Sunday’s Forum
It's all because of you.
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, May 17, 2020
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53 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 just can’t listen to these lying duplicitous cowards anymore (but maybe you have a stronger stomach than I) but this is just such an egregious statement I had to make note of it.
When life gives you pandemics, make coffin beds??
Seattle Times:
Sure it does. Remember “Trust but verify?” With this admin, it’s always always always, “Don’t trust.”
Much more at the link.
Obamas 2020 commencement speech
Choice excerpt:
NASCAR starts back up today at Darlington Raceway in SC.
Darlington: “the track too tough to tame”
Best Darlington drivers: Cale Yarborough (the “Timmonsville Tiger”), David Pearson (the “Silver Fox”, Richard Petty(“King Richard”), Dale Earnhardt, Buck Baker, Junior Johnson, Bill Elliott (“Awesome Bill from Dawsonville”), Jeff Gordon, Darrell Waltrip, Bobby Allison, Fred Lorenzon (“Fastback Fred”) among many.
I went to Darlington often when I was young. The hottest, loudest place on earth. Watch the 1964 and ’65 races: really different compared to now. I was at those races, and attended races there until the 1990s.
NASCAR and WWE are getting things done while the MLB and NBA are still thinking about it. Some of those California teams could be looking at other states.
The Florida headline of the day-
Palm Beach County reopened without meeting federal guidelines, investigation shows
@OzarkHillbilly:
Come on, give poor old Kayleigh a break. Nobody know what Obamagate is, including Trump.
Shorter tyrell: I need to be entertained!!! even if people die.
McConnell Admits He Was Wrong to Say Obama Left Trump Without Pandemic Plan
The former administration left behind a 69-page document.
Always always always ask the question, is the trump admin (and by extension the GOP) lying to me?
99 time out of a hundred the answer will be yes, and the few times the answer is no? Know that that truth is in service to a larger lie.
@Tyrell: “NASCAR and WWE are getting things done while the MLB and NBA are still thinking about it.”
Yes, they are driving around tracks and staging fake fights. Meanwhile 100,000 Americans have died of a disease for which there is no cure and very few tests. Glad you’ve got your priorities straight.
@Tyrell: NASCAR and WWE are getting things done while the MLB and NBA are still thinking about it.
To lump MLB and NBA with NASCAR and the WWE shows a fundamental lack of understanding as to how the different entities operate. Just from a financial standpoint, consider that MLB and NBA teams are franchises operating as part of a unified league, and each franchise is worth at least $1 billion (Florida Marlins are only $980M) . I suspect the owners are much less likely to put their product at risk than the WWE or NASCAR.
Why would the NBA even re-open? The season normally ends in the middle of June. It is a close contact sport where a player who has the virus could easily infect every other player on the court. I assume they have written off the playoffs, and will hope to start the 2020-2021 season on time.
My understanding is the MLB is still consulting medical professionals and working with the unions to determine if and when they can come up with a modified season.
WWE had their event in Florida. They got special consideration when the governor declared the WWE an essential business, which is not surprising since Linda McMahon is a big GOP donor. I assume its no skin off their nose if the wrestlers get the virus since they are independent contractors and the WWE has shown numerous times that the wrestlers are on their own if they get sick or injured.
NASCAR has seen a huge drop in popularity the last decade and a half. TV ratings in 2005 were more than twice as high as they were in 2019. NASCAR can’t afford to miss an opportunity to be one of the only major entertainment venues operating. Aside from pit row there really is limited contact, so racing seems like it could be done with relatively low risk.
@Tyrell:
So is it safe to assume that if Trump brought back Roman Empire style gladiator fighting, you would watch it? Death is okay for your entertainment?
@senyorDave: you really need to start using bold tags, or italics, or quote marks, or blockquoting, or something to separate the text you’re quoting from the text you are writing.
Well, apparently if the person Trump shoots in the middle of Fifth Avenue is a senior citizen, it actually would lose him some supporters.
For some seniors, virus is shifting their views of Trump
I guess America’s elderly aren’t so willing to be shoveled into the maw of Trump’s incompetence and Wall Street greed. Too bad they didn’t realize how expendable everyone is to the modern Republican Party until it was their turn in the barrel.
Downtown Detroit Realtor Charged With Threatening To Kill Whitmer, Nessel
What do you bet he claims free speech?
@Sleeping Dog: Whoa. That picture of him scowling in front of Lincoln’s portrait was… Well, if someone challenged me to imagine someone dressed up for the Racist Gun Nuts Club annual awards dinner where he would be honored as “The Racist Most Likely To Start Shooting In A House of Worship“, that would be my mental image.
@Sleeping Dog: “What do you bet he claims free speech?”
It was sarcasm.
