Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, June 29, 2020
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87 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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Barr is a menace to our institutions.
Why get a schmuck like Cohen to be your bagman when you can subvert the whole DoJ?
This is Nixon × 100.
The short-term and long-term implications of what Barr is doing to and with the DoJ is terrifying.
If we have AGs who subvert justice to serve their Presidential master, that’s it. We’re done.
I gave up reading Rod Dreher on a regular basis because of his hysterical obsession with The Gays and The Trans and how he might one day be forced to bake a cake for one of them. But I did occasionally stop by to see if he was having one of his better days. Lately, there have been no better days. It turns out that in addition to his near paralyzing fear of those who are sexually different, he is also deeply deeply afraid that The Blacks will get out of control and come for him and his family.
@MarkedMan: I used to read Dreher way back in his Beliefnet days. I just can’t anymore. Mostly because I just don’t understand what he is banging on about. It is like he lives in a totally different world or paradigm and speaks another language. And it involves the end of the world as he knows it or something.
@MarkedMan:
Re: Dreher
You forgot the SJWs at Hamline or Oberlin or wherever demanding that be all treated equitably. 5000 words on the tyranny of equality.
Seriously. Dude bailed on two previous religious faith practices in protest.
Cannot see that for example BLM protestors are trying to change the system for the better and from within. These protestors are committed to a better system.
Dreher’s response is to withdraw and pooh-pooh all that don’t. Screw him. He’s hopeless and hopelessly self-blind.
Not worthy of attention anymore. Plus, he cannot help but self-promote his own books every other paragraph. It’s clinically diagnosable head up his buttitis. Likely terminal.
@Scott:
But it does! At least, I think that’s what’s going on.
Dreher is facing a future in which his kind (white, heterosexual, Christian men) is no longer the benchmark compared to which all other groups (e.g. women, gays, ethnic minorities) fall short.
In his view, it’s a perversion of the natural order that will necessarily lead to the ruin of society – not coincidentally because he and his kind no longer automatically get to run it.
Dreher used to be somebody, just because of who he was. That is now being taken away from him.
@de stijl:
Equality is a threat to Deher’s perceived birthright. Thus, he lashes out.
@Scott: I’m actually wondering if he will end up institutionalized. His whole life seems to be ruled by an obsessive fear that these diseased or animalistic people are coming for him and there is nowhere safe any more.
Ryan O. Ferguson
@ryanoferguson
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Jun 27
New England: yeah, our Dunkin burned down but don’t worry, there’s another one ONE HUNDRED YARDS AWAY.
@MarkedMan: Sometimes I think he already is institutionalized and these columns are a part of his therapy.
“So, how are you doing today, Rod?”
Things have been interesting up in STL. The DEM mayor appears to have lost perspective. Than again, maybe she never had any?
That not being enough, she doubled down, because it’s all about her, doncha know?
At least until somebody on her staff pointed out what a complete asshat she is being, and now, she is ever so very very sorry:
And then this happened:
Interesting times.
This is interesting:
“Lightning strikes kill nearly 120 in India” (Washington Post)
Thor’s mighty hammer pounds the earth!
Are you kidding? That is several times the number killed in the US in an average year. The lightning was described as “thunderbolts”! Some were hundreds of miles long and literally melted the earth!
Was this due to a magnetic field tremor that went around the earth? (Space Weather)
Yeah, I was just going to post about your last, OH. Think about this, though. Trump has made those folks famous (or infamous) by posting the video of the encounter on his twitter feed. (Better get over there before he deletes it.) He has not done them any favors. They will probably come to wish he had never done that.
@OzarkHillbilly:
What the STL mayor did was thisclose to incitement.
I saw that story earlier and was spooked.
She should resign now. That was not acceptable.
Dreher was making an excuse for trump’s white power video, but unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to post because apparently I’ve been banned by the American Conservative. Good job previous me. 😀
@OzarkHillbilly:
Dreher certainly has the obsessiveness nailed.
@Teve:
I got banned there because I said that he should think about censoring or explicitly condemning outright white power comments and their authors.
He banned me. I was quite polite.
@Teve:
Think of it as a badge of honor.
@Teve:
Now, now. This is a bit unfair.
