Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, October 25, 2022
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59 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 believe we have a (dead) suspect, tho motive is still unknown..
After a UPS worker’s suicide, employees disclose ‘tragic’ conditions at largest facility
Their complaints don’t sound at all hollow to me, but they are union. Where’s their shop steward? Where’s their business rep? Those guys are supposed to be front and center on these kinds of issues.
Today’s Darwin Award nominee
The reaction of the police is troubling.
@Sleeping Dog: Do you have any idea how dangerous those corn mazes are? You can be attacked at any moment by ghouls or wolfmen or vampires. It happens all the time!
This,
is bullshit.
@Sleeping Dog: That. And the usual “the gun fired”, “the gun discharged” passive voice and the statement the incident won’t affect his permit. Those dang guns, sometimes those clowns just decide to go off. Nothing you can do about it but laugh.
There used to be a reporter who collected these sorts of stories, I think at Kos. He got dozens each month. I think he gave up as it was doing no good and getting very repetitive.
As a general note – the story’s paywalled but with OTB in Google Incognito mode it opened right up.
@OzarkHillbilly:
How much you wanna bet that the idiot messed with the safety so that he’d feel cooler.
Also, that whole bit about not effecting his permit is the stupidest thing in the world. The 2nd Amendment is so sacrosanct that it would be an infringement to take a weapon designed to kill humans away from a person too stupid to respect it.
I might have to take a news and social media break. Just read this piece in the NYT (New York’s Governor’s Race Is Suddenly Too Close For Democrats’ Comfort).
If Zeldin, a Trump supporter, is within striking distance of winning the Governor’s race in New York State, Nov. 8 is going to be a bloodbath for Democrats. The long-term implications of this are very bad.
It drives me absolutely crazy when elected officials become complacent about running. One thing I drilled into every candidate I worked with was: never act like you have a safe seat, because you don’t. All it takes is the right opponent, under the right conditions–including your complacency–and you’re gone. All a challenger needs is 50+1% of those who show up to vote.
@gVOR08:
The “Bypass Paywalls Clean” extension for Firefox seems to be remarkably good at getting past paywalls. In addition to a long list of sites, it also deals with several/many common paywall packages used by lots of sites not in the specific list. Updates seem to come out every couple of weeks. The author is either spending a lot of time on it, or has a network of people feeding him good information.
@Jen:
Long term, not really. People forget a lot of NY is red with the big cities making it blue. Much like Pensyltucky, you can drive through a lot of the state and see Confederate and Trump flags everywhere. The GOP isn’t more popular or stronger then it’s been in years.
Honestly Hochul’s problems is she’s a woman. The Hillary issue yet again, where she’s “shrill” and “abrasive” in a state that had Cuomo for governor right before her. Her record would be unremarkable for a male candidate and the race wouldn’t be in question. There’s still a huge misogyny gap even in Dems who will either just sit it out assuming others can carry it across the line or actively not vote because they don’t like “that woman”. Complacency is definitely a factor but the deep-seated misogyny that makes a lib go “weeeellllllll” when pulling the lever in this case is far more dangerous.
@gVOR08:
Makes a lie of the old NRA bromide that guns don’t kill, people do, if the gun can go off on its own.
@gVOR08:
@Michael Cain:
Usually the Strib allows you to look at a few stories a month w/o a subscription, but you do need to close 2-3 pop ups to reach the story. Also toggling off javascript will bi-pass the paywall.
A second, Darwin Award nominee
A trucker that got “Storrowed*”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/10/25/metro/truck-hits-bu-bridge-closing-eastbound-lane-soldiers-field-road/
Hitting a low bridge on Boston’s Storrow Drive.
Guess he figured that he could ‘sneak’ to his destination. Imagine the sinking feeling that he felt when he hit the RR bridge.
@gVOR08: @Beth: @Sleeping Dog:
Many years ago, Frontline did a program in which they interviewed convicted killers. To a person, these guys slipped into the passive voice when recounting their crimes: “The gun was fired…,” etc.
From yesterday’s open forum, @reid comment got em thinking a bit about older works of science fiction.
I’ve read lots from the 30s through 70s, largely because they were very available in the late 70s when I began reading seriously. Also some XIX century SF by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.
