One Week to go Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, October 27, 2020
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114 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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http://www.thedailybeast.com/italy-burns-as-protesters-riot-against-second-covid-lockdown?ref=home
from Caution and confidence keep Biden close to home in final days
The crazification number again. And again and again and again and again and again…
But “herd immunity”…
No, it’s because you are a bigoted asshole and dressing your bigotry up in religious clothing doesn’t change that fact.
Yes, gay people made Jerry Falwell Jr. do it. I rest my case.
Random observations from San Antonio (at least my small middle-upper middle class suburb):
People are going all out for Halloween. The yard decorations are more elaborate than ever. However, there seems to be a violence to them. A lot more skeletons, a lot more axes in heads, a lot more blood and gore. More hanging bodies. Subliminal lynchings? Sign of the times?
Yard signs: about 60-40 for Trump. Less than I expected. This is the kind of neighborhood that would have “shy Biden voters” instead of hidden Trump voters.
Early voting yesterday surpassed 2016 in numbers and percentage. Early voting continues through Friday.
Coronavirus news: After doing pretty good, cases are rising, hospitalizations are up, ventilator use is up. Schools have been open for two months now and no virus breakouts. Most kids are back in school. Good so far. However, my wife’s elementary school just had to send a letter out saying there has been a student who test positive. First in two months.
Then there’s this and not sure what to think of it:
Texas Guard to send troops to cities for possible ‘postelection’ disturbances
Good times.
The Florida headline of the day-
Police: Florida man stole bulldozer, ran down Biden signs
The headline of the day-
HSBC says it could charge for current accounts
VMI cadets decide to wallow in the gutter.
This is *exactly* the problem.
@Scott:
Two more things:
1) Signs with these sayings are popping up:
In This House
We Believe:
Black Lives Matter
No Human Is Illegal
Love is Love
Women’s Rights Are Human Right
Science is Real
2) A lot more American flags are flying. At first, I though it may be a Trump/Republican signifier but many have Biden/Harris signs also.
Fffffffffυck Thththththis.
Apropos of absolutely nothing: Last night I was reading a biography of Jacqueline Onassis by an English biographer, Sarah Bradford. In it, the author makes mention several times of Jackie tooling around Washington D.C. in 1952 and 1952 in what several people refer to as her “sporty little Mustang.” I stopped right there.
There was no Mustang, sporty or otherwise, in 1951 or 1952. The prototype wasn’t designed until 1961, and the first 1965 Mustangs weren’t available to the public until till the fall of 1964.
While it’s true that there were 1962 and 1963 “concept car” Mustangs to pretest public interest, Jackie wasn’t tooling around in one ten years prior to that.
Easily correctable errors like that irritate me. Rant over.
Proofraeding ain’t what it used to be.
@sam:
Well, mine certainly isn’t.
@sam: It takes a special kind of masochist.
Peek A Boo
Steinbeck…Yikes! You are jiving me right?
Modestly submitted, it’s an original Bluster narrating real life events.
New trailer for Season 2 of His Dark Materials.
@sam: that’s really gorgeous country, best viewed through a window with fresh coffee and a sweater
I’ve donated about three times as much as I usually do to the Biden campaign. I’d volunteer to drive people to the polls but Washington is all mail-in. I’m not the most social person so no campaign wants me making phone calls or knocking on doors on their behalf. I feel like I’ve done what I can.
The character of this nation is on the line. If Biden wins then enough people agree with me that DJT is not what America is about. If Trump wins, then we truly are a nation of deplorables. I am cautiously optimistic but after 2016… I’m wary to count on the decency of my fellow citizens.
Bad news on the COVID-19 treatment front. Eli Lilly’s monoclonal antibodies proved ineffective in critical patients. So much so, that the trial has been ended.
However, trials with patients less ill and even with light symptoms continue. it may be the antibodies have a better effect before the virus does too much damage. This could confirm my suspicion that part of the problem with COVID mortality is the immune system itself.
On other news, the Mexican government is finally admitting the death count from COVID-19 is higher than the official numbers. more around 135,000 deaths than 90,000. This also means the case numbers are far higher than the nearly 900,000 admitted thus far.
