Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, May 16, 2023
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42 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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WHAT. !!!
Nobody is up yet?
@Bob@Youngstown: I’ve been up for hours, nothing much to pass on today.
A couple of days ago there was a discussion on AM radio and I sent a link to it to a relative who works in the broadcast industry on alternate uses for the spectrum broadcast channels are allocated. He had mentioned that after presenting a paper at a recent national conference he was mobbed by engineers from AM stations. After I sent it to him, it occurred to me that being in his mid twenties he was a much younger demographic than many of us here. So I’ve made a kind of a resolution that anytime we are discussing something of relevance to one of my younger acquaintances I’ll send them a link rather than just mentioning it to them. And point out that unlike most things they are interested in, the comments are usually as relevant as the top post.
So Johnny Durham proved to be a bust. He could have just re-issued the Horowitz IG Report.
But Rudy…tsk, tsk, tsk…and $2M for a pardon? Who paid? Did Bannon?
Here’s a court filing you just cannot stop reading.
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=ayMPHcCh5eCKqo1g4gB42A==&system=prod
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Here is the Durham Nothing-Burger.
https://www.justice.gov/storage/durhamreport.pdf
Durham has been replaced by Comer. They just know they will find something this time. Or maybe they dont. Since at least the Obama admin the GOP MO has been to keep at least one highly advertised “investigation” going. Anyone with sense would note that they have yet to find anything in all of these investigations, and considering they did 8 for Benghazi alone they should be laughed at. However, they rake in funding and they keep the base angry so actually finding anything is probably irrelevant.
Steve
Hahahahaha…..One of our local tattoo artists posted some “before and after” pictures of a coverup she did. Normally I wouldn’t even pay attention…..but the tattoo being covered up was of a Skeletor Trump wearing a MAGA hat. I honestly couldn’t even tell what the coverup was on the hat, just that it was very black, and it looked like she turned Trump’s face into a log or something. 😛 😛 😛
The US Virgin Islands is suing JPMorgan. Guess who has been subpoenaed? Guess who seems to be dodging the subpoena?
I am not surprised by either development.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
I commented on this last night–that it was way, way, way beyond revolting. Thanks (I think) for finding the complete filing.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve got a story for you. A Springfield MO HS geometry teacher was using the n word regularly. A student got him on video. The teacher is, one way or another, no longer with the school. The school has a range of options for phone use in class from a talking to to a three day suspension. The kid got a three day suspension. As someone in comments said, she’s got a great essay subject for her college applications.
@gVOR08: I read of that the other day. I hope she got ice cream and cake every day of her suspension.
Indeed.
@gVOR08: @OzarkHillbilly:
Seems to me the student did the school a huge favor by providing evidence of the teacher’s blatant racism.
@daryl and his brother darryl: @daryl and his brother darryl: @steve:
Here’s Trump’s reaction to the Durham Report:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-rants-about-scum-and-cockroaches-after-durham-report?ref=home
@CSK:
Blithely untethered from reality.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Trump sees and hears only what he wants to see and hear. And if he has to fantasize something, he will.
He reminds me of a guy I had a summer job with. If there were nine honest, profitable ways to do something, he’d invariably choose the tenth dishonest and unprofitable way.
@CSK: Back when Trump was still burning through the fortune he inherited from his father, more than one NYC real estate tycoon commented that they were amazed how often Trump left money on the table because he was so anxious to screw his partners over. (They weren’t tsk tsk-ing because of the screwing, as they would do the same, but rather the leaving money on the table.) I remember one guy, when asked about this trait said that Trump would walk away from the bulk of the money and settle for scraps.
@MarkedMan:
Not that I don’t believe you, but this makes zero sense.
@CSK: True enough. But if she doesn’t get the 3-day suspension, the new question for all the kids watching pornhub is “how come she gets to her phone, but the rest of us don’t. “
@just nutha:
No good deed goes unpunished.
@CSK: Back around 2016 I saw a story, I think in New Yorker, although I can’t now find it. IIRC it was written by the agent who sold the Plaza Hotel to Trump. The guy wrote he was new to NY real estate and was really nervous about getting taken by the sharks in that pool. Then Trump showed up, anxious to beat everybody else out of the property, and offered not only the asking price but no comps. “Comps” if I have the terminology correct, is an inspection by the buyer with the seller paying for any necessary repairs found. It was an old building, in disrepair, comps were expected to be big bucks.
@just nutha:
Indeed. But I suppose the school authorities could have told her parents that the suspension wouldn’t go on her permanent record.
@gVOR08:
And in 1995 Trump ended up having to sell the Plaza at an 83 million dollar loss to avert bankruptcy. What an astute business man, right?
@just nutha:
When the school district is in court for retaliating against a harrassment whistleblower, I don’t think that argument will get them very far…
@Stormy Dragon:
The three day suspension might well deter students from recording evidence of teachers doing harm to their students.
@Stormy Dragon: I’ll have to wait to see how that actually plays out, but if you want to argue the case pro bono, fly at it. I suspect, as CSK has already noted, that the whole issue would get settled long before you got to the courthouse door.
(And while I’m here THERE’S NO PERMANENT RECORD. 😉 )
@CSK: Sadly, the harm that teachers do to their students happens where and when there are no witnesses. The YouTube video of the Korean teacher using “the stick of love” on the high schooler is an anomaly rather than a usual.
