Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, August 6, 2021
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109 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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Professor who had COVID sues George Mason University over vax mandate
Words fail me.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Just because somebody is intelligent, doesn’t mean they aren’t an idiot.
Shocked, shocked you are:
I had an MRI 3 weeks ago. Still no results. Welcome to American healthcare.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I notice you offered me your “offical” Trump Cardand got it laminated for me. I am overwhelmed by your beneficence.
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s because you lack an “offical” Trump Card. I get all my test results the same day.
We had our big freeze and utility meltdown in February. Since then, elected officials have slow walking everything expecting (with good reason) that the short attention spans of the public won’t ultimately hold them accountable. But things like this keep popping up to remind everyone of that disaster.
Baboons at Texas Biomed had to have fingers, toes or tails amputated after February freeze
Nice piece on DeSantis:
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/why-ron-desantis-more-dangerous-trump-n1276142
Columbia County has a population of 56,833 (2020 census).
Key COVID-19 Data Summary for Columbia County as of August 5th , 2021
Total confirmed positive test results: 5,636 (+58 since 7/28/21)
Active cases: 60 (+25 since 7/28/21)
Total probable test results: 407 (+4 since 7/28/21)
Total ever hospitalized: 346 (+6 since 7/28/21)
Individuals recovered: 5,513 (+33 since 7/28/21)
Total deaths of people confirmed positive: 61 (+0 since 7/28/21)
Total deaths of people probable results: 12 (+0 since 7/28/21)
COVID-19 Activity Level: HIGH
COVID-19 Percent Positive: LOW
Level of Community Transmission: Substantial
————-
I get weekly notifications from the Colum County Division of Public Health, and publish them in the paper without comment. This is the first week they added the “Level of Community Transmission” category. I’m not sure what “Substantial” means, however.
@Mu Yixiao: i means only 1/3rd of the numbnuts in this county are vaxxed and it’s spreading like wildfire.
Yesterday’s discussion about Reason magazine and their unwillingness to deal with the Kansas fiasco got me musing. I’m always searching for good conservative perspective, whether it be a magazine, a blog or just an individual pundit, but I find so little of it. Why?
Some is just that the term “conservative” has been hijacked and essentially means “Republican” now. I would consider someone like Paul Krugman to be traditionally conservative, but because he is vociferously anti-Republican he is now labeled a far-left Liberal.
As I thought about it more, I started to ask myself, nevermind “conservative” or “liberal” or “progressive”, what makes a source worthwhile just on their own merits?” I realized the answer, for me at least, is astoundingly easy. Take a source, look for where they comment on a subject that you know something about, and see if they tackle the hardest questions or whether they push them aside. That’s it. If they tackle reality, they are worthwhile and serious. If they don’t then they are just shills hawking a product.
Reading “Reason” or the latest white paper from the Cato Institute is the equivalent of reading the advertising copy penned by Toyota’s Madison Avenue ad firm and concluding that the Toyota Camry is the most innovative and exciting car ever made. They aren’t pursuing truth, and the writing has no basis in anything real. They generate ad copy for a fee. To give it attention is worse than a waste of time, it’s making yourself into a gullible fan boy. And sure, there are plenty of fan boys in the world but, for me, that community holds no interest.
I know that is harsh. But it’s accurate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/08/05/change-ocean-collapse-atlantic-meridional/
@MarkedMan:
I think also that there’s an increasing confusion as to what “conservatism” means. For some, it’s blind adherence to whatever Donald Trump says or does. Thus, anyone who doesn’t do so is automatically regarded as a far-left liberal.
There was some pushback yesterday about how Apple’s new iPhone (and I suspect, eventually, all their phones) will check to see if any images stored on it match known child pornography images. I am willing to bet a fair amount this is in pursuit of privacy, rather than an erosion of it.
The US, Chinese and other governments have been putting tremendous pressure on Apple to put a back door into their software to allow the governments to search iPhones remotely. They also want Apple to do this for stuff they store in the cloud for their customers, which are currently end to end encrypted. The governments exert public pressure and the two most effective messages are “Apple is protecting terrorists”, and “Apple is protecting child molesters”. By checking locally, on the phone itself, for the hashes of child pornography Apple takes away that second argument.
I find it interesting that to many, the reaction has been, “Well, I’m getting rid of my Apple phone! Android here I come!” I think it is pretty obvious why the government is publicly pressuring Apple to put in a backdoor but not doing the same for Android phone manufacturers. Just sayin’…
@MarkedMan: I started out, growing up in the rural south, a conservative/libertarian type. By my mid-20’s I saw that the ‘thought leaders’ on that side were dishonest. Creationism isn’t an equally valid perspective. You’re just lying so bible-thumpers will vote for you. Global Warming denial isn’t an equally valid perspective. You’re just lying so that Exxon and coal producers will keep writing those big checks. Supply-side economics isn’t an equally valid perspective, Robber Barons just want to get even wealthier off a subsistence-poverty workforce. Minimum Wage increases don’t obliterate the economy, see last sentence. Now, of course, it’s updated with things like Voter Fraud isn’t real, you just want to tilt the elections further toward whites. I stopped watching the Sunday shows and eventually all cable news because every time a Republican is talking, they’re not even telling plausible lies. It’s insulting.