@CSK: I can’t find out what kind of car she had in 1952, all anybody on the Internet wants to talk about is her 1974 BMW.
the Future of Abortion in a Post-Roe America
@Paine: I made some small donations yesterday to DEMs in close contests, Bollier in KS, Greenfield in IA, Smith in MN. Was going to give to Ossof in GA but then I saw this Schupp ad and sent her a little money instead. Funny that they all went to women candidates, I was just looking for close contests where every little bit counts.
That was supposed to end my campaign giving for the year but now I feel a little guilty about not sending any to Ossof so I’m going to $25 over my allowance for him.
@Teve:
From a quick search, I can’t find anything that looked like a Mustang. The Chevy Corvette did, a bit, but that debuted in 1953.
@CSK: I was going to guess this little beauty, but it wasn’t released until 1954
@Kathy:
Good news on the vaccine front though.
OxfordU/AstraZeneca phase 2 trials reporting immunity response in all age groups, appears to be particularly robust response and minimal side effects in elderly subjects.
Not the last word, as it still needs phase 3 trials and full determination of clinical effect i.e. do raised antibodies actually generally prevent infection at scale?
But at least it’s hopeful.
@CSK: @Teve: I’ll bet it was a European import. MG, Austin, Alpha
@Teve:
The white supremacists are really, really unhappy about this. They say the repeal of Roe v. Wade will lead to more African American and Hispanic women giving birth.
@Mr. Prosser:
Maybe, but most people can identify those correctly. I have read that Jackie and her sister Lee bought a Hillman Minx and drove it around Europe in the summer of 1951.
@CSK:
@MarkedMan:
@Mr. Prosser:
Didn’t JFK own an MG-T?
That could be it.
Don’t see how you’d mistake it for a Mustang though!
@MarkedMan:
That is a nice car.
@JohnSF:
But Jackie hadn’t met JFK then.
Interesting anecdote: Before the White House years, Jackie wanted to buy JFK a Thunderbird. Old Joe wouldn’t permit this; he had ordained that the Kennedy family would drive only Buicks.
@JohnSF:
Rooting for the home team, are you? 😉
Of course I don’t care who comes up with a good vaccine. I’d take one from North Korea, if it had been through rigorous trials.
The good news is phase 3 trials of the Oxford vaccine are underway. The better news, is that this is a one-dose vaccine, which is far less complicated than the mRNA two-dose version. Not only does it act faster, but you don’t risk people failing to show up for a second dose.
@CSK:
This looks like a Mustang…
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/WuzsGO04AE_VTQzcDZope5MhBhY0Eu847el1QB2LQZp-kLBEK7n6KUnw_Q2uL1KYVry1Ygm8GlL1FrQTJDEkCy38liRf7wXPVrUvgy3li1xBy5LlykGQTO6GUcopgg
@CSK: low-info people were suspicious of the FBI’s arrest of Eric Rudolph. Why would the same person bomb both abortion clinics and the Olympics?
Race. The abortion clinics were aborting white babies—the wrong ones! And the Olympics was the global symbol of race mixing.
@dazedandconfused:
By gum, it does, doesn’t it?
@CSK:
Aha.
Found a link to a pic.
Black Mercury 1947 convertible.
Gift from her father.
That’s got to be it.
@JohnSF: @CSK: Years ago my wife worked for the fundraising side of a local Planned Parenthood organization. There were a number of wealthy old ladies who donated under the mistaken impression that it was primarily black women who used PP services, and b) that “services” consisted exclusively or primarily of abortion services. They were pretty clear that they felt their money was going to decrease the number of blacks in the world.
The staff took the money and shook their heads. It came up from time to time in conversation but how do you even process something like that?
@CSK: Hillman Minx? I just looked it up and if anyone every mistook that for a sports car, they no doubt think the Chrysler K car was the height of luxury, or that the newest Japanese cars are really redefining elegance and taste when it comes to car grills.
@JohnSF: Hah! I always thought that was a Lotus. I had a friend that used to have one or a similar one, and he claimed he could stub his cigarette out on the ground when he was stopped at a light.
@MarkedMan: Just remembered, he had a Lotus 7, which is a later model and only resembles the MG-T in the broadest sense. Makes the “stubbing a cigarette on the ground” pretty realistic…
@CSK:
Nash Metropolitan?
