Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, January 15, 2025
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56 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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Good Morning y’all,
It’s a balmy 8 F here (would be great weather for an inauguration)
This would be a good day to start reading (or re-reading) Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here. Lewis wrote it as he watched Mussolini take over Italy, and found that the seeds of a similar transformation existed in America. If you read the entire source article below, an American critic complained that Lewis made it sound like Windrip was a Rotarian-type dictator and he should have been clearer that fascism was a foreign belief system. Ha, ha, ha. Those were the days.
“The novel describes the rise of Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a demagogue who is elected President of the United States, after fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and “traditional” values. After his election, Windrip takes complete control of the government via self-coup and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force…”
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here
MILTARY: Republican Senator Eric Schmitt’s misspelled sign undermines rant accusing military of incompetence due to DEI (Yahoo News):
A trans senator would have proofread her poster before presenting it in such a serious official setting.
I don’t whether to laugh or cry when Republicans deliver their prepackaged talking points in support of putting an alcohol-soaked White Christian Nationalist misogynist in charge of the military. When the best Hegseth and GOP sycophants can say of his qualifications is that he will be a change agent, one has to remember that the proverbial bull in a china shop was a change agent, too. The underlying theory is clear: if the President is unfit and unqualified for the job, it’s ok – even preferable – for his Cabinet members to follow suit.
@Charley in Cleveland: Fantastic comment, nailed it.
The right has long raced towards anti-intellectualism, denigrating those who aspire to be elite at what they do. So of course Republicans now elevate mediocre addicts, kooks, and criminals — like Trump, Hegseth, Hastert, Gaetz, Gabbard, RFK Jr., and Musk.
These creeps are unqualified; most couldn’t pass a basic background check to teach kindergarten, yet they’re going to hold powerful positions in the federal executive branch. Yikes.
@Charley in Cleveland:
“We need someone like him to shake things up!”
Putting a four-year-old at the controls of a flying 747 shakes things up, too. Doesn’t make it a good idea.
@DK:
@Charley in Cleveland:
The sad thing about all this is that he will likely be confirmed. In spite of his mediocrity being the very reason DEI is so necessary.
Goodwin wrote about Lincoln’s Cabinet, calling it a Team of Rivals. Diaper Donnie is putting together a Team of Dunces.
I see Joni Ernst caved. I bet she’s sick to her stomach.
That got me thinking about Roy Cohn and his intimate mob ties.
I don’t think enough ink has spilled on the subject of death threats and blackmail that gop pols get from magansters.
Kompromat was Roy Cohn’s favorite weapon when representing mobsters, including trump in Cohn’s cesspool of clients. All signs point to all kinds of bad actors occupying the WH soon. Where ever trump goes, organized crime follows.
DEI is the dreaded argument that all positions of power should not go to White fraternity boys.
Radley Balko has a nice piece on using firearms forensic analysis in criminal trials. It turns out that the scientific evidence supporting the use of that kind of expert testimony is weak. There is very little effort to make sure that the experts testifying are actually good at what they do. The one place in the country that makes a sincere effort to monitor its experts reports error rates of 24%-60%.
So, in Illinois a judge decided to hold a hearing looking at the scientific evidence on firearms analysis. He concluded the science was weak and it should not be used in court cases or with reservations noting its problems. However, he left and another judge vacated his decision. Radio’s analysis of this follows and I think it is pertinent in light of the Chevron decision.
“Coleman’s opinion, by contrast reads like every other opinion we see when a judge rejects one of these challenges. Which is to say that it isn’t a scientific analysis, but a legal one. Instead of citing scientific studies, Coleman cites case law. She points out that courts all over the country have repeatedly upheld the validity of forensic firearms analysis in thousands of cases. But she largely avoids engaging with whether those prior opinions were right or wrong. She finds the case law so overwhelming that, she argues, that her predecessor shouldn’t have even granted a hearing on the validity of such testimony, much less ruled for the defense in the wake of that hearing.