I disagree with a lot of things on the Democratic side, but Kevin Drum isn’t going to deliberately deceive you. Or K-thug, or AOC, or Preet Bharara. They might get things wrong, or let biases interfere with their thinking, but they’re not just running a con, and the right-wing is.
@CSK: This is my working definition of good conservative principles: The assumption that while it is important to move together towards common goals for the improvement of the public good, it is also important that we try to do so, wherever possible, with incremental changes based on real world experience and data. This is the less risky approach then wildly flipping from theory to theory and throwing all into chaos. Further, the rule of law is an essential element of a mature society, and changes made in defiance of that principle will inevitably cause more harm than good.
That’s why I think of Krugman as a conservative.
@MarkedMan: and Apple has smartly resisted it for years, correctly noting that if you build in a back door for the good guys, the bad guys will kick it down within hours. Security experts like Bruce Schneier make the same point.
“But it’s just this one time, for this one terrorist!”
It’s never just this one time.
FWIW, my new iPhone 12 is the cat’s pajamas. 😀
Reminder; just one week until the former guy is re-instated as POTUS.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Oh, Lindell is now saying that might not happen till September.
@CSK:
In a very, very broad brush. The division of politics into two camps is limiting to understanding, but because the US is a two party system that is what we’re left with. Better to use a European understanding of the political spectrum where you have progressives, essentially communist/Marxist; liberals, rule of law, market economics, lots of democracy; conservatives, limited democracy, oligarchy, protection of the elites and wealth class; authoritarians, state control of institutions, economic oligarchy, law is whatever the ruling elite says it is.
Today in the US the Dems range from progressive to conservatives who value the rule of law, markets and are open to more democracy. R’s, are everyone else.
@MarkedMan:
I agree with the spirit of this. Very much. The low quality of discourse bothers me a lot.
I do worry that you set an unreasonably high bar by this:
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if more commenters did this. But I don’t think it works as a general sorting function.
I’m open to people making narrow points that don’t address the hardest questions. What I’m not open to is people being manipulative and strategic wrt ignoring these questions. That is, if these questions are relevant to the point they are making, then they ought to be grappled with, especially if they cast doubt on the commenter’s point/perspective.
When I evaluate the quality of commenters, I weigh the following:
-Do they include caveats to their point/perspective?
-Do they steelman points/perspectives that differ from their own?
-Have they changed their mind in a significant way in the past?
-Do they consult the relevant research literature to inform their perspective?
-Do they (are they willing to) have skin in the game?
I’m curious who you consider to be a “worthwhile and serious” source – based on your criterion or my criteria.
Real Tucker Carlson chyron:
Why it matters that Tucker Carlson is broadcasting from Hungary this week
@Mimai:
While this is true in theory, in practice the ones that most often do this, (George Will comes to mind) usually end up on the shill/fan boy side of the equation. A perfect example of this is a columnist in the WaPo or the NYTimes (Megan somebody?) that used to blog in The Atlantic back in the day. For a time I read her along with Coates and Sullivan and the others there. She often talked about narrow points or things that had little to do with politics like cooking methods and science-y things. And every single time she discussed anything I knew something about, she got things lazily and sloppily wrong, even on the cooking stuff. She manufactured something in her head and decided it sounded brilliantly authoritative, which she equated with “True” (inasmuch as she contemplated “Truth” at all). She was, no surprise, Libertarian adjacent.
As to who I think are serious? The list is depressingly short.
– Drum
– Krugman
– In the past I would list Sullivan here because, while his instincts are almost always bad, he used to deliberately seek out the best arguments on the other side. Alas, in his dotage he has taken to sitting with like minded individuals and then merely discuss how obviously brilliant they are.
– David Brooks. An odd case. I think he’s serious but rarely interesting
– Frum
– Anne Applebaum
– Fallows
– Joyner and Taylor (obvious, given how much time I spend here…)
– Most of 538 and Vox
How about you?
@MarkedMan: I just realized I mentioned Coates but didn’t explicitly list him. One of the greats.
The restaurant industry is being forced to improve their job offerings.
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/06/1025202681/restaurants-are-dangling-paid-vacation-and-matching-401-k-but-workers-arent-biti
@MarkedMan: Megan McArdle, the nation’s most unethical living columnist?
@Sleeping Dog:
Including the communists? Aha! Now I understand American politics!
🙂
@Teve:
VIKTOR FRANKENSTEIN BELIEVES IN BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER
@MarkedMan:
I like Tom Nichols and Rick Wilson, but I freely admit that what I enjoy most about them is their ferocious (and in Wilson’s case, hilarious) anti-Trump stance.
A lot of the writers at The Bulwark are good, too.
This is very entertaining and some of it is probably true
The Five Universal Laws of Human Stupidity
@JohnSF:
Like crowds with torches?
@MarkedMan: @Mimai: Quite agree. I came to OTB many years ago looking for rationale conservative voices, only to have James and Doug go squishy on me. (I don’t recall Dr. T ever being particularly conservative.)
