Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, August 4, 2020
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65 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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How can you watch this exchange and think that this person should be in charge of managing the response to a deadly pandemic?
Indeed. Somebody said it’s like an episode of Veep.
@sam: like the guy said, the fundamental thing to know about Trump is that he’s a moron.
@sam: My god, the man is dumb. It’s like one of those skits on the Tonight Show or whatever where they pull people off the street and ask them to point out where the US is on a map, and the people can’t.
Census Bureau will finish count earlier than expected, deliver data to Trump
Clearly, this census will be incredibly inaccurate whether by inadequate counting or blatant manipulation of the numbers.
I have two questions to throw out there:
1) Since a census is Constitutionally required, can a census be so botched as to be unconstitutional and, therefore, as a remedy be forced to be redone?
2) While a census is every ten years as mandated by the Constitution, is there anything preventing a census be taken at other times and can that be used to apportion the Representatives?
@sam:
I can’t watch this. I suffer too badly from vicarious embarrassment.
Trump on John Lewis:
“I don’t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. He didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches. And that’s his right. Again, nobody has done more for the Black Americans than I have. He should have come. I think he made a big mistake.”
God help us.
I’ve been wondering how the RNC was going to adjust the convention. The DNC has been planning and working on a virtual convention for months, while the Republicans had been (foolishly) clinging to the notion that theirs would be in-person. They now need to revamp the entire thing.
I’ve done political event planning before, and to completely start from scratch on something this big, with only a few weeks to pull it off, is going to be a challenge to say the least.
We now being offered the following:
– A “nightly surprise.”
– “Still under-wraps venues”
– Tributes to “the forgotten men and women of America” and, wow,
– “and attack cancel culture, “radical elements” of society and threats to public safety.”
The “still under-wraps venues” means they are having trouble coordinating and nailing down details. It’s not some clever surprise, it’s bad planning.
Via Axios.
@Scott:
Unsure about (1) but (2) happens a lot. There’s a technically Census every year – it’s just not the big national one. People get randomly selected to answer questions so that they can keep up the sampling data.
There’s nothing prohibiting a yearly Census other then costs and politics. It’s a basic requirement, not a ceiling of action. Remember, the Census was envisioned during a time when you *needed* years between to be able to count everyone in a growing, pre-industrial Age. There’s no reason we couldn’t redo a botched Census since it’s just mandated we do one – not that we use that data in a timely fashion like a few months or so. Also, we probably *do* have all the proper data but it’s not be analyzed correctly. Census data is kept private for 75 year so they’re hoping nobody’s going to go digging…. problem is that can be rectified by Congress in a one-time pass. Reported results can theoretically legally be modified as long as the base data that was collected during the Census is present since the false data would be lying to Congress. IANAL, just someone who did the Census last time around……
I read this really funny joke about trickle-down economics. I’d tell it, but 99% of you won’t get it.
@Kathy: Ouch.
@Jen:
Many years ago I saw a game show where one of the contestants was asked which continent Morocco is on. The contestant answered, “India.”
I got it!
@Kylopod: Oh, no…that is cringe-inducing.
I get that mine was not a “normal” upbringing. Living all over the place makes one keenly aware of geography. But still, the poor grasp some have on it stuns me.
@Kylopod: my favorite if I remember correctly it was Jay Leno and crew waited outside the movie exits for Saving Private Ryan, and asked the viewers what war the movie was about.
“The Civil War?”
It reminded me of the time I was in a movie theater in Florida watching a Bond movie, and they very obviously are in Germany in the movie, and people are speaking German, and the lady behind me whispered loudly to her friend, “THEY’RE IN RUSSIA”.
@Scott: I think a close review of “census” data from 2020 would be a high order for a Biden administration. If found to be inadequate, the whole exercise should be redone and no state should be allowed to use the inadequate data for redistricting.
JFC Trump was just at some event and he pronounced Yosemite “Yo-Semite…Yo-simnite”.
https://twitter.com/dcexaminer/status/1290664848620236800?s=21
@Teve:
Oh. My. God. I guess whoever wrote the speech for him didn’t realize he’d need a pronunciation guide for…Yosemite.
And we’re supposed to believe he was a top student at Wharton.
@Teve:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqvCJwS12c0&feature=youtu.be&t=32
You can’t make this stuff up…
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/watch-trump-supporter-boasts-of-barely-ever-wearing-condoms-and-says-thats-why-hell-never-wear-a-mask/
A supporter of President Donald Trump this week boasted that he “barely” ever wears condoms — and he linked this to his defiance over wearing a face mask during the coronavirus pandemic.
As recorded by Right Wing Watch, Trump super fan Brenden Dilley, who is described as a “MAGA life coach,” said during a podcast this week that nothing will convince him to wear a face mask.