Of course, Dreher did say that he believes that Trump is “so lazy and inattentive that he didn’t watch the whole video,” but he also bravely pointed out who the real culprit is:
If only we could go back to “the liberal, MLK-era model of race relations,” Dreher laments.
(OK, I’ll admit: I like reading Dreher sometimes. I find nominally smart people who think dumb things oddly fascinating, as well as instructive.)
@drj: The guy saying white power starts at about six seconds into the video, so Dreher is just making stupid excuses.
@Teve:
You over-write about the implications of the video you have, not the video you wished you had.
Btw, here are 4500 words on my grievances. I will plug my new book, like a lot.
A couple of months ago, Dreher had a post on the segregated schools and how afraid his parents’ generation was of blacks getting political power. Someone asked what they were afraid of, and he responded they were afraid that blacks would treat whites the same way whites had treated blacks.
I did not see anyone make the two obvious responses to this (although Dreher does tend to not approve comments if they are too awkward for him, and otherwise is very snarky with those who disagree with him):
1. If conservative Christians are afraid of having others do unto them as they have done unto others, perhaps it is time to reflect on how far they have strayed from the tenets of Christianity.
2. In what way is the treatment of gays distinguished from the treatment of blacks under segregation, where literally every fear Dreher expresses is something which conservative Christians have done to gays within his lifetime? If, as Dreher concedes, segregation was wrongful, what lessons should have been learned from it with respect to relations with other groups?
@Teve:
I was just a weenie bit sarcastic.
@MarkedMan: Dreher is like a few years ago when libertarians were going to go Galt because Obama or something. If the only thing for him to do is to withdraw from the world into his Benedict Option, would he please just go.
The protesters in St. Louis are braver than I am. Too much time with Google Maps this morning says that they couldn’t have gotten to where they encountered the couple with guns without either scaling a substantial fence or walking right past a clear permanent “Private property, no trespassing” plaque. Those particular streets and sidewalks are not public. The rich people coming out with their own guns would be a surprise, but surely the chain of thought, “Private property, private security, this state’s castle doctrine laws allow owners to initiate attacks on intruders” had to go through their heads.
But I’m not young any more.
Dreher remains intriguing because he is clearly not an idiot.
Yet he clearly views our queer neighbors as queer rather than as his neighbors. Screw that nonsense.
And he is on a lifelong quest to justify that.
He is quite bright and very dim.
A man obsessed with defining what is without the circle. Not a clinician but dude presents as pretty paranoid.
@Moosebreath:
The likely responses were likely purposefully not approved.
He likes a curated commentariat.
So we knew about COVID but the President never saw it.
And we knew about these bounties, but the President never saw it.
Maybe we should hire a President that can actually read?
Obama apparently read his PDB every night in the White House residence.
I’ll bet you Trump has never read one. It’s been reported ad nauseam that they have to brief Trump like he’s a four year old. What else has been missed?
Trump says the bounty story is another Russia hoax fabricated by the NYTimes.
@MarkedMan: I think term is properly written as “Teh Blacks”…
@sam: There were a fair number of people in all venues who were making excuses for why Trump posted the “White Power” video, including the (to me) ridiculous defense that “of course” he must have just retweeted it without looking at it. That was actually the second line of defense after the first one, “He didn’t watch to the point where the guy started chanting ‘white power!'” which failed because that happens in the first ten seconds of the video.
I’m curious as to what excuses there will be for him retweeting the armed white couple waving their guns around at peaceful protesters.
@MarkedMan:
I think Trump always has time to watch a video in which people laud him.
@Jim Brown 32:
Per Trump, The Blacks love Trump.
Who are you to contradict?
That man has the worst racial compass of any American alive. A tiny insecure man so desperate to be loved he pits neighbor vs neighbor. Fuck him.
@MarkedMan: So it looks like the Trump line is that 1) he didn’t hear that comment (despite it being almost the first thing in the vide, repeated several times and very clear), and 2) He supports the people “his people” who are unfairly demonized.
It is so unfair how people judge others who shout “White Power!” unfairly.
@OzarkHillbilly:
https://twitter.com/popehat/status/1277420924581494784?s=21
Patricia is casually holding a small handgun, pointing it directly at the protestors, with her finger inside the trigger guard. (There are other photos of her that make that clear).
Her husband appears to be pointing his ridiculous gun at her.
