Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, February 8, 2022
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83 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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This is good advice:
http://www.thebulwark.com/memo-to-dems-stop-taking-these maskless-pictures/
Once-fired Minneapolis police officer promoted to department training director
In the summer of 2020 an officer with a long history of citizen complaints and also a training officer, murdered a citizen. Why would an acting, chief of police, who aspires for a permanent appointment, place another disgraced officer in the same role?
Hiding something?
It seems that this chief want-to-be is more interested in pleasing the police union than showing the citizenry that department management is interested in policing them fairly.
This comes to light after another citizen was killed by a cop, while the department was executing a no knock search warrant. The warrant was requested by the St Paul PD, who specified that a no knock warrant wasn’t necessary and were over ruled by the MPD. The victim, not a subject to the warrant, was crashing on the couch, was waken by police who let themselves in using a pass key.
The victim was in possession of a gun, for which he had a permit to carry.
This is a department that needs to have done to it what was done in Newark, fire everyone and start over.
It dawned on me today that the tsunami of black people in commercials since GF was murdered are serving to give the majority of white Americans, who have little interaction with black people (outside of the marginalized black folks in their town), an avalanche of skits that portray our lives as normal. drip, drip, drip
Income aside, most black peoples family experience is closer to Blackish or Family Matters than it was to, say, Good Times. You’d never know that if you didn’t live in or near a metro area and only saw black people on TV and when driving through the poor section of town where everyone with wherewithal got out and people with more serious limitations were trapped.
I dont even patronize products or services anymore that dont have at least an occasional black person or theme in their ads. If they cant spend a extra few dollars to appeal to me…I take it to mean they dont want my money.
Well, looks like the idiots are going to try and pick a fight that will not end well for them
Republican Lawmaker Basically Begs Anti-Vax Truckers to Blockade the Super Bowl
The “Freedom Convoy” is getting away with what it is because Canada is terrified they’ll go…. well, go American and start shooting up Ottawa. We’re at Day 10 of the siege because they don’t want to cause a scene or riot. Try this at the Super Bowl? Hah! The out of town fans alone will *NOT* tolerate it and there *will* be bloodshed. It would turn opinions on the unvaxxed around pretty quick if the SB was delayed or cancelled because of this idiocy; declining numbers aside, it still makes a ton of money and is virtually a national holiday for a large segment of the population. If all the horns blaring and anti-vax ruckus was the distraction that cost the team a crucial goal……
@CSK: A lot of this goes back to the recurring problem Dems face, which is that their messages are always more nuanced than Republicans’, and most Americans are morons and therefore don’t get nuance. Gavin Newsom you can legitimately accuse of hypocrisy, but the recent Stacy Abrams flap was really much ado about nothing: she was wearing a mask, but she took it off for a speech and photo op. And then she deleted the tweets featuring her maskless photo. This I really don’t get. When has deleting tweets ever done any good for anyone? Do these people not understand how the nets work? It just plays as an admission of guilt. She should have just owned it. Now, she’s given the controversy an official stamp of approval.
@Jim Brown 32: When I was a teenager in my middle class white family, my mom became a Board member for the local Urban League. As a Board member, she received subscriptions to both Ebony and Jet, so they were always in our house. It didn’t take me long to notice that the ads in those magazines were identical to the ads in Time and Newsweek, except the families in the Ebony / Jet ads were black. Nevertheless, dad sat in the same chair with the same look reading the same paper and mom stood at the same counter with the same utensil in her hand – just like the white families. That experience left a (useful, I hope) mark.
@KM:
I’m thinking that a large number of those truckers are avid football fans.
@Kylopod:
I haven’t followed the Abrams controversy closely, but she could have said: “Look, I took off my mask to make a speech, because you can’t make yourself clearly understood while wearing a mask, and then I put it back on.”
@CSK:
If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
@Kylopod:
In this case, she should have. It sounds perfectly reasonable, at least to me. Deleting the tweet seems like an admission of guilt.
