Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, November 14, 2021
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42 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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Most US parents struggle to find affordable preschool. One Texas city has them covered
It works and as the 1/8 cent sales tax shows, it’s not gonna bust any budgets. So, DOA.
Notice, Republicans merit not even a mention. By their own choice they aren’t a part of this conversation.
A great country invests in it’s future. What better investment represents our future than our children?
Politically, this is a no brainer. A straight up Win/Win for both parties, and therefor undoable with today’s GOP.
The stupid… It hurts:
But it’s nothing new:
The silver lining?
No duh.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh, but they’re going about it all wrong.
For starters, you need to start before you take the vaccine, and then keep it up for weeks afterwards. How? By taking massive doses of immunosuppressant drugs, naturally. I mean really large doses, which will effectively shut down the immune system.
That way after your cells produce spike proteins anyway (no way around that with a vaccine), you won’t produce the needed antibodies and memory cells, so it would be as if you’d never taken the vaccine.
Another option, also before taking the vaccine, is to have intense chemotherapy or radiation therapy (better take both to make sure), so your bone marrow will be destroyed and you won’t make or store B cells.
Of course the first option leaves you susceptible to all infections. The second one as well, with the added bonus of requiring a bone marrow transplant (you can do an autologous transplant, if you collect your own bone marrow before the radiation detox).
Both options cost a lot of money, which no insurance company will ever cover nor any doctor will administer.
But what other options are there?
@Kathy: There’s always the 53 cent solution. It’s cheap, a whole lot quicker, and easily self administered.
Steve Redmond
@sjredmond
Dear Anti-Vaxxers:
Please don’t fall for the old Borax trick. If you really want to be rid of the vaccine from your body, Venmo me $1,000 and I will not only heal you, but I will also send you a really official looking certificate saying you are a certified Anti-Vaxxer.
Also, don’t fall for those knock-off $998 solutions. Only my solution actually turns you back into a certified Anti-Vaxxer. Operators are standing by…
If you act right now, i’ll also send you a key to download “The Worst of Eric Clapton and Travis Tritt”. Don’t wait..this is a limited time offer.
But that’s not all, order in the next 15 minutes and I’ll send you your very own Dr. Fauci dart board.
As an added bonus, with every order sent out today, we’ll also include a 25% off coupon at Trump funeral homes. If you can’t use it for yourself, give it to a loved one you previously infected.
But wait!! There’s more!
“If we are going to to have one nation under God, and we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion.”
So said Michael Flynn on Saturday, November 13, 2021.
Which religion would that be, Mike?
@CSK: Obviously he never actually read the constitution he swore to support and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic. If he had he’d blow his brains out.
SUGAR TITS IS A COCK.
I just had to link it.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Flynn also remarked that the Jan. 6 investigation is “a crucifixion of our First Amendment rights.”
If I recall correctly, the First Amendment says something about freedom of religion, does it not?
@CSK: whatever dear leader El Cheeto is a devout follower.
@CSK:
Now lets not bring in added information that might confuse.
@Sleeping Dog:
A thousand pardons, my good man. 😀
@CSK: Well yeah, but only the right religion. ftr, yours is not the right one.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, Flynn was raised as a Roman Catholic, and I’m assuming he still is one. (I could be wrong about that.) So is he promoting Roman Catholicism as the one and only true faith? If so, Protestant fundamentalists will be very unhappy. Not to speak of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, and atheists.
@CSK:
I think Buddhism allows its adherents to engage in other religious practices. If so, that’s the obvious choice.
If not, we should resurrect the cult of Athena Parthenos, the religion of the birthplace of democracy.
@OzarkHillbilly:
And miss out on the chance of graft vs host disease?
“And though I am a committed Christian, I believe everyone has the right to their own religion–by you Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.” — Stephen Colbert
@CSK: The obvious answer is Islam that clearly ties religious practice and political actions together. The establishment of Sharia would give Flynn his desired result. I’m sure that the cost of turning churches into Islamic temples would be cheerfully underwritten by the House of Saud.
Apple is sticking taxpayers with part of the bill for rollout of tech giant’s digital ID card
and the sun comes up in the east.
@Slugger:
Somehow, I don’t think Islam is what Flynn has in mind.
For those who are not aware, there’s a great organization called The Human Library.
