Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, October 7, 2023
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42 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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The headline of the day-Family Sentenced for Selling Bleach as ‘Miracle’ Covid-19 Cure
The seismic alert went off a little past 11 pm las night, and I slept through it.
It was a light 6-6.5 quake. It didn’t even wake me up.
At least 1,000 birds died from colliding with one Chicago building in one day
The Law of Unintended Consequences asserts itself.
Robert F Kennedy Jr announced as speaker at hard-right CPAC event
I suppose this calamitous clown car cavalcade could be entertaining to some people, but I’ll take a hard pass.
@Kathy: Always depends how far away and what your plate looks like.
Growing up, we would sometimes wake up to all the furniture having been displaced by a small amount because of a 4-6 that none of us felt. In spite of living 18 years in a well-known earthquake zone (Sweet Home Juan de Fuca), only 2 rumblers have left an imprint: a 6.2-ish that hit pretty close by that distinctly created a wave through our office (built on fill, not great in a quake), and the one out here on the East coast 10-ish years ago where I immediately went under the desk while everyone else was just massively confused.
Earthquakes are weird.
Isn’t this the kind of thing one would expect Israel’s vaunted intelligence services to see coming?
I guess gutting the legal system and protecting Bibi at all costs took too much effort.
Hamas just launched a massive attack from Gaza into Israel, gunning down civilians, taking hostages etc. Massive Israeli intelligence failure, caught by surprise.
Expect massive retaliation into Gaza by the IDF, already underway.
Went to a nice concert last night with my nails painted in 4 mismatched, very bright colors done by my 4 year old adopted grandkids. Gave them singing cat birthday cards for the birthday which they love and their dad hates. Did the same last year. He is getting revenge. Every time I come over he reminds the girls, 4 year old twins, to paint my nails. How can you say no? They look so intense when they do it. Made me think how much the world has changed. I wouldn’t have dared to go out in public wearing nail polish 50 years ago.
Steve
@steve:
My father wore a woven bracelet his grandson made for him.
@steve: Job well done Grandpa.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/07/illinois-congressional-map-gerrymandering/
This story focuses on Illinois, but there is a map included of which states are heavily gerrymandered, almost all of the heavily gerrymandered states are Republican controlled.
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is a very serious problem which Architects actually spend a bunch of time thinking about and trying to prevent.
I do know Donnie is very concerned about windmills killing birds.
List of bird-killers.
Cats – 2.4B
Buildings – 600M
Vehicles – 215M
Land-based Wind Turbines – 234K
Offshore Wind Turbines – N.A.
As someone who suffers from cat allergies – I say do away with the cats!!!
@Daryl: Yeah I know, that’s why I posted it up. We have bird feeders and 2 or 3 times every winter one will hit a window, no fatalities yet, as far as I could tell.
We had an indoor cat who was one hell of a mouser. Fortunately, she was not at all fond of being outdoors. On the few occasions where curiosity led her thru an open door or out a window, she would start howling as soon as she realized she could not get back in.
@Daryl:
The mass extermination of cats in the Middle Ages because they were supposedly witches’ familiars was an indirect cause of the plague!
A better approach is to require spaying and neutering and encouraging people to keep their cats indoors, or wear bells.
@Jen: My eldest sister had a white cat, deaf as a post. An Aces Ace at killing birds. Ma put a bell on it. Still killed birds. Had it declawed. Still killed birds. Put it on a tether. Still killed birds.
She threw up her hands in disgust. “If a belled all white cat on a tether with no claws or hearing, is able to get a bird, that is one stupid bird.”
@OzarkHillbilly: We had a 20 lb dark grey cat who would sit under the bird-feeder in plain sight and just wait. Birds such as cardinals, blue jays, and crows would never get caught. Other birds….? Well, let’s say that there are a lot of stupid birds out there.
(Cats seem to differ in as to what they like hunting. Our second cat was a great hunter of anything on four legs. Mice, rats, voles, shrews, rabbits-bigger-than-she-was—nothing fazed her. But she absolutely refused to catch birds (aside from the ones dive-bombing her))
Hakeem Jeffries wants to do things bipartisan:
Gift link:
“WaPo_Gift_Link”
@Bill Jempty: That story had the inevitable beginning, “A Florida man”.
@charontwo: Something something Democrats won’t negotiate with Republicans something something bothsides.
@Grumpy Realist: Years ago there were a pair of books, What Do Dogs Want followed by What Do Cats Want The gist of the dog book was that they were pack animals who wanted to find other dogs, sniff their butts, and decide where they stood in the pecking order. What do cats want? Mice. End of story. The gist was that cats were such well evolved hunters they could feed themselves in an hour or so a day and spend the rest of their time sleeping.
@DK:
What is that a paraphrase of? I do not see the connection to what Jeffries says. (or to anything I posted).
