May Day Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
·
19 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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
Yesterday I listened to a Preet Bharara’s podcast and he had on a Harvard Law professor, talking about the issues the Supremes have to consider on the Trump immunity case. Prior to listening to this I was pretty close to Josh Marshall’s position that this Court is corrupt, that they are totally in the bag for Trump, and they are endangering democracy by trying to do their billionaire patrons’ bidding and giving in to their Dominionist world views. I still think that’s a very real possibility, but this professor, who actually studies this area, had a different opinion. He felt that the issues were very difficult, largely because the founders barely addressed this type of thing in the constitution. There has always been a presumption of some immunity because after all the President makes dozens of decisions a day and some will be wrong and result in harm. It’s not realistic to put that responsibility and then say you are criminally and/0r civilly liable if an outcome is bad. There’s a lot more than that, and it’s well worth listening to.
But as I said, I’m not necessarily convinced that the Supremes are taking the path they are on for reasons other than helping the Republicans and satisfying their patrons. But it was a good argument offered in good faith. If I only look for stuff that matches my preconceived notions, especially those that present as angry and aggrieved, then I’m just a trumper. (In my personal notation – which I’m not trying to foist on anyone else – a lowercase t “trumper” is an angry, shallow person constantly searching for excuses to be outraged, sarcastic and demeaning, and who is incapable or undesirous of discriminating between crazed internet rants and valid research or well thought POV, while an uppercase T “Trumper” is a trumper who also is a fan of Donald Trump.)
Fewer wildfires, great biodiversity: what is the secret to the success of Mexico’s forests?
It’s a good read.
@MarkedMan: Yeah, while Trump’s case is not hard, the general case *is* hard, and hard to make a good rule to follow, but that’s what they need to do.
I think anybody can be an angry, shallow person who is perpetually aggrieved. It’s a kind of habit, and being something else, even partially, takes work. I know I work on it.
New Orleans archdiocese is target of child sex-trafficking inquiry, officials say
I want to say, “Still not a drag queen,” but don’t they wear dresses?
Revealed: Tyson Foods dumps millions of pounds of toxic pollutants into US rivers and lakes
I am shocked, shocked I tell you!
@OzarkHillbilly:
Spiritual pollution in the case of the New Orleans archdiocese and physical pollution in the case of Tyson.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m fixing to drive by that place, Notre Dame Seminary, in about 10 minutes when I run out to visit my dad. Weird. Also I had no idea they had a pool.
@Jay L Gischer:
Truer words… I think I realized this first when reading NYT critics, of any sort, music, food, film. And they were always arch and sneering and negative. Once a year at most they allowed themselves to like something popular. I gave up reading them by the time I was 25. Still don’t. Years later I read a TC Boyle short story involving a NYT food critic who observed that being sarcastic and nasty and biting is viewed as being sophisticated, whereas there is great risk in approving of or even honestly considering anything. It is always safer to insult than to compliment.
@Jay L Gischer: @MarkedMan:
I used to be a restaurant critic and TBH looking back now, there are columns I’d probably want to walk back. But I came at it from a blue collar perspective, becoming most outraged not at the people in the kitchen or on the floor, but at the newly-minted MBAs who put their people in impossible situations. Also the quite large number of restaurateurs who started a restaurant so they could sit at the bar and hit on waitresses.
If I saw a restaurant that was in the weeds while a manager sat on his ass, I’d beat them about them about the head and shoulders because I also used to be a restaurant manager and I bussed and seated and expedited. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Probably my most brutal review was for a restaurateur who openly berated a waitress on the floor, reducing her to tears, in front of customers.
That said, sometimes I was just a prick. (I know! Who’d have guessed?) I did over time become queasy at the thought that a lot of my readers just came for the verbal violence. The irony is that the most actual damage I ever did was a 4 star, wildly enthusiastic review of a tiny barbecue joint that as a result was overwhelmed and ended up closing.*
Of course later I was on the receiving end of critics, so, justice of a sort.
*Still to this day the best BBQ. You just had to look at a rib for the meat to fall off the bone.
Second Tuesday of next week…
@Mister Bluster:
Too bad there is no credit given in the US for being the “adults in the room.”
Here’s a link to the images Copilot made yesterday.
It makes a set of four for each prompt. The leftmost comes from the original prompt, which went something like this “Red-haired, green-eyed woman with bangs, wearing a white pleated gown and a filigreed silver armband with an oblong blue jewel at the center, with a backdrop of ancient Greek ruins and a sky showing galaxies and shooting stars.”
The center image came when I added the specification the jewel goes on the center of the armband.
The rightmost one when I asked to add a sword in her right hand.
Overall it worked rather well.
There are some odd details. Notice the rightmost image the whites of her eyes are greenish. And over her left shoulder you kind of see a giant planet with a nebula inside it. The last is not as bad, considering there’s no way to get such a view of actual galaxies in real time anyway. She’s also holding the sword like a dagger.
@Jay L Gischer: That’s why the correct procedure here would be to try Trump before the appeal so they can say “while there is certainly no immunity for what happened here, we’re not saying there never is” and then we can live our lives till there’s a harder case.
@Kathy: Do you need to subscribe to generate images with Copilot? I keep getting an “image generator not available” error.
@Kingdaddy:
It did ask me to sign into my Microsoft account before it let me see the images generated. If you run Windows, you should have such an account already.
I’ve been using the app on my iPad, which requires a login. Out of 10 tries, it only generated an image once.
@Kingdaddy:
I haven’t used an Apple product in years. I’ve the Copilot app on my Android phone, but mostly I use it in the desktop Edge browser.
Maybe Apple doesn’t like MS butting into its plantation?
First of May
Bee Gees
Hahahaha….Genetically Modified Republicans. I love this guy. 😉 😉
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/04/28/rod-miller-experimenting-with-political-dna-in-the-big-empty/