Post-SOTU Forum
Have at.
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, March 8, 2024
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40 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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Singer Steve Lawrence has passed away. Dear Wife and I attended a Frank Sinatra concert in 1991, and Lawrence and his singing partner and wife Eydie Gorme were the lead act. I also recall Lawrence playing the part of Fran Fine’s seldom seen but often mentioned father on The Nanny. RIP.
@Bill Jempty:
Oh, great – one more thing Biden will be blamed for. đ
I thought the SOTU was fine. One thing is clear – Biden has no fear of Republicans, unlike a lot of congressional democrats.
Biden did very well. But he’s so ooooold.
Prejudice is the inability or unwillingness to see what’s in front of your face. He’s a good president, most capable president in my lifetime. Sure, he’d doing a great job and having great results, but you know, so ooooold. You can hear all about his age on Fox News, run by a 92 year-old man, and serving a constituency of retirees at the Hamlets. Just ask 80 year-old Brit Hume.
The headline of the day- Expelled congressman George Santos plans another House bid
@Bill Jempty: I just saw that. My only thought was, “Dawg… This guy is such a masochist.”
I think we’re going to be hearing claims that they jacked Joe up on something. That’s what I think is at least being insinuated in this tweet.
Ari Fleischer
@AriFleischer
No one is going to remember a single thing Biden says tonight. Everyone is going to remember how weirdly amped up he is and how bizarrely fast heâs speaking.
9:52 PM · Mar 7, 2024
@Michael Reynolds: A tangent: I realized long ago that liberals and progressives are as likely to be prejudiced and bigoted as anyone else – they just create different groups in ntheir heads that it is okay to stereotype. And, like the more widely acknowledged prejudice and bigotry, they feel that when they lump all members of a group into a whole and stereotype them negatively or positively, they are just speaking the obvious truth. In fact they, like “traditional” bigots, will insist they are not bigoted because it is the self obvious truth. They also imitate the traditionals in that they will offer partial passes in that group because for one of the “good ones”.
Brilliant legal strategy, donald, just brilliant.
Smarter than Deutsche Bank.
Oooopps.
Joe learned a few things during his years in the Senate. It seems #1 was how to make his opponents look stupid.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. I doubt the aircraft will ever be found.
@Bill Jempty:
There’s a push for a new search, mostly by the families of the people lost in the crash.
Usually one searches along the planned route, near the last known position. this was problematic form the start, as the plane clearly deviated from its flight plan. And the last known positions are not very reliable.
Given a few pieces of wreckage washed on shore at known times, and the time of the crash is known as well, it’s theoretically possible to use maps of ocean currents and meteorological data to estimate a crash area. But there are also many uncertainties involved, and the ocean is a large volume to search.
Absent a solid good lead on the crash location, I doubt anyone will undertake a new search.
@Kathy: Jalopnik has a piece today about a proposal to analyze the barnacles on some of the wreckage found to identify where the pieces have been. Sounds like it is a semi-vague proposal that might lead to something or might not.
“On the Democrat side, they wore white. On the Republican side, they were white.”
-Stephen Colbert.
@OzarkHillbilly: And a nice stinger is that when that clip ends and freeze-frames, the contrasting expressions on Kamala Harris and Mike Johnson is so precious.
Harris has a grin as befits someone who has just seen the opponents take the bait and get trapped. Mike Johnson, in contrast, looks like he’s thinking, “Of course those idiots don’t know bait when they see it. Of course they don’t know how to not make a bad situation worse.”
âŠand those were the idiots that elected me.
(disclaimerâŠthis is pure speculation. I can not read his mind.)
Somebody actually wrote an article titled, Are you always late? Hereâs how to be on time
OOOOO! Oooo! Ooooo! I know I know PickmePickmePickme P I C K M E!!!!!
Leave early.
Letter I sent to both of my Senators (Casey and Fetterman) yesterday:
Another month.
Another strong jobs report.
Ho hum… Thanks Brandon.
Joe Biden greatly exceeeded what were, to be sure, very low expectations. He did a very very well.
To me the the strange dark sh*t came when Senator Katie Britt of Alabama gave the dystopian Republican rebuttal to America.
Look, I know that Boomers *raises hand* (yes, I’m one) are supposed to be all that’s wrong with America today, but please, allow me to retort … Lauren Boebert, Majorie Taylor-Greene, Katie Britt, Matt Gaetz, James Comer … they’re not Boomers. You can’t blame all of us because of Donald Trump.