I’ll state a simpler criterion. I read to be informed or to be entertained. And I can’t find conservatives who do either. Even in our leading national papers the conservative columnists are obviously EEOC hires filling a slot. Brooks had a big piece at Atlantic a few days ago that got a lot of press, but it’s just another example of the column he’s written a hundred times, identifying a real problem, then going to any lengths to blame it on someone other than Republicans. When Bill Kristol’s lies got too obvious NYT searched high and low for a replacement, and the best they could come up with was Ross Douthat, man of a thousand words with no conclusion. The only one worth reading was the late Charles Krauthammer. But he was only worth reading for the game, could you spot where he hid the card. He was a very good lawyer and did a good job of hiding the relevant fact he omitted, or the inference that sounded right but didn’t logically follow, or the word that changed definition mid-stream. However the craft made it obvious he knew he was lying. George Will, on the other hand, may actually be that dumb.
As Dr. T instructs us, we have, and must have, two parties. The Republican party is hardly conservative in any way the word is used outside politics, but I’m not sure they aren’t conservative in the way political conservatives always have been, defense of privilege cloaked in blood and soil nativism. The Republican Party is the conservative party we have and de facto they define the conservatism of the moment. And they are why we have no good conservative writers. They are schizoid, a blood and soil base and an oligarchic establishment. The beliefs of the blood and soil base are hard to defend on their face, but the real obstacle is they must not be named. A sense of fear and loss must be stoked, but it has to be left a gut feeling, a fuzzy awareness. Only the extreme fringe can admit to racism and misogyny. For the rest the blue line flag is about respect for cops, not a desire for the cops to be a line holding against… well something.
And the establishment is worse. There is simply no honest case to be made that it’s good for the country to allow the top 0.1% to accumulate a greater and greater share of the nation’s wealth to the point Bezos can’t burn it off faster than it accumulates even by shooting himself sort of off into space.
J. K. Galbraith observed that shilling for the wealthy pays better than crusading for the truth.
@Teve:
That’s the one. Haven’t read her in years and years. What makes her unethical?
@JohnSF: You, sir, win the Internet today!
@MarkedMan:
I’d add many of the by-lines that are showing up at the Bulwark. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have said that about any of them, but TFG created a come to Jesus moment for them and they needed to decide which side they were on. I can (vehemently) disagree with them about policy, but be assured that on the most important issues, the rule of law and democracy, we are in essential agreement.
Otherwise, I agree with your list.
@MarkedMan: One example of many:
When the whole housing crisis was going down she wrote numerous columns making the following two points:
1 Banks should proudly use any ruthless legal means to foreclose and resell properties for profits, even cases like an elderly homeowner mistakenly underpaid by 5 cents, because hey, that’s the rules, free market capitalism is why America is great, that 90-year-old deserves to be put out on the street.
2 Even if a homeowner was mislead into signing a loan they didn’t understand, with a massive escalation of payments down the line, they should be socially pressured to honor their obligations to the bank at all costs. Liquidate your retirement and your kid’s college fund. Sell your car and take the bus to work. How Dare they walk away, society can’t function if citizens don’t honor their moral obligations after signing a contract.
In Megan’s world it’s great if the rich and powerful use legal system technicalities to maximize profits at everyone else’s expense, but poor people must be bound by the Social Contract to sacrifice everything for their betters.
@JohnSF:
Even the communists don’t call themselves communists in the US any longer. Some will admit to being Marxists, that is confusing to the rubes. After all what do the Marx brothers have to do with politics (a lot when you listen to their bits). Some communists don’t bother to vote, but those that do, typically end up voting for a Dem.
@MarkedMan:
A good start but I would add that there is a strong preference to retain or reuse “known” concepts and traditions as the method of going forward rather than implement something new. Conservatism as a philosophy is not necessarily opposed to change or improvement for the greater good but rather change outside its established approved framework is deemed unacceptable. Stick within the proscribed lines and a conservative is more than happy to advocate for something; imply one must use outside methods to achieve the goal and suddenly opposition kicks in.
I’m waiting for the attention to shift to Chris Cuomo, who is Exhibit A in why journalists should not have chummy relationships with politicians. Or family ones.
Farmers in California are destroying almond trees because there isn’t enough water to keep them alive.
A few years ago I said that this was inevitable, that the trees would eventually die. Nothing prescient on my part, just watching drought become more common. I worry about the future of agriculture in California.
@Kingdaddy:
That attention has begun. Tuesday there were articles on how CC didn’t cover the release of the report and this AM, Memeorandum has a couple of articles on the bind that this puts CNN.
Should an individual be denied a desired career path because a relative chose a political career?
This said CNN has bungled the Cuomo brothers’ professional relationship/coverage for a long time, and it became blatantly apparent with the coverage of Covid.
@Kingdaddy:
Several media outlets, including the NY Times, have questioned Chris Cuomo’s involvement. Here’s a piece from one source:
http://www.usatoday.com/opinion/2021/08/05/why-cnn-anchor-chris-cuomos-ethical-failures-hurt-all-journalists-andrew-cuomo/5496092001/
@Teve:
Typical of the lack of historical perspective that annoys rather-conservative me about many modern (American especially, but quite few British) “Conservatives”, never mind libertarians.
The privileging of the moral standing of the creditors, by the creditors, for the creditors, is a pretty much a constant in history back at least to ancient Greece.
