Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, February 15, 2024
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44 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a 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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This is kinda yesterday’s news, but since the Valentine’s Day thread is already up …
Kelvin Kiptum died in a car accident at age 24. Considering his world record 2:00:35 in the Chicago marathon that was just ratified, it seems that we might have just lost the person most likely to break two hours. (And no, I will not dignify Kipchoge’s fake run here.)
From Private moon lander lifts off aiming for first US lunar touchdown in 52 years, comes this little tidbit:
Yes, they did in fact accomplish “an unusually precise “pinpoint” touchdown”. I wonder why the article left out the fact that their lander ended up upside down? Not taking anything away from JAXA, space is hard after all, but it’s still kinda funny.
@Franklin: Damn.
Here’s the thing I don’t get about this whole psyop conspiracy idea: THERE’S NO NEED FOR SECRECY IN THIS. THERE IS NO NEED FOR ANYONE TO CONSPIRE. When the time comes, TS will endorse Biden. Or not. And it will all be very public.
All of which leads me to conclude that 27% (the crazification factor) of Americans are paranoid schizophrenics who need to be on some kind of medication.
Yeah, the “yet” is unspoken. Talk about “whistling past the grave yard.” I suspect alarm bells will be ringing in his head when he goes to renew his homeowners insurance.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Call “Mr Overly Cautions”, but I’d be disinclined to build or buy a house near a cliff like that unless the geology was guaranteed grade-A hard rock.
People in East Anglia have frequently learnt that lesson the hard way.
@JohnSF: exactly what has happened to Dunwich.
Trump says that even if he’s guilty, he didn’t commit a crime.
http://www.rawstory.com/trump-courthouse-rant/
@CSK:
I’d never thought I’d say this: Lardass A. Drumpf is right.
He committed many crimes.
@Kathy:
Well, Trump’s defense in the Stormy Daniels matter is going to be that he paid Daniels off because he didn’t want Melania to find out about their fling.
I know, I know.
More fun people from Texas:
PARKER COUNTY ‘WHITE NATIONALIST FIGHT CLUB’ LEADER EXPOSED
I don’t know if anyone has shared this yet: ex-president of Mongolia mocks Putin on X: https://twitter.com/elbegdorj/status/1756818696700657935
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m reminded of an account I read about the transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown in 1919, eight years before Lindbergh. They won a prize for Newfoundland to Ireland while Lindbergh did New York to Paris. And Alcock and Brown crashed on landing, both uninjured. Apparently it’s hard from the air to tell a nice grassy meadow from a peat bog. And, as the account concluded, in 1919 crashing didn’t count against you the way it does now.
@OzarkHillbilly: I am reminded of visiting LA years ago. They were experiencing a big storm with onshore winds along with a very high tide. A local TV station was interviewing threatened homeowners. ‘This is terrible, the state has to do something.’ ‘The state needs to stabilize the beach.’ and so on. Then they interviewed a geologist on the beach. ‘The beach moves. You don’t think it’s been here for a million years, do you?’
If the guy has insurance it’s not a problem. If he doesn’t have insurance, I hope the state and county leave it his problem. And demolish it before it becomes a hazard, as apparently the Brits @JohnSF: notes did. The link doesn’t say anything about money. Whether the homeowners were somehow compensated, insured, or just SOL.
The NYT is reporting that yesterday’s shooting at the end of the Chiefs’ celebration was most likely caused by “a dispute.” Two of the three people detained for the shooting are under 18.
Sad, annoying, and pathetic.
@Jen:
One of the witnesses said that one of the shooters spun around in a circle firing randomly. Those injured had nothing to do with the quarrel.
People kill people with guns in this country because they can.
I dont think anyone has linked to this but Balko has a series up on the retconning of George Floyd. Link goes to first part but there are three parts. It is very well done. There is an ongoing effort to spread the conspiracy beliefs that Chauvin is innocent and that Floyd died from either natural causes or a drug overdose with the right wing movie The Fall Of Minneapolis part of that effort. I made myself watch that, time I will never get back. The series is pretty well done. The 2nd part focuses on the medical aspects.
Blake totally blows up the idea that Chauvin was acting according to MPD training protocol with lots of citations, interviews and uses the video clips in the movie against them to undercut their claims. The second part was more interesting to me given my profession. On the medical issues I thought the movie and its claims were just awful. It was as if no one in the movie understood basic physiology or pharmacology or how we diagnose stuff. Anyway, the movie had fairly good production values and lots of drama. I can see how it might suck some people in. This is a good resource to have if you want to know the issues with the movie.
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retconning-of-george-floyd
Steve
@steve: Good production values takes money. Who is funding these propaganda pieces?>
The next Fani Willis shoe drops:
Of course, with Newsweek as the source, we can simply write this off as another right-wing hit piece if we choose to.
@CSK: One point about this case that interests me is the fact that the DOJ decided against taking it up, so New York did instead, and there are differences in how it’s handled at the state level. For one thing, hush-money payments are a federal crime but not a state crime. What he’s being prosecuted for is not the payment itself, but the falsification of business records in connection with the federal crime. That leads me to the prediction that Trump is going to parrot legal talking points that are no longer relevant now that it’s been kicked down to state.
@steve:
Just speculating here, is it possible that the series was blue skying on how yahoos like Chauvin and members of the general public diagnose stuff? Still irresponsible, for sure, but it might explain your disconnect.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: She did testify to that, but doesn’t seem to have any supporting evidence.