Coleman’s reasoning mirrors the gap between law and science we see over and over in these cases. While the law strives for consistency and predictability, science is constantly changing as we acquire new information. Those clashing priorities create huge problems when the two fields intersect. Under Coleman’s opinion, so long as there’s sufficient case law supporting it, no Illinois court short of the state supreme court can reconsider the reliability of any field of expertise, no matter how much scientific research shows it to be nonsense.”
In this case Balko seems to believe that the judge made good faith analysis but based it upon the law, and we got a crappy decision. Now take this example and imagine what happens when truly partisan judges are making decisions.
Steve
@Daryl:
I did you wrong yesterday and I apologize unreservedly. I was having one of those days where it’s probably a good thing I don’t have a gun.
I don’t get the skepticism on Hesgseht. I’m sure he’s perfectly qualified to mismanage the DoD and abuse its members (at least those who are neither male nor white nor straight nor cis). Was this not the intent behind the nomination?
Remember the average Trump cabinet member lasts two years.
@steve: This is adjacent to a controversial Texas case WRT “shaken baby syndrome”.
What is shaken baby syndrome, the controversial diagnosis for which Robert Roberson is set to die?
The Texas legislature has gone so far as to subpoena Roberson to testify causing the execution date to be moved back. As of today, the new date has not been set for execution.
As a sidenote, it has been shown that Texas has executed the innocent. I was queasy about the death penalty but these facts make me unalterable opposed. Better a 100 people get life imprisonment than 1 person get erroneously executed.
@Fortune: And that the replacement often makes people yearn for the one who got sacked.
I just read border patrol did some surprise raids on field workers in Bakersfield CA. Oranges are rotting away.
RFK jr tossed about the idea of rounding up antidepressant users and putting them to work on farms.
I’m thinking all those jobs Americans don’t want to do, we will now be forced to do.
For all of the folks screaming about how awful regulations are, I repeat: they aren’t proposed out of thin air, there’s almost always an actual reason (and benefit)
From the NYT (gift link): More Americans Than Ever Are Living in Wildfire Areas. L.A. Is No Exception.
I’m getting the hang of the Honda. It does have too many features, and lacks a few. For instance, there’s no good spot for mounting a cell phone. I rely on that for driving directions. Now, the car has an onboard navigation function, but I don’t think it accounts for traffic (the car is from 2013, before Waze was widespread).
It also seems to lack a cumulative fuel efficiency measurement, and a trip time clock.
Next I need to see whether I can pair two bluetooth devices at once. That’s the problem with having one phone for audiobooks and one for phone calls and navigation. I don’t think I can do that, so the bluetooth speaker will live on for a few more years.
What’s really great is the rear view camera. I wonder how I drove for several decades without one. But then, I recall when side mirrors on the passenger side were thought to be unnecessary.
They Voted For It Watch: House slashes funding for rural schools and roads
https://www.newportnewstimes.com/news_free/u-s-house-fails-to-reauthorize-20-year-old-bipartisan-bill-to-fund-rural-schools/article_b50bb5f3-77ab-565c-8c73-c0b3b288c670.html
A cease-fire deal has been reached in Gaza. Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/15/world/israel-hamas-cease-fire-deal-gaza?unlocked_article_code=1.pU4.hx5U.GWRw9v6l8nJF&smid=url-share
@Fortune:
Rubio will be asking himself, “I gave up my safe Senate seat for this?”, as he attempts diplomatic damage control after dt’s SUPDEF* parrots dt blustering about using US military force in allied nations.
*Superintendent of Defense, because he thinks secretary isn’t masculine enough.
@steve:
RB is one of the best investigative criminal legal system journalists out there. He’s also one of the few shining examples of what a principled libertarian looks like (though I don’t know if he still identifies as libertarian).
@becca:
Well, there’s the signal to Susan Collins, she can now be ‘very concerned’ as she votes to confirm the non-woke abusive alcoholic Christian nationalist to be Secretary of Defense.