I attended–if that’s the right word–my first Zoom memorial service yesterday, for an old, old friend who died last October. His daughters had originally intended to hold it in one of his favorite restaurants, but obviously with the pandemic that was impossible. Anyway, it was a wonderful service, with a few tears and a lot of laughter.
“OBAMAGATE!”–that one single word–is now a pinned tweet at #realdonaldtrump. He also has up a meme of Kayleigh Whosis as Superwoman, and hasn’t yet deleted that ridiculous photoshopped clip that superimposes Trump’s head on Bill Pullman’s body in the scene from Independence Day where Pullman gives his rousing speech.
Rick Wilson had the best response to the clip: “25th Amendment.”
@CSK: Yesterday Obama gave an eight minute speech to the class of 2020 and the nation as a whole, that demonstrated values and leadership and temperament.
On the same day, Trump retweeted a two minute clip of his head photoshopped on Bill Pullman’s body giving a speech from the movie Independence Day.
Every supporter of Donald Trump owes the nation, and the world, an apology.
@Teve:
I know. I just pointed out that Trump still has that ghastly photoshopped clip up on his Twitter feed. Couldn’t someone, somewhere prevail on him to take it down? If you suffer from vicarious embarrassment as badly as I do, you’re dying. The man is such a buffoon.
@Tyrell: The prices for high-end collectible cars seem to be good:
https://ritholtz.com/2020/05/distressed-assets-2010-versus-2020/
Ferraris, Mercedes, and such are not getting cheaper. High end real estate is also strong. There appears to be a big difference between the 2006-2009 downturn and the current one. In the current one the lower end of the economic scale seems to be taken most of the punishment. The less moneyed are facing unemployment or working for $12/hour frontline jobs complete with viral exposure while we richie riches are doing ok. Interesting!
@OzarkHillbilly: I do have to admit that WWE is beginning to show some feel for doing the oldtimey studio shows from almost half a century ago again. My guess is that the added rehearsal time because nobody has to travel anywhere other than the Performance Center is showing some dividends.
The stagey entrances with the wrestlers mugging at crowds that are no longer there are still lame, though.
@Slugger: My wife and I are looking to move later this year to be closer to the granddaughters, and to have a smaller place. Our neighbor is a real estate broker. She says that along the Front Range urban corridor here in Colorado, listings and sales are both down substantially, but prices haven’t budged.
Hopefully, the prices of half-assed collectibles hold as well.
I am finally getting to the end of a nearly 4 year journey of rebuilding a 1969 Corvette Convertible. Monaco (“Hugger”) orange, white top, black interior, 350/350. My intent was to see what it would feel like to drive a new, off-the-line 1969 corvette. Everything done has been to stay true to the original car and/or model year. (examples: red-wall tires… because in October 1968, white letter tires were still not available. 1969-only factory features: front-fender chrome vents, Chrome side pipes. See those two on any other year vette, it’s not original). You have no idea how hard it is to get a date matching carb, or a mono AM/FM radio that works and doesn’t look as if it is 50 years old. The right steering column with tilt. The only change for safety: the tires are steel belted, not polyglass. So much freakin’ research.
Why: My heroes were astronauts, and they drove some bad-assed stingrays.
https://www.chron.com/cars/article/Astronauts-helped-established-the-Corvette-as-4887779.php
What I have learned: Putting money in a basket and setting it on fire would have been more expedient.
I’m lucky in being part of the UMC/LUC… which seemed so far away when I was a Detroiter, downriver, and listing to Seger sing that aspirational ditty.
Now, once done, it will be trucked down to Florida, parked, and driven to the beach.
If the universe continues to love me like it does, a hurricane will hit my southern abode dead on, so I can cash that out, as the car is insured for half the price of the house. 🙂
@OzarkHillbilly: Think about it. Five months into a pandemic that has killed over 100K Americans and will kill many, many more, McConnell, with power and responsibilities second only to Trump, is so disconnected from it all that he truly didn’t even know there was a pandemic response plan. Not just didn’t read it or consult it. Didn’t know it existed. He just doesn’t see the pandemic or the governments response to it as anything he should be interested in.
That one fact tells you everything you need to know about the national Republican Party.
On Friday Rush Limbaugh told Mike Pence that some of the governors of the blue states are keeping their states closed in order to inflict as much pain on Donald Trump as possible.
@Liberal Capitalist:
One of the better years for collectible C3 vette.
At the risk of being snarky, oh hell, I’ll be snarky, the build quality of late 60’s Corvettes was so bad your car will likely drive better than it did coming off the assembly line. To match the original’s quality, you’ll need to forget some bolts and not tighten others. 🙂
Enjoy the car and good luck when you sell it.
@OzarkHillbilly: I am not sure of the message there, but I appreciate your reply and comments. The WWE and the Darlington race will not have spectators in seats. At least with the Darlington race, we can watch it for free. I would feel more in danger driving to the race track than getting some disease there. I am looking at the schedule for the next race and I might try that one. Then it is just two hours to the beach from the track. So I could knock out two birds with one stone.
