybody, his defense claimed.
In 1994 I lost my job and was out of work for 4 months. I was having a bad time and was very stressed. I don’t remember planning to bring bombs to former employer. I remember leaning on family and friends.
I guess this guy wasn’t so lucky with his judge:
Shamar Betts, 20, was sentenced to four years in federal prison in August on charges of inciting a riot after he posted a provocative flyer on social media before a protest turned destructive in Salt Lake City, Utah.
I do love the “he planted three bombs but didn’t intend to harm anyone” defense.
@senyordave: I think you need to check your Shamar Betts story. While your comparison holds with regard to the relative privilege, up Mr. Betts posted an “invitation” to riot on FB and it was in Champaign, IL.
This is…creepy:
http://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahmimms/election-fraud-conspiracy-groups-new-hampshire
Jen? Sleeping Dog?
@Joe: Betts deserved to go to jail for incitement to riot (it was in Champaign, IL). Michanowicz? He got time served and three years probation for planting three bombs.
@senyordave: I think Betts getting jail time for his message was ridiculous. (Disclosure: I have a close friend who was/is working for his release.) He was barely 20 years old, with no leadership position, shit posting on FB. How that makes him criminally responsible for people he didn’t even know actually gathering and actually rioting is beyond me. I think he is being made responsible for carrying matches near a powder keg that this country (and this city) have been amassing for years.
@CSK: I wish I could say I’m surprised.
Voter lists can be purchased, but this still seems like a very bad idea here in NH. I can say with a high degree of certainty that a number of my neighbors are gun owners. We have a dog who doesn’t take kindly to intrusions. Etc.
@Jen:
Nor does NH seem to me to be the optimal place to pull this kind of stunt.
On a lighter note, as seen in today’s Guardian op-ed:
No, you have to read it for yourself. But the tone is priceless. Looking to @JohnSF to learn if it’s accurate – or representative.
Well, I plant bombs every spring in the hopes of growing a bomb tree.
@Jen: @CSK: I really doubt anyone will try that around here. It’s very rare anyone knocks on my door and it’s generally somebody lost or needing help when it has happened. There was one meat seller I almost pulled my shotgun on after several “Get off my land”s but he figured out I wasn’t kidding short of that.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, Trump won Missouri, so he wouldn’t be wanting to prove voter fraud there. This business in NH seems to be happening in states Trump thinks he should have won.
O. J. Simpson is a free man (his parole ended) as of today. His first words: “I’ve got a little getting even to do.”
Not smart, O. J. Not smart.
@flat earth luddite:
Martina Hyde really loves putting the boot into Johnson, LOL.
Though I think Jonathan Freedland or Rafael Behr are more surgical in their skewering, but Hyde is better for belly-laughs 🙂
Thing is, it’s not that funny any more.
Rather, Hyde still is; Johnson ain’t.
His various mendacities and inability to work the detail, and the discipline to act like First Lord of Her Majesty’s Treasury-in-Commission and Prime Minister of the Cabinet, rather than a self-serving piss artist chasing more cake and a crafty shag, have left him politically trapped.
The thing is it IS a health emergency, BUT ALSO Johnson was plainly jumping ahead of Cabinet decisions to get himself out of bad headlines (see Guardian for details).
Hence the evident fury of Health Secretary Javid: he’s fine with the policy but plainly narked at how Johnson has buggered the presentation and implementation thereof.
@CSK:
Well they are dumb asses and should know that even Dems in NH come well armed.
TBH, trump has absolutely nothing to do with it. The state GOP would love to “prove” voter fraud on the part of DEMs. It’s all about the narrative they use to justify their voter suppression. Mind you, they still wouldn’t do it out here, not enough DEMs to make it worth their while. They’ll do other things.
@OzarkHillbilly:
And is this how it will spread it’s seedlings in turn? Tree bombs!
@Scott:
It’s a republic!
@OzarkHillbilly:
The problem for the GQP is that those getting busted for voter fraud are R’s that voted for TFG. Three more today in the Villages in FLA
6-3 SCOTUS denies striking down NY vaccine mandate that excludes religious exemptions.
[emphasis added]
The dissent was written by Gorsuch, joined by Alito. Thomas also dissented, but no word on whether he wrote an opinion.
When everyone here seems to be assuming that the 6-3 conservative court is going to overturn Roe v Wade, it should be noted with interest that 3 of those conservatives refused to allow religious exemptions to a vaccine mandate–a much lower bar.
@OzarkHillbilly:
IMO, a stage tree would be more fun.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Growing up, Grandma’s brothers used to launch saplings with det cord when things were slow. Launching stumps was serious. I quit planting bombs when I was about 13, IIRC