Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, February 27, 2021
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220 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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WNBA announces sale of Atlanta Dream from ex-senator Kelly Loeffler
And now they can dream again.
Also, I just really, really, really like the sound of “ex-senator Kelly Loeffler.”
But but but antifa.
Police: Search history shows man set car on fire before reporting it stolen
‘I hope I make it’: 7-year-old Alabama girl selling lemonade to fund her own brain surgeries
@Teve:
Bootstrappy! American Exceptionalism!
@Teve:
Makes detective work more efficient.
Yesterday I got my first stick (Pfizer) at Ravens Stadium in Baltimore. This was a trial run day of 500 people and there was way more space and staff than they needed, but they will be doing 6000/day on Monday and given what I saw I have to believe they could do multiples of that if they had the supplies. It’s in the heart of the city (10 minute walk from me), convenient to public transportation and, being a football stadium, oceans of parking and easy access from two highways.
I have to admit I got emotional when I saw the preparation and the competence and enthusiasm of the hundreds of people working there, civilian and National Guard. It was well organized and planned, and it reminded me of what we Americans are capable when we let decent people who give a sh*t get to work. I continue to marvel at the amount of weight that lifted from my shoulders when Trump and his Trash were evicted from office.
As a side note, I’ve been by that stadium a number of times as well as Camden yards and wondered why they were going to the trouble of keeping all the walkways, access roads and parking lots plowed and salted. Then I realized these are giant meeting places with all the access to transportation and supplies, located in the densest part of a city. Part of the reason for putting them there was to provide a place to deal with mass emergencies, somewhere with tons of both open and covered space and areas where helicopters could take off and land, emergency supplies could be staged and so forth. I’m sure when all the Stadium discussions were raging, it never came up in the public eye, but there were city, state and federal planners thinking about these possibilities who were involved in the site selection and design. I’m sure there are thick plans in various offices outlining a hundred different contingencies. This is the difference between executive and legislative experience – executive being about actions and plans and legislation being merely enacting laws to ensure these things can be done. It’s why I am always skeptical of presidential candidates with only legislative experience.
http://www.cnn.com/2021/02/26/politics/fbi-identify-suspect-sicknick/index.html
In addition to the golden idol of Trump they have, CPAC’s main stage looks exactly like a Nazi symbol.
https://twitter.com/hopeformaybe/status/1365433108456169475?s=20
I’d put the chance of this being a coincidence at somewhere around…zero.
One long-term symptom I either got from Covid (or it developed independently and concurrently which could happen but is unlikely) is persistent dry mouth and tongue. Seemingly slightly inflamed tongue.
I hydrate a lot. 3 liters of water a day at least and 1.5 liters of tea, if not double that. That has not changed. In fact, the water has increased because of the dry mouth.
That, and a bifurcated sleep schedule where my main sleep is 5-6 hours and a 1-2 hour nap. Sometimes two naps.
The persistent dry mouth / tongue thing is annoying and strange more than problematic. Fairly easy to cope. The sleep schedule thing is fine too because I can sleep whenever I feel like it, but notable.
Thankfully, none else of the long-haul symptoms.
I was notably dopey / foggy during the depths. November was not a fun month; thankfully I slept through 2/3 of it.
Where your mask!
Republicans kept a House Rules Committee hearing open for 10 hours yesterday so that they could complain that Nancy Pelosi passed the coronavirus relief bill “in the dead of night”. House GOP saying this all over Twitter this morning.
They’re also coordinated in calling it “the Blue State Bailout” which is just a dumb lie as per their normal M.O.
@MarkedMan:
A friend of mine is a very senior person in the city planning office. She is always a super interesting person to talk with.
The logistics of running a city are fascinating. Those guys are super into heat maps gauging where people are and how we move about. They work with the Transportation folks to determine the priorities on street plowing. It’s so intricate.
She is also way into gaming, specifically granular city builders.
She has a very interesting job and she’s super cool.
4 min CNN video of Trump supporters insisting he’s coming back in March, QAnon, 1/6 was antifa and no Trump supporters were arrested etc
@Teve:
Blue states are gonna bail out the entirely foreseeable outcome of a highly deregulated Texas energy system to the tune of ~ $50 billion or so because there was a market disincentive to properly winterize and implement standard practice weather event mitigation. Competing firms were incented to be as cheap as possible and damn and ignore the downside.
Libertarianism ain’t no way to run an energy grid. The Invisible Hand just slapped Texas in the face. Hopefully, it is a wake-up slap, but given state politics, likely not.
TIL: when Spain was conquering South America in the 16th century and looking for gold, one of the things they did find was large amounts of platinum, but because they didn’t know what it was, a bunch of the conquistadors starting using it to make counterfeit gold coins. This became such a problem that Spain passed a law that lasted for 100 years requiring any platinum they found to be dumped into the ocean.
@Teve:
I remember when Covid was a blue state / big city problem.
I.e., a D problem. And nowadays an R would not help a D on fire but to piss on them.
If you were ever inclined to give any credence at all to CPAC, this should dissuade you: One of the speakers is Jay Aeba, who, as the head of a Japanese organization called Happy Science, claims his group could channel Donald Trump’s spirit protector.
I have no idea what Aeba plans to discuss.
@Teve:
I proposed a theory here that the most dickish Rs win most primaries.
It is performative dickishness.
See the debate on the Equality Act or Rachel Levine’s confirmation hearing.
Rs are rewarded for being performatively dickish. It energizes their base. Competition to be alpha dick.
@Teve:
If Antifa was one hundred percent of the insurrectionists, how do they explain the people (like the realtor from Texas) who defended themselves by saying they were only doing what Trump told them to do.
@CSK:
I recall bits of the Old Testament where worshipping a false golden idol got your ass smited. Or smote. Smoten.
@CSK: Crisis Actor!
@CSK:
Right wingers are so in love with the concept of false-flag operations they should put a ring on it. They see it everywhere where it causes them to potentially suffer cognitive dissonance. Fellow RW does a foul deed? FALSE FLAG!
They read one or two Tom Clancy books and think they have it all figured out. Clancy writes worse dialog than George Lucas and that’s a really low bar.
@Teve:
The thing about crisis actors is that it never seems to occur to those who believe in them how many people would have to be in on the hoax. Take Sandy Hook. Not only would the victims, and their parents, other relatives, and friends have had to have been actors, but so would the police, EMTs, reporters, the personnel at the various hospitals to which the victims were taken, the funeral home employees…
How do they account for those? Actors all? Talk about a cast of thousands.
@de stijl: Interesting that your sleep seemed to change post-COVID. There’s reasonable evidence from the historical record that biphasic sleep was the norm in pre-industrial societies. And there’s even some experimental support too.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10607034/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11559786/
Also, the new book Why We Sleep has gotten a lot of praise, but it is rife with problems. Caveat emptor.
The Hurricane Sandy Relief Act got 32 “no” votes in the Senate. All Republican.
@Mimai:
I have read on this (prior to Covid).
Big sleep and little sleep with a little nosh in between.
I have a theory that it relates to the time before electricity and northern latitudes where you have very long nights in winter. Long enough to not be able to sleep through.
In an environment where most daily activities require light and it is dark for 16 hours in a row you’re gonna get variations on the 16 hours up 8 hours asleep pattern.
The 16/8 pattern works fine at the equator and less so nearer the poles.
