Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, August 13, 2020
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87 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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The headline of the day-
Air Force helicopter struck by bullet while flying over Virginia
The Florida headline of the day-
Florida sheriff forbids employees, visitors to wear masks: If they do, ‘they will be asked to leave’
@Bill: Good Morning again, Bill. Hope you’re well. Saw this headline and just knew we’d see you link to it. For those who don’t know, Ocala is 26 miles from The Villages.
@JohnMcC: A Florida note: I’ve noticed while watching sports-TV in the Tampa/StPete market that there are NO Trump commercials. D’s are pretty solidly present in every between-the-innings commercial break but no President. Are you seeing the same in South FL?
Anyone in ‘battleground states’ have any observations on that topic? Frankly it’s puzzling unless the chaos in the Administration has gotten worse than bad.
@JohnMcC:
It’s all about analytics. My guess is you’re watching an event/channel that isn’t the demographic that the GOP is trying to reach. Turn to the local Fox station, or the local Sinclair station, and you’ll probably see some Trump ads. Trump’s campaign is not even trying to get independents or persuadable voters. They’re counting on, and hoping for, a turnout election where Trump’s base turns out more than the Dem base. So all the ads and messaging is targeting the base – old, white, evangelical, racists, xenophobes, and other assorted deplorables. Yes. I said it. Eff you if you don’t like it. It’s the truth.
@Bill: because a mask prevents clear communications? What BS. Next I’d expect that 911 operators to ask if the caller is wearing a mask before asking ‘ what is your emergency?’
In today’s New York Times:
The True Coronavirus Toll in the U.S. Has Already Surpassed 200,000
The piece is well-researched and includes plenty of informative graphics that show, by region and by state, where and when excess deaths peaked.
@JohnMcC: My guess is that the money problems are about to become acute. Also, traditionally speaking this used to be considered kind of early to put campaign ads up, but early voting/mail in voting’s prominence this year is scrambling some timetables.
The Trump campaign had a reasonably substantial war chest built up, but some of the salaries they are paying are eye-popping. Their burn rate must be quite high. Add to that Parscale’s bias toward online advertising and they probably aren’t paying sufficient attention to higher-priced traditional media markets.
This piece from the NYT goes into some of the oddities in Trump’s ad buys.
US Chamber of Commerce gently bashes the Executive Order on deferring payroll taxes:
U.S. Chamber Letter to Secretary Mnuchin on Implementation of the Executive Order Deferring Payroll Tax Obligations in Light of the Ongoing COVID-19 Disaster
I guess the Chamber is not a fan. Plus it will cost money to implement the reprogramming in the complex payroll systems most companies use these days.
@Bill :
So question to the lawyers out there: a police station is public property and deliberately open (at least part of it) to the public. What happens when someone seeking help from the police comes in and won’t take off the mask – either because they’re not dumb or because they’re too focused on getting help? Are they seriously going to tell someone they won’t do their jobs and to GTFO unless they risk themselves in what will be a plague hotspot shortly? What happens when an officer gets caught wearing a mask because shit got real for them – who do the union support?
A great example of why Defund the Police is still getting people out into the street months later. This is not his little fiefdom to be run according to his personal / political beliefs. He’s endangering the public and his employees on a power trip.
There may not be many participants at OTB who have direct participation in the opening up of schools (except perhaps our hosts) during this pandemic but the ramifications came home in a real way yesterday.
My wife is a counselor at an elementary school here in San Antonio. I’ve been following the ups and downs of preparing the school to begin teaching starting Monday (virtually until after Labor Day, then parent will choose in-school or virtual).
She has been physically working at the school, first with administration, and then, this week with the teachers. Well, she came home yesterday around 5pm with a sore throat and headache, no temperature. So we run through all the scenarios and procedures. She had went to the school nurse and consulted with her. We called the COVID Nurse advice line and gave the info. However, no advice to get tested. This morning no sore throat and she went to work. Hopefully, that will be the end of it.
It is the uncertainty of it all that is most daunting. But the implications of what happens if a positive diagnosis is made is even more. Impacts the employer (school) and the family (which is wife, husband (me), two adult children) in ways that will have to be spun out. I’ll be interested in how the school system’s procedures react.
Random thought of the day — I continue to wonder how much the Trump administration’s plans to “reinvent” the Post Office (into a much slower form of delivery) are absolutely going to screw the party base in these next few months (or longer if they win reelection).
