Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, May 6, 2024
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45 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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A small glimmer of hope from a school district in San Antonio.
Background. Our school district (around 60K students) is pretty well known for its general excellence and desirability and reputation for being well run. The district is also know for being having a conservative political reputation. For the last couple of years there has been turmoil and infighting on the school board generated by the various right wing culture warriors in our community.
On Saturday we had school board elections. The result was a major pushback:
The losers (funded by outside interests) outspent the winners 7-1.
One small anecdote but…
@Scott: Congratulations on a small but significantly important victory!
A couple of days ago I cracked, “gutless Dems, but I repeat myself”. NYT today has a Guest Essay by a poli sci professor M. Steven Fish, Trump Knows Dominance Wins. Someone Tell Democrats.
About half the top comments at NYT agree, but there’s a lot of ‘we shouldn’t be like that’, which I take as confirmation of Mr. Fish’s observation. We should govern fairly and for the benefit of all, but we should do politics to win. Mr. Fish’s essay strikes me as excellent advice on how to win.
Boeing will try to launch its Starliner capsule today at around 10:30 pm eastern time. With two test subjects (crew?) onboard. Here are some details.
I do wish them well. With Boeing, however, one would do well to take to heart the old adage: hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
You can watch here
If it pleases the court, Your Honor should stop threatening the defendant with imprisonment, and just throw his orange ass in the slammer already.
Texas man wants court order to investigate woman’s out-of-state abortion
I think that the Texas man should be charged with recklessly knocking her up.
@gVOR10:
It is all but impossible to get Democrats to understand that right-and-wrong is vital, but it is not everything. Politics is a game of power. Without power, virtue is impotent. No, we don’t want to be like them and sacrifice our core beliefs in the pursuit of power, but we want to find ways to actually do good, not just advocate for it.
Our job as Democrats is to feed the hungry, house the poor, care for the sick, defend the weak, and protect and extend the rights of all people. Those are things to do. And doing them requires power.
Interesting vaccine development. pretty much it’s a broad spectrum coronavirus vaccine.
Usually I dismiss early reports of new developments, as often they fizzle after a few weeks, but this one follows work that started shortly after the 2021 kerfuffle on boosters when the Delta variant screwed up the very promising recovery. As I recall, the US Army was pursuing this line of research.
This is not an mRNA vaccine, but rather it presents several coronavirus spike proteins to the immune system, meaning T and B cells would emerge for every kind of spike (thus broad spectrum).
I wonder if they could also include the viral protein coat and membrane. We know the immune system can react to these as well. It reacts differently, making for mode helper T cells and few or no killer T cells. Also a lower antibody count. Studies of whole virus immune response, specifically with SARS-CoV2, show the helper T cells produced helped ameliorate the disease, even though ti doesn’t prevent infection as well as mRNA vaccines.
The main drawback of whole virus shots, be they inactivated or weakened virus, is the off chance some live, active virus may result from faulty fabrication or quality control, and this could lead to infection. That’s one reason there’s been a move to sub-unit, virus vector, and mRNA vaccines.
But if you’re fabricating viral fragments and sticking them in nanoparticles, you can add all you want with zero risk to the people receiving the vaccine. And if it still induces an immune reaction and memory B and T cells, add layer of protection as well.
@Mister Bluster:
Colorado is going to tell Texas to go suck eggs due to “state’s rights”. What’s legal in Colorado is legal and you are free to travel there because in the USA, travel is unrestricted and the laws of another state do not follow you. Fundamental facts for the states to be able to function and yet here they are trying to mess with them to satisfy the cult’s fanaticism.
Texas is playing a very dangerous game here assuming it alone has supremacy via conflicting state laws. What jurisdiction does it have over the pregnancy always? Is it because of residency of the woman – means that it believes it’s laws supersede federal ones or even local jurisdiction, a huge-ass no-no even to conservatives. Residency of the father? Hah – prove he was the father in the first place as it’s an assumption he’s making. Is it where or even when conception took place? Hah bloody hah- conjure at best since you can’t prove that definitively in court. Prove it wasn’t a miscarriage that happened out of state or that there was even a pregnancy in the first place – if she didn’t go to the doctor (likely if it was early or she never planned to keep it) there will be no record of it at all anywhere so he’s shit out of luck. The court is taking his word for it that she was pregnant – something HE needs to prove as an accusation in court and nothing SHE needs to provide evidence for under the 5th Amendment as self-incrimination.
Again for the idiots in the back, this is why birth has been the standards forever since you cannot prove anything else with a level of certainty the law needs to work. Trying to force work-arounds will break so much of our basic legal system that conservatives are going to have to give in rather then shatter it all.
