Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, July 3, 2024
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65 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 could be a real problem for djt. If rfk jr. can split the scumbag, misogynist, rapist vote, trump might even lose Misery.
Suggestion for Biden sound bite:
“ I do not need criminal immunity, because I don’t plan to commit any crimes. On the other hand my opponent insists that he needs criminal immunity in order to function as President. That tells a lot about his plans.”
So how much warmer are the waters going to be in September? Are we gonna add new categories for the even stronger hurricanes that are sure to form?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Scientists explore whether to add a “Category 6” designation for hurricanes
@Stormy Dragon:
Maybe the categories should be renamed. I’m thinking of names like Shell, Pemex, BP, Exxon, etc.
@Stormy Dragon: I’d say “Great minds…” and all that but they would no doubt object.
It’s odd the US didn’t need to shield its presidents from criminal prosecution, until they voted a criminal into the White House.
Robert Towne, writer of Chinatown, has died at 89.
Yes, but Obama does need presidential immunity since it is well documented he ordered the intentional killing of an American citizen without trial. And as the person was designated a “terrorist” that by means the person was a political opponent, though perhaps not personally to Obama.
All this decision did was give the president the same absolute immunity for official acts that judges and prosecutors have enjoyed since the 1980s SCOTUS decision. And that was over a clearly personal favor done as a judge that resulted in a 15 yr old girl being forcibly and secretly sterilized, as a personal favor to the girl’s mother to whom the judge was a friend, that she did not discover until her and her husband we trying to have children.
Yes, it is new for a political party’s officeholders to go after their opponents with lawfare. Democrats plowed this new ground only to discover what was beneath the firm soil.
Apparently reports of a general idiot strike were wrong.
It is interesting how certain numbnuts dance around trump’s obvious criminal behavior. It’s almost as though their “law and order” rhetoric was as empty as their souls.
Jake, above, does raise a point I’ve been intending to point out. Wrt Trump’s prosecutions there are two theories of the case. One is that, unable to defeat Trump legitimately at the polls, Dems have resorted to lawfare to try to remove him. The other is that Trump committed numerous crimes and should be prosecuted for them. One case is supported by evidence, the other by feelz.
That six out of nine Supremos seem to believe the former is another demonstration of the oft mentioned phenomenon, at least by me, that conservatives come to believe their own bullshit. It’s common to fault FTFNYT for going down the Benghazi, emails, and foundation rabbit holes. I feel they’re more culpable for not reporting on the many allegations of Trump’s suspected money laundering, bribery, domestic and foreign mob ties, corrupt foundation, etc. They were deterred by a fear of being sued for reporting on unproven allegations and they seem to have regarded his history as old news, not realizing that outside NYC most people were blissfully unaware of Trump except for his TV show. Elect a clown, expect a circus. Elect an habitual criminal, expect trials.
I have successfully endured four days mostly doing sudoku puzzles and perusing the occasional open threads in OTB and BJ. My neck is more relaxed, I sleep like a baby, and I wake up rested. Turns out there really is a connection between ignorance and bliss.
I have also been baking cobblers lately. One blueberry, one rhubarb, and another blackberry-rhubarb. Next, a caramel peach. Baking my blues away.
@JKB:
What’s new is that you people, motivated by resentment and hate, elected a rapist, fraud, pathological liar and ignoramus to office. Had you stopped there, that would have been bad enough. But your cult leader is also a criminal.
Next time, maybe think a little about the country and not just your own festering grievances. This is 100% the fault of MAGA voters. You elected a pig.
@JKB: Concerning the charge of “lawfare”:
Trump tried to overturn the result of a lawfully conducted election.
You think that shouldn’t be prosecuted?
Trump stole highly secret documents from the government.
He showed them to other people.
He stored them insecurely.
He lied about whether he had them.
He hid them to prevent their recovery.
This is all documented. You think he shouldn’t be prosecuted for that?
I remember in 2016 more then a few people who told me that they didn’t care about the Supreme Court because of Hillary’s emails, cankels and she was “unlikeable”. Also, she was clearly too old but Burnie Sanders was not. I feel like I’m living thought that again.
