Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, December 7, 2021
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70 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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Is Trump’s new social media business a serious enterprise or yet another one of his ludicrous scam-o-prises? Well, consider who he has just appointed CEO of this supposed $1.25B effort: a soon to be former Congressional Rep, Devin Nunes, who has zero business experience beyond a few years involvement with his family farm logged before he entered a life long career as a non-executive politician. Nunes main qualification seems to be that he engaged in deeply unethical and possibly criminal use of his office to benefit Trump, and he is now available because his seat has been redistricted.
Seen on Twitter: Hispanix.
A compromise of sorts on the entire LatinX thing.
@Gustopher:
Or possibly a Spanish buddy of Asterix?
Well, Iberian.
‘I thought I was a free man’: the engineer fighting Texas’s ban on boycotting Israel
Reading his life’s story, one can not help but understand his… dislike of Israel. Yeah, that’s the word.
Talk about your toxic bosses…
@Gustopher: Also seen on Twitter:
“People who say Latinx are Pendejox”
Such blatant criminality….
Lipstick on a pig. Funny how money changes the equation. They are quite willing to subject a poor man to years of jail time without a trial, so they can pressure him into accepting a plea bargain regardless of actual innocence or guilt, while they will drop all charges to avoid a years long court battle with a rich man’s lawyers.
Money talks.
ETA: I had meant to note this above:
Spectacular is a bit of an understatement.
My school district where my 3 children was educated:
North East ISD pulls over 400 library books for review, prompted by lawmaker’s inquiry
We are a well to do, well funded school district. Have already told the School Board what I think of this cave-in to political bullying.
If the politicians and parents think their poor darlings are going to be corrupted by actual reading just wait til they see what the kids access on their phones and laptops. Hint: same pornography their parents are accessing.
Interesting article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/january-6-insurrection-trump-coup-2024-election/620843/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Personally I hope he’s wrong but I have three children, and I fear he’s right.
@OzarkHillbilly: The next step will be Steinhardt’s attorneys asking that the government compensate him for value of the antiquities. I wouldn’t have been surprised if that had been part of the original deal.
This does not inspire confidence that Trump, his kids or the Trump Organization will ever face meaningful charges from Vance’s office.
I might be reaching my limit already today.
Some nitwit from Politico (Alex Thompson) has written a piece screeching about VP Harris’s refusal to use Bluetooth headsets, preferring wired ones instead due to the security risks involved. The article quotes “former aides” who believe this is “paranoid.”
In recent weeks, we were also treated to fussing about the VP purchasing a few pieces of expensive (but durable) cookware.
Bluetooth IS a security risk, and thank god we have a VP who at least recognizes this. I DNGAF what kind of cookware she buys, and neither should anyone else.
Meanwhile, the former President endangered a huge number of people by wandering around after a positive covid diagnosis and everyone’s like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Jen:
Not–far from it–that I’m excusing Trump’s behavior, but it may be that some people are so accustomed to him acting like a malevolent churl that they say, “Oh, well, what can you expect? Of course he’s a one-man superspreader.”
@CSK: Which is exactly the attitude the supposedly liberal MSM had taken toward Republicans generally for the last few decades.
December 7th.
For me it is a sad reminder that 40 years later, when our nation was once again attacked, Democrats were/are unable to show enough balls to go after the perpetrators.
If Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Garland, et al, had been in office on 12/7/41 they would have said, meh, the kamikazes who are dead is punishment enough…no need to go after the Japanese Generals.
What is wrong with us?
@Jen: I’ve worked with and for the federal government for nearly 20 years, and disabling Bluetooth on mobile devices has been a requirement for as long as there has been Bluetooth.
Uber-griftress Sidney Powell raised almost $15 million through her “Defending the Republic” non-profit (sic).
@MarkedMan: We should start a betting pool on how long Nunes will have this job. People working for Trump don’t seem to last very long. I will put up $100 (to be donated to Doctors without Borders) that Nunes will be out in under a Jeff Sessions period. Any takers on the over?
@Slugger:
Well, given that TruthSocial.com missed its launch date, and given the abject failure of Trump’s other online ventures, I assume Nunes has a back-up plan of some sort. Perhaps he can milk cows rather than investors.
@Jen:
Just making sure I have these outrages correct:
-Buying $300 cookware: what an out of touch, elitist POS.