The Douche Crew…
Out of a school of thousands (?) he can only find 6 people to support him.
A friend of mine in high school just naturally started doing that and we all including him thought it was weird until we found out that it used to be the norm.
@MarkedMan: Your vaccination center will be doing 6000 a day, our vaccination center did 1000 total and is closed again awaiting a shipment. Living in a Metro has it’s advantages.
@Mimai:
My bout was in November and I live at a fairly Northern latitude.
Perhaps I will revert a 16/8 as we see more daytime sun.
@de stijl: Your theory is exactly the basis for the experimental manipulations in the lab studies. This notion certainly adds a broader perspective to discussions about light pollution.
That said, despite the apparent adaptive advantage of a biphasic schedule, it’s not clear whether that is “optimal” in current circumstances. I, for one, have never been a napper. Makes me feel like rubbish afterwards. Individual variability – within some normative boundaries – seems particularly relevant for sleep.
@Mimai: Relatedly, Dave Eagleman has proposed the “defensive activation theory” to explain why we dream. In short, it’s to stimulate the neurons of the visual cortex so as to prevent them from being taken over by adjacent senses (which remain active during sleep). Jury is still out on this but it does follow from our increased understanding of just how quickly brain plasticity occurs.
@Mimai:
I am also mostly retired and single and live alone. I have zero attachments that require me to be awake at any one time.
And a night owl.
When I was working, getting up at 6:30 was a major issue. My peak performing hours are evening.
@de stijl: Ha! You’re like a perpetual teenager.
@OzarkHillbilly:
The total enrollment of Patrick Henry College, as of 2015, was 304.
@Mikey:
Your link does not show a very vivid picture. Here is a better view:
https://hackwhackers.blogspot.com/2021/02/who-did-nazi-this-coming.html
@OzarkHillbilly:
Dude went to Patrick Henry for one term before flunking out. He made a very big impression in a very short time span.
If you have a choice of colleges why would anyone pick Patrick Henry? Or Liberty U? It baffles me. I want a deliberately truncated education that omits the interesting stuff. Gah!
Who would hire that “student”?
If you are a RWer and want an internship in DC there is a pipeline.
Other than that, it’s pointless, and a resume embarrassment.
@Mimai:
Some years ago when I was in the Air Force, I went on a deployment but ended up in a place somewhat distant from the rest of the unit, with just me and one co-worker to run a 24-hour operation. 12 on, 12 off. The 12 off was BO-RING. So he and I ended up sleeping in four-hour chunks, with a few hours in between to eat/shower/exercise and then assist the other guy while he was on shift.
My experience was really positive, actually–even though I was only sleeping four hours at a time, I didn’t feel tired while awake. My co-worker said the same thing.
Now I have bi-phasic sleep but not on purpose, I just lose sleep in the middle of the night because I have to get up to pee and can’t fall back asleep. That’s rather less pleasant.
@Mimai:
I know!
It’s freakin awesome.
@OzarkHillbilly: Patrick Henry, founded in 2000, started with 92 students. 22 years later, the total is 304. (Wikipedia) Not a big place. But that six is all he could find to endorse him isn’t very surprising to me. He graduated from a questionable school accredited by a questionable accreditation group.
@Mikey:
Alaska?
@OzarkHillbilly: @de stijl:
I’m in the middle of reading this:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116623/sexual-assault-patrick-henry-college-gods-harvard
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Even Liberty University knows it’s sketchy: [from the previous source] “Liberty gained TRACS accreditation in September 1984, but resigned its accreditation on November 6, 2008.[18][19]”
@Mikey: Your experience tracks with what I’ve heard from a lot of vets who are deployed to, er, unusual places. Not the exact details of 4 hour chunks, but the general notion of carving up sleep time (to manage boredom and/or keep yourself alive) and finding it surprisingly easy, even preferable.
If you don’t mind me asking, were you supplied with pharmaceuticals to help manage sleep/wake?
@de stijl:
Back when I used to work in a hospital labs I knew a guy in Valdosta whose parents told him that they would pay for college but only if he went to Bob Jones University, so he did and majored in biology, and when he applied to the Masters program at FSU they told him that they would accept him but he had about two years of remedial biology to do, because he didn’t know jack shit about evolution, which is the foundation of the subject.
Still nothing about Andrew Cuomo?
He’s in hot water about things we knew of months ago…and now he’s got some “me2” issues. Are they trying to just wish this stuff away?
@charon: Thanks for the second picture. I was wondering what I was supposed to be seeing.
@CSK:
Wow! Fuck me, that is awful.
I heartily approve of the DTR talk but with waay wider parameters and within a 2021 understanding of relationships. Defining a relationship is a good thing.
Establishing a relationship where the female is the “helpmeet” and baby factory is full-on The Handmaid’s Tale.
Everything else is reaally spooky and scary. Women are required to prevent men from “stumbling”? That is disturbed thinking.
Very good link. Thanks! My opinion of Patrick Henry College went down significantly after reading that, and it was prior to today as the worst place you could ever go for post-secondary education.
@charon:
Is the symbol on the lecterns? Because I’m still not seeing it if it isn’t.
@de stijl:
I’m glad you enjoyed–if that’s the word I want–the article. I found it as disturbing as you did. Dean Sandra sounds like a real piece of work.
The parents of young women sent to Patrick Henry have the benefit of knowing that if they are sexually exploited it will be by a good christian young man.
And it was her fault.
@Bill: How come all you Trumpies ever want to talk about is Cuomo and none of the other investigations in at least a dozen other states regarding nursing homes and long-term care facilities in those states that also mishandled COVID? It’s almost like it’s….politically motivated or something. 😉
@Mimai:
Speaking of dreaming, I had remarkably vivid dreams while I was sick.
Most dreams fade after a few minutes of waking. These Covid would stay with me all day. There were intricate.
All made up in my sleeping head. Apparently, I am a born storyteller that nails the details. Also, it appears my brain likes twist endings.
Fever dreams you can recall are very interesting.
@CSK: obviously a fifth columnist, comrades.
@Bill:
What’s the correct term for someone with an uncontrollable deflection reflex? I propose “whatabot”.
@Bill:
Just out of curiosity, do you find it equally disturbing that Trump has been accused of forcing his attentions on over two dozen women? That’s he’s actually boasted of kissing them against their will, groping them, and, in his inimitable words, “grabbing them by the pussy”?
I should add that I hold no brief for Andrew Cuomo.
@Mimai:
It is my understanding of studies where subjects are in a controlled setting with no windows and no clocks, their sleep patterns go wildly off the 16/8 pattern.
One could hypothesize the 16/8 pattern is a cultural adaptation to work for pay capitalism.
@CSK:
It just shows how powerful George Soros is.
@DrDaveT: he’s full of it, anyway, there are stories about the allegations at NBC news, the Washington Post, the New York post, CNN, Newsweek, NPR, CBS, Fox, The Guardian…
@MarkedMan:
Were any of them Trans? Because you know if they were Trans that might spoil the whole experience.
@CSK:
The floor of the stage is the symbol.
@DrDaveT:
Instant threadwinner. Congrats! Theta’s definitely the neologism of the year.
@charon:
Ah. Thanks.
@gVOR08:
And not one, not a single one, of these thousands of Soros-controlled actors has ever once been tempted to spill the beans. Right. Got it.
