Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, August 16, 2021
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36 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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Famously unable to get a link correct, I bravely sail on….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/
Actually, it’s a whole lot more common than one might expect:
That last is from wikipedia. My google research shows things are all over the place and a bit confusing but the wiki page is a decent compilation, tho it may be inaccurate here or there. Hard to say w/o devoting hours looking into the particulars.
Today is the first day of school here in San Antonio. My wife, a school counselor, is kind of dreading it. With the rapid rise of COVID in the county, there is a shortage of teachers and you can’t get subs. Basic public health measures are now totally politicized. Courts are saying yes, then no to any public health mandates, agreeing or disagreeing with the Governor over who has authority.
The Texas Supreme Court agreed last night with the Governor’s position. They are all elected Republicans.
So the political science question of the day is: Elected judges, good or bad? Discuss!
Tyler Gilbert makes first MLB start at age of 27 … and throws no-hitter
I’d say, “It’s all down hill from here.” but maybe not. Pitching a World Series clincher might beat it. Here’s looking at you Tyler. May you have a long and prosperous career.
No. Just no.
@Scott:
The election of judges is a horrible idea, particularly state supreme court justices. It simply becomes another place for the wealthy and special interests, to buy influence through campaign contributions.
Specifically regarding TX, the fact they are elected and are all R’s is immaterial, given that R’s have dominated TX government for 20 years. Even if the appointment process was similar to the Feds, they would be R’s.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Theodore Breitenstein is one bad-ass name.
Electing judges is a bad idea.
Justice should not be majoritorian.
Elected judges can produce a bias towards harsh sentences in criminal trials if judges are trying for a reputation for toughness, This can depend on the type of case, too.
In TX, judges write thank you letters to everyone at the voir dire after the trial, I have seen letters that were really something.
I remember this local story in the 1990s:
Yes but just as our conservative USSC justices have strayed from the one true faith on occasion, TX SC judges might do the same if they didn’t have to worry about donors and voters.
@Scott:
Definitely bad. The wrong incentives are in play.
The other day under a Youtube vid about an anti-vax rant by Tom Hanks’ 30-year-old son, I left a brief comment about covidiots, and naturally I received a swarm of anti-vax responses that accused me of drinking the kool-aid. I have a general policy of not engaging with crazies on Youtube, but others in the thread took up the mantle. Here is one exchange during the conversation:
[Commenter 1] “Can’t take anyone seriously who says ‘99% survival rate’. Healthy people have contracted CV and died, healthy people have contracted CV and had extensive damage done to their major organs, others become long-haulers. Some have thought they were recovering from covid and ‘rallying’ against the virus, only to suffer the cytokine storm. You’re another plug that does not understand what research is credible, and are deeply privileged and take advantage of the hard work of others. If people like you had your way, that 99% survival rate could be lowered to 96% survivable. But covid isn’t a deadly virus because it kills, it is successful and fearsome because it spreads and it does not grant immunity to its survivors. And it has reconstructed the definition for what constitutes a survivor to a disease.”
[Commenter 2] “Can’t take anyone seriously who takes CV seriously when everyone I’ve knew who’s gotten it haven’t died or gone to the hospital from it, take your brainwashed idiocy out of here.”
Anti-vax is pernicious.
I fear for our future. Buncha idiots potentially controlling the levers of power.
Idiocracy in real time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/
Well, Trump says “it’s time for Joe Biden to resign in disgrace.”
I am into Jeff Tweedy today. Wilco and Golden Smog. Some old school Uncle Tupelo too.
I respect that man highly. Routinely beset by cluster headaches and he copes. I see him as hero.
I get cluster headaches. Also known as suicide headaches. Twice a year, maybe three times, for 4 to 8 weeks I get intensely painful headaches 2 to 5 times a day.
The pain is very intense and precise. 2 inches behind my right eye. Imagine breaking a bone and feeling that burst of pain. Only that instant lasts for an hour. And it is in your head. A pinkie knuckle sized chunk of molten metal.
When the headache breaks and it fades you feel so pumped. Behind the scenes your brain is dumping out endorphins and feel-good chemicals as a reaction. When the pain melts away you are seriously jacked to shit because you finally feel the brain chemicals kick in.
