Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, September 10, 2020
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50 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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I had a good night listening to Disturbed and The Foo Fighters.
There a lot of issues with white folks, but damn we can do yearning and melancholy well when we put our backs into it.
The headline of the day-
Convicted murderer on death row sworn in by Sri Lankan Parliament
The Florida headline of the day-
Plane makes emergency landing on Alligator Alley
Iowa refuses to close bars and require masks as Covid-19 cases surge in cities
Birds of a feather…
@Bill:
Hey Erin? He didn’t crash. He made an emergency landing. Says so right there in the first sentence of your article.
@OzarkHillbilly: High infection rate, record farm bankruptcies and suicides. Iowa is going for Trump, for sure.
Just for you Bill: Florida sewage spills expected to worsen due to ageing infrastructure
“Oh noes, whatever can we do about this? We just don’t have the money!”
“Ummm, raise taxes?”
“Fuck that shit.”
@Scott:
My brother lived there for a while, and came away convinced that Iowans are among the most self-infatuated people on earth. When you’re convinced that you’re God’s elect, you can do no wrong.
@Scott: It’s the fault of all those black people! Both of them!
UK has already breached withdrawal agreement, EU lawyers say
Meanwhile, in another part of the government that is being corrupted:
Whistleblower: DHS Hyped ‘Antifa,’ Soft-Pedaled White Supremacist Threat
@OzarkHillbilly:
Reynolds also claimed she could absolutely restrict any municipality or county from enacting local laws on masks. She lost in court thankfully.
In Des Moines it is required to be masked in any business or office. Most bars and restaurants are still closed.
What if everybody criticizing the polling is wrong? What if people snakebitten by 2016 are too timid to see what is right in front of them? What if Biden wins in a landslide…
@An Interested Party:
Mona Charen, the author of the piece, needs to get her facts straight.
1- The taking of American hostages in Iran began in November 1979 not January 1980
2- Three helicopters didn’t crash in the botched rescue attempt. It was one helicopter and a EC-130.
3- A Marxist regime took power in Mozambique in 1975, Over a year before Carter got in office.
@An Interested Party: The GREATEST ELECTORAL FRAUD in the HISTORY of ELECTIONS!!!!
ETA: that or proof that illegal aliens are voting in our elections.
Photos from the Bay area showing a dark orange sky straight from Bladerunner 2049.
2020 is one crazy, horrible year.
190,000 dead – likelier closer to 250,000. That’s the population of Tallahassee.
Diana Rigg has died, age 82. RIP, Dame Diana, you were something.
From Rebecca Watson, why Sturgis was a bigger spreader event than all the BLM protests.
@CSK:
Dame Diana was certainly that. Mrs. Peel and wife to James Bond. She was also Vincent Price’s helpful daughter in the classic black comedy, Theatre of Blood. Poodle pie anyone? RIP Diana Rigg.
PS- For those wondering where Dame Diana is in the video, she’s the shaggy haired man wearing glasses.
For the sake of maintaining what’s left of my sanity, I’m getting off the emotional roller coaster of obsessively following the polls.
I’ll glance at them now and then, but not several times a day. I know why people follow them closely, but for me it’s exhausting. See Biden’s lead climb, and you get euphoric. See it go down, and you start to worry and even get depressed.
I’ll still support Biden and attack Trump the Covidiot in Chief at every chance, but that’s just plain good manners. I’m past the stage, way past, when I thought I could make any kind of material difference beyond a few people.
Excellent movie…one of Price’s best performances, with Rigg providing pitch-perfect assistance…
Back in the early ’70s I spent some quailty time with a gal that looked just like Diana Rigg. I remember her name was Jill. She was fluent in Russian and wanted to work at the United Nations as a translator. Her second choice was to work for an international airline.
Don’t know where she is today.
Please supply a suitable caption.
Biden campaign staffer, “And the best part? We didn’t need to raise the Kraken.”
@sam:..suitable caption…
Kurbside service only. No inside dining.
From The New Yorker
[emphasis mine]
Carlson is still a sniveling weasel, but at least he isn’t Hannity?
@Mister Bluster:..quality…
I know I have read my post at least a dozen times in the past three hours and I just now noticed the spelling error.
test
@CSK:
She was certainly a formative influence on me. I own the boxed set of all the Mrs. Peel episodes of The Avengers.
Favorite Diana Rigg line:
We’ll remember you fondly, Dame Diana.
@sam:
“suitable caption”
A metaphor for Trump’s polling numbers.
@Bill:
Suggestion for tomorrow’s headline of the day (via TPM):
Voter Casts Ballot Topless After Being Told Her Anti-Trump Shirt Was Illegal At Polling Place. Unfortunately, the article does not contain a relevant picture.
I saw Diana Rigg playing Eliza in Pygmalion, Albery Theatre, London. 1974.
She just lit up the stage.
How the years roll on.
@sam:
Oh, so that’s where Trump’s lead went.
@sam: Glub glub glub…
ETA: “Noah? How long can you tread water?” (Shamelessly stolen from bill cosby’s “bill cosby is a very funny fellow”)
@Moosebreath: Hmmmm… None of the poll workers have ever objected to my “Make Racism Wrong Again” hat, and I have soooooooo been wanting them to. I am ever so ready to ask, “Do you think racism is a political issue???” Maybe this next time.
@Teve:
Only Trump would be proud of this. What a revolting swine he is.
@Kurtz: While I agree with your view of Carlson, I take exception to your maligning the good name of weasels!
Recent belated revelations by Bob Woodward have me reviewing the course of the pandemic. I said something about it on the related thread (here) about travel bans.
