Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, June 25, 2020
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63 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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What, no song lyrics that I don’t have a chance of remembering? I’m disappointed. đ
Three police officers fired in North Carolina over racial slurs video
Sure. Saying you’re gonna buy an AR15 for the express purpose of killing ni**ers is soooo not racist. He’s just a cop who takes “law and order” serious. Only a bunch of snowflakes would get upset by that.
A nice story to start the day with:
Small-scale miner finds biggest tanzanite gems in history, worth $3.3m
Tanzania has a novel way of mining:
Headlines from this mornings NYT’s website.
How the Virus Won
U.S. Sets Record for Daily New Cases as Virus Surges in South and West
So much winning!
@OzarkHillbilly:
Try this one: Replays each of the days.
@Kathy: Yeah, I don’t get that one either.
Do you ever get the feeling some people love SARS-CoV-2 and want to spread it far and wide?
Australia’s agriculture minister says Roundup is safe after $16bn US cancer lawsuit
“We have the best words! Our words totally nullify the carcinogenic properties of RoundUp! Just say them over and over while using and you will be completely protected!”
In fairness, he’s talking about the directions for use, which I guess are different than the ones on the bottles here. But it still sounds plenty stupid to me, especially when we all know men don’t follow directions.
Add West Virginia to the Republican run states where, angry at reality, the top health official has been driven from office.
Devin Nunes Loses Legal Battle With Twitter Cow
2nd Amendment propagandists suddenly find open carry “unacceptable” and an example of “mob rule” when black people do it.
Again, conservatism is not primarily about what is being done, but about who gets to do it.
Conservatism is basically “daddy must always get the biggest piece of meat” writ large.
So if we don’t test for COVID-19, that means the virus doesn’t exist?
Wow…I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing…a grown man banging on a desk while a witness speaks or a chairman who doesn’t throw the idiot out of the room…this is what the Judiciary Committee has been reduced to…
@An Interested Party:
He forgot to say “We will bury you.”
@Teve: If one loses to a cow in court, it’s time to get a new lawyer. One that will tell you to grow the F up.
I went to the reopening of a bar within walking distance of my house. I wore my mask, ordered a shot of the 101 proof Wild Turkey and a glass of a locally brewed Pilsener-style beer, and sat at their outdoor tables unmasked. A lot of the regulars showed. There was a lot of camaraderie. It felt good. There are some things that donât come across in virtual meetings.These things are very valuable. However, my pleasures can not be the only guide to policy.
This morningâs news regarding surges of disease in many places are worrisome. The biology of infection does not care about the simple pleasures of daily life. We need leadership that is willing to take the measures to control this. I want my country to be the envy of the world not on the list of biggest failures. We need some grownups in charge.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Just a reminder unless these officers have their law enforcement certifications revoke they will be able to be hired by any police department in NC and any other states that recognize their certifications through reciprocity agreements.
That’s, of course, provided they are not reinstated through mandatory union arbitration.
@OzarkHillbilly: I knew a lawyer in Chapel Hill who said âhalf my day is telling people they canât sue someone for that.â
I darkly love how everyone wearing masks is the single best thing we can do, and Republicans are filming themselves throwing tantrums about CONSTITUTION!
@Kathy:
And he didn’t use his shoe as a gavel.
@mattbernius: From the part I didn’t quote because I just wanted to snark:
FWIW, which my experience with small town cops suggests “not much”.
@mattbernius:
According to Stephen Rushin, who studied the matter, nine out of ten police contracts have clauses that thwart any legitimate disciplinary action being taken against bad cops.
@Teve: I can’t count the number of times I have said, “Talk to a lawyer but I don’t think you can do anything about that.”
@OzarkHillbilly:
So it is sufficiently obscure.
A prime reason why law and order won’t work for Republicans this year–their leader is lawless and disordered…
This is worrisome. Every state has an increase in the C19 death rate/100k residents over the past week.