There’s anecdotal reporting of drugs no longer reaching through-the-mail subscribers on time. And, a significant portion of seniors still pay their bills through the mail (one study from 2017 puts it at approximately 40%). So if those mailings are delayed, will those folks be facing a lot of late fees?
Also, does the social security administration still give people the option to recieve physical checks via mail?
Charles Johnson
@Green_Footballs
I don’t mean to be rude, but aren’t you dead?
11:19 PM · Aug 12, 2020
@Bill: If I lived in Ocala, I would be feeling a powerful desire to go down to the cop shop with a news crew to file a complaint about something. Just to get their refusal to do their jobs on camera, and plaster it everywhere I could.
@Mikey: I reported that account just a bit ago. They should not be using the named account of someone who is descended to spread their garbage propaganda.
@Scott: I hope everything is okay and all remain healthy. But yeah, I have several friends who are teachers or who work in schools in other capacities, and the ramifications are daunting.
Yesterday, someone posted a link to this Vanity Fair piece, that contained this gem.
Which got me to thinking, when was Rich Lowry going to print his Nat’l Review apology and retraction for this.
Probably never.
@Sleeping Dog: “As much self-awareness as a dog licking its own ass in public,” as Jim Wright (blog-runner of Stonekettle Station) is fond of saying.
This is…queepy: Errr, creepy.
http://www.thebulwark.com/qwazy-for-qanon/
@Teve:
Does Trump understand that a fair number of his constituents still use the USPS to pay their bills?
No. Direct deposit or debit card.
@Sleeping Dog:
Didn’t Trump pull the same stunt with Brian Kemp? Encourage him to re-open Georgia and then turn on Kemp when he did?
This must be an example of what Trump means when he says he likes a chaotic work environment.
@Jen:
*Deceased.* I meant someone who is deceased.
My typing is horrible today!
@CSK: and receive important medications.
@Teve:
Many of which may be time-sensitive. Thanks for reminding me.
@HarvardLaw
Trump admits to intentionally hindering the ability to vote.
Why not file a Class-Action Lawsuit for violation of Civil Rights; hindering our ability, and thus our right, to vote. Millions would sign on. Millions.
And because it would need to be expedited it would keep Barr busy and out of other trouble.
@Teve: The last time I had a dispute with the IRS, I seem to recall that official notifications and such could only by done by USPS.
@Jen: And here I thought that was a Freudian slip as in, “descended to Hell.”
@Jen: Thanks. It’s funny but my wife’s and my greatest fear is not COVID (we are 55 and 66 respectively and in pretty good shape) but that one of our adult children may be the carriers and feel guilty about it all if something bad happened.
@Jen: I jumped to the conclusion that you had some inside knowledge of Mr Cain’s eternal abode.
Edit: I see our Missouri friend beat me to the misconception.
She must be refferrring to some imaginary Republicans because it’s been a long time since any held themselves to -incentives matter, money doesn’t grow on trees, personal responsibility is essential to a well-ordered society—. Decades at least.
Wonkette
@JohnMcC: TBH, I actually thought Jen did it on purpose.
Uber CEO threatens to halt service in California until November election
Eric Murphy the terrible thing about the Trump presidency isn’t Trump. It’s that he revealed that 30%+ of Americans will support fascism, given the chance.
@Teve: The history of the pro-fascist movement in the 1930s and its support by the wealthy (think Fords, DuPonts) was very carefully buried after WWII.
He paid off Stormy to keep her quiet in the run-up to the 2016 election…an election finance violation.
He colluded with Russia…over 200 incidents documented in the Mueller Report (not to mention obstruction).
This go-round…he tried to get Ukraine to smear Biden…and was impeached for it.
He is actively sabotaging the USPS in order to hinder people’s ability to vote.
He is illegally coordinating with Kanye West in an attempt to bleed votes from Biden.
And most certainly he is still benefiting from Russian efforts to aid in his re-election.
Oh yeah…and he cheats at golf.
It must be emasculating to know that you are completely incapable of competing without cheating.
@OzarkHillbilly: uber was always a scam. Dara Khosrowshahi was brought in to try to get the stock to a certain level where the investors could cash out.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Bye!
