Tuesday’s Open Forum
Chit-chat time.
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, January 21, 2020
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105 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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Police arrest 21-year-old Richmond woman for wearing bandanna near pro-gun rally
I won’t belabor the obvious.
If you haven’t heard this phrase, it is essentially a religious axiom among the gun nut community. People believe this hard. (the sign says, “Registration Leads To Confiscation”, which is why nobody in America owns vehicles)
It’s a good thing trump had Suleimani killed, stopping all those imminent attacks on our embassies. I’m sure all our embassy staffs throughout the Middle East sleep much easier at night.
@OzarkHillbilly: What is it with the right and slippery-slope arguments?
My take is when your argument against something is weak, you fall back on what it will supposedly lead to.
@Kylopod: Logic is hard.
Black and white thinking is attractively simple-minded.
It’s show time!
N. K. Jemisin profile in the New Yorker. I just downloaded The Fifth Season on Kindle from the library.
Trump’s team is what happens when you don’t pay your legal bills.
Does anyone else have the problem in iOS of autocorrect randomly capitalizing words when you go back to edit?
@MarkedMan: yes. I really like The iPad I’m typing this on, but the text editing features are far inferior to android. I’m using voice recognition right now, and you see that capitalized T in the last sentence? Yeah I didn’t do that.
Ideological Diversity is not Enough
Conservatives need a positive scholarly agenda for the humanities and social sciences
Neither is owning the Libs.
Something that I’ve wondered about for a long time, was how conservatives have fooled themselves into believing that an agenda that serves the elite can be sold to a broader community. Particularly when you are using racial and cultural resentment to capture the support working class whites.
Much of what passes for conservatism in America today is hollow.
@MarkedMan:
The current version of iOS is riddled with bugs. And everything involving text entry and editing is a disgrace. On the other hand, I’d likely write much more were the system better, so count your blessings.
@Sleeping Dog:
I respectfully disagree: it’s not hollow but full of shit.
@Kit: I’m thinking about putting the Google keyboard on the iPad, but I don’t know if that will affect the cutting and pasting stuff, which on iOS is absolute garbage.
365 days until a new President is sworn in.
@Teve: From your lips to God’s ears.
A few years ago, then-president Enrique Peña paid an exorbitant amount of money for a Boeing 787 to replace an old Boeing 757 as the presidential plane. The current president, His majesty Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador (no one gets that joke) likes to show off his austerity by taking commercial flights, and thus far has made no trips abroad. So he wants to sell the 787.
good. Except that after a year on the market, it remains unsold. So one idea he’s floated is to raffle the plane off in a national lottery. 6 million tickets would be sold at 500 pesos each (about $27 US. No word on prizes other than the plane.
While it seems ridiculous, and the odds are lousy, the prize would be awesome.
Allegedly the plane cost a total of $218 million US, and the raffle would raise $150 million, which I assume is the amount still owed to whatever government bank financed the purchase.
I don’t know the asking price. but the list price of a 787-8 is about $248 million.Of course, no one pays list price. so assume it’s half that, or $124 million (very likely too low). So if you won the plane, which has had little use, so the air frame is in great condition, you could easily sell it to any number of airlines, lessors, or even a private business or billionaire, if you asked for a “mere” $100 million.
At odds of one in six million, though, you’re better off saving that money.
President Pelosi
President Nancy Patricia Pelosi
POTUS 46
Kinda has a nice ring to it. Would be great in the history books… the story of how a strong conservative party was taken over by a minority nationalist faction that attempted to crash the American Dream, and how the people of the United States stepped in and put a stop to it.
I predicted this long ago. I see a great outcome, but fear that it could just be a divergent alternative fiction.
Do you think Pelosi would run for reelection?
Remember, as this upside-down Show Trial commences in the Senate; we all know what Trump did.
The only question that will be answered going forward is where Republican Senators allegiance lies. Is it with the Country and our Constitution? Or is it with Trump? It cannot be both.
@Teve:
Do you mean Gboard, the virtual keyboard, or a physical one?
@Kit: If Google makes a physical keyboard I’m not aware of it.
@Teve:
It does not matter, the fix is in.
@Kathy: That’s a great deal but the parking fees alone would bankrupt one.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
It isn’t a “Show Trial” with the GOP determined that it be as boring and inconspicuous as possible.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Some stories in the papers about this, mention a grant to operate the plane for one year, which is a meaningless measure of time. How many flights, what does it cover, etc. And, yes, parking fees for a widebody are huge for the average well-off person. the plane might wind up being seized by the airport to recover fees!
That’s why you sell it at once.
