Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, August 11, 2020
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69 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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Covid-19 Drug Research Is a Big Huge Mess
The headline of the day-
White House looks at plan to keep out citizens and legal residents over virus
Far-UVC light safely kills airborne coronaviruses
The Florida headline of the day-
DeSantis urges college football to go on as COVID-19 doubts grow
Washington Post headline: ‘You’re going to jail’: Body-cam video shows an 8-year-old Florida boy arrested at school
@Bill: And here I thought trump would never agree with Angela Merkel on anything.
Uber and Lyft must classify drivers as employees, judge rules, in blow to gig economy
OK OK, the Guardian article doesn’t actually say, “the greedy scum sucking Uber spokesman said in a comment dripping with condescension. Sue me.
Ol’ Abe said, “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground.” and he was right about that. Unfortunately, desecrating is still within the grasp of some people.
Where can I read the “Democratic Manifesto” ?
@Bob@Youngstown: You could buy it, for the one time only low low Amazon hardcover price of $855.58*. May I suggest instead your local library?
* considering the paperback price is $26.95, that has got to be a typo.
ETA: just now noticed the publishing date is 1-1-1942 so maybe that hardcover price isn’t a typo after all.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Aw, I was hoping to find the 2020 Biden version!
@Bob@Youngstown: In that case, may I suggest the Republican National Committee website? I’m sure they have the latest version (updated daily).
Geeez, I wonder why Astros pitchers are suddenly have such a hard time getting the ball over the plate?
What Democrats Can Learn from the Republicans about Political Power
It’s always nice when someone smarter than you comes along and cogently summarizes your own rants.
Yesterday Fox News was a discussion topic, I saw this article today.
Why Wikipedia Decided to Stop Calling Fox a ‘Reliable’ Source
We are never going to get rid of Covid-19. Never.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/listening-to-experts-is-elitist-idaho-republicans-move-to-strip-power-from-public-health-officials/
@OzarkHillbilly: is this true worldwide, or only in the US? What’s the research about treatment protocols in other countries?
@Sleeping Dog: excellent article! What would it take for Democrats to heed its advice?
@Monala:
Reeducation camps?
Jerry Taylor isn’t the first to make this analysis and Dem leaning pundits and party elite haven’t listened for years. Bill Clinton got and managed to be in office 8 years, despite his personal foibles. Whatever Bill accomplished wasn’t enough and he betrayed the people, the left cried. Obama received similar treatment, but has been spared because his successor is so awful.
So Putin says Russia has a TrumpVirus vaccine.
Trump said he believed Putin when Putin said Russia did not interfere in the 2016 President USA election.
Is anybody going to ask Trump if the President USA believes Putin about the vaccine.
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, maybe they should let him speak at Gettysburg, on one condition: the podium must be set up on the starting point for Pickett’s Charge. That didn’t end well either.
History, civil rights and the original cancel culture
From The Hill, h/t Lawyers, Guns and Money.
Steve,
If you happen to lurk today–I thought you’d be interested to know the Interferon Beta treatment you weighed in on previously is getting its chance to piss or get off the pot in combination with Remdesivir. Be interested to see how this one shakes out. I’ve always thought that most of the damage caused by Covid was done by the immune system and that the best treatment solution would probably turn out to be some sort of cocktail approach ala HIV– fingers crossed that this can be another arrow in the treatment quiver
https://www.foxnews.com/health/california-coronavirus-patient-drug-combo-global-trial
My wife is scheduled to be on Good Morning America this week. (Air date uncertain.) She’ll be on with Thea Sharrock, the director of The One And Only Ivan, and Angelina Jolie, the producer.
On our last day as home and office cleaners we took Polaroids, me grinning like a loon as I emptied the used tampon bin, and Katherine bent over a toilet, brush in hand. I remember the two of us standing on the boardwalk in Ocean City with our minuscule pile of earthly belongings after Katherine informed our sexist employer that he would, “Talk to this woman, motherfucker.” I remember her in an unheated rental when we had to abandon all but a single freezing bedroom.
Long, strange trip, as Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir used to sing.
@Mister Bluster:
According to MSN, Alex Azar, representing the Trump administration, has expressed some skepticism about the Russian vaccine, noting that all vaccines should be subjected to safety and efficacy trials.
This is not to say that Trump won’t decide to contradict Azar, as he is wont to do.