@Scott: a long time ago I thought ‘what was wrong with the German people that they would allow that to happen’. Now I realize that there was nothing out of the ordinary with the German people. Millions of dumb assholes in this country would go right along with it.
@Mikey:
giggle
@CSK:
He most certainly did.
One thing none of the morons ever learn, is that if you are going to fawn at his feet there is always a bus waiting in the background.
@Sleeping Dog:
Yeah, I was just musing over that very fact: that people never seem to understand that for Trump, loyalty is strictly a one-way street. You owe him everything, and when you’ve given it to him, he turns around and kicks you in the teeth.
Trump seems to be getting more and more unhinged–badly so–as time goes on. Either he really is deteriorating at an accelerated clip, or he’s come to terms with the fact that he’s going to lose, so he feels free to say and tweet whatever he wants: “Vote for me! I’ll keep the suburbs white!” “I’ll wreck the post office so it can’t deliver mail-in ballots! Or your medicines or your checks or your bills!”
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: @Teve: What we all forget is, that by focusing on Trump, we ignore all the willing accomplices over the last 3 1/2 years, whether it is White House staff, Pompeo, McConnell, Barr, and hundreds of burrowing termites undermining our government. They cannot be considered “Good Germans”, but part and parcel of the whole rot.
@CSK:
This is likely optimistic, but I suspect that R’s are reaching a tipping point w/him. Few R’s in congress are speaking in support of his exec memos and orders and R governors are in opposition. The business community certainly isn’t interested carrying out the payroll tax suspension. As he treads closer to the edge of undeniable insanity they are putting distance between themselves and him. It’s is if R pols know they will take a beating in Nov, but know the eroding base still supports him. They have come to the point where they are deciding to take their lumps, get him out of there and start over.
Is it just me, or has it become a fetish with certain law enforcement personnel to wear military-style badges of rank on their shoulders (specifically, the Marion County, FL, sheriff)? To rise to 4-star rank in the armed services takes many years of service and beating out other candidates. Any yahoo can get elected as a sheriff, I guess.
@EddieInCA:
I would venture a guess that 20% of Uber’s business is in California. If CA was the only problem area it would be suicide for Uber to cancel us. But it won’t just be California, other states and other countries will take similar positions. Uber will end up serving Nebraska.
@Teve:
“Now they need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots…But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting…”
Donald Trump — Saying the quiet parts out load since the 1980’s.
@Sleeping Dog:
This strikes me as good sense rather than optimism.
@Moosebreath:
If there’s anything that ought to demonstrate to his base that Trump not only despises them but doesn’t care if they live or die it’s this: his plan to cut off their checks and medicine. Will it? Good question.
@CSK:
Yeah, but we’re talking about Rs
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
He came right out and admitted as much this morning. How much more anti-democratic and anti-American can you get? This strikes at the most basic of our democratic principles. Will this be the red line that turns Republicans in Congress against him? Ha ha, of course not, they’re busy calling Harris the most liberal person ever.
Bob Woodward has a new book on Trump coming out this September: Rage. It will contain “explosive scenes” dealing with Trump’s reaction to Covid-19, the BLM protests, and the economic disaster.
Woodward also got hold of Trump’s “love letters” with Kim. Kim apparently informed Trump that their relationship was akin to one in “a fantasy film.”
I’ll read this, but I’ll have to steel myself. Woodward’s first book about Trump, Fear, was scary enough.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Not at all. They think it’s clever and an element of their superiority.
@OzarkHillbilly:
My theory a television news crew wouldn’t do this is the media are afraid of the local police. They’d suffer some form of retaliation. Why else do the local South Florida newspapers keep on endorsing Ric Bradshaw for re-election as Palm Beach County when his office has a history of thuggery and covering up when police shootings occur? A George Floyd incident is probably the only thing that will change the media’s minds but at what cost.
@Sleeping Dog:
Yeah, you’re right. Maybe someday Trump will alienate his base sufficiently so that non-base Rs don’t have to be terrified of them.
Probably not.
@Teve:
Psychologists invented the “A scale”, a pencil and paper questionnaire intended to identify individuals with an authoritarian tendency. The intent was to find out what it was about Germany that led to Hitler. Then they found no difference between Germans and Americans.
