Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
·
53 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
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.
Fine piece at The New Republic:
“Beware the Pundit-Brained Version of the DNC”
snip
snip
snip
From, comes this little tidbit:
Well said, good sir, well said.
Ex-NFL player Gosder Cherilus arrested after allegedly urinating on woman during flight
Maybe they should check boarding passengers with a breathalyzer.
@OzarkHillbilly: Still a trickle, but hoping it’s in the heart of the dam. Will more typical Repubs start running away from him? Not because of ethics or moral fiber, of course, but because they see him as a loser and are trying to make that failure stank doesn’t get on them?
Why in the world are law enforcement officers allowed to stand in support of, in uniform, a political candidate. Especially in this day and age. Are they just asking to be distrusted by at least half the population? Or are they just stupid?
5 key takeaways from Donald Trump’s August visit to Howell
If there is one thing the age of rump has shown, there is no place for ethics or moral fiber or courage in today’s GOP, just kowtowing to every idiot thing that comes out of rump’s mouth. Eventually, (hopefully?) they will come to see that he is a loser that leaves failure stank in his wake, and they can not wash it off. Maybe then a *conservative* party can rise from the ashes.
** I’m not even sure what that word means anymore, certainly not what it meant 50 or 60 years ago.
@MarkedMan:
?
Not sure which of Ozark’s comments you are replying to 🙂
Missouri headline of the day:
What could be more Miserian than finally getting their Jeff City sht together for a summer food program on the first day of school?
@Scott: I couldn’t get past this in TFA:
I’ve lived in the vicinity of Howell my whole life. I assure you that “all-American” translates directly as “all-white”. I loved that literally *dozens* of people showed up for the event.
@Scott:
RATM had it right back in ’93:
Some of those that work forces
Are the same that burn crosses
@Franklin: I see what you did there…
Here’s a little bit of political history that I knew nothing about:
This Is Not the 1968 Convention. Could It Be 1860?
I had never heard of the Wide Awakes. Found it fascinating.
This is written by Jon Grinspan, the curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the author of “Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War.”
Read this at 2 AM yestermorn, apologies to those who’ve seen it. Sorry about the long blockquote.
It’s a long, and horrific read, and I don’t know how she found the strength and the courage to survive. It closes with:
What is worse? To see bad things happen to good people, or to see good things happen to terrible people?
FFS:
@Kathy: It’s all just part and parcel of life, and the only alternative is death.
@Kingdaddy: And they wonder why DEMs won’t give them interviews.
@Kingdaddy: I should have added that they had the story lines all written up about the ’24 campaign and how DEMs lost it and now they’re pissed because DEMs aren’t cooperating.
Cognac, tortoises and a pink-striped helicopter: inside the mystery of Alice Guo, the missing Philippines mayor
Somebody should make a movie.
OMG, I cannot believe that Obama went “there.”
Harley-Davidson drops DEI initiatives amid pressure from ‘anti-woke’ activists
Not at all surprising considering their products are designed to appeal to insecure fragile white males w/ severe pnis envy.
@Franklin: Maybe the one it was linked to?
@OzarkHillbilly: Laugh if you want, but now the governor gets credit for trying to accomplish something the lege and government had no intention whatsoever of doing, merely incompetent instead of callous. “We just couldn’t get our act together; isn’t that just like us?” [insert nods and winks here]
@MarkedMan: Alas, I didn’t. But I’m only a cracker and have always been slow on scatology.
@OzarkHillbilly: And people wonder why abused women kill their abusers rather than “seeking a legal resolution.”
I have been using AI in my writing.
Not to generate the narrative, but to check what I’ve written. I do this two ways:
1) I feed it a scene and ask for a summary. This lets me know if the scene conveys what I meant to say, at least to the AI.
2) When I’m unsure of a sentence, I feed it to the AI and ask if it thinks it’s clear, or too long. Now, usually it will offer a rewrite, regardless of whether the sentence was clear or not. I ignore that.
I also asked it for help with some technobabble. Specifically I asked how close to the surface of a yellow star, like the Sun, does an object need to be to complete and orbit in six hours. It didn’t give me a number of kilometers, but implied it was so close that the object would suffer major damage in short order.
