The Welcome to September Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, September 1, 2022
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105 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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Looks like Trump got himself a real lawyer so, sadly, I presume the self incrimination via court filings will stop. From TPM:
Welcome to September! I live in a university town, and last week has seen the crowds come back.
@Jen:
Following up from yesterday’s forum. I suspect that what has happened to the Free State movement here, is similar to what has happened to the Libertarian Party nationally, there has been a trumpist takeover. The FS’s have always had an element of trumpism, usually seen in lazy entitlement of some adherents, but from a political point of view, there was basically an extreme, small government ethos. All that is gone and what has replaced it, is the same craziness that has infected the nat’l R party. The NH R party has dodged the worst of trumpism for the past several years, but now only Sununu and some faceless legislators are left as traditional R conservatives.
@Barry:
We live in a summer resort community and next week we get our town back and most importantly our beaches.
Apparently Trump’s filing last night did not claim that any of the materials had been declassified. Done with that argument (I wish).
@MarkedMan: Corcoran signed the filing. Kise did not.
Head? Meet desk.
That somebody had to tell them they should remove that plaque, does not speak well of the officers in charge of West Point.
@Sleeping Dog: Does this mean tourist season is over? Damn, and I didn’t bag my limit.
If you feel like being enraged, this will do it: ‘What’s this about?’: bodycam footage shows confusion as Florida man arrested for voter fraud
I wish there was a law against malevolent governance. DeSantis should do 20 years for this.
Very successful ballot initiative to protect women’s rights in Michigan is nixed … due to poor text formatting …
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/us/michigan-referendum-abortion-ballot.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220901&instance_id=70784&nl=the-morning®i_id=93762889&segment_id=102919&te=1&user_id=89e1ff1d1f9b6de4e39cf7914986ebbe
Hopefully with working link this time …
@Joe: The article was actually about how Trump was throwing Corcoran and Bobb under the bus because, well, they did what he told them to do which apparently was “commit a felony for me”. Kise was just mentioned in terms of what he will do once he tosses his former toadies in the garbage.
@Franklin: Not hyperlinked, here you go!
Michigan Board Says Abortion Referendum Should Not Go to Voters
Who can blame him. I’ve read of several policemen who had to be hospitalized after being assaulted with a vape pen. s//
@Jen: Thank you!
SCIFI becomes reality: NASA will be sending an Atmosphere Processing Plant to Mars. OK, not really, but pretty cool stuff just the same.
You can run, but you can’t hide:
http://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/doj-mar-a-lago-trump/671294/
@Jen:
Ah yes, the old “they were tricked into voting this way by typos!!” excuse. That went over so well in Kansas…..
@MarkedMan:
Kise better get his money up front.
@Sleeping Dog: That seems like a reasonable assessment of what’s happened.
Which feeds into a theory I’ve had for a while now: that the vast majority of people no longer bother to identify with a set of political principles–instead, they identify someone in politics who is saying close to what they think, and reverse into political ID from there. It’s a weirdly celebrity-focused way of voting/thinking.
@Jen:
I agree 100% with that.
@CSK:
Honestly, I was wondering if that was why he wasn’t involved in that clusterf*ck of filing last night. He’s waiting for the check to clear.
Of course it could turn out that Kise isn’t joining the team at all. It wouldn’t be the first time Trump announced something as a done deal only for it to be just smoke.
@MarkedMan:
Foley & Lardner, Kise’s former law firm, has scrubbed any mention of him from their website.
Kise appears to be stuck with Trump.
@Jen:
You think that’s hard to read. I voted on one in Ohio that was bit of legalese something like “repeal the amendment that removed the clause that reinstated the prohibition…” By the time it was over it was a quint or sextuple negative and no one knew what it meant without reading the voters guides that said vote YES if you want X.
If it hadn’t been spacing it would have been hard to read sans serif font or the all caps first section or too many signatures weren’t in black ballpoint. Anything to thwart democracy. But let’s not call them semi-fascists.
