Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, July 2, 2020
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88 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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Just as a reminder that the crisis facing our country is not Trump, but rather the Republican Party which gave rise to him and continues to blindly enable and support him: when news was revealed that American soldiers were being targeted by the Russians who offered rich bounties to assassins, the Republican leadership met behind closed doors with administration officials, not a single Democrat present, and emerged with their talking points perfectly aligned, “No one knows what happened, no one knows who was briefed, no one knows if the intelligence is good, and we can never know.” Not even the murder of US soldiers, put in harms way by a war they have supported for two decades, can get enough of a reaction out of them to so much as rock the boat. Disgusting.
From this ProPublica article:
Proof again that you can’t fix stupid.
@MarkedMan: Pro Life my ass.
Your non-Blech story for the day: ‘Swim happy!’: family save bear found swimming with a plastic jar on its head – video .
Heh.
Don’t let this guy check the air in your tires as he tends to over inflate everything: Brazil’s new education minister resigns amid scrutiny over qualifications
Right wingers sure seem to be suffering a plague of fake facts these days.
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is coming from a guy who resisted Medicaid expansion for years. The notion that Abbott cares about reducing poverty is so laughable it beggars belief. But it’s important not to forget that Republicans are still very good at messaging, and a lot better at it than Dems. The way he immediately frames the issue as one of taking the pandemic seriously vs. championing the poor isn’t stupid, it’s clever. It’s what Republicans do well. It’s probably not going to work in this case, since you can’t message away a virus. But I’m not ready to gloat about it, not when they’ve caused this much damage to the population. Democrats shouldn’t have to rely on a disaster of biblical portions to see Republicans’ political fortunes go down the crapper.
I got those moderation blues again. Please release me.
Hawks turn arena into voting station after Georgia residents struggle to get to polls
Excellent.
@Kylopod: One doesn’t have to be a genius to win an election in Texas. You just have to be a Republican.
Some people may recall the twitter thread linked by @grumpy realist in yesterday’s forum; the hilarious tale of a Brexiteer family’s misadventures in France?
(“Improved” by the writer, I suspect, but still true to life.)
If anyone is wondering where it went, apparently the Spectator weekly journal website pickup up on it, denounced it as “fake news”, and then…
Author then deleted account (understandably).
Thin skinned and humourless bunch of sods, these Brexiteers, as well as stupid.
There’s a new JAMA article on undercounting of COVID-19 deaths, and how it varies by state.
Results: There were approximately 781,000 total deaths in the United States from March 1 to May 30, 2020, representing 122, 300 (95% prediction interval, 116, 800-127, 000) more deaths than would typically be expected at that time of year. There were 95 ,235 reported deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 from March 1 to May 30, 2020. The number of excess all-cause deaths was 28% higher than the official tally of COVID-19–reported deaths during that period. In several states, these deaths occurred before increases in the availability of COVID-19 diagnostic tests and were not counted in official COVID-19 death records. There was substantial variability between states in the difference between official COVID-19 deaths and the estimated burden of excess deaths.
Per NBC, Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested by the FBI somewhere on the east coast (probably NYC) this morning. She’ll be arraigned later today.
@CSK:
The Daily Beast says Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire.
Weird Dilbert Guy Says Joe Biden To Most Dangerous Game The White People, That Sounds Just Like Old Joe
I found out 20 years ago that Scott Adams was insane, some people are just finding that out now.
Oklahomans voted to expand Medicaid. That’s bad news for Republicans.
@Teve: The GOP made a conscious decision that they could no longer sufficiently compete for the rational vote, and so needed to court the irrational. The long-term consequences of that should have been obvious.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffery Epstein’s companion, was taken into custody today by the FBI, in Bedford New Hampshire.
@DrDaveT: The Southern Strategy of appealing to angry white racists made a lot of sense 50 years ago. Nixon won one of the elections with 60% of the vote. But the percentage of angry racist white people has been diminishing for 50 years. It’s a terrible strategy now. If you chart the percentage of the vote Republican presidential candidates have gotten over the last 50 years, you’ll see the trend line.
@Jen:
Okay, that makes sense. One report had it as “Branford,” and as far as I know, there isn’t any Branford, NH.
But what was she doing in Bedford? Shopping at the mall?
@CSK: I’m curious about that too, and wonder if she was sheltering with a friend. It’s not that far from where they found her holed up before, at her home in Newburyport MA.
