Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, December 12, 2022
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57 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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@DrDaveT: Last night Dr. Dave asked why I would wear a mask on an airplane given the excellent filtering and circulation of the air. For me it’s all about proximity. If a person sitting directly behind me or next to me is infectious, the air circulation is unlikely to overcome that. He also asked about the messaging that the primary benefit of masking comes about by an infected person wearing a mask rather than an uninflected one. While I agree that from a societal view we get more bang for the buck if an infected person is wearing a mask, that doesn’t mean that an uninfected individual doesn’t get benefit wearing one if they are in proximity to a spreader.
And in the “we all knew this was coming” category:
Kari Lake sues Arizona over “stolen” election.
Victor Bout gave an interview to Maria Butina, sounding like he’s prepping to be a right wing influencer in his new life. Wa-aaay easier than arms dealing. Would not be surprised he shows up at Maralago soon.
@Mu Yixiao:
That’s not all. Republican candidate for AZ Attorney General Abe Hamadah has also filed suit.
@CSK:
At least the AG candidate is alleging procedural errors, rather than fraud. If the judge is smart, though, they’ll dismiss the case for being filed in the wrong jurisdiction.
@MarkedMan:
The thing in an airplane, is that a few infected individuals won’t expose most of the people in the plane to the virus. But they will expose those in their immediate vicinity. The ventilation and filtering help contain the hot zone to a small area, but there is a hot zone.
Masks are barriers. they work best at keeping stuff in, which is why surgeons and other medical personnel wear them. But they also keep stuff out, just not as effectively as they keep it in.
I do credit masking with helping me to avoid COVID, as I’ve bene near people who were infected at the time and did not once catch it.
@CSK:
It’s tempting to laugh these things off as hopeless stunts and shows for the base. But the GQP owns the Supreme Court now, and it’s not much of a stretch to imagine Brett or Clarence drafting an opinion expressing the new “No Fair” standard.
I wish a great Fiesta de la Virgin de Guadalupe to all. I had a business flight on December 11 some years ago and found the local airport packed with people headed back to Mexico to celebrate on 12/12. I didn’t know that is was a big deal before. Hanukkah starts this Sunday, and there are other celebrations later this month. This is how we cope with the darkness; sunset is about 4:30 where I live, and I’m ready for more daylight. If you live in Oslo, almost 60 degrees north, how do you do it?
Been thinking about the NZ baby who’s parents were holding up a life-saving surgery for because of COVID BS. Their screams of “tainted blood” and all the nasty comments from their supporters about a “separate blood supply” got me thinking about how this is gonna be a running theme for the next decade or two. Anyone calling themselves a “pure blood” will now have to reject any medical issue involving blood transfers for the rest of their lives (or till they stop believing in this nonsense) . You’re 20ish, into COVID denial and think you’re invincible but god forbid you get into an accident and get blood while unconscious – you’ll be tainted against your will! How many are going to try and sue afterwards for harm done, frivolous suit or not? Not to mention that the supply will naturally diminish as believers die off and more and more people are infected and/or vaxxed over time. By the time they get to 40, they’ll have caught it or will be faced with the impossibility of sourcing someone who’s still “pure”.
I thought somebody would have set up a grift on this one by now. However I realized how hard established blood centers have to push to get get regular donations; you’d never be able to keep a “pure blood” center afloat since it would require damn near every one of them in the nation to donate monthly just to function. I suppose they could pass on normal blood donations as “pure” and ride the grift till they get caught but doesn’t seem to be cost-effective. You just can’t profit on this the way they can on other COVID denial-related things. Insurance won’t cover the cost of keeping a separate source of blood so it means the expenses (and there’s definitely expenses) would need to be paid upfront. Most people won’t have the money to pay it; they think it’s merely stick needle in arm, draw and put in second person. Leaving out materials and labor, costs are type and cross, storage, testing for disease and other prep work needs to happen even for blood donated onsite. The price you’d cite and require to be paid upfront would cause them all to balk so you couldn’t even run it as an ad hoc service.
@Michael Cain:
It’s filed against Kris Mayes, Katie Hobbs, and every jurisdiction in Arizona.
@Kathy:
If the MAGAs lose, it’s only because of cheating.