@CSK:
As for the Trump manikin, a suit jacket plus red white and blue shorts and flip-flops footwear – someone is being trolled, the comparisons to a “golden calf” are a bit silly as I see it.
Good picture here:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/cpac-in-orlando-looks-to-be-the-saddest-stupidest-cpac-yet?ref=topic
@Loviatar: What are you going on about?
@charon:
I don’t think the Trump supporters are entirely happy with the golden manikin.
As for the floor in the shape of a Nazi symbol…I think someone is overreacting here, or reading too much into the meaning of the design. There’s so much else about CPAC that’s reprehensible, such as the line-up of freaks and charlatans as speakers, culminating with Trump himself as the main event, that I can’t get too upset about what’s probably an accident.
@charon: That stage seems designed to break someone’s leg. I’d be ok with that.
@de stijl: Re your dreams, a hypothesis: those who are particularly vivid dreamers have particularly plastic brains (at least in the areas adjacent to the visual cortex). The vividness is a defense against the ever-ready encroaching neighbors.
Re the studies on sleep patterns, your understanding comports with mine. Though I do think the shift in the direction of the 16/8 pattern (or something close) pre-dated “work for pay capitalism”…which I consider an accelerant as opposed to an initiator.
@CSK: It’s such a bizarre stage that I don’t think it can be an accident in the traditional sense of the word — that pure of heart people accidentally designed a new fun stage design that happens to look like a Nazi symbol in current use by white supremacists.
It’s likely that they accidentally hired a white supremacist who did it on purpose, and it’s obscure enough that no one noticed. How they didn’t notice that it’s just a terrible design for a stage, I don’t know. If they accidentally hired a neonazi dance troop, they are going to be falling off that dumbass stage.
‘It’s Donald Trump’s party’: How the former president is building a political operation to cement his hold on the GOP
Heh indeed.
Should we go easy on Bill? Sure sounds like he’s been cancelled and for no good reason at all.
@Gustopher:
As soon as you said “fun stage design” and “neonazi dance troupe,” I wanted to link to the Youtube video of “Springtime for Hitler.’
@Mister Bluster: We should go easy on Bill because he seems to have a massive crack cocaine problem.
Man there is no way the shape of that stage is an accident.
@Teve:
Then they’re even stupider and more vicious than I thought they were.
@Teve:
Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
Speaking of which, it turns out Charlie Murphy’s story on the Prince pick-up basketball game vs. Eddie Murphy and crew was spot on true. Prince and company waxed their butts.
I loved Charlie Murphy’s stories.
Gonna go watch old Chappelle Show clips now.
@Teve:
Even if it was accidental this time, now that it’s been pointed out, we’re going to start seeing it everywhere. Much like the “okay symbol” and white supremacy, even if it started out as a hoax, it quickly became a real thing.
@Stormy Dragon:
Well, if it “owns the libs” (God, that expression annoys the hell out of me) then it’s worth it, isn’t it?
@Gustopher:
@Teve:
I knew a dude who was the roaster at my fave coffee joint. Went by Tyr.
Met him at my local and he was smart and interesting, but weirdly obsessive about guns. We shared some beers and gabbed as you do in that situation.
Seemed a decent enough fella tho the gun thing was weird. He said he had two AKs named [german name] and [german name].
(Actually, one was an AK variant and the other a SKS variant.)
One day I saw an image on his tee shirt. It bugged me. I knew I had seen it before.
About a month later it occurred it was a symbol used by Nazis. I looked it up. It devilishly hard to search for images using text. Found it.
He was one of those hiding in plain sight guys. Fucking Nazi gifted me a pound of primo Blue Mountain and I drank it before I knew he was a Nazi.
I hate Nazis.
@CSK: if it annoys you, than it owned the lib.
@de stijl: if a Nazi offered me Jamaican Blue Mountain, I would have to take it.
@Teve: Me too! I used to play soccer with a Jamaican dude in college. Every time he’d go back home, he’d return with the good stuff. Even I, as a young lad with unrefined tastes at the time, could appreciate the gloriousness of that stuff. Kona coffee ain’t too shabby either.
@Gustopher:
Anyone whose highest aspiration entails “owning” me needs help. Desperately.
What strikes me as absolutely pathetic about these people is that they’ll seize on the feeblest example of a riposte on the part of someone like Matt Gaetz and use it as an example of how his dazzling wit “owned the libs.”
@CSK:
The really funny part is how much the “own the libs” thing is driven by the alt-right’s compulsive desire for “the libs'” approval.
@CSK: 304… total… I put the question mark there because it occurred to me that it might be a small college with a total enrollment between 1 and 2 thousand. It never occurred to me the total would be below 500. Talk about small ponds, easy to be the big fish there.
@Teve:
I did accept. I did not know at the time. That was some fine ass coffee. Well roasted too, man knew his job. Gotta give him that.
Had I known then I would’ve turned him down. I don’t like bad mojo shit. Bad follows bad. Had I known, I would’ve declined.
At the time I was stoked. Buy a guy $15 bucks of beer, get $50 bucks of perhaps the best coffee in the world.
I know karma is bullshit but a huge chunk of my brain believes it to be true. I’ve learned to trust that chunk. The pre-frontal reasoning bit has caused me more problems than the gut-feeling bit.
Ignore gut-feelings at your peril.
@Bill: He’s being savaged by both left and right but I guess you you wouldn’t have noticed with your head up OANN’s ass.
@Stormy Dragon:Yeah, they’re a lot like Trump in that respect. He effects to hate the NYTimes, but if the Times were ever to write a favorable piece about him, he’d die of happiness. And probably swear his undying allegiance to the Democratic Party.
@Gustopher:
Very likely an inadvertent thing, choosing someone to be responsible for the design who would do that – but it shows the kind of people they are likely to be working with.
@de stijl:
Tyr was an old Norse god, a war god. Maybe just into that culture.
@charon:
Tyr is the old spelling for Thor. I knew that then.
Nazis have been trying to appropriate Nordic mythology forever.
I reject that. I hate that. I want it reclaimed and purged of that taint.
—
I highly recommend Heilung (Healing). Wardruna.
Tyr – Tuesday
Odin – Wednesday
Thor – Thursday
Freya – Friday
@de stijl: Personal experience: I used to do expedition caving spending a week underground. After a couple days everybody’s sleep patterns got all screwed up and no 2 person’s matched up. I never brought a clock, so I’d have no idea what time it was. We’d survey/explore until we were tired then go back to camp, eat dinner and go to sleep. I always brought a book so I’d have something to read after I woke up and waited for the other’s to. It would usually be hours. When working if we took a break, I’d nap. Fall asleep in about 2 mins laying right in the middle of the trail.
Went with some cave photographers once and they gave me copies of all their pics. Damned near every pic of me I was asleep.
“Here I am sleeping in the Chandelier Ballroom.”
“Here I am sleeping in Ghost town.”
“Here I am sleeping at the 3 Amigos.”
It was more than a little funny.
@CSK: Well I don’t know about anybody else but I get my Soros check on the 1st of every month.
Okaaaaaaay…. If that’s where you’re going what is the innocent explanation for the stage being built that way? Because I’ll be damned if I can come up with one. I’ve seen a few stages over the years, but I’ve never seen one designed to have inattentive people fall off in any direction but straight backwards.
Heilung In Madjan live LIFA.
Or Alfadhirhaiti.