But I give very low odds of a raffle taking place. Mostly because it has been widely ridiculed already. The web is rife with memes of the plane photoshopped parked in front of a house, driving in the freeway, its nose inside a suburban garage, etc.
There’s talk of leasing it, which is not a terrible idea. Some have suggested His Majesty actually use it. Most likely it will be sold at a loss. The next president can avoid a similar twin debacle by ordering an A321 XLR. It won’t have the range to get to Europe or Asia nonstop, but it’s cheaper and burns less fuel.
@Kathy: Selling it at once for say $5 mil plus lawyer fees* to an airline is the obvious solution.
* having never owned a plane much less a 787 I have no idea of the legal liabilities attached to said ownership, but I would bet they are very expensive.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Chicago Is Trying to Pay Down Its Debt by Impounding Innocent People’s Cars
BTW You do not need a license, insurance and registration to drive a car on your private property. Those are required for public roads and driveways.
Can any of the lawyers (Doug?), or anyone, answer an impeachment question for me? GOPs keep saying you can’t impeach for “abuse of power” as that’s not a crime in the Federal code*. Let me set aside any discussion of what’s impeachable. The underlying act is asking Ukraine for an in kind bribe to Trump personally in return for releasing legally mandated aid. I’ve described this as no different than an electrical inspector saying your wiring is good, but he needs fifty bucks cash to sign off.
So a two part question: Is the bill of impeachment written in such a way that it does not charge solicitation of bribery. And if so, why did the Ds write it in such a way the GOPs can do this?
* Reminded of his clear statements during the Clinton impeachment that an article of impeachment need not be a defined crime, I see Dershowitz is wrapping himself in verbal knots around “crimish” or some silly thing. Looks as silly as a guy with a gun and body armor at the VA capitol.
ETA In line with my iPad keyboard rant below, I updated to “with a gun” from “withnangun”.
@gVOR08: those twerps in VA were playing dress up Army Man. They want to cosplay as warriors but they’re too chickenshit to serve.
Look at this chubby doofus pretending to be a sniper
@OzarkHillbilly:
That would be such a low price, airlines would fall over each other to get it.
So you auction it off. Brilliant. you’d get far more than $5 million and lawyer fees. I’d be willing to settle for the original asking price, plus lifetime travel anytime anywhere in first (or best available) class to just about any European or Asian legacy airline.
@Kit: I tried the Gboard for awhile when I got this iPad and went back because I didn’t see any clear advantage. But, seemingly with recent iOS releases, my Apple virtual keyboard has gotten very balky. It seems OK on a hard surface, but sitting in my lap it doesn’t see keystrokes. “o” in particular for gawd knows what reason. Plus the Apple keyboard retains it’s most irritating feature. The num keyboard has an undo key where the alpha keyboard has a num key. That’s bad enough, but the undo is just where a dragging palm or little finger catches it. And unlike the o key, it seems very sensitive. I’m going to dig my way through settings and reup the Gboard.
@gVOR08: The worst text thing about the iPad is when you’re trying to select a block of text with your finger. That shit is incredibly bad and frustrating.
@charon: I am going to steal the “upside down show trial” line. I think what you’re saying is what Daryl meant.
@Paul L.:
Don’t always assume that a logical sounding statement is true.
After all, Colorado actually licenses and collects taxes on inoperable vehicles. https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/dmv/inoperable-collectors-item-registration
However, if you are making a parallel argument that guns, if not removed from private property, should not be registered… well, that’s kind of a red herring.
Would I support that? Sure. (However that may not work for actual sportsmen who hunt animals… you know the folks for which that the NRA was actually started.)
But… is that what we saw this weekend with folks carrying semi-automatic weapons and costumed in make-believe combat gear? No.
@gVOR08: Warning: don’t provoke me on this subject! I can go on and on about Apple’s shortcomings in this area.
Damn it! Here I go:
For people who write in multiple languages… Every day while writing in English, iOS will propose several options in French. Every now and then, it will autocorrect a valid word in English to some French alternative it finds preferable. To my mind, this sort of functionality could only have been developed by a team of monoglots: if I wish to use a French word in the middle of English text, I’ll change the damn keyboard!
And come on, Apple! If I wish to write the word damn, then learn it! At least give the option somewhere.
A grace note would be flagging if the current word is spelt correctly. Simply rendering the leftmost word option in grey would suffice.
Oh, and can we have some warning before holding the delete key jumps to warp speed?
And what about a shift lock so that I can enter numbers and spaces without going insane? In fact, why not offer a dedicated number pad?
And when the autocorrect chooses a word that’s capitalized and I then correct it, is it too much to ask that the shift key return to its previous state?
