Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, January 11, 2023
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64 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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If there is a god, he must really hate Haitians.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Don’t get Pat Robertson started. 🙁
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I swear to dawg they have been stuck in all 9 circles of Hell at the same time for ever and a day.
How sad must one’s life be to consider a fast food joint to be “life changing”?
Like gutting the House Office of Congressional Ethics. The ads write themselves.
@OzarkHillbilly: Our closest “fast food” is 100 miles away. Any fast food joint would be life changing, for me. 😛
@OzarkHillbilly:
The cult of burger chains is interesting. A few years ago, 5 Guys was the burger to have. One opened in the area and a guy I worked with nearly peed his pants in excitement. We went their for lunch one day and it was ok, better than MickyD’s but not as good as what could be had at an dozen or so bar and grills in the area. The place shut down ignominiously when the lease ran out.
In college Coors beer was all the rage on the east coast, since it wasn’t distributed here. Finally enough began trickling east that folks got a chance to try it and realized it was like making love in a canoe, effin close to water. The allure faded quickly.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I seriously love In-n-Out (and can’t hardly ever eat there because I live on the wrong coast) but even I wouldn’t consider one opening down the street from me as “life-changing.”
Well, maybe in the context of my life changing because I got fat from eating there too often, but outside of that, no.
@Sleeping Dog: Five Guys is great, but holy shit is it expensive for fast food.
Overall my favorite burger joints are those that offer onion rings.
Nassau County Republican leaders will call on Rep. George Santos to resign Wednesday for fabricating his biography to win his congressional seat, three people with knowledge of the plans told POLITICO.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Shut your whore mouth!!
Only a person who has never had an In N Out burger would spew such blasphemy.
As a California native who has been able to enjoy In N Out since I was a kid, I can say, after traveling the country, that Five Guys, Whataburger, Hardee’s, and the other east coast burger joints can suck it.
One one that comes close to In N Out is Shake Shack.
Well, for some, In-n-Out *is* life-changing. I recall that when they first came to Silicon Valley, the few people who knew what they were *insisted* on going there for our work group lunches. And yeah, they are different than the usual. Not different enough for me to endure a drivethru line of 20 vehicles, but clearly some would think so. And my older daughter absolutely insisted on it as her burger joint of choice.
Damar Hamlin has been released fron the hospital.
@Jay L Gischer: Here are some interesting facts about In-n-Out:
* Burgers are made after you order them. There are no heat lamps. They are still pretty darn fast.
* The fries are made from potatoes. Fresh. You can watch the guy put a peeled potato in the slicer, and cut them up and put them into the deep fryer.
The one-off burger joint, which was a tiny hole-in-the-wall with a counter and a bit of seating (and no drive through) has officially died here. (There once were several). The last one I know of closed during Covid. So In-n-Out is the we got.
@Mister Bluster:
IANAL but I wonder if voters could file a class action suit alleging fraud?
I mean, the guy misrepresented himself on EVERYTHING!!!
OTB legal minds?
@Jay L Gischer:
Yeah, but around here there are no shortage of good burger joint chains: BurgerFI, Smash Burger, Johnny Rocket, etc. Those are all worthy places for a burger.
@Jay L Gischer:..The fries are made from potatoes. Fresh. You can watch the guy put a peeled potato in the slicer, and cut them up and put them into the deep fryer.
My dad’s cousin was the manager of the Burger Chef in Danville, Illinois. He showed me that method of making french fries when I got a tour of the place…in 1961.
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Got the EDIT key.
I noticed just after I hit POST COMMENT for this entry that I had misspelled my eMail address and thought for sure it would go to moderation. I was surprised when it went through. The security around here is slipping.
@Mister Bluster:
@daryl and his brother darryl:
The Chairman of the Nassau County GOP didn’t mince words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD05InqWbzc
McCarthy hasn’t looked this weak since the 15th round of Speaker of the House voting.
@Sleeping Dog: For several years I worked for a contractor doing ADA* upgrades on fast food restaurants and building new ones. One time we were building a new Sonic Drive-In in west STL county. This woman pulls her car into the gravel lot and stops next to me. Sticking her head out the window she asked what we were building and I said it was a Sonic. I swear she did a 30 second happy dance inside her car.
*Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
@EddieInCA: I’m not big on fast food of any kind, only eating it when the other choice is wait 4 hours. If you had seen some of the things I had seen, you’d probably shy away from them more often.
@OzarkHillbilly: @Sleeping Dog: @EddieInCA: In and Out came to San Antonio a few years back. It had an initial buzz (mainly due to transplanted West Coasters). However, it ran into our own hamburger cult (Whataburger) which is also rapidly spreading north, east and west from its South Texas base. No one seems to talk about In and Out anymore.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Agreed. But, full transparency, I gave up meat over a year ago. I’m 13 months into being a pescatarian. I eat fish, fruits, nuts, and vegetables. Haven’t had chicken, beef, or pork for over a year. But I still miss In N Out, and the local taco truck’s carnitas.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I mentioned this to a friend today, but what would be life changing is if we could get a place near us that had a decent $5 burger (nothing fancy, just good) AND a selection of high priced fancy pants burgers. Hopefully they’d have decent fries too. Our neighborhood problem is that we’ve reached a weird sort of detente between bad chinese, bad “italian”, bad mexican and erratic hipster restaurants. We’ve had an influx of ramen places, which is at least different.