@CSK: But that goes back to the question I asked before: Why does anyone in the public eye ever delete tweets? It’s such a stupid and pointless thing to do, and always only makes things worse for whoever does it. It would be one thing if it was 2010 or something, but it’s been long enough that it’s hard to believe any seasoned pol (or the people advising them) doesn’t know this already. It’s also the first unforced error I can remember from Stacy Abrams, who up to now has been almost flawless when it comes to PR.
@Kylopod:
It’s probably something they don’t think through. We’re all capable of ostrich-like behavior at times: “If I can no longer see it, no one can.”
Abrams probably deleted the Tweet on impulse. She’s human, just like all of us.
Some people are just too dumb to serve.
An Army officer may have nuked his career with a single tweet
Rightwing lobby group Alec driving laws to blacklist companies that boycott the oil industry
I can not think of a clearer example of Frank Wilhoit’s, “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
@Jim Brown 32:
Blacks are getting a fair share of parts in commercials, and that has been noticed by the white supremacists who are outraged by this.
@Sleeping Dog:
That makes me so happy!
@Joe: Is this sort of our version of “make the libs cry”?
@Scott:
It gets tiresome to point out that low efficacy is not the same as zero efficacy, or that boosters bring efficacy against infection (and therefore transmission) of Omicron near to the levels of the two-dose regimen against the original strain.
Therefore the vaccines do prevent infection and transmission, more so if you get boosted. Therefore vaccinating everyone who can be vaccinated, with medical exceptions only, would bring the end of the pandemic that much closer in time.
I seriously can’t comprehend why so many people have taken the side of the virus in this fight. And I say this with full understanding of why Fins and Ukrainians took the side of the nazis in WWII. Unlike the nazis, SARS-CoV-2 can neither promise anything nor deliver it.
@Kylopod:
I think that’s known as “owning the libs.” Or “libtards.”
It’s become the raison d’etre of the right.
On big and overlooked aviation news, Frontier and Spirit have announced their intention to merge (meaning Frontier will acquire Spirit). This requires approval from the DOJ as regards antitrust issues.
This makes a lot of sense as regards operations. Both airlines have A320 family fleets, and both have been investing a lot in newer planes. If they merge, they’ll have one of the youngest, most modern fleets in the world. there seems to be little overlap in their existing routes, too.
No idea what the antitrust issued will be or how the DOJ will rule. There are other ultra-low and low cost airlines, plus Southwest and jetBlue, in addition to basic economy in the legacy carriers. I’m more concerned about the effects of consolidation in the market.
@Kathy: If they don’t name the resulting airline “Frontier Spirit” I’ll be bummed.
Still upset that the Penguin-Random House merger didn’t result in The Random Penguin publishing house.
@Jen:
Lately airline mergers preserve the name of one airline only: American (US Airways), Delta (Northwest), United (Continental), Alaska (Virgin America), Southwest (Air Tran). Not to mention Boeing (McDonnell Douglas), or even Pan Am (National)
About the only nod to an acquisition was that United kept the Continental logo on the tail of its fleet. And I think that was because Continental acquired United.
@Jen: My favorite is a large, successful test and inspection equipment manufacturer named Fluke.
@Jen: @Kathy:
According to NPR, “Frontier shareholders would own about 51.5% of the new company and Spirit shareholders would own 48.5%.”
@CSK:
I forgot the exact numbers, but this is what I mean Frontier is acquiring Spirit, even if they call it a merger.
@Kathy:
Readers of the Boston Globe have some suggestions for names of the new airline:
1. FrontSpit
2. FronTears
3. JetPoo
4. Snowpiercer Airlines
5. Pain Am
6. U.S. Scare
7. Dispirited
@Kathy:
The funny thing is I still remember when Frontier first started and was trying to brand themselves as more luxurious than the big carriers.
I’ve only known one person that consistently flies Spirit, anyone else that I’ve talked to that has flown it say never again. The Spirit flyer owns a house in Berwick,ME and a condo in Orlando, so he has no need for luggage and usually doesn’t even bother computer bag, just brings a book. He points out the hassles of Spirit involve luggage, with none he enjoys the ~$60 fare.