There is a nice state liquor store in Bedford, great selection of single-malt Scotches at that location but I don’t think they open until 10:00 so she wasn’t there… 😀
@Jen:
Not Newburyport, but Manchester-by-the-Sea.
I’m sure I’ve patronized the Bedford liquor store.
@sam: This is the type of creativity needed to beat these a-holes. I love it!
@CSK: Hm. Several outlets now saying it is Bradford, NH, not Bedford. There is a Bradford, NH but it’s a very small/rural community. That’s interesting.
I’d think an outsider would be more evident in a small community like that rather than Bedford, which is right outside of Manchester.
Another lightning thunderbolt storm:
“Four people killed on a beach in Brazil lightning strikes”
“World record lightning mega flash in South America” (Washington Post)
“Four hundred forty miles long lightning bolt over Brazil is biggest recorded” (Live Science” You can’t make this stuff up.
Also, a lightning bolt that lasted almost twenty seconds!
Storms of Biblical proportions! Scientists are puzzled.
@Jen:
This is getting confusing. I just checked the Union-Leader online and WMUR and they’re both going with Bradford.
I’d never heard of Bradford, NH before this. Is there money there? Did someone lend her a hideaway as happened in Manchester-by-the-Sea?
@sam: @Jim Brown 32:
That really is genius. Now they need to train up some players as poll workers.
@Jen:
Having some experience in hiding in plain sight, it’s a matter of balance, the danger of a small number of locals who might recognize you, versus greater exposure to more people who might recognize you in a larger town. Six of one.
Well this is interesting, that prosecutor that Trump just fired? Berman? His office was the one working on the Ghislaine Maxwell case.
@Jen:
@CSK:
Bradford, lots of small farms and weekend places and as Jen mentioned, likely hanging with a friend. I’m waiting to see if they prosecute her or get her to turn on a bigger fish. Prince Andrew and maybe the Donald should be concerned.
@Teve:
No, I get that. But I wasn’t really talking about the racists or even the fanatical anti-abortionists, though they are part of the irrational coalition. I’m talking about the outright loons — the damaged people susceptible to conspiracy theories and information bubbles. GOP courting of these people’s votes (even as their advertisers separate them from their cash) is well-documented. But when the irrational become a critical component of your base, you should not be surprised when they express their irrationality in other ways, as well — ways that do not help your cause.
@CSK: Bradford is outside of Concord, near-ish to Lake Sunapee. It’s entirely possible there’s money there. That’s the thing about NH, you can be driving out in the country and pass a few old farms and then see a massive, well-kept property that clearly costs a ton of money to maintain.
People like to be left alone here. {shrugs}
@Jen:
I know; I’ve always lived a stone’s throw from NH. There’s money in places you might not expect. And, given how odd–or non-existent–the zoning laws are, you can find palaces next to shacks.
Bradford has a population of 1650. Maxwell probably was noticed. I wonder how long the FBI had her under surveillance before they slapped the cuffs on her.
@Jen: I’m still puzzled over why she didn’t retreat to the UK long since. The UK won’t extradite based on “conspiracy” charges.
@Michael Cain:
She’d have had to produce a passport. Ding! There go the FBI computers as well as the MI5 computers. The UK may not be anxious to get possession of a woman who might spill everything about Prince Andrew to the ravenous British press.
Job #1 if you’re hiding out: stay off the grid. Betcha dollar she also hasn’t been driving a car or using credit cards.
@DrDaveT: Crank Magnetism is the term for how a person doesn’t just believe one conspiracy theory, they believe five conspiracy theories.
@DrDaveT: This tracks. I spent 2-3 months in the excess deaths rabbit hole and during that time the nationwide “likely C19 vs confirmed C19” changed from a multiplier of 1.8 to 1.6 and then seemed to stabilize at 1.3.
During lockdown there was no point in looking at excess deaths in states with low case count because their multipliers were something like 0.95, primarily due to dramatic reduction in number of accidents, which are the third leading killer in the US
@Michael Cain: @Michael Reynolds:
She didn’t pick the optimal place to hide. Bradford is tiny, and strangers would be noticed. I wonder if she was running out of boltholes.
When she was “hiding out” in Manchester-by-the-Sea, she didn’t advertise her presence, but she didn’t conceal it, either. The neighbors knew her as “G.” She walked her vizla a lot.
I’ve heard people in cities across the country remarking about how prevalent fireworks are this year, starting weeks ago. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories about this, but FWIW I think the answer is actually pretty simple.