@Scott: “Who is funding these propaganda pieces?”
Fortunately the Republicans slashed taxes on billionaires, so there’s plenty of money sloshing around.
@CSK:
It’s like Watergate: It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.
@Kylopod:
There isn’t much other ammunition left for him to fire, is there?
@Kathy:
Yep.
The headline of the day- Delta flight turns back to Amsterdam airport due to maggots on plane
@OzarkHillbilly:
I regret to inform you that the crazification factor estimated the percentage of the population on the right that was crazy. Assume a similar amount on the left and you are over 50%.
You may commence crying. It is the appropriate response.
We got hit with a surprise Hell Week Extension.
I had to finish three proposals by the 19th. It seemed not much of an issue, as I’d been able to advance them with plenty of time. Then one drops today that’s far more complex, and they want over 700 samples by next Thursday. Worse, I can’t even begin to advance with it, because the requirements are scanned images.
I really need to punch some petty bureaucrat who comes up with these idiocies.
@Gustopher:
The crazification factor was a reference to the percentage of Illinois voters who backed Alan Keyes over Barack Obama in the 2004 Senate race.
Call me crazy, but I think that if that race were to take place today, Keyes would do a lot better. He wouldn’t come close to winning, but he’d probably be somewhere in the territory of 40%, just like Trump. Outside the Chicago area, much of the state is MAGA central.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t know about you but, I’m thinking that it’s time to adjust the Crazification Factor up, from 27% to at least 33%
Scott- It claims it is crowdfunded with a lot of input from Alpha News. I think that means we dont really know who is funding it.
Cracker- They play off the ignorance of the general public. They do it be bringing in a bunch of fake experts, ignoring what the medical examiners actually said and, sometimes kind of humorously, highlighting some parts of reports while ignoring the conclusions that are actually on the screen.
As an example take the claim that he died of an overdose. The initial report was released after the autopsy and they had the drug levels but the ME noted that he couldn’t reach any conclusions because he hadn’t watched the video or read the reports about what happened. In an email he (ME) noted that if he knew nothing else he would call it a drug overdose death. That is actually true, but in fact we did know a lot more. I think even most lay people know that you develop tolerance to narcotics pretty quickly. An isolated drug level is pretty meaningless. There are lots of people walking around with drug levels higher than Floyd had. In one study the average drug level in people stopped for speeding was higher than Floyd’s level.
So the bottom line is you dont call it a drug overdose death until you can confirm that the actual behavior is consistent with an overdose death. The ME actually notes that, saying that in an OD death people are not talking, not resisting and they are drowsy/sedated. It’s not remotely a drug OD death and anyone who understands narcotics knows that.
I could also go on a long rant about positional asphyxia. The autopsy didnt show any damage to the airway so the film claims it cant an asphyxia death. However, we have known for decades that just sitting on someone’s back (or neck) can limit respiration and lead to asphyxia. Police departments have been warning their officers about that for many years, especially in Minneapolis where they had such a death in 2010. Heck, when i was a corpsman in the early 70s we knew that and if we had to restrain a crazy or intoxicated pt we got off the back as soon as we could.
Steve
@wr: See? Yeah, that’s the ticket!
@steve: Thanks for the details (haven’t watched the video and am not curious enough about alternative scenarios to do so). I’ll take your comment for a “yes” then.
Fun times in Hot ‘lanta as Fani Willis rages into the hearing regarding her possible inappropriate actions with her lover.
@Kylopod:
I was living in Illinois at the time, and I completely forgot that’s who Obama’s opponent was. If pressed, I would have said it was Jack Ryan–I’d totally forgotten he stepped down.
@JKB: Fun times in DC when it turns out the GOP’s star informant against Joe and Hunter was a complete fucking liar.
Former FBI informant charged with lying about Biden business
As anyone with two functioning brain cells could figure out, it was all bullshit.
Based on lies, just like everything else the Republicans say.
Well, at least it’s not because gorilla brains are getting bigger
Troll brains, though, seem to be getting smaller. It’s probably NARF Syndrome.
@JKB: You do realize the case still goes on, right? Just with a different prosecutor? It’s not like the charges will be dropped. The evidence of criming is ALLLLL still there. 😛 😛
@Jax:
Maybe, but the case could be removed to another county’s prosecutor’s office who will do their own determination at to whether the case should proceed. And Fani may be facing her own prosecution, or at least have her cash in her mattress investigated.
@JKB: Ohhhh, you’re going to be so sad.
Note to self: Get a mattress and put cash in it.
My Dad always told me to keep that much cash on hand, too. He didn’t say mattress, but….we’re white, and we still don’t trust da gubmint.
Before and after serving as Defense Secretary, James Mattis was paid by the UAE government to advise on the conduct of its war in Yemen. This information was not known to most Senators or the general public.
Naively I thought this might be something of a major scandal even in the Trump era, but the story seems to have sunk without trace. I guess nobody wants to question the integrity of an American hero.
@Jen:
Still, it’s generally well-accepted that it was Keyes’ repulsiveness, not Obama’s star power, that was the primary driver in Obama’s landslide, the biggest in the state’s history. Bush lost the state in the concurrent presidential election but did about 40 points better than Keyes. Obama didn’t just crush Keyes in terms of raw numbers, he carried many rock-ribbed Republican areas that almost never go for Democrats.
When the oddest thing in the room is not the airplane past the bed, but the conference room on the other side of the cabin.
@Ken_L: I think it’s weird that these things are allowed but UAE is considered a strong US partner in the region.