These are people who should have their guns seized by the police and not returned until after they have taken gun safety classes. Or never.
This is absolute speculation on my part.
Someone close to Trump sold him on retweeting that vid. Someone who knew that Trump is just too fucking lazy to watch a two minute video. Someone who knew how to pluck his racist grandpa strings.
Someone whose name rhymes with Stephen Miller.
I’m kind of enjoying that all the people who go crazy on camera because they are being asked to wear a mask in a grocery store are being identified on Twitter and harassed in real life. Perhaps they wouldn’t be so easy to identify if they wore masks…
I’m sure it will all go horribly wrong at some point, but it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
@de stijl: why would Stephen Miller be in the President’s bathroom?
@Gustopher:
There is no butthurt more than white privilege butthurt.
I get to brandish a weapon at you without consequence.
Tomorrow dude and wife get fired and issue an “I am so sorry” facebook apology.
It’s a meme for a reason.
@Gustopher:
For the lulz.
Those who take an interest in Rod Dreher’s mental health should rush over to TAC right away. The SC just overturned Louisiana’s anti-abortion-access law. That number does not include me.
@Tyrell: I looked at that piece, and yeah, that really is attention getting: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/lightning-strikes-kill-more-than-100-in-india/2020/06/26/4c010886-b71c-11ea-9a1d-d3db1cbe07ce_story.html
I think though, that what’s going on is climate change – there’s more energy in the atmosphere because its warmer – plus a really, really poor neighborhood with not much protection. Also, there’s a lot of people in India, and most of them live in places where there are thunderstorms at this time of year.
The US gets about 50 lightning deaths per year, while India before now has been averaging 1000 deaths/year. That’s a big difference just as a baseline.
@JohnMcC:
The TAC website appears to be down as of right this minute.
@de stijl:
Nah. If someone presented that video to him by telling him it was of a golf cart parade of his devotees, he’d watch it. Believe me.
@CSK:
Mark my words. Trump is extraordinarily lazy.
His minions are abusing his extremely limited attention span. Lil Seb Gorka juniors are pulling a fast one on the boss to signal to their bros.
Rhymes with Stephen Miller.
@de stijl: Why speculate on complex reasons why he didn’t know what he tweeted? Sincerely asking, as it seems obvious to me that it was a panicked Trump desperately fluffing his base.
@de stijl:
Regarding Trump’s laziness, I don’t disagree at all. But even he will watch a 2 minute video lauding him. After all, it’s about him. That’s why he has the energy to do those rallies. It’s all about him. He’s the center of attention.
@CSK: not now. Dreher’s saying progressives are going to cause a race war.
In the wee hours of this early am, grumpy realist opined:
I’m not even sure that I’m the customer in a transaction at Amazon anymore. They may be making more selling whatever information they have about me than they make selling me stuff. (In my case, that’s almost a sure thing considering how little I purchase. 😛 )
@de stijl: Sounds like high intelligence, low wisdom. (Yeah, I played in grade school.)
@MarkedMan:
Is there any reason to account for how Trump would even know about that video unless someone brought it to his attention?
There is no way Trump plucks that video out of the multitudes out there. No way Trump found it on his own.
He has minions print put e-mails and hand writes out his response on paper and hands it back to a minion, ffs.
He is literally too ignorant to have found *that* white power video on his own except for intervention.
Someone fed him that to retweet. Someone with an agenda.
Can I 100% guarantee? No.
Is is true? Yes.
@Teve:
I saw. I thought he was going to become unhinged about the SC decision on abortion.
Kayleigh McEnany told Fox this morning that Trump didn’t hear the person on the clip yell “White power.”
That’s their story and they’re sticking to it.
She added that Trump retweeted the clip because he wanted to show support for his followers, “who are often demonized.”
@CSK: “Kayleigh McEnany told Fox this morning that Trump didn’t hear the person on the clip yell “White power.””
No doubt he thought the guy was yelling “Russia is paying the Taliban to kill Americans.”
@wr:
Didn’t you hear????? Trump already said that Taliban business was another “Russia hoax” invented by the NYTimes.
The RNC and Trump campaign moved the convention from Charlotte, NC to Jacksonville FL, because Charlotte refused to guarantee that they could carry on without masks.
Jacksonville just passed a mandatory indoor mask ordinance.
Someone flipped the script.
