Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, August 24, 2023
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43 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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Last night tied the record for the highest overnight low in recorded history again. It tied yesterday which set the record.
R’s are gaslighting me that this is normal.
@de stijl: They think it’s a positive, training for Hell, which is where they are heading to.
A ‘lethal threat’: why the far right sees more scrutiny than the left
There is a flip side to the Boy Who Cried Wolf story.
Sometimes there is a wolf. And an orca. And a scorpion with an owlbear on its back.
Yesterday may have been the hottest heat index ever here. It was 122F ffs.
Some folks pooh-pooh that. It’s summer, get a grip! Get over it, pansy! The hottest it has ever been two days in a row and it is normalized as “summer”. Fuck you!
The inability to see a crisis directly in front of you, directly confronting you is incredibly maddening. Have you ever had a friend / loved one that desperately needed to dry out and needed rehab desperately?
They will lie to your face to preserve access to a huge honking bottle of ice cold vodka stashed in the freezer. Literally lie to you, to your face, on purpose, to preserve access.
You are less than a week away from being evicted and homeless. You should probably address that.
Substance abuse disorder is a hell of a thing.
Your preferred outcome drives your response to abnormal inputs. Republicans desperately do not want to acknowledge climate change. They disallow all evidence. Deride, mock, laugh at it. They have to: the cognitive dissonance would make them explode.
Somewhere in their heads they know they are wrong and are just fronting because they have to. Their perception of themself requires them to ignore all evidence. They have to make up a lame excuse.
Can someone please tell me how ignoring and deriding direct evidence is in any way “consevative”?
Because it isn’t and any conservative worth their salt would be concerned as hell about climate change. It messes with the status quo.
So-called “conservatives” continue to not impress me. They fail utterly at being conservative, again.
Radical reactionary != conservative.
@de stijl: I heard a professor of climatology say this summer will be the coolest summer for the rest of our lives.
We have been warned for decades we needed to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. I started an ecology club in high school 50 years ago, very Pete’s sake. Scientists have known about the greenhouse effect for over a hundred years. Too bad Eisenhower kept his reservations about oil to himself before we went all in on the interstate building.
I am not normally a vindictive sort, but I hope the GOP pays a high price for their outright lies and denials and not just at the ballot box.
At a time of anti-trans sentiment, a New York lawsuit brings hope for the community
I just want to compare Makyyla Holland to the Jessica Watkins story yesterday. Makyyla worked with the ACLU to get a new policy in place that will benefit all future trans people who end up in contact with the Broome County prison system. Watkins, on the other hand, is just trying to get people in high places to get her special treatment while all the other trans people she spends her time trying to oppress get left with the same treatment.
@de stijl:
Conservatism for a long time has involved protecting the interests of the wealthy, and that includes the fossil fuel industry. Confronting climate change entails not only bringing down the clamps of government on that industry, but promoting alternative forms of energy that threaten that very industry’s existence.
Of course as the world becomes a furnace it’ll be bad for everybody, even the oil plutocrats living in their mansions. But they aren’t the sorts of people to think that far ahead.
Two eps of Ahsoka in, I can’t make a snarky comment without spoiler alerts.
The makeup is exceptionally good. I can totally buy the skin tones of both Hera and Ahsoka. The Loth cat was a really nice touch,
Trivia. The actor who plays the governor of Lothal, and also voiced him in Rebels, played the abusive guard, Hadley, in The Shawshank Redemption.
Late comment on the apparent decapitation of the Wagner group. It always astounds me how many mercenaries (and gunsels) over the millennia have forgotten the rule that their employers always prefer the cheaper option of paying off mercenaries, with a bullet/knife/rock etc in the back.
Side thought is that Prig apparently never read Machiavelli, or ignored the fact that you never do an enemy a small injury.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Prigozhin’s employment history is mostly as a chef, right? Not particularly known for reading Machiavelli, are chefs.
https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1694757377470296421
https://twitter.com/allenanalysis/status/1694759217758900641
@Jay L Gischer:
The chefs I’ve known always knew better than to turn their backs on anybody with a knife. Apparently the rules are different in the former Soviet socialist republics
@Kathy: What I’ve been wondering about Ahsoka is why the main character looks like fan service for Battlestar Galactica and Chariots of the Gods. I would have thought that I was past the target age for any new Star Bores offerings.
Rudy says he was cheered by the inmates at the Fulton County jail today. He observed that “it was like a rally.”
@Kathy: The pacing is slow, which gives you time to really let the visuals soak in.
Visually, lots of little things bothered me — edges between real things and CGI popped in a way I don’t usually notice. Not sure whether it is significantly worse effects, or whether it’s just that there were a lot of scenes in sparse, clean, well-lit places.
There were also a few scenes where only one character was in focus, which I get is a reasonable thing to do, but didn’t match the visual style of Star Wars in general and was jarring. If the show moved faster, I don’t think I would have noticed.
That said, I don’t mind the slower pace. It also lets you see characters being characters, with each having distinctive ways they stand and move. And the effects… well, I like the reminder that you’re supposed to be suspending disbelief.*
Also, and perhaps most importantly, not enough people had their hands cut off. That used to be the hallmark of a Star Wars, and I miss it. I hope they cut off some hands later in the season. Even a Wampa arm would be fine.