-Not buying $300 earpods: what an out of touch, elitist POS.
Some interesting things from Europe re. EU stepping up political trade retaliatory capacity.
Indications are that, ironically, this was originally set in motion by Trump’s threats of transatlantic trade war, but is now primarily directed towards China.
Finbarr Bermingham on twitter:
Also his recent Twitter thread v. interesting; looks like Beijing is now doing some high-speed backpedalling on it’s petty minded trade war with Lithuania.
Similar story here and at CNN:
And perhaps not unrelated:
EU Court of Justice Advocate General determines that
This opens the way for EU authorities to cut EU funds to Poland and Hungary if they continue to defy rulings on their political interference with the courts.
A technical thing that most news will overlook, but potentially very significant indeed.
Orbanism depends on leeching off EU funding.
@Slugger:
Isn’t the official metric the Scaramucci?
A few days ago James had a post disagreeing with a Jack Shafer column in Politico. Shafer said media should pay less attention to cable news because even Fox’s audience is so small. James noted that their influence is, however, significant. Today Kevin Drum has a post arguing that their audience is really larger than Shafer said. Shafer pointed to only 4.2 million viewers during prime time.
This is another episode of Drum’s ongoing argument that the root cause of our polarization is FOX “News”. More than anyone else, Rupert Moloch is destroying democracy.
Holy f*ck:
@Slugger: @CSK: Since it’s not as public a position as AG, I have no guess on the over/under but will speculate that his termination will be connected to the venture going banko.
Bannon trial set to go forward. In JULY!!! A year-and-a-half after Jan. 6th.
Democrats have completely fuqed up these investigations.
I don’t see myself ever voting for one of them again.
Complete and utter failures.
@JohnSF:
It has been pointed out that China, lacks friends among other nations. With friends defined as a country’s default response is to accept, at face value, another country’s is trust worthy. Certainly the Chinese have little credibility and no friends among the nations that constitute its near abroad. Hell, even Putin has a couple of vassal states that provide him with close to unconditional support.
But China? Myanmar perhaps, a country of no world consequence. NK is a wild card. Under Duterte, the Philippines, have been a bit of supplicant, but the reality is that Duterte has really been using China to create space from the US. Pretty much every over government in the region is cold to hostile. Now China’s default behavior may cause it to be locked out markets. Who would have guessed that a country could be more ham handed than the US in executing its foreign policy.
This is going to far. now the Commie Socialist democrats are turning the GOP’s manual woke.
@Scott:
I am very unhappy that none of my/our books made the list. There are few things better than having a book banned from the right. If I could get some yahoos to burn my books I’d contribute the books in exchange for video.
@Sleeping Dog:
The really weird thing about China is that 6-8 years ago (before Xi cemented his power), China was on the path to becoming “friend to the third world”. Beijing negotiated significant trade deals with countries in South America and Africa, they gave out huge amounts of foreign aid in the form of infrastructure (ports, rail, roads, etc.)–all without string attached–and was welcoming foreign investment.
If they’d kept on that path, they really would have been some significant competition for the US not only in terms of trade, but in terms of building strong, ongoing relationships with countries that the US couldn’t care less about. Developing countries that could become the “New China”–places that China could use for resources and cheap labor, while building them up to where they could be a market for their own products.
Instead? Bloviating and power plays blew that all to hell.
Side note: China will never be friends with Japan or Korea. Way too much bad blood over the centuries.
@Mu Yixiao:
Well, see Europe.
You want blood? We got it.
You don’t have to love everyone, but cordiality beats combat for a lazy weekend.
Also, yes, Xi has to be world class historical example of how to throw away a potential winning hand.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Consider yourself lucky.
You get a trial in July.
Chances of our lot of crooks ever being in the dock are p*ss-poor.
And thinking about it, might not trials at that point be better re. impact on Autumn elections?
Two years ago today, on a day that will live in infamy, I adopted my cat.
(She is not, however, the first cat I adopted on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor — I’ve been using this lame joke for almost two decades)
@Mu Yixiao: Yeah I’ve been wondering what the hell happened. Those actions were leading China to a future of vastly increased power on multiple fronts. Then they just kind of stopped? Is it really just as simple as Xi stopping it?
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think the real news is that Steinhardt apparently broke into the Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse and stole the Ark of the Covenant:
D.A. Vance: Michael Steinhardt Surrenders 180 Stolen Antiquities Valued at $70 Million
@Sleeping Dog:
I’ve come across speculations that it’s a cultural legacy of not having a state system with prolonged experience in dealing with peer states.
