Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, August 28, 2024
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71 comments
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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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This is almost a week old by now but I’ve seen it pop up on various news sites and it’s so unbelievable that it makes you realize that “weird” is the kindest thing you can say about Vance:
““Today it came out that Tim Walz had lied about having a family via IVF. Who lies about something like that?” his Republican rival, JD Vance, posted on X on Tuesday.”
The rest of the article is a discussion of the different methods of IVF and their different names. Interesting information from healthcare professionals – which Vance is not.
My point is – who the hell cares if the Walz used IVF or a turkey baster to get pregnant? What kind of underwear-sniffing ghoul cares about this? Answer: some one I do not want living in my neighborhood or in any way around my family.
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/vance-walz-ivf-iui-fertility-treatment-b2599663.html
@Not the IT Dept.: When you’ve got nothing, set up an argument over the shade of blue.
Same thing as the stolen valor claim; people who ASSUME that Walz was in a combat zone because he said “in war”, need to be reminded that the ASSUMPTION is their error.
Went to the gastroenterologist yesterday. I’m going to have a endoscopy done on September 19th where they will also do a needle biopsy of my pancreas.
The same doctor advised me to see a kidney specialist because of what has recently been seen on a MRI and a scan. I have an appointment with that doctor next week.
I’m probably going to need a kidney removed. My doctor didn’t say anything but I think they are frightened by what is going on inside me right now. I feel the same. For 15 years I have fought off Stage IV cancer. I may be finally losing the battle.
If anyone wonders, I have made extensive arrangements for Dear Wife after I die. We own the condo and the car she drives without having to make payments*. We’re sitting on 6 figures worth of non-retirement money and my books bring in high four figures/low five figures monthly. She will be fine financially because I’ve hoarded money rather than lavishly spend it for most of a decade.
I want to get my Yakuza epic/pride and joy done before cancer treatments make me too sick to work. Any other books will be icing or doomed forever to be on one drive and never to be finished. Like the one about somebody having a theory that there is a one-hundred year old cow and the cow started the Great Chicago fire.
Yes I’m very depressed right now.
*- With the exception of monthly condo association fees.
Gotta love CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/28/politics/trump-indictment-jack-smith-election-analysis/index.html
The front page subheadline states and a decent amount of the article deals explores: “The return of Trump’s legal issues to center stage presents new challenges for Harris”
Yes… Trump being indicted AGAIN is a challenge for Kamala. So we’re back to, “WHY THIS IS ACTUALLY TERRIBLE FOR BIDEN!” in response to everything that happens, just subbing in Kamala for Biden. Lovely. Well done, CNN.
@Bill Jempty: Sorry to hear that the diagnosis wasn’t better. Fingers still crossed for you as you navigate all this, including finishing the book.
@Bill Jempty:
Really sorry to hear what you are going through. Hoping for the best for you and your family.
@Bill Jempty: Fight it. I know you’re tired, but you still have a lot to live for. We’re with you.
@Bill Jempty: I do hope that things improve for you. Good luck!
Homicide: Life On The Streets is finally available on streaming (Peacock). It’s David Simon’s Baltimore-based police drama that precedes The Wire. There are some similarities, but also many differences. If you have never seen it, I can’t recommend it enough.
@Bill Jempty:
Hoping for the best.
@Bill Jempty:
I’m sorry the news wasn’t more comforting…
@Bill Jempty: Holding you and yours in the light.
@Kingdaddy: Some great characters in it.
@Bill Jempty: wishing you as well as possible under the circumstances.
Bonoism of the day:
“Every generation gets a chance to change the world
Pity the nation that won’t listen to your boys and girls”
@Bill Jempty: Sending good thoughts your way
@Kazzy:
Maybe an embarrassment of riches is a challenge? You know, like picking just one flavor of ice cream when there are dozens.
I can imagine headlines near or past the 2026 midterms, where a good economy and El Felón’s latest jail sentence are seen as damaging to Harris’ chances for reelection.
Well, just for completeness sake, we can check off another phony morality play by modern Republicans – i.e. that they were compelled to vote for Trump because they were so strongly against abortion that it overwhelmed every other consideration. But of course even after Trump struck the anti-Abortion plank from the Republican platform and assured women he would be “great for women and their reproductive rights”, they will still support him. Once again the so called moralists show that it was all just performative sackcloth and ashes. Peter Wehner, arguing in The Atlantic from the conservative christian side, makes the point better than I ever could. (No subscription needed)
@Bill Jempty: Will be thinking and praying for you and DW.
There is always these assholes who can’t let others feel joy.
