Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, August 29, 2021
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35 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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I had a nice day cooking yesterday
First for breakfast I made a grilled cheese sandwich with gouda, ham, and onions, with chipotle mayo on the outside and a bit of mustard inside.
Later I made corkscrew pasta with mushrooms, onions, shredded beef, and tomato sauce. It was worth adding a dash of sherry to the mushrooms as they cooked. Also I cooked rice with lentils and barley, then mixed that with beans, a bit of gouda (it melts), sweet corn, sautéed onions and bell pepper.
Leda and the Ostrich doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi.
@sam:
It doesn’t, does it.
According to ABC, Ida is now a Category 5 hurricane, with winds at 150 mph.
@CSK:
I am heartsick about the catastrophe we are about to watch unfold. This is a stronger storm than Katrina, and the LA hospital system is at capacity due to Covid-19.
The only small blessing is that we are passed the full moon so tides are not at their peak. Hopefully the enhanced levies will hold.
Still we are seeing multiple man-made/-enhanced disasters converging and people will pay a terrible price.
Republican election audits have led to voting system breaches, experts say
Nooo!!! I never would have guessed this might happen!
Ozark, hope your son has moved inland.
@james has a post up on covid schadenfreude, but the repeated beatings that Louisiana takes from hurricanes, has you wondering when the rest of the country will turn against aid to residents of the coastal areas. With calls that they be told, no you can’t have flood insurance and no there will be no loans for you to rebuild.
‘The smartest person in any room anywhere’: in defence of Elon Musk, by Douglas Coupland
Oh please. The smart person knows when to STFU but Musk never does. The smart person knows when to put down the shovel because the hole only gets deeper but he just keeps on digging.
Intelligent? Yes, absolutely but has demonstrated time and again that he can and will be the dumbest muthaf*cka in the room. There is a word for what afflicts him: Hubris. He’s read way too many of his own press releases.
@Sleeping Dog: He hasn’t.
@Kathy:
Ever made a Croque Madame?
@OzarkHillbilly: And if he is the ‘The smartest person in any room anywhere’, he needs to go into different rooms.
@Matt Bernius:
It’s terrifying. This will be the strongest hurricane ever to hit louisiana.
If you want a picture of the future with climate change, imagine a hurricane stamping on New Orleans’ face – forever.
Louisiana and Florida are our Bangladesh, places which cannot be saved and will inevitably be lost to rising seas and increasingly violent weather. Unlike Covidiots who have a solution to their problem right in front of them, I do feel sorry for these people. Even Floridians. You can’t dam a delta and you can’t build a wall around Florida.
You can’t? Damn, there goes plan Q.
For just $34,000,000 you can buy this lovely 7 bedroom, 13 bath, 20,000 square foot mansion on a man-made key off Miami Beach. It’s about an inch and a half above sea level on a pile of landfill. And some clown will buy it.
Just looked at Hurricane Ida. Holy Shit.
I think if I had Bill Gates Money i’d just give it all to that dude.
I had coffee the other morning with someone I consider a close friend. Known for about 15 years. Former co-worker, still a mentor in the biz. Normally intelligent, well-read, generally nice guy. Conservative politically, but we agree to disagree (since I tend more towards burn the sucka down). Towards the end of our klatsch, he told me that he and his SO both expect to lose their jobs before the end of the year. Her national hospital chain is mandating vaccines by mid-September. She has “medical, religious, and philosophical objections to having to wear a Star of David.” His work already prohibits non-vaccinated workers from the office (he’s been working remotely since before the pandemic hit). He shares her objections to taking something that’s “made with aborted fetuses.” Anyway, their plan is to buy something on the Mississippi side of the border, south of Memphis. They’re urging us to move nearby.
He’s my age; she’s 50-ish. And I KNOW I’ve done way more drugs and alcohol than both of them together. But merciful deity of your choice, the stupid burns!