I lived in Shanghai for four years and can confirm that the amount of fireworks used during the entire Chinese Spring Festival (including Chinese New Year) dwarfs anything that goes on in the US for 4th of July. I’m talking two or maybe even three orders of magnitude. But this year China was shut down so I suspect a whole years worth of production from Chinese fireworks plants went unsold. Putting it in ships and sending it to the US would take 8-10 weeks, which would have it arriving on our shores by April/May. The end of May was when I started hearing fireworks every night here in Baltimore city.
Lotta stuff happening today:
A judge has ruled that Simon and Schuster can go ahead with the release of Mary Trump’s book, overturning the decision a Dutchess County judge made yesterday.
I’d never heard of that breed before. Good looking dog.
@CSK: “They were not party to the NDA.” Duh.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t know what basis the judge used for this most recent decision, but that would make sense.
The book is an Amazon best-seller.
@OzarkHillbilly:
They’re really nice dogs. Much too nice for Maxwell. Then again, any dog is much too nice for Maxwell.
On aviation news, Yesterday the FAA concluded a series of test flights with a Boeing 737 MAX 7, as part of the re-certification process to get the model back in the air. It may get flying again in September.
It also came out that Boeing did not mention the now-infamous MCAS to the FAA on the original certification for the type. The FAA, it turns out, relied too much on the information provided by Boeing.
While final certification took place in March 2017, the process goes back much further, even to before the maiden test flight in January 2016. So this is not something that can specifically be lamed on the Trump regime. Rather regulatory standards and practices in aviation seem to rely too much on manufacturer’s data. They should be more inquisitive and far less trusting.
BTW, if I believed in such things, I’d say the plane is jinxed. First, it was grounded amid high demand, while some airlines were either enlarging or renovating their fleets, and while Airbus was having success with the A320/1 neo line, especially the A321 LR and the proposed A321 XLR. But then it comes back into service as demand has plummeted, and orders have been cancelled.
Regulatory capture happens under both DEM and GOP presidents. I don’t know what the answer is, as the right to petition the govt is in the 1st amendment.
Trump Admin Scales Back Mandate That Health Insurers Cover COVID Tests
It’s not paranoia if they really are out to kill you.
In other news, SCOTUS has agreed to inject itself into the battle between the House and DOJ regarding release of the redacted portions of the Mueller information, specifically the grand jury materials.
In practical terms, this means that the stay will remain in effect and there is zero chance the material will be given to Congress before the election. Trump and Barr seem to have prevailed in the battle to run out the clock.
@Kathy:
I also saw where Norwegian just cancelled an order for 92 of the 737’s as well as five 787’s that it had ordered. Not the best time to be Boeing.
With respect to Ghislaine Maxwell:
She’s being arraigned in Concord, NH this afternoon.
William Sweeney, acting director of the NY FBI office, said that she had been living on “a gorgeous property” in NH. There is speculation she bought it through an LLC.
@CSK:
Essentially that the courts are not obligated to step in and enforce non-disclosure agreements. Monetary damages stemming from breach of the agreement are the appropriate remedy for a breach, but only after the fact. There isn’t a role for the courts to impose prior restraint in order to prevent Mary Trump from breaching her NDA.
Basically “not our job to force her to comply with a a civil contract. If she breaches it, sue her, but we’re not going to prevent it from happening”
@HarvardLaw92: Every intra-party legal battle these days always seems to come back to the question: WWRD?
What Will Roberts Do?
@HarvardLaw92:
Thanks. I wonder if Robert Trump will sue. It seems to me that a suit would cause an even bigger rift in the family, given that Mary Trump quotes Maryanne Trump Barry as saying some unpleasant things about Donald.
And of course, a suit just garners more publicity for the book. And the number of people sympathetic to Donald Trump, outside of Cult45, is probably close to zero.
@Kylopod:
Indeed. This one was just a grant of cert though, which only requires 4 votes. It’s entirely possible that Roberts didn’t vote yes for that. The issue does need to be resolved, so I’m generally pleased that they took it up, but the timing smells like dead fish. The Circuit opinion came down in early March, so there was more than ample time to get it on the current calendar and it’s certainly a grave enough SOP issue to have merited expedited review. They just didn’t want it to happen. It got slow walked for a purpose imo.
@CSK:
I have my doubts tbh. Robert Trump got drafted in as a doppelgänger for Donald when he failed to prevail in the same quest. The goal was never to collect from her. It was to shut her up before an election. That ship has basically sailed now. Suing her after the fact would just be sour grapes.