@Jen:
At one point there was some genuine concern that the Trump/RNC War Chest of funds for the election was so massive that it would put D’s at a disadvantage right out of the gate when it came to reaching out to prospective voters (whether on-line, through tv, print media, etc.) but it was kind-of amazing how fast the gap in funds narrowed when Biden was formally announced as the D Presidential candidate.
It is hard to “bury” your opponent with ads defining him well ahead of the election when your opponent has a nearly identically sized cash haul and can do the same to you.
Let’s face it…Trump was obviously going to rely on rallies to do the heavy lifting of getting things like Sleepy Joe to stick in the general public’s’ minds and then a million commercials would air amplifying whatever he said at his rallies so that this is not happening really is giving Trump heartburn…he needs his rallies (what he really needed is another opponent named Clinton, but the rallies would have been a huge help towards his being able to define Biden and get his jabs at Biden to stick in the average voter’s head).
It is telling that the GOP/RNC, and even Trump himself have stopped pushing the idea of getting rallies set-up for him, because Trump knows that even his most enthusiastic heinie kissers do not want to get within 100 ft of a group of Trump fans.
I was at the oncololgist’s office much of the morning today. My cancer is stable for the moment.
Today marks 12 years since I had repair of an ascending aortic aneurysm and heart valve replacement. Afterwards I was in the hospital for 16 days due to complications but I have no heart issues since.
One of my two editors has advised me (While thanking me for a recent compensation for her editing) that my LGBT sci-fi Yakusa epic* is almost ready**. It is about 2,000 pages in length, so it makes James Clavell’s Noble House*** look like a short story. I have never published a story in parts or as a serial before but I may do it this time.
*The one I have Robert Mueller in as an important minor character. DHCF is set between 2007 and 2011. Mueller was then FBI Director.
**LA, my editor, says it may be done by weekend after next. Then I have to go back to double checking her and my work, plus make any plot fixes LA strongly advises if any are needed.
***- And DHCF is also partly set in Hong Kong just like Noble House.
@gVOR08 :
Of course they didn’t. The world has indulged in a 75 year fantasy that Germany uniquely lost its mind for a brief period. Other tyrants and mass murderers have come and gone with similar public support but the German people get tarred as especially evil or at least weak to evil. America loved to lord it over the planet that THEY were the Beacon of Freedom and would NEVER allow such a man to rise to power….. now we see the Hilter’s generation isn’t even completely gone from this earth and we’re just as susceptible to that BS. We are just insanely lucky our blight is too self-centered and stupid to be able to do the kind of damage others have. We may not be so lucky next time…..
@Bill:
Is congrats appropriate in this case? Best wishes for continued good health and inspiration!
@OzarkHillbilly: Me too. Thought ‘now that’s a sense of humor as dry as vermouth’.
@OzarkHillbilly:
@JohnMcC:
I am indebted to you both for thinking I am that clever. 🙂
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Didn’t you hear the possible explanation for George Washington having never told a lie? Here they are-
1 GW never filed an income tax return
2 GW never played golf
@gVOR08: http://www.prisonexp.org
That’s a website based on the 1971 Stanford prison experiment.
@Bill: The first article I saw on the Ocala sheriff mentioned that the county went 70% for Trump, would have been higher but the county’s 20% black. So the sheriff is just politicking. The article went on to opine that voting for sheriff is as dumb as voting for judges.
@CSK:
The author of this The New Republic might reply- Big Deal.
The rest of the article is worth reading.
Full disclosure- I read Robert Woodward’s Fear.
Oops- Here is a link to the article I quote above.
https://newrepublic.com/article/158816/helpless-outrage-anti-trump-book
@Bill: As Wodehouse’s Oldest Member says, you can tell everything you need to know about a person’s character by watching them play golf.
@Bill:
Thanks for the link; that was an interesting piece.
And my best for your continued health.
@mattbernius:
This big headline worthy story about the USPS defunding should get its own post on OTB. Trump basically went on national tv and told his base that he is screwing them over because he wants to try to slow down mail-in ballots…wow. Kevin Drum basically asked the same question I am about to ask…whose ox does Trump think is being gored here? Not a rhetorical question because I am curious as to what the answer will be.
When I almost obtained a job at the USPS late last year one of the things they note is that for a lot of folks in remote areas (which would be rural…I always get urban/rural confused, but my understanding is a good chunk of Trump’s base is from urban locales) contact with their USPS mail carrier is sometimes the only daily contact they have with the outside world. The USPS is much beloved by both Trump’s base and liberals in CA and NY.
