Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, June 15, 2023
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64 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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Nothing new to report at 2am PDT. Wishing everyone a Happy Friday Eve. Let the festivities begin!
Is it only Thursday? Man, this week is dragging by.
@Mikey: I am pretty sure this is at least the third Thursday I’ve woken up to this week.
Weird AF story coming out of NH/PA/MA yesterday:
Couple accused of selling body parts stolen from morgue
So, so many levels of WTAF here.
@Jen: Put it on sale, and they will come.
Blech:
She’s got a bad case of footinmouthitis.
@Jen:
I don’t want to know what the woman in Peabody, MA who owns the “creepy doll shop” was doing with human body parts.
How a Hampton Beach business partnership is changing lives for Lakota women
Despite a tinge of white-saviorism in the writing, generally a good news story. The program is in its second year and a couple of last years participants have returned on their own to work for the summer.
If you have been on the Pine Ridge Reservation, or know anything about the history and conditions there, what the women say about life there isn’t surprising. South Dakota pursues policies against tribal members that would be familiar to blacks in the south.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Palin gave a perfect description of a Trumpkin.
@OzarkHillbilly:
And somehow this is causing it to be colder than normal in the Great Lakes region. Climate and weather are weird. I’m wondering if it’s affecting the jet stream or something. Or if it’s just saving up to roast us in August.
Glenda Jackson, 87, has died. RIP.
@Mu Yixiao: We’ve had some cooler than normal periods here as well with really low humidity. I’m sure Mother Nature will extract her pound of flesh come July, it’s our worst month. August here is usually not so bad because Hurricane season kicks into high gear and stirs up the atmosphere.
@CSK:
My grade school piano teacher?
NYMetro has been cooler than normal but also exceptionally dry. In addition to the Canadian wildfire smoke we had to deal with, small fires broke out in parts of NJ.
The 25 best stunts in cinema – ranked!
There are all good, like 13. Stormy Weather (1943) of which he said:
but it’s very subjective. Still, a lot of fun to watch the one’s he picked.
@Mu Yixiao:
Jackson was a very famous British actress who then became a Labour M.P. She had a long career in politics.
Front Range Colorado is having one of the wettest Junes on record and we’re only halfway through. And at altitude, it’s almost always cool if there’s cloud cover. Where I live we’ve only reached 80 °F on one day this month. The residents in my group of townhouses have a Wednesday happy hour under the gazebo at 5:30 pm during the summer. Yesterday’s bunch broke up early because everyone was getting cold.
I saw this earlier and thought it was a joke, but over at the Bulwark, Charley Sykes confirmed it is real. According to someone at John Hopkins all you gals out there are no longer women, not even womyn, but now non-men.
Great story in the WaPo about how Trump ignored his attorneys suggestion of negotiating a plea with the DOJ, and instead believed RWNJ Tom Fitton who told him he could keep the documents.
Fitton lost the infamous Clinton “Socks” case. He also apparently pushed for Trump to declare victory and stop counting the ballots before midnight on Election Night, 2020.
Fitton is not a lawyer.
Here.
@CSK: Loved Glenda Jackson in everything she did, especially playing Queen Elizabeth I in both Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) and Elizabeth R (1971). I’ve always wondered how she managed to win the Best Actress Oscar *twice* and still remain relatively unknown to American general audiences. Shades of Luise Rainer.
@Mu Yixiao:
Oh please roast me whether daddy, I’m freezing.
@Sleeping Dog:
The thing about this that pisses me off is that trans people are getting blamed for this. This is so stupid and will only make things worse for trans/non-binary people. It’s actively dumb.
@Sleeping Dog:
So there are no longer men and women, just men and non-men? Swell.
And how does this improve the lot of the non-binary????
@DK:
Yes, she was great as ER in both instances. I think if she had not left acting to pursue a parliamentary career in 1992, she would be far better known.
She seems to have resumed acting in 2019, and I believe recently completed a movie with Michael Caine.
It seems to me the full 10 years would be a bit excessive, especially since the conference went off without a hitch. I guess we’ll see.
@DK:
Possibly because she was never in the Hollywood network, which I’d suppose generates a lot of reporting?
And more recently, from 1991 until 2015 she was a Labour MP.
So not really celebrity gossip column material.
@DK:
Check her out in the more-famous Women in Love and the somewhat-obscure Hopscotch (with Walter Matthau, who plays a CIA agent writing a tell-all about how dumb his bosses are, who are after him as he taunts them with chapters).
A picture in the video shows horrific over crowding on the deck. The article also states that the holds on these smuggler boats are usually locked as a form of crowd control.
@Modulo Myself: Hopscotch is a family favorite film. Matthau was great in that!
It’s worth clicking on the link below just to see the photo of Trump that accompanies it:
http://www.rawstory.com/trump-espionage-2661363083/
Sidesplitting.