You may all appreciate to know Dr. Fiona Hill makes several observations about Benito the Cheeto that track with ones made in this forum. Dr. Hill had the misfortune and opportunity to observe this creature up close for an extended time.
In particular, she mentions Benito is all about appearances. What matter most is how things look to him, and how he thinks they look to others. Beyond that, or perhaps above, what also matters is what people say about him.
@CSK: Ah. Coupled with TPM’s comment about his engagement being worth millions of dollars, this explains things: Kise is the latest idiot who thinks he can get just close enough to Trump to make his fortune without having everything turn to sh*t. Suprise! Everything will turn to sh*t and he will get it all over himself.
This is all too rich:
And yes, he’s gonna sue.
@OzarkHillbilly:
GOOD.
This sh!t has to stop, and if it takes bleeding every last nickel out of local governments, so be it.
JFC. Watering flowers. A pastor watering flowers.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Also: Jennings is a former police officer, himself. 🙂
@Mu Yixiao: The article neglected to mention that. He did say he was pro-police, just anti racism (or something like that).
@OzarkHillbilly:
And, according to the article I read, the woman didn’t call the police to say she was wrong, she came out on the lawn and spoke to the arresting officers.
Reason
Okay, this is petty and childish but where did I ever say I wasn’t petty and childish?
When the photo of the Top Secret files on the floor of Trump’s office was published, I was vaguely aware of some chatter about the carpet. Didn’t really register it or what it was about, but today when I looked at the picture again on a bigger monitor, it caused me to look at the carpet. Holy Smokes! That’s one cheap carpet! I mean, Motel 6 level cheap, although done in a style that apes a carpet found in, say, a JW Marriott from the 1950’s.
I mean, no surprise his ersatz country club is full of ersatz “class”. What it actually got me thinking about is something I’ve suspected for a while: he’s half blind, for whatever reason contacts don’t cut it, and vanity is keeping him from wearing classes. To him that blocky 8 bit mockery of a high-end pattern may actually look the same to him as the real thing.
@MarkedMan:
I prefer solid colors for carpets, wall paint, drapes, blinds, tiles, etc.
@OzarkHillbilly:..Damn, and I didn’t bag my limit.
I see where the Current River claimed at least one poor sap from Kansas.
The chairman of Russia’s Lukoil oil giant, Ravil Maganov, has died after falling from a hospital window in Moscow, reports say.
Trump is still insisting he declassified all the documents in his possession.
Stolen from a friend:
@MarkedMan:
The Washington Post has put an embarrassing amount of effort into identifying the location where the picture was taken. They have concluded that it was in one of the “public” spaces at Mar-a-Lago, and that Trump’s actual office has a completely different — and much more normal — decor/style. The carpet shown is of a kind with the carpet used in casinos, that makes liquid spills and wear patterns from foot traffic much less noticeable. Designing and manufacturing such is a specialty of sorts, and the carpet itself is rather expensive.
@Joe:
This is what Steve Bannon calls “flooding the zone with shit.”
I love this TPM headline:
“FLORIDA MAN DECLARES NATIONAL SECRETS BELONG TO HIM.”
@gVOR08: You’ve reminded me of a story one of my friends told me: while working at a gov’t agency in Texas one of her jobs as an attorney was to go through proposed administrative legislation and make certain that said proposed legislation didn’t have any obvious legal bugs in it. During their analysis of one particularly obscurely written sentence, a co-worker came in waving the document with much glee: “I finally found the verb!”
@MarkedMan: Kise is 57 years old. It may be that he DID get all his money up front and is looking at this as a step toward an early retirement. Beyond that, his bio picture shows that he has the same “I eat kittens for breakfast” smile as FG and bears a striking resemblance to the character Jim Carey played in Dumb and Dumber. He may be FG’s long-lost brother from another mother.
Or Denny Crane.
