Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, September 26, 2023
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30 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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Woke up during the middle of the night to learn Xfinity was down in my area for maintenance. Service has just been restored after at least a five-hour outage. This is why I don’t bundle all my services together*. Dear Wife and I have T-Mobile for our cellphones.
*- Our condo association has a deal with Xfinity that provides our Television and internet service. We also have a land line through them.
From Yesterday’s Open forum-
@DeD: In case anyone hasn’t read it, yet.
<a href="@DeD: In case anyone hasn’t read it, yet. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/general-mark-milley-trump-coup/675375/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share“>https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/general-mark-milley-trump-coup/675375/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share The whole article is behind a paywall so I can’t compare them, but Bob Woodward’s latest book ‘Rage’ covered some of what Milley did.
The Florida headline of the day- Miami man distributed over $16 million of adulterated HIV drugs given to U.S. patients
@Bill Jempty: That reminds me of the time Bayer knowingly sold HIV infected blood-based products in Latin America and Asia after pulling them from the US and Europe.
They hadn’t had any Nazi war criminals on the board of directors for about 20 years at that point!
Who would have expected the makers of heroin and Zyklon B to be evil? (Heroin was originally marketed as a child friendly version of morphine)
@Bill Jempty: We have Xfinity for everything (cable, phone, internet, and cell phone) but I’m not concerned about an Xfinity outage for our cell phones. They run on the Verizon network, we’re even billed separately for that service. I’m not sure what Verizon got out of that deal, because our bill was literally cut by two-thirds when we switched from VZ to Xfinity.
On another note, regarding the previous discussion about cash vs. using credit cards all the time…swipe fees are absolutely wrecking small businesses. This NPR story details how an ice cream shop had $25K in swipe fees. The article does not explain WHY Americans pay higher swipe fees than in Europe.
Well sure, doesn’t everyone keep $100K or 2 laying around the house for emergencies? And gold is the universal language of brib… I mean political donors everywhere. Freedom of Speech! Just ask Clarence.
Menenedez should have stupidity added to his charges. Piles of cash and gold bars scream bribery. Thomas was much more clever. Have your rich “friends” buy you a luxury mobile home, pay for your kids private school, pay for luxury vacations, private jet travel, fancy meals. Much easier to keep that stuff hidden and not as damning as picture of a pile of cash and gold.
Steve
@steve: One of the most grating things about Thomas is his whining “poor, poor, pitiful me” about how he wanted was to be rich and it is so unfair that he couldn’t be personally wealthy because he became a Supreme Court Justice. Yes. If you become a high ranking public servant you will not become personally wealthy. That’s part of the deal. His defense is the same defense of 95% of the corrupt officials out there, from the Vice President of the US (Agnew) to the cop here in Baltimore that just got caught on surveillance camera lifting an envelope of cash from a business = “I am such a valued public servant and give up so much out of the goodness of my heart that you should all look the other way when I put my hand in the till.”
@Jen:
How xfinity’s cell service works is that the call/internet access only goes over the Verizon network when it can’t be sent through some xfinity connected wifi network. While in your house, though connected to a verizon tower, the call actually goes through your router. When you leave the house it disconnects from your wifi and connects to your neighbors or some businesses network. This is all opaque to the users, but doesn’t effect them at all as xfinity maintains a pipe, i.e. data stream for themselves above and beyond what you pay for.
It’s pretty nifty and a bit creepy.
@MarkedMan: It’s not corruption when they do it, it’s just an evening of the scales.
I’m reading a book on cosmology, mostly, Michio Kaku’s Parallel Worlds.
Aside, cosmology often feels more like philosophy, albeit more sophisticated. there are all these wonderful notions, but many can’t be tested or falsified. Of course, nowadays things are more rigorous. That is, people enamored of any of the many varieties of String Theory are looking for ways to prove them, even as theories proliferate faster than that.
Anyway, Dr. Kaku meanders along with the science, so we go back to the origins of the universe, and then forward to the far future. The operating assumption is the universe is young and has a long, long, really long time to run still. That is in the order of trillions of years to go.
Along the way, it will change literally beyond recognition. for instance, as soon as 150 billion years from now (over ten times the age of the universe as of today), galaxies bound together gravitationally will be all within the visual horizon. as the universe expands, all other galaxy clusters will have receded too far to be seen.
So, if anyone is alive and sentient in the Milky Way by then, they will know the universe consists of 30 galaxies in a volume of a few million light years across, and nothing else.
Meandering, that’s similar to the view of the universe prevalent until the XIX century, before we knew such things as galaxies existed (other galaxies, at least). Astronomers believed the universe was the Milky Way. End of story*. It took better telescoped to resolve stars in nearby galaxies (then known as nebulae) for this to change.