The whole Joe Rogan thing has got me thinking about sources of news and information in general. It seems to me there are three main types of information sources out there:
– Actual News Media. Sources that try to understand and explain reality. Examples – NYT, WaPo
– Advocacy Sources. These are people and organizations that use information and analysis to try to sway people in some way. We can break these down further into Honest Advocacy, where the advocates engage fairly with all the disparate facts and analysis that challenge their advocacy, and Dishonest Advocacy, where the advocates only engage with strawmen and actively seek to distract from their opposition’s most substantial challenges. Examples of Honest Advocacy sources would be the CDC, or certain green groups. Examples of Dishonest Advocacy sources would be various astroturfing industry groups, Reason Magazine, the Heritage foundation.
– Entertainment Sources. These are sources that really have no major interest in truth or reality but rather will put forward anything that attracts audience, especially audience of their target demographic. Relatively harmless examples of this are local sports pages and E! Online (I think that’s the name) and toxic examples are Joe Rogan or Fox News.
In general I try to limit myself to Actual News Media, Honest Advocacy Sources (regardless of whether I agree with their positions) and relatively harmless Entertainment Sources. I actively avoid liars, which are basically what Reason Magazine, Joe Rogan and Fox News are. And the idea that there are lots of non-shit things in their shit sandwiches doesn’t work for me. I don’t give credence to anything from sources that regularly try to lie to me, and that applies in my personal life too.
@Sleeping Dog:
I avoid Spirit because they have an explicitly predatory business model: quote a ridiculously low fare to show up first on all the search engine results for a flight, but then nickel and dime you for everything until by the end you’re actually paying more than you would have on a full-service carrier.
@CSK: Does The Bulwark have a Well duh! department or is this article’s tags something else?
@Sleeping Dog: “Hiding something?”
That she doesn’t actually GAF about the perception about the department by the citizenry would be my guess. Or, maybe she’s realized that she doesn’t really want the job after all.
@MarkedMan:
I’d break this up into observational, investigational, and access news media. A lot of the problems with the New York Times come from it being primarily access journalism (e.g. bothsidesing most issues).
Yesterday alanstorm made a comment about Rs no longer being the party of the “rich and powerful”, with a couple comments in response. Jalmelle Bouie has a column at NYT today on exactly how Rs are the new working class party. It’s titled Marco Rubio Wants to Be a Working-Class Hero. There’s Just One Problem.
It’s unclear why legislation is needed for voluntary groups or for company unions, which already exist.
This is how GOPs are the party of the working man, BS and fraud. I’d like to say this is more proof that Marco (Mr. water bottle) Rubio (my senior senator) is, improbably, actually as dumb as he looks. But the MAGAts will probably love this. “We can tell the boss not to make us get vaccinated or wear masks without having to have some socialist union.”
@CSK:
Cattle Express was taken?
@Stormy Dragon:
We’ll see how Breeze does, but overall the model of offering more or a better experience is not working. See Interjet. It works at the very high end, with people willing to pay exorbitant prices for a flat bed and a good meal with top shelf booze.
@Sleeping Dog:
@Stormy Dragon:
I haven’t priced a flight/trip since 2015, but my MO might help.
I look at travel agencies first, to get a notion of price. I then look up airlines and hotels, separately and flight/hotel packages if they are on offer. At the airlines, I price the ancillary fees, including fuel surcharges, and luggage and seat selection. At hotel sites I look for resort fees and such.
Results vary. Sometimes I’ll get a better deal with a travel agency, sometimes booking flight and hotel separately.
It is worth mentioning I enjoy browsing such sites, and often I have months of lead time.
@Stormy Dragon:
Which is why I’ve never flown them. My acquaintance is the rare traveler that beats Spirit at its own game.
@just nutha:
One would think that those who vigorously promote mask-wearing by others would have the brains to wear masks themselves, even if only for the look of things, but apparently not. “Masks for thee but not for me” is not a winning strategy.