So incoming House Shadow Speaker Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-QAnon), Trump Jr., and Adolf Bannon were at a New York Young
NaziRepublican Club dinner this weekend, pushing “total war” and Jan 6-style armed political violence.The Biden White House response to this latest round of Republican extremism:
What is it about modern 21st century conservatives that they attract such vile, nutty, dangerous, anti-American fascists?
@Slugger:
Dec. 12 used to mark the start of the holiday season, culminating in January 6, with classes resuming the next weekday.
Then the marketing geniuses invented The Good Weekend to more or less coincide with Black Friday, and now shopping and Christmas music comes earlier…
Feel good post for the day…
Yes, Madeline, You Can Have a Unicorn, L.A. County Tells Girl
@Kathy: I’ve flown back and forth to Europe seven times since August 2021, including extra flights within Europe a few times. Also flown three domestic round trips in this period.
The first flights I decided to chance it and not mask were my return flights from Brussels in October of this year. Within hours of getting off that flight I had the first signs of what turned out to be my first cold in three years, and it was vicious.
I am just back from ten days in Berlin. I masked on the plane.
@Kathy: What is “The Good Weekend”?
@MarkedMan:
Monday in The Good Place 😀
Seriously, it’s a marketing gimmick like Black Friday, which usually takes place the week before Black Friday (then they try to add the latter here, though there’s no Thanksgiving break).
I’m finally getting over this flu that’s hitting everyone in So Cal and it’s freaking nasty. Covid was easier than this flu. My wife had it for nine days, and I’ve had it for 8 and I feel like I’m barely halfway through it. Fever. Chills. Sweats. Coughing. The works. No fun.
Okay, hive-mind. I’m looking for a decent balsamic vinegar. It does not have to be the $100 an ounce stuff from Modena, I just want a good, tasty alternative that is better quality than supermarket. Primary uses are as a finishing ingredient for caprese, over strawberries, and so on, but not so fancy that I get paralyzed by the thought of using it (e.g., the $100 stuff).
Suggestions?
@EddieInCA: I hope you’re back to full power soon. I’m almost afraid to ask: was this despite getting a flu shot? I’m thisclose to reverting to full-on Hermit Mode.
There was a lot of belittling the CDC and other government agencies in the pandemic, essentially because they took human nature into account when they decided what policies to promote. Public health officials are all too aware that simply telling people the absolute best things to do isn’t necessarily going to change behavior, that effective public health campaigns are based on what people will actually do in response. I’m reminded of this because of what is about to happen in China. The Chinese government has promoted a zero Covid policy with an extremism that would have been impossible in just about any other country. But they never seemed to plan for what would come next, probably because an official crafting such plans would seen as questioning the CCP and Xi. The policy was based exclusively on the power of the state and had very little of the traditional public health campaign. Now they are suddenly abandoning their policies without adequately vaccinating the population or setting up the needed medical infrastructure to handle the inevitable infections. They had an unsustainable policy that took less and less account of how people would actually react, and are abandoning it now that they fear losing control completely. It’s going to be bad.
As a side note, when I lived in China I was surprised at how often people protested and how often it worked. Any hint of large public unrest could kill a municipal or provincial officials career if it made it up the chain, so those officials might well give in once a large enough group was assembled. The harshness came earlier, when it was just a handful of individuals, and that could be devastatingly brutal. But once a certain threshold was reached, the officials were usually unwilling to call in the police or the troops.
Wherein the oversimplistic DEMOCRATS ARE LOSING LATINOS BECAUSE OF WOKE LATINX HERE COMES THE MULTIRACIAL REPUBLICAN MAJORITY fake narrative implodes, as the journalists suddenly discovers Latinos are not a monolith and don’t all live in Florida:
And you can put Reagan and Nixon’s California on this list too.
@Jen: @Jen: For a while now I’ve been getting balsamic vinegar from a specialty store. I thought it was a chain, but it doesn’t appear to be. Before moving to Baltimore I went to a similar vendor in Annapolis. They bulk buy the vinegar, and you can get it plain or infused, and they let you taste. I get the plain. It is not very expensive and since it is thicker than normal and very intense it is probably quite inexpensive per serving. Prior to finding this I bought quite expensive bottles ($25 to $30 for a small bottle) from various supermarkets and was always disappointed.