What struck me is that all measures, from travel bans, to distancing, to masks, etc. were gradual. Each implemented as we learned more about how SARS-CoV-2 gets around and infects people.
It seems logical and reasonable. Self-evidently and obviously logical an reasonable. I think it’s fundamentally the worst way possible to deal with a pandemic.
Suppose Dr. Fauci could travel back to February and tell his somewhat younger self all Fauci of September 2020 knows about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 that Fauci of February 2020 didn’t know. the advice the February version would give would be vastly different from what he actually said back then, right?
Of course, neither Fauci nor anyone else could know in February what they knew in September. that’s the self-evident and obvious part of the logic.
But it’s not true.
No one knew then what we know about SARS-CoV-2 now, true. But a great many people, especially in the medical field, knew about devastating pandemics of respiratory diseases like the 1918-1920 H1N1 Flu. Or the 1957-58 Flu that killed maybe 1.1 million people. Or the 1968 Flu which killed about as many.
Yes, one can contrast much lower case loads and mortality rates from other such diseases, namely the 2009 H1N1 Flu, SARS, and MERS. had we engaged in lock downs, distancing, closing bars and theaters, wearing masks, etc in each one, would the economic toll have been worth the lives saved? I tend to say yes, but that’s not the point.
The point is, as Larry Niven put it, “If you don’t understand it, it’s dangerous.” gradual responses may work well enough with something not as virulent and not as deadly (and in the case of the 2009 Flu, something against which there is some proven treatment). But we’ve seen the toll of gradual and incremental responses when it is that virulent and that deadly. When this is the case, the gradual approach is very literally lethal.
The next pathogen that hits us may be more benign than the 2009 Flu, or it may be worse than SARS-CoV-2. If the former, and we jump to extreme measures, it will cost us money. If the latter, and we do a gradual approach, it will cost us lives, and in the end also vast sums of money.
We will know what it is long before we find out by study, too, as a less contagious, less lethal pathogen will be more easily stopped by masks and lockdowns than a more contagious, more lethal one. Based on my own experiences with the 2009 Flu, when in Mexico City bars, restaurants, theaters, schools, etc. were closed, and later people began to wear masks, I thought the more strict lockdown, distancing, and later mask measures would stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by late spring.
I was wrong.
There are many reasons why. The flu is seasonal, SARS-CoV-2 is not. H1N1 in 2009 wasn’t as contagious. SARS-CoV-2 is far more lethal and harder to treat, etc.
We can argue what “extreme” measures are better, but not that they are necessary. South Korea controlled SARS-CoV-2 by extensive testing and tracing. New Zealand did it with a strict lockdown. Others used a combination of both. Countries were masks are commonly worn against seasonal respiratory ailments did better than those were they’re not. No one, not even much-vaunted Sweden, controlled it by going about as normal as possible.
To close, SARS-CoV-2 is far from the worst kind of viral infection we can have. The other epidemic everyone’s heard about is the Black Death that finished of the Middle Ages in Europe. That, too, could be transmitted person-to-person through the air, as well as by infected rats and fleas.
That bacterium, Yersinia pestis, still exists, but now we can treat it with antibiotics, and we have far better sanitation that keeps rats and their fleas further away from people. But ti still has a high mortality rate, even with treatment, and like all living beings it can still evolve and change. Bacteria lately have a tendency to develop antibiotic resistance.
And there are many, many, many other viruses and bacteria out there. We just can’t say when one will do what SARS-CoV-2 has done, or worse than that. Victory, either by treatment or vaccination, or both, is always temporary. Another battle is always just beyond the horizon.
It’s only a matter of time.
Microsoft says that Kremlin-based hackers have been trying to attack the Biden campaign for the last two months.
@de stijl:
I assume you have already seen the video making the rounds where someone used the Blade Runner 2049 score in a video of drone footage of the orange skies in the Bay Area (here in Fremont it was orange for most of the day yesterday).
Trump Lied About COVID to Protect the Markets, Not Human Beings
Greatest collection of experts and information technology available in history at his disposal and he’s watching 9 hours of Fox a day.
Titanic is on AMC (again).
-K. Drum
Has this already been mentioned, that Treasury put the Ukrainian/Russian guy who was feeding info to Rudy Giuliani intended to discredit Biden by using his son’s activities against him on a sanctions list?
This strikes me as a big deal because it pretty much discredits any attempts by the GOP to use Hunter Biden against Biden when October rolls around (their version of an October surprise against the Democratic Party but now I feel a sad trombone sound should come into play as this “surprise” is not going to do much to change any minds that were thinking of voting for Biden into voting for Trump).
Again, this feels weird because Barr and the GOP investigating the Ukraine stuff keep promising a shocking revelation that will clearly show Biden is not fit be President but so far…crickets, and we are heading into mid-September, time is running out to drop this bombshell on the American Public.
In Memoriam: Today is September 11th. Where were you, when you heard and saw what was happening?
Please carry on to tomorrow’s Open Forum.
@Jax: sleeping in my apartment in Raleigh when my BlackBerry started going crazy. Everybody was just messaging turn on the TV. I did, and woke my roommate up, and we went to Publix a block away and bought a case of beer and came home and watched TV for the next 16 hours. I skipped going to class that day, next day I saw a guy named Matt on campus, and he asked where I was yesterday and I said do you have any idea what happened yesterday? And he said oh dude that’s just some political crap it’s not gonna affect us.
@JohnSF: “I saw Diana Rigg playing Eliza in Pygmalion, Albery Theatre, London. 1974.”
For me it was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with David Suchet as George in the 90s…