@Sleeping Dog:
@JohnSF:
Never mind.
@MarkedMan:people in the car business refer to that as the Predator Grille.
@JohnSF:
It probably is. But how anyone mistake that for a Mustang escapes me.
Katherine and I just pulled the plug on our involvement with the Animorphs Movie.
This will astound @EddieinCA and @wr, but IP creators are sometimes not respected in Hollywood.
@Michael Reynolds:
Oh, boy. Can you talk about what happened?
Ken Cuccinelli:
Have you ever seen a group of people so willing to debase themselves?
@CSK:
News stories about commercial aircraft, even major crashes, often use stock photos of aircraft. Very often they don’t get the plane type right. I don’t mean they show a 737-700 instead of a 737-800, they’re similar enough. but that the story is about a 737 (medium-sized, two engines) and will show a 747 (big, 4 engines).
I’m somewhat relieved it happens with cars, too.
@Teve: You know, it seems like Japanese Industrial Designers are on like a 20 year cycle. Whether it be cars, car radios, stereo systems or anything else they go from perfecting elegance and simplicity to baroque monstrosities. I remember in the 80’s and 90’s when you couldn’t sleep in the same room as a Japanese stereo system because of the flashing lights and LED displays that covered everything and that were constantly pulsing, skittering or bouncing.
Nowadays it is car exteriors. It’s like every square meter of surface was given to a different design team along with instructions to include at least 3 random swoops or lines so, of course, there is no flow line whatsoever, with every crease and seam caroming off at a different angle. And don’t get me started on the ugly bulbous head light and taillight assemblies, which look like they were mashed together form a a half dozen random Duplo blocks. These aren’t even the worst by any stretch but are illustrative. Why do they stick out so far from the flow lines of the hood and sides? Why are they so angular? And why do those angles have nothing to do with any other angles? For that matter, why are the curved pieces randomly curved with no continuity between the rest of the car. Not to mention how they exacerbate the clunkiness of the many seams and steps in the hood. Take a long look at that and envision some kind of cereal box toy frog head. Once that’s in your head you will never be able to look at a modern Sentra without thinking “frog via the Lego corporation”. I don’t think of myself as being overly concerned with style, but this makes me want to pull my eyes out.
@Michael Reynolds: Sorry to hear. It seems that this is by far the norm. Maybe more of a question for Eddie or wr, but why is that.
Kevin Drum: with a week to go, it’s looking like a landslide
@Teve:
Fingers crossed.
I warn you all, if Biden wins, I’ll launch into an explanation of the beginner’s luck fallacy.
@MarkedMan:
This happens often. Among writers, there’s a saying: “Get the option money. Get the purchase price. Then pray they don’t make the movie.”
Usually it’s the studio that pulls the plug, for a variety of reasons. They don’t mind losing whatever they’ve paid to the author of the book; even if it’s a lot of money to the author, it’s chump change to an outfit like Paramount or Disney.
Been there. Done that.
I saw a version of this years ago. I tried to Google it recently but couldn’t find it. A friend just randomly posted it on Facebook.
@MarkedMan: Back in the 80s, before the big Japanese car companies built design studios here in the US to cater to the US market, Japanese cars were styled for their local market. Like a lot of Japanese design, the little details mattered because of living in close quarters. The cars were made to be see close up. Rear view mirrors were placed way out on the front fenders. When I was stationed there, I noticed they totally pampered their cars, inside and out. Even put lace curtains in the rear window. And they didn’t like used cars either. It was great for US troops because we could get used cars dirt cheap.
@Teve:
Only Toronto Maple Leafs fans …
@Teve: My position is that the American conservative movement is, essentially, a scam. I know that some liberals like to wax sentimental about how today’s Republicans aren’t “true conservatives” like their forebears, how they’ve betrayed the honorable conservative tradition and become reactionaries. I don’t buy it. They’ve been this way, more or less, for as long as there’s been a self-conscious “conservative movement” in America. And once you get past all the vague slogans–I’m for limited government, fiscal responsibility, etc.–you almost immediately run up against demonstrable lies.