@Mister Bluster: The Current river once tried to take my truck after 7″ of rain in less than 12 hours. Damned near succeeded too. I tried to beat it out of the valley my sons and I were camped in but I had to cross a shallow, usually dry creekbed. When I got to it the water was about 10 feet across and appeared to be about 3′ deep. While trying to decide if I should risk it, the gods sent a 2′ diameter log by. “Ummmm, nope!”
Spent the rest of that day backing up the truck on my ever shrinking island. Looked at my sons at one point and said, “Boys? We may have to swim out of here.”
“OK.” was all they said and went back to reading their books.
By about 8 that evening the water finally stopped creeping up (I’d been gauging it’s progress with sticks in the ground) When we woke up the next morning the river was back within it’s banks.
@CSK: It doesn’t count if he doesn’t say it in a court filing.
@Mu Yixiao: Another good man lost to Russian window cancer.
@Michael Cain: I was specifically calling out the extremely coarse weave.
@Kathy:
I hear you. Out in the world I really love bright, explosive, clashy things and patterns. Chaos is good!
At home, I definitely prefer calm. Home as oasis, a hardened comfy bunker.
I can always go out of my way to introduce agents of chaos into my life via music or games or movies or streamed TV and I do so daily. But I want the canvas fairly blank.
Not beige, definitely not! I respond well to a muted orange on my walls, actually. Furniture has to modernistic, streamlined. Stark, but cool. Less is more.
I have one bad-ass couch. Low slung, metal swoopy legs in nickel, neo-Deco, bright canary red. It pops. Brings the whole room together as the Dude would say. One of the best purchases I have ever made. Chills my brain out.
I do deep breathing exercises every morning. I live on a busy street so I go down to the basement and sit on the stairs to kill the ambient street noise. Breathe. Focus/not focus on my diaphragm. Deep, hold, exhale. Calmness.
I want my physically controlled space to echo that time/feeling. Kinda zen.
Your choice of furniture and wall paint and overall aesthetic vibe definitely impacts your sense of inner peace. Choose wisely.
@OzarkHillbilly:
It doesn’t in fact, but it does in the minds of his deplorables.
Remember he lost scores of court cases over the election because his legal teams did not present any evidence (it’s hard to present non-existent evidence). He later claimed no mater how much evidence was presented, the courts said it wasn’t enough. I’d bet a fortune his deplorables believe convincing, probative evidence was presented. The courts are just unfair, rigged spawn of the deep state, out to cheat Cheetos fat and small of their due.
@CSK:
Well, it’s a shame that the charges the DOJ will likely use do not require any classification level to be held as criminal.
This is one of those instances when if you are explaining, you are losing. Trump, in his tweets / Truths(?) basically admitted guilt.
(What do you call a “tweet” on the Truth social platform? I’m going with “truth” in quote marks.)
@OzarkHillbilly:..a shallow, usually dry creekbed.
Is that still considered a bridge on a state road in Missouri?
This is pure genius:
Plenty more at the link.
@de stijl:
A tweet on TruthSocial is called a Truth, which can be ReTruthed.
Trmp’s apparently been “ReTruthing” a lot of Qanon stuff over the past few days.
@Mister Bluster: A “low water bridge”. Actual LW bridges are a concrete pad over culvert pipes, sometimes even with curbs. A smart driver never crosses a LW bridge unless they can see the concrete thru the water when it gets high enough to cover it. My ex’s dumb ass violent husband forgot that rule and dropped his truck into the creek. Damned lucky he didn’t drown.
Welcome to September
The Leaves of Brown Came Tumbling Down Remember…
Thank you Dinah Washington
1924-1963
RIP
@de stijl: Call it what it is: A bald faced lie.
@Mu Yixiao:
“…has died after falling from a hospital window…”
Defenestration.
Your monthly reminder that Ginni Thomas is completely nuts:
Ginni Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory
The conservative activist and wife of the Supreme Court justice emailed lawmakers in two states in the weeks after the election
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Yep. Learned that word in my Classical Styles class in college.
“Windows are classically known as fenestrations. And if you throw someone out of one, that’s known as defenestration.”