@EddieInCA:
I will never set foot in a Shake Shake again. A couple years ago me and a couple girlfriends went to a really fancy cocktail place. The drinks were really expensive and subtly strong. For some reason we all decided we weren’t drunk enough after we left so we sauntered over to the Shake Shake for fries and some Shake Shake Prosecco. I vomited more than all the times I vomited in law school combined. None of the 4 of us got out of bed the next day.
@Scott:
It’s funny, around here, seacoast NH, the national restaurant chains only survive near the malls. They wander too many blocks from the mall and they’re crushed by locally owned places. Even TGI Fridays only lasted a couple of years. Locally owned chains will do OK, but not the nationals. Yeah MickyD’s does ok, but even Burger King closed all the stores in the area.
My favorite fast food burger place is Elevation Burger, but they only have 40 locations so far, so probably most people here have never seen one.
@Jay L Gischer:
That’s the way Culver’s does it. It started one town over from where I grew up, and still has its national HQ there. They have one additional thing: Butter burgers (plus supper-club style fish sandwiches).
At risk of enraging my fellow Angeleno, @EddieInCA: I am not a member of the In-N-Out cult. Perfectly fine burgers, but the fries are a crime against humanity.
Five Guys – great burgers, and great fries.
Never mind burgers (I prefer to make my own tbh): in the world of fast food nothing beats a genuine Turkish (or Greek, tbf) kebab shop.
I hear all sorts of good things about Mexican/American (is that the correct term?) fast food, but that’s something that you just don’t get in the UK.
Outside of London, of course, because you get everything in London.
The In-and-Out burger I want is the one in the movies, especially the one in The Big Lebowski. Sadly, that one is imaginary. Lots of good things don’t exist IRL.
Five Guys? Why can’t I get a slice of onion on my burger?
@JohnSF: I’m a Burger King guy myself, but don’t find fast food burgers to be all that different one from another. And I also will agree that a good gyro outshines a burger every time. Even a mediocre gyro will outshine most burgers; it’s not a high bar to jump.
@Michael Reynolds:
You’re dead to me Reynolds.
Kevin Drum asks an interesting question: Why is it that to be a real he-man Conservative you have to a) love nuclear power, b) hate solar and wind power, and c) be indifferent to geothermal and tidal power?
My answer: the billionaires boys club that funds Reason, Heritage Foundation, etc have revenue streams and assets that are threatened by wind and solar but recognize that the others have little chance of displacing them. And much of conservative “free thought” is really just parroting a bunch of invented gotchas from those sources.
I’ve found that judicious shopping among local (not chain) fast service restaurants, sandwich shops and delis yield some real bargains for lunch. When I worked in Annapolis I could walk five minutes and get a wonderful bowl of soup and half a sandwich for less than a crummy meal at a fast food place (soup = no need for overpriced soda). And afterward I felt good rather than that leaden stomach feeling I get when eating fast food. A lot of days I would just have the soup, which I think was like four bucks.
@OzarkHillbilly:
It wasn’t God, it was France.
I happen to be reading Piketty’s A Brief History of Equality He discusses Haiti. In 1825 France, backed by a fleet and troops, “negotiated” indemnity for the land lost by the slaveholders. It amounted to three times annual national income. Paying it pretty much destroyed an hope of a viable economy. Picketty notes there’s a move in France to pay it back to Haiti. Unclear if that’s any more real than Black reparations here
@JohnSF: When I first visited London (50 years ago), I was impoverished and couldn’t eat anywhere except the cheapest places I could find. My wife and I went back for a week in ’03 and enjoyed a delicious dinner every night at a variety of ethnically diverse places (Tandoori, Turkish, West African, etc.).
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Burger King has onion rings, and they used to sub them for fries on package meals.
I agree most fast food burgers are alike.
@MarkedMan:
As a real he-man Socialist Monarchist, can I just say I
a) love nuclear power,
b) love solar and wind power, and
c) love geothermal and tidal power?
But really f@kin hate German energiewende talking “green”, closing Nukes, and burning lignite (and, until lately, Rusian gas).
If that includes nuclear power displacing coal and oil, the contrary indicator is France.
Which usually gets c.80% of electricity from nukes, and has a lower carbon footprint than any other major industrial nation.
France CO2/capita of c.5 tonnes/yr;
USA 16
Japan 9.5
Germany 9
China 8
Russia 12.
@Michael Reynolds: “Five Guys – great burgers, and great fries”
I get it — definitely a 5 Guys fan. But there’s a certain kind of perfection to a Double Double with grilled onions, when those sweet onions and the American cheese and the meat merge into something much greater than the component parts.