Take “fiscal responsibility.” The agenda we see currently–tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, and assaults on social program, all having the cumulative effect of massive deficits–did not begin with Trump. It’s been GOP orthodoxy since Reagan. It’s one of the most unifying features of the party, joining moderates and rightists alike. In 2017 Susan Collins justified her support for Trump’s tax cuts on the grounds that “Economic growth produces more revenue and that will help to offset this tax cut and actually lower the debt.” When Chuck Todd asked her to support that statement, she cited three right-wing economists, two of whom subsequently clarified that they said no such thing. Collins wasn’t promoting a right-wing economic position. She was saying something she knew perfectly well was bullshit, to justify a policy favored by her rich benefactors. Like most elected Republicans, Collins is a con artist. That isn’t an insult, it’s a job description.
People who actually take the debt seriously are almost all Democrats, such as Obama’s team of economic advisers. There are also many on the left who think the concerns over debt are overblown. The real debate over debt and fiscal matters takes place almost entirely within the Democratic Party. The Republicans aren’t participating in that debate, they are engaged in a scam.
Or take health care. Many liberals get this one wrong. It’s true that Heritage did once promote some of the ideas in the ACA, and that Republicans in 1993 proposed a bill that was quite similar to the future ACA. But they were backing it as a foil against the Clinton plan. They never seriously pursued it anytime they got into power. As for Romney, he was the governor of a blue state working closely with Ted Kennedy. Romneycare has about as much relevance to Romney’s party as John Bel Edwards’ anti-abortion bill has to his.
In 2017 Philip Klein of Washington Examiner wondered why Republicans don’t come out and say, “We don’t believe that it is the job of the federal government to guarantee that everybody has health insurance.” But of course they never say that out loud. Their entire approach to health care has long been to use lying and misdirection to create the impression that they favor universal coverage, and to malign Democratic health-care proposals by falsely suggesting those proposals will endanger the coverage people already have. They’re con artists. Their job is to sell something to the public they know the public doesn’t want, by pretending it’s the opposite of what it is.
You might object that Democratic politicians also lie. No. Politicians are all salespeople of a sort, and salespeople sometimes lie. But Dems do genuinely believe in the product they’re selling, and they present that product more or less accurately according to the way they see it. Republicans on the other hand are like the salesmen from Glengarry Glen Ross: they know perfectly well their products are garbage, and they believe their job is to trick gullible people into buying them, under a misguided notion that that’s what capitalism is about.
@Teve:
Certainly, the world is full of them and they are known as trolls. A large portion of Trump’s appeal is to trolls. Cuccinelli is clearly of this sort. A fun thing to do when one of this ilk asks, seeking argument (which isn’t argument, it’s only the seeking of an opportunity to troll), why one is voting for Biden is to reply “Because he makes right-winger’s heads explode.”
Fun fact: states have five weeks to certify the election. California certified the Nov 8, 2016 election on December 16th.
@Teve:
Expecting Trump to understand or even acknowledge and obey the law is like expecting your goldfish to understand calculus.
@Kylopod: Just in case you are viewing me as someone who likes “to wax sentimental about how today’s Republicans aren’t “true conservatives” like their forebears”, let me clarify my position. I separate the Modern Republican Party from the one that existed in my youth mostly because that Party did not consist solely of self identified conservatives as it does today. I can think of a few Liberal Republicans off the top of my head, and many more who had quite liberal positions on specific issues.
On another tack, I differentiate conservative positions from positions that self identified conservatives take. A conservative position is one that says we shouldn’t change long standing norms and institutions or, if they do need to be changed, we should do it slowly. This is in contrast to a progressive position which is that a norm or institution has reached its sell by date and futzing around the edges is only going to give the illusion of the necessary change, so lets repeal and replace. On some issues I lean more conservative and on some issues I learn more progressive. But these positions have nothing to do with what self identified conservatives or progressives might believe.
Finally, I believe you can take the leadership of the people alive today who self identify as conservatives and trace an unbroken line back to those who didn’t want civil rights for gays or blacks or women, who wanted to exclude Jews and Catholics from schools and clubs, who fought against the woman’s suffrage, who supported apartheid and slavery and locking people up for their religious beliefs. McConnel and Graham, Dreher, Rand and Buchanan trace directly back to the jacket and tie hate and bigotry of William F. Buckley and, before that, Woodrow Wilson but also directly back to the hooded night riders and good old boys. They may have called themselves something other than conservative, but they were nonetheless knots along the same rope.