@EddieInCA:
And what, pray, is “a MAGA life coach”?
@CSK:
A KKK recruiter?
Brenden Dilley is the guy who said two months ago that if Trump gave them the go-ahead that he and other right wingers would shoot protesters. He said last summer that he didn’t give a shit if something he said about the Democrats was true or not as long as it hurts them.
Great guy.
@EddieInCA: “Barely ever wears condoms”?
Is it because they keep falling off his tiny manhood, or because no woman will let him near?
I kind of wish the Biden campaign would start distributing blue MAGA hats and appropriate the slogan, just to point out how much greater American was four years ago. Add an Eagle in a circle patterned after the Obama O with the flag…
And trigger the Repubs.
@Teve: Yo, Semite Sam was one of my favorite WB cartoon characters, and I was pleased to see a strong portrayal of a Jewish man as a gunslinger.
The big nose is unfortunate, but, we can’t really judge them by today’s standards — it was very progressive for it’s time.
Lol. Jonathan swan: “There’s some very committed leakers in this White House. Very committed to their craft.”
@Gustopher:
and resurrect the Are you better off today, than you were four years ago? line.
@Gustopher: Apparently Yosemite Sam was meant to be Jewish.
Link
Looking at the data, over the last five weeks, the COVID deaths every week have been higher than the previous week.
WTF just happened in Beirut?
I know little about explosives, but the video at the top shows a massive blast.
@Kathy:
Early reports indicate that it may have been an accident and the result of stupidity (storing explosives in an urban area) rather than a terrorist incident. But this is Lebanon, who know.
@KM:
Hypertechnically, what happens every year is the American Community Survey (ACS), and it is not a census. A census is (by current definition) a head count — an enumeration of all people living in an area. Sampling is not permitted as an alternative to attempting to count everyone.
The ACS replaces the “long form” census, which used to be done at the same time as the decennial census for a random subset of census households. The ACS is less detailed, but it has the advantages of a higher response rate and being done every year, so that timely data are available on a variety of questions.
Republicans have persistently resisted attempts to change the law (or amend the Constitution?) to permit statistical sampling to inform the census. They know that the census is most likely to completely miss people in districts that tend to vote Democratic, and so the inaccuracies of the census are biased in favor of the GOP.
@Sleeping Dog:..Early reports indicate that it may have been an accident and the result of stupidity (storing explosives in an urban area) rather than a terrorist incident. But this is Lebanon, who know.
Today in amusing Twitter threads:
A man was on the beach and found what looked like a rock with teeth. He posted a photo on Twitter with the question: “Anyone know what this is, or should I just chalk it up to the fact that it’s 2020, so of course rocks have developed teeth?”
Several people responded that it is in fact a natural phenomenon; rocks sometimes develop fissures, and calcium and other minerals sometimes fill in those fissures, forming what looks like teeth.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Ouch indeed…but still worth an upvote, lol.
@Monala: found an image: Link
@Monala:
Well, it’s an interesting objet to put on your coffee table, I suppose.
@Bob@Youngstown:..Other items of interest regarding your absentee or VBM ballot:
Just saw your reply to my comment on Monday’s Hoisted on his own anti-VBM Petard thread. Thanks for the update.
If Trump the Dullard is convinced COVID-19 cases are a result of testing, then why hasn’t he simply ordered testing stopped? Wouldn’t that save like, perhaps, 150,000 people, and keep hundreds of thousands more out of the hospital?
@Monala: Langoliers!
@Kathy:
Sometimes Trump’s statements that the high number of Covid-19 cases are the result of greater testing sound like an object-permanence fallacy, but he’s also said it makes the country “look bad,” which I think is the core of what bothers him. In other words, he’s saying it doesn’t matter how many people are actually sick as long as they’re not labeled as having Covid-19. He’s perfectly fine sweeping the problem under the rug as he claims all those other countries are doing. All that matters to him is keeping the statistics down, not keeping the actual cases down.
It isn’t hard to enter the head of a man who cheats at golf.
Just a random whine: I’m making changes to a script in order to make it more marketable today, shoehorning a ‘theme’ into something designed to be just scary fun, despite knowing it’s the wrong choice for a year from now, let alone two or three years from now. It’s infuriating. People a couple years from now will be sick to death of good-for-you themes. They’ll be sick of politics, sick of being sick, sick of being lectured and hectored.
@Kylopod:
I still don’t get it.
Then he’d have over one thousand deaths per day of some mystery disease, which is also overwhelming hospitals, and there’d have to be research to determine what it is, and how to treat it, and more research for a vaccine, and it will turn out to be COVID-19 all along.
There are two ways I can make it make sense: 1) trump the Moron cannot think past the next step (which would explain a lot); 2) Trump is, in technical terms, nuttier than a fruitcake.
@Kathy:
It’s not one or the other.