Which means that Donald Trump probably will. I doubt that Robert does.
@HarvardLaw92:
Oh, Donald will threaten to sue. It’s my impression his suits against writers either get tossed by a judge or Trump himself doesn’t follow through on them.
That said, I recall him once saying, with characteristic swinish glee, that he loved suing writers “because it costs me only a few dollars and bankrupts them.”
@CSK: @HarvardLaw92:
Also there’s the fact that restrictions like this come under equity, so basically the court can throw in whatever it pleases in equity’s balancing act to come up with its final decision. Here, the decision to throw the whole thing open seems to hing on the fact that Trump isn’t just a sleazy real estate wheeler-dealer anymore; he’s also POTUS and there’s a lot of public interest attached.
There’s also the fact that the original NDA seems to have had a time limit of, well, forever. Something else that judges give a fishy eye to. All NDAs I’ve signed have either had a) long time limits on material specifically identified as trade secrets of the company, or b) a limit of one year after the project finishes on any general-purpose “confidential” material.
I suspect the judge also looked at the power imbalance between Trump and his niece when the original NDA was signed. Just because you can financially pressure someone into signing a harsh NDA doesn’t mean a judge will automatically support it.
@HarvardLaw92: I was wondering about that. Kind of hard to sue somebody for violating a NDA when they haven’t yet violated it.
@CSK:
After thinking about it, I doubt he even does that. The absolute last place he would want to find himself is a nasty internecine family dispute in which he’ll be equally subject to discovery. That would risk laying the rest of their dirty laundry out for public consumption. Sort of akin to the Vanderbilt estate litigation back in the day. It very quickly got so embarrassing for everybody concerned that it ended up being preferable to all of them that it just go away as efficiently and quietly as possible.
I imagine she’ll be further ostracized, but I doubt she’d care. This is personal for her – residual from the intrafamily dispute that begat the NDA in the first place – in a way that leads me to believe that she doesn’t care how much of the forest burns down. Donald has more to lose than she does by suing her.
@OzarkHillbilly:
It can happen, but generally it’s in matters where disclosure would irreparably damage the party seeking restraint. Say, for example, a guy knows the original recipe for Coke but is barred from disclosing it by an NDA and it’s a trade secret. In that case, the resultant damage to Coke would arguably be unable to remedied after the fact by any sum of money, and certainly not any sum available to a sole party. Ergo there would be a role for the courts to step in and prevent disclosure. We’re talking 1st Amendment though. Strict scrutiny. Prior restraint has to be the only viable remedy available that will provide equitable relief. Courts do not often go there, for good reason.
In this case, simply preventing somebody from being embarrassed doesn’t even come close to justifying walking rough shod over the 1A. They threw a Hail Mary and it predictably failed to connect.
@HarvardLaw92:
Oh, absolutely the wisest thing for DJT would be to let the whole matter drop quietly. Even if the book reveals him to be a pedophiliac Satanist Communist, Cult45 won’t believe it. The rest of us will, but so many appalling things have been written about Donald Trump that what’s another book detailing his awfulness in the grand scheme of things.
Note that I said that ignoring the book would be the wisest thing for Trump to do, but how often does he do the wisest thing?
@CSK:
He’s driven by ego. That rarely thinks strategically. It’s reactionary. He’s been in this position before in business dealings and had his ass handed to him because of it. Greatest strength almost always equals greatest weakness. It just depends on the circumstances.
Given that Carl Reiner just passed away, something one of his recent roles had to say seems relevant. As Saul in Ocean’s Thirteen, he opined that
That’s Trump …
@OzarkHillbilly:
To begin with, regulator ought to believe the manufacturers less. That said, a number of airplanes have been certified recently: the C-Series (now A220), the A320/1neo, the A330neo, the A350, and others. Only the MAX came with a fatal flaw, but that was more than enough.
@HarvardLaw92:
Norwegian was in financial trouble even before the pandemic. They’ve been growing aggressively, chasing market share off a cliff at the expense of profit. Other airlines trying the long-haul low cost model have perished, like WOW and Primera Air.
That said, the MAX was important to their model, as it can do some transatlantic flights at much lower cost than the 787. So we’ll just have to see. Some routes can be covered with the 737-900 they also operate.
Herman Cain has been hospitalized in Atlanta with Covid-19. He was at Trump’s Tulsa rally.