Bottom line, “conservatism” is a position, while modern day “Conservatism” is a power structure, and they have nothing to do with each other.
@Kylopod: It may be through a haze of nostalgia and age, but the big difference between today’s conservatives and conservatives from before say 1992 ish is that the republicans of yore at least acted like they were interested in governing. The current group doesn’t want to have anything to do with governing, the only thing they’re interested is amassing power, like voting to affirm judges rather than take up a covid aid bill.
But, as I said, that’s how I remember it, not how it actually was.
@MarkedMan:
That seems wise, and useful.
I have gradually come to believe that only the first half of that definition applies. I find almost zero evidence of a nontrivial body of people who believe that X really does need to be changed, but believe that gradual tactics will best accomplish the needed changes. Invariably, this position is dissimulation — they actually do not want X to change at all, but realize that taking this position openly would be unpopular and/or counterproductive to their goal.
I recognize that this may have been different in the past, when there were liberals and conservatives who agreed on the goals but differed with regard to means. We didn’t always know that the negative incentives of safety nets don’t outweigh their benefits for steady growth and social progress. We didn’t always know that public health is best thought of as infrastructure, like public schools and highways, whose benefits repay the substantial investments needed and outweigh the costs of unproductive free riders. We didn’t always know that having meaningful labor unions does not necessarily lead to communism. But we do know these things now, and have known them for a while.
@Michael Reynolds:
Shakespeare in Love
@MarkedMan:
That’s intentional in Japanese auto design. Think back to the Japanese cars of the 60’s & 70’s. At the time, European and American car design was moving toward cleaner, smoother shapes, while the surfaces of Japanese cars were littered with odd bits of chrome and weird turns of sheet metal. Somewhere in that time period, I read an analysis of Japanese car design and one of the things that it pointed out is that Japanese cities are very crowded and there is a smaller opportunity for someone to stand back and view the design as a whole. Those odd chrome touches and bends were intended as surface interest to capture the viewers attention.
To increase sales in the US and Europe that moderated some in the late 70’s and Datsun (Nissan) was the first with the 510 sedan which cribbed its design language from the BMW Neue Classe. Then they went right back to traditional Japanese design with the B210. Toyota and Honda went as far as having distinct bodies for the US/Eur market from what was sold in Asia.
As I’ve said before, Republican “conservatives” seem to have more in common with the alt-right in other countries than the mainstream right-of-centre/conservative parties.
Just look at German CDU, French Republicans, Spanish PP, Japanese LDP etc.
The exceptions seem to be some former “eastern bloc” countries, where the post-1945 reconstruction of the right did not take place.
And Italy due the split of the old Christian Democrats, the legacy of Berlusconi’s personal politics, regionalism and “hate them all” populism.
And in the last few years the Conservatives in Britain have gone off the rails, due to the stresses of Brexit, “activist capture” similar to the US, and a campaign over the past 20 years of culture warriors and “libertarians” aligned with the Murdoch/Barclays media and “transatlantic” lobbying networks.
The perils of a common language; UK right easily slide into the influence of US right media/social media systems.
This guy might be the lineal descendant of this guy.
@sam: I remember years ago looking at some of the old Queen videos and noticing SBC’s resemblance to Freddie, so I wasn’t surprised when he was the first one cast in the role (but later dropped out).
Oh by the way, everyone: if you have Amazon Prime, see Borat 2.
@Sleeping Dog:
But also, if you look at European car design, the “clean lines” approach of the 80’s seems to have turned to increasingly baroque exaggeration of features.
Compare BMW 3 series from 1975 through different versions into the 200’s with the 2020 BMW 1 or 3.
Or Mercedes w124 to 2020 GLA.
Japanese take it a lot further, though.
With one obvious exception: Mazda.
New Mazda 3 is beautifully elegant. and clean-lined.