This is nuts…McConnell should be raging at Trump to back off destroying the USPS right now, literally as I am typing this out. It is insanity and will hasten the GOP’s demise if McConnell does not take steps to right this ship.
Seriously, what Trump is doing is just nuts and the GOP should not be standing behind his actions at all.
@inhumans99: the only thing the GOP cares about is power.
@Teve: I absolutely despise those people.
@Teve:
Yes, but if they still want to retain any last vestiges of power in November they better back off destroying the USPS. This is not simply an action that “owns the libs,” which is something I hate but understand why politicians get behind said actions.
Destroying a 200 year old+ institution that is genuinely loved by both conservatives who are most likely to vote (the elderly) and liberals is just straight up dumb and shame on McConnell for letting things get to the point where they are now regarding USPS funding which should have been handled in the first round of Covid relief from 2-3 months back.
@inhumans99:
Something few realize is that the Constitution provides only 2 mandates on the part of congress, one is to create a highway system and the other a postal system.
One of these days, those red state senators will wake up and find their constituents outside the door with pitchforks because of the failure of the postal system.
@gVOR08:
I’m not inclined to believe that people oppose authoritarianism per se. They oppose being on the wrong side of the authority equation. It would be nice if we would oppose authoritarianism, but most of us don’t seem particularly wired that way.
Prices have gone up, but just a few years ago Uber was losing $1 billion a quarter because the amount you paid for your ride only covered 40% of the cost, the rest was subsidized by investors. They sold investors on this bullshit idea that they would destroy all the other taxi companies and then be able to set whatever prices they wanted, but that didn’t work out. Uber was always a scam. “ We’re going to be the Amazon of ridesharing!” Yeah except Amazon lost all that money building out huge infrastructure that they can now charge out the wazoo for. If Amazon Web Services was its own company it would be a Fortune 500 business. Uber lost all that money just subsidizing rides. The whole gig economy is based on the premise, let’s outsource the costs of a business to the poor people who work for us. I knew a guy named Brandon in Gainesville Florida who drove for Uber for a while, and after a few months he calculated that he made about three dollars an hour, before wear and tear on his car.
i wonder if Rome had a version of the Republicans, a group that does not give a single shit about their countrymen but are only interested in accumulating power and wealth.
@EddieInCA: “Uber CEO threatens to halt service in California until November election”
Of course most Uber drivers already also drive for Lyft. And unless the two companies are illegally conspiring to restrain trade, then there’s a good chance that Lyft is simply going to vacuum up every passenger dollar in California — and how many free and discounted rides will Uber have to give away to get them back?
Uber seems to think that this is still 2015 and they’ve got all the power.
Here’s a good sign, from two friends who live in Portland.
Friend 1:
friend 2, replying to Friend 1:
Dr. Fauci said today that temperature checks, particularly in the summer, are not reliable indicators of ovid-19, and that they have been abandoned at the White House and (I think) the NIH.
So, peace in the Middle East…desperate dictators and an under-fire Bibi wanting to give Trump a win, or is this a blind-squirrel-finding-a-nut situation?
@Teve: I’m sure they did. I first observed this behavior with the big 3 American auto companies when they tanked in the 80’s and 90’s. Harvard Business School trained executives who cared only about rising to the top, spending way more time in C level politics and playing dirty tricks on their competition around the conference table and didn’t even think about the damage they were doing to their companies.
In other words, the parasites start to consume the muscle mass and vital organs of the host. I suspect this is a natural outgrowth of very successful large entities.
@Teve: They must have. There is a Latin word for oligarchy.
@Bill:
Send all the good karma and best wishes I can muster.
Keep on, Bill. Best.
I thought that Lou Holtz’s Normandy Beach bloviation was going to win the JSTFU Award for today, but this late entry has just edged him out of contention. Lost the original HuffPost linkchristian-parents-call-wisconsin-school-districts-face-mask-requirement-satanic
And while you’re at it, go away, too.
@Teve:
That would be the Optimates.
@Jen:
The UAE and the other Gulf Monarchies are far more worried about Iran.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: @Sleeping Dog: Our beloved Governor DeSantis /s said reopening schools was like the SEAL raid to kill bin Laden. I can’t find that anybody asked, as they also should have asked Holz, how many casualties he thought it was worth.