Meandering back, the Milky Way will also be different. Red dwarf stars, by far the most common type, will be contain far more helium than they do now. Larger stars, like the Sun, will be fewer. there will be more helium in the universe overall and less hydrogen. Also more heavy elements.
This may all be wrong, see above about our earlier conceptions of the universe, but it’s fun to think about.
*Old ideas, and their associated old expressions, die hard. I recall the term “island universes” to refer to galaxies. Also many mentions of the Andromeda nebula in text books. BTW, before the rest of the universe disappears from view, the Milky Way and Andromeda will have collided and merged into a larger galaxy.
Atrios notes that Trump’s appearance in Detroit will be at a non-union supplier plant, to a non-union workforce, at the invitation of the plant’s management. But the supposedly liberal MSM are all reporting he’ll speak to the UAW.
If that $480,000 is lost in a house fire, a flood, or a hurricane would his homeowner’s insurance policy cover that loss? Or would Bob expect FEMA to reimburse him for the loss?
Asking for Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Alito and Thomas
@al Ameda:
No.
Contents of the house have to be insured separately, typically item by item (or at least category by category), using personal property insurance. Most homeowners don’t have sufficiently valuable jewelry, oriental rugs, art works, etc. for that to be cost-effective. And even if he had one, I’m reasonably sure that Menendez did not take out a rider on his policy for “Lucre, filthy, assorted.”
Re: Weak parties. Political Wire quotes a New Jersey Globe story saying NJ Republicans have a problem. The RNC has a deadline for selecting delegates that’s a few days earlier than the scheduled state run primary election. They could do a party paid GOP primary earlier than the state run primary. Or they could select national delegates at a state convention. Such a convention is thought to give Chris Christie a better shot at getting national convention delegates than a GOP primary in his home state. Or they could just get a waiver on the date from the RNC as they have in past years. It’ll be interesting to see if Christie loyal insiders ratfrack the party into a convention.
In 2016 smoke filled rooms would probably have horked up Little Jebbie! as the nominee. Which would have been better than Trump. Low, low bar.
The FTC is suing Amazon.
I know it will come as a great big surprise to no one that Amazon is a monopoly. the difference this time is the FTC alleges Amazon is imposing higher prices and benefiting itself in sales in their marketplace. Remember the argument that monopolies are ok as long as they don’t hurt consumers by, as a wild example, raising prices? Well…
BTW, I think there are other pending lawsuits involving Facebook and Google. At the glacial speed these things move along, they generate little in the way of news. it’s easy to forget they’re there shortly after reading about them.
Republicans Against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump):
MeidasTouch (MeidasTouch):
Anti-Trump influencers understand the assignment.
@DK:
What’s disgraceful is we had to wait 20 years, and more in the case of Afghanistan, to find out who’s responsible for the two big boondoggles. All this time we’ve believed the narrative forced on us by the fake news media and the deep state.
@DK:
Trump’s hand gestures have gotten more and more flailing, haven’t they?
Turn on cable news or google Trump NY civil suit. The judge issued a summary judgement saying Trump Org committed fraud. Talking heads are still reading, but it sounds like he ordered the company shut down into receivership.
That’s one.
(OK, pending appeal.)
ETA – apparently the judge ordered money sanctions against a LIST of Trump attorneys over behavior in this case.
@gVOR10:
Well, the good news for Benito is he can now engage in the world’s first Xitt-storm.
@gVOR10:
Judge not amused:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F6-y2gSW8AAB8eX?format=jpg&name=small
@charontwo:
https://twitter.com/Delavegalaw/status/1706774869281579191
https://twitter.com/Delavegalaw/status/1706780994626330854
@charontwo:
https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1706773043274797449/photo/1
The Trump Org.is out o’ business.
The Writers’ strike is over.
@DrDaveT: These are slightly off:
Most homeowners insurance policies include personal property coverage up to a certain limit, and you have to choose between actual cash value and replacement cost as the standard for reimbursement. If your belongings are more expensive, you can increase the amount covered for personal property (this will affect the premium). It’s a very good idea to have an inventory of your belongings, but you are not required to list all of your property on a base policy.
Adding a rider for valuable personal property is actually a good idea if you have electronics or jewelry, and it’s also usually a fairly inexpensive rider, so it certainly is cost effective if there’s anything that you own that would collectively bump your personal property above your policy limit. We have one that covers our electronics and some jewelry I inherited, and it costs $51 a year. This is where you need to list things out.
Cash IS covered, but the limit is pretty low. $480K would be well above any standard policy limit for loss of cash in a covered event.
@Jen:
I think Menendez should review his Homeowner’s Coverage.
@Jen:
Depends what you mean by “cost effective”. If you can afford to replace your lost property, that is always going to be cheaper (on average) than paying insurance premiums you are very unlikely to ever need. Insurance is for the stuff you can’t deal with if it happens.