Loved that prof. 🙂
@de stijl:
It’s obvious: a Lie.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
I don’t know about Moscow hospitals, but you’re not supposed to be able to open hospital windows here and in the U.K.
I mean, assuming Maganov couldn’t open the window, nor could anyone else, did his defenestrators just hurl him through the glass?
@CSK:
I didn’t notice whether the windows opened or not when I was in the hospital last year. But I can tell you being tethered to an IV stand made moving rather difficult. I manged to move from the bed to the chair next to it, and to the bathroom, and only because they were in range of the IV line.
@OzarkHillbilly:
That applies to roads too. A lot of people have drowned because the road they remember from before the flood was pretty flat and proceed into it, but the flood conceals a washed out section…major whoopsies…
@Kathy:
Yes, an IV pole does do a good job of limiting one’s range of activity.
@Mu Yixiao:
I first heard it in the context of a history lesson:
The Defenestration of Prague
That my remark to the teacher was “Does that mean someone was stealing the windows?” perhaps reveals something about me. 😉
@CSK:
In America, you close window. In Russia…
@MarkedMan: It’s consistent with something else I noticed. Back in ’87, I had to attend a meeting at one of TFG’s hotels in Atlantic City. The amenities in my room were comparable to what I would expect to find in a Motel 6.
@Mu Yixiao: I was always fascinated by that word. How many times does something have to happen before you create a word for it? What kind of culture does that? Machiavellian Era Italy for one. I read somewhere that they had many words for different kinds of poisoning – slipping it into a drink, into food, sprinkling it on their clothing, etc
I saw a brief item yesterday (no link), where Michael Cohen claims Benito retained the classified documents to blackmail the DOJ should they try to prosecute them. The gist is el Cheeto would threaten to expose the documents if they indicted him.
Do I believe this?
Well, it would be an incredibly stupid thing to do. Also, everyone know archivists keep track of their documents or artifacts. They may miss one or two, but not several boxes. So it would be something an idiot would think to do if he were drunk and feeling particularly stupid and sleep deprived at the time.
So, it’s plausible.
@Kathy:
I’ve seen the blackmail theory proposed elsewhere. It’s the kind of stupid stunt Trump would think he could pull off without any consequence to himself.
@Kathy:
@CSK:
Wait–what? Someone is proposing this as a plausible explanation?
That “don’t you dare prosecute me for these other crimes, or I’ll violate the law by releasing this information” is ridiculous.
So, totally on-brand I suppose.
@Jen:
Well, he also has to avenge himself for getting booted out of office.
@de stijl: I’m fine with white and beige even though I’d probably not choose them. Then again, the last time I lived in a place where I could decide how the decor worked was 1981.
A social platform / rip-off of Twitter called Truth. “Tweets” are called “Truths”.
So much hubris my brain is ceasing to function properly.
This is a poorly written Greek tragedy. Or maybe a comedy.
Aristotle laid out the elements of an ideal tragedy. This is one. Hint to other representative democracies / republics: do not elect a narcissistic buffoon as head of government.
I demand catharsis in the final act. A charge, a trial, a conviction, a sentence.
Symmetry declares there has to be consequence.
Breaking: The judge is postponing her decision on the special master.
Andrew Weissman says this is good news for the DOJ.
@de stijl: “What do you call a “tweet” on the Truth social platform?”
I go with “bloviation,” myself. (Or “something I’m unlikely to read.”)
@CSK:
@Jen:
It’s still exceedingly hard to find a rational reason why an irrational person does something.
@CSK: Just like “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop,” the world will never know.
@Kathy: @CSK: The IV poles in your hospitals don’t have wheels on them? Interesting.
@de stijl:
When I bought my house, I made a solemn vow: NO WHITE WALLS.
Being a scene painter, I went through a few odd combinations*, but I’ve settled on mostly cool colors downstairs and warm colors upstairs. My dining room and downstairs bathroom are, for example, key-lime green**. With the light oak wainscoting and door/window frames, and dark green towels, the bathroom has a feeling of “Granny Smith apple tree”.