And has an unfortunate tendency, for said creditors, for the debtors to eventually look round, figure out there’s more of them, and suggest a slight renegotiation of terms;
“On the one hand, you have your debt ledger and contracts; on the other we have pointy bronze spears and flaming torches. What say we talk this over, eh?”
Avoiding rescheduling at spearpoint is a fundamental aspect of modern polities.
@Kari Q:
Given the massive amounts of water it takes to grow nuts (not just almonds), it’s not surprising at all. There are plenty of other crops that are less water-intensive that would grow quite well in California’s long growing season.
@Kingdaddy: A few months ago when Chris Cuomo was covering the Meghan Markle controversy, he talked about Trump’s attacks on her, then he remarked offhandedly that Trump had limited means to insult her since he couldn’t mock her looks the way he has with some other women he’s attacked. The woman Chris was interviewing didn’t respond, and simply changed the subject.
I inwardly cringed. I don’t know if I’d have had that reaction if this had just been any reporter, and not the brother of a guy under investigation for sexual harassment. I might have just brushed it off. But I also remembered that one of Andrew’s accusers had said that Andrew demeaned her appearance, and when this story first broke at one of the forums I read, several of the commenters questioned the woman’s claims by posting pictures of her, implying basically that she was too hot for it to be plausible that Andrew would have put her down in that way. That’s a common misconception about sexual harassment. It’s a defense that Trump himself has resorted to against his own accusers (I would never hit that). Now, none of this means that Chris is guilty of the same things as his brother, but it did make him sound a bit tone-deaf on the whole subject.
@MarkedMan: As noted above, @gVOR08: , I strongly disagree about Brooks. He recognized his moderate, reasonable brand couldn’t survive going Trumper, but his act is still Republican concern troll. I noted his current Atlantic article as an example. Oh yes, it’s terrible that we’re so divided. But it’s not because of thirty years of Republicans telling the base “the elites” disdain them and FOX nutpicking backbench congresswomen and the odd associate professor of Black Studies. It’s because our Harvard credentialed meritocrats, Brooks’ “Bobos”, would never eat at an (imaginary) Applebees salad bar. Brooks talks about liberal concerns and liberal issues, but unless he wanders off into pop sociology and loses the point completely, his conclusion somehow ends up favoring Republicans. Too bad Charles Pierce went paywall, he used to have a lot of fun at Brooks’ expense.
https://mobile.twitter.com/therecount/status/1423325205779386373
Some good news: The J&J vax, which I had, is also highly effective against the Delta and beta variants.
@Mu Yixiao:
I agree, and I’ve made this point myself. Most often the response is to tell me about how profitable almonds are, which is not the point at all. I’m sure that almonds made a lot of sense for the farmers, but they made no sense at all for the state as a whole. Given that water is a public resource, those orchards were inevitably not going to last through a serious drought and it would be in the best interest of everyone if farmers were given incentives to invest in less water-intensive crops.
I’ve heard plenty of men dismiss sexual harassment charges on the grounds that boys will be boys. Cuomo’s defense may be the first example I’ve heard of Italians will be Italians.
@Kylopod:
Is it possible that Cuomo is so arrogant, so self-absorbed that he sees absolutely nothing wrong with what he did?
Somehow, I don’t think the “Hey, I’m Italian. All Italian guys grope women” defense is going to fly.
@MarkedMan:
I’ll start out with the cheap shot: How is that any different from a liberal magazine, blog, or pundit?
I’m somewhat serious in that question, because any magazine, blog, or pundit is going to be pushing some sort of bias–if not an out-right agenda.
Reason is on my reading list because it gives me one perspective on topics, and introduces me to topics I may not have known about before. I read other material from other perspectives to give me a rounder understanding of the topic, and help fill in the gaps that each of the others leaves out.
Back when Google Newsstand (or whatever it was called) still worked on my tablet, I would read both The Blaze and The Daily Beast* so I could get two very divergent and opposite perspectives on individual stories. That gave me a sense of where “the middle” was so I could start looking around for more factual information.
Hell… I scan the headlines from Campus Reform–which is a horrible news source–because there are nuggets of truth in there that give me a starting point to look for “the truth” on topics that pique my interest.
I see so many people saying “I only rely on solid news sources”–but then you’re limiting yourself to a very, very limited view of what’s happening. And those “solid news sources” are also leaving out lots of information, perspective, and counter-arguments.
I would say I disagree with probably 50% of the opinions in Reason–but I’m interested in knowing what those opinions are so I can better construct my own opinions and back them up with data and solid arguments.
I agree with maybe 25% of what they write–though almost always with caveats.
And the rest is stuff I’m not really interested in.
For news-news, my go-to sources are BBC and Al Jazeera (being fully aware of the explicit and implicit biases of both) because I appreciate seeing US news from an outside perspective. That, and I can’t tolerate the style of CNN and other major US news outlets.
============
* I stopped reading them when Newsstand shut down, because neither of them has an RSS feed.
@Mu Yixiao:
Not a cheap shot at all – it’s a fundamental question. And I admit my writing is confusing, as I use the term “conservative” in two different ways: 1) Someone who self identifies as a conservative, 2) someone whose natural impulse is to act according to the very personal definition of conservative I’ve outlined above, and repeated below*. In this case I was referring to people who self identify as conservative.