I am listening to WWL-AM 870 New Orleans via the Radio Locator website on my laptop. There is a city worker on now talking about the failure of the lift stations in the wastewater sewage collection system throughout the city due to loss of electricity. Apparently there is generator back up but it is not 100%. He is asking residents to not use water unless absolutely necessary.
We never had hurricanes when I worked at the sewage treatment plant in Murphysboro, Illinois but we did have floods. The Big Muddy River, that received the effluent that was treated and discharged from the plant, would flood and although the plant was designed to hold off the rising river sometimes the river would win that battle and we had a mess on our hands.
When the earliest storm sewer and wastewater sewer systems were developed many used common pipes as there were no treatment plants, everything went straight into the river. Even as late as the ’70s we would do smoke tests that would find illegal connections between storm sewers and wastewater discharge.
I’ve had to work outside in some nasty weather over the years but not like this.
I hope every one in the path of Ida* can take cover or get out of town if they can.
*Ida was my paternal grandmother.
@flat earth luddite:
I thought it was the unvaxxed who had to wear the Star of David. Can these people get together, and pick a single offensive Holocaust metaphor?
Ed Asner has died. He was 91. RIP, Mr. Grant.
@Stormy Dragon:
I had to google it just now.
@Michael Reynolds: A fool and his money are soon parted?
(A similar scenario will soon be playing out in states in the West depending on Colorado River water or the Ogawalla reservoir, except in their case, it’s going to be not enough drinking water.)
@Gustopher:
Well they’re not unvaxed anti vax…
Neither likes my comment that, hey, we’ve got to use all that fetal tissue for SOMETHING… Insert snarky emoji here…
@Flat Earth Luddite: …unvaxed…anti vax…
And I’m the flat earth luddite!
video clip:
https://twitter.com/225MPH_EF4/status/1432062243567542276
@CSK: Well, maybe the ‘most powerful’ by some measures but the barometric pressure when Ida encountered Grande Isle was 933mb, from the NOAA website. Googling showed the same measure for Katrina was 902mb.
All kinds of ways to look at these storms. But the delta-pressure is the actual engine that runs them.
Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg tweeted the following today:
Followed up by this:
He is rightfully getting ratioed by people pointing out numerous fallacies in his thinking:
– ignoring the benefits to young people from the Child Tax Credit and other stimulus measures passed by Democrats
– ignoring the cancellation of student loans for people with disabilities and those defrauded by for-profit colleges
– ignoring the multiple crises the Biden administration has had to deal with in its first 8 months (Covid, Afghanistan, etc) such that all priorities haven’t yet had a chance to be addressed
– ignoring the steps the Biden administration has taken to address climate change (re-entering the Paris Agreement, inclusion in the infrastructure bill)
– ignoring the fact that young people are still the least likely to vote, and young white voters like David still voted for Trump in the majority, so David should perhaps focus his attention on them (and his Republican parents) rather than Democrats
@charon: terrifying. Those poor people!
@JohnMcC:
The above is well before landfall in Louisiana.
..
Ida came ashore at Cat 4 with 150 mph winds – i.e., close to Cat 5. It is moving slowly at 10 mph and seems to be weakening exceptionally slowly post landfall.
IMO, this is a significantly stronger storm than Katrina over Louisiana. Katrina was somewhere else when it was at 175 mph.
All of News Orleans parish is without power. Entergy (integrated energy company) says this is because of “catastrophic transmission damage.”
@CSK: I’m watching YouTube. It’s horrendous. I would say to abandon South Louisiana but it’s one of the most important shipping ports in the entire world.
@Teve:
I don’t have Bill Gates money (or even Mr. Bill money) but a big portion of my charitable giving goes to World Central Kitchen. I’m still lobbying Dr. Taylor to nominate Jose Andres for a Nobel Peace Prize.
@flat earth luddite: I will simply repeat that either of them having any religious convictions at all is news to me. Still in all, I wish them well in their new life in the suburbs of Bug Tussle.