@Kathy:
Why can’t 1 and 2 be true simultaneously?
This is just sad.
Daniel Weissbein @DanielWeissbein
Good joke on Twitter:
“If Trump ignored Covid-19 any more, we’d have to change its name to Tiffany.”
@sam:
If Trump were less than 100% loathsome, yes, I’d think it was sad, and I’d feel bad for him. But…
@Kathy:
Not some mystery disease. According to Trump, it’s just old people with preexisting health problems who are dying from the virus, and their deaths can therefore be blamed on those other problems instead of Covid-19. Some of what Trump says about this is gaslighting, but I think he truly believes this particular claim. It’s what a lot of people in his echo chamber are saying, and it fits his simplistic way of looking at the world and poor understanding of any remotely nuanced scientific explanation.
I wasn’t being flippant with the golf analogy. I do think he looks at it as a game of staying under par.
The Republican Party Is Racist and Soulless. Just Ask This Veteran GOP Strategist.
@Sleeping Dog:
@CSK:
Yeah, I kind of realized that after I hit “post.”
@Kylopod:
But that works, even with his devoted cult base, as long as you don’t know any young(er) people dying of it.
@Kathy: And there’s the rub….school’s have been closed this entire time, so they “think” kids don’t die from it, but we haven’t really tossed them into the germ pools at the schools themselves yet, so in about 4-6 weeks, we’ll have definitive “data” on that….and they’re probably gonna say that’s fake news, too, all these suddenly dead kids OBVIOUSLY had un-diagnosed pre-existing conditions. (eyeroll)
@Michael Reynolds: Do you get to pick the theme, or was one assigned to you?
You cannot go wrong with man’s dehumanization of the other. Always popular, topical and relevant. Or the power of friendship. Either.
Or both.
The power of friendship can overcome man’s dehumanization of the other, which is why so-and-so is one of the good whatevers.
The cartoon Animaniacs often ended with a moral, which was selected by spinning a wheel, and then read off in monotone by Wacko. His sister Dot would always complain that the theme made no sense and had nothing to do with anything.
@Jax: They were so young that no one had time to diagnose all their pre-existing conditions.
(We are so fucked… At least not all states are opening schools at the same time? We will hopefully only kill half as many children, parents and teachers…)
@Jax:
Some children may have preexisting conditions, like asthma, that may complicate things. All the more reason to keep schools closed.
That aside, it boggles the mind they are willing to risk the lives of children to carry out a delusion.
@Kylopod: When Nick Cordero, a 41-year-old Broadway actor and dancer, died, several Trumpers claimed it was because of all his “pre-existing conditions” – such as lung infections, pacemaker for his heart, amputated leg – even though he had none of these things before Covid, and all of them because of Covid.
@Jax: I wonder if there will be any reports of the outcomes of the hundreds of kids sickened with Covid at a Christian camp in Missouri and a YMCA camp in Georgia. How many kids were asymptomatic, and how many developed symptoms? Of the latter, how many became very sick? How many recovered, and of those recovered, are there any lasting symptoms or conditions? Did any of them spread the disease to other family members?
@Kathy:
The kids have to go to school so the parents can go back to work so the billionaires can get Even Moar Money. If Little Johnny infects Papaw or Abuelita, them’s the breaks.
@Monala: There IS data, I just saw it the other day on the one in Georgia! I will look for it. Basic memory says it turned into a “super-spreader” event, and they were still tracking the outcomes….I want to say some 260 ended up infected at the time of the writing?
@Monala: The pre-existing conditions thing is something they are telling themselves to distance themselves from potential illness.
The problem with that is, even being overweight is a pre-existing condition with this disease.
It’s also bullsh!t to use that as an excuse. Cancer survivors. High blood pressure too–which many Americans don’t even realize they have. A 9 year old kid who had received an organ donation died from covid.
Screw all of these people who write off human beings with a “well, he/she had a pre-existing condition.”
@Jen: Fer real. If we’re at the point where we’re deciding who’s getting kicked off the island (planet earth), let’s start with them. Most of them are also the people who write off “the poor” and “the immigrants (whispering, because they can’t say that part out loud anymore) of color”.
In a heartbreaking and infuriating case, Aurora, CO police detain a black family, cuffing their children (ages 6-17) and making them lay prone on the hot ground, based on looking for a stolen motorcycle with Montana plates. The Colorado family’s SUV had a similar plate number.
The video, where the terrified children are crying, is very hard to watch. The police department has apologized.
Stuff like this makes me support defunding and abolishing existing police departments, even if in calmer moments I don’t think that’s the best answer.
Link
@Monala: The video was absolutely horrifying, I cried. I am so fucking sorry that shit is this way. It’s not supposed to be this way.
@Monala:
The Aorora, CO. police don’t know the difference between a motorcycle and an SUV?