Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
·
45 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.
White man arrested for killing geese
Trump and Vance continue to blame this on immigrants – but in an entirely expected twist, an old white male was the person actually doing it.
@Gavin:
Just yesterday I watched a Scandinavian cook try to make a meal of live chickens.
If anyone is wondering, dear wife is sick of the talking heads. So we watch a sitcom at dinner time. F Troop, The Odd Couple, The Flying Nun, Hogan’s Heroes, Get Smart, Benson, The Nanny, and The Muppet Show*. Right now we’re going through the Muppets.
*- Original version
Daniel Drezner thinks a lot of people who should know better need to change their diapers:
Quote from Axios’ Zachary Basu: “educated elites who should know better — billionaires, elected officials, journalists — keep falling for fakes, conspiracy theories and outright lies. Human gullibility is not a new phenomenon. But social media and polarized politics are exposing it at industrial scale, fueled by a poisonous cocktail of bad actors, media illiteracy and plummeting trust in traditional news.”
Source: https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/a-gut-check-on-the-2024-election
Fernando Valenzuela
RIP
Another article showing Trump supporters shooting themselves in the foot:
As Trump threatens mass deportations, some rural areas that back him rely heavily on immigrant labor
They’ll get what they vote for. And they’ll get it good and hard.
Why is it that Harris continually needs to “reassure” people she is not to liberal while no one askes Trump to reassure anyone he is too fascist.
@Not the IT Dept.:
Substitute “confirmation bias machine” every time you see “social media” .
@Rick DeMent:
This is a part of what’s referred to as “sanewashing”.
@Mister Bluster:
RIP too.
Fernando mania caused baseball writers to once more give the CY Young to the wrong pitcher. Tom Seaver deserved it that year. Seaver won it in 69, 73*, and 75 and should have gotten it in 71 also.
*- Baseball writers have so often gone for flashy loss records aka Lamarr Hoyt in 83 and Pete Vukovich in 82, but didn’t in 1973. Ron Bryant won 24 games that year and Seaver 19. Bryant’s career took a bad dive the next year. Don’t pardon the pun.
@Bill Jempty: That reminded me of Bob Welch, who played for my Oakland A’s. He had a gaudy 27-win season in 1990 and won the Cy Young, but it’s not clear he was even the best pitcher on the team that year.
(Sadly, I haven’t really paid much attention to pro sports in 20 years or so, but I’ll never forget some of the old times.)
@Bill Jempty: That should have been flashy won loss records
Today in irony- What did I just discover when going out to dump our recycles? There is a broken down tow truck in our parking lot.
Who says life in Florida isn’t interesting?
@Scott:
Has he just admitted to filing false I-9 forms for his employees? Does anybody still believe that enforcement against employers is a viable route to curbing the problem?
@Rick DeMent: Because being a liberal is a worse crime than being a fascist in a center-right country. Not a new phenomenon, either.
@reid:
I forgot Welch when writing my post this morning. You’re right about him and the CY award in 1990. His teammate Dave Stewart deserved it. Welch won 27 games, much like Hoyt’s 24 in 1983, because the team he played for scored 6 runs a game for them. Welch was also helped by a great Oakland bullpen led by Denis Eckersley.
Welch was a better pitcher than Hoyt and Vukovich, who weren’t bad career wise themselves, but none of them deserved the CY award.
@Mimai:
The bird flu thing is probably not helping. I know back during calving season we were looking to purchase a milk cow or two from over in Idaho, and not one dairy operation would send anything across the state line because they’d have to test their whole herd. Nobody was willing to have a positive confirmation. I haven’t heard much about it lately, other than a chicken producer in Idaho had to cull 1.8 million birds because the bird flu.
@Bill Jempty: Yes to all of that. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. It was an exciting time to be an A’s fan.
Open question to people who are RCV fans and not as innumerate as I try to be:
Luddite mentioned this a few days ago, but I can provide the actual figures from a letter to my brother a few days ago. Multnomah County in Oregon (Portland as the county seat) is doing rank choice voting this year for local offices, but Portland is the only city where a potential difficulty might present. To the point: Portland Mayor has 11 candidates, Council District 1 has 15, District 2 has 20, District 3 has 26, and District 4 has 22. Voters will choose 6 or fewer candidates for each office.
My question: Isn’t it possible with such large numbers of candidates in most races that the winner will still only have, effectively, gotten a plurality of the vote? And yeah, I get that we can draw the lines to get down to force a majority winner, but what end does that serve? I can remember doing my grades at Woosong–25 (or even 30 or 40 students) students 5% get A, 8 more % get B, the rest get C with the dividing lines at 96.783% for the final A and 93.614 for the final B (numbers estimated for example purposes, but I do remember one specific situation where 0.14% made the difference between the lowest B and highest C and both students still had percentages in the high 80s).