@Jen: I just saw that, and thought: Trump is going to have a tantrum.
Can DeSantis override–or get an exemption from–this at Trump’s request? Apparently the mayor of J’ville is a Republican.
@CSK:
Of course, it’s Jacksonville.
—
What is the largest US city with a republican mayor?
My google fu failed me.
—
Why do RW folks hate masks so much? Do not get it beyond just crass tribal signalling.
I want to protect others if I am spreading and want to protect me from others. It’s entirely practical and sound. I am not making a political statement by wearing a mask. It is prophylaxis.
Why the bother and hoo-hah?
Plus, I don’t have to wear my stupid annoying fake teeth to the grocery store.
@de stijl: another recent meme: “Hell hath no fury like a white person mildly inconvenienced.”
@de stijl:
I think right-wingers hate the masks because they feel wearing them is an infringement on their personal liberty. Some see it as a means of conditioning the population to accept more and more government control. And finally…not wearing a mask causes the libtards agita, and let’s face it, the point of life is…owning the libs.
If you have to declaim “White Power” and advocate for it, you are seriously not very good at being a white person.
It is incredibly easy. Keep yourself to yourself and basically no one fucks with you ever.
No one ever asks you if you live here or to have to agree to a patdown in a store.
I walk a lot often at night. Every now and again a cruiser draws up and shines their spot on me. I wave. Say I’m out taking a walk and they drive off.
Life is incredibly easy.
I would have to fuck up pretty hard for cops to pay attention and I could probably skate with a heartfelt apology.
These “White Power” folks are apparently doing it wrong. If you are not actively a blatant criminal, it’s super easy to be white.
Health insurance is bizarre, borderline insane. What the heck is going on here?
Via NYT:
Emphasis added by moi.
How would you even know about this unless you asked, and how would you know to ask? This is INSANE.
@Monala:
@CSK:
Do they not wear seatbelts? Do they not buy home insurance? Do they not buy car insurance?
The mask thing is tribal performative bullshit. There is no reason other than being publicly contrary.
When I was a kid it was when seatbelts became mandatory and unleaded gas and oh my god the butthurt!
Fucking weenie snowflakes.
@Jen:
Republicans tell us we have the best health system in the world.
Who are you going to believe? Them or your lying eyes?
@de stijl:
Some of them don’t wear seatbelts, for the same reason they won’t wear masks. They do carry auto insurance (mandatory except for New Hampshire and Virginia) and homeowner’s.
@de stijl:
Found it. The largest US city with a Republican mayor is San Diego.
Second is Jacksonville. Then Fort Worth, El Paso, OKC, Fresno, Mesa, Omaha, Colorado Springs, Miami, Virginia Beach, Tulsa, and Arlington of the top 50 by pop.
@Teve: He started banning me quite some time ago. Apparently pointing his hypocrisy out to him is a no-no and causes one to be identified as a troll.
(I also kept pointing out how law didn’t work the way he and his supporters thought it did and that REALLY ticked them off…)
@Jen
Saw this and I’m interested in your thoughts?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/29/metro/nhs-latest-political-identity-crisis-is-it-even-swing-state-anymore/
My thoughts are that it is all about Trump. I expect Sununu to reelected by a wide margin, Chris Pappas should retain his seat, I don’t know enough about the 2nd CD to have an opinion. The legislature will likely continue to be Dem, because of turnout in a presidential year (but 2022 is a different story). The governors council? Probably they’ll all get reelected unless there’s a vacancy the party majority won’t change. Of course fewer than 5% of the voters can tell you what the GC does.
@grumpy realist:
I knew I had seen you nym there in the comments.
They won’t be disappointed…SCOTUS to unborn: drop dead…
So, basically, we have a president who is Sergeant Schultz…
@Sleeping Dog: I agree with your assessment.
NH tends to be fiscally conservative and anti-tax, which typically plays well with Republican politics. But it’s also a “mind your own business” state, and I think people here are genuinely bothered by the hateful rhetoric that comes from Trump. He still has his supporters, clearly. But the “I don’t want my taxes to go up” contingency is getting split, and I think that Biden wins that support.
I like Pappas, and I think Kuster’s seat is probably safe too.
@An Interested Party:
They’ve used the excuse that Trump didn’t hear the shout of “White power!” twice. It must be the best one they can come up with, which is likely given that Trump tweeted the clip and gave it his approval.