Can autocorrect leave behind some visual trace, like on MacOS?
How about a long tap on a word bringing up a list of potential corrections? And if that word was autocorrected, then let the original word head the list.
And why when long pressing on the space bar in order to move the cursor, do I sometimes go into selection mode? How to stop it? And how to start it on purpose? And speaking of which, have you tried editing a long URL in safari?
And let me lock my frequently used emojis! The list is constantly shifting!
And now autocorrect will do the courtesy of “correcting” the previous word to better fit. Hitting delete erases both words.
I’m feeling better now 🙂
Christ. Awful.
@Liberal Capitalist:
Inoperable Collector’s Item vehicles
Or the gun parts loophole!
Gun Violence Isn’t a Problem — it’s actually 5 Problems, with Different Solutions
@Liberal Capitalist:
If anything Pelosi should remove her name from Succession…thereby eliminating the conflict of interest.
The Presidency would then fall to Grassley…but who cares? He’d never get re-elected, and it’s too late for any Republicans to mount a serious primary race.
Until the last year, I was very happy with my successive iPhones and iPads. Lately, my iPhone 10R makes me feels as though I’m carrying around an imp of the perverse. Aside from bugs, many of the software design decisions are confusing and unhelpful. Worst example is the increased pressure to use iCloud, which does more harm than good, at least in my case. One result: I often can’t send someone a picture of my incredibly cute granddaughter. Bastards.
@Teve: Thank you. That’s probably the best thing I’ve seen on gun violence.
Alabama Televangelist Acton Bowen sentenced to over 1000 years in prison for raping children.
He’ll probably be released in only 689 years for good behavior. 😛
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Why? It is part of the constitutional plan. it is exactly what it is to do.
If the two chucklef#cks are removed, then the other party should take over. Pelosi was not one who wanted impeachment, however relented when evidence became obvious.
(insert “I’m OK with this” meme cartoon here)
I’m not much for ballet, but this version of Polovtsian dances is mesmerizing. My only complaint (a very small complaint given the performance) is that they omitted the chorus.
On iPad keyboards – I got the magnetic folding cover with a hardware keyboard with my current iPad. I generally use it if I do something long on the iPad, which is infrequent. Can anybody tell me why the backspace key is labeled “delete”? I use an iPad and iPhone, but laptops and desktops are Windows. Does Apple do this on laptop and desktop keyboards?
And about every third time I go to use the hardware keyboard I have to reboot before it will automatically switch over, including just now when I looked to see if it was “delete” or “del”.
@Kathy:
Imagine the eBay ad. 🙂
@Liberal Capitalist: The idea wasn’t to change parties, although given what we’re learning about impeachment it is sort of a given that it won’t happen unless the Speaker is of the opposite party. The idea was that the speaker was the closest office available to popularly elected.
In the event, if the veep looked impeachable there’s a fair chance they’d somehow work a Ford/Agnew style substitution before push came to shove.
But I sure would love me some Madame President Pelosi. ‘You want any of your crap signed, Turtle Boy, you’re gonna have to butter me up for a while. You better start now.’
@gVOR08:
You might just try toggling the Bluetooth setting, simply to make the process faster. Still, something is wrong. If you can, try stopping by an Apple Store.
@sam: That was great. Thanks.
The Richmond gun nuts are just cos-playing. They’re like furries or bronies but with guns and race hatred.
From the NYT, 2 hrs ago –
I’m happy to report that I’ve tried, repeatedly, and continue to get:
“We’re sorry, all circuits are busy”
@gVOR08:
My bad, my reading skills are waning in my dotage.
@Kathy: Did anyone bother to ask John Travolta if he wants to buy the plane?
@Michael Reynolds:
Two things about that ridiculous display:
If military recruiters showed up they would scatter like rats when the lights come on.
And more importantly…If colored people showed up, in those numbers and open carrying and armed to the hilt like that, we would have gun control in a matter of hours.
@gVOR08:
This is all part of the Republican obfuscation effort.
Pages 118-120 of the House Impeachment Report (the 600 page report) specifically spells out bribery and wire fraud as elements of Article 1 Abuse of Power.
This cannot be said loudly enough, or often enough.
Why it isn’t, I do not know. Another case of Democrats losing the messaging game.
Just the same…don’t fall for the Republican BS.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
“What do you call the black Cliven Bundy?”
“Deceased.”
@Teve:
*6 problems. Mental health.
Nevermind. A quick scan of the link shows it is discussed as an overarching theme
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Asked and answered. You couldn’t (or wouldn’t) be a Republican Senator today unless you had already sold out the country. The only question is will any of them have a conversion in time. I would put the odds at pretty low. There are plenty of examples of snakes that turn virtuous just in time… in fiction. Not so many in real life.