You’ve heard the question and the skeletal argument. Any takers? I got no dog in this fight–I’ve not lived in the county long enough to even recognize any of the names–so I’ll accept whatever rationales people want to make about the virtues of the system. But right now, I’m not seeing how this is an improvement–or even different. I get that it’s cheaper. With 26 candidates running for an office, one primary is not going to yield anything resembling a sane result, either.
What is it with some of these candidates who have fictionalized families? Do they not think anyone would notice?
Children in Texas state representative’s latest campaign ad aren’t hers
Speaking of politician’s children, is the fact that J.D. Vance referred to his kids as “my wife’s children” a little weird?
@Jax:
I remember reading stuff like this while I was in Korea. The scale was much different though. A few hundred thousand birds spread across 3 or four county sub-units called “ri” and 10 or so farms. Then again, the guy who claimed to be the largest cattle farmer (no ranches in Korea) had a herd of 75-100 head, too, when I was there. And the government indemnifies the chicken farmers for their losses on bird flu, so they won’t go under.
Not if he’s the bigot he seems to be, no. All things considered, there might be complementarian theology at work or some totally normal Appalachia thing going on, if we need a more benign explanation.
Tulsi Gabbard has announced that she’s a Republican.
@Scott:
I take that to mean that JD isn’t the father. They must have a
creepyinteresting life.@CSK:
Good riddance.
@Scott:
Not at all. This is common when one doesn’t know for certain who the father is.
@Scott: Regarding the ad…my guess is that they are counting on the image sticking, but nothing else. Strange.
RE: JD Vance–probably she’s the one with all of the responsibility of care & feeding, so maybe he just got caught telling an uncomfortable truth there.
@Jen: @Kathy: Well, given that we are living in Trump’s world now, shouldn’t there be a pack of media and internet influencers demanding a paternity test?
@Sleeping Dog:
When she was running for president back in 2020, I recall seeing a LOT of signs for Gabbard in southeastern NH.
@Rick DeMent: Because fascism isn’t seen as a threat to the Sulzberger and Bezos fortunes.
I have to confess that the cruel side of myself wishes that if Trump actually tries to carry out his mass deportations that some Dems identify illegals in the industries run by people who support Trump, like dairy in Wisconsin and construction in Texas, and works to have them deported first. In reality, we know that there will be some show arrests and deportations of families in California or NYC, mostly affecting liberal cities.
Steve
@Scott:
It was Texas. Be thankful the fake kids weren’t carrying real guns.
@CSK: For her, Trump’s fascism is a feature, not a bug.
I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’ve heard of any mRNA vaccines other than those for the trump virus. Now one for norovirus is in phase 3 testing.
The lack of an explosion in new mRNA vaccines is explained, largely, due tot eh existence of perfectly good vaccines made by other means. More important, with a large manufacturing and distribution base already in place. Since there’s no vaccine for norovirus, mRNA is a viable pathway.
@CSK: And General Franco is still dead.
@gVOR10:
Ooh. Good one. Hadn’t thought about that reason.
@CSK:
There were, but who they are and how many didn’t match up with the signs.
Here in NH you can put signs on your property and public property. Lots and lots of her signs were on public property, quite likely placed there by a small number of supporters. Last year there were a suspicious number of Vitek signs for some one who was polling <1%.
Imagine if this was a normal election pre-Trump. One candidate has a former chief of staff, who happened to be a four-star general in his past day job, come out and say that the candidate praised Hitler. Also, the candidate, when talking about a dead soldier, commented that it doesn’t cost $60,000 to bury a fucking Mexican. That would have been the October surprise, and in a close election would almost certainly have sunk the candidate. For Trump supporters it is just another day. Who knows, maybe it really will hurt him with the undecideds. As a Jew, I don’t see how a Jew votes for a guy who praised Hitler.
@Sleeping Dog:
I wondered about that. I was in a meeting with some other local officials and one of the other town officials came in with a stack of signs he said he’d just removed from town property and the sides of public roadways. He seemed pretty sure of himself that he was authorized to do this.
@Lucysfootball:
For Trump supporters or those who lean Trump, there’s only one analysis: Does it make him look strong or weak? Racism, Sexism, anti-military-ism, all that might not be to there liking, but it shows (in their minds) that he is strong and not afraid of anyone. So done and dusted, he’s their guy.
@MarkedMan: Can’t argue your points. One good thing, IMO that only applies to people who’ve already decided that he’s their guy. For everyone else, praising Hitler is not a positive. Demeaning a dead soldier is not a positive. Even if it’s the tiniest movement of the needle, it can only hurt him.