I appreciate your views on Reason et al, but it doesn’t work for me. I think you use the term “different perspective” incorrectly here. Different perspectives are wonderful and that is what I am looking for. But what Reason and many, many other sources of information (The Root and Jezebel are examples on the left) is to try to trick you by leaving out anything that contradicts what they are saying. That has nothing to do with perspective and everything to do with intellectual dishonesty. Life is too short and there is too much to learn about to read stuff in the hope that you can catch all their BS.
*This is my working definition of good conservative principles: The assumption that while it is important to move together towards common goals for the improvement of the public good, it is also important that we try to do so, wherever possible, with incremental changes based on real world experience and data. This is the less risky approach then wildly flipping from theory to theory and throwing all into chaos. Further, the rule of law is an essential element of a mature society, and changes made in defiance of that principle will inevitably cause more harm than good.
@Kari Q:
In retrospect it may not have been a brilliant idea to grow very thirsty crops in the middle of a desert.
Climate change will likely drive all agriculture north away from the equator. Distressing for California farmers, a mass extinction/migration event in Africa. Climate change will hit poor countries hardest. The Mediterranean will have a new layer of migrant bones to add to many earlier layers of war debris. Bangladesh cannot hope to survive. China will be hit very hard.
Time to buy property on high ground in Alaska?
@OzarkHillbilly:
As Cracker and I frequently snark, “True Dat!”
@Teve:
And a BIG h/t for reminding me of this universal set of laws. Still, like with the football players mentioned in the other column this morning, words fail me. As Mr. Zappa opined in song, “Dumb all over, a little ugly on the side.”
@MarkedMan:
I’m going to have to disagree with you on that. Sure, there are a fair number of articles that are straight-out opinion pieces, but there are also a lot that say “Here’s what the other side is saying; here’s why we think they’re wrong”.
And, while I don’t watch them, they have a whole series of video debates where they bring in people from opposite sides of an issue and let them go at it.
Honest question: Why do different perspectives have to give you a complete view of something? It’s not that way in physical life. If I’m standing on the observation deck of the Sears Tower, I’m going to see something very different than old man laying on Oak Street Beach, and we’ll both see something very different from the kid standing on the end of Navy Pier.
But we’re all looking at Chicago. It doesn’t make my view of Chicago “intellectually dishonest” because I’m not talking about the most popular snow cones or the temperature of the water. And why should the old man walk all the way over to State St to make comments about traffic when he’s discussing swimming conditions?
@gVOR08:
Pierce had some good quips. But there’s something i never understood about his writing. It was hard to read. I never did the work of gathering up several columns of his and figuring out exactly why.
You know how some writers, you start reading their stuff, it’s so smooth, that it’s over before you know it? Pierce was the opposite. I had to slog through paragraphs like I was ankle deep in molasses. His columns were never fun to read.
I can’t explain exactly why that is. His writing just had no flow.
@Kylopod: “Guidos will be Guidos” doesn’t work anywhere that J-Wow and Snookie aren’t.
@Mu Yixiao: ” I would read both The Blaze and The Daily Beast* so I could get two very divergent and opposite perspectives on individual stories. That gave me a sense of where “the middle” was so I could start looking around for more factual information.”
Hilarious — or is it tragic? — that you locate “the middle” somewhere between a slightly left of center, mainstream news site and the paranoid ravings of a conspiracy theorist so insane he was kicked off Fox News.
I guess that proves the Sean Hannity is right in the middle right?
@Mu Yixiao: You’re very lucky. Our county used to have all that info at one place, but decided it’s too complicated to assemble, so each data point is a different search. (Population: ~110,000)
@Teve: Or Fredos will be Fredos.
@Mu Yixiao: In Washington, “substantial” is the first level of risk. Think yellow in a “green/yellow/red” configuration and as a subdivision of yellow, probably the bottom level of concern.
@Mu Yixiao:
Let’s use Baltimore, since I’m living there at the moment. Here’s an example of a different perspective: My friend, who lives in the suburbs and Ocean City and has always lived in that type of place, gives me an alternative perspective on city life. He thinks of his interactions with the city in terms of his frustration with parking. His viewpoint of the city is parking lot by parking lot, meter by meter. I don’t even think of parking as I move about the city. But if there is a discussion about attracting suburban dollars into city businesses, this is a vital perspective to have.
Here’s a dishonest perspective: I have repeatedly heard from conservative pundits what a battleground West Baltimore is, full of drugs and murder, unsafe at any hour of the day and you may as well shoot yourself as go outside. But I live in a wonderful little neighborhood in West Baltimore. Last night, after dark, I put on my rucksack and walked through probably four or five different neighborhoods to go to the supermarket, and then walked back (it does have a free parking lot, by the way, but I needed the exercise and in general prefer walking to driving). I passed hundreds of people, out walking, at outdoor restaurant tables, leaving the parks, running errands. At no point did I feel remotely threatened. (Well, a dog behind a gate who jumped up and barked loudly, startling me, but that can happen anywhere you walk.) Do these conservative pundits ever change their minds, given facts? No – they have a story to sell and the facts don’t matter. What benefit is it to learn about West Baltimore by reading their nonsense?