===========
* And then, the girlfriend of a renter while I was in China decided to paint stuff without asking. That pissed me off, let me tell you. Who the frack paints a wall dark brown??
** Like the Jell-O pie, not the real stuff.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Of course they do. It’s just tedious hauling them around.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl and Mu Yixiao:
I was once told by a realtor that my house had “great fenestration.” The only reason I had the slightest idea that she was referring to my many windows facing out onto a park is that “fenster” is the German word for “window.”
In the English language usage “defenestrate” has an intransitive meaning to voluntarily exit a room (either for a purpose or surreptitiously) and a transitive one to throw someone out of a room – the window is optional.
@SC_Birdflyte: Yes, but that doesn’t trouble me about Motel 6 when I stay there. I really am one of the people Tom Bodett talks about in the Motel 6 ads who, for 90% of the time I’m in the room, has my eyes closed. My last trip to Korea, my hotel bill was $140 dollars for the week. Yeah, I could have stayed in the Park Hyatt for that much a night, but what would be the point?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yes. And batteries, too. But they are hooked to the wall socket. It gets complicated when you’ve just had hernia surgery, and are also hooked to a urinary catheter (I hate those things).
At that, I had one IV pump and got only saline, antibiotics, and acetaminophen. I’ve seen patients hooked to multiple pumps, often in two or more IV stands on opposite sides of the bed.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
A friend of mine does her place up in black and white exclusively with a few carefully chosen pieces of sculpture and some paintings that break the rule.
Stark white walls. White carpet. A lot of black furniture pieces. It fits who she is perfectly. She chose all of that to suit herself. She designed a place that fits her. She is by no means a black and white person in opinions and beliefs at all. Quite the opposite. A very nuanced thinker.
Not a style I would choose, but it works for her. And God’s bless her! She made her own curated bunker.
I love it! It is her unadulterated, curated, aesthetic choice. Fits her to a tee. She is comfortable there.
My tastes are different.
@Mu Yixiao: The produce company I worked at when I was young bought one pallet of Key Limes once when we couldn’t get Persian variety. We never did it again. They were hard to sell because they weren’t green enough to suit our customers. I don’t know whether it was a fluke or not, but they came in sort of a yellowish green and got more yellow the longer we held them. By the time we jobbed of the last 10 or 15 boxes–to a guy who only needed to juice them–they looked like tiny, shriveled lemons. At a dollar a 40# box, he was happy with them, though.
@Kathy: Aha! I’ve never been hooked up to a line that had a pump to push fluid in.
@JohnSF:
There is an obscure DC comic called “Section 8” (picture a superhero version of the Suicide Squad where all the superheroes with mental issues get sent) that had a character named The Defenestrator (picture a T2-era Arnold Schwarzenegger wannabe whos gimmick was obsessively carrying around a window so that he could throw whoever he’s fighting through it).
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
They called it a pump, and it beeped when any of the bottle or bags connected to them ran dry (and then I had to buzz the nurses about it, even in the middle of the night). But as best as I could make out, what they did was regulate the flow of IV fluids, and monitor their state. The doctors could alter the flow by using the keypad in the pump.
@Mu Yixiao:
Greens and oak (and pine) go really well together, imo. A totally cool combination. A mid-orange does too. Some of the yellows.
Heck, if you are cool with it, that’s all that matters.
My point, my desire, is that people think through and design a space they control and that they feel comfortable in.
Hell, if you like beige and want that – go for it! There is no shame in that (well… a little). Just go for what you like, what speaks to you.
Design your space!
@Kathy: That would be an infusion pump. It adds pharmaceuticals to a drip bag per schedule and can do so over a long period of time if the prescription calls for it. Revolutionary when they first came out.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
When I am in a new town I kind of want a room in the scrappy part of town.
The downtown Hyatt or Ramada you know exactly what you are going to get. Boring sameness.
On contract gigs over a week or two they usually give you a residence room where you have a bare bones kitchen. A fridge, a sink, a cooktop, a microwave. Downsized versions, sure, but the effort was made. I always appreciated that.