@JKB:
I welcomed charges then and I do now. Pretty weak ‘gotcha,’ picking an action that liberals were staunchly against at the time and continue to be now.
@Jay L Gischer: And attempted to convince his lawyer to lie about the concealed documents. Which is why one Federal Court ruled he had waived the attorney client privilege.
A
@a country lawyer: An opportunity to re-up my prior point that, as I read commentary on the opinion, the Supremes have granted privilege to any conversation the prez has with a subordinate. Even if the conversation is to suborn perjury. Or murder. Or treason. (In the vernacular sense, noting the Constitution limits legal treason to time of war, albeit “time of war” having become a looser concept than it was in 1787.)
OK, only granted to GOP prezes under a secret codicil viewable only by Originalists.
@Neil Hudelson: And backed by an OLC opinion saying that killing Alwaki would be legal.
(I’m personally more puzzled by the distinction between killing a citizen and killing a foreigner. I’ve seen no discussion of why there were no qualms about killing foreign enemy combatants, but there were about a citizen enemy combatant. A question, not an objection.)
@JKB:
but Obama does need presidential immunity
@OzarkHillbilly:
I had a rambunctious youth.
He was addicted to heroin.
I think that is a bit beyond what an average American voter would consider “rambunctious”.
I’m beginning to think that I was wrong about Biden and he will choose to drop out after all. His public schedule is light enough to make me question my previous assumptions.
But if he does, the candidate is still Harris.
@Kari Q:
My partner said something about an “all hands” call at the White House scheduled for this weekend. I haven’t seen anything about it though, but I’ve been slacking today. Palworld update has me attacking an oil rig with a rocket launcher.
Anyway, if he’s gonna do it, it has to be now and it has to be Harris. LGM had something about Beshear as the new VP. I think that’s a hell of a good idea. I think I like him more than Shapiro. The question in my mind is: are they going to be able to clear the field. I think it has to be basically all or nothing to have a chance of working. Meaning, if a bunch of other idiots think that they would win (say, Gotthiemer, that one guy that ran in the primaries, from what, MN), or if someone with a legitimate potential shot (Pritzker, Whitmer), or an egomaniac like Newsom decides to cause problems we’re fuckola’d. I really hate Newsom and I could see him getting a bug up his ass and causing problems.
@CSK:..Chinatown…
My Number 1 Film.
Every time I watch it I have to follow it with The Two Jakes.
@Mister Bluster: “Every time I watch it I have to follow it with The Two Jakes.”
Kind of like following a 1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild with Ripple…
I’m starting to think AI is about 90% bullshit whose only real use is in raising stock prices.
@gVOR10:
American citizens are afforded the rights and liberties enumerated in the Constitution and judicial jurisprudence, including due process. That’s especially important for capital punishment. Those rights (presumably) continue to exist even if the executive branch labels someone a combatant.
@OzarkHillbilly:
The MAGAs will believe anything bad about RFK Jr. Trump, on the other hand, most of them consider to be a blessed innocent heroically fighting the forces of darkness.
Bottom line: They won’t vote for Junior.
For the week I want to try baking a chicken breast in the cast iron pot in the oven, possibly one without the skin on. The idea is to shred the meat for chilaquiles, and save the bones for stock.
I want refried beans with soy chorizo (so called), garlic, and onions on the side, but I don’t think I’ll make my own beans this time.
On other things, I accidentally froze a 600 ml. plastic bottle of diet coke at the office. Monday at around 8 am I took it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge. A few minutes ago, meaning about 52 hours after removing it from the freezer, a bit of it is still frozen. I think it means out fridge is really cold.
On yet other things, I think The Acolyte is about to do a flip. The show’s called The Acolyte, so there must be an acolyte before it ends.
And on science fiction news, Netflix allegedly dropped season 2 of Prodigy some time this week. I haven’t checked to see if it’s so.
