Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, May 17, 2024
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50 comments
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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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Factoid of the day: Astronauts in orbit don’t get ice cream.
Why not? Because no crewed vehicle nor space station has any refrigeration facilities (not for food), with one exception. The exception was Skylab, which had a fridge and a freezer, so the crews who served in it had ice cream (and also cold drinks).
What about the infamous “astronaut ice cream” found in the gifts shops at NASA sites, science museums, and EPCOT?
Well, it’s freeze-dried ice cream, so technically it’s ice cream. But it’s neither cold nor creamy, and overall not much of a pleasant experience. And although NASA had it developed for use in the Apollo program, it wasn’t used either then or since. It was listed in the manifest for Apollo VII, but may not have been included, as the last living crew, when asked, had no memory of it (not to mention the aftermath of that flight for that crew).
Things might change. The Crew Dragon capsule has a freezer compartment. Unfortunately, it’s meant for samples which require it. But if it flies at all and there’s spare room, NASA will send up some individual ice cream servings.
You also won’t get a Coke in space, either. And all the coffee is instant. And somehow none of this keeps people from going to the ISS sometimes for months.
The Sports headline of the day- Scottie Scheffler detained by police before start of PGA Championship
Josh Marshall prints a message from a reader that pretty much sums up my feelings about Israel (no subscription needed):
The headline of the day- Algerian man found alive in cellar after 26 years
More performative nonsense from Louisiana this morning as they are trying, again, to get the 10 Commandments into every public school classroom.
That’s just so ’90s guys. Geez, try to keep up. These days it’s all about limiting trans folks’ rights.
Louisiana is so backward…they can’t even keep up to date on the fake outrage de jour
Greg Abbot and Sam Alito are competing for biggest partisan nut jobs this morning. Abbot pardoned a murderer cuz, hey, he only killed a lefty protester – nothing wrong with that!- and the Alito residence flew an upside down flag in their yard, representing their allegiance to the Dumpster after the Dumpster lost the election in 2020. Way to project judicial independence, Sammy.
In a sane world, those two would not be anywhere near positions of power. Disgusting.
@becca:
Since when has the world ever been sane?
@becca: Alito threw his wife under the bus for the flag thing. How white male conservative of him.
@Mikey: They are never at fault for anything. That whole Dobb’s thing? Jesus made him do it.
While I’ve enjoyed her movies, I don’t normally think to look to Whoopi Goldberg for wisdom, but this sounds about right:
I genuinely do NOT understand the Justice Alito thing. It’s not like he’s new to the bench. It’s not like his wife hasn’t had YEARS to understand how public political displays might be perceived by others.
My parents were covered under the Hatch Act for decades. But even if they hadn’t been, they would have resisted putting something public up because of their government-held positions. JFC, this is EASY STUFF. That *justices* are failing to clear the low bars is scary.
Marjorie Taylor Greene got her ass handed to her, rhetorically speaking, after her lame attempt yesterday to insult Jasmine Crockett (D-TX):
“Bleach blonde, bad built, butch body” now that’s true art.
@Jen:
There’s no mystery: he can get away with it.
Same as Uncle Thomas taking bribes. Justices have a lifetime appointment, and can be removed only by impeachment. As that’s never going to happen, they can and will keep getting away with flouting all rules and norms of decency.
I watch comedy the way a pilot watches a windsock. It’s revealing. It has tides, ebbs and flows.
Something big just happened in the world of comedy that signals a change in the wind: Bill Burr laughed at Bill Maher, to his face, while announcing that no one cares about cancel culture anymore, it’s over. Burr is a very smart comic. Smarter than Maher, more adaptable, a deeper guy, though his persona is ‘angry Boston loudmouth,’ while Maher plays the cynical intellectual.
We’re having a moment where thesis and antithesis are reaching synthesis. Woke and anti-woke are both burned out, and what’s left is a residue of each, and thankfully, hopefully, we can get back to comedy that is allowed to take chances and push boundaries, but has at the same time come to accept that being provocative just to provoke is for middle school.
Maher and Chapelle, to pick two obvious examples, now seem tired, old and irrelevant. Chapelle is brilliant, but he has failed to adapt. Jimmy Carr, who I love, is falling into that same category, but he may be smart enough to escape the trap. On the ‘woke’ side, Hannah Gadsby has never been funny, and is less so now. Amy Schumer was funny, and then she dived into the polarized fray and lost her funny. Hassan Minaj committed career suicide.