We have two Covid cases in our county, and those came in March. There have been four traffic fatalities.
“All roads lead to Darlington”
@Liberal Capitalist: Regarding holes that you throw money into but never fill up: classic car/sailboat, potayto/potahto. 😉
@Slugger: During the ’08 – ’09 Great Recession I did a little personal interest sparked researching locally. The Porsche/Jaguar dealer here in St Pete and the high-end power yacht dealer were both doing great. My recall of that event is that it missed an awful lot of wealthy people. Wasn’t surprised.
@Tyrell:
Ok, I’m beginning to see the problem — poor traffic management that results in all cars having to go through the same spot. You should get involved with your local government, and start showing up to some town board meetings and suggest that they get rid some real urban planners involved.
@Liberal Capitalist: A story I heard in high school which is a VERY long time ago: A fellow in Pennsylvania bought a brand new 1962 Corvette. Drove it home and put it in his garage and proceeded to brick up the vehicle entry of his garage. Neighbor asks what the hell? That, the fellow replies, is my retirement.
Funny how the memory of ‘in Pennsylvania’ sticks with me. A little tic that probably validates a totally apocryphal legend.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yesterday was my 32nd anniversary of sobriety.
And, when I got sober, the first things to go was the ski boat… then soon after the Hobie. Well, that was first after a long list of government imposed suggestions.
Somehow, spending a day on the boat with a bunch of drunks that don’t stick around to clean up the mess… not really fun.
Funny fact: when I went for my TSA frequent traveler in-person interview, the last question was: Kid, you ever been in jail?
I said: Of course! I’m from Detroit!
Still got my TSA okey-dokey precheck approved.
Eric Trump, who along with his older brother is vying for the coveted Dullard of the Year Award, told Jeanine Pirro that the Democrats are inventing coronavirus shutdowns to prevent his father from holding rallies.
SEATTLE — An innovative coronavirus testing program in the Seattle area — promoted by billionaire Bill Gates and local public health officials as a way of conducting wider surveillance on the invisible spread of the virus — has been ordered by the federal government to stop its work pending additional reviews. And I, for one, am absolutely positive that there’s no connection whatsoever between this decision and criticism of the administration’s coronavirus response by Melissa Gates earlier this past week. Nuh huh, none whatsoever.
(And just for the record, on my craziness, there’s no may be about it. 😉 )
@Liberal Capitalist: Honesty is most often the best policy. As I have frequently noted, when the truth don’t make you free, it’s probably because you ain’t got no freedom comin’.
Because soooooooooo many of them have been held in blue states and were sooooooooooooo popular. Somehow dullard doesn’t seem fair. Lots of dullards would never even try that claim as too ridiculous.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yeah; I don’t notice Trump holding rallies in Yankee Stadium or Dodger Stadium or Wrigley Field.
“Eric Trump is the reason Don Junior believes himself to be smart.”
-john fugelsang
@Teve:
Okay, that made me laugh out loud. Very clever. And very astute of Fugelsang.
The video incorporated in this article is very good. Painful to watch, because Trump comes off as such a monumental horse’s ass in comparison to other world leaders, but good:
http://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/donald-trump-study-leadership/611719/
I’m still finding it hard to believe this malevolent buffoon ever became president, or that so many of my fellow countrymen and women think he’s the greatest president of their lifetimes.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
“Two happiest days of my life: The day I bought my boat and the day I sold it.”
@sam:
Sounds what the mother of a friend of mine said about having her adult children visit: “Always glad to see you come; always glad to see you go.”
And speaking of Corvettes…
@Liberal Capitalist:
If was for littering, wasn’t it? Officer Obie up to his old tricks again…
This episode, Miri, of Star Trek (1966) is on H+I TV at 7pm CDT tonight (Sun).
Apparently the children of Gene Roddenberry, William Shatner and Grace Lee Whitney are cast in the production.
@Mister Bluster: We used to call that one the “creeping crud” episode when we were kids.
And the “bonk bonk on the head” stuff is downright cringey.
@Mister Bluster:
A couple of notes on the episode-
1 Kim Darby (True Grit) and Michael J Pollard (Bonnie and Clyde) guest star in the episode and both are way too old to be play pre-pubsecent children. They were 18 and 27 respectively at the time
2 The image for the planet in the episode when it was originally broadcast* was Earth.
*- Around 10-15 years ago, original ST episodes were remastered and the images of planets and special effects were altered.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yet it is so memorable, I might use it for a Amazon quote. When reviewing movies or television shows, I always find a quote to go along with it.
@Bill: Definitely memorable!
Mother of God. I guess Ben Sasse saw Obama‘s speech and thought he could do that too.
This might be the worst attempted speech I’ve ever seen.