@CSK: I wish I can say it made no sense to me, but it’s not even particularly trumpish behavior. When I worked in NJ I learned a lot of lessons about humanity just from observing the way people drove. More than once I saw someone miss their exit because they were so focused on not letting someone else merge in. So, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Trump would leave something on the table just so he wasn’t running the risk that he would get screwed rather than be doin’ the screwin’
@MarkedMan:
It seems odd for Trump to leave money anywhere. After all, this is the guy who cashed a 13 cent check from Spy magazine.
This story of the girl with the phone getting a suspension…it reminds me of a tale my sister tells.
She was a senior in high school. She had a home ec class in the afternoon. Kind of a senior goof-off class. It was focused on cooking for at least a while. Well, certain members of the basketball team would come in after school and eat the stuff they had made. Without permission.
So, my sis one day baked a big old chocolate cake with chocolate frosting stuff full of the Ex-Lax doses that were embedded in chocolate. I think she might have melted them in a double boiler, the way you do with normal chocolate bricks.
BB players came in, ate the cake, had the predicted result. Judy was discovered, and given a suspension. However, the tale she tells of meeting with the principal, who wasn’t mad at her at all. He was just, “I can’t let this go on, people will get ideas, and I look forward to seeing you back in school.” Also, he couldn’t stop laughing.
@CSK:
Then don’t go to China. Your head will explode. 🙂
Near the factory where I worked my last gig over there, I would regularly see a traffic jam at one specific corner. It would last for 30-60 minutes with zero movement. Why? Because nobody was willing to let the other person go first or give an inch of the ground they’d gained.
@Mu Yixiao:
I once read a story about two guys who drove into each other rather than one of them giving way to the other.
@CSK:
Ah, I see the disconnect. From the way it was described, Trump wasn’t deliberately leaving money on the table. Rather he was so anxious to “come out on top” of everyone in the room that he screwed them over out of, essentially, chump change and then of course the deal was over and they wouldn’t work with him again. It’s been a long time but as I remember it, in the one interview I got the impression that if Trump had screwed the people at the table in some brutally clever way for a big payoff he would have admired him for it, but his disgust was the penny ante nature of it all.
@Mu Yixiao: Last year there was a case in NYC of two drivers of those articulated busses that were both blocking each other. Neither would back up, and the they were there for hours (?). Let me see if I can find it. Oh, here it is. (How much can you trust my un-googled memory? It was for a half hour and it was two years ago…)
@MarkedMan:
Okay, now I get it. Thanks.
@MarkedMan:
The worst, for me, was my morning commute (if I didn’t time it right). A few thousand electric scooters in a separate half-width lane. I had a “hog” of a scooter, which could easily pass the crowd by. But…
I’d get to a red light (at the head of the pack), and (like Trump and his business deals) the rest couldn’t tolerate that someone was in front. So they’d zip around me. And the ones behind them would do the same, until they were piled out into the intersection. With–if you’ve been paying attention–the slowest ones in front (big game of leap frog). So now we’d all have to jostle for position again, with me passing them by until I could get out into a nice clear space and gun it.
I never got quite good enough to stay in the clear and still time my speed to miss the red lights. I just started coming in to work at 06:00 when nobody else was on the road.
@Jay L Gischer: Great story.
@MarkedMan: I read that trump screwed all the contractors in Atlantic City so often they got together and rigged the bids. The lowest bid (it rotated among them) was twice what it would be for anyone else. This ensured that by the time the job was halfway finished, they had been fully compensated and when he withheld the final payment they didn’t care.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Good for them.
IIRC. Trump also drove out the neighbors because he wanted to build a casino parking lot. He sure is a defender and protector of the common man, isn’t he?
@OzarkHillbilly: Hah! I did that for one of my customers once, one I didn’t really trust, and it was to build a custom system that was a real kluge, an embarrassment, quite frankly. I always charged half the payment up front, so I quoted him three times what I would have anyone else. To my surprise I got the job. Not to my surprise, he attempted to screw me in the end. But it turns out he wanted to screw me on ownership of the IP for this terrible idea. I made a big show of holding out as long as I could before I “reluctantly” took the final check and signed over my IP rights. I never heard from him again so either it worked perfectly for years or he realized he had burned all bridges with me.
Just heard a report on today’s (5/16/2023) NPR broadcast of Here and Now about the “No Labels” Party in Maine. Apparently “No Labels” is getting Maine voters to change their political party registration so that “No Labels” Party can place candidates on Maine electon ballots.
The Maine Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, states that some residents of the Pine Tree State have called her office and said that they believed they were signing a petition. Not changing their political party affiliation. Secretary of State Bellows sent 7000 letters out to newly registered members of the “No Label” Party to confirm that changing their party affiliation was intentional.
Another report from WMTW-TV, Poland Spring, Maine, includes video that shows a Maine Voter Registration card (-0:44).
Maybe it’s just me but this does not look like a petition.
A petition is a sheet at the cash register at the local Kwikie Mart that is headed “Ban All Dogs From Sleepytown” with spaces for multiple names that will be presented to the City Council at their next meeting.
I find it hard to believe that an organization like “No Labels” who are campaigning for transparency in government would try to trick Maine voters in this manner.
I am anxiously awaiting the response to the 7000 letters that Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows mailed out.
@OzarkHillbilly: I believe it. When the Trump Taj Mahal opened, an analyst said that it would fail because the construction costs were so high they would never be able to cover the debt. And he was right. Trump pressured the company to fire the analyst, they did, and the analyst sued and won. He got money from his own company, and he sued Trump personally and Trump settled . The bad part of the story – the guy voted for Trump in 2016. Because he is a marketing genius and nobody could handle the press better (this is from an article by NPR in 2016).
It seems like Liz is going away soon.