Or Norupa.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I have mine direct-deposited.
@CSK: I like being able to hold it, cash it, take it home and swim in my marble Jacuzzi full of $50s.
@OzarkHillbilly: It might be big enough to mostly prevent that. We haven’t been treated to videos of people falling of the Nazi iconography stage yet.
I’m really hoping it’s just yet.
Oh, god, Trump. How is he going to get on that thing? Will they wheel up a ramp? Little stairs? And he walks around a lot when he speaks…
I’ve been good. I’ve been avoiding exposure for a year, wearing a mask, donating to food banks… if I’ve built up any karma points, I’d like to cash them in now.
@de stijl:
Tyr and Thor are two completely different Norse gods. Although the names look similar in modern English, they actually look nothing alike in Old Norse (“Týr” and “Þórr” respectively). Interestingly, Tyr derives from the proto-Germanic “*Tīwaz”, which literally means “the god”, so he may have been some sort of syncretic import that played a more central role in some other pre-Norse religious tradition.
@Gustopher: It’s big enough, but knowing me, if I was on a stage built like that? I’d probably get so worked up about whatever my topic was I’d forget, be walking all around it emphasizing this that and the other, take a step back and WHOOOpps! I can almost guarantee I’d be the idiot to fall off it, and I’m not the only idiot in this world.
I’m willing to bet a beer that the Golden Trump Idol is from Borat or equivalent. Any takers?
@OzarkHillbilly:
I had to look at it a while before I saw the resemblance.
I have an instinctive dislike of putting sinister interpretations on ostensibly innocuous objects and events, because to do so is a characteristic of the alt-right. Indeed, it’s the defining feature of QAnon. Every goddamn thing to them has sinister import.
@OzarkHillbilly:
You are harder-core than me.
I was a member of a group of urban explorers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Loved it.
Sierra Club rules applied always. No exceptions.
Underground was best. Bring good gear. Full body waders. You’re gonna trudge thru some shit before you hit the good stuff. All of it was technically illegal. We were trespassers in a strict definition. The city owns most of the underground and civilian exploration is forbidden.
Some of the folk were also spelunkers. I had explored the caves beneath St. Paul’s bluffs. To the extant that me and Bobcat decided that it was a fine place to play a game of Risk with a lantern and a lot of beer.
I begged on to one of their actual spelunking trips. It was awesome, but in one very tight passage, I found out I have latent claustrophobia.
It was so strange. I saw person transit that narrow passage. I saw her light in front of me. I knew she made it. I could have backed out anytime. My brain just flipped out anyway. I fronted as if I were okay, but I wasn’t. The tightness and the thought of the rock and dirt overhead just flooded. Nearly a panic attack.
Gotta leave that to people who can handle it.
That weekend was very cool and I’m glad I did it, but no more tight passages underground for me please. Once does me fine.
@MarkedMan:
Apparently it was made in Mexico by an American expat artist named Tommy Zegan.
@Gustopher: that would be a hell of a headline: “Trump Falls Off CPAC Stage, Hits Head, Dies”
@de stijl: Pro tip: Cavers rescue spelunkers. 😉 We don’t go spelunking, we go caving. 🙂
Rule #1 of caving: At any time, any person can say, “No.” If they aren’t comfortable doing something, you don’t try to talk them into it, and you sure as shit don’t shame them for it. I almost got crushed by a Buick sized boulder in a little cave in South STL. It flipped end over end, picked me up, slammed me against the wall, and tried to make me squish. For years afterwards I got a little squirrely any time I got around big breakdown. A couple times I said, “Nope. Not me, not here, not now.” and nobody ever said anything except, “OK.” I got better after a few years, but even now it makes me uneasy.
2,352,000 vaccine doses administered yesterday.
@OzarkHillbilly:
No shame on them.
No one criticized me but me. Everybody was super cool and chill. Dude took a bit longer than normal – no worries. No one said a word.
I had no idea about the distinction between caver and spelunker.
@CSK: He gave an interview where he didn’t quite say he was a Trump supporter, and his other art seems to be of the Andy Warhol famous people variety. So I don’t know. I’m leaning toward either crazy artist or troll. And given that I suspect many “legitimate” artists of being trolls, I’m not sure that really means anything.
two counties in North Dakota are blocking a wind power project to try to keep a failing coal plant active
@MarkedMan:
I figured with the discomfort you displayed towards the Trans community on The Equality Act thread you might feel uncomfortable if any of the soldiers administering the vaccine was Trans. Or is it only Trans athletes you have a problem with.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I loved everything about that trip. I always enjoy camping and exploration.
Out of 3 days, 45 seconds really sucked and the ten minutes after sucked also when I was totally safe and I pretended I was fine and not freaking out.
Measured breathing helps. I’m a pro at that when I’m not having a panic attack.
It was so unexpected.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4250390/How-far-right-hides-new-symbols-hate-PLAIN-SIGHT.html
Depictions at the link
https://twitter.com/Gittelrock/status/1365448388628549635
@de stijl:
Wind power isn’t killing coal. What’s killing coal is that natural gas costs much less per BTU than coal does. One interesting thing is that a lot of anti-fracking activism is actually be funded by coal and oil companies because they’re hoping limits on natural gas production will make coal and oil economically viable again.
@Stormy Dragon:
I screwed that up. I always thought Tyr was for Thor and not Tiw. You have shifted years of incorrect assumptions. Thanks.
@Stormy Dragon:
I think you mis-tagged me on the death of coal.
No worries, I have stupider things very recently.
@de stijl: “He was one of those hiding in plain sight guys. Fucking Nazi gifted me a pound of primo Blue Mountain and I drank it before I knew he was a Nazi.”
You know what you call a pound of Blue Mountain given to you by a Nazi? A pound of Blue Mountain…
The serif modification of the Odal rune on a German uniform:
https://twitter.com/parkerplotkin/status/1365669225235415044
@Mimai:
The one time I was in Hawaii, I had a chance to visit a plantation in Kona and taste some of the not-generally-exported stuff. Wow. Even better, though, was some peaberry coffee from Oahu, which I have only seen once stateside.
@MarkedMan:
The USA flag hot pants remind me of roller disco fashion choices.
Can’t Stop The Music
Disco Stu
Speedo guy from Bob’s Burgers
I find the golden Trump statue fascinating. It’s very evocative. Super creepy.
@wr:
You have a point. It’s damn good coffee. Plus, I do pour-over. I ain’t no schlub.
Had I known I woulda turned it down anyways. Principles.
He was a very good roaster. Knew his craft.
@de stijl:
We were in Germany, running a small communications site.
@Teve:
I have always enjoyed the phrase “cutting off your nose to spite your face”.
It’s so specific.
@Mimai:
No, nothing except the fine German beer…haha…I did use an eye covering during the day because the curtains in the room weren’t good at blocking light. Otherwise I just fell into a cycle. We were only there for a couple weeks, so I was surprised how quickly I adjusted to the split sleep schedule.
When i switched from coffee to loose-leaf earl grey it was convenient that my French press worked for tea too.
This is really good:
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/02/27/as-cpac-goes-so-goes-the-gop-and-its-not-looking-good/
@Teve:
Loose-leaf is best tea. Earl Grey ain’t my bag but be you and drink what you want.
Lotsa folks swear by PG Tips, but I am unconvinced.
I get shit too. I like Twining’s Irish Breakfast as a go-to. Hmm Malty.