@Kylopod:
We tried to watch it last Friday night, but encountered significant buffering. Never seen that before from Amazon Prime, and we have a fairly fast, hardwired connection to our Roku. Probably because there was a huge demand on the servers for the film. We’ll try again this Friday.
@JohnSF: 100% agreement on the Mazda 3. In fact, Mazda’s in general are nice, once they got the hideous design language of the RX-8 out of their system.
FWIW:
Aston Martins are often beautiful, as are Jaguars. Minis and Jeep’s are ugly but in a wonderfully deliberate and consistent way. Honda sedans are often very nice, while Toyota sedans went from boring to hideous in the space of a few design cycles. I saw a Chrysler 200 on the street the other day and whatever else it’s fault, it was perfectly executed aesthetically. I like recent Lincoln sedans for the most part, and Cadillacs actually pull off a consistent and different design language then the competition, and much more appealing in recent years. The Tesla S is a thing of beauty while the Tesla 3 looks like someone incompetent tried to copy it.
Very few crossovers look good to me, and all SUVs look ridiculous.
Trump’s Nuremderp rallies might not be working out for him. And insult to injury, Obama’s trolling him.
@Northerner:
Oooohhhhhhh… well played! Two thoughts come to mind:
(from my grandmother): From beyond the blue line… he shoots… he scores!
(from a bumper sticker years ago):
big letters: JESUS SAVES
little letters below: Gretzky gets the puck. He shoots. HE SCORES!!!!
@MarkedMan:
Well, the current Honda Civics can be bit wild (OK, I grant you that is the Type R LOL)
Interestingly, Honda (like a lot of Japanese brands) have cut their UK/Europe ranges: Accord no longer sold here;
Toyota don’t sell the Avalon.
Acura not on sale at all.
Infinti rare as hen’s teeth and apparently pulling out of Europe/UK.
Lexus still offering a full range though.
@Sleeping Dog:
It HAS to be intentional. That kind of ugliness just doesn’t occur by accident.
@flat earth luddite:
Old Liverpudlian joke from the early 70’s:
“Jesus saves. But St.John scores on the rebound.”
@JohnSF:
I’ve been wondering about that. I normally just complain about the hideous grills but what is it with those… faux vents? pretend fog lamps?… whatever those things are underneath the headlights. They get bigger every year and as far as I know serve no purpose. Unless it’s to make them more resemble a transformer? I’m only half kidding….
@JohnSF:
Yes, this is the Chris Bangle effect. Bangle recognized that the need for gas mileage, performance and low emissions would mean that all mainstream cars, i.e. most everything but the exotic sports cars and Rolls and Bentley, would have jelly bean shapes and that would make them pretty indistinguishable. He drew on the concept of surface interest to differentiate cars. Think the flame surfacing, arched brows on headlamps and the infamous Bangle butt. The others were a matter of taste, but the Bangle butt was truly hideous, but it is a feature of every sedan made today. We’ve become used to it.
The guns lit side windows are the result of safety standards as is the tall hoods (bonnet to you) for pedestrian safety.
Agreed on the Mazda 3 and it is a relatively cheap car.
@sam:
Like when the older ones were young and screaming for Frank Sinatra.
Meanwhile: Early voting, 18 to 29
@MarkedMan:
The last car my father had was a 2005(?) model Mazda 6 2.0 auto. Had it up to 2012.
Nice design inside and out, and a great long distance cruiser; shared driving it to/from southern France several times, a proper Autoroute eater.
Thing was, father was a long-time UK motor industry guy (Rootes/ChryslerUK; then BL/AustinRover).
When asked why not a British car, his answer “Their motability* terms are rubbish; and this is a damn good car for my money.”
We had several experiences of Austin products suffering failures in France; once ended up getting from Oreans back to home on a breakdown truck. LOL.
As dad said, “Loyalty is one thing, bloody stupid is another.”
(*”motability” = UK scheme for disabled drivers which Dad qualified for as a wounded ex-services)
@Sleeping Dog:
Nissan (Datsun)’s cribbing goes back a step further. When they made the 1600/2000 series sports cars. Put one on a rack next to an MB Midget of that era and you can’t see a difference in the frame…because there isn’t. Dead copy.
Nissan thought “We want to build a sports car…Let’s copy the British!”