Back to Ghislaine: Through an LLC, she paid 1 million+ for a seven-room house on 156 acres at 338 East Washington Road in Bradford NH. The driveway is a half-mile long. It boasts “a fabulous barn ideal for square dances and hoedowns.” (Yee-hah.) The realtor’s listing said it was ideal for anyone seeking total privacy. Indeed.
Apparently it wasn’t quite private enough.
@CSK: Nice little place, huh?
@Jen:
Oh, yeah. I wonder what will happen to it now.
ETA: According to the Guardian, Maxwell has been hiding out at various locations in New England since Epstein died.
@Jim Brown 32: Look for the SoS to note that while he thanks them for their civic mindedness, that it is simply impractical for the elections office to try to staff any additional polling places. Especially with the Covid-19 crisis as dire as it is.
Still a nice move, though.
Agreed. but they have the money, the lobbyists, the lawyers, the engineers, etc etc etc. I’m just a dumbfuck hillbilly from Misery. Who do you think they’re going to listen to?
@Jen: Better than her current digs.
@CSK:
@Jen:
It is a nice place and quite likely will be back on the market.
Probably bracketed by properties that haven’t been painted in 40 years, have a collapsing barn and at least one collapsed outbuilding and every car the family has owned since WWII lined up along the back fence line where they dragged them when they stopped running. Gotta love rural NH and Maine.
If she bought the place she wasn’t hiding out from the law, but from the press and paparazzi.
Hugh Downs has died. He was 99.
@Sleeping Dog:
As I said in one of my books: “New Hampshire had funny zoning laws.”
On 156 acres, she was probably well out of sight and sound of any adjacent hovels. But, given the real estate prices Bradford, probably not too many hovels.
Tammy Duckworth will hold up 1000+ military promotions until Lt Col. Alexander Vindman gets his.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/02/tammy-duckworth-alexander-vindman-military-nominees-348183
@CSK:
Zoning laws they have, it is enforcing building codes on existing property that doesn’t happen.
@CSK:
I once took a cruise on which he was the Special Guest Host. Two weeks, only 140 passengers, so I dined with him a couple of times, and chatted with him a few more in the lounge or observation deck. He was every bit as charming and delightful in person as he seemed on TV. If it was an act, he deserves a lifetime Oscar as well.
@Sleeping Dog: Sheeeeit, come to the Ozarks, we don’t need no stinking building codes or zoning laws.
@CSK:
Have you ever noticed how the people who successfully go off and hide for 20 or 30 years live small? I assume that she’s got real known dirt on someone the FBI can lay their hands on or they wouldn’t have settled for “conspiracy” at this point.
Good Lord, somebody is pitching Tucker Carlson as a 2024 frontrunner. Like we could sink any lower than Trump…..
Narrator Voice: Or can we……..
@Kathy: Those planes have been grounded for over a year now? I would be wary about flying on one of those. Parts can deteriorate from lack of use. It has cost the airlines a fortune to keep those things up as it is. Fuels and fluids have to be changed out, they have to be cooled down in the summer heat, tires can break down, and animals have to be sealed out. The future is Boeing’s 777 300er: better range, more savings on fuel.
@Jax: What? Tucker Carlson? It’s like WWE in the “Attitude Era;” everytime one thought that Vince had made the show as vulgar as possible, he rented a bathysphere to explore new possibilities.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, the FAA has the authority, and, for a few years, no manufacturer will want the onus of putting the next MAX into service.
@sam, @Jim Brown 32, @Michael Reynolds: Even better is that the head coach is issuing a challenge to the other 29 NBA coaches to follow Atlanta’s lead…so it would be great if this same plan is duplicated in other cities, particularly Charlotte, Miami, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, and Philadelphia…
According to the linked article, hundreds of Hawks employees and arena staff will be trained as election workers, so I imagine the SoS will have to come up with a more plausible excuse…
@Michael Cain:
It sounds as if they knew she was there for a while. I wonder to what degree they’ll negotiate the conspiracy charges.
…..Hermain Cain is my name and I got infected riding the Donald train……
@CSK: That’s a shame. I hope he recovers. Herman Caín seems like a nice man. A grifter, but grifting from people I don’t like…
I never got a true believer vibe out of him, and I have a certain fondness for grifters.
@Gustopher: The thing is, he went to the rally not wearing a mask. So it isn’t just grift; that suggests some genuine stupidity.
I remember him going on the Daily Show some years ago, and he did come off as surprisingly likable. Remember, though, that his 2012 campaign ended due to allegations of sexual harassment.