[Nifong reference was deleted.}
@Paul L.:
How many? 6? It sure looked like another lily-white Trump rally to me.
A bunch of tiny dick white guys showing off their penile prosthetics.
Ammosexuals.
@locomotivebreath1901: Is Steve Borden (aka Sting) making a return to wrestling?
😀 😛 😀 😛 😀 😛 😀 😛 😀 😛
Pat Cipollone is just as big a tool as Jay Sekulow and Colludy Rudy.
Isn’t he.
I’ve thought all along that it was certain to be Cipollone who was piloting the U.S.S. Drumpf from behind a curtain – pulling levers , spinning dials and flipping switches, a la Wizard of Oz.
But no.
Cipollone – bible banger, father of 10, bff of Laura Ingraham – is cut from the very same moron mold as the rest of Trump’s sycophantic Apple Dumpling Gang.
The same graceless, ham-fisted, ethically challenged, shameless liar and charlatan as the rest of them.
Would one of the OPs please ban this goon already? He obviously is trying to goad you into doing and my vote is that you let him do it.
@gVOR08: My guess would be because backspace is the only delete-type function on an Apple keyboard, but it’s been a long time (almost 30 years) since I’ve used an Apple computer, so there may be other reasons. Needing to backspace to edit was the feature of Apple that I couldn’t get used to.
Eewwwwwww!!! Now I have to go find an extra large spool of industrial-strength mental floss. How likely is that? 🙁
@MarkedMan:
Which goon?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
You can delete forward (meaning the character in front of the cursor) by pressing the option (or control?) key along with backspace. Not exactly obvious.
Ala, I see I’m not the only one who found Cipollone’s performance wholly offensive –
Former CIA Director John Brennan, 22m ago, via Twitter:
F*&king liars.
All of them.
Every Single One in Trump’s cadre of clowns is a bald faced, consequences be damned (BECAUSE THERE NEVER F*CKING ARE ANY!!!) – LIARS!
And the MAGAloons gobble it up.
Gym Jordan, Mark Meadows, Elise Stefanik, John Ratcliffe, Debbie Lesko – the whole winger contagion will be blanketing the airwaves with their toxic waster over the next 48 hours in a coordinated effort to gaslight the nation.
And they’ll succeed.
And Chief Justice John Roberts will officiate and formally apply the SOTUS stamp of approval to the whole toxic undertaking.
And the Dems will – once again – lick their wounds, tuck their tails and hope a newly emboldened, openly lawless Trump won’t somehow have them all imprisoned come November – to the cheers and guffaws of tens of millions.
And our nation will be lost.
The last bulwark, the Senate, will have fallen to a merciless onslaught of hedonism, ignorance, wholesale grifting and debauchery.
I truly fear we have failed our children and grandchildren.
But.. remember y’all – it was elitism, those”college educated white people” who not only welcomed, but celebrated this democracy crushing hedonism.
Just think back on all those scholarly crowds filling stadiums around the nation, donning their elitist Baseball Caps, spouting their erudite memes, waving their haute couture Bumper Stickers and then organizing countless tony TEA gatherings around the nation.
All of them feeding on the same steady diet of hate, fear, manipulation and division being disseminated via NPR and PBS and the new MasterClass series on Youtube.
It is the educated and informed among us who have brought about the downfall of our Democracy.
(dripping in sarcasm).
@CSK: the one with the disordered personality w/r/t a certain legal case in N.C. nigh on 13 years ago.
@roger:
No idea. But the plane spent most of last year parked in California, where interested parties could see it.
Is John Travolta rated on this type?
I’m following the Show Trial on Twitter…whilst I’m working…but are the cable channels carrying it live?
@Paul L.: Is this news to you? Here’s more news: So does every other law enforcement agency in they country. It’s called give them an incentive to seize stuff (they all get a cut of the profits) and they will. I only wonder why Reason felt the need to single out Chicago for this article?
@Kathy: My desires are small and my needs are simple. With $5 mil I can live quite comfortably off the dividends and I can get rid of a huge headache double quick.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Any reasonable person can live a whole life with $5 million in the bank.
But with $10 or $20 million, one could fund several charities as well.
@Liberal Capitalist:
It’s too easy for them to say “She only impeached so that she could become President.”
If anything…commit to not running in 2020.
@Teve:
Thanks. I skip his posts; most of the time I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about, since it has no relevance to the topic under discussion.
@Kathy: Now you’re just being greedy. 😉
@CSK: that boy ain’t right. 😀
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: CSPAN is covering it and I think the cable channels are using their feed?