Predictably, within a couple years:
“Oopsies… Let’s copy the Germans!”
I’m wondering what kind of havoc lame duck Trump will wreak once he’s done holding his breath and shouting fraud.
I expect there won’t be any COVID relief bill while his term lasts. Past that, it’s his last and only chance to seek vengeance against his many enemies. He’ll try something, I’m sure of it.
@Sleeping Dog:
Yes, once heard it referred to as “full-bangle versus half-bangle; never go full bangle.”
BMW 1-series: “the saggy bottom boy” LOL.
Yep “flame surfacing” or variation on it common in 21’st century Euro design cars: last generation of Focus and Fiesta; most Peugeots and Renaults; Opel/Vauxhall; a lot of German designs.
Skoda and Volvo are rather more restrained (new Volvo V90 is a lovely bit of design)
Oh, and my current car also definitely “flame” style influence, if not exactly brand new LOL.
@Sleeping Dog:
Yes, once heard it referred to as “full-bangle versus half-bangle; never go full bangle.”
BMW 1-series: “the saggy bottom boy” LOL.
Yep “flame surfacing” or variation on it common in 21’st century Euro design cars: last generation of Focus and Fiesta; most Peugeots and Renaults; Opel/Vauxhall; a lot of German designs.
Skoda and Volvo are rather more restrained (new Volvo V90 is a lovely bit of design)
Oh, and my current car also definitely “flame” style influence, if not exactly brand new LOL.
The bigger Japanese firms have just gone full manga on the approach!
@Sleeping Dog:
My understanding is that when you optimize sedan aerodynamics, combined with moving the wheels as close to the corners of the body as you can, you always end up with some version of the Bangle butt. IIRC, a good deal of it is creating high pressure zones in exactly the right places.
Interesting article over at FiveThirtyEight on state races and possible impact on redistricting.
On related topic, I remember reading a couple of years back, an ex-Republican “neverTrumper” arguing that a major problem for Democrats was that in “off years” they often fell back on state parties that were often hopeless disorganized, and failed to redirect campaign effort and money from at a national level from “safe” states to “winnables”.
Argument was that, even setting aside House gerrymandering, the state level was vital for building the machines for slowly grinding away to build a platform for senate and gubernatorial races.
Quote something like: “Winning states is like going broke: slowly, then completely.”
Hmm. Looks like the edit functionality has developed a mind of its own again.
Why there are two versions of an earlier post, heaven knows.
@Michael Cain:
IIRC a higher plane for the boot lid, a shorter boot overall, and a curved “fall away” at the rear, helps aerodynamics; but full bangle-ing is not necessarily required.
Interesting thing is, in UK/Europe, booted saloons are now a niche product for the “business driver” (aka “executive” market); hatchbacks have dominated the personal/family vehicle market since the 1980’s. And they don’t need such tricks; tend to be inherently more aerodynamic.
And they are now being challenged by a growing shift to SUV’s, for a variety of weird reasons IMHO.
Jesus Christ. Here in North Florida friends are posting Facebook comments they’re getting about Barrett’s nomination, stuff like “finally Jesus is going to be represented in our laws.”
When I was young I made some shitty decisions and got some bad items on my record. Nothing too horrible, just dumb. I can’t even go to Canada without special permission. But if things had been different you can bet your ass I’d be looking at changes of location.
I’m about to finish the Picard prequel book (audio book). If anyone’s interested, you probably already know most of what’s in it, as it was covered in season 1, but you get to find out how it happens. For instance, you get to read about Picard’s first meeting with the fighting nuns and Elnor.
So, it was worth taking a break from the more serious stuff like ancient religions and cult practices lectures.
What I wonder now is 1) what will season 2 of Picard be about? 2) when will it film (never mind air)?, and 3) how long can they keep it up? Sir Patrick is 80 years old.
@CSK: I was hoping that she might have been tooling around in her sporty little T-bird, but even that wouldn’t have been possible until 1955. I guess she could have been tooling around in this, though. Kinda sporty, anyway.
@Teve:
In my experience, FWIW, people who say “finally Jesus will be represented in the law” tend to be fundamentalist Protestants. Are they okay with Barrett being a Papist?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Looks like a topless tank.