Nowadays, I do one pour-over coffee enough for two mugs and then tea the rest of the day.
@DrDaveT: I was not familiar with peaberry coffee beans. Color me intrigued. I travel to HI a couple times per year (pre-COVID) and will be sure to check it out next time. Thanks!
@de stijl: I brew, sugar, and chill it, so I have Earl Grey sweet tea 😀
By the way according to the people at America’s Test Kitchen, of all the supermarket brands you can get, Twinings is the best.
@wr:
I have been to Blue Mountain.
It’s very off path for Jamaican tourists (well, it was then. Today there likely specific tours).
You know when you are in-country when no one is trying to sell you stuff or give you cornrows. It was just folks. Working jobs, raising kids.
Tourism oriented cities and their citizens in the Caribbean get distorted economies. Higglers & vendors. Not my scene.
@de stijl:
I’ve read that they deliberately cast Idris Elba as Heimdall in the Thor movies to dissociate them from the neo-Nazis.
@Teve:
I adore ATK. The one never fail show I watch every week is America’s Test Kitchen on Saturday. Cook’s Country too. Boo if repeats. Boo, I say.
Milk Street can bite my shiny metal butt.
Roger Stone showed outside the CPAC venue today to dance (literally) to a tune about “patriots” storming the Capitol (I guess he doesn’t believe they were Antifa) and denounce the CPAC attendees as “neocon losers.” He made an exception for Trump, whom he called “the greatest president of all time.”
“CPAC looks like one of those high school assemblies where they try to make abstinence sound cool.”
-ed burmilla
@de stijl: Milk Street is fine. But if I’m about to make something for the first time or I don’t make it well, I YouTube ATK making the dish. This afternoon I made their baked potato. So, so good.
@gVOR08:
Well played.
Butt-hurt Star Wars “fans” are way up the list of worst people on earth.
Below butt-hurt racist Star Wars “fans” and butt-hurt misogynistic Star Wars “fans”.
The intersectionality between these groups is markedly high.
I would be down with George Lucas as a dialog writer haters. “I don’t like sand…” What the actual fuck?!
@de stijl:
Yunnan Golden Monkey
@Teve:
I don’t dislike Milk Street. And Kimball is consistently good, but the show is just meh.
America’s Test Kitchen is my appointment tv. That is so lame.
Greg Norton of Husker Du opened a restaurant in Red Wing. I ate there. It was boss.
I now have to put on Land Speed Record on at full volume and thrash about just to prove my bona fides to myself. Brb.
Btw, Bob Mould is a total gent. One of the nicest, coolest, smartest people I ever met.
@de stijl:
No doubt! Cockpit Country is similar. Amazing plant and animal diversity. The terrain is so challenging that Maroon communities set up there to escape the Brits. Jamaica is a great country – warts and all.
@DrDaveT: Holy shit that’s $125 a pound. I’ll stick with my $25 a pound Earl Grey thanks.
@de stijl:
This is why I think you should be very wary of a Nordic tattoo. Unless you’re really up on your racists — like, really up on them — you run the risk of picking something that is just beginning to gain use by the American Nazis, and then it will spill into the culture at large and now you have a Nazi tattoo.
Borderline related: Years ago, some friends and I would go to the trivia night at a local bar. There was a corgi who begged for french fries by offering to shake, and if you didn’t give him a french fry, he would just try harder and it looked like he was doing a Nazi salute, which was a constant source of embarrassment for the gay, Jewish couple who owned the corgi and ran the trivia night.
If you win the trivia night, you got $20 or so. Which is fine, it’s money. But, if you came in second, you got to choose a topic for next week’s trivia night. My friends and I tied for first, and there was a sudden death round: name all the provinces of Canada. The other team got 7 right. We got zero, because we were doing things like Sasquatch, Alex Trebec, Brutish Cascadia, Poodle and Golden Retriever, William Shatner, etc. — all so we could pick the category for the next week.
So, next week one of the categories was “Famous Racists.” We did not do well.
(We were nice, and presented two alternate categories, in case they didn’t want to do Famous Racists. They thought Space: 1999 was worse, and whatever the third one was it wasn’t going to be as much fun as being able to deny responsibility, and use their corgi as the answer to one of the easier questions.)
I think this was right after Obama was elected, when there was a brief moment of hope that America was mostly burying its racist past.
@Teve:
@DrDaveT:
Mayhaps one could befriend a Nazi who works there? You might score a pound.
I’m riffing. I’m sure they are good folks. But if one were named Tyr…?
@Teve:
It’s the cheaper of the two versions they currently offer. The expensive one is $28.75 for 50 grams. (Or, as they note, $1.29 per cup, if you want to compare against Starbucks…) Or you can go Yunnan Golden Tips for half the price, and it’s still excellent.
Elite high-end teas are a lot cheaper per serving than my other beverage habits, like wine and scotch. A bottle of wine is about 6 glasses; good luck finding a really nice wine for $8…
@Gustopher:
Not decided on image or if at all, but leading image so far is Huginn and or Muninn a hrafna (raven) that could wrap around the eye socket up to the low forehead organically via an extended wing. Black and gray.
I understand your concern. I got this.
Half the year I could be mistaken for a skinhead but no one ever does. The other half I look like Joe Strummer circa 1978.
I refuse to abandon this realm to them. Fuck them.
@de stijl:
The prequels expanded the Star Wars story, and offered something new. They were not always successful at everything they tried, but they were a good springboard for better written stories. And the effects were pushing the limit of the technology at the time (with a similar result).
I can respect the prequels. Plus, when Lucas’s local government wouldn’t let him expand his studio on his estate because of zoning issues, he spitefully created affordable housing there instead. Big fan of Lucas, even if he writes some terrible dialog.
The sequels on the other hand… a boring reshelled version of A New Hope, a good movie, and a very bad movie that reversed everything interesting about the good movie. But the “fans” are worse than the movies have ever been, and done more to dampen my enthusiasm for the franchise of my childhood than a couple of bad movies ever could.
(To be fair to Rise of Skywalker… at least it wasn’t Man of Steel.)
@Gustopher:
Brutish Cascadia. Sublime.
Oh how I miss pub trivia nights.
@DrDaveT: it’s really not terrible. I think I calculated that a quart of the earl gray tea that I make costs like $.33
@Loviatar: I don’t see any upside to engaging here.
@OzarkHillbilly:
And he wasn’t even able to do it. He left without graduating.
@de stijl:
They used to hold Trivia Nights at an Italian restaurant very near me. I hope they resume them when it’s possible to go places and do things again.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
He dropped out after one semester. His grades were mostly Ds.
@Teve: Unrealistic. What’s Trump going to injure that will kill him from landing on his head?
@Teve:
Not only is that article not good, it’s so bad it makes me question the basic competence of both the reporter and the editors since it overlooked basic facts such as CPAC and AFPAC being two completely different conferences.
@de stijl:
Well, as Grandma used to say, “Always trust your tummy, it never lies. Except about chocolate chip cookies.”
Of course, she also taught me to count cards and bottom deal, so there you go.
I don’t mind the sequels.
Daisy Ridley is fan fucking tastic. That woman needs to be a way bigger deal.
I saw the original in a theater in 1977. I was 14. It looked cool as shit, but as a movie story it was lacking. I never got into it. The second was worse.