Massive Sugar Land statue sparks Houston celebrations as one church group demonstrates against it
@MarkedMan: Cry me a river. Seriously, I find Wehner’s protestations every bit as empty as trump’s promises.
@Scott:
Religious Freedom(TM) in action!
@Scott: What did they expect? This is America after all. The only question was how long would it take?
And how often. And how violent. Will it be destroyed by arson or explosives? How many will be injured? Who will….
OK OK, so many questions, so little time.
@Kingdaddy: While there are so many excellent members of that cast, I can’t help but name check Andre Braugher as Frank Pembleton. Beyond masterful.
@Kathy:
As always, Wilhoit applies. One religion is protected, but not bound while other religions are bound but not protected. We must preserve our ‘Murican culture, which is that people like me are on top.
@OzarkHillbilly:
You can tell where Trump stands (or what he will do) by who supports him, it’s pointless to care what he promises. I find it hard to understand someone (e.g., Wehner) being politically aware and being taken in by Trump promising something.
US police use force on 300,000 people a year, with numbers rising since George Floyd: ‘relentless violence’
@MarkedMan: And the book Wenner cites in his closing paragraph, The Subversion of Christianity was published back in the 70s. Evangelicalism has a long history of selling out to politics. Loving country more than loving God may well be a hallmark of American Christianity. Not a good look for a “Christian” nation.
According to the NYT, some couples are charging up to $450 per guest to attend their weddings.
Here’s an idea: Have a more modest wedding.
@charontwo:
I could be wrong, but I think Wehner has always been anti-Trump.
Trump is selling a new series of digital trading cards. AND…if you buy enough of them, you’ll get a snippet of the suit he wore to debate Biden.
Like wow. Who could resist?
@charontwo:
Wehner hasn’t been taken in by Trump. And he’s pointing out that it’s hard for his co-religionists to claim they were taken in when Trump has been so obviously lying all along.
@MarkedMan:
Far as I know, Wehner’s always been anti-Trump.
@CSK:
I’ve literally never wanted to attend any wedding. The ceremonies are nice, but then there’s a party and I hate parties*.
There’s no need to say what I think about this, but there is a question: how much do I get paid for not going.
*Maybe if the “music” weren’t played loud enough to cause hearing damage, so that one could actually talk to other people, at least during the meal, I wouldn’t find them so repellent.
@CSK: Is that what the framed patch of blue near the bottom of one card was about? I was wondering but I was watching a news item about it with the sound off while I was reading the article, so I missed some of the details of the pitch.
But it’s always possible that I’m missing out on a valuable collectible by not getting Trump cards. And I could store them with my dad’s Churchill Commemorative Medallions and the UK coins my mom hoarded on her last trip to NI when the shift to decimal currency happened. I’ve really not kept up on acquiring new family treasures, but only because I didn’t make any new family, I suspect.
@Kathy: You should go to weddings at Baptist churches. No dancing, no band, no dinner. Just a cake and finger foods reception in the basement. And you’re not limited to people sitting near you for company either because there are only seats for the elderly and infirmed.
My ex-wife and I had a similar affair at a Lutheran Church. Our reception was pretty long–I think it went 90 or so minutes.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
The worst wedding I ever attended was on of my crazy strict Orthodox Jewish cousins. First, the ceremony took over an hour. Observant orthodox Jews don’t mix men and women in the synagogue*. That’s bad enough, but the strict orthodox don’t even allow mixing of men and women in the reception.
So, if there was no dancing, and not even a dance area, why was there f**ng LOUD music all through the reception?
*Women typically sit in the back section, or the upper section, depending on the design. That’s second class treatment. The one good thing about the synagogue my parents took me to, styled as “Conservative,” was that all were mixed together, and women were allowed to officiate.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
It could be; I haven’t seen the cards myself.
Shares in Trump Media have fallen over 75% in value since the company went public this past March.
@Bill Jempty:
Sending support to you. I am sorry you are going through this.
@MarkedMan: During COVID I subscribed to The Atlantic during COVID. The New Yorker got very thin on content and advertising and I feared they’d go under. I took The Atlantic as a fallback. I let it lapse after a year. I didn’t find much of the content interesting and I came to find Wehner andTom Nichols irritating.
Both Wehner and Nichols seemed to be purveyors of centrist conventional wisdom without much actual insight. Nichols wanted me to admire him for being gutsy and independent and switching from Republican to anti-Trump. Everyone’s welcome on board, but my reaction was, “Slow learner.” In this piece Wehner seems to think he’s being clever, but what he’s saying manages to be both blindingly obvious and wrong. Everyone knew Roe was more useful to them as an issue than it would be as an accomplishment. But Trump’s current comments won’t be a major problem with the MAGA. They know he lies. They’ll happily rationalize that he has to say those things to get elected and to con the commie-fascist MSM, but deep in his hypothetical heart he’s sincerely pro-life, and if not, God will lead him.