One problem is that often imagined technologies have been surpassed, sometimes by giant bounds, by current developments. Consider in the XIX century aircraft did not exist, so reading what Wells thought air travel would be like is between baffling and hilarious (I got the impression planes swam in the air or something). He got to live until 1946. I wonder what the thought of aircraft then.
In hard SF, which focuses on the science and/or technology, this is a huge problem. In soft SF, focusing on stuff like psychology, politics, sociology, etc., the specifics of tech or science matter a bit less. One just has to learn to suspend disbelief of things known to be impossible, wrong, or not even wrong.
Or works like 1984, which can be argued to be both hard and soft SF. That is, the politics, semantics, psychology, etc. are descriptions of real methods used in totalitarian states. The physical science and tech is backward, except for the telescreen* at the time of writing, and there’s actual nonsense like “floating fortresses.” The regressive technology is on purpose.
How about the quality of the stories? It varies by skill, theme, characterization, and the reader’s tastes.
*I think in Oceania, and presumably the other two states, half the population must do nothing but watch the other half.
@KM:
I didn’t articulate my thoughts very clearly there–what I meant was, if a state like NY is even in play, the results nationwide on Nov. 8 could prove problematic long-term. I agree with your assessment about Hochul’s gender factoring into it, but my point stands: elected officials who think they have a cakewalk are the ones left wondering what happened the day after election day. It’s careless and sloppy.
@CSK: In some cases I suspect there’s a grain of truth to the feeling, even on the part of convicted murderers, that it just happened somehow, the gun just went off. They were in a stressful situation thinking they might shoot and maybe with less than full intention the finger pulled. The moral, maybe, should be that the crime lies in creating a situation in which you might shoot. Including this bozo carrying a loaded weapon to a corn maize.
The anti-gun message shouldn’t be that these concealed, or open, carry people are a scary threat, but that they’re fearful dweebs.
Many expletives were heard in my home office when I read this:
Liberals urge Biden to rethink Ukraine strategy: Democratic lawmakers’ letter calls for direct U.S. talks with Russia
@gVOR08:
Possibly. I suspect a lot of them just don’t want to take responsibility for what they did. The passive voice is a way to removed yourself from the act.
Jack Shafer always has an amusing take on things:
http://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/10/25/awesome-futility-of-interviewing-trump-00063228
I do like the description of Trump’s brain as “a hot diaper mess.”
@Kingdaddy:
When I saw that headline, the phrase Dumb F*cks slipped from my lips. But I’ve thought on occasion that the isolationist left had been quiet for sometime. It’s a guarantee that if there had been an R in the WH that pursued Biden’s policy, they would have been screaming from day one.
That’s not an excuse for their ignorance and stupidity.
Speaking of older science fiction, Harrison’s novel “Make Room, Make Room” doesn’t seem to be heading for a dramatic “Soylent Green is made out of people!” moment. It feels more like how much it sucks to live in an overpopulated world* with scarce food and resources.
The novel is from the 1966, the movie from the 1973. Those were times with much concern about overpopulation, pollution, scarcity, much like today.
In 1972 a plane crashed in the Andes, and some of the survivors resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. That might have influenced the movie’s writers to introduce it in their adaptation.
*Like Asimov in the 50s, Harrison imagined a horribly overpopulated world of 8 billion people. That’s around the population today. Since we don’t all live in enclosed underground cities, nor in crowded open cities, and we’re not restricted to eating synthetic food made with yeast or algae, one wonders how the predictions were off.
Not that we don”t have major problems. Wildfires come with drought come with climate change. Water is becoming a major concern in many places. We definitely should stop growing the human population, and even reduce it gradually over the next few centuries. We are bumping against the limits of our planet’s carrying capacity. The collapse, if it comes, would horrify Thanos.
But odds are global population will reach or pass ten billions before it comes down. I can only hope the collapse is averted, or comes after my time.
@Kingdaddy:
@Sleeping Dog:
F**king Idiots is what ran through my head.
When I speak about the left not knowing when to shut the fuck up, this would be example #1 right now. When you have to put out a “clarifying” statement less than 24 hours later, it means you stepped in it. We now have a pro-Putin left; which gives cover to the MTG’s and DJT and Pro-Putin Right that lies about Ukraine and Russia.