@Michael Reynolds:
Years ago, GMA had one of the most ramshackle back stages I’d ever encountered. Lots of tripping hazards. The set wasn’t much, either, though I assure you it photographs better.
Or…wait. Will they be interviewing Katherine remotely from where you guys live? If so, never mind.
@CSK:
Yeah, it’ll be Zoom. For which, thank God, because a live appearance would have required wardrobe, hair, weight loss, etc…
Seattle police chief resigns.
The reporting doesn’t seem to mention that she ordered the tear gassing of an entire neighborhood (really, people in their apartments were suffering because of this), and did not enforce requirements that police have badge numbers displayed. Or that her department gave up on that neighborhood and retreated from a precinct.
The police riots in Seattle were terrible and she was terrible. She did nothing to de-escalate the situation.
@Michael Reynolds: There was an interview with Bryan Cranston on GMA this morning. He’s great and the movie looks incredible. We’ll definitely be watching it.
@Sleeping Dog: TL/DR version: Liberals do not understand people unlike themselves and therefore–have not invested in the tools or tradecraft to persuade those people.
I would also argue one point the author attempted to make–knowledge is indeed power. Influence flows from both knowledge of self and knowledge of the target audience. Other than that the sentiment of the essay is correct–including the fact that Liberals will no doubt learn the wrong lessons from “Conservative” tactics and simply try develop Liberal versions of them.
The Democrats have announced their speakers for next week’s convention. Just about all of the names bandied about for VP have speaking slots, except Susan Rice. Very interesting.
@Michael Reynolds:
The GMA make-up and hair artists can do wonders in very little time. I hope those people get paid well, because they earn it.
Even though it’s Zoom, Katherine will still want to fuss with hair, make-up, and wardrobe. Don’t kid yourself.
Self-proclaimed Va. KKK leader who drove car through Black Lives Matter protest found guilty of assault, property crimes but not hate crimes
Apparently, deliberately driving a car into a crowd is a collection of misdemeanors. And Klansmen targeting black folks is not a hate crime.
We have a way to go in America. A long way to go.
@Moosebreath:
She apparently unloaded all her Netflix stock options last week. That may be another factor.
@Jim Brown 32:
Amen. Libs often believe that if they explain, they will convince. What they don’t get is that the explanation they give comes with a values spin that they don’t recognize.
I took his differentiation of knowledge v. influence = power as a rhetorical choice to force the reader to separate them. Too many will conflate knowledge and influence as one in the same, something that libs do all the time. You see that in the comments here at OTB. You are right, that you can’t continue to use power derived from influence if you lack the knowledge base to back it up. Trump is the perfect example of that, he derives power from influence but as he fails to deliver that influence has dried up.
@Moosebreath: Huge tent! Speakers from all wings of the Democratic party, along with John Kasich. I know we often live up to Will Rogers’ saying, “I am not a member of any organized political party — I am a Democrat. ” But still, at moments like these, I feel like the Balloon Juice tag, “Proud to be a Democrat.”
@Sleeping Dog: I agree with what the article is saying about the problem, but it’s more than a little light on the solution.
Fragile male egos, unite!
Trump: Biden Is Insulting Men Everywhere by Picking Woman as Running Mate
After four years of this nitwit being on the national stage, I would have thought that I’d have become inured to this verbal tic of his to use “some people” as a stand-in for his own opinion, but I just cannot.
This ridiculous man has to be defeated in November.
linky
“Some people talk about a Yellow Peril, I don’t know that’s just what some people say.”
@Teve: Or the people who said all our women would be wearing burkas in a few years if we didn’t go to war in Iraq.
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
True, but does anyone have a solution for pigheadedness and know it all attitude? Ideally the people he discusses, will look into their souls and make a change. But I doubt it. The left has embarked on same type DINO putsch that the right has done.
And it’s not like the left isn’t capable of introspection, I’ll point out the Dem that the most infuriates the right AOC has realized that she’ll accomplish nothing if she allows herself to be marginalized in the squad and now picks her battles with her erstwhile allies
@Jen: @Teve:
Dear God, he’s such an imbecile. Such an imbecile. Who the hell talks the way he does?
I had the same reaction to tequila.
@CSK:
Oh, yes. Few women want to be in a split-screen with Angelina Jolie.
He probably votes for Trump.
@Sleeping Dog:
I don’t know. This particular dude sounds more to me like one of those self-righteous, condescending, humorless assholes who can be found anywhere on the political spectrum. Sort of a male Karen.