FWIW, I’ve also been disappointed by most olive oil brands and similarly haven’t found price to be any indication of quality or the lack of it. For the past 3-4 years I’ve bought Trader Joe’s Premium Extra Virgin Oil which comes in a large bottle and is very reasonably priced. Very consistent, with a nice fragrance and a very nice taste.
Today’s conservatives are vile, nutty, dangerous, anti-American fascists.
@Jen:
Colavita Aged Balsamic Vinegar of Modena is pretty good. It’s not horribly expensive, either: maybe $13 a bottle.
@MarkedMan:
@CSK:
Thank you both! @MarkedMan, your comment made me think of a butcher/specialty store nearby that I think has one of those self-service vats…but I can’t remember if it’s oil or vinegar. I’m going to go check this week, that’s probably my best local option.
@CSK: Is that a Colavita I’d get at, say, Hannafords? Or is it like a specialty line for them that I’ll need to hunt down next time I’m in a population center?
@Jen:
I don’t know about Hannaford’s, but I think Market Basket carries it. Any specialty groceries in your area?
@Jen: My Southern scratch cook mom had a brand called Acetaia Dodi at the house of a famous actress friend, and now that’s the main one she uses. I believe it’s sold at several ages, so different price ranges. Syrupy and tasty over butter pecan ice cream.
@OzarkHillbilly: So were a fair number of yesterday’s conservatives. My parents were donors to the Liberty Lobby and readers of it’s Liberty Letter flyer until they sent us a sample copy of another magazine they thought would interest us…
Stormfront.
@just nutha:
Ah, Stormfront. The Web’s first major racial hate site.
I’m glad for Jen that other people have a grip on the whole balsamic vinegar vibe. I use house label balsamic salad dressing when I find the need to balsamic vinegar something. In other news…
[some] Scientists are now claiming that plants communicate with the world at large by casting off fragrances and that the smell of freshly mowed grass is a pain filled scream for help. Help ease the suffering of plant life by eating beef, pork, lamb, and fowl.
[Source: PBS, Nature, What Plants Talk About]
@EddieInCA: Thanks for the warning. Getting my flu shot on Wednesday, along with the latest booster…
@DK:
I saw that article, but what it pointed out has been known for a long time. That there are different communities of interest among Latinos is something that progressive Dems have been willfully ignorant to outright in denial about, along with the reality that Latinos can’t be counted on to buy the full progressive agenda.
AZ and CA are the states where Latinos have been most solidly Dem and are a major voting block, what do they have in common? Latinos in both states had been subjected to discrimination and persecution by white, R political elites.
@CSK: Also the house organ for the world’s earliest neo-Nazi group.
@Jen:
No. I did not get a flu shot this year. Only the Omicron booster (booster #3).
Several co-workers have gotten the horrible flu even with the flu shot. Just anecdotal.
As for Balsamic, https://www.bonappetit.com/gallery/the-best-balsamic-vinegars-you-can-buy-at-the-grocery-store
@just nutha: Birds of a feather flock together. Any Republican with an ounce of shame left and more and more Nazis saw a home for them.
Believe it or not, English is not my 2nd language.
@DK:
Marjorie Taylor Greene says today that she was only making a “sarcastic joke” and that the White House doesn’t understand her humor.
@EddieInCA:
That’s what I feared. I skipped my flu shot about 15 or so years ago, and got the flu so bad I thought I was going to end up in the hospital. I’ve had a shot every year since then, (including this year), but I know there are some years where the strain is a mismatch.
Thanks so much for the balsamic recommendations, one and all!
Heh, too good not to share:
Of course, he lies all the time, especially to himself.
@OzarkHillbilly:
And so they did. Type of noise not specified in the original request.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Elon: Dave, are they booing me?
Dave: No, Elon, they’re saying “Moo-usk.”
(Full disclosure: I did not come up with this but can’t remember where I saw it.)
@Mikey:
The Simpsons, the film festival ep. After Burns’ self-aggrandizing movie ends, the audience boos.
Burns: Smithers, are they booing my movie?
Smithers: No, sir. They’re saying Boo-urns!
Burns (to the audience): are you booing or saying Boo-urns (he gets pelted with movie snacks and loud boos)
Hans Moleman: I was saying Boo-urns.