Note – there are dangerous neighborhoods in West Baltimore – West Baltimore covers a lot of territory. But the vast majority of Baltimore is perfectly fine. And the vast majority of violent crime is of the “3am while doing a drug deal” variety.
Alert Newsmax! Call OANN! Biden’s wearing Unamerican Clothing!
@MarkedMan: At heart, Krugman is a capitalist who acknowledges that capitalism needs regulations like every other human endeavor. That makes him more of a liberal in the common continuum. At their root, I think the thing that separates out conservatives is a commitment to the concept of “rule by our betters–namely us!” that overshadows concerns about economics or other issues. That idea is at the root of Buckley’s comment about the propriety, even righteousness of suppressing voting among blacks in the early days of the National Review and that root principle hasn’t changed one iota during my lifetime.
@Mu Yixiao: To build on wr’s comment, taking an extreme and dividing by two is no way to get an accurate view. I have a sister who constantly reminds me that she is just getting data from all sides. Problem is, she doesn’t differentiate between some bat-shit crazy TV “documentary” about space aliens doing anal probes and a peer reviewed medical study looking at a population of 5000 people studied over twenty years. Her world is a mix of sensible precautions and crazy avoidances. Did you know that it’s a myth that airplanes are the safest mode of transportation. There are many, many more airplane crashes than are reported in the paper but the government and the media conspire to cover them up. We only hear about the ones that got out before the handlers stepped in. And of course you know about how the Muslims are taking over small towns and imposing Sharia law?
You can’t get to truth by mixing lies and reality in a bucket and see how it comes out.
@Scott: ” Since then, elected officials have slow walking everything expecting (with good reason) that the short attention spans of the public won’t ultimately hold them accountable.”
They are also assuming that the Republicans there would willingly offer up their daughters for sacrifice rather than vote for a DemononkRAT, and that the Texas system will make sure that the correct outcome happens, no matter what the votes are.
I wonder if this trope is covered in movies and TV. I call it “I’m not cruel. The need for drama made me do it like this.”
Spoilers follow for Batwoman season 1.
Proceed at your own risk.
So, after missing soooooooooooo many chances to nab Alice and lock her in Arkham (in typical superhero fashion: lock up first, trial afterwards*), Kate finally gets to do it. Of course, she has to betray Alice in order to do it.
That’s ok. There was no way Alice would consent, after all. Yet I found the actual betrayal to be unnecessarily cruel.
More spoilers follow:
Alice begs Kate to help her break Mouse out of Arkham, among much psychopathic head games of course. Kate ultimately agrees, but stipulates Alice cannot kill anyone. So they infiltrate Arkham, make their way to the maximum security wing, split up to get the dual keys needed to open Mouse’s cell, fight a ton of guards along the way, and then enter the cell where Mouse is strapped to a chair.
This is the cruel part. Alice asks Kate to help with the straps, and then Kate calmly closes the cell door trapping Alice with Mouse.
Why is this cruel? Because in addition to betrayal, Kate lets Alice to her goal, letting her believe they’d made it, then snatches victory away in the jaws of betrayal.
Story wise, it would have made for dull TV if the moment the guards find them, Kate backed off and just let them tase Alice and take her into custody. The various fights, the getting of keys, Alice confronting an Arkham psychiatrist, makes for livelier programming, and more cruelty.
Sorry for the orphaned asterisk:
* I know there’s a similar line in Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland.
There’s an entertaining Reddit thread? Group? Whatever at
https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/
Where they post stories of the type “Texas talk radio host who said last week that vaccine was for ‘soy-boy fruits’ now on ventilator”
and it’s great for schadenfreude. I’m not very familiar with Reddit, though, if anyone has threads to recommend i’m all ears.
@MarkedMan: One of the ridiculous things about Trump’s comments on Elijah Cummings, but which didn’t get nearly enough attention in my view, was that Trump seemed to think Cummings was a “Congressman from Baltimore” and therefore represented a decaying, crime-ridden slum. Cummings’ district comprises the relatively affluent–but majority African American–portions of the Baltimore area.
@Kathy: Watching Batwoman and Riverdale over the past few years has convinced me that Greg Berlanti really wants to be thought to be a sick little puppy. I don’t understand why though. My guess is that the same need to be “edgy” that drives Howard Stern and drove Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus (into obscurity in his case) drives the dreck that Berlanti is doing. Ride the wave, Greg. Wipeout will come soon enough.
@CSK:..Some good news: The J&J vax, which I had, is also highly effective against the Delta and beta variants.…
Me too. One and done and no side effects for me.
When I got poked I asked the nurse why people would get a two stage vaccine if the single dose was available. She said that the J&J had an ingredient that some people did not want. She named it but damned if I can remember what it was.
Arkansas judge blocks state from enforcing mask mandate ban
One Arkey that’s not among the stupid.
On Asa Hutchinson, he was quoted recently, claiming that he signed the anti-mask law since a veto would have been overridden anyway. Dumb rationalization and now that he’s been exposed as amoral, he is paying the price. Good.
@Mister Bluster: J&J uses an adenovirus vector which very rarely can trigger blood clots.
@Mister Bluster:
Moderna and Pfizer reported higher efficacy against infection. Earlier in the year, Pfizer reported good efficacy against the Alpha variant. Also, the mRNA vaccines came out months earlier.