I can do a killer Chewie though. It’s open vowel back of throat mouth shape + fry. Wookies apparently do not believe in consonants or glottal stops.
It was never the series that caught me. To me, the first six were well shot and boring. With some super bad dialog. And senate politicking! Pod races.
I believe I have seen all of them except the last two.
I played KOTOR and KOTOR 2.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
One semester equals 1/8 of graduation. Do you get course credits if you fail?
At my school we did J term. That would throw the math off slightly.
@Mikey:
With regards to a split sleep schedule, I’ve been on one since early in chemotherapy. Still carrying it out five years after.
Started out sleeping 18 hours/day, or so it seemed. Dozing, up, dozing, up, pretty much the same schedule as the cats. We fought over the available sunbeams on various flat surfaces. Gradually, shifted to sleeping 2, awake, nap, awake, rinse, repeat. My standing joke to the doctors was that I slept like a baby, “sleep for two hours, wake up crying for no explicable reason, drift back to sleep.” Now post chemo, I’m still down midnight-3:30, up until 5, asleep until 7. Then I’m up and the meat computer in my head won’t shut up until close to midnight. Normal? Don’t know, but then again, normal is not something anyone’s ever confused me with.
I figure that as long as your sleep schedule leaves you functional and functioning, it’s all good.
@Stormy Dragon: that part was confusingly written, I noticed, and I think somebody deleted the wrong sentence or, as so many of us do, managed to leave out an important. But I appreciated the overall thesis, that you can tell where conservatism is going by what’s happening at CPAC, and that this year’s CPAC is a bad harbinger.
JFC. From WaPo:
@flat earth luddite:
This guy knows the truth of sleep.
Sleep when your body tells you.
@MarkedMan:
I missed his point. What was he even trying to accuse you with?
Once, here, I was boringly critical of Likud policies on settlements and someone accused me of antisemitism.
@CSK:
I have been doing zoom trivia weekly with some friends, run by a guy in Baltimore whose job evaporated when the COVID hit. He’s been running essentially nightly trivia for $2 per participant ($3 for team captains) paid by PayPal and the honor system. He’s making more money now than he did before, has been on the national news and daytime shows, and is loving his work more than ever. No vacations, though.
@CSK: As I noted, couldn’t even do big fish in a small pond. Not even big rock in a mud puddle.
@de stijl: I liked the original Star Wars movie, with each successive sequel slightly less appreciated. On the other hand, I used to like the serialized movies that Republic Pictures produced and was thrilled to find a streaming source for others from Columbia and Universal from the 30s. The cheesy stories make them all the better. Shazam!
150 people signed a letter saying he was a sexual predator??? Good heavens. That should disqualify you from being a Shift leader at a Dairy Queen, let alone a Representative.
@de stijl: When I was in uni, I don’t recall that you got credit for classes where your grade was below C- (but it might have been D+), but that’s changed a lot. In Korea, I almost never awarded a D grade because at the school at which I was teaching, students who got Ds could neither receive credit for the course nor retake the class to improve their grade. (Another change from when/where I went to school–no grade was ever “replaced” on a transcript when you retook the class, every class you attempted that you didn’t drop during the first week appeared on the transcript either as a grade, a fail, or a drop.)
ETA (!!!) Woosong had both a summer and a winter intersession. The marketing on it was “finish a 4 year program in 3 years.” (And it wasn’t an option. All students took interterm classes.)
@Mimai:
Another place I liked was Port Antonio. It was non touristy then. I remember a teacher leading her charges down the street and the kids were holding hands. A mama duck and her ducklings.
And a little village on the far eastern tip. When I was there it was huge waves coming in from the north. The thump resonated. Boom boom boom.
Not great accomodations but a bed which did me fine. I kinda like geckoes. Super cute. I tried to get one to run up my finger and settle down for a quick scan around. Didn’t work.
@CSK: It took me a while, too. Follow the stage back toward the backdrops and you’ll see it.
@de stijl:
You didn’t go to Hampshire College, did you?
@MarkedMan:
Good for you.
Too bad those of a minority community typically don’t have that option.
@de stijl: It’s the same dude who when you said everybody should be kind during the height of the pandemic deaths, he kept bringing it up for like the next two weeks. He has a problem with letting ANYTHING go. Apparently MarkedMan pissed him off on the Equality Act thread, so here he is, DAYS LATER, trying to pick a fight again.
@Loviatar: You gotta learn to let things go, man. There’s no point in coming back, days later, picking fights over threads that happened days or weeks ago. We’re all mostly friends here, and our back and forth on subjects has led to a lot of people opening their minds. Be happy with that and not “scoring points” or holding grudges.
@de stijl: @CSK:
Hamline.
North side of St. Paul.
Go Pipers! Actually, I really don’t care. Please do not send me solicitation letters anymore. Not gonna happen.
They have produced a few good hockey teams tho. Minnesota D3 hockey ain’t no joke. Those boys and girls thrash hard.
A lot of the private schools in the Twin Cities go Fall term, J term, Spring term. It’s the norm. Well, in my time. Cannot say for certain now.
These kids nowadays.
@de stijl: I haven’t spent much time on that side of the island. Sounds like you’ve got a fair amount of history there. What was the impetus (if you don’t mind)?
@Jax:
You’re right, my calling out bigotry is just a game. Since its been two whole days, I’ll just drop it and move on.
What’s today’s hot topic? ahh Tea, I’m typically an Earl Grey man myself, however I do occasionally like a fruit tea .
@Teve:
A quote from Hawley’s speech:
Is the bolded phrasing a play on words? A verbal hiccup? Did he mean that Hawley should be resigned to his fate as a dunce, Trump sycophant, and traitor? Did he mean that he should be forced to resign and be resigned about it? Does he mean the Left tried to cancel him? Does he mean that the Left is willing to coerce him into resignation (both definitions)?
This dude says so many confusing things in speeches that he either needs a new speechwriter or should stop ad-libbing. Maybe it’s both. If it’s the latter, it says a lot more about the ever widening chasm between his reputation and his attributes.
@de stijl:
For those who do not now, J Term is one class for one month. Usually 2 to 3 hours long with a big break halfway through.
Professors were encouraged to think up interesting angles on their field of study.
Tough on them. Run a class, and in your free time invent a new one.
Only the top tier folks ponied up usually.
J Term was the best. One class for a month. An intensive month. Everybody got wasted every night cuz class time was 10:30 or 11.
Best class I ever took was cheekily called How To Watch Television by the philosophy prof who was the department go to person on logic.
How to critically evaluate news and advertisements. What claims are made? Are they supported?
If I were uni president, every month would be J Term.
It was also a quick way for students to check boxes for major requirements. If you weren’t a complete dullard you could tick your math box in three weeks.
On of the minor Ivies was doing that scheme throughout the year. Cornell I believe. It’s a cool concept for full time students and part-time too.
@Loviatar: Everybody’s on a learning curve, around here. From our hosts down to the commentariat, most of us have learned something just hanging around here and watching. What’s the point of calling people out over and over again for something they may still be thinking over in their heads? Give them room to grow, not make them feel defensive. As soon as you make people feel defensive, they are LESS likely to change their minds.
@Loviatar:
Dude, chill. Seriously… I appreciate your contributions here. I’m sure a lot of others do as well. I can tell you from personal experience, including from interactions I have had here, that holding on to beef from the past is a poor way to move forward.