@Lucysfootball:
@MarkedMan:
My working hypothesis in 2016 was that El Felón’s base, and many of the mainstream voters, were attracted to his open, shameless embrace of bigotry.
I’ve seen nothing to make me change my mind.
I think the shameless part is crucial, though. There are all sorts of things the social consensus deems to be wrong, which many, many people nevertheless want to indulge in or want to practice or want to embrace. A lot of the time, they refrain due to social opprobrium. At least they don’t do it openly, Ergo the prevalence of dog whistles in earlier times.
When a person, if we may judge by his shape, of high standing and wealth, and with the presidential nomination from one of the two parties that matter, embraces bigotry without shame, remorse, regret, or even a twinge of guilt, a lot of people will take it to mean they’ve been lied to. that there’s really nothing wrong with bigotry, and didn’t their parents and grandparents practice it more openly in the past? Now they can, too.
Not all of El Weirdo’s supporters fall into this category. a lot simply ignore it or whitewash it (the irony) or refuse to acknowledge it for various reasons. But I’m convinced it does apply to the base and perhaps a majority of Felon voters.
@Kathy:
Influenza mRNA vaccines have gotten as far as phase 2 testing. Whether any get to phase 3, and a license, is uncertain. As you point out, the FDA requires some sort of advantage for a new vaccine to get licensed. Eg, no previous vaccine, or cheaper, or more effective, or fewer side effects. The biggest advantage for the current mRNA flu vaccine(s) is that they can be produced more rapidly, so the WHO wouldn’t have to guess which strains to include in the vaccine until closer to flu season.
The DHHS is paying Moderna to develop the infrastructure to rapidly produce a vaccine for a pandemic flu, should the need arise. The current most likely threat would be a mutated avian flu virus.
@Kathy: Sadly, bigotry is as American as apple pie. And since most people “not our own kind” (as my mom used to express it) are strangers, bigotry is easy ground to stand on.
And the ones we know are exceptions. Perfectly coherent.
@Jax:
Bird flu is indeed a major factor. The transport issue you mentioned is highly relevant. Seems like folks on all sides of this issue have settled into a three wise monkeys equilibrium. I’m sure that will turn out just grand.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I stole a meme some years ago more or less like “Bigotry is so American, that when you criticize it people think you’re criticizing America.”
@Michael Cain:
I recall a lot of talk of combined flu/COVID vaccine a bit after the controversy over boosters for Delta had passed.
Also, there was the usual wild speculation about how miraculous and superultrarevolutionary the new vaccine platforms were, and how we’d have mRNA vaccines for everything by the end of 2021, in particular including most emphatically HIV.
This is typical every time there’s a new development (still waiting on graphene batteries and carbon nanotube mega structures*). So much so, I tend to skip news of such things lately. Too much hype and not enough thought is given to the myriad difficulties.
*And diamond microchips, buckyball lubricants, nuclear fusion (just from the big headlines of ten years ago), self driving cars, and I’m sure a million things I’ve already forgotten.
I think odds are better than even El Weirdo will try to withdraw the US from NATO if the worst happens in November.
It turns out there’s a process for withdrawal, spelled out in Article 13 of the Treaty:
Irony’s been having a field day lately.
Now, knowing El Felón, he won’t want to even do this much. Wait a year to leave? What if Mad Vlad says something mean? It would make him look bad!
What the treaty does not say is how a member leaves and what happens to bases in other NATO countries, and to heavy equipment and other assets stationed or kept in other NATO countries. The US has lots of bases and equipment in Europe, some of which have been used to stage actions in the Middle East and elsewhere. I assume America would have to negotiate with each country.
One might assume the host countries would want to keep US troops and planes and ships and tanks and missiles anyway. But would they? It’s one thing if they are positioned to defend the host country or others in the alliance. it’s quite another if they’re merely bases of a foreign power that will get used only in ways that benefit the US.
Remember when Reagan bombed Libya in retaliation for terrorist acts in the 80s? F-111 fighters stationed in the UK were used. They had to detour around the Iberian peninsula, as France denied permission to use its airspace for that mission (I can’t recall whether Spain and/or Portugal had joined NATO by then).
Suppose Reagan had ignored the French government and flown his fighters over French airspace. There’d have been a major diplomatic row and ill feelings all around, and who know how things would work out then. While Reagan wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, he was far smarter than El Weirdo, and far savvier in foreign policy. So he didn’t do that.
I can see El Felón doing things like that. And worse, too.
Boeing can’t catch a break. The union rejected the most recent offer, with 64% of the vote against.
If it were a horse, we’d all want it to be put out of its misery.