Me, I got Pfizer because that’s what they were giving when it was my turn. The J&J shot is good, too. Efficacy against severe disease, hospitalization, and death, is about the same as the mRNA shots. When I was looking to travel for a vaccine in the US, my thinking was 90-10% in favor of J&J, because that would require only one trip.
Essentially the J&J (and AZ and Sputnik and other virus vector) shot works the same way as the mRNA shots. Both get cells to make spike proteins. the difference is in how they get them to do it. The virus vector send a non-replicating virus to infect cells and delivers the mRNA recipe for the spike protein. the mRNA vaccines use the mRNA directly, encapsulated in a lipid coating to penetrate the cells.
@Mister Bluster:
Apparently some MAGA hysterics believe that the J&J vax contains aborted fetal tissue, which it doesn’t.
@MarkedMan:
Sorry for asking a question and then dropping out of the conversation. Life.
Another thing that bothers me (you may have noticed) is the tendency of pundits/commenters to mind-read. They are so very certain about their ability to discern the motives etc of their political opponents (and allies for that matter). So when I see this as a consistent tactic (perhaps I’m mind reading here too), I tend to downgrade that source.
To be sure, sometimes one’s opponents (allies) consistently take positions and/or behave in ways that allow for a bit of mind-reading. But even then, one should be humble about this and hold these mind-read “truths” lightly.
To answer your question, I’ve dipped in and out of various reading ponds over the years (this is not unique). Instead of giving an unhelpfully long list, I will approach it as follows.
Given that (1) most OTB regulars are left-leaning/adjacent, and (2) the comments section is frequently sprinkled with assertions about the total absence of thoughtful, honest, intelligent, non-evil, etc right-leaning/adjacent folks, I’ll list a few who’ve been labeled as right(ish) and who are (have been) above average in quality. Please note, this is not a blanket endorsement for any of these people or for any/all of their ideas.
Jim Manzi, Yuval Levin, Avik Roy, Reihan Salam, Alex Tabarrok, Jon Rauch, Cathy Young, Michael Strain, David Henderson, Matt Ridley, Eugene Volokh et al, Yascha Mounk, Matthew Crawford (YMWDV)
@Mimai: Thanks, I’ll check them out.
@Michael Reynolds:
Recalled from what I picked up out of interest in world building and climate models for alternative geographies, and as extension from interest in archaeology:
Climate change consequences for localised climates may be very tricky to predict.
Probably the best guides we have, arguably, are the climates of some subdivisions of the Tertiary Period, and a few attempts at computer model based mainly on the indications from fossil flora and fossil geochemistry.
Really clever stuff.
Generally the Tertiary was on average warmer, and notably Arctic ice was usually absent, and sea levels higher.
Note: we still don’t really understand the “why” of warmer.
Our understanding of longer-term global climates is still rather poor.
Contrary to some speculation, the north Atlantic gyre seems to have been present, but more erratic and less strong flow; but compensated for by a warmer central Atlantic.
The north Pacific gyre seems to have been stronger, if anything.
On the whole, Pliocene climates in Europe and NW America seem to have both warmer and wetter.
Much closer to the current climates of S China and SE USA; v. bad news for growers of Mediterranean crops (vines, olives etc) and possibly wheat grains: mould and rot.
But when you get daft denialists saying “Aha! No problem then! Burn them hydrocarbons!”
Not so fast, dimwits…
– transition likely to involve chaotic change in climate/weather patterns: extremes of wet/drought/heat/cold
– indications that the Pliocene climate was more prone to extremes generally (more energy in atmosphere; more extreme pressure zone and high altitude air current effects)
– likelihood of sea surface temps. conducive to hurricane formation in NW Pacific and NW Atlantic. Oh dear.
– high probability that west-central belt of North America east of Rockies is dessicated
– most large cities of the modern world are under about 1ooft of water
– disrupting the grain based food supplies of 7.7 billion people and the vast agricultural logistic infrastructure of harvesters, grain dryers, grain store, rail nets, barges, port terminals etc. is very much NOT a good idea
@Teve:..blood clots…
I do recall hearing about that risk and I decided that I would take that chance.
@CSK:..aborted fetal tissue…
Only morons would believe this to be true.
@Kathy:..Thank you for the tutorial.
@Mister Bluster:
I did say they were MAGA hysterics, didn’t I?
I rest my case.
@Mister Bluster: last i saw, the J&J blood clot issue was ~2-3 dozen cases for 7 million doses.
@Teve:
That’s the overall rate. However, most cases have been in women under 50. It’s still a very low rate in that group, but higher than a few dozen in 7 million doses.
@MarkedMan:
And you didn’t listen to a damn thing I said.
To quote:
Exactly where does that say “The mean is the truth”? This isn’t math or basic color theory.
Finding the truth (as much as one can) requires multiple perspectives. The “middle” doesn’t mean it’s at exactly 50%. It might be anywhere on an array–but you can’t know that until you know–and understand–what the dozen other perspectives are saying, how strong they’re saying it, why their saying it, and how strong or vulnerable they are.
–Sun Tzu
You refuse to know your enemy. And, in politics, without knowing the enemy, it’s difficult to know yourself.
