Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Saturday, August 14, 2021
·
49 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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
I’m out on a motorcycle tour and haven’t seen the news.
How’d reinstatement go?
Smoothly, I hope?
About yesterday’s discussion on the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, I think a reminder that America is not the only country in the world is in order. Nothing in principle prevents France, the UK, Canada, China, Russia, or any coalition of these or any other countries, from putting together a force they can send to Afghanistan to deal with the Taliban.
I’m not saying it’s not America’s doing that things developed this way, nor that they are now right in abandoning the country. But there is not one and only one nation that can do something about it now.
And suddenly the death rate plummets. How’d dey do dat???
For anyone watching FL data:
https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1426287840779018247/TfgSlnYX?format=jpg&name=900×900
https://twitter.com/prchovanec/status/1426352391427817472
More juking the numbers.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Can still get hospitalization usage from an alternate source:
https://twitter.com/FLHospitalAssn
And failing at it.
Karma is a beach.
Trump’s latest Tweet (via Liz Harrington):
“BULLIES NEVER FIGHT!” — Aug. 11, 2021
Sales Of Fossil-Fuel Vehicles Have Already Peaked, Bloomberg Predicts
The Fiesta I bought new in 2012 has 60k miles and is in great shape. I could easily keep it another 5-10 years. At that point, I doubt whatever I buy next will have a fossil fuel engine.
From NASA’s New Telescope Will Show Us the Infancy of the Universe at the New Yorker:
I did not know that one individual was largely responsible for the Deep Field images.
@Teve:
That’s not a compliment, is it? The Shining Path killed 16 people, including two kids, in Peru this past May. (It left pamphlets at the scene telling people not to vote.) The Peruvian government says SP’s devolved into a drug ring.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Hope you’re not in Sturgis…
@CSK: Shining Path punched above its weight, is I think the comparison he was making. 😀
@Sleeping Dog: Darryl doesn’t seem to have an IQ below 75 so I doubt he’s at Sturgis.
(Saw a photo from Sturgis yesterday of hat merchandise. The Trump hats were mixed in with Nazi SS and swastika hats.)
@Teve:
Hey, it’s a “freedom thing.” According to one Jenny Alonso, it’s also a way of honoring U.S. soldiers who brought back Nazi memorabilia.
Suuuuuure it is.
@Teve:
I can think of better ones.
@OzarkHillbilly:
One question that needs to be asked here: why are the triage procedures at these hospitals favoring unvaccinated COVID patients over the heart attack patients?
@Stormy Dragon: Keeping in mind that hospitals are legally obligated to treat and stabilize every person who walks thru their door, it would seem to me that it is “First come, first served.”
@OzarkHillbilly:
But they’re not stabilizing every person. So again, when they’re choosing who to refuse admission, why are they choosing to do it this way? And I don’t think reflexively picking “first come, first served” is the best option here.
It’s the same when I saw that story about the guy who didn’t get vaccinated and ended up having to get a lung transplant and was now “remorsefully” telling everyone else to get vaccinated. All I could think is, “what happened to the person who would have gotten those lungs if the plague rat hadn’t gotten them instead?”
Coverage of TFG’s return to DC
Crowd Lays Down Path Of MyPillows As Trump Triumphantly Rides Donkey Into D.C.
@Stormy Dragon: I’ve been thinking a lot about this, especially after viewing the Tik-tok video from the man in NC whose wife, battling breast cancer, was discharged earlier than she really should have been in order to free up the bed for these covidiots who didn’t get vaccinated. I say this as someone whose husband enjoys riding his motorcycle, no matter how many morons he passes who are texting/talking/doing just about anything but driving their damn vehicles. To say I worry about hospitals filling is an understatement. My parents are vaccinated but older, and could end up injured for any number of reasons. I’m TERRIFIED that someone I love, who has done everything right, is going to pay a price because of the stupidity of others.
My preference would be that every hospital reserve beds for emergency/non-covid patients. You show up unvaccinated and with covid and all of the covid beds are full? Tough luck.
However, it doesn’t work that way. If a bed is open and someone needs care, they get care.
It’s frustrating AF for those of us who bothered to get vaccinated.
@Jen:
Where are your parents located? If they’re in the New England region, their chances of getting a hospital bed if they need one are a lot better.
@Jen:
Oh gods yes.
My SIL wound up in hospital for a broken hip (at 45, it’s his second!). Anyway, the night it happened at work, he was transported to the ONLY hospital in PDX that reported any available bed to the paramedics, a Kaiser facility (which is NOT in his plan). Anyway, 5 days in (2 days of which were directly related to the fact that he was out of plan, as he’s not a KPNW member), he’s home and recovering from the hip replacement. He’s gotten two letters – the first from KPNW advising that he owes them the FULL amount of all treatment, as he shouldn’t have otta come to their hospital because he knew he wasn’t covered, and that they’re gonna hound him to his grave for every dollar, forever amen. The second was from his workers’ comp carrier, advising that because he fell 3 days before his hip broke, they’re going to deny the claim for his hip breaking at work.
For me, the toughest parts of this are:
(a) trying to push warm Jell-O to keep him trying to get w/c to cover this (because it did happen at work, meeting the standard) and
(b) grinding my teeth at the sheer stupidity of going after a $30k blue collar worker for what’ll be about $500k + in medicals, because when you’re laying on the floor with a broken hip, of course you’re going to refuse transport to a medical facility, right?
@CSK: Alas, they are in Arizona. I’m the only one out East.
The thing going for them is the sheer number of hospitals and medical facilities out in AZ.
@flat earth luddite:
This is another wrinkle that is going to be a massive issue. I hope he protests this all the way up the chain. If there are no available beds in network, how TF is he supposed to stay in network?
