Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, November 15, 2023
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68 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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A joint op-ed by two Israeli MPs in the WSJ:
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich:
All this, of course, while there are 700,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements on the occupied West Bank.
What a country…
Democrats sympathize more with Israel than with Palestinians
With the exception of one age group – those under 29 – Dems support Israel over the Palestinians, and, overall, Dems approve of Biden’s handling of the crisis 62%-21%.
Yep, that Biden is sure too old to get the job done.
@drj:
To put the above in context, the Netanyahu administration’s plans to expel the entire population of Gaza have been leaked:
Leaked document fuels concern Israel plans to push Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt
So it’s hard to see those two statements as anything other than attempts to put a smiley face on ethnic cleansing.
@EddieInCA:
Democrats sympathize (not “support”) more with Israel than with the Palestinians by the following margins:
Israel: 27%
The Palestinians: 20%
About equal: 35%
Not sure: 18%
Paints a rather different picture…
@EddieInCA:
One thing I noted is that while Democrats are the most likely to think Israel is doing too much, they are also most supportive of aid for Israel. There’s a certain irony in Israel’s continued sidling up to the Republicans in that while they’ll rhetorically end up with a freer hand, they’re effectively advocating for their own abandonment as a practical matter.
@drj:
Literally, the definition of ethnic cleansing.
@Stormy Dragon: Netanyahu is an authoritarian asshole who feels at home with Republicans. Plus, he and a large part of the conservative parties in Israel are bigots, so naturally he allies with Republicans.
@drj: Hey, when you have an enabler like the US backing you, they probably figure go for it.
Here’s a solution: Have Israel pay $1 milion for each person to leave. Then they will have countries lining up to “resettle” them.
Meanwhile, in Texas:
Texas secessionists feel more emboldened than ever
Kamau-Imani is a Houston-based preacher.
Of course.
@Scott:
I’d be happy to let them go.
Personally,
I sympathize with both the people of Israeli and the people of Gaza, however I have no sympathy for the governments of either.
I’m reminded of the Vietnam protests, where my objection to warfare was conflated by the press/polls with a support of communism.
I am also very wary about pronouncements of “intelligence” reports, having been burned with the “weapons of mass destruction” debacle in Iraq.
@Scott:
Texas produces more wind power than any other state. It’s a critical part of that state’s energy infrastructure. What an idiot.
10 years ago, Batkid was battling bad guys and cancer — now he’s 15 and healthy
This article is surprising if true–yutes today are falling back in love with The Simpsons.
https://www.vulture.com/article/the-simpsons-is-good-again.html?utm_source=delivra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Eight%408%20-%202023-11-15&utm_id=45491502
@Scott:
No poor people??? But who will they exploit? I know I know, immigrants, they’re not people. Same as it ever was.
@Scott:
I wonder how the electoral math would work out for the union. Texas has 35-40 EC votes, if memory serves. These would need to be reapportioned. I’ve no idea how that would go, but likely they’d be diluted among several states. The GQP might never win another inversion without that massive amount of concentrated red votes.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think the plan is not to have immigrants, documented or otherwise, as its final goal.
@CSK:
Of course it is (nudge, wink).
@Scott: What stood out to me is “world class football”. Who the heck are they going to play? Each other? UT and A&M won’t be in the SEC any longer. Texas Tech, TCU, or Houston? Maybe in any given year they might rise. But no, football would be decidedly mediocre.
@CSK: I’m sure everyone will be happy to do their own yard work in 100-degree heat. :-/
@drj:
Replace Gazan Arabs with the word Jews and watch hilarity ensue. And by hilarity, I mean mass outrage at the obvious anti-semitism.
@drj:
Also, is the Mediterranean Sea not a natural resource. I may be showing my ignorance here, but are there no actual ports along the Gaza Strip?
For MR:
Shapeshifting and Its Consequences
@CSK: If they did that, half of Texas businesses would have to shut down. I mean, who would do all their roofing? Hang their drywall? Wash dishes in their restaurants?
@Scott: The “Burn it all down, whatever replaces it will be better” of secessionists (Brexiteers, anti-NATO’ists, etc) exists on the left, right and the middle. It’s often just a basic failure to understand reality. I mean, sometimes can be done right. If I’ve got a car and it is a so old it’s a maintenance nightmare, then junking it might be the best solution – provided I buy its replacement before I do so. Same with a house, or my job that pays for my food, etc. IMO this basic failure to plan for the replacement before you junk what you have indicates a fundamental lack of maturity. It’s a kid’s response to an adult problem.
@Franklin:
Did you know there’s a giant gas field right off the shore of the Gaza Strip?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Marine
@OzarkHillbilly:
Think of Texas kind of like a Gulf oil state.
Past oil, Texas does have other industries I’m largely unfamiliar with. Two of relevance are XpaceX and Blue Origin. Do you suppose the government will allow NASA to rely on foreigners for launch services? And what about the military’s launch needs? The Pentagon subsidizes space launch companies to maintain launch readiness. Subsidies going abroad? I’d like to see that.
Also, chances are parts of Texas might secede to remain in the US. I’m sure the Texas National Guard is an efficient fighting force, but they won’t be able to hold out logistically against the whole US armed forces.
Well, who’s got two thumbs and the ‘rona! weeeeee. Started with a little tickle in my throat Sunday night and then I got hit by a truck Wily E. Coyote style. I spent all day asleep yesterday and am feeling slightly better today. I’m stuck in bed though. I must of caught a weird variant that the vax did nothing to stop. Paxlovid seems to be helping?
The worst part, I had a three day party bender planned for this weekend.
@drj:
I wonder what they are going to do when the rest of the world lines up to say, “no”.
@Beth: I hope you feel better very soon. I think some people just get socked regardless of vaccination. I’ve mentioned here before that my dad had alllll the shots and boosters and had a horrible case of covid, he was bedridden for 2 weeks. My mom and sister, vaccinated at the same times/same manufacturer, both were around him and figured they were doomed so took only mild precautions around my dad. Neither of them ever tested positive.
It’s such a weird-AF virus.
Hamas beheads and bakes Israeli babies in ovens. IDF provides incubators and evacuation to Palestinian babies at hospital where Hamas has a military command facility.
The gnostic religion behind the National Socialists in Germany and that still remains in the shadows today believes that Jews are a threat to civilization and intermixing corrupts others. But every day Israel exists, every day it thrives creating a civilization out of barren desert the anti-Semitics, and the Nazis have their cult beliefs disproven. The Cult of the Dialectic that pervades the non-STEM academia is disproven. That is why the professors and their useful idiot students must