@CSK:
I think it’s sort of like the “no enemies on the left” thing Communists* used to come out with (when it suited them).
Evangelical fundis, “more-Catholic-than-the-pope” Catholics, Jewish ultra-Orthodox, all will be one big happy family, battling the evil secular humanists!
Of course, once they are taken care of…{whets knife, hefts club}
* In the words Labour politician of my grandfathers acquaintance: “No enemies on the left, my arse.”
@JohnSF: I think of it as a Hitler-and-Japan situation. Barrett is an honorary Aryan.
@MarkedMan: This is why I came to the conclusion that money itself is devoid of moral content. There’s no good or bad money (although there may be honest and dishonest people associated with some funds); it’s all simply funds. I don’t care where it came from nor do I care about the motivations of the donors. It all spends equally well.
I will and do make an exception with regard to stolen money, but that’s a matter of law not morality. I still don’t actually care, but I also don’t want to be identified as an accessory.
@CSK: I imagine ‘Bortion overrides sectarian disputes.
@MarkedMan: Being fair, though, aside from 2 seat roadsters, this may have been about as “sporty” as cars got in 1952 (Couldn’t find a good picture of a 51 Minx.)
@Mister Bluster: Steinbeck had off days, and weird little moments that don’t really matter and just feel out of place.
For every moment like this there are three or four that just don’t quite pan out, but which have an odd folksy charm.
@Teve: I’ve often noted to the type of person who believes that the market can provide everything that we need that there wouldn’t even be culverts to drain our dirt roads if we waited for the market to see the need for them.
@Northerner: Dude, that’s gonna leave a mark. 😀
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Perhaps. But OTOH around 1952(ish) my father owned one of these: Riley
I’d rate it as pretty sporty even today…(though even a basic modern hatchback could probably out-drag it, LOL.)
Not in the same league as a 1952 F212, mind you.
@Scott:
Those signs are everywhere in a few parts of Seattle. Particularly the wealthy white neighborhoods.
I’ve been considering getting some of those signs, crossing out one of the lines, and putting them all over one of those upper-middle-class performatively-woke suburbs. Get people outraged that somewhere there is someone who only agrees with them 80%.
I just can’t pick which line.
I guess the alternative is just to add a line, either of something insane like “Q Loves Pizza” and leaving it visible, or something boring and crossing it out so thoroughly you can’t tell what is under it so people will try to figure out what was objectionable.
I had the idea in the Before Times, while sitting in a bar, while people were discussing the horror of some political sign that was too inclusive, it was an admirable sentiment but maybe not in this neighborhood.
@CSK: No, not even. I’ve had goldfish. A goldfish is far and away more likely to understand calculus than Trump is to acknowledge and obey a law.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Also, they are more demure.
I once asked a goldfish owner, why does this fish keep hiding under the lily pads?
He replied, well it’s just a bit koi.
@CSK: Yeah. I lost track of when it happened–I went to Lutheran from evangelical nondenominational in the early 80s–but at some point being a Catholic no longer had the stigma that it’d had in the past. There was even a shift in end-times prophecy teaching in that “The Whore of Babylon” started being left out. The political shifts involving needing Catholic support for anti-abortion politics had some bearing as I recall, though.
Same thing happened for Mormons. When Falwell decided he wanted/needed Mormon support, the whole “Mormonism is a big Satanic cult” thing dropped out of sight almost completely.
@JohnSF: that f212 is just beautiful. I just don’t understand how two designers can take the same dimensions and equipment and one comes up with a dud and the other comes out with something like that. Can’t do it myself but I’m glad someone can.
@JohnSF: Yeah. That Riley is definitely a nice looking car. As is the Ferrari, but for my interest, hard top sports cars are just wrong. The Mustang was a nice looking car, but only the convertible was worth owning in my book.
@JohnSF: Hee hee. 😀
@Gustopher:
Sorry, I prefer my idea. Take the signs, put a red circle with a diagonal over it all, AND THEN PUT THEM BACK.
But then again, money aside, this is why I can’t live on queen Anne or magnolia any more, even if I could afford it.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
No no no, laws are for losers, not BIGLEY winners like Trump