Almost all of us here are part of the same broad worldview. The ones who are not, are often a lot closer to the edges of the circle upon closer analysis.
Performative politics works in narrow circumstances. When it becomes an end rather than a step toward substantive means, it becomes anti-persuasive and counterproductive.
@Loviatar: I have always considered myself an advocate for all people. Gay and trans rights are human rights, same as black people, hispanic people, asian people, basically anybody who’s a human.
And then my daughter came out to me last week, and I discovered that I still have a little bit of “Oh my God, she’s only 11, she just doesn’t know what she’s talking about yet, she’s barely got boobs!” And I realized I still have a little bit of bigotry in me, too. 😐
Work in progress…..looking back on EVERYTHING, I’ve always known. And in fact, she is probably going to announce a transition at a later date. She may not know it yet, but like I said….looking back on it, and learning curve….
I would be angry if you called me a bigot because I am surprised and confused and STILL trying to figure out in my head where I stand in all this…..besides supporting my daughter in every way I can, and learning along the way. Am I struggling? Yes. Same as everybody else who’s learning along the way, whether it be racism, sexism, or all the other ism’s.
People are allowed to learn and change their minds. If you want to do battle, Parler’s back up, I hear. Go do battle against the real bigots and racists.
@Jax:
Ah! That guy. Gotcha.
How ya doin’, bae? I hope life is treating you well. I know last year was difficult for you. I send you good thoughts and warm wishes.
@de stijl: I’m all right. One day at a time!
@Jax:
I really respect your comment and honesty, so I’m going to give myself some time to respond as I don’t want to mistakenly diminish your comment.
@Loviatar: I appreciate that. For what it’s worth, I felt your anger back when de Stijl was urging us to love our neighbors, even though our Republican neighbors don’t love us back, and in fact would like to see us dead. I saw his point, as well, because I try every day to be a better human being, but DAMN…..it’s hard sometimes.
But we gotta stay united. We can’t fall into the circular firing squad formation.
@Mimai:
It was a cheap plane ride to get to a place where I was the outsider. Not just in temperament but by skin color. I was the outlier. The mistrusted. I had to walk on broken glass. There were seven white people in town.
Four folks from the Goethe Institute documenting the library. He was a German poet? Whatever, not my business…. And a hippie couple.
One of the best bits is local transport. Coming in I flew via Air Tim. Tim was the pilot, founder, and CEO of Air Tim. Overbooked so I got to be co-pilot. Awesome.
You can’t do that in tourist oriented cities. You need to go to actual towns that have an economy not reliant on tourists.
At home, I tick all of the boxes. White, male, het, well-educated. Not at home is a different world with different set of assumptions. I become the other.
I’m pretty sure Air Tim has slipped the surly bonds of this earth given the time, but that man was a proper dude.
@de stijl:
Good on ya’. Would that more folks (myself included) sought out opportunities to regularly experience this. It does the perspective good.
@Jax:
IIRC I wasn’t even advocating that we love our neighbors, but to tolerate them, and to not wish harm on them.
I am a punk not a hippie 😉
Ah, it’s true. I’m a big old softie.
@de stijl: The point was taken, ya big ol’ punk/hippie softie. We gotta try to be better humans, even if THEY’RE not trying at all. 😉
@Jax:
Bigotry is belief. The belief that I’m better than you, that there is something wrong with you, which entitles me to say I’m better than you.
—–
emphasis is mine
I would never call you a bigot because this quote is where you differ from bigots. Your response to your daughter’s news was not bigotry, it was surprise, shock, fear for her and the difficulties she will face. It was a father assimilating surprising news about his daughter and trying his best to figure out how to deal with it. You were never a bigot, because even when surprised by that news, you still questioned yourself. You questioned; your beliefs, your thought process, you didn’t shut your mind to the fact that you could be wrong on how you would react to this type of surprising and personal news. Questioning leaves you open to change.
—–
Bigots do not question, they believe. When confronted with lived experiences –> they respond with, yeah but, I believe, when confronted with logic and data –> they respond with, yeah but, I believe. That is not a mind open to change, that’s faith; bigots cannot handle questions, because to even consider that their beliefs could be wrong would open them to possibly changing their mind.
——
You ever participated in an awkward silence; that period when someone says or does something inappropriate and everyone goes silent. Then usually there is a rush to move on, change the subject, not discuss it, not embarrass anyone. Too often when that occurs no one is held to account, there is no reckoning for the hurt or damage done. This site is notorious for that, the host is one of the “good” Republicans, so lets not call him out for past faults (Limbaugh love) or current failings. The commenters are mostly moderates/centrist, so lets not point out they provide cover and enable the “Parler” crowd with their bothsiderism. All the isms depend on awkward silence to succeed, I’m just yelling into the awkward silence; You can’t say that.
@DrDaveT: Are you a fellow Baltimorean?
@Mimai:
Not that cool.
I could fly home anytime I wanted.
Only the privileged have the means to do what I did.
I believe the desire is valid and true – to glimpse otherness and live it for a tiny amount of time, but my privilege is always there. I can walk away anytime.
It hurts my head trying to figure my path out.
I decry tourists, but I am one, too. A different sort, but still as crass and self – absorbed.
The Clash wrote an insightful song called Safe European Home in 1978.
Every morning when I wake up, I go to the bathroom and look in the mirror and know that sometime during the day I’ll have to deal with a bigot. Something will be said or done that will cause me to realize, that person doesn’t see me as their equal. Every Fcuking Day. If I can do anything so some young person trying to figure out their life doesn’t have to deal with that daily bullshit, I will.
This comment is for those questioning who made me god, what right do I have to yell into the awkward silence.
@Loviatar: You’re not exactly yelling into awkward silence. Do you know how many times I’ve seen your comments, and wanted to caution you that you’re attacking the wrong people, but deleted it?
Check back on OTB in say, 2008 or so. How very different were our host’s opinions?! Should we not give them credit for the ways they have grown since then? Are they ever going to be fully liberal, like you and I? No, they are not, but they’re learning, and changing, and from a moral standpoint, I consider them an ally as far as standing up for what’s good and what’s right in the world. I felt the same way when Reynolds was on a kick a couple weeks ago, requiring an apology from Dr. Taylor because he USED to be a Republican.
I do not require people to flay themselves because they used to be something. There is no penitence required, just movement forward.
Also, I am her mother. Her….for now. She’s always been uncomfortable in her own skin, but I will always remain the woman who gave birth to this amazing child. Whatever she chooses, I am behind her 100%, even though I am absolutely terrified that we live in Wyoming and people are not so friendly to “other” here.
@de stijl: I hear that. And I assume that it’s all true. I do hope that you balance the critical (self) evaluation with radical (self) acceptance. The dialectic and all that. Nothing is more punk than that!
@Jax:
Sorry for the misgendering. For some reason your comment above caused me to think you were her father.
Good for you. I’ve never understood people who couldn’t love their children no matter what.
—–
Here is my first real disagreement with you
James Joyner has not changed. The Republican party has changed and moved further right, they’ve become coarser, meaner and more blatant in their isms, so by comparison James seems to have moderated. He hasn’t.
Steven L. Taylor is trying, he still has too much process and procedure in him and he is not getting it as quickly as I would like, but that is on me. So yes, he is changing.
—–
Joe Walsh
.