@Mu Yixiao:
The northeast has been far below normal. A couple of days last week, my wife turned the heat on and that’s the first time we’ve done that in June.
@Daryl:
Thanks.
My first takeaway is that English needs two new words. One that means a stupid form of hubris, and another that means such a stupid form of hubris that idiots would think it’s stupid.
I’d suggest “trump” for the latter, but that’s already used for a card and a virus.
@Beth:
Unfortunate, but true.
@CSK:
Months ago, I suggested to you that you needed to get fitted for one of those red dresses with the white bonnet. And to add to the misery of women in this society, the Southern Baptists are kicking out churches that have women clergy from the convention.
@CSK:
Maybe, if you can see past the ugly. That always stops me.
I don’t want to see any more pictures of him unless he’s handcuffed or in prison.
Oops! Double post. Please delete.
A rare bit of sanity from the SC
Somehow I don’t think this “non-men” locution is going to fly.
http://www.newsweek.com/johns-hopkins-women-transgender-non-binary-1806627
@CSK:
I get that whoever was responsible for the non-man locution was trying to be inclusive of binary individuals, but why assume men are the standard and why only lesbians? Its really bizarre and that’s why I figured it was a parody.
It will go the way of birthing vessels
@Sleeping Dog:
But wouldn’t that mean that a non-man is non-binary? Again, how does this help the non-binary?
Can someone please find a hill for this man?
Republican Dan Crenshaw Says Gender-Affirming Care Is ‘The Hill We Will Die On’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/republican-dan-crenshaw-says-gender-110117096.html
One good thing is that they are coming out in the open more and more, his star witness is a therapist who espouses conversion therapy. Their goal really is the eradication of trans people.
@Kathy:
I understand the sentiment, but face it–we’re going to be treated to photos of Trump for some time to come. Might as well enjoy the really terrible ones.
¡BREAKING NEWS!
Cornel West jumps from People’s Party to Green Party!
@CSK:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As I may have mentioned, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has resigned as an MP.
Today we got the official report that led to his departure:
House of Commons Committee of Privileges,
Matter referred on 21 April 2022 (conduct of Rt Hon Boris Johnson):
Final Report
It’s brutal. It’s also rather long; for a summary version Ian Dunt has a twitter thread worth a look.
The Houses of Parliament: when it works, it works.
a.k.a. “When you come at the Commons, you best not miss.”
Johnson has a response out.
Short version: waah! I’m so persecuted
Sod off, Boris.
@Sleeping Dog: It’s taken them this long? [mild expletive, deleted] When I was in the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches in my child and early young adulthood, we kicked a congregation out of our local association group for changing the name of their church to leave “Baptist” out. We’d have had congregations with women in roles carrying the title “pastor” out of fellowship before the ordination councils of said women could even meet to appoint them.
@JohnSF:
NO!?! Really? When did this happen? WA! 😉
@CSK: From the link
Language is messy. There are also apparently trans men who have lived a decent chunk of their lives as lesbians and still think the term applies because it is part of their life experience.
I get the argument. Not sure I agree with it, but I get it.
Language is messy and dumb and awkward and trying to get the exact right term that will satisfy the language lawyers and grammar-Nazis is probably impossible.
An oversight, likely.
But I’m more interested in the “social media users” who are calling it misogynistic. They’re almost certainly a combination of twits and TERFs, grammar-Nazis and plain Nazis, etc. a frothy mix of annoying pedants and truly hateful people. There’s more than a hint of “what is a woman?” here.
As an annoying pedant, I think we have an obligation to look at our fellow travelers and when our annoying pedantry is being used as cover by bigots to bite our tongues and let the gross offense to pedantry slide to avoid siding with bigots.
Yes, it physically hurts to let someone be wrong without pointing it out. But it’s a sacrifice for the greater good. It’s how we serve. There should be a day on the calendar to mark this.
That said, the first use of singular-they to refer to known, identifiable, named persons (rather than an unknown individual) was in 2008 according to OED, and I am content to use it I just want the singular-they proponents to stop trying to gaslight me and claim it’s been used that way since 1385.
——
also, I don’t include things with genuine consequences, just annoying pedantry. BDS is a protest of the Israeli state’s actions, but is used as cover by Nazis. The BDS supporters have an obligation to call out the Nazis and distance themselves from them, not to ignore the actions of the Israeli government.
I left the office around 10:15 this morning. The weather app showed 29 C. inside the car, the thermometer read 34 C. After a short drive with the A/C on as high as it would go, it dropped to 29.
I parked at an underground garage for maybe half an hour. When I returned, the car’s temp was 30.
@Kathy: I am convinced that a major part of why the US public does not care about climate chance is we are presented with things like “by the end of the century, average temperatures will rise by 3C” and have no idea how much that is.