My .02, get his Member of Congress involved. Start screaming now, loud, and often.
My epidemiologist friend Tara just shared a meme:
@OzarkHillbilly:
My Carl Sagan “billions and billions” total perspective vertex moment came when I was 10.
Dad had decided we would attend the amateur astronomers. semi-annual gathering atop Table Mountain, not far from Wenatchee. At the time I thought ugh, this will be boring, but it turned out to be quite fun. Amateur astronomers are the ultimate geeks, but boy o boy do they pour money into their toys. There were people there with 30 ft trailers to carry their home-made telescopes, which took them the best part of a day to set properly, and they proudly encourage people to come take a peek. There were dozens of set-ups. Everybody focused on some cool nebula or some-such. All those colors are real.
Climbed an 8 ft ladder to reach the eyepiece of one. It was focused away from the Milky way and the aiming eye-piece showed just a couple stars. It was a bit of sky about the size of a pea held at arm’s length. In the main eyepiece
it was all but a wall of dots, best guess was about a thousand. I remarked “There sure are a lot of stars we can’t see.”
“Only the two bright ones on top and to the left are stars, the rest are galaxies.”
Twitter thread about how the illiberalism we’re seeing on the right had its roots back in William F. Buckley and Friends in the 1950s
@OzarkHillbilly: Years ago, the school at which I did my graduate studies conducted a placement test for incoming first-year students. The intent was to route the students who couldn’t pass the test to remedial English and Math courses.
The Problem: A considerably larger number of students didn’t pass the test than the school was capable of providing remedial services for (In English, it was on the order of 2 or 300% more, AIR).
The Solution: Count up from the bottom until the remedial classes are filled and draw a new “meets entrance requirements” line there.
Glad to see that governments are keeping time-honored traditions from our palaces of higher education alive. 🙁
@CSK: Is he saying that because he’s a bully he doesn’t fight?
@Stormy Dragon: [Dons his rose-colored glasses] I’m going to assume that the plague rat struck it lucky and had no one nearby who needed the lung rather than go toward my usual decrying of the corruption that permeates organ registries.
@Sleeping Dog:
Would the Orange Ass ride a regular ass and risk being confused for his mount?
????????????????
@dazedandconfused: Way cool.
@OzarkHillbilly:
From your own quote:
Those first six hospitals obviously weren’t stabilizing “everyone who walked through their door”.
@Jen:
I know how you feel. My brother and his wife are in AZ as well. Fortunately they’re fully vaxxed and they take care of themselves. My best to your folks.
@Stormy Dragon:
He never walked thru their doors.
ETA: or maybe I should say, “was wheeled thru their doors.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
As always with Trump, who the hell knows what he’s saying. He may have been referring to Andrew Cuomo. I think that particular Tweet was subject to widespread mockery.
@OzarkHillbilly:
You’re right, clearly the heart attack patient should have just fought his way in after they started telling ambulances to go elsewhere.
@Jen:
Bed availability/cost/jack-rolling the hapless patient is going to be a HUGE on-going issue. But then again, what else do we expect from a for-profit model? Gotta grind up those peons to properly oil the machinery, donchaknow?
In case you need a break from the slowly rolling and inevitable yet mostly preventable tragedy that is Covid…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/13/florida-toddler-mother-shooting-zoom/
Kid’s father left his gun out, and the kid found it. Hopefully we will get a follow up where he is charged with manslaughter and child endangerment, but I doubt it because … Florida.
But before we let the dead woman off the hook, let’s remember that she was living with a guy who kept an unsecured gun around the house. She chose this lifestyle, and she was always the most likely person to get shot with that gun.
My empathy has been waning of late.
I hope the kid is too young to ever remember any of this, that they are placed with an entirely unrelated family, and when they do get to the point of asking questions, they are just lied to, and shown newspaper articles about a nice couple killed by a drunk driver.
Or covid. Covid could be a fine lie.
@Teve:
If it less than 5 miles there and back, I walk.
It got to the point last year that I bought fuel stabilizer and ran the engine for 15-20 minutes every ten days just there would be no long term issues with my vehicle’s engine.
If I have to tote too much stuff than can be walked home fairly easily, I drive.
If not, I walk. Sometimes I walk there and taxi back. I enjoy walking.
Groceries are a quarter mile away. Easy as shit.
Walking is good for the body and good for the soul. Driving is for when you have to.
@Gustopher:
Sometimes I have to guard against the loss of empathy, myself. It is easy to lose it when people act foolishly.
It is an easy act / thought process when people act foolishly and to an extent foretell their fate by action or inaction. I have to resist the impulse towards blaming and shaming.
We are all moments away from personal catastrophe. Sometimes by our doing or not doing, and quite often by random happenstance that afflicts both the righteous and the indolent. Dice roll. Randomness or fate depending on your world-view
Yes, correctly securing of firearms and securely separating ammo from that around kids is extraordinarily important, but what happened to her was her fault three times removed.
Be kind. Sometimes our faults kill us. Sometimes it is the roulette wheel of chance.
I’m forty minutes into re-watching Zodiac for the first time in 10 or 12 years. I do love me some Fincher.
My lord! That cast! Down to folks who have maybe 20 lines. It is fucking impressive the casting.
I do know John Carrol Lynch is coming on and, wow!
@Gustopher: Replacing the “slowly rolling and inevitable yet mostly preventable tragedy that is Covid” with a sudden equally inevitable yet entirely preventable tragedy. Great job
BrownieGus.@de stijl:
Elias Koteas and Donal Logue as tertiary characters.
Phillip Baker Hall is a god damned cameo. Fuck me!
You could make a pretty damn good Terrence Malick movie out of the small role actors of Zodiac.
The Thin Red Line 2. No Caviezel this time. That man is an idiot.