Eff me. Morons. Effing Morons!!!!!!
@Kathy:
They were based on then-current technology and understanding. Norman Borlaug introduced dwarf wheat for testing in Mexico in 1961. Capacity doubled in a couple years, and is now 10 times what it was then.
Progress in disease resistance, farming techniques, preservation techniques, etc. across the board in agriculture mean that we’re producing far more food–on a lot less land–than we were in the 1960s. These aren’t things that can be planned for, they’re “leaps” in advancement. We know that techniques will advance, just not where, when, or by how much.
On lighter topics, the supermarkets I visit most often are selling a plethora of products imported from Italy.
There’s the expected, like overpriced pasta, jars of pasta sauces, different brands of olive oil. But also odd things like breakfast cereal, candy, and potato chips.
The latter seems excessive. After all, what can anyone do differently when frying thinly cut potatoes? Well, seasoning. I saw some advertised on the package s “paprika flavor”. I got one bag out of curiosity.
In a word: disappointing. There is some faint resemblance to the taste of paprika, but mostly it tastes like salty chips. IMO, one would do better buying regular potato chips and sprinkling paprika on them.
@Kathy:
The UN’s median forecast gets to 10B about 2055, then peaks at about 10.5B in 2090. Climate change is on the march, and so far reality is worse than the “pessemistic” predictions that governments are willing to publish. (Governments aren’t willing to publish, “Positive feedback loops, minimum 10 °F increases, end of civilization in much of the world.”) Figure by 2050 a couple billion of that 10B will be on the move, abandoning areas that have become inhospitable.
@Kingdaddy: Unbelievably stupid. Weeks away from what might be the most consequential midterm election in a very long time, and they trot that out.
I’ve seen a few people on Twitter pull out the “but they are running for reelection, this plays well in their districts” –oh PLEASE. I haven’t cross-checked the signatories with Cook’s Political report, but I’m doubtful this lot are in tough, close races.
About the only notion I’m willing to entertain is that it’s some kind of double-twist: that this lot, criticizing Biden, is an attempt to bolster Biden by making him look reasonable and doing what is right. In other words, undecided voters are to think “if he’s pissed off that lot, he’s probably on the right track.”
@Kathy:
“IMO, one would do better buying regular potato chips and sprinkling paprika on them.”
I love smoked paprika on any format of potatoes: fries, tots, roasted, chips, etc. I’m not sure exactly why the taste is so appealing to me, but it definitely hits some kind of umami/salt/starch spot with me.
@Jen:
That’s a bit convoluted for the average voter, isn’t it?
@Jen:
My recipe for oven fries is to toss cut potatoes in oil, then bake in the oven or cook in a covered pot until they’re done. I then let them cool a bit, and toss them in a mix of black pepper, garlic powder, and paprika.
@Mu Yixiao:
It could be. I recall a lot of predictions in the 70s that oil would run out by the 90s.
@Michael Cain:
I recall when there were only 4 billion of us, and we thought that number barely sustainable. I wonder whether 10 billion will be.
The good news is that, according to Randall Munroe, there ins’t enough carbon on Earth for a runaway green house effect that would leave our world as uninhabitable as Venus.
This means we won’t destroy the biosphere, not without additional measures like massive thermonuclear war, or a self-induced massive asteroid bombardment. But we can still end humanity and a great deal of existing life.
@Jen: Good morning! I read in my scan of news this morning that one of the 30 said that the letter was written back in July, that the point he wanted to make was just to be in favor of max diplomacy, and so forth.
No explanation for why it was released this date.
LGM? I worked so hard for poor short term memory, too.
@gVOR08:..There used to be a reporter who collected these sorts of stories, I think at Kos. He got dozens each month. I think he gave up as it was doing no good and getting very repetitive.
For another take on this matter see Chicago journalist Mike Royko.
I’d like to give a shout out to the student body at my alma mater for standing strong in the face of right wing violence:
Following violence, Penn State pres. defends decision to not cancel Proud Boys founder event
On the other hand, the new university president and the chief of the university police both ought to be fired immediately.
@Kingdaddy:
@Sleeping Dog:
@EddieInCA:
@Jen:
A section of the letter that really ground my gravel:
As John F. Kennedy didn’t exactly say: “We shall pay any price…. well, except for gas at $3.80, of course, that’s just too much to expect.”