People would have a hard time understanding it to begin with, but when all the numbers are meaningless too, it’s just a lost cause. Our failure to adopt the metric system will lead to so much suffering.
Anyway, I hope you are able to keep warm or cool, as appropriate. 😉
(Ok, 30C is 86F, if I googled correctly, so this all seems very temperate-warm? With 34C being a bit hot?)
If there was a contemporary metric based version of Foreigner’s classic “Hot Blooded”, that would also have helped.
I’m hot blooded, I’ve got a fever of forty C…
@Gustopher:
Ambient temperature is a somewhat relative measure. How a temperature feels depends on things like humidity, altitude, acclimation, etc.
In Vegas, for instance, which is as dry as a desert and not very high above sea level, 28-30 feels just fine*. Mexico City is a valley and former lake, around 2200 meters above sea level. 25 is hot here, 30 is like an oven.
I admit I don’t get what 3 C average temperature means. I do know that this is a year average, which includes temperatures below freezing for extended periods. So a 3 point increase in average when the cold temps are so low, is really a LOT.
*Out of direct sunlight. It takes 35 C or so before I find Vegas too hot. It took 41 C for me to give up any thoughts of an outing, and return to the comforts of an A/C casino.
The dance card is getting full
Who’d have thought someone as repulsive as Benito would be the belle of the Legal System Ball?
BTW, he wants all federal charges dropped, and his documents returned.
@Gustopher:
I think it’s misogynistic. I imagine it was some dude in a Ralph Wiggum “I’m Helping” tee shirt that did this. To me, this definition also carries the implication that I’m not a woman. Which in itself pisses me off. Lol, this is how you get both TERFs and binary trans women on the same side of being pissed at you. That’s quite an accomplishment.
I agree that language is messy and it’s hard to be precise. I think it’s better to be messy and expansive while being as inclusive as possible. Adding in additional parts to the definition isn’t the worst thing.
Neither my partner nor I identify as lesbians and are very careful about how we use that term to describe ourselves. I’ve started using WLW (in community) and Sapphic. I’m not a lesbian even though I’m in a “lesbian-style” relationship.*
As for trans men who identify as lesbians, they shouldn’t. That’s how you know they’re men; they’re appropriating something that doesn’t belong to them.**
Lol, it also makes me laugh. Us Bi’s have been a freaking war for, what, the better part of two decades over “Bi” and “Pan”. Now there’s a fun little war for the summer time.
*I’m part of a trans women’s group and we had a joint party with our trans masc counter-parts. After foisting all the planning and set up on us, they walked in and handed us more stuff to do. On one hand, affirming. On the other hand I got real bitchy real fast.
I see I missed some * and the above might be a bit word-salady. Thank the prednisone.
@OzarkHillbilly: Omg, I’ve seen that before. How were muscles not ripped?
@Modulo Myself: I was told many years back — as a rabid Bette Davis fanboy — that if I liked Davis’s intensity then I should familiarize myself with Glenda Jackson’s oeuvre. So I’ve seen all her Oscar-nominated roles: Women in Love, A Touch of Class, Hedda, and Sunday Bloody Sunday.
I will seek out Hopscotch, thanks for the rec.
@Kathy: I would laugh my ass off if Jack Smith personally autographed every newspaper clipping, photo of Trump with a celebrity, and anything else that ACTUALLY qualified as a personal document before he gave them all back to him. Hell, sign the boxes, too. “With love, Jack” 😛 😛
@Jax:
Imagine how much harder you’d laugh if Biden did that.
On news elsewhere, the Knesset has demonstrated the benefit of secret ballots in parliamentary procedures.
I wonder if Benito would have been convicted on the second impeachment had the US Senate enjoyed this advantage.
@Kathy:
Could well be.
@Mu Yixiao:
Exactly. Increased global temperature increases the magnitude of fluctuations in the jet stream, and the average wind velocity. That means more times when the jet stream swings unusually far south, as well as the times when it rides up around Nunavit. The increased frequency of extreme events (in both directions) will be more damaging than the relatively small increase in average temperatures.
@CSK:
Anyone who hasn’t seen them should watch her two comedic tours de force with Walter Matthau: Hopscotch and House Calls. Hopscotch is the film that my family used to evaluate the suitability of prospective spouses — if they didn’t love it, they weren’t going to fit in.
@Gustopher:
I’m pretty sure I heard Dr. Anne Curzan of UMich (dean and professor of English and Linguistics) cite an instance of Jane Austen using singular they for a specific individual of known gender. That’s not 1385, but it’s a lot longer ago than 2008. I’ll see if I can find the reference.
@JohnSF: We were recently in Edinburgh, and our guide noted that Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have done more for the Scottish independence movement than anyone else.
@SC_Birdflyte:
OTOH, the debacle of the end of Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership of the SNP has probably balanced them out.