@DK: I keep wondering if the supposedly liberal MSM are ever going to figure out that Republicans are OK with the current state of affairs. Beclowning themselves may have some minor electoral consequences, but as long as they have gerrymandering, the filibuster, and the Court, they’re OK with that. The Gaetzes and MTGs are happy with doing nothing as long as they aren’t primaried on the right. At the other extreme the Kochs, DeVoses, Uihleins, etc. want congress to do nothing. If congress did anything there’s always the chance it would cost the Billionaire Boys Club money or regulate their corporations. I see the Club for Growth (sic) has said they won’t support any Speaker candidate that wants to change the current motion to vacate rule. They like it like this. And NYT, WAPO, etc. can’t figure out this isn’t their fathers’ Republican Party.
@gVOR10:
Cats are obligate carnivores. Dogs are omnivorous.
@gVOR10:
That would require analysis, which journalists no longer do. My reading of Dr. Joyner’s recent comments is that he approves of this — he feels that pointing out to America that Republicans and their bankers are content with dysfunction belongs on the dismissible editorial pages, not the actionable information pages.
@gVOR10:
As with the map I linked upthread, there are a couple of states gerrymandered by Democrats but many including FL and TX and GA gerrymandered by Republicans. Without the gerrymandering, the Dems would have easy and clear control of the House.
@charontwo: Some days ago James did a post contesting that there’s a Republican, or at least bothsides, bias in the MSM. The story you link is a perfect example of the growing Republican bias at WAPO. Rather than belabor details, I’ll refer readers to the first few most liked comments on the story at WAPO, which nicely hit the obvious issues. Except I didn’t see anyone note the absence of any mention of the 2010 REDMAP project.
This story is also a prime example of what’s getting to be a pet peeve of mine. The MSM no longer write news stories. They write long, long essays about the news. Did I mention that the story is long? Do they really think anybody reads these whole things?
@gVOR10:
I wonder, though, if the bias (headlines, etc.) sugarcoats the stories in a way that gets Republicans to read them.
Not that it matters, most Republicans are in an echo chamber where they reject information that challenges their priors.
@charontwo: If you’re suggesting that as a real reason, no? If you’re saying it’s a story the authors and editors tell themselves, maybe.
And you’re right, it wouldn’t change any minds. You are right to say “echo chamber”. Were you referencing the comment here, a few days ago, that linked to a paper making a distinction between an “epistemic bubble”, which does not include outside information, and an “echo chamber”, that actively excludes outside information.
@gVOR10:
The paper on echo chambers v. epistemic bubbles was my link, so typical GOP base people are echo chambered.
Here are the links again:
https://philpapers.org/archive/NGUECA.pdf
The aeon piece is a shorter version of what is in the pdf.
https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult
@charontwo:
If you’re a true MAGA, you eschew all commie globalist mainstream media and get all your news from truly reliable sources such as The Gateway Pundit, OAN, and The Conservative Tree House.
The fabulous Simone Biles has captured her 21st title.
Some excerpts from the Public Notice Substack:
Bottom line: Building a party around a personality cult has problems, more so if the personality is a loon.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I am unsure how to interpret this, but my new girlfriend’s cat, a renowned mouser, leaves the rear ends of her prey on the windshield of my car, most typically on the windshield wipers which recess into a well so I didn’t notice there were two there until I turned on the wipers the first time this happened. Nothing like seeing dead mouse/rat body parts being smeared across your field of view, I can report. I’m pretty sure the cat does not hate me, she has played with the string I dangled for her and cuddled up to sleep next to me a time or two.
@dazedandconfused: oh, that’s standard. As a kid, one of my jobs was disposing of the furry Somme our cat deposited on the doorstep each morning. The bottom half of mice was her speciality.
@Grumpy Realist: Well, you know, feathers caught in the teeth or halfway down the old pipe.
Yuck.
@dazedandconfused: She is saying, “I love you soooooo much I am sharing half of this delectable mouse with you. Can I get belly scritchins now?”
Donald Trump drops from the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. Here’s what’s changed.
Awwwwwwwww…. Pobrecito. That annoying squeaky little sound you hear is the world’s tiniest violin. Or maybe it’s the sound of a ketchup bottle hitting the MAL dining room wall.
@dazedandconfused:
The cat was just sharing its prey with you. Feel honored.
My cat Felix was being dive bombed by Blue Jays but that cat was being acting asleep when in fact it had one eye partially opened and when one bird came down he just barely missed getting it with one of his paws. My Mom or Dad said Felix would get one sooner or later.
A couple of days later, Felix came home with a bird in its mouth and gave it to my mother.
@charontwo: I was sarcastically paraphrasing claims that Democrats aren’t reaching out to Republicans in an effort to negotiate and compromise. Jeffries’s efforts are yet more evidence to the contrary.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Evolution in action?
One of my favorite things my idiot baby boy* does is to come flat out racing to whatever room we are in and let out this just absolutely bloodcurdling scream, like Human loud, and then just barf. He then just saunters away like we just inconvenienced him.
*he was the runt of the litter that was born in our bushes. He was like 6 Oz for the longest time. I had to feed him with a syringe cause his siblings would crowd him out. He was the only one we kept (dumb). Now he does this thing where he lets me grab him by the face and he just melts.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Probably true. I was assigned to take care of the cat when she went on a week long business trip. Terrified of what the fallout would be if the cat ran away, I fed her real Bumble Bee tuna and roast chicken every night. She’s just trying to return the favor…