Not to mention, in the squalid but necessary world of political campaigning, coming up to elections, and you gift your opponent that sort of attack line?
How bloody stupid do you have to be, to do that?
And .
Russia has been angling for direct talks with the USA, over the heads of Ukraine, for years.
How dumb does a Representative do to have to be not to know this?
And how naive not to see that this is the sort of signal Putin is looking for: the west is weak willed, all we have to do is keep on, turn up the horror, signal we won’t give up, hint at nuclear weapons, hit their economies, spread propagnda, they will break first.
Fools.
If Putin does use a radiological weapon “false flag”, these idiots are helping to set the stage for it.
@JohnMc: Yes, the letter was written back in June according to CNN.
They are, rather predictably, throwing underpaid staffers under the bus:
Even more idiotic is certainly an interesting flex.
@CSK: Oh, absolutely. The notion did help to quell my rage though.
@Jen:
Reading this, I suffered an acute attack of vicarious embarrassment on behalf of Jayapal and Co.
@CSK:
The Progs are slinking away like the rats they are. Good news is that it has likely ruined Jayapal’s quest for a leadership position.
Perhaps the Representatives would like to sit down and negotiate this rpeorted by TASS:
Aleksey Pavlov, assistant secretary of the Russian Security Council…
It should be noted, this is not new; Putin specifically mentioned this propaganda line in his annexation speech, it has been promoted in Russia via politicised Orthodoxy, and is sometimes pumped in Russia aligned ultraMAGA/Qanon-ish social media.
Often linked up, it should be noted with similar stuff on sex, gender etc
The number of Russia-symp ultraMAGA/white nationalist types who think the Ukrainian Army is a legion of gay/trans/woke warriors, who are also antifa AND fascists all at the same time is remarkable.
@JohnSF:
See? See what good Christians they are? They’re fighting Satan!
Very funny.
@gVOR08: I don’t use any incognito modes or VPNs and it opened up for me just fine.
@KM: As I sometimes remind my ex-pat friend in Korea: Democrats in aggregate aren’t as liberal as one might imagine. They’re not even as Democrat as one might imagine. 🙁
@Kathy: I think that the predictions in neo-Malthusian fiction fail for the same reasons that Malthus’ original predictions did. Both presume fixed levels of agricultural production and fixed levels of storage and logistical technology for transporting food. We may well reach some fixed point sometime, but so far, we haven’t, and predictions fail because of it.
ETA: And even as we exceed present production, storage, and shipping technologies, famine remains an issue anyway. Merely limited and localized. (And therefore, somewhat addressable.)-
@JohnSF:
No, he didn’t. Then again, he might not get reelected (or even elected in the first place) in current ‘Murka. (And we can’t be sure of what he’d say to get/stay elected, either.)
Just noticed this:
A new Search tool to help control your online presence
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I was just thinking that Old Joe Kennedy reminds me of Trump–much smarter, of course, and less overtly crude–but first and foremost a vengeful crook.
@CSK: In an attempt at fairness, what fields outside of crookdom were avail for Irish to succeed at when Joe Kennedy was young? He worked with what he could get and made material success for himself and his family. This is the American Dream, warped example though it might be.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
That’s all true, of course. Joe was motivated by a perfectly understandable rage against the WASPs of Massachusetts, who regarded the Irish as barely human, if human at all.
Again, that gives him commonality with Trump, who’s motivated by rage against the Manhattan haut monde, who refused him entry into their ranks.
Joe’s rage is, however infinitely preferable and justifiable.
Good news (really) the second part of season 1 of Star Trek Prodigy is supposed to begin sometime this week.
I don’t know how an 8 month break between episodes can be called part of the same season, but perhaps people binging the series years from now won’t even notice.
Me, I’m trying to finish The Expanse. I was rather annoyed season 5 (minimal spoilers) breaks away from the Ring and gets back to I-Hate-You-More politics. I hope for some answers in season 6.
Watched the latest episode of Doctor Who, the last episode of Jodie Whitaker as The Doctor, and it was fine. A few actually great moments, but I don’t want to post spoilers beyond what was in the teaser. Very weird that there was so much fan service for Classic Who, but it was good to see Ace and Teegan.