It is very intense and really painful. You know docs ask how painful something is on a scale of 1 to 10?
Cluster headaches hit 10 pretty routinely. Maybe 11 or 12 sometimes. Off the chart pain. You bang your head against a wall just to feel a different less focused pain for a few seconds. Anything but this.
2 or 3 or 4 times a day. Every day for a month or two. You wake up with one always during a cluster. That is a rock-solid guarantee. Makes going to sleep dicey and problematic. You dread tomorrow.
Then it goes away for a few months of blissful peace. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
Jesus etc. Is one of my most favorite songs ever. Jeff Tweedy is one bad-ass man.
@Steven L. Taylor: Do I recall correctly that in your book you note that in the rest of the world only one South American country elects judges, and only for a small number of positions?
@Scott:
You know, for “a republic, not a democracy,” I can’t think of any other country with so many elected positions. The closest that comes to mind is the Roman Republic.
@Kathy:
The Romans eventually learned to set a frontier boundary. Garrison the borders.
Learned that some campaigns were fruitless and foolish.
Germania or the east.
Learned that further campaigning caused more problems than it was worth.
I streamed Gravity yesterday.
You know movies that aren’t bad, but you’re glad you didn’t watch them in a theater? This is one of those.
As I said, it’s not bad. But it’s sloooooooooooow. This is rather realistic, as in space simple things take longer to do than they do on Earth. I also wonder why Sandra Bullock’s character was given a tragic backstory, when nothing else but the desperate attempt to get home alive ever happens.
On the plus side, a very nice, very convincing depiction of weightlessness, vacuum, and space overall.
@Kathy: My take was 180 degrees from yours. Saw it in the theater and it was so all encompassing. You were IN there with her. Haven’t bothered watching it on a smaller screen.
@Scott: Government is only as good as the majority of the stakeholders demand it to be?
Corollary: Self-serving populations elect self-serving justice systems/judges. (??)
@Kathy:
@MarkedMan:
With Marked Man here. Gravity on a IMax screen was epic. Not a great movie in any way. But pretty fucking good. Well done.
Some things work well or perhaps better on a small screen seen alone.
Gravity needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible to be understood correctly.
@de stijl:
There is some thing about Sandra Bullock that evokes empathy.
She is certainly charismatic, no doubt. But not massively so. She is way above average, but not Clooney level.
Bullock evokes empathy to a weirdly disproportionate level. We want her to succeed.
@MarkedMan:
@de stijl:
I’m very skeptical of that, unless the theatrical version played in 35 minutes. Really, I can’t recall a movie I paused so many times in order to do something more entertaining.
@de stijl:
I agree completely with this statement. There is just something about her that has me rooting for her from the start. I have no idea why.
@de stijl: I think part of it that she’s good at projecting vulnerability. It’s something you see in her early roles where she typically did it in a comic way that reminded me somewhat of Mary Tyler Moore. But I’ve noticed she also tends to do thrillers very well, even though she only occasionally appears in them. Ironically, in her one Oscar-winning performance, in The Blind Side (which I despise for a variety of reasons), she tossed all that aside and played a stereotypical right-wing alpha-female type.
@gVOR08: IIRC, some judges in Uruguay are (were?) elected.
But we are definitively “exceptional” when it comes to this issue.
It would be more accurate to think of big money contributors to parties and politicians as customers rather than donors.
@Kylopod:
Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People was brutally chilling. A really good performance and it freaked me out quite a bit.
Way against type. Alpha wife and mother. Cut throat. I wasn’t freaked out because of the actress, but because of the characterization and role of very carefully contained rage.
Mtm was great. And she freaked me out a lot. I have a tainted experience of mothers.
@de stijl:
Damsel-In-Distress-Who-Ain’t-Totally-Helpless…can’t help but root for one of those. Can’t think of anyone who does that better than Bullock.
Not enough fuel in Lebanon to even keep the hospital emergency generators running?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/16/fuel-shortages-leave-lebanese-hospitals-in-critical
Yet another humanitarian crisis looms.
@Kathy:
Fixed that for you, Kathy
I got banned from from posting on Rod Dreher’s site at “The American Conservative”.
My offense?
Pointing out to Dreher himself that he fully supported the war in 2002, and called people like me “un-American” and worse.
Asshole.