Since the GQP is bothsiding the documents matter, I propose the DOJ investigate and prosecute both Benito and Biden, with the proviso it be a joint trial.
At the end I predict the judge and jury would want to sentence El Cheeto life in prison, and make Biden president for life.
@Kathy: I think Burger Kings here still do that, but the last time I ordered onion rings at BK, they were onion loops, ring shaped somethings made from minced onion. I hope BK stops doing that sometime, but given that back in the 80s, onion loops started being a thing because they were considerably cheaper to buy, I suspect they won’t stop.
You guys are killing me here. I am NOT driving 200 miles round trip for a damn fast food hamburger, the roads are shit. 😛 😛
@gVOR08: You mean Pat Robertson was wrong when he said that the problems Haiti has had over the years were because Toussaint L’Ouverture made a pact with Satan pledging that every Haitian would worship Satan for all time if Satan would help him drive out the French?
Another illusion shattered. 😐
@Michael Reynolds:
Well, I still miss Dag’s Beefy Boy. Unfortunately, 3 hr drive one way to the nearest one is a non-starter.
Like Cracker, gimmie a gyro rather than what passes for a burger here.
Jeff Beck
RIP
Heart Full of Soul
The Yardbirds
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I think I last ate at Burger King around 2013. That’s when most government proposals went digital, and I no longer had to go present them, or attend meetings, etc. So I stopped looking for quick, cheap places to eat.
Since then, I’ve seen fewer anyway. The one near my place is an empty lot now.
But last time, as I recall, there were real onions inside the rings.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Weight gain, hardening arteries, cholesterol… sounds pretty life changing to me!
There was a second find of classified documents in Biden’s offices.
This ruins any case against Benito. regardless of the facts, there will be a lot of squealing, rending of garments, rolling in ashes, wailing, etc. if one is prosecuted and the other not.
There’s a lot more to get Benito on, but if I were Jack Smith I’d be furious at Biden for being that sloppy. Before the finds, it seemed something uniquely criminal involving the Cheeto only. Now these finds give the impression it’s no big deal, and everyone in the White House does it. You’re going to have a hell of a hard time convicting anyone of it.
@Flat Earth Luddite: There was one of those in Georgetown, not far from Boeing field. I liked the “Double Dag” (known locally as the “Double Gag”) myself.
However in the area of cult burger joints there is no other way to describe <a href="“Dicks”:”>Dick’s Drive In. People just love that stuff, never understood why. Greasy fries, sweet-pickle relish are just not my thing, but there are people who have to make regular pilgrimages to partake.
Comfort food.
@EddieInCA: I understand. But finding 3.5 x4 inches of grease inside a wall was more grossness than I could handle.
@gVOR08: Thanx for that bit of history.
@Jax: Heh.
Who knows what hell I have wrought?
@Gustopher: Thumbs up for truth.
@Kathy: Because obstructing justice and lying to the FBI doesn’t really mean anything. I mean it’s not a REAL crime, right?
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, well, I made some fried green tomatoes last night that kick the collective asses of ANY fried green tomato I’ve had in a restaurant, EVER. I should probably put the recipe on the internet, but fuck those guys. 😛
And they’re not even deep fried, no oil at all, just baked. Seriously, so good, each bite is a little bit of sweet and sour sunshine.
@EddieInCA: I got nothing against chains, per se. But I really love a good one-off hole in the wall. That’s where, for instance, the best Mexican (or Cal-Mex or Ore-Mex, or Tex-Mex) is found.
@gVOR08:
Last year the NYT had a long, multi part series on Haiti and how it reached its current state. French claims on behalf of French banks is ground zero for Haiti’s problems.
The surviving member of Diamond & Silk says that if you believe her sister was hospitalized with Covid, you might actually be dumb enough to believe the duo were fired by Fox.
Today I found out a friend I’ve known for 37 years is in hospice. I’m flying out to say goodbye but can’t go until Saturday.
It just sucks.
@Mikey: All of my good vibes are with you. I got the same call in 2008, and I hauled ass to Montana, but I did not make it in time. Do not be afraid to say fuck it and go now, even if you have to drive. I will never forgive myself for not being there when my best friend died.
@Jax: Thank you. It’s far enough that even driving wouldn’t get me there before Saturday, not safely anyway. I spoke to him earlier today and he knows I’m coming so even if he’s not lucid when I get there, he knows I’ll be there.
@dazedandconfused:
S Lander St and Broadway locations. When I lived behind sccc we’d go to Broadway location, buy giant soft serve cones, and walk down and eat in front of Hagen daas , laughing at folks coming out eating tiny $3-5 cones 1/4 the size of ours. Wearing my ‘nuke all the gay baby unborn whales’ Tshirt. Good times.
@Kathy: no problem. Prosecute both (assuming there is a case to be made). I would say that makes it easier. No more whining about how you can’t prosecute a former president or any of that crap. Putting all future presidents on notice that they can and will be held accountable for illegal acts is a bonus
@Erik: Yeah, we should probably codify that into law.