@Jen:
All of New England is pretty much “mind your own business,” don’t you think, which is why busybody social conservatives really haven’t done well here since the Salem witch trials. Okay, there was the Watch and Ward Society, but that was mostly about gambling, and it became a prison reform group almost 50 years ago.
(from the Cold War thread)
@de stijl:………Not that mall octoplex bs, but the old big movie houses with names: The Regal or The Orpheum.
Or the RKO Palace, capacity 2916, in Rochester NY where I saw the Sorcerer’s Apprentice when I was very young.
RKO Palace
@Jen:
Great minds…
The race I’m looking forward to is the 2022 Senate. Maggie v. Sununu. You know it is going to happen unless Biden brings Maggie into the administration.
The failed Free State Project of a couple of decades ago has really benefited NH and insulted the state from the social conservative Repugs. Those libertarians were good for something.
@OzarkHillbilly: Nice story. With all the other crap going on, this was refreshing. Thank you. 😉
@de stijl: @Teve: Indeed! One does what one can with the tools one has available. [Thumbs up emoji here]
@Teve: Maybe not. It doesn’t take 6 seconds to see a geezer with a MAGA hat and Trump signs on his golf cart. Give them a break. 😛
ETA: @de stijl: Again, cut the guy a break. He’s self-marketing his book. Tough job.
@wr: Or “Soylent Green is made… of people” maybe?
@Jen: Recently, I had a biopsy done. My copayment was the standard for my insurance company of $250. The insurer paid something on the order of $1200. The invoice I received from the hospital for my records had $39,000 as the charge.
How does anybody know what ANYTHING costs in the medical field at all anymore? A few weeks back, I had a $5000 echocardiogram for which the insurer disallowed $4700, too.
If it were me being the doctor, I might take my chances on socialized medicine. Either that, or my “rack rate” is horrifying!
@Just nutha ignint cracker: i was in a massive car wreck about three years ago. I was in ICU for three days. The bills they send me would buy a house. The United States has a Third World medical system.
@Teve: So, what? The insurer can give me a break because your insurer (or, more likely, you 🙁 ) are subsidizing my hospital costs? WTF?
@Mister Bluster:
My formative place was The Uptown at Hennepin and Lagoon in south Minneapolis in the Uptown neighborhood.
It was a revival house. Kinda art house.
They would run themed gigs. Like March is film noir month which was teh awesome!
I fell in love with Lana Turner even though she was so scary I think my testicles retracted.
There was a old school place downtown that used to be a big movie palace, but got chopped up into four little boxes.
A guy named “le dial” let’s call him, might have skipped out of work after carefully seeding his calendar with a phony meeting at the tech center on the edge of downtown. Half hour to walk there, hour meeting, half an hour walk back. So two hours blocked out.
le dial might have met up his friends there on a boring Wednesday afternoon for a matinee showing of Die Hard, for instance.
We did not abuse the privilege. 4 or 5 times a year and never on Mondays or Fridays. It was a fun motley crowd. One worked for the public defender’s office and the other was a super junior DA and they were a couple. Sounds like a hokey Hallmark movie, but they were super sweet together.
@de stijl:
Back fill on PD gal and DA boy.
They knew each other in law school. They were just friends. Both fancied each other fiercely unbeknownst to us.
I knew Jen. Super solid citizen. Smart is sexy. I sorta fancied her myself.
I knew Steve. He came along on a Black Hills camping trip and we bonded over a campfire. Conventional style dude, but a good guy. Was a bit too much into Bukowski, but there are worse things.
One October night at a house party. People were drinking and some were smoking. Cool, chill night.
Jen and Steve were dancing together and about two minutes in they just started kissing.
It was so cool. People clapped who knew about them fancying each other insider knowledge.
They later got married and had two kids.
That was a good party.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: This is why (among other reasons) that anyone who makes any kind of “market based” argument about our health care system (or that its “private” nature is radically better than “socialism!”) is impossible to take seriously.
@Steven L. Taylor: Yeah, I’ve been pretty clear on this point since I lived in Korea during the ACA debates. Going on Medicare was a real eye opener, because my HMO never revealed all of the bookkeeping like I see it now. As Teve says, YIKES!