Sacha Dhawan is great as The Master, even if this version throws away everything from the Michelle Gomez incarnation — basically the John Simms incarnation, but somehow more manic. I hope they keep him on for a bit. The fact that he shines despite the writing, while Whitiker’s Doctor does not probably says more about the roles than the actors — chewing scenery as a recurring villain is just fun to watch.
I would like a return to the scheming Master who has a plan rather than a personal vendetta though. New Who always seemed to get the character wrong.
I hope Jodie gets to return in a special at some point, and gets to have a great story. This was fine, but not great. (Maybe she thinks it was great… if so, good for her, she should live that delusion and enjoy herself!)
@Kingdaddy: Much ado about nothing. There are always outliers.
@OzarkHillbilly: Maybe not MAAN. I doubt that voters pay enough attention to what happens in places/situations outside of their own very parochial interests for the letter in question to have any effect, but it still might embolden Republiqans to feel more comfortable about getting behind Putin (or whoever takes over when he dies of cancer–current rumors are that his health is fading fast*.)
*But not fast enough to suit me. 🙁
He’s baaaa–ack!
How many more times do we have to listen to these a$$ hatted douchecanoes trot out “All we have to do is cut out the waste, fraud, and abuse.” We saw during St. Ronnie’s administration that they couldn’t even find millions to cut–let alone 10s or hundreds of billions. I’m confident that there aren’t TRILLIONS out there to cut now! The odds are just against it.
They’ll keep trotting out the waste, fraud, and abuse BS as long as voters keep buying it.
To sum up the summary of the summary, people are a problem.
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
Waste, Fraud and Abuse typically just means Black people getting benefits.
If the welfare queens in their Cadillacs eating their t-bones were cut off, there would be plenty for Real Americans.
(And god forbid one of them finds the James Madison magic flute.)
@Gustopher: “Watched the latest episode of Doctor Who, the last episode of Jodie Whitaker as The Doctor, and it was fine.”
I thought it was one of Chris Chibnall’s better episodes, which meant it only took a potentially interesting story and rendered it boring. It’s a constant shock to me how poorly this guy structures his stories, so that mysteries are never allowed to build and we are constantly being given answers to questions long before we ask them. On the other hand, I didn’t find myself shrinking in embarrassment from the strident declarations of do-gooderism, as was often the case during his tenure.
I do wish Whittaker had had a chance to play the doctor under a good showrunner. But I’m thrilled that RTD is taking over again — my second favorite Who writer — and am looking forward to three David Tenant specials.
@wr: You captured my views exactly. I was rooting hard for Whittaker, but Chinball was clearly not suited to Doctor Who.
I agree that the “Power of the Doctor” was one of Chinball’s better eps, which is damning with faint praise because it was a narrative mess.
The Daleks, Cybermen, etc. were there just to, well, be there.
I loved seeing Tegan and Ace, but they really weren’t really used (and Tegan’s response was a faint echo of the excellent Tenth Doctor encounter with Sarah Jane).
Why was the Master posing as Rasputin? Why were they in 1916 in the first place?
The “Forced Regeneration” made no sense whatsoever. If the Master wanted to take over the Doctor and ruin her reputation he needed her to still look like her, no look like the Master. Indeed, it would have been far more interesting if he forced regenerated himself into a version of the Doctor, not the other way around. Indeed, I just wrote a much better premise wherein one of the older Doctor actors came back and the Master has regenerated himself into that form to ruin the Doctor’s reputation the Thirteenth has to stop him. The only problem with that idea is that Sasha Dhawan as the Master is one of the few bright spots of the Chibnall era.
I loved the appearances of the 1, 5, 6, 7, and 8, but that doesn’t solve the narrative mess.
And while I am griping: Chniball’s version of the Doctor being clever is just stating that she is clever. There was never any really demonstration of the cleverness, just a lot of kinetic action.
(Moffat, for example, would have had a much better and far more clever version of the “shock” business).
And I am quite excited about RTD’s return. Moffat is the pinnacle of Doctor Who writing, IMHO, but RTD knows the character and I have a lot of hope that he will right the ship.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Colin Baker would have been great in this role, it occurs to me.
Ah well.