@Kathy:
Having been a business traveler for several years, I flew whatever airline was most convenient and d@mn the price, someone else was paying. Those years, personal travel was on points. Since retiring, I no longer fly, except to cross an ocean. Every other trip I drive. I’ve nothing but time and I get to see the country along the way.
@Kathy:
I kind of like Pain Am.
@gVOR08:
So that Rubio and Banks can appear to be in favor of working for the interests of the worker while not doing so. What’s more interesting to me is that this transparent ploy will probably work and RTW advocates will cite opposition to it as more lefty/progressive hypocrisy about worker rights.
@Sleeping Dog:
Volaris began as a low cost airline, along with Interjet in 2005. Later it adopted the ultra-low cot model, which means packing the plane and charging for everything. Interjet featured lots of space (32″ seat pitch standard, when full service airlines offered 30″).
17 years later Volaris is thriving, while Interjet is deceased, and even Aeromexico charges for nearly everything. The trend is clear.
Not long ago, c.2012, you could pick a bulkhead or exit row seat, both have more legroom, on any airline for free, if any were still available when you booked. these days even a middle seat in the last row (standard legroom, no recline) will cost you money. It’s obscene.
@gVOR08:
I’d be interested in taking a closer look at the text of the bill, there’s probably something in there that bolsters the hand of the employer in some way. This seems like just another way to form a PAC.
@Sleeping Dog: I flew on Frontier a couple of times. It takes a lot of discipline to limit yourself to “no, just the flight itself, please” though.
@CSK: You’d also expect people to be smarter considering the sheer numbers of pols who’ve been beat about the head and shoulders with this particular stick. I guess the old saying is true: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, business as usual.”
@gVOR08:
It’s more cultural than anything else. White non-college-educated voters see the Democrats as a crew of elitists who sneer at them and their values and vastly prefer Europe to the United States.
This has been going on for a while. Remember Spiro Agnew decrying the “elite corps of impudent snobs”?
Sidney Powell says she shouldn’t be disbarred because “millions of Americans” believe that there was election fraud in 2020, and perhaps they’re right.
I don’t think of Fox’s Brian Kilmeade as an original thinker (and that’s an understatement), so I wonder what is behind him making the following statement about Trump, as reported by The Hill:
@CSK: Oh yeah. I point out Wisconsin where Scott Walker went on a Koch fueled war with public service unions. When people saw unions got teachers a little better pay and benefits, the reaction wasn’t “We oughta get a union.” It was “Yeah, stick it to them uppity teachers.” Sad. It’s really hard to help some people.
@MarkedMan:
I haven’t read The Hill piece yet, but Kilmeade appears to be saying that Trump is a great, great man capable of doing so much good, so why is he wasting his time with this election crap?
@gVOR08:
It’s impossible to help some people when those people think you’re trying to destroy their way of life and everything they believe in.
@Scott:
Interestingly, that sounds a lot like the Rogan position on vaccines.
@Kathy:
You maybe right, but the cheapies aren’t worth it. After I stopped flying significantly for biz and before retirement, I mostly flew Southwest, which was seldom the cheapest fare, often $25-$75 more. But everything is included and the pitch of the seats is tolerable. Quite often, I’d buy the early boarding option or even a biz class seat in order to get the early boarding. Flying commercial now is such a terrible experience, why make it worse. Granted some folks simply need to fly as cheap as possible, but most folks I saw seeking the cheapest possible fare, and extra $50 or $75 wouldn’t have been noticed.
@CSK:
If millions of Americans tried to argue electoral fraud in court without evidences, they should all be disbarred as well.
Why does it seem that it is the R candidates who have the kinky peccadillos.
https://nypost.com/2022/02/08/oregon-gop-gubernatorial-candidate-admits-belonging-to-swingers-group/
@Sleeping Dog: Does that mean Oregon is a swing state now?
@Kathy:
Yeah, Powell’s an uber-loon, just like her buddy L. Lin Wood.
Does it ever, ever occur to the MAGAs why the only people willing to work on behalf of Trump now are utter sleazoids like Bannon and Roger Stone and lunatics like Powell and Wood?