Personally, I think it may have more to do with insecurity bred by a virtually continuous series of political catastrophes since 1839 (arguably since the collapse of the Ming Dynasty, if you count the Qing as Manchu interlopers)
@Matt:
Yes and no.
I’m not an expert, and this is me speculating as an outsider, but…
Economic progress leads to people with more options. Which leads to people who want more choices. Which leads to a population that isn’t easy to control.
The CCP is terrified that prosperity will mean loss of power–and Xi is all about power.
@Mu Yixiao:
I agree with your main point and about Japan and SK, and I’d add Vietnam to that list. The one thing that I’d point out about China’s pre-Xi foreign policy, is that it wasn’t viewed by the countries that China assisted as benign. There were complaints about the financial terms and who the projects really benefited, but it was recognized that China was no further out of line than the US or present day Europe.
Under Xi, China has not only become a bully, but it seemingly is trying to recreate 18th century mercantilist economic arrangements, and that isn’t setting well in nations that spent a century or two as colonies of European countries. Also China seems oblivious or in denial, to the damage its image has received due to its treatment of the Uyghurs and Tibet, but particularly the Uyghurs.
@Matt:
I want to say it’s not the first time China’s done this, based on the expeditions of Zheng He, and their termination.
@JohnSF:
I would tend to lend more credence to the insecurity argument. Many of today’s nations lacked a history of state systems and still manage exist in a cool peace. Granted just about all went through a period of reconciling themselves to nationhood in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it wasn’t exactly pretty. But China had ~30 years of being cloistered from the world under Mao, yet considered a regional power. Then for the next 30 years grew into an economic power.
You’d think that they’d move beyond that insecurity. Which has be believing that @Mu Yixiao: is accurate in pointing to fear of the CCP losing control.
@Sleeping Dog:
Correct. But that’s also a matter of timing. At the time of initially negotiating the deals, they were very welcomed–especially by South America, which is getting tired of the US. It was after the Chinese companies came in that stuff started going sideways. The business model for China is “how much can I steal without you noticing?” The other countries were expecting fair deals, not “business with Chinese characteristics”.
@Matt:
In addition to the possible historical influence I mentioned, I suspect the political environment of the CCP doen’t make for a midset oriented to long term mutual beneficial cooperation between equals, regulated by legal limits.
But rather to zero-sum, submission/dominance, and shifting maneuverings for a power within an autocratic elite. Power that, if obtained, can be arbitrary and absolute in regard to inferiors.
Also, both some aspects of Chinese history, and being trained in a Party ideology of a veneer of pseudo-Marxist/Maoist guff over a corrosive aristocratic cynicism, tempered by bouts of nationalist enthusiasm, may genuinely lead the Chinese leadership to a hubrisitic view of the decadence or inferiority of other countries.
Lesson #1 of comparative imperial history: don’t get high on you own supply 🙂
@Sleeping Dog:
Yes. And from the 19th century the tempting loans that led various countries (eg Egypt, Venezuela, Argentina, etc) end up being subjected to military enforcement operations.
Compare recent Chinese “debt diplomacy”
To be fair to the European imperialists (!) they generally didn’t consciously aim at it being a trap. The general reaction in Whitehall to the Egyptian 1876 debt crisis was “oh, hell, what now?” rather than “hooray!”
@Kathy:
The real reason they stopped the voyages is they found nothing worth trading for. All the rest of the world had at that time were, as described, “novelties”. Exotic animals and such. For these they had to mount enormously expensive expeditions to trade gold, silks, and fine porcelain for..novelties.
For China at that time the rest of the world had little else to offer of value. They were miles ahead of the rest of the world.
@Sleeping Dog:
The “fear of losing control” or “fear of losing out” is endemic in the Chinese people–down to the most basic situations, and to such a degree that they shoot themselves in the foot. Two examples from my morning commutes.
1) I, like hundreds of thousands of others in Kunshan, drove a scooter to work (like a Vespa, but electric). Mine was a “hog”–much bigger, more powerful, and faster than pretty much everyone else on my route. It would take me maybe 50 -100 meters to get out to the head of the pack and have a clear path. If I hit a red light, the people behind me would swerve around and get in front of me. They couldn’t tolerate not being at the very front. And then I’d have to weave my way through them again–as would everyone else, because the slowest people would push ahead of the fast ones while we waited.