This is probably very close to what Trump would say, if given the opportunity:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/heres-the-speech-trump-should-give-at-barrons-graduation?ref=home
@CSK:
And if he could speak coherently and minimize sidelines and diversions, and didn’t lose his place and go on a tangent altogether.
And if you could get kids to sit still for 90 minutes or so.
@Kathy:
Don’t ask the impossible, Kathy.
Judge Merchan:
No more fines, jail next.
“Talking Points Memo”
@charontwo:
Are we betting on when Merchan will throw up his hands in disgust, say “I’ve had it,” and toss Donald von Shitzinpantz in the clink?
@gVOR10:
Democrats have already forgotten Michelle Obama’s naive call to the old days:
Biden is better served by, ‘when they go low, we’d better go lower.’ These Republicans? You don’t bring Pt Reyes Farmstead cheese and a nice chablis to a gun fight. You bring tactical nuclear weapons.
We shall see…
@al Ameda: I like “When they go low, we raise a knee.”
My local headline of the day:
Suspected drunk driver hits suspected drunk driver in head-on collision on I-696
@al Ameda:
@gVOR10:
Never revise contrary to literal meaning.
So, “when they go low, we go high and take their heads off.”
Can’t get any higher than that.
@Mister Bluster:
This is enraging. Is the father ready to assume 100% care of the fetus once it’s born? Pay all medical, educational, food, shelter, and clothing costs? Is he ready to compensate the woman for any and all pregnancy-related expenses, including loss of income?
Or does he just plan to waltz merrily away after the birth, because it’s now the slut’s responsibility?
What a POS.
@Franklin:
When Worlds Collide.
@Kathy:
I forget what book I read the following line in-
You spend the first year getting them to walk and talk. Then you spend twenty years trying to get them to shut up and sit down.
Noem insists ‘I love dogs’ amid puppy-shooting controversy
I bet she loves them to death.
@CSK:
I’d like to pick “never” and lose.
I can state that if the judge doesn’t throw Lardass in prison at the next gag order violation, then he likely never will. IMO, Merchan may think a credible warning is enough. IT’s not. Lardass accomplishes two things by continually violating the order. 1) he has the satisfaction of violating the order to vent his spleen (and may intimidate witnesses or jurors). 2) He delays the trial with never ending hearings on violations of the order. And the maximum fine $1,000 per violation, is small enough that it can be covered by campaign money easily.
Being imprisoned, even if only a day or two, would be a real hardship.
Of course, the beloathed won’t just meekly go. he’d appeal. According to Copilot (I know), an finding of contempt with an order of imprisonment can be appealed. Next it said something unclear, I’ll transcribe it: “During the appeal, the defendant may remain out of prison unless the court specifically orders otherwise.”
This last sounds like Lardass could stay out of prison while his inevitable appeals runs its course, unless Merchan orders otherwise. I hope the judge would find the fortitude to order otherwise, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
@CSK:
Revenge birth based on bad breakup, enabled by anti-abortion bullies.
#comment-2914183″>charontwo:
Yeah, I figured something like that. If he wants the kid so badly, he can take care of it.
@CSK:
I wonder if Dems should put forth a law that any man who tries to prevent an abortion using “wrongful death” threats should immediately get 100% custody and get a parole officer up your ass to check in on you daily to see how it’s going. Not CPS, an actual cop. The idea is to make it the police’s problem. Make them file a report with the court every month and need to be their in person to do so, no excuses for no shows. Even if they look the other way and lie like a MOFO, it’s still paperwork and time in they won’t get paid for. Its Texas so they ain’t raising taxes to pay for all the work it will cause and ACAB will rear it’s ugly head on time. If they have to assign out resources to do this, watch this kind of behavior get nipped in the bud. The second they see child abuse or neglect, boom – jail for you, buddy and they don’t have to deal with it anymore s it’s CPS’ problem now.
You wanna force a woman to have your kid? Fine but it’s YOUR kid. Enjoy the nice officer cranky about all this extra work in your face for the next 18 years!
@KM:
The woman in the Texas case has already obtained the abortion, so who-gets-the-kid is moot. Collin Davis, who sired the child, wants to pursue wrongful death suits against those who aided his former partner.
Asshole.
Yet again my prostate refuses to kill me. Over the last 10 years I’ve had rising PSA numbers (old men will know what that is) and three times I’ve had biopsies. At Johns Hopkins, UCLA and Stanford, no less. So finally had an MRI and there’s a small something (19 mm) that doesn’t look like anything much. So it seems I’m still not dying.* Which I guess means I still have to work.**
*Yet.