If I ate out, I always billed that back. It was usually with a colleague and I made sure to stay well within the limits of allowable daily spending. So mid-brow joints, unless boss was paying.
Many nights it was take-out. Some nights it was bare-bones home cooking. KFC rocks for value, btw.
When you are in a straight up hotel room your options are very limited. When you are in a residency room, the world opens up a bit.
On most of those jobs they wanted your input/contribution fast and hard so it was 12-14 hour days because you are expensive.
I got put up in a lot of residency hotels in the semi-sketchy part of whatever town.
I worked a lot for a big bank hq’ed in San Francisco and they always put me up in an actual high-rise hotel with only a bed and a TV which severely limits your choice. Screw it, they’re effing with me, so it’s going to be super spendy room service and a 20% tip on top.
@de stijl:
My walls are sky blue. the ceiling and blinds are white (came with the apartment), and the floor is wood.
I would love a snow-white carpet, but odds are it would end up as dirty snow in color within a few days.
@Kathy:
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Uh, yeah. And the annoying part is when the battery pack runs out of charge or the bag is empty. The atonal beeping pitched to carry to the nurses station is enough to drive a Luddite madder than I already was.
I always figured the purpose of the wheeled IV stand was that it slowed you down when you were trying to make your break for the exit
@Kathy:
If you take off your shoes upon enterering your joint, white carpet is not an issue. If you maintain good hygiene protocol on footware, you are golden. The biggest issue is dust. Just rent a rug cleaner once a year and your white carpet will stay white.
I have wood floors. The stereotypical American sawn oak 2 inch wide strips.
When you say “apartment” I assume rental not condo. That makes it hard. You are kinda stuck when it comes to walls and floors and ceilings.
But you have full control on your furniture picks.
@CSK:
Interesting. I am seeing the opposite, that the judge is making a mess of this by considering the executive privilege claim.
@Jen:
I’ve seen that too. At this point, I don’t know…
@de stijl:
I think I’ll get a large, soft, white rug instead.
On really long extended gigs you get an actual apartment. In the US a super bland place furnished so as to not offend anyone and therefore infuriates everyone. In the most boring suburb ever.
My n=7, so not a huge sample set. Designed to be boring and inoffensive in my experience.
Still, I appreciated it. It is nice to have an actual kitchen.
Does it feel “homey”? Absolutely not!
Every so often I would go home. Pick up mail. Write some checks for bills not on autopay. Sleep for 18 hours. Then a taxi to the airport once again.
The only apartments that felt vaguely like home were in Sweden and Iceland. You get a bumped up place there. Downtown high-rise. Less egregiously standard issue blandness. A bit more quirky. Probably standard issue there, but new to me. I appreciated it.
The biggest perk of a residency hotel or a corporate apartment was the ability to do laundry without having to go to a laundromat and sit around waiting. You needed a crap ton of quarters. Or krona.
I’m watching Biden. Good speech.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Hadn’t thought about that. Good catch!
ETA: Tremor interrupted the @ Flat Earth Luddite hotlink. Don’t know how to fix it. 🙁
AETA: Never mind, got it! 🙂 (Even works to take you back.)
@dazedandconfused: Yep. I got caught by a flood many many years ago in January when the ground was frozen solid and the rains were torrential. We had to get home*. So I sat on the hood of the truck with a long pole as we drove slowly thru the ice cold water, probing the road ahead to make sure it was still there.
*truth: if we hadn’t had our heads so far up our asses we probably could have gotten out easily by going upstream instead of down. Lesson learned.
@becca: Pundits are heading for the fainting couches in droves.
@de stijl: Thank you for this! While I was in Korea, I always wondered why all of my fellow faculty continually complained about getting a furnished apartment as part of the compensation. Always had a “thankless bitch” quality to me. Now I know.
@CSK:
Honestly, with the promise of receiving a million dollars +, which Trump will easily grift from his people, Kise must be on an early 401K tour.