Delaware, which shows up as worse, may be an exception, because it seems likely they just reclassified a large number of deaths as C19 earlier this week. I haven’t seen anything to that effect but there is the typical one day spike associated with other states that have done that.
“5.8 earthquake rocks southern California” Causes dust to rise in mountains!
“Massive 7.7 quake hits Mexico, tsunami warning issued! ”
The fire rim is heating up.
“I fell in to a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down and the flames got higher” ( Cash)
@Tyrell:
I know Mexico had a 7.4 quake on June 23 (OTB commenter Kathy experienced it), but has there been a 7.7 quake since then?
@Tyrell: Tyrell, thanks for adding that “(Cash)” at the end because as I was reading I was worried that it was you that had fallen into the burning ring of fire. Such a relief at the end…
Yesterday I heard about the red summer of 1919 for the first time. I am a bit appalled that this was the first time I had ever heard about it.
I just started listening to a podcast about this summer and thought I should share it with y’all in case there are others who were unaware of this as I was.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-you-missed-in-history-cl-21124503/episode/red-summer-1919-45606614/
A couple of weeks ago I pointed out that deaths were trailing case rates by a longer margin than it did during the NYC outbreak, and stated that there was at least a possibility that the case rate was going up so dramatically because we were testing more people and catching more with milder cases. If this was true the positivity rate of tests would be going down, but I couldn’t find good data for positivity rates. That hope has been dashed. This article at TPM is the clearest explanation I’ve seen of why that isn’t the case. Couldn’t be more clear.
The death rates in a number of states seem to be starting to climb. More significantly, the hospitalization rate is definitely starting to climb in a number of states. All of them, except for California, are what I would call Trump states or at least typically Republican states, i.e. “Reality is what we say it is!!!”
Carly Fiorina has announced that she’s voting for Joe Biden. Cult45 will naturally retort that she’s still upset about Trump implying that she has an ugly face. I don’t think it’s that.
@Teve:
Wearing a mask isn’t a political statement…it’s an IQ test.
In 2019, 29.7% of Protestant who attend church weekly believed Trump was sent to us by God. In 2020, that figure has risen to 49.%%. This according to a study published in Religion in Public entitled “Trump the Anointed?”
Link
The right’s latest talking point about Aunt Jemima is that we want to cancel a character based upon a woman who rose up from slavery to become a millionaire.
“Nope,” says Snopes. Quoting from two books written more than a decade ago about the “Mammy” stereotype, the Snopes article points out that decades after she modeled for Aunt Jemima, Nancy Green was still working as a domestic (according to Census records). Furthermore, her descendants tried unsuccessfully to sue Quaker Oats for taking advantage of Green without compensation.
This is in addition to the fact that when Green was working to promote the Aunt Jemima syrup, the promotions specifically had her wax poetic about how much she loved her days in slavery.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
It’s also an empathy test. As wearing a mask mostly keeps someone infected from spreading the virus around, those who wear one are trying to keep from unknowingly harming others.
@Mike in Arlington: And for a really deep dive into the Spanish Flu, the Palmer Raids and such fun times, there is the timeless John Dos Passos’ trilogy lumped together under the name U.S.A.
@OzarkHillbilly: Wait… jugs of weed killer have directions for use on them????
@Teve: The guy from the Handel on the Law radio show always says that the issue is not whether you can sue, it’s whether you can win.
@Kathy: Sheeeit girl, 99% of popular culture is obscure to me.
@Mike in Arlington: I read this this morning, The Ghosts of Elaine, Arkansas, 1919 and meant to pass it along but it touched on so many things I didn’t have time to get into it all. Still don’t but here’s the lede:
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: Oooooo…. I gotta remember that one.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I know! Who’da thunk it???
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: Does the style of the mask relate to IQ? My current mask is the Fiend – modeled after Bray Wyatt mask (WWE).
@JohnMcC: Thank you! I’ll add them to my ever increasing reading list.
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks for that. The podcast I mentioned covered that massacre. It was chilling and sickening.