@CSK: I wonder if you have to buy more cards to make sure you don’t get a snippet of his trouser’s crotch.
@Mr. Prosser:
I was wondering how many MAGAs would pay extra FOR a snippet of the crotch.
@CSK: So when he sells off, he’ll only get one or two billion in unearned gains rather than 8 billion? 😐
@gVOR10:
Yeah, unfortunately. And we’ve all seen this before.
ETA: @Mr. Prosser: @CSK: EEEEWWWWWW!!!
@CSK: Gack. Now you’ve got me picturing selling swatches of the adult diaper he wore for the debate. With a premium for… never mind.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Not so much a laughing matter, perhaps, when the Weirdo Felon already owed nearly half a billion just to the state of New York, plus a large amount of millions to E. Jean Carroll.
But that’s beside the point. What hurts and irks the Weirdo is the loss of value. He can’t brag about it without everyone laughing.
On other things, I’m getting to hate thumb drives. Yes, they’re nice, small, convenient, and fast, much better than data CDs or even DVDs ever were, but they’ve become the sole way to transfer files when email or messaging is inconvenient or not allowed.
For instance, many customers require the Excel files of our proposal, the ones with price lists, to be included in the physical proposal we deliver. Now this means a thumb drive with a capacity of 16 or 32 GB, holding one or two files totaling under 1 MB (usually under 200 KB all told). Worse yet, some states need two copies. That’s like hiring the biggest 18-wheel tractor trailer to haul one can of soda.
Someone often comments the acquisition committees involved must use them afterward for their own purposes. I really hope they do, otherwise they’re just wasted.
Just now, a coworker asked if I had a 32GB one, because the 16Gb she’d been stuffing with files for a state registry was insufficient. While these registries require more than one file, I’d be amazed if they ever totaled as much as 0.5GB. It’s all scanned documents and a few photo files.
I gave her one, because I had some and I don’t pay for them. Out of curiosity I put it in my computer. Sure enough, plenty of space left (like 15.9 GB empty still), but the system also warned the unit was damaged. So that’s why it didn’t work in getting new files into it.
@MarkedMan: this part is well said:
@Monala:
What fascinates me is that there’s absolutely zero discussion of this among the MAGAs themselves at the rabidly pro-Trump websites. I don’t mean Wehner’s article, but Trump’s pro-choice stance itself. Surely they must have heard about it.
Mighty Cubs down 10-3 at Pittsburgh in 7th inning today go crazy and beat
Pirates 14-10! World Series here we come!
@Kathy: Yeah. I have a flash drive or three that have corrupted sectors on them and can’t store anymore data. Fortunately, they’re all from my Korea teaching era and thus, completely surplus.
On a parallel point, a college endowment foundation I gave some money to a while back provided me with a 3 or 4 gig flash drive as a thank you/promotional gift a while back. Should your company be looking at the possibility that they should buy a carton or two of such “gift items” (imprinted with the company name/logo, of course) to put such bids/proposals on rather than using office supply stock?
@Kathy:
I’ve been to those. The thinking behind the mechitza needs to launched into orbit.
That said, how the hell did they make the traditional orthodox wedding last an hour? It should take, maybe, 20 minutes. That is an advantage over, for example, the Catholic (maybe Orthodox?) wedding I went to where the ceremony took 2+ hours.
@CSK: Not mentioning the change goes back to gVOR10‘s comment up stream. The MAGAts have long believed that you have to take Trump “seriously but not literally” and “literally but not seriously.” So no, they are not aware of what he is saying or what others are reporting about what he’s saying. They know it’s all bulls***. There’s also a significant FU shout of the sort that Michael Moore talked about before the 2016 election still in play with both Trump and the MAGAts*.
*Both by them and at them from Trump himself, but they only hear what they want to.
@Mister Bluster: Congratulations!!! Now send some of that Cubby magic over to Bill in Florida as he faces his medical issues.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
What do you know, The Windows scan/repair thingy worked, and the flash drive is now usable again*.
It contained 135MB, which is about 0.84% of the 16 GB capacity. Yeah, it almost left only 99% of the drive empty! It was about to overflow and throw bits all over the desktop! 🙂
*I still wouldn’t use it for anything important. It can fail again.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Or maybe the MAGAs figure Trump has to say stuff about favoring reproductive rights in order to get elected. They just know he doesn’t mean it.