——
*: I have a bunch of shows on BlueRay that were clearly never meant to be seen at that resolution, and I always love it. Star Trek, where you can see that the “windows” in the various rooms are just posters of the stars that someone put up to dream about not being in a windowless cell all day. Batman ‘66 with nearly everything looking off in a way that really fits the show. And Space: 1999 just looks great.
@Kathy:
I loved the Loth cat.
(Autocorrect wanted that to be a sloth cat, and I would have loved one of those too)
@de stijl:
Corey Robin wrote a whole book, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump that makes an excellent case that “conservatives are really reactionaries – and always have been. They deny clear evidence of AGW because various wealthy elites have spent huge sums of money to get them to do so. And it you think about it, that’s very “conservative”.
It more and more pisses me off that everything in politics revolves around money, but no one, especially the supposedly liberal MSM, ever wants to talk about money in any meaningful way.
Lost in yesterday’s sturm and drang about Prigozhin — sayonara, sucker! — and the GQP clown car debate was this revelation: some of the millions of Secret Service emails in the DOJ’s possession show pre-J6 contact with the Oath Keepers. This is not particularly unusual, but the leaked email shows some Secret Servicefolk naïvely felt these fare right paramilitary groups were around to help them with crowd control.
Like lol wut? Does this help explain why the Secret Service accidentally-on-purpose deleted all its J6 text messages? How many in our SS are active rightwing extremist MAGA nuts like Dan Bongino?
Just asking questions. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Kathy: My husband remembered him from his role in “Highlander.”
@Jen: Yes, Clancy Brown. He was the Kurgan.
He’s also Mr. Krabs in Spongebob Squarepants.
@charontwo:
My quick two cents is an effort to essentially “force” Trump into taking the stand. Put him at the end or the middle and watch as he gets more an more pissed off at the other defendants so that when given the opportunity to get up there and run his idiot mouth off. Watch a former president go to jail cause he couldn’t keep his trap shut.
@Beth:
trump says he’ll be surrendering to that radical leftist lowlife Fani Willis at 7:30 p.m. local time.
Because I really enjoy messing with people’s minds, I present the following musing.
The Title: Trump as Messiah? Starting To Make Sense To Me
The Money Quote: “Recognizing this, Trump as Messiah starts making sense to me. Both men have made it clear who and what we are. Jesus made it harder to be fully human in the path he called us to take. Donald made it easier to be fully human in the path he calls us to take. And, frankly, the success of the Jesus model has not exactly been stellar. Loving our enemies is way too difficult; hating them, however, is easy and highly doable.”
My reaction: The writer makes a strangely compelling, although somewhat deconstructive, argument for her thesis. Alas, the only other wish I would have is for her commentariat to be as insightful and expressive as the one here, but one can’t have everything.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I don’t know, but I suspect she is a big old troll.
The ease to which she came to hating our enemies is cool and, in fact easy, makes me doubt her sincerity.
Even right wing religious folk strive harder to square the circle of Jesus theology to hyper-partisan politics. The logical jump is too abrupt.
If that isn’t satirical it scares the crap out of me.
@de stijl: Interesting. I had no trouble seeing the satire to it at all. 😉
@Just nutha ignint cracker: No editing today 🙁 , so I’ll add a thank you for allowing me to mess with your mind.
I nominate this for least surprising headline of the year: Lockdowns and face masks ‘unequivocally’ cut spread of Covid, report finds
Specially this:
@OzarkHillbilly:
We do indeed.
Woman fined for fighting back ‘too much’ during sex attack
Surprisingly enough, not Texas, or Mississippi, or Alabama, but the Balkan country of Montenegro. Sarcasm, but not by much.
@CSK:
They should tell him that the court has closed for the day, so they’ll have to hold him overnight and arraign him in the morning. =3
@Stormy Dragon:
That would be wonderful.
@Gustopher:
I really have no eye for detail. I didn’t notice any of the defects or details you mentioned. So long as things are reasonably well done and self consistent, it all looks fine to me.
Also, I think we’ve seen the last of Lothal. So, we probably won’t get to see Loth wolves.
https://twitter.com/AnnaBower/status/1694811544461115619
Emphasis added.
Did anyone else find it odd that Trump is posting bail via bond rather than cash?
I know bond is cheaper, but then he doesn’t get the money back
@CSK:
‘Nuff said.
@CSK:
I’ll take ‘Things That Never Happened’ for $600, Alex.
On the other hand, were they chanting ‘lock him up!’ ?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Who on the right suggested eating a puppy?
@al Ameda:
I doubt he saw any convicts. I can’t imagine there’s a tour of the inmate housing prior to booking. In any case, if jailed criminals cheered me, I wouldn’t brag about it.
On other things, is there any benefit in defragmenting a solid state hard drive?
It doesn’t really matter, as tomorrow I’m switching to the laptop. Of course, I said the same thing Tuesday, and then work got in the way (long, boring story). But I’m curious if there’s any effect. I recall defragmenting was kind of useful on older PCs, say up until around Win98 or so. Less so for 21st century machines.
@OzarkHillbilly:
The soldier and the dog are both sweeties.
@al Ameda:
Not according to Rudy. They loved him.
With a picture
https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1694876783492125068
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F4Vpc5WaMAAJQQY?format=webp&name=small
@Stormy Dragon: My assumption was that he’s going to stiff the bondsman by guaranteeing the bond on a property that’s already completely leveraged. That or he can’t lay his hands on $200k.
By the way, did the Fulton County Sheriff make good on his promise to publish Trumps vitals with the mug shot? I had 6 even and 260.