We hear so much about how self centered the felon is and how he only acts if there’s something in it for him. But it turns out in the privacy of his own home, he can be quite considerate. For example, it’s known he tiptoes around the bathroom’s medicine cabinet, so as not to wake up the sleeping pills.
@becca:
The incoming administration may, I’m afraid, use this tactic in the aftermath of the fires as political retribution. That is, target SoCal with ICE raids to reduce the availability of migrant labor involved in the construction industry, resulting in scarcer housing and higher prices.
@just nutha: “And that the replacement often makes people yearn for the one who got sacked.”
It is an astonishing fact of life that they can always get worse.
Except maybe in the case of Matt Gaetz. He might have been the absolute bottom
@Jen:
It makes sense that homes can be made significantly more resistant to wildfire with marginal increases in cost, but it’s great to have actual data and analyses like this. Also from the article:
There’s a limit to the amount of defensible space around a home on a fractional acre lot, but improving buffers and using fire-resistant materials outdoors has got to help.
Don’t want to nitpick the Times piece, but I have to take issue with the second paragraph:
This seems like a misleading characterization of the buildings that have been burned, as “nestled in or near hillsides covered with highly flammable vegetation” isn’t an accurate description of the wildland-urban interface that’s later discussed. The LA County fire maps of damaged/destroyed properties appear to show most of the buildings several blocks/streets away from the edges of development, such as block after block of older Altadena neighborhoods.
@wr:
Madison Cawthorn.
I’m not saying he’d have replaced Gatze, or that the felon would even remember his existence. But there’s always someone worse known on the GQP team.
Oh, George Santos (not his real name, probably).
@wr: I think Hegseth might be worse than Gaetz.
Gaetz: statutory rape.
Hegseth: just plain rape rape.
Gaetz: major white nationalist vibes
Hegseth: has white nationalist tattoos
Hegseth does have a bit more non-government experience, having run multiple nonprofits into the ground. Very nonprofitty.
@becca:
Guess which party represents Kern County in Congress, and which presidential candidate carried its vote?
Hundreds of Bakersfield residents gather to protest against Border Patrol raids (Caló News):
Voting to destroy the local economy to own the libs. ‘But I didn’t think the mass deportations would eat MY face!’
@Charley in Cleveland: you know how Mythbusters proved the “frog in a boiling pot of water” theory wrong? (When it gets too warm, the frog hops out.) Well, someone recently tried to prove or disprove the “bull in a china shop” theory.That one is actually true. The bull utterly destroyed it.
@mattbernius: I recall RB writing a public apology in an article he had written about abusive policing in Ferguson, MO. He had interviewed a young Black man who owned a car and limo service. Since this young man was often seen driving different, very nice vehicles, he had been arrested a ridiculous number of times by Ferguson police (never convicted, but the time and money wasted and humiliation had worn him down considerably). At one point, he commented that he was so ashamed his kids had to know that he kept getting arrested. Balko asked, “Does their mom still allow you to see the kids?” The young man answered, “My kids’ mom? You mean my wife? My wife who I live with, with our children?”
Balko apologized to him and then to the public in the article, realizing he had stereotyped this young man just as much as the Ferguson police (albeit with less severe consequences).
@Gustopher: Remember when people were calling the Jerusalem Cross fascist, then it was on the Carter funeral program.
@Monala:
The Mythbusters did the bull in a china shop. Albeit by placing shelves with an assortment of china in a corral and let some bulls lose. They didn’t cause much damage. But then, they had room to move and were in a familiar place.
I suspect a bull or three in an unfamiliar, confined place filled with easily breakable stuff, won’t be as restrained.
I don’t recall they ever did a frog in a boiling pot. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing they’d do. They did plenty of animal myths, including many where animals might be hurt or killed (and many where people would be hurt or killed, too, for that matter). In such cases, they made analogue bodies, sometimes using real animal bones, and tested on that (a frozen turkey dropped on a cat will kill it). They might come up with an analogue frog that might boil, but not one that would react to the heat.
@Mikey: Honey badger gonna honey badger.