I’d like to know how many abortions he caused to be performed back in the day.
@Mister Bluster: Wow! Now that’s a comeback!
@Kathy: I’m really surprised this is the preferred method. USB drives are notorious as spreaders of malware. I know that many of our pharmaceutical company customers prohibit thumb drives from even being brought onto the grounds for that reason. They buy computers without ports or literally glue them shut.
Of course computers increasingly use USB-C which are used for charging and attaching external displays, so I’m not sure what they will do in the future.
“I guarantee that if Jesus came down and was the vote counter I’d win California, okay?” — Donald Trump to Dr. Phil
@CSK:
As I said the last time this was asked: three fewer than he should have.
@MarkedMan:
Well, for proposals, they specify a flash drive. For state registries, the files have to be handed in at a window along with half a ton of waste paper. Few computers made recently even have CD drives anymore, and floppies are dead. Ditto when you go pick up requirements from state agencies (federal agencies have to use the online portal, and a request isn’t officially published until it appears there).
@CSK:
Has FOX covered it? I wouldn’t assume they know about it. Someone commented yesterday about surprising gaps in MAGA knowledge. A decade ago “epistemic closure” was a meme. Haven’t heard that phrase in a long time, but the closure continues.
@CSK:
Does it come with a money-back guarantee?
If I’m spending $500 to attend a wedding (or $1000 if I bring a date), I want some assurances that this wedding is going to stick.
@gVOR10:
I think we renamed it MAGA Brain Rot, or Terminally Online.
Radley Balko points out in his release today that Trump has filed a $100 million lawsuit against the DOJ/FBI for their search of Mar-a Lago. It’s a suit most people dont expect him to win. If he is re-eelcted he could actually order the DOJ to settle the suit. This could be investigated as corruption but SCOTUS has already ruled that interactions between POTUS and DOJ are immune to prosecution.
Steve
@gVOR10: Out of curiosity I checked. A quick search shows the FOX website does mention Trump’s softening on abortion. But it’s very FOXy. There’s an old article about removing abortion language from the Platform, but it’s very soft, without quotes of the language, and they quote pro-lifers who are OK with it, More recently I find an article about a pro-lifer who doesn’t like the shift, but they avoid quoting Trump or any other specifics. So FOX has covered it, but very partially and very carefully. They never actually lied, they just left out most of the story. As I observed yesterday, “fact checking” doesn’t begin to address what FOX does.
@Bill Jempty:
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Bill at bat knocks the cancer out of the park!
@gVOR10:
Trump made the claim himself on Truth Social.
At Dayrestan International Airport in southern Iran today, the heat index reached 180F.
That is not a typo.
The dewpoint was 97F.
Both are the highest ever recorded.
@Mikey:
That’s around 82 C in terms I can comprehend. it’s over twice the human mean body temperature (36-37 C), and 8-10 C above the cooked temperature of chicken. It’s also just ten C lower than the temperature of boiling water at the altitude of Mexico City.
Heat index, if memory serves, is how hot it feels when adding heat and humidity, and perhaps other factors. So the ambient temperature might have been lower. It’s still not a number I can make sense of outside an oven or other cooking appliance. Plainly, I can’t see people doing anything other than keeling over dead of heatstroke at such temperatures.
@Kathy:
A dew point of 97F and heat index of 180F can be had at a dry bulb (regular) temperature of merely 101F (38C) but with the relative humidity at about 89%. That is insane, as the human body wouldn’t be able to effectively cool itself through perspiration and evaporation with the dew point nearly equal to body temperature. So I’m assuming everyone had to hunker down in A/C or a naturally cooler low level of a building (or underground), or immerse themselves in water or find some other way to cool themselves.
I’ve occasionally heard someone say that they were somewhere where the temperature was 95F with 95% humidity, and I’ve been known to say that you don’t find those conditions at the same time and place in nature. But I realize now that I was wrong–the previous record dew point was 95F in Saudi Arabia, which could correspond to a temperature of 96F with 96% humidity. The new dew point record is only 2F higher, but that’s a big difference on the dew point scale.
@Kathy: Why only 3? Which spawns are you sparing?
@Mister Bluster: Fingers crossed.
@Kathy: That story irritated me no end by not mentioning the actual temperature. It’s like, “The heat index is the bigger, scarier number, we’ll just go with that.” Or maybe the reporter is dumb enough to think the heat index is the temperature. He did mention the dry bulb temp and the relative humidity both, so maybe he thought dry bulb temperature is the actual temperature.