@OzarkHillbilly:
This also underlines Chapelle’s continued transformation into red-pilled edgelord
What I marvel at is how pathetic his transparently obvious lie is, which is a perfect reflection of how pathetic he is.
“Man up mf’er, grow a pair.”
@Sleeping Dog: That there are different communities of interest among Latinos is something that conservatives and progressive-bashing cosplay centrists have been willfully ignorant to outright in denial about, along with the reality that not only were Latinos not abandoning Democrats and never buying the full conservative agenda, by some metrics Republicans have less Latino support now than they did under George W. Bush.
Just like Emailghazigatepalooza 2016 and Incoming Red Wave 2022, LatinX-Is-Killing-Us was just another overblown fake narrative by Twitterbrained establishmentarians who still can’t think out-of-touch invested by the Chuck Todds and Chris Cillizzas of the Beltway.
@Stormy Dragon: TBH, I never found Chapelle to be all that funny. Which tbh, is not all that out of the ordinary. Most comedy these days hit me flat.
@DK:
What do you mean “by some metrics”? Is there anyone who seriously disputes that W. had more Latino support than Republicans do today?
Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas.
@CSK:
WTF took so long?
I still have douche-bro acquaintances who are still all in on Crypto. These are the idiots that bought it at $25K-$30K who were too stupid to get out with a 100% gain, and are now watching it go down, hoping and praying it gets back to where they purchased it so they can say they broke even. Interestingly enough, the crypto crowd, for the most part, seems to be anti-vax and anti-mask, at least anecdotally.
Would love to see a venn diagram of that.
It’s late, and this thread is probably dead, but I’ll ask anyway, because there are a lot of smart people on this site who I respect and learn from regularly.
Why is it so hard for so many in media and entertainment to drop twitter?
That’s the simple question. I don’t understand the reluctance of so many smart, educated, successful people to leave the platform fully and completely.
@EddieInCA: I understand why people in the news media are reluctant to drop it, because it gives them the fastest breaking news and allows them to find expertise on virtually any subject on demand. But I have no idea why anyone else stays on it. Used it for a month or so when it first got started but never saw the appeal.
@OzarkHillbilly:
This could apply equally well to Trump.
@MarkedMan:
When something, almost anything, of importance happens, my phone blows up. CNN, Fox, PBS, Washington Post all hit me with alerts. Twitter isn’t one of them. There has to be something else. There’s no shortage of places to get breaking news. I think it has to do more with FOMO. “Everyone who I think is important is on it, so I have to be on it or else I’m giving an advantage to my contemporaries.” or some such pathology. I just don’t get it.
@Kathy: Yes, I remember the Simpsons bit, I just cant remember where I read the Moo-usk variation.
Which is sad because it was less than 12 hours ago…lol
@EddieInCA:
Well, first there’s this from Kevin Drum. Most of Twitter isn’t political, and the crapfest we know it for.
Twitter is a way to fill the void left by the death of RSS, and bloggers who would just post collections of links on a topic. You’re interested in a topic, you curate a list of people to follow and you get announcements.
The second thing about Twitter is that when you’ve been on any social media for a while (including a blog comment section!) you tend to form a community, and the names on your screen begin to mean something. You are reluctant to stop hearing from them.
I’ve had a couple of very solid and active communities just disappear on me, for various reasons outside my control. It really sucks. One of them died because without some moderation, too many people came in and started smearing crap on the walls. I guess they felt they needed to shut us down. This is the fear that people have for their own communities on Twitter, now that things are changing.
That’s my take, anyway. I’m not really on Twitter, though.
@Mikey:
Ah. I had it backwards. I thought you made up the Elon variation, but did not recall where you’d seen something similar before.
related, rumor is Elon the Thin-Skinned is cancelling accounts that Twit the video. FYI, the link here is still on Tweeter, and I’ve re-tweeted it a few times.
@MarkedMan: Thanks for the considered reply!
@Kylopod:
Don’t ask me. Ask the people who spent the past two years pushing the idea Republicans were in process of building an unprecedented working class multiracial coalition with unprecedented Latino support as Latinos were supposedly abandoning Democrats in droves to embrace MAGA. Because of something something LatinX something something woke.