@Michael Reynolds:
Sounds like you had a bad or disappointing experience with an AI recently…
I’ve been having some myself. Just today I used Copilot for cast iron pot recipes for chicken breast. It gave me one for frying one in a cast iron skillet. I rephrased, adding “cast iron pot in an oven.” It came up with a reverse sear cast iron skillet recipe.
From this and other things, I think it’s relying more on search, but it doesn’t entirely understand what it’s being asked. If it matches enough terms, it’s good enough.
Some days ago, there was a piece in the news about a movie written entirely by Chat GPT, which was removed from some festival lineup because of that. The makers claim they are critiquing AI witht heir film.
Anyway, there was some info about how the movie was written. pretty much they fed the AI an outline, then pretty much use a prompt for every scene. Reading all that, I thought ti would be simpler, easier, and faster to just write it myself.
@Michael Reynolds:
And possibly global temperatures.
AI drives 48% increase in Google emissions.
This just nuts.
I’m beginning to come round to the Green Party proposal for an “energy tax” on the mega-tech corporate server farms.
A follow up to a couple of items from yesterday’s forum that I missed due to early bedtime:
<a href="@Kathy:”>Kathy
I’d argue, more major wars end with one side capitulating, and any “negotiation” involved is pretty much purely decorative.
The most obvious big recent exception being the Korean War.
At present: inflicting sufficient adverse attrition on the Russian army (rate to date appears to have averaged 3:1 in Ukraines favour) and destruction of lines of communication and air defences as to render their positions in Ukraine untenable.
dazed and confused
I wouldn’t over-read that; Orban is currently President of the Council of the EU; the position rotates automatically every 6 months, and right now Orban is it, and visiting Kyiv in that capacity.
(Not to be confused with the European Council President; or the President of the Commission; or the President of the European Parliament: presidents, they haz them!)
@Michael Reynolds:
Hey! Lookie that! An issue you and I can be Crank Twin Flames on.
@Kathy:
With the way they are cramming “AI” into everything these days I’m deeply worried that I’m going to get sued because they inserted AI into some of the critical legal software I use and then it accidentally leaks privileged information. Or if the stupid crap they’ve jammed into Westlaw feeding me some hallucination as an actual case.
My partner just found out LinkedIn doesn’t let you opt out of their AI and it made her job harder. This is all so stupid and poorly planned.
@JohnSF:
You got your popcorn and fireworks ready for tomorrow?
Today is the last day that thousands of Americans will have ten fingers.
The tree of liberty may be watered with the blood of patriots or tyrants or whatever, but it is mulched with fingers blown off by fireworks.
Stay safe, just have your friends hold the fireworks as they are lit.
@Beth: Here’s my AI idea — we have CRISPR that can replace sequences in our genes, but we barely understand the human genome. I think we can use generative AI to determine new sequences to add.
Just train it on the human genome project, and everything from 23AndMe.
@JohnSF:
That’s partly a matter of definitions. I’d call Rome’s agreement to pay off the Gauls to leave the city a negotiated settlement, even though the Gauls had taken over and sacked the city.
@CSK: I know. trump is the Chosen One.
@Beth:
@Gustopher:
AI has been around and in use for a while. What’s new is generative AI, and that’s been taken to mean all AI now (clear?)
While useful, its record is far from stellar. I think the name makes people think it can operate without supervision, and its results need not be checked. Computers, after all, don’t make mistakes (narrator: they do make mistakes).
An early experiment in image recognition tried to train an AI to tell apart skin cancer from benign lesions. It seemed it was wildly successful after a while. It quickly learned to ignore all benign lesions, and flagged all cancer exemplars without missing even one.
But then it turned out the photos of cancerous lesions had a scale ruler, while the benign ones did not.
Oops!
I’ve tried using Copilot to generate dialogue and scenes. I get passable results, things I could use if I edited them and adapted to my style and taste, only after feeding it a very detailed prompt. that’s about the same work and verbiage as what I try to write. So…
@Beth:
Westlaw. Pfff. We had to shepardize with flimsy red pamphlets.
I have found the best prescription for the malaise that has afflicted me since Monday: a 300 horsepower Sea-Doo jet ski. Pretty much the most fun a guy can have with pants on.