Fortune, eff right off with comparing the cross I have hanging on my wall in my bedroom with the one on Hegseth’s body. In fact, I also own a cross that is from Israel when my neighbor visited Israel many years ago and brought back a wooden carved figure of Jesus Christ carrying the cross. In the 25+ years that I have owned that cross it has been easy to ignore anyone who would call me a fascist sympathizer for owning the cross in the form of a figurine, or one designed to hang on my wall. I was especially sad when the Northridge Earthquake caused damage to my carved figure of Jesus.
You continue to show your true colors by defending a woman abusing, alcoholic, racist waste of a human being like Hegseth.
But you do you.
@wr: I’ll concede that it’s hard to imagine anyone lower, but if there’s a worse choice than Gaetz, Trump can find it.
@inhumans99: Yeah, that’s the stuff I was laughing about. Funny a month ago and still just as funny.
@Fortune: When I see stuff like that, I remember 2 things:
1) The Bible verse that says, “Remember when the world hates you, it hated me first,” and
2) That lots of people are coopting Christian symbols for to all sorts of hateful and non-Christian ends these days.
Larger point being that I can only be responsible for my own behavior and beliefs and have to let other people take responsibility for themselves.
@Kathy: there’s probably a reason the expression is “a bull in a china shop,” and not simply “a bull around china.” Basically, bulls don’t belong in china shops because they’re bound to destroy it. The analogy to Hegseth’s potential appointment is relevant.
It occurs to me if someone need more aggravation in their life for some reason, they may as well get an older, near obsolete smart phone, rather than engage with the snakes in the OTB garden.
On other things, I’m thinking unbreaded chicken milanesas* topped with fettucine in a creamy mushroom sauce for next week. For a side/starter I think I’ll make dry lentil soup with some tomato paste and browned onions.
Today it took me a full minute to find my car in the parking lot, even though it was quite literally right in front of me, and it flashed and beeped when I clicked the fob. Only then I recalled it’s white, not silver.
*Breading would be a lot better, but I’m getting tired of fiddling with flour, eggs, and bread crumbs. I’m thinking instead to cut up the milanesas, mix them with the sauce and pasta, then cover the thing with shredded cheese and bread crumbs and sticking it in the oven.
@Joe: Some idiot reporter asked Biden who deserves the credit for this deal, him or Trump. Biden gave the only appropriate answer to that stupidity: “Is that a joke?”
@Fortune: Things have context.
When the Indian family next door has a swastika on their door, we can generally assume it means one thing, while when the dude who hangs out in white nationalist circles has it, it means something else.
Same with the Jerusalem Cross.
(It’s like a lot of Norse symbols. Either they are a time traveling Viking who arrived from the 1100s, or their a fucking Nazi… but who can tell?)
@Gustopher:
If there’s one thing that unites all purveyors of bad-faith bullshit, it’s their deliberate and consistent evasion of context. Context is to them as the noon sun is to a vampire.
@becca: “I see Joni Ernst caved. I bet she’s sick to her stomach.”
Just as sick as Collins, whose brow has reached Furrow State Delta.
Funny headline of the day: SpaceX (sic) launches two lunar landers to the moon.
Good thing they didn’t launch them to Venus…
Seriously, I don’t get why they are taking weeks or months to get to the Moon. It’s hardly a light second away, about 300,000 kilometers. Apollo got there in about 3 days.
Celestial mechanics is a weird and counterintuitive subject. One is tempted to say “the Apollo missions went faster.” This is not so. The landers are probably going to reach the same speed as the Apollo missions did: the relative speed at which the Moon orbits the Earth.
The acceleration is a different matter. Whatever these probes use to accelerate, presumably not the Xalcon’s xecond xtage, accelerates more slowly than Apollo’s lunar insertion stage did.
To complicate matters further, if you intend to land without first orbiting the Moon, you might go faster than the relative speed of the Moon around Earth. I don’t think this is the case here. It has been done to reach Mars, but there you can use the atmosphere to shed speed.