Not that Wood and Powell aren’t sleazy, but their defining characteristic is lunacy.
@Kylopod:
Very clever.
Boosters for the 40-49 age group started this week. Apparently the stock of AZ has been used up, and this group will get the first dose of Sputnik V*.
I’ve heard from one coworker who doesn’t want it. She wants AZ or Pfizer. Easy for me to say (I got AZ on top of two of Pfizer, after all), I advised her to get whatever’s offered. She could wait and see what the 30-39 group gets, and take it then (but they’ll likely get the second dose of Sputnik V).
She countered with a reasonable objection: she wants to travel abroad this year, and the Russkiy vaccine isn’t approved in many countries. She assured me she’ll take it, though, as she’d rather not die of COVID.
*The Russian vaccine is a viral vector vaccine, like AZ and J&J, but uses a different virus in each dose, apparently to prevent the immune system from developing resistance to the vector. I thought that was clever, but credible efficacy numbers for Sputnik V are hard to find. So who knows how well it really works.
Two people I know who got both doses last year also got breakthrough Omicron this year. I don’t know if they got it mild or not, but both recovered without hospitalization. So it may be effective.
@CSK:
This should answer your question: You’re just jealous that Biden can’t get people of that caliber. Benito hires the best people.
@CSK: Is her statement actually related to the charge being leveled at her related to the disbarment or is it simply a deflection/diversion. Yes, I know that’s a stupid question, but I haven’t been following this circus, so I don’t know what’s going on anymore.
@MarkedMan: I’m wondering why Fox hired a guy who, seemingly, can’t string words together better than that. Is he really THAT much better at reading off a teleprompter? Wa!
@Kathy:
Okay, you made me laugh.
When I make my daily trip to Lucianne.com, the Trumpkins there (which is 99.9% of them; non-worshipers get evicted tout de suite), always lament that Trump, being the honest, forthright, upright businessman that he is, was far too trusting of the evil Deep Staters who surrounded him.
It’s his only flaw, you know. He was far too virtuous for Washington, D.C.
@just nutha:
It was in the documents she submitted to the U.S. Appeals Court.
@CSK: Sure, but also pretty clearly called him a liar. People like Trump either fade away (which ain’t gonna happen with this clown) or they wear out their welcome. When they turn on him it will happen fast. Not that they will ever admit they were wrong, but “Trump just isn’t the same guy any more…” (See Doctor Who: “Don’t you think she looks tired?”)
@CSK: You mean the old “Trump may be an asshole, but he’s our asshole” take is too cuck for them? They have to actually say he’s a nice guy whom they’d happily trust with their daughter?
@CSK: I’m not seeing any reason for MAGAots to even recognize lunacy when they see it. Rejecting it would be unlikely in such a scenario.
@MarkedMan:
Re: Kilmeade
Trump’s extraordinarily soft take-down of Mike Pence is causing some of the mice to feel brave. They act the way they do to keep their highly lucrative jobs but most of them are quite aware Trump is a liar.
Trump’s method of control is hard but brittle. When people are forced to act in ways they don’t believe in they hate the person who forces them, of course, but even more they hate themselves for knuckling under. The self-loathing stews and becomes toxic.
I expect Trump’s loss of power, if it comes, will follow Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy: “Gradually, then suddenly.”
I’m trying to come up with a quantum physics joke, but all I’ve got so far is the set up:
A photon walks into two bars.
@Kylopod:
Oh, my God, yes. Trump is a devout Christian. a faithful husband, a devoted father, a superlative businessman, and the best president we’ve ever had. Better even than Reagan. He fights on behalf of real Americans. No one stronger than Trump.
That’s what they say they believe.
@CSK:
Maybe on the internet nobody can see the guns to their heads.
@MarkedMan:
Other than Trump deciding he’s now a liberal, I can’t see his hardcore worshipers ever turning on him.