@Beth:
I can take or leave popcorn, tbh.
Got some crisps and cheesy crackers, though. 🙂
As I’m at work on Friday, the champagne will wait till Friday eve, when I shall the highlights of the counts.
The last of vintage Mumm I bought in Rheims with my father in 2006; and I shall drink a toast his memory, and to victory.
@Beth:
I saw some reporting that said the “all hands meeting” was just to tell everyone to keep working on governing, ignore the frenzy, and please don’t talk to the media, leave that up to official spokespeople.
I agree that the only possible alternative is Harris; I’ve been saying that all along. Beshear as VP sounds like an excellent choice to me.
@Kathy:
I was thinking more of “contemporary era” warfare ie post 1800.
It seems, at rough straining of memory, the frequency of capitulation vs negotiation drops over time. Once the “later modern” era begins, and mass-armies and state mobilization becomes normal, the inclination to a negotiated peace seems to drop off.
The difference perhaps between dynastic and national wars? The stakes became higher as the level of notional commitment to war increased.
@Kathy:
The University of Edinburgh had a School of Artificial Intelligence over fifty years ago.
On the UK elections, my prediction from earlier this week still seems reasonable:
Labour between 400 and 450
Conservatives, around 100
LibDem 45 to 60
Reform 1 (Clacton) or maybe 2; just possibly 3
Green 2 or 3
SNP 15? (tbh not looked closely at Scotland; its an area of expertise in itself)
Plaid 3
Northern Ireland seats: not the foggiest, tbh. Even more a separate contest than Scotland.
In short, unless I’ve totally lost the plot, the Conservatives are about to be stomped flat.
Heritage Foundation intends to go to court to argue that it’s actually Republican state legislators perogative to choose who the Democratic candidate for President is:
Heritage Foundation working on election legal challenges in case Biden pulled from DNC nomination
@JohnSF:
There’s an anecdote about a Chinese diplomat in the 1960s, who for some reason* was asked about the impact of the French Revolution (c.1790s). His reply was “It’s too early to say.” I can sympathize with that feeling 🙂
So, WWI. Germany had a lot of its armies in France and Belgium, and wasn’t itself invaded. It was also blockaded and nearing starvation. Would you call the weeks of Versailles conferences after the armistice? Capitulation or negotiation?
*When”for some reason” is included, the story is very likely not true. In this case, I’ve heard he’d been asked about student protests in France, which were ongoing, and it would have been evidently too early to say.
But I can’t sympathize with that to the same extent.
@wr:..ripple…
It’s been a few years since I heard one of the servers at a diner I frequented mention The Two Jakes as movie they liked. When I mentioned that it was a sequel
to Chinatown they had never heard of it. I said that they might want to check it out. I don’t remember them ever getting back to me on that.
I am hardly an expert on the cinema. For what it’s worth my other Number 1 films are Blade Runner, Animal House, Double Indemnity and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
@Kathy:
Capitulation.
The Hundred Days Offensive had broken the back of the Reichswehr, the Allied advance was 40 miles from Brussels, and looked likely to “pocket” a large area of the northern Champagne.
German industrial production was about half of 1913 levels etc.
The High Seas Fleet mutinied when ordered to sortie.
Germany had zero chance of preventing an Allied advance to the Rhine.
Therefore it capitulated in hope that a negotiation based on Wilson’s “14 Points” would somehow retrieve it from utter disaster.
That the British and French were minded to tell Wilson, albeit diplomatically, and the Germans, more bluntly, to take the 14 Points and shove them, was the founding myth of the “betrayal of peace” used by the Nazis.
In short that the army had been undefeated and “stabbed in the back”, that it was unfair that Germany had had to surrender “national German” lands (Alsace, no union with Austria and Bohemia) and lost “historic German” lands (German Poland), arms limitations, and required to pay reparations.
Ignoring the German nationalist hypocrisy of “national rights for me, but not for thee” re German vs Slavic delimitations; and the established principles of reparations.
And the utter lunacy of imagining the British and French had fought a war costing millions of lives, and crippling expenditure, to permit Germany to increase its territory and population.