Weird and counterintuitive.
I hypothesize these probes accelerate, slowly, just enough so they are sufficiently close to the Moon that they come under its gravitational field, so the Moon reels them in. You can’t do that with a crewed mission, as you’d need supplies for weeks.
@Kathy:
Good question, escape velocity is escape velocity and that should be the minimum for going to the moon.
Here’s an article on why so long. Seems doing it this way, 25 days of what appears to be expanding elliptical orbits of earth, can produce acceleration which saves a lot of fuel.
Less fuel = More payload.
@Not the IT Dept.:
15 years ago would have been a “great” time have read Sinclair Lewis’ prescient work. I did. And then watched our society sleep walk down that road. Maybe Lewis wasn’t so much “prescient” as he was observant, of human nature, proclivities, and short comings.
I’ve been following a policy of not reading anything about shows or movies I want to see. The reason is that often there are spoilers, and as often they’re not marked as such.
So the other day I began Skeleton Crew, knowing only it was Star Wars and Jude Law was in it. It’s been kind of ok so far. I liked the look at the daily lives of regular people, distressingly very near like our daily lives, but with vehicles that hover rather than roll. When it turned to more typical SW settings, I felt it dragged. We’ll see. Six eps to go.
I also incautiously saw a trailer for Severance season 2, and I think I caught a minor spoiler. I won’t mention what it is here, as I don’t want to spoil anyone. Really, anyone who liked or was left intrigued enough by season 1 will watch season 2. There’s no need to see the trailer.
And I think I’ll wait to get Apple tv+ until at least half the season is up. Unless I decide to rewatch season 1. I think I remember it pretty well, but it’s been a long while.
BTW, the model of short seasons running one long story in 8-10 eps, followed by over a year for the next season if no pandemics, strikes, or fires get in their way, feels more like seeing a movie and its sequel than a TV show.
Obviously they’re not movies, but they aren’t TV shows in the usual sense, either. Maybe we should call them something else. TV plays, or Streaming plays, or something.
@becca:
Aside from RFK Jr ideological classification as “muddled,” both the Right and the Left always seem to want to impose some kind of moral value framework on people.
Personally, I prefer that people be required to buy into minimum healthcare plans and get vaccines, but not be forced to carry fetuses to full term under medical duress, or required to live in communities without reasonable firearm regulation, or be allowed to spew out greenhouse gases in perpetuity.
But on a positive note, both contingents on opposite sides of the divide, still reject (for the moment) smoking in confined public spaces, accept traffic flow regulation, and seat belts. Yay civilization! High five! Way to go, man, affirming that data discernment feedback loop!
It’s all about choices.
@dazedandconfused:
Thanks for the link (and remind me to hunt down people who display white text over a dark background; it’s murder on the eyes),
Longer transit times are far less important for uncrewed missions, past making the launch window.
@Kathy: We just watched the finale of Skeleton Crew. Really enjoyed the series, it was fun.
We just started with Lower Decks, we like it very much so far.
@Fortune:
Seriously? Please, seek help. It’s not too late.
IN the off chance someone’s both awake and interested, Lex Bezos’ rocket is about 35 minutes from launch. You can watch here
@Kathy: Skeleton Crew was pretty fun. It’s not groundbreaking, and it isn’t going to make you have deep thoughts about the nature of power structures or anything, but it’s fun.
It doesn’t require deep knowledge about massive amounts of backstory. It isn’t interested in dropping lore. There’s no gratuitous fan service. It’s just fun.
There’s a story with a beginning, middle and end, with new characters having character arcs. And they just tell the story.
More Star Wars should be that way.
(I guess knowing that this story has an ending might be a spoiler, since a lot of Star Wars projects don’t have an ending, but I’m not saying whether it is left open ended or not — just that it tells a complete story)
Even the kids were fine. They’re a bit older than young Leia in Kenobi, and the director and action coordinators seem to know what to do with children.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Agree on all points in your comment. The section I quoted is something I’m trying to really practice in 2025.