The future is comics like Taylor Tomlinson and Nate Bargatze (and lots of others, of course.) They both stood apart from the woke/not woke struggle.
@Mikey:
Omg, the t-shirts should be being made right now!
Twenty years ago today Massachusetts legalized gay marriage, the first state to do so. You can thank attorney Mary Bonauto for that.
@Jen: Alito is 74 years old, and I would assume his wife is of similar age. I’m guessing early onset dementia. Sadly, the Constitutional provisions for handling such an eventuality are weak.
@Franklin:
I rarely disparage anyone’s physical appearance, but I’m sick of looking at Marjorie Trailer Queen’s short, fat arms. I wish she’d wear sleeves.
@Michael Reynolds: My wife and I have been re-watching The Mandalorian and Burr has been in a couple of episodes. In the first he was part of a larger group and didn’t do much, but they brought the character back for a second episode where he was a very important role and had a lot of screen time. He was really good, although it wasn’t a comedic role he did give his particular spin which made it very entertaining.
We enjoy his stand-up, too, and we thought his turn in The Mandalorian was very well done.
@Mikey: “Alito threw his wife under the bus for the flag thing. How white male conservative of him.”
To be fair, Hispanic Democratic male Robert Menendez did the same thing.
@wr: Yeah, I saw that. Of course, such assholery is not confined solely to one demographic.
@MarkedMan:
No matter how loathsome those ideas are.
I’m sorry, everybody has the right to be as idiotic, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, etc etc etc as they want and even say as much. That does not mean I have to give them any respect. Fck that shit.
@Jen:
I genuinely do not understand the outrage over the Justice Alito thing. I mean, as far as political speech goes, this is pretty mild.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think she meant that we have to respect his right to say what he wants. She made it pretty clear she does not agree with it.
I haven’t been in a church for anything other than funerals and marriages for almost 50 years, but I still know how to do a proper “sign of the cross.”
A little point from this weeks news.
I didn’t realise at first where the Putin-Xi summit was being held.
Harbin.
I suspect someone in the Chinese foreign ministry has a nasty sense of humour.
These sort of things seldom happen by accident.
@OzarkHillbilly: A sitting SCOTUS Justice displayed a symbol indicating he at least sympathizes with, if not agrees with, people who conducted an insurrection against the US in order to steal a Presidential election. I would not categorize that as mild.
Furthermore, he is currently sitting in judgment of a case that will determine whether the chief director of that insurrection is immune from prosecution for it. I think that makes the display of solidarity with insurrectionists even more disturbing.
Wow. This is awful. What a piece of shit P. Diddy is.
https://x.com/yashar/status/1791516240965701917
I like the yellow tie trump is wearing in that pic. It matches the yellow streak down his back.
@Mikey: Let me just say this: His flying the flag upside down is merely symbolic of…. Something.
Maybe, “he… sympathizes with, if not agrees with, people who conducted an insurrection against the US in order to steal a Presidential election.” Maybe not. (yeah, I know better)
Whether he flew the flag upside down or not is immaterial to his “sitting in judgement” of whether or not some people are bound by our laws or not, but even that is nothing new. As Frank Wilhoit pointed out “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
And we all know, and have known for quite some time, what Alito’s preference is.
I just can’t get worked up about an upside down flag while the real insult is his continued existence on the most powerful court in America.
In Hollywood movies, being poor is the most shameful thing
@OzarkHillbilly:
@MarkedMan:
The bigot’s right to say stupid and hateful things was fully respected. He wasn’t arrested, fined, imprisoned, or exiled for what he said, was he? No one in the local, state, or federal government, took any judicial notice of the shit he spewed out in public and then posted, or was posted for him, online.
If he’s condemned for what he said, or loses his job over it, or gets criticized for it, or gets mocked and ridiculed, his rights are still fully respected. See above about what the various levels of government haven’t done about it.
@JKB:
The example supplied points to the absurdity of this study. (And I use that term loosely.) The incident cited had nothing to do with poverty, it was about the work ethic. We do shame people for laziness, lack of effort. We do not shame people for poverty per se, indeed politicians bend over backward to cite any example of poverty in their lives precisely so they can then regale us with their tale of hard work and perseverance.
ETA: In fact I flaunt my poverty, I’m proud that I used to have a hard life, and survived, and by virtue of work and discipline and a lot of luck, I am no longer poor. If anything, like a lot of people, I have to resist a feeling of scorn for people born well-off. I include my own kids.
@JKB: What’s your point? Why does the reader need to care about what you just said?