2) There was a 4-way stop near our factory that saw a lot of traffic in the mornings. It had traffic lights*, but everyone would push forward on the yellow–can’t give up those few seconds!–and the others would go as soon as it turned green. They’d frequently end up in a gordian knot of traffic, locked dead for half an hour or more–because absolutely nobody was going to let the other person go first. To “save” 30 seconds, it cost them 30 minutes.
@Mu Yixiao:
I’m thinking back to the discussion here a while back on Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem and I rremarked
If all Chinese society is really that zero sum, they have serious problems ahead.
and:
@JohnSF:
One of the things that we forget (or don’t realize) is that people my age actually remember the Cultural Revolution. Ones just a decade older remember the Great Leap Forward.
That just baffles me–and my parents grew up during the Great Depression. My dad served in WWII.
@Mu Yixiao:
They sound a lot like Mexican drivers. Red lights are seen as a suggestion to stop.
I’ve read the leading cause of death in Mexico City is yielding to traffic even a millimeter*. My estimate is that over a million deaths are averted every hour by creating traffic jams instead.
*For some reason, Chrome’s spell check doesn’t recognize millimiter.
Umm….
Can someone with more smarts than I have tell me if this is a real thing or a satire site?
“DARPA creates first real warp bubble.”
The other thing that has been occurring to me lately is that in some ways the geo-strategic economic position of China today is remarkably similar in some ways to that of Japan in the 1920’s (albeit without the blatant aggression of Japan re. Manchuria).
China is a Great Power that could only barely feed itself (with considerable hardship) and cannot power itself, without imports of food and fuel that in must pay for in dollars.
And it’s marginal domestic food balance absolutely requires some 35 million tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser per annum; IIRC at some 44 giga joule per tonne, that’ll be a significant percentage of energy use totals.
To pay for these imports it must export dollar earning goods; in the inter-war period the Japanese problem (as with much of the rest of the world) was that it was impossible to earn the dollars or other hard currency (sterling or gold, basically) it needed to import essentials.
China at present can do so.
But it depends upon US permissive access to dollar financial systems, and to the sea-lanes for both hard currency export markets, and food and fuel imports.
Unless it can bypass those chokepoints, and effectively overturn the current global trade/finance base, it has no way around dependence, no matter how politely concealed
(Which likely galls Xi considerably).
Attacking Taiwan, even if successful, would only serve to trigger economic strangulation.
(And very high odds of Japan going nuclear to counter the island line breach)
Land transport by rail via Russia would be far pricier; a possible wartime expedient, but not a sustainable one.
In it’s current geo-strategic position China cannot realistically hope to “break out”.
On the other hand neither could Japan; didn’t stop them trying.
Mel Brooks Still alive at ninety-five.
@Mu Yixiao:
Sounds like satire. It might be a crackpot site, too.
On better news, in Mexico City today boosters rolled out for adults over 60 (teenagers over 60 are out of luck, I guess). Apparently the booster will be whatever vaccine is at hand, meaning mostly AstraZeneca and Pfizer, but also Sputnik V. I’d be ok with either of the first two.
Judging by past rollouts, I estimate a booster by February. So, unless Omicron proves to be a sure killer, it looks like California will have to keep on doing without me for a few more years. I’m sure they’ll manage.
@Mu Yixiao:
Quick scan, if not a spoof seems to relate to the Casimir Effect which is known and measurable, albeit seriously weird, like most things “quantummy”.
But, as also like most quantummy stuff, totally irrelevant to macro-scale matter (he said with foolish assurance).
Just as the fact that at the subatomic scale most matter is empty space doesn’t make walking through a brick wall any easier.
@Kathy:
An Italian quip on traffic lights:
@Mu Yixiao:
@Kathy:
Looking at the Debrief site a bit more, pretty confident not a spoof, not crackpot, just a tad, umm, enthusiastic and optimistic, shall we say.
Reminds me a bit of Omni magazine back in the day.
@Mu Yixiao:
Similar.
Also, get off my lawn, you damn kids!
@Mu Yixiao:
Scotty needs to be consulted.