@MarkedMan:
It’s not a bad idea. the problem is area. Unless the barnacles are found on a very limited area of ocean, you still need to search a great deal of ocean bottom. Not to mention barnacles might have climbed on the wreckage piece en route.
@al Ameda:
In the age of Trump, it seems only fair that our side should occasionally reap the rewards of that gambit.
Another MAGA fraud.
Lawmaker who claims to be a retired rear admiral was actually demoted
Reports are Lardass posted a $91.6 million appeal bond on the Carroll judgment.
When he justifies posting a lower amount pleading”irreparable injury,2 and then goes an posts a bond in a higher amount that was required, Lardass is doing his poor best to become the Boy who Cried “Wolf.”
Unfortunately for him, his poor best is really good enough for such a simple task.
@Kathy: They don’t go into too much detail in the article, but what they do touch on is intriguing. It turns out that you can tell from the barnacles “layers” of growth things about water temperature and what might have been around it at different points during its growth. So for the wreckage mentioned, they can get an idea of what currents took it along and for how long. However the article mentioned two problems: there are barnacles on parts of the wreckage that would have been above the waterline if had been floating alone in the ocean, and secondly that the preliminary analysis gives a location 1500 miles away from the farthest out area considered to date.
@Kathy: He was required to post that amount, as interest accumulates during the appeal.
@Kathy: @MarkedMan:
The bond was underwritten by the company that did the appraisal of Trump’s condo in Trump Tower.
@MarkedMan:
It’s always more complicated than the news piece says. The issue still remains: how much does this reduce the search area?
Consider the Air France A330 that crashed in the south Atlantic was flying per flight plan, and there was a pretty good estimate of when it crashed. It still took two years to find it.
@MarkedMan:
Thanks. I should have known that.
Still claiming irreparable injury and then posting the bond anyway, makes Lardass look like a liar,
No Label
No Candidate
Secret Delegates
Secret Meetings
@Mister Bluster: I was wondering if they’ll do the old “unpledged electors” thing from the Dixiecrat era, where they don’t settle on a candidate before the election, and if they win a state, then the electors pick someone. Which of course means they’ll never pick anyone, because they’re not going to win a state.
More likely, they’re just going to find some random billionaire with no experience in public office.
@Mister Bluster:
Remember to vote for who’s behind door number two in November!
@Scott: Thanx for that. Now I have a smile on my face.
Things might be even worse for Boeing than I had imagined.
The testimony before the Senate this week was Boeing had failed to turn over the records of the work done on the blow-out door. The strong implication is they do not exist, and there were comments from Boeing employees they had been encouraged to skip record-keeping to reduce the known incidents of bad work.
All work on aircraft must be documented. If the reports turn out true, the regulators have the very existence of Boeing on their hands. They could ground all aircraft which have been manufactured under this policy.
@Kylopod: I hear George Santos and Bob Menendez are available. Maybe they should talk to Ken Paxton too.
@Kathy: Candidate Behind Door #2 might be The GOAT. Or just a goat.
It’s that time again: to bitch and moan and carry on about Daylight Savings Time and to leave things as they are once again.
I found it odd Rubio proposed, and managed to get unanimous consent on, permanent DST. Time change aside (jet lag without jet), what seems to bother most people is having the sun come up later in the morning. Naturally this would be even worse in fall and winter.
The piece explains more daylight later in the day stimulates more spending.
Figures.
Mexico adopted DST in the 90s, I think, but it was dropped last year. We went on permanent standard time. I can’t say I mind. But then, I didn’t suffer much from DST changes.
@Kathy: Speaking as one who’s life revolved around working as soon as the sun came up (or just before or just after) (and trust me, the closer we got to the time change, the more we worked in the dark) I like the time change. So, so very sorry some of you have difficulties making your mid morning coffee and bagel meetings but I still have all my fingers and toes.
Well, most of them anyway.
@OzarkHillbilly: if you keep them in jars it doesnât really count as âhaving all your fingers and toesâ
@OzarkHillbilly:
I see it like this:
Keeping DST will piss a lot of people off.
Changing to permanent DST will piss a lot of people off.
Changing to permanent Standard Time will piss a lot of people off.
So, a lot of people will be angry no matter what gets done, or even if nothing gets done. But the amounts of pissed off people is not the same for each scenario. Ideally we find the one that angers the lowest number of people and go with that.
Except for Kathy’s First law: Nothing is ever that simple.
There’s the matter of health effects. If permanent standard time is better overall for health, we should go with that. There are economic effects, as noted, but IMO health considerations should come ahead.
@Gustopher:..keep them in jarsâŠ
Maybe he put them under his pillow for the digit fairyâŠ