Would it be constitutional to just pass a law banning all past and present Facebook employees from ever working in tech again?
Facebook reportedly wants to securely mine your encrypted data to target ads
@Teve:
I’ve only read a few bits and snatches since Esquire paywalled Charles Pierce. I remember him as being funnier than a rubber crutch. His bits about David Brooks’ membership in the very exclusive Young Fogies Club and being snitched on by his dog, Moral Hazard ,
Maybe you have to share Pierce’s warped sense of humor.
And Brooks’ column at NYT today is more of the same. On it’s face it’s a standard issue ode to bipartisanship. Even very complimentary about Biden. But the real message is everything’s OK, don’t worry, be happy. Focus on Moderate Mitch, don’t worry about the guys trying to take over the Fulton and Maricopa county Boards of Election.
@Teve:
Can’t we just have Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the Facebook board sent to Devils’s Island?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I happen to work for Greg Berlanti. And I can say, without any caveats, that he’s one of the nicest, most genuine people on the planet. When the pandemic hit, he reached into his very fat wallet and offered cash grants to any crew member on any of his 24 television series currently on the air. No questions asked. No need to pay it back. From Greg personally.
Alot of people with his success are assholes. He’s not. Not even a little bit. Furthermore, he surrounds himself with good people. There isn’t an asshole in the bunch at the entire Berlanti Company.
@Mu Yixiao: No offense meant, that’s why I said it wouldn’t work for me, and didn’t say I thought you were wrong. I’m not looking to “know my enemy” as I don’t consider myself to be in a war with Libertarians, Maoists or anyone else. I’m not really that interested in engaging with them, although I am fascinated by their outlook.
I’m looking for reality, as best I can. For me, that means not wasting my time with people trying to trick me by hiding the flaws in their thinking. But, and this speaks to different perspectives, I recognize you are coming from a different place and have a different purpose.
@Teve:
Snake Plisskin represent!
We need more than one?
“Call me Mister Plisskin”
@Teve:
I’m beginning to get the impression that President Biden has a rather wry sense of humour.
Trolling the idiots grade: A*
@JohnSF: Either Lou Dobbs and company throw another shit fit about the tan suit, making themselves look absurd, or they don’t throw a shit fit, suggesting that they don’t have a problem when a white guy does it.
@Teve: I thought someone told me it was dead babies extract, but I could be wrong.
@Mu Yixiao:
Sun Tzu
Sun John
@Just nutha ignint cracker: imitation dead baby extract is just as good, but cheaper.
Seeing as how I left my job a month ago I was not looking to going into student loan repayment next month, but word is the Biden administration just extended it to January.
@EddieInCA: I’m just going by the feeling that I’ve had that some of the plots on some of his shows that I’ve watched are creepier than necessary. I probably shouldn’t be putting that on him. (And it could also be that all of my taste resides in my mouth and the only soul that I have is on the bottoms of my feet.)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
He’s a talented guy, but he’s not running any of his shows. Each has a showrunner. He’s too busy running an empire, and is focused on his features. But all in all, just a good dude.
@Michael Reynolds:
Interestingly enough some equatorial regions will end up with more precipitation as the climate warms, others will turn into deserts. The globe is 3/4 water, so overall precipitation will rise with increasing temperature. The tricky part is determining where that water comes down (most of it over the ocean of course, but of the part that comes down on land its vary variable, depending on ocean currents (which may change drastically with catastrophic effects for many currently heavily populated regions and beneficial effects for some currently dry regions — for instance Nature-Climate has again published a paper predicting the shutting down of much of the grand conveyor belt driving the main oceanic water flow because of rising surface water temperatures reducing sinking of cold water near Iceland etc).
However, even if the amount of well watered land remained constant (anything but a given), it’d cause massive food shortages because we simply can’t switch regions of agricultural development that quickly (and it can take centuries to build up the soil in a newly wet region). Shifting climates has always meant wars, often very desperate ones (if you’re dying of starvation anyway then there’s little to lose) — but now we get to play that game with nuclear weapons. What could possibly go wrong?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/06/politics/student-loan-pause-extended/index.html
Actually that would work fine.
@gVOR08:
Why have I not heard of this before? I need this in my life!
LOL.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve had several recent MRIs. I get the radiologist reports pretty much the same day. Getting an appointment to discuss them with my specialist? Yeah, that can take weeks.
@Sleeping Dog:
Steven Brust does. He’s the only recent writer from a communist perspective that I have ever found to be worth reading. And even at his advanced age he is open to changing his mind — I think his critical reading of The Wealth of Nations is one of the best things I’ve ever seen on the internet. He agreed with about 80% of what Smith had to say, and was explicit and well-reasoned about where he thought Smith got it wrong.
I suppose it helps to be a great novelist in the first place…
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
It basically makes him Adam Smith, in terms of political economy and social justice.
More charitably, I think for many of them conservatism is driven by being vastly more afraid of social unrest than they are upset by injustice. Naturally, this set of relative priorities is much more common (though not exclusively so!) among people who are not the actual victims of injustice.
There’s a protest song from last century that talks about strikes and riots and sit-ins and such, and has the chorus “It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice — but if that’s freedom’s price, we don’t mind.” Conservatives mind.