It Was All a Lie review: Trump as symptom not cause of Republican decline
I don’t need or want penitence, what I’d like is acknowledgement of their participation in the creation of the modern GOP. I believe only then will they begin to help fix our country. Think about it; why do you need to fix anything, if you don’t acknowledge that you helped break it.
—–
The enablers are too comfortable. Someone needs to occasionally say, you may be an ally, but your comment provides cover to those who are not allies. Also, do you know how many times I’ve written how I really feel about these people and had to delete it? ;>)
—-
P.S.
Funny coincidence you referencing 2008, I went down the rabbit hole last night and googled Loviatar + OTB. At least I’m consistent.
@Mimai:
You should be a therapist.
@Loviatar: I concur that if the GOP were to somehow….right itself from the Trump era….Dr. Joyner would go back to his ship. I don’t think Dr. Taylor would. That doesn’t mean that they haven’t learned anything from their castaway experience, though.
Joe Walsh…..God, I used to hate that guy. And somehow he’s become a “likeable Republican”.
I was just a lurker back in 2008, but I’ve learned a lot from my time here.
@Jax:
It was the boobs phrase in your comment that caused me to think you were her father. For some reason I could see a man saying that, but I could not picture a woman saying it. Heh, I guess I still have some cultural sexism in me.
@Loviatar:
You are guilty of the same sin you criticize at the beginning. We are all imperfect, but you don’t seem nearly as self-reflective as many of the people here. Some people’s moderation is actually a commitment to democracy or respect or persuasion rather than evidence of bigotry or apologia.
Reserve some of your mirror time for self-reflection and maybe, just maybe, you will find yourself capable of reaching across the silence and pulling some to your side rather than yelling at them across a battle line.
@Kurtz:
Why I’m yelling across the battle line.
The modern Republican party is engaged in a civil war. They see anyone who does not share their beliefs as the enemy, they see moderates/centrist as useful idiots in their attempt to overthrow the US government.
I know, it sounds crazy to see it written out like that, but my response is 2021 storming of the United States Capitol.
—–
Please tell me,
– How much longer are we going to have to wait before moderates/centrist realize that the modern Republican party is not open to persuasion?
– How many additional people are going to have to die from the pandemic before moderates/centrist realize that the modern Republican party do not respect their fellow Americans?
– How many voter suppression bills, attacks on the US Capitol, threats to democratic politicians before moderates/centrist realize that the modern Republican party is not committed to democracy?
@Loviatar: But what good does it do to fight those battles HERE? 90% of us are in agreement with you. What change are you making for the greater good by attacking people HERE with purity testing?
We all KNOW all of the things you’ve described above, the hosts have done posts on it, I mean….the GOP ain’t coming back. No matter how much Dr. J wants it to. What good does it do to rub it in anyone’s face that they supported the GOP of old?
@Loviatar:
So, we are no longer talking about @Marked Man then?
@MarkedMan:
Former. I went to college in Charm City in the 80s. I live in the DC area now, after various side trips.
@Jax:
I am not a parent so I cannot advise you how to act. (I wrote out several paragraphs and then realized I have zero experience and standing so backspaced over that.)
Obviously seek support if you need it, but Michael Reynolds has faced a similar situation with one of his kids.
I know he fronts as if he is curt and gruff and curmudgeonly, but he is a teddy bear. The Grr! bit is all show.
There is likely a PFLAG chapter near you. One of the cool things about Covid is you can talk with somebody via video now with way fewer issues.
Be well.
@de stijl: Thank you. We have no such thing in my area, but I have reached out to every person I’ve ever been friends with who’s grown up here that’s LGBTQ and asked for advice on how best to support her. Perhaps I should start my own group.
The funny thing is that ALL of them said the kids were way cooler than the adults about it (even back in the 80’s), and that’s what my daughter says, too. It’s no big deal to her classmates, there are several others who are also questioning.
These kids are gonna save us, I think. Our humanity, in general.
@DrDaveT: I still can’t figure out how you’re making a bottle of wine pour that many glasses. I don’t think you’re doing it right. 😉
@Loviatar:
Your last post in response to Jax… I’ve made every single one of those arguments about the clear path from the GOP from previous decades to the current one. I’ve made the same argument about Republican complicity.
I’ve also: pointedly ctiticized several prolific posters for using right-wing language to criticize parts of their own coalition. Ironically, they also replicate phrases that are misunderstandings of the concept they adopted it from. See: signaling, virtue.
All of this is to say: I am with you. I don’t think you’re correct in some details–James has moved away from some of his old views. Taylor is moving faster than you think. But that’s fine. They are going to do what they are going to do and are likely impervious to you shaming them.
As for many of the commentariat, calling these folks enablers does no one any good. Nor does making symbolic stands that are only useful for calling initial attention to an issue that has gone ignored. We are past the point of needing to call attention to the existence of trans persons. Anybody who doesn’t acknowledge it at this point won’t until they have lost the political battle or one of their children comes out to them.
To put it another way: we are past the need to performatively stage a public speech act to deconstruct traditional gender norms reified by traditional institutions. (note: read this sentence until you understand fully why I wrote it.)
Just because something reinforced oppression in the past doesn’t mean destroying everything is the correct answer.* Even if it was feasible, replacement structure built now would likely have the fingerprints of the ‘enablers’ in the foundation anyway. And it would require dismantling structures that allow, even encourage, righteous dissent.
I recognize that we need you. We needed Stokeley Carmichael and Malcolm X just as much as we needed MLK. But this is the wrong place for you to unleash your beast. This is the place for massage, because you are only going to alienate and foster resentment among people who are on your side.
There is a point when a belief, no matter how correct and pure, results in nihilism. Be cautious, my friend.
*Watch The Power of Nightmares. I think episode 3 makes the point that the tactic environmentalists used to highlight the potential disaster looming from AGW was co-opted to justify the invasion of Iraq. How we get around that, I haven’t figured yet. But I do know that insulting friends and friends of friends ain’t going to work.
I’m torn.
I believe both @Jax and @Kurtz are wrong. I think this site and others like it where comfortable moderates/centrist gather is the place for someone to yell WAKE UP, stop providing cover to the bigots and radicals within our society.
However, I’m going to take my advise. I’m going to question my beliefs because I may be wrong. Maybe the comfortable nudging that most here seem to prefer is the way to change minds and win hearts.
We’ll see
@Jax
I can guarantee you a PFLAG person will chat with you even from states away. Hit up the Minneapolis or Seattle chapters. Denver. Someone will respond.
You got it right. The kids’ got this. They are way cooler and more open than us at that age.
One of the things we got right as a society is raising kids where decency is the golden rule.
We should be proud of that.
@DrDaveT:
Lets each of us have our beliefs; I won’t question yours and you don’t question mine.
@Loviatar:
Wow! That is rich coming from you.
That’s your whole spiel, and now you back away after a few *pointedly* polite challenges?
@Loviatar: that oil of Bergamot is some good stuff.
@Jax: hang in there, momma. 😀
I have an ex whose family put bets on one nephew when he was 5. He was obviously gay by then.
@Teve:
Thanks for the suggestion. I received an oil warmer as a gift awhile ago, I’ll have to try the oil of Bergamot.
@de stijl:
What a coincidence, I was listening to some Demi Lovato as I read your comment, and this song happened to be playing, guess which song.
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Sorry Not Sorry
@Loviatar:
Not sorry.