@Kathy:
Oh, I think that some of them–a very few–are just pretending enthusiasm for Trump because they cherish the feeling of community they get at Lucianne.com and don’t want to be kicked out of the nest.
@gVOR08:
The other problem is that contrary to the prevailing media narrative, Democrats are still winning the (low turnout) votes of the lowest-income households and demographics.
@MarkedMan:
Same thing that’s behind Pence and McConnell’s newfound tepid anti-Trumpism. Fundraising numbers and internal polling showing Republicans are way weaker for the midterms than the prevailing narrative says they should be.
@dazedandconfused:
I hope that’s true. We need these invertebrates to pull a Wormtongue vs. Saruman moment.
@CSK: Like I said, they will never admit they were wrong, they’ll just talk about how he’s not the same guy anymore. Not up to the new task.
@DK:
You could be right but, still, I think it’s different. McConnell and Pence have always resented Trump because he diminishes them. But Kilmeade was raised up by Trump. For him to risk Trump’s wrath, well, it just seems it has to be something more than some kind of general concern about Republican prospects.
@MarkedMan:
I don’t think they’ll ever do that. They have far too much invested in Trump’s utter perfection.
@Dude Kembro:
As I recall, there was a rather revealing slip by a lot of analysts after 2016. It was common to say TFG won the working class vote. They had to be corrected – No, he won the white working class vote. He lost the working class vote billy.
@gVOR08: “billy”? I swear that said “bigly” when I typed it.
Man in Mandalorian costume gives away masks to other passengers during a flight.
I thought the mask on Grogu was a nice touch.
@gVOR08:
Like we all do, many in legacy media extropolate too much from their own narrow experiences. Journalism social circles tend to be disproportionately white. And, yes, among whites Trump caused the educated (aka “the elites”) to drift left. Meanwhile, white Beltway types watched their downscale cousins back home in Ohio drift hard right.
So the lazy narrative became Democratic elitism vs. working class champion Trump. Which erases the people of color, LGBT, youth, and others in relatively less privileged or less wealthy demos that formed the core of anti-Trumpism from the day one.
Not only did Hillary carry households making under $50k annually by nearly ten points, she won even working class whites who told exit pollsters their top issue was the economy. Trump won working class whites voting on the culture war: immigration, crime, anti-Islam, “political correctness” etc.
In response to criticism, some in the press have tried more intersectional nuance in analyzing demographic complexities. (Some still don’t get it, like the perpetually clueless Ross Douthat, who tried to rewrite how Zucker’s CNN enabled Trump with false equivalences, the But Her Emails witch hunt, and the now-infamous Trump podium coverage.)
But Republicans remain high on their own supply; they think repeating “we’re the working class party” enough will confuse those folks into voting for tax cuts for billionaires.
So I learned a new word today – ambivert.
Not introvert, not extrovert. Something different. Between and both. I need to dig into this. It seemingly explains a lot.
Fascinating.
@gVOR08:
While I absolutely agree and have noticed that many people use “working class” as a shorthand for “white working class,” the claim that Trump won the working-class vote is based on defining the term as voters without a four-year college degree, and it is true–Trump did win that demographic both times (albeit very narrowly in 2020). And then the analytical pieces talk about Trump’s domination of the vote of whites without college degrees, which he indeed won by massive margins both times.
The problem is that this category doesn’t map perfectly onto the everyday meaning of working class as someone who holds a particular type of job. Many people with four-year college degrees hold working-class jobs (at least initially), and many people without them don’t (Bill Gates would be defined as working class by this standard, at least until the honorary degrees he was given several years into being the wealthiest man on the planet). So why do pollsters use this category as the benchmark for what other people call working class? Probably simply because it’s easier to identify. It’s possible to imagine a long-ranging study where they identified working-class voters under specific criteria on what types of jobs they held, but it would be complicated as hell to set up such a study. For a run-of-the-mill exit poll, they’re pretty much stuck either asking the voter directly “Are you working class?” or asking them if they have a four-year degree. Most pollsters choose the latter, and this has gone on to become the overwhelming convention of a technical definition of working-class voter for analysis purposes.