Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, January 8, 2022
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34 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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Yeah Joe, we can’t bury our heads on this one.. Unfortunately, Republicans can.
Hear in Cow Hampshire, I’ve had a couple of R friends comment that they believe that the current R majorities in the legislature are batsh!t crazy.
It won’t go anywhere, but still…
@Sleeping Dog: I just finished reading “A Libertarian Walks into a Bear,” and that independence crap is a BIG focus of the Free State crowd.
I’m glad that bill (probably) isn’t going anywhere, but after reading that book…I’m not really resting easy. It’s unnerving how quickly Grafton unraveled after just a few of these folks got into positions on the select board.
@Sleeping Dog:
The Supreme Court and the national Republican Party controlled by representation from most of the Midwest, South, and rural West seem determined to make the country ungovernable at the federal level. I expect that there will be an increasing amount of “Can we go our own way?” sorts of talk.
@Jen:
As the author mentions early in the book, Grafton was a mess before the free staters showed up. Though they have made it worse without ever achieving the holy grail of nearly no taxes.
In some ways, the libertarians in the R party have been a drag on the third of the party that wants to use the state to enforce their moral code. The best example of that was the attempt to repeal marriage equality in the 2012 session. Even though in the House, Rs had a better than 2/3rds majority, the religious right couldn’t manage to scrape up a bare majority. As I recall the legislation failed ~42% to 58%.
@Michael Cain:
They should read the US from the Articles of Confederation period. Stupid me, of course they don’t read and would only consider it fake news.
I’m coming to the belief that blue state senators and congress critters should sponsor legislation that turns programs into block grants run by the states, except the amount of the block grant isn’t determined by population, but by how much excess revenue a states citizens send to Washington. If your state is donor state you get a pot of money, if your state is a taker state, tough, no donut. SSI and Medicare excepted, as they have a dedicated funding source.
It’ll never happen, but I expect states like TX and FLA would sign on as it would be to their benefit.
@Jen: This is my biggest gripe against libertarians. Every place they have managed to get even a modest amount of power has turned to sh*t, but they never want to talk about that or learn any lessons. They just continue on and on with supreme confidence, blathering endlessly about their theories as if those theories had never been tested and found wanting.
Mother of the year, this one.
@OzarkHillbilly:
So…this woman (who works for the school system) put her son in the car trunk because she was afraid the kid would infect her while she was en route to be tested? Do I have that right?
What does she do with the boy at home? Lock him in a closet?
@CSK: Stuffs him in the gun safe.
Boy, when those Chinese do a hoax, they do it right. They thought of everything!
@CSK:
Duct-tape school of babysitting…
@OzarkHillbilly: @Michael Cain:
Well, she’s on administrative leave from her job, so I guess they spend a lot of days and nights together.
Of course he did:
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-spent-jan-6-anniversary-watching-cable-news-fuming-1667077
Several Supreme Court justices reveal they are completely clueless about the the virus, vaccines, masks, hospitals, etc. Apparently, they get their opinions from the fake news and lack the ability of skepticism.
@JKB: You are correct. The right-wing of the Court is off the rails on this topic.
Glad to see you’ve come around.
@JKB:
I think you need to clarify who is off the rails and about what.
For some reason I recently thought about a research study on tone deafness that I participated in years ago. I had always assumed I was tone deaf because I can’t carry a tune and 7 years of piano lessons didn’t stick.
The study consisted of first completing a 10-question survey, then donning a pair of headphones to listen to music. It started simply; you’d hear a single note, followed by a series of five single notes, one of which matched the first note you heard. The goal was to correctly identify the matching note. It became more complex as you did this with two-note patterns, then three-note patterns, on up to whole passages of music.
Your results were scored on a scale from 0 (complete tone deafness) to 100 (perfect ear). I scored a 73. I was stunned. “How can this be?” I asked the researchers. “I always thought I was tone deaf.”
“We knew you weren’t tone deaf before you started listening to the music,” they told me. When I asked how, they told me it was based on my survey answers. The survey questions included things like: can you dance to a rhythm? Can you clap your hands in time to a beat? Can you recognize the instrumental version of familiar songs?
I had answered “yes” to almost all the questions on the survey. “If you were truly tone deaf,” the researchers told me, “you wouldn’t be able to do any of those things.” (In fact, I think their goal was to predict how well someone would do in the listening test based on their survey answers).
@CSK: No. That won’t work. Then, he’ll have to admit that most of his posts are complete nonsense. This way he has the cover of subverting the truth in the service of the lie.
@Monala:
That’s fascinating.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I find these cute little non-specific drive-by posts irritating.
If it is a small comfort, the R senate caucus will likely be less crazy by one, John Thune is running for reelection.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/01/08/wires/south-dakota-senator-john-thune-announces-hell-seek-4th-term/
Given that there is no chance that a Dem could win SD, an R that isn’t batsh!t crazy is progress.
@Monala: I remember reading a paper years ago about music education that note that Carl Seashore’s testing of hearing and musical ability found only about 3% of the population cannot discriminate pitch and other qualities associated with tone deafness. After 3 different attempts to learn to play the piano covering a fairly large amount of time (including several academic terms in both undergrad and graduate level music education) I still can’t play the piano with both hands at the same time. But that doesn’t surprise me particularly; I can’t touch type particularly well either (particularly now as the tremor that I’ve had in both my hands and legs most of my life increases its grip). Playing piano is as much motor control as it is pitch recognition. Maybe more so.
@CSK: “I find these cute little non-specific drive-by posts irritating.”
That’s how he knows they’re working. (Or is it MINE that you’re talking about? In which case, thanks, I was wondering if they trigger any reaction.)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
No, I was speaking of JKB’s post. I shouldn’t react to them at all–and usually I don’t–since clearly what he wants is to get a rise out of people, but this time I did.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: it’s kind of cool that music ability is something most humans have. I wonder how it developed and what evolutionary purpose it served? Perhaps as a way to bond members of a tribe together, the way oxytocin bonds parent and child?
@Monala:
It was communal; something that people could share, like storytelling.
@CSK: Resisting the urge to point out that the emperor (in JKB’s tiny mind he is a towering intellect) has no clothes (but in fact has the IQ of a sack of hammers) can be difficult at times.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
“Then, he’ll have to admit that most of his posts are complete nonsense.”
No, JKB doesn’t say enough in each post for them to be complete nonsense. Rather, they are incomplete nonsense.
@CSK: Re finding posts irritating. You might try my technique: if a post is by a trumper or I see an “@trumper” in a reply, I just skip over it. I find that I lose nothing at all by following this practice religiously.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m banned for lifetime from commenting at Lucianne.com, but I’d enjoy, every so often, telling them what gullible morons they are.
@MarkedMan:
Mostly that’s what I do.
@Moosebreath: Okay, okay! Point taken. 😉
Let me see if I have this straight: The next big thing in Covid-19 therapy is going to be massive doses of Viagra?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Well, that’s uplifting news.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Being a total dick himself–I suppose a massive dose of Viagra would swell and paralyze Tucket’s entire body.
@Jim Brown 32: A worthwhile experiment.