The last is just a very specific search. The AI search just finds the exact datum rather than an article of Wikipedia entry that contains it.
McMaster has written another book, this one on his time at the Felon’s so-called administration.
The link gives some details on how Mad Vlad played the Orange Felon.
I expect I may get to it. But it would need to be before the election, as I hope I, and everyone else, might finally lose interest in the Felon if Harris wins in November*. And I was a bit disappointed in his book on LBJ’s (mis)handling of the Vietnam War (TL;DR, Johnson, for all his failings, was president of the US, not only of the war in Vietnam).
*Other than seeing that he pays for his many crimes.
@Kathy:
I can’t think of a U.S. president who’s ever been as despised and mocked as much as Trump has been by his own employees.
@CSK:
Some of them have been doing little cameos at the DNC convention.
@charontwo:
I know. Has such a thing ever happened before?
@Kathy:
Did McMaster ever express regret for his infamous “It didn’t happen” lie following reporting of Trump passing highly sensitive national security information to Russian officials in the White House? He tried to respond with run of the mill weasel wording such as “as written” (to a WaPo story, I believe), which was plainly evasive and so maybe not terribly deceptive. However, when he then stood in front of the press and the world and said it didn’t happen, the context of “it” was clear, and his statement was the worst kind of bald-faced, damnable lie. There were soon more reports backing up Trump’s security breach, and Trump himself saying basically that yeah, he did it, but he was allowed to do it.
@CSK:
I can’t think of a previous US president who tried to screw his own country, and gave advance notice he’d go at it harder if elected a second time.
@Eusebio:
No idea. I just read the piece on The Guardian, not the book.
I wouldn’t expect him to.
@Kingdaddy: a lot of commenters are taking the article to task, but I especially like this succinct opinion:
It appears abortion access will be on the ballot in AZ:
“Link”
You know, nothing prevents Joe Biden from running for president in 2028 at 86 years old, should he live that long.
As to the Felon, regardless of whether he wins or not*, I predict that he will run in 2028, if he doesn’t die first. Yes, I know he can’t run for a third term, but he probably doesn’t. Besides, the Crow & Leo court will rule the relevant constitutional amendment to be unconstitutional if this pleases the patrons.
*To prevent an adverse outcome, I recommend sacrifices** to Zeus, Athena, and Hera. Now, Politics and government are not Hera’s bailiwick, but in the Trojan War legends, she offers Paris dominion over Asia in exchange for voting her the fairest. That’s government and politics in one sentence.
**I recommend going through all the ritual, with prayers and offerings, but to omit the actual sacrifice of the animals, not to mention the butchering and cooking. Let the deities pick them up at their leisure.
Also, do light a fire anyway, and extinguish it with a drink offering. And by that I mean fine wine, or spirits if you want an update. And I mean fine. Use boxed wine, or cheap booze, and you may find out you get what you pay for
Any chance this story has legs?
Former President Donald Trump may have called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss a potential ceasefire deal with Hamas that President Joe Biden’s administration is currently negotiating. Now, experts are saying Trump may have committed a felony.
In the least surprising news of the day, RFK Jr. is ending his campaign and will endorse Trump.
https://x.com/OurShallowState/status/1826372001176625489
@Mikey: @charontwo:
RFK Jr. offered to endorse Harris-Walz in exchange for a cabinet position.
How Trump is looking currently:
“Trump_MSNBC“
@Lucysfootball: To the best of my recollection, Reagan committed the same felony only involving Iran. Anybody with any stroke to address the misdeed ever end up caring about it?
@Lucysfootball:
At this point, there’s no there there.
The Trump Camp and Netanyahu have denied any call happened. And currently it looks like the story is based on a single unnamed source.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
And didn’t Kissinger and/or Nixon too?
But in this case, it might be worth the attempt to prosecute. Namely because in this case, the Felon can’t hide behind the phony Crow & Leo court decision of immunity, nor muddle the case with the same decision.