This is about folding space-time, travelling anywhere and not actually moving at all. By far the spookiest thing I’ve ever heard is the apparent fact, demonstrated by the proof of quantum linking, that at quantum level space is actually no space at all. The furthest point in space-time is precisely the same distance away as the tip of one’s nose. Our minds are not structured to grasp this, but there it is.
Btw, at the quantum level your lawn is their lawn…
Oh NOES… Democrats working within the system and once AGAIN getting fuqed because they haven’t yet said “F*CK IT ALL, KILL ALL THE REPUBLICANS AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT!!!”
Really? You want to blame them for the fact that GOPs have rights? For the fact that Americans voted for trump who inserted morally bankrupt jurists into the system? It’s all the DEMs faults?
@Mu Yixiao: Given the coverage it’s received, I’d lean toward real. Also, there’s a link to the published paper in the European Physics Journal.
@dazedandconfused:
It’s looking as though space rather than being a fundamental property of the universe, is really an emergent property of quantum systems.
The other day I had a weird dream about meeting someone from a parallel universe. I recall almost nothing, except when this person explained why we couldn’t visit his universe: there’s no matter or energy there.
I’ve been wasting some time trying to picture such a thing.
@JohnSF:
Having driven a car in both Rome and Naples, I can confirm this is 100% accurate.
For those of you who don’t listen to All Things Considered on NPR, there was a very interesting segment on today’s show.
A pharmaceutical company in Canada–Medicago*–has developed a COVID vaccine that is derived from plants.
If this gains FDA approval in the US, I’ll be really curious to see what contortions the “religious objectors” go through to justify not taking it.
===================
* They need a better PR/Marketing staff. That company name does not roll off the tongue.
@Jen:
10-year-old me (who takes control on occasion) is just really trying not to jump around screaming OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!
@JohnSF:
Quite a few of us in China (mostly expats) referred to traffic lights as “Christmas decorations”.
There were a couple times when power went out to the traffic lights, and I noticed a fundamental difference in how the Chinese react to the situation vs. Americans:
American: Treat it like a stop sign (or at least a yield).
Chinese: It’s not red, so I can keep going–full speed.
@Mu Yixiao:
So, the Canadian Democrat Commie Socialists want to turn people into plants.
Re, marketing. the name sounds very close to 1st person singular conjugation of defecate in Spanish.
@Kathy:
Same thing happens to me when I try to imagine the perspective of an electron or photon. At the speed of light time doesn’t exist, so in a journey across the universe over hundreds of billions of years, it’s everywhere along it’s journey at the same time. What would that be like?
If time does not exist in a black hole, and one formed at the Big Bang, for the black hole the Big Bang is a current event…
One last post before I go watch a little TV* and slip into bed.
I’ve talked about the fact that I publish a small online newspaper for the 5 municipalities that make up our community (mostly defined by the school district). September marked two years of publishing.
At the start, all the municipalities were eager to send along information for publication. Lately, I have to prod them for anything, and mostly get no response.
I work a full time job. I don’t have the energy to sit through (and I’m not exaggerating) approximately 40 hours of city/village/town/school board** meetings every month. That doesn’t even take into account that several of the meetings take place simultaneously.
I work a full time job. I’m not privy to all the things going on in the community that get talked about at the coffee bar, or at the farmers’ table at the diner.
I don’t have the time or energy to work sales and bring in advertising money, and I made a promise that the news would always be free to read (I believe in that very strongly).
Last week I put out a semi-ultimatum: If there aren’t 20 people (out of 8 to 10 thousand) who are willing to step up and feed me news tips (or really step up and report on government meetings or school events), I will be closing my doors on Dec 31st.
On the one hand: It will be a huge weight off my shoulders.
On the other hand: The community will lose the only engaged and responsive news it has.
On the gripping hand: I sincerely believe that “an informed electorate is essential for a free democracy” and I want to do what I can in that vein, but… I can’t get to the important issues without help.
On the…. Ummm… I’ve run out of hands: We have elections in April which include the mayor and a referendum for more school funding (more taxes).
So… Without any additional information…
Gut reactions: Do I push to get more people involved (I can’t pay them), or do I say 27 months is a good time served and close down?
==============
* Is it still “TV” if it’s downloaded videos watched on a computer?
** School Board meetings run
@dazedandconfused:
I give you the atom.
Them trons are righteous.
@dazedandconfused:
Crowded?
@Mister Bluster:
Mel Brooks, The Producers and the Ethics of Satire about N@zis