While I know my knowledge of American history is a bit patchy in some areas, I was embarrassed to find out that I had never even heard about the red summer.
@Tyrell: Ordinarily, I’d say no.
Rachel Bitecofer says Ohio just moved from lean Republican to toss up.
iâm in a union. If I slapped a customer Iâd be fired immediately. And the union would tell me to go fuck myself. Itâs not the existence of unions thatâs the problem, itâs the contracts.
On another thread, KingDaddy mentioned movies that were good but whose plots made no sense. His reference was “The Big Sleep”. Mine is “Vertigo”. I can appreciate everything about it, except that the plot is so far out there as to be a feature length I Love Lucy episode. If you are going to commit that particular crime, there must be thousands of ways that are more straightforward than the method chosen.
@MarkedMan:
None of the screenwriters, including William Faulkner, could figure out what the hell The Maltese Falcon was about, either.
While reading James’ post about Trump going to his New Jersey golf club, the subject of saluting persons, uniforms, and vehicles in the military came up and reminded me of a story from my early days in the USAF.
Upon graduation from basic training in August 1976, we were all awakened before dawn to move out of our dormitory to be processed and sent to our next duty stations, which for most of us were our technical training centers. In true military “hurry-up and wait” fashion, hundreds of new Airmen were gathered in a large warehouse-like building and waited while we were divided up into groups based on destination, with hundreds going by chartered buses to several bases across the USA. A lucky few got to go to by plane from San Antonio airport. There were just two of us who were heading to Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo, Texas for our tech school and we were told we’d be going by Greyhound bus from the downtown bus station. To get us there, they called for a car and driver, which turned out to be the staff car for the base commander, with a Colonel’s flag sitting on the front fender which the driver, with a wink, said he wouldn’t bother to remove. It was a great way to leave Lackland AFB, slowly driving across the base with two brand new Airmen, still sporting our buzz cuts, as every Airman, NCO, and Officer saluted the vehicle on the way out as we waved from the back seat.
@CSK: Aw c’mon, the Black Bird. What else? đ
@Mike in Arlington: Don’t feel bad, I had forgotten about the Red Summer until I read that. Chances are pretty good I’ll forget about it again before the week is out.
And to think that this bozo is touted in Republican circles as a possible future presidential candidate…he seems far too scared of black people to ever serve in any role in the White House…
@OzarkHillbilly:
To me, too, probably. But Rush’s “The Body Electric” was not that popular.
Anyway, the relevant part:
Replays each of the days
A hundred years of routines
Bows its head and prays
To the mother of all machines
It happened again:
Customer: do I qualify for the 55 and up plan?
Me: let me look at your Driverâs License again. Yep, youâre 62, you qualifyïżŒ.
Customer: how old are *you*?
Me: 43.
Customer: you donât look 43.
Me: I Moisturize.
@MarkedMan: Double Indemnity didnât really make any sense either.
@Teve: Hahahahahaha…..thanks for the laugh, I imagined that in my head. You should try different lines, just to see their reaction. Stick to commercially available products, you don’t want to get them totally freaked out by hyping green grass enema’s or a smoothie from the blood of a giant frog or anything. I mean, you could, but probably ought to wait til you put your two weeks in to pull those. đ
This is pretty brutal.
I remain convinced that Biden should just hunker down and let the man Trump is destroy himself. Peggy Noonan wants a hero, well, it’s not Biden, perhaps she should do some soul-reflecting and wonder why there aren’t any other Republicans riding in to save the day.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-week-it-went-south-for-trump-11593127733?mod=djemalertNEWS
@Jax:
Where’s she gonna find that in the Republican party as it’s configured currently?
[spoiler alert] Because everybody needs an earworm.
@Jax: Interesting column from Noonan. Well, interesting that she wrote it, otherwise pretty mediocre. I made the mistake of reading comments. The WSJ commenters are nearly as bad as Lucianne or The American Thinker.