Here’s the dead giveaway: Trump voters don’t live in bubbles the way this guy and his family do. Trump voters believe Coivd-19 is a scam to bring downs their fearless leader.
@sam:..tequila…
Yeah and she smiled and went back for another hit…just like you did with the vitamin T.
It’s official Biden announces Harris as his running mate.
@mattbernius: where’s EddieinLA? A few months ago Mike Reynolds said something like we all owe him drinks if it’s Harris, because Eddie has been predicting a Biden-Harris ticket from the beginning.
@mattbernius: You know what’s an indicator of a TRULY strong man?
One who has picked as his running mate the woman who went after him in a debate. That’s the very definition of someone secure in his skin.
Biden/Harris 2020
@OzarkHillbilly: Interesting link. Thanks! Still in all, the subtitle of the history of late 20th/early 21st Century America will probably be
@Bob@Youngstown: You might check https://www.questia.com/read/31174647/a-democratic-manifesto. But note that a google search using the title as the key term will link to about 10 or 15 different sets of material, so I don’t really know which one you want.
ETA: The Google search DOES include a link dated 2020 FWIW.
@Michael Reynolds: Congrats to you and your beloved on arriving somewhere else.
@Sleeping Dog: Interesting article and thesis. Overall, the theory is good and cogent and philosophically it’s very much on point. My own bias about it is that it is also too theoretical.
I was just discussing a parallel phenomenon with an evangelical friend and I see the same difficulty in how we are taught our values within evangelical Christianity. We’ve focused on what we believe-as a cognitive phenomenon, what we know–as a body of orthodox or pietistic perceptions, what is true–as epistemologic. Where we miss the boat it that none of that effectively spells out the answer to the question “how shall we, then, live.” (What do we do? How do we get from theory to practice? As I’ve noted in the past, the whole “you are the only Jesus most people will ever meet” thing puts the religion at a disadvantage in the marketplace of ideas because we don’t know how to be Jesus at all, let alone skilled at it.)
This article has the same issues IM [less than] HO, but YMMV.
@Monala: Hopefully by now you gave up on hearing from me and read it yourself. If you didn’t…
@Just nutha ignint cracker: The history of any period of time could be encapsulated by those words.
Still, I understand why things are the way they are just now, considering the absolute lack of leadership from the top of the Fed govt.
@Sleeping Dog: Jeebus, Mary, and Joseph.
@Michael Reynolds: Congratulations to your wife and you on her latest success.
Why These Twins Can Make Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ Trend 47 Years After Release
I discovered these two boys yesterday quite by accident. They’re only two of a number of young, black under-40s who are discovering 70s music — and liking it. Here’s young woman hearing Elvin Bishop’s Fooled Around and Fell in Love for the first time. If you go to the links, there are a lot of links to other first-time reactions. All of them wonderful.
@sam: [And then puts the straw back in her mouth for another pull] which is how tastes are acquired.
@Sleeping Dog: Wow! I haven’t had the issue that entry number two is having since I left the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches behind over 40 years ago. I had no idea that supposedly rational (I assume) liberal types had this sort of baggage to carry around. Sheets!
I also don’t get number one’s problem unless he’s actually there to supervise every time his child puts something in his mouth (which might be the case, now that I think about it 🙁 ).
@OzarkHillbilly: Okay, that’s a good point. Maaaaaaybe were not reeeeeealy any stupider than the generations that preceded us. 😀
On another channel, commenting on someone hearing The Righteous Brother’s You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling for the first time: “The moment when you realize your grandparents were cooler than you.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker: As Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t exactly repeat itself but it often rhymes.”
@sam: Check out them listening to “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. Their faces are remarkably expressive which is 90% of the fun!
@Monala: Anyone know a way to do a go fund me or similar to send him a nice bottle of something?
@sam: OK, F U sam, I fell down a Joe Cocker rabbit hole and now I’m jonesing for some Janis.
DAMN YOU, I HAVE CHICKENS TO TEND TO!!!
@MarkedMan: I’d contribute to that.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I can believe it, cause I know the type. Sometimes it is the men (who are the worse) other times the women. I pegged this guy as a Trump voter, but he could just as well been some obsessive lefty who is determined to control his kids life. The child is his jewel and nothing should discomfort him.
@OzarkHillbilly: or as my grandmother used to say,
Which may explain why I thought family gatherings were a full-contact sport. Without rules.