The big problem,as I imagine is common in such cases, would be to obtain adequate probative evidence that can get a conviction. A recording of the call would be great, if there is one. How to obtain it? the parties in the call won’t want to produce it, again if there is one.
I suspect either the Felon offered something to Bibi, or the latter asked for something the Felon agreed to. More weapons, maybe, or a free(er) hand in the West Bank, or asylum for when Bibi’s luck finally runs out and he’s convicted himself.
The odds just don’t look good.
@CSK: Well what’s funny about this is that Trump may have “promised” him a position of HHS or something. But I think I read that his VP Shanahan was less than confident that Trump would keep his word on that. But then again, Trump only hires the “best” (bootlickers). So I’m not sure which way this would go if Trump won.
I get it that a 1,600 km daily commute is ridiculous, and doesn’t help Starbucks improve their coffee one bit.
The thing is, don’t tell anyone, many airline pilots do something not quite dissimilar, albeit involving shorter distances. Often a pilot will be based in, say, LA, but live in San Francisco (just as an example). If this is the case, said pilot will hitch a free ride in one of his airline’s flights. Usually this means the cockpit jump seat (it’s there mainly for instructors and check pilots, so it rarely gets used), but they may score an empty passenger seat as well.
This doesn’t necessarily happen daily, it varies by route assignments (a hellishly complex thing in its own right), and other factors (like monthly flight days). But an average of 3 times per week strikes me as a good guess.
I find it nerve wracking when I read about it. What if you can’t find passage? Call in sick? Drive? Take the bus?
As to the link, it’s a 2.5 hour flight. I know Americans have longer commutes than many other countries, but spending 5 hours every day, nearly 1/4th of a day, just getting to and from work, would drive me insane.
If nothing else convinces anyone that the media is wildly both conservative and PRO republican, consider the ramifications of the following.
RAND corporation [conservative defense consultancy, hardly any sort of liberal] conducted a simple economic comparison of asset possessions in 1980 and today. Instead of proof of “trickle down” after 44 years of Republican deregulation nomsense, what they found was trickle UP to the top 1%.
The value in 2024 is 40 trillion dollars of difference.
40 trillion that would be in the hands of everyone else is today instead in possession of the top 1%.
Spare me with your platitudes about “Republicans are always better on the economy” — The question is for whom are they better? Not for you, reader of this thread.
@Kathy: I’d forgotten about Nixon and Dr. K, 🙁 But I think that all three contact events were in the campaign stage rather than the Presidential stage of their careers, so the recent Supreme’s decision applies to no one.
@Kathy: I know FEDEX pilot who once commuted from Memphis TN to Alaska.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Given the immunity decision, I wouldn’t be surprised if the so called justices find a constitutional provision that El Felón cannot be found guilty of anything for any reason.
@a country lawyer:
The one way this makes sense to me, is if the pilot flew international routes to Asia. As I recall, FedEx has its main hub in Memphis. I can see this person flew to Alaska as a passenger, and then flew either the same or another plane as a pilot, and maybe not on the same day.
Until recently they operated a great many more MD-11 and DC-10 freighters, which don’t have the range to make it from Memphis to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, etc. The route would require refueling in Alaska.
I could also have it all wrong.
@Mikey: aside from the head-scratching and muttered “ well, that’s…weird…” I’m seeing from the pundits, someone also pointed out that this basically totally explodes any pretense of RFK Jr. ever having a serious political career in the future.
Considering the increasing number of fruitcakes that Trump has been accumulating around himself, I suspect another four years of Trump as POTUS would be associated with a high death rate. As Ben Franklin so cheerfully said:”a republic…if you can keep it.”
@Franklin: I think the main reason for the drop-out at present is because VP Shanahan has become tired of funding the money pit that is RFK Jr’s run for president.
I’d say too bad that she didn’t decide this earlier, but at least now a large chunk of change that might be donated to Trump has already been burnt up.
@Kathy:
Sure, but he can work during the commute. Makes a world of difference
Bill Clinton is speaking at the convention now. You can hear the age in his voice, but he’s still an excellent speaker.
Interestingly, he’s using written notes rather than a teleprompter