I’m curious… what human book(s) would OTB commenters be most keen to check out? [note, there are rules of engagement, so you might consult them before responding]
@Sleeping Dog: That Apple ID story seems to be click bait. “Apple has sole discretion over aspects of the program!”, turns out to be that Apple retains the right to determine which devices it will run on. That 11 year old iPhone 4S? Probably not supported. As near as I could glean from the rest of the article Apple was seeking to insure that all the different states used common formats and protocols wherever feasible and that once Apple had committed to implementing a particular state’s database they required a single person responsible at the state to answer questions and resolve any difficulties that arose. The HORROR!
They’ll get over it.
KILL THE HERETICS! KILL THE HERETICS!!
We’ve had discussions about in roads that R’s have made in Hispanic/Latino communities in Texas and Florida, this article brings up another front in the failure of Dems to understand constituent communities.
Chinese Voters Came Out in Force for the GOP in NYC, Shaking Up Politics
Ouch. Only its own racism keeps R’s from achieving parity in support of voters in many minority communities.
The coolest thing I will watch today:
@OzarkHillbilly: Alas, conservatives/Republicans (along with a considerable number of “moderates”) live in a zero-sum universe where every action that enriches someone else’s life impoverishes their lives and the lives of their loved ones. And in a universe where there is already a shortage of elite educational opportunities and elite post education opportunities to match, preparing the Maliks of the world to go to school simply can’t be made a priority.
Of course, we could redistribute the entire pool of resources to make more opportunities overall, but that would mean that some of the plutocracy would need to defer (or even cancel in some cases) their opportunity to take that 15 minute trip into sub-orbital space on Virgin Spaceways or Blue Whoever. We can’t have that. It would be unfair.
@CSK: Traditionally, it’s been the religion of the people with the most weapons/largest militias and varies by region.
Made me giggle.
A friend sent me a link. Frighteningly on point for our current moment. Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
You mean the bitter clingers?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Is the one in the chair Marjorie Taylor Greene?
@CSK: Looks like her to me.
@CSK: The original pic:
@OzarkHillbilly:
I wonder if that means that it took her years to get around to reading the Bible or that it took her years to get through it.
MTG has never struck me as an ardent bibliophile.
@OzarkHillbilly:..A brilliant demo of the power and creativity of engineering to solve real problems…
Almost as much fun as a cat video.
Investment group CGI Merchant Group has bought the lease on the Trump Intl. Hotel in Washington for 375 million dollars.
They will change the name to the Waldorf-Astoria.
@CSK: Not necessarily. I’m not convinced that the bitter clingers are actually better armed or armed in sufficient numbers to decide by force. It’s part of why they see themselves as an oppressed minority. (It’s also not clear within bitter clinger-dom that all the guns would point in the same direction should push come to shove. Not even the bitter clingers are as monolithic as we might believe.)
This afternoon, for the newspaper, I went to the high school.
To see a musical.
About high-schoolers.
Doing a musical.
… I don’t think I have enough scotch in the house to wipe that out of my memory. And I now I need to write a review that doesn’t crush the souls of 4 dozen children–who can’t act to save their lives, dance worse than me, and couldn’t find a tune if they were allowed to use the GPS on their phones.
My school used to have a reputation for producing talent who went on to serious careers in the performing arts. The leads in this show couldn’t sing. I’m not saying “they couldn’t sing like a Broadway star”, I’m saying they couldn’t sing.
Nor could they act. Nor could they dance.
All of which our students used to be able to do very well. There are awards on the walls to prove it.
Write tomorrow.
Scotch tonight.
@Mu Yixiao: Ha! Our high school put on their play this weekend, too. It was Oklahoma!, and it was absolutely awful. 😛
@Mu Yixiao:
@Jax:
In general, I won’t advocate for participation trophies and atta-boys, but the HS play is one time where you should drop the critical lens and simply talk about how much fun the play was and that the kids and the audience were enjoying themselves.
Mu, what scotch are you drinking?
@Sleeping Dog: Oh, I enjoyed the shit out of it, but it was awful. The kids had a blast! Mine was on the stage crew, she told me who the funniest actors with the best lines were. She had a lot of fun helping build the sets and such.
@Jax: Alas, that isn’t the point. For a significant portion of the population if it doesn’t make one more employable, it just doesn’t belong in the schools. Not a majority, thank goodness, but still a significant number (I’ve spent years listening to the arguments. Time that I’ll never get back. 🙁 )
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I don’t know, I been telling her what wr and Eddie are saying about the movie set labor shortages, she thinks maybe she could design video games as a side hustle from her main job of set and costume design. 😛
I’m just glad she found something she enjoys besides video games.