**Finished a book last week. Starting on what I believe will be the world’s first post-apocalyptic rom-com. I have not yet figured out how to ‘need’ a tax-deductible research trip.
@Michael Reynolds:
I hope you’re around and grumping on OTB for a long while, you old curmudgeon, you.
@CSK:
Thanks! I realize I’m tempting the gods, but I’ve had good luck health-wise. Only the good die young.
@Michael Reynolds:
I would wish you rid of the damned thing, but you would accuse me of antisemenism.
@Kathy:
“May”, not “will” nor “shall”. He would be cuffed and marched out of the court room by the bailiff and detained until some other court got around to deciding that issue, and in NYC his odds of that landing on a sympathetic desk aren’t real swift.
I found another interesting use for Copilot.
Suppose you have an idea for a story. Naturally it will seem 100% truly original no one has ever thought of this before, and so on. You use a concise description of the gist of it, and ask the AI if there are stories that have used this idea.
If I ask “is there a story about a billionaire who clones dinosaurs for an amusement park,” it replies that yes, there is, and it’s called Jurassic Park (this would have spared Principal Skinner an angry lecture at a convenience store).
Naturally it may reply it can find no story like the one you describe, which would indicate it is rather original (depending on the idea), but one should keep in mind the AI could be wrong, or maybe some information is not to be found on the web.
Atrios has, I think, a nice complement to my comment above@gVOR10: on why Ds pols should project strength and dominance.
@dazedandconfused:
I’d pay to see that.
I’d also bet $10 he cries or throws a tantrum.
@DrDaveT: Wow!
Lol, there’s a vas deferens between a good dad joke and, well, being a dad at all.
Any odds on whether we’ll see act III of The GQP Krazy Kaukus Klown Show tomorrow?
I’m not sure how things work out for Johnson is Democrats bail him out. I recall more than a few negative comments about how the Democrats all voted to sack Kevin last year. But this is politics, and what was true yesterday is a damnable lie today (and we have always been at war with Eastasia!!1)
Other than that, Ms. Trailer Queen should not press for a vote she knows she’ll lose, not even perhaps to gauge what support there is for sacking Johnson. Given the past iterations of the Klown Show, you’d think Johnson would have to do something completely egregious for most in the GQP side to want to oust him.
I have a favorite Lou Reed quote: “I’d try to be as progressive as I can possibly be, so long as I don’t have to try too much.” It’s from “Beginning of a Great Adventure” off New York.
He meant it as some kind of insult, but I think it sets a nice lower bound — if you can do the right shit when it’s pretty easy, you should do that. At least ask how hard it is before just doing nothing.
I do wish New York was less relevant 35 years after its release. At least change the names — Trump and Giuliani have really overstayed their welcome and are just stinking up the place.
At least Kurt Waldheim is dead, and that Nazi pope. I assume Waldheim is dead.
(No one ever believes that I’m an optimist, but here I am finding positive, uplifting messages in the music of Lou Reed. Could anyone other than a relentless optimist do that?)
@Kathy:
Or not.
But thanks for the heads up.
@Michael Reynolds:
There are lots of areas of the world where government has mostly collapsed, which might give a much needed sense of place for your story if you visited there.
Suggesting Gaza seems a bit of an easy dig.
How about Haiti? I hear they are being overrun by a guy named Barbecue. That’s gotta be good post-apocalyptic tourism right there, depending on your post-apocalypse.
Wherever you go, I recommend studying how the upper class lives in well-guarded compounds, drinking frozen cocktails by the pool. Seems easier than studying the less fortunate.
@al Ameda:
I think it’s time for a drive out towards the coast to pick up some cheese, especially Schloss at Marin French Cheese Co., a favorite stop on many happy family outings long ago. It was 20 minutes from our front door back then…
@gVOR10:
At least no doors blew out.
I feel like some of y’all are setting up a binary that looks like “Fight Dirty or Give In”.
This is a false dichotomy. You do have to exercise dominance. I don’t disagree with that. But if you dominate without the sleaze, it’s even more dominant. It’s also less likely to provoke resentment.
Do y’all remember the last SOTU speech by Biden? He gave a demonstration of this, and he’s an old geezer. “Oh, you don’t? Well that’s great news!” (And Mike Johnson facepalms about how idiotic his caucus is. Notice that what he isn’t is angry because Biden isn’t playing fair. That’s how thorough that particular move was.)
Dominance is never one-and-done, though. And it can be exhausting, which is why so many people who want to just get on with the doing of the things we want to do want to sidestep the whole affair. However, it can’t be sidestepped. It can be delegated, though, but that runs the risk of creating a monster, someone who cares more about their own dominance than the things you wanted them to use the dominance to do.