We can’t read your mind, at least partially because there are no complete paragraphs there. 🙁
@JKB: Dude, you’re just phoning it in now. You can do better trolling.
2.5/10
@OzarkHillbilly:
I do not proclaim that what I am about to say is anything profound, but it does seem overdue that as Michael notes, since tarring someone as overly woke seems to be losing its power to label someone as out of touch with the “average” voter in this country, that we start to lean into not trying to cancel someone, or no longer go hard at trying to prevent certain individuals from participating in a speaking engagement that a college campus invited them to give a lecture.
That “provocative” individual who wants to “shock” the audience by saying racist or just patently dumb/ignorant sheet, let them speak on a college campus full of liberals, let them be free to tour and try to make money at venues, such as comedy clubs.
Instead of all this effort to cancel folks, let them get up on stage and get booed by the audience, this individual does not have a constitutional right to insist I cheer them on like a MAGA critter at a Trump rally, and if they keep getting booed, and the audience for their words starts to dwindle and is starting to lose them money, maybe, just maybe they will cancel themselves and realize that yup, Colleges and other venues no longer seem to be “cancelling” them, but a quick look at the books will show that they need to figure out another way to bring home the bacon as their schtick has worn thin.
@MarkedMan: Here are some of the words that we don’t really need to give a lot of respect to:
That’s just antisemitic bullshit. Also, no one is being jailed.
(Plus, we all know it was the Romans.)
@OzarkHillbilly: Mild or not, a JUDGE (and, by proxy, a judge’s wife) should know better. Be better. Act better.
Public officials are (or should be) held to a higher standard, but especially judges, whose impartiality (perceived or real) is the very currency of their position.
Justice Roberts has been worried about the legacy of his court…he can start by course-correcting Alito and Thomas.
@Jen:
Roberts has nothing to worry about. The odds of the Roberts Court being regarded as regressive, repressive, corrupt, and illegitimate, are so high as to be certain.
@OzarkHillbilly:
When did Boobert become or pretend to be a Roman Catholic? I thought she claimed to belong to some “Christian” nondenominational holy roller cult, at least nominally.
Those people don’t believe Roman Catholics are Christians.
Speaking of Boobert, she also says that Trump “looks pretty when he sleeps” in court.
She added that she believes he might be praying, not sleeping.
@Jen:
Problem there is the Chief Justice lacks a wood-shed to take them to. He can’t fire them or fine them and they know it. He must cajole when possible but he can’t berate effectively.
@JohnSF:
If it were another nation you might think, coincidence. But the Chinese? No, that was deliberate. It was bear-baiting.
Folks, how many of us defended the rights of an individual to burn the flag as an expression of speech? How many of us defended the rights of an individual to kneel during the national anthem as an expression of speech? And you are going to get your panties in a bunch over a SC justice displaying the flag upside down???
What? He became a SC justice and gave up his right to free speech?
I went to countless union meetings where I refused to swear allegiance to a flag but instead swore allegiance to the Constitution. (and yes, the Pledge of Allegiance began every meeting)
The fact is, you, me, that guy over there, the women standing at the polling booth… None of us give a rat’s ass about anything he says outside of opinions. What we really object to is his existence. Especially his existence on the Supreme Court.
That is me, you, and 51.2% of our fellow Americans.
I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if he wiped his ass with the flag. He’s already done so with the constitution.
@inhumans99:
You and I have no disagreement. Speech is not free. It comes with costs.
Sorry, I was disabused of that notion long ago. We don’t live in that world anymore.
@CSK: I have no idea what she proclaims to be. Suffice it to say, she ain’t a christian.
eta: not that I am.
@OzarkHillbilly: The flag thing didn’t happen in a vacuum. It indicated he is on the side of insurrection. How you can give him the benefit of the doubt after all he’s done frankly puzzles me.
He’s not Joe Schmoe burning a flag. He’s not even Kaepernick taking a knee. He has power, real power that can change America for the worse for generations to come. And he’s on the side of authoritarian fascism. That’s what flying the flag upside-down immediately after January 6 2021 means.
@Jen:
Senator Durbin, chair of the judiciary committee was onTV this afternoon. When asked what should be done, he started out with Chief Justice Roberts needs to show leadership. I just broke out laughing.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes. Exactly. Of course. ALL civil servants give up basic free speech rights — check out the Hatch Act. In the judiciary, it’s the whole point of impartiality. You can be a legitimate Supreme Court Justice, or you can be a partisan. You can’t be both. Duh.