@Kathy: Remember the Microsoft AI Twitter Chatbot, that went racist in under a day?
https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist
Now, that’s a decade ago, and all the technology has changed, but the problem still remains — if you have a dataset of everything you’ve encountered, some of it is going to be terrible.
A lot of the recent AI tools are simply restricted from saying the racist shit. Very surface level. (There was an Elongated Muskrat post about what if the only way to save the world from nuclear war was to get ChatGPT to say the n-word, and how if it couldn’t then we are all doomed).
Until we have a whole new generation AI that can explain its “thinking” and have a trace of what data sources are being used and mixed to generate output, it runs the risk of making terrible, racist, sexist, bigoted decisions, and just couching them in better language. Like a middle-aged white man who’s “not racist, but…”.
And even then, I don’t expect great media literacy from either the generator or the people using it, so I’m not hopeful. But, we will be able to automate saying that the Jews killed Jesus, that we are a republic not a democracy, that queer folks are groomers, and that cutting taxes raises revenues so a small-government conservative should favor higher taxes to starve the beast.
And a much more modern phrenology. Not getting calipers to measure features of the head, but reviewing countless snippets of information to find other ways of determining who the better people are. (Spoiler, it’s the white people… but it’s really correlated with labradoodle and corgi ownership, not race at all)
@JohnSF:
Orban’s turn as chair of the EU is irrelevant, he’s the guy pitching Putin’s offer to Zelenskyy.
Major wars? Neither Russia nor Ukraine have managed to achieve full mobilization for this war. Their respective publics are either not down for that or their leaders are afraid they are. Zelenskyy was just barely able to get the draft age down to 25. I would say this conflict doesn’t fit that bill. All wars are unique and labels sometimes only serve to make us stupid.
@dazedandconfused:
The piece doesn’t say why Orban went to Kyiv. Meaning, was he invited by Zelensky, or did he ask to come (“surprise visit” means the media were unaware it would take place).
From what the piece mentions Zelensky said, it looks like Orban went to push Mad Vlad’s proposed deal, rather than Zelensky asked to engage in negotiations.
On other things, I opened the now thawed diet coke that froze on the weekend, and I was surprised at what I found. It’s also giving me ideas for frozen treats. I need to look up a few things, do some experiments, and then try something.
Yes, it should be close to a badly done Icee.
@Liberal Capitalist: I don’t care any more about RFK, Jr.s heroin addiction than I cared about Shrub’s cocaine use. Both are incompetent for the job from the get go. That’s all that matters. Same with Trump. Everything else is window dressing.
@wr: My recollection of seeing The Two Jakes was to wonder why I bought a ticket. Maybe I should check Roku to see if I can watch it for free someplace and see if it’s aged well?
ETA: Woo hoo! It streams on Kanopy. Now I have two movies to watch there.
@Gustopher: And a happy Independunce Day to you, to0!
😀 😛
@Kathy:
I would speculate Orban took advantage of his status as chair of the EU to get in the door. It would hand propagandists a present if Zelenskyy were to refuse to meet with the chair of the EU.
That notwithstanding, Zelenskyy seems to be coming around to the idea that perhaps the maximalist goal of reconquering everything taking in 2014 has become untenable.
Hah!
Dear Prostate: You missed, motherfucker. Benign!
@Michael Reynolds:
Plastics have proven to be incredibly useful for all kinds of purposes. If you look at what was promised and predicted when plastics were 10-20 years old… it looks a lot like what people are saying about AI today.
Just because it’s overhyped doesn’t mean it isn’t incredible.
@JohnSF:
Internalizing externalities is a key purpose of taxation. If your actions are doing damage to the commons, you need to pay for the privilege or stop doing the damage.
@DrDaveT: If AI is going to become the next “plastics,” I think “mixed blessing” is probably more accurate than “incredible” as an adjectival descriptor. And probably mixed toward the toxic rather than the benign.
@DrDaveT: Aye and now we’re discovering the other “joys” of plastic including microplastics and how it’s effecting us and the environment.
Not exactly the comparison the AI peeps want right now..