I caught parts of it on CSPAN online and just saw a few seconds of a TV monitor where it appeared to be carried by MSNBC.
You’ll be able to watch the whole thing on CSPAN online.
I saw most of Schiff’s presentation (very, very good) followed by LYING Jay Sekulow (abject clown), which was followed by Pat Cipillone – whose demeanor, presentation, meandering habit and BLATANT LYING were infuriating!!
Why can NOTHING be done about the wholesale LYING of every member of the Republican party and their co-conspirators?
The Chief Justice is seated immediately behind them – for christ’s sake!
Is there truly NO remedy for this overt – televised – debasement of our democracy!
Are we REALLY going to simply surrender our our country and our children’s future to Donny Two Scoops and the party of Grifting Obtuse People!?
@Fortunato: several lawyers on twitter are saying Cipillone looked like a lying clown contrasted with Schiff.
@Fortunato:
That’s why I’m not even following it. I’ve no interest in working up a rage, nor finding out how low the GOP can sink (answer: lower than we can conceive).
If Schiff and Cipollone got into a fight, and Schiff mashed Cipollone’s face into a bloody pulp, the Branch Trumpidians would be talking about the beating Cipollone gave to Schiff’s fists.
@Teve:
And they’re right!
And Cipillone’s underling, smarmy Jay Sekulow – fresh off his grifting gig touring ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers’ – looked even worse.
The whole country should be required to watch and contrast the presentation of Schiff and these two Trump maroons.
And I see David Corn (Mother Jones) is with me re Chief Justice Roberts.
Corn, moments ago, via Twitter:
There really, really has to be some sort of recourse!
No?!
@proudresister
@Sleeping Dog: I read that piece hoping that at some point he would say what would define a conservative approach to any particular social science. No such luck; I’m still left with “conservatism is whatever conservatives advocate” as the only functional definition. Sort of like “IQ is what IQ tests measure”.
I was fascinated to read him saying that the Great Books promote no specifically conservative ideas. (“Great Books” likewise undefined here; perhaps academics all know what he means.) Should this perhaps be a clue? (And since when is Leviathan not on the list?)
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: Indeed we saw exactly that in California when Reagan was governor and black people started walking around armed….
@Matt:..Indeed we saw exactly that in California when Reagan was governor and black people started walking around armed….
You mean like this: Capitol is Invaded
The NRA supported gun control when the Black Panthers were the ones holding the guns.
If a liberal billionaire wanted the second amendment repealed they’d just have to offer a free Ar-15 to any adult African American with no felony conviction.
@DrDaveT:
I suspect that he is referring to the generally accepted cannon of dead, white, western men. Often you hear conservatives bemoan that fact that universities have done away with the Great Books cannon and horrors of horrors including writings by people of color and women. I took that as a dig at conservative critics of academia.
@CSK: Paul L
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: And I say don’t give a f*cking inch to the moral degenerates that make up the Republican party
@Guarneri: If you don’t like it, don’t freakin look at it. It’s really that simple. You don’t contribute anything except the typical throwing turds and “Losers!”, so why do you even stop by?
@MarkedMan:
He is on his last chance and has been warned.
Wow. Actual FoxNews chyron 2 hrs ago:
You would do well to pity yourself…anyone who would constantly do drive-by comments on a blog without engaging or even making sensible arguments is a sad and sorry excuse for a commentator… while you are allegedly feeling pity for others, everyone else is looking at you and pointing and laughing…it’s really amazing what a supposedly successful wealthy businessman does with so much of his free time…
Meanwhile, the following is a bit long but it does make the right point…
@CSK: Thank you for the demonstration of how autobanning can work.
@Guarneri:
See the other thread about “opinions.” I had a long post prepared for you to show, using your words from both here, and at Schuler’s blog, to show you how absurd you are. Over there, you actually assert things. They aren’t quite arguments, but it’s vastly better than what you do here.
You may want to lay off the psychology terminology. You aren’t very good at using them.
And there is plenty of disagreement here. You either don’t bother to read it, or your so obsessed with throwing shit at the wall, that everything looks like a flat surface.
Again, I will extend my invitation to meet for coffee or dinner. You won’t accept, because you won’t be behind your keyboard. Seeing a live person would prevent you from seeing the posts here as the rantings of an objects rather than minds.
@Guarneri:
Why… Thank you! I do my part. 🙂
@Guarneri:
The problem is: this is an incredibly lazy approach.
If you want to criticize, at least be able to identify what you want to criticize. And you want to have an argument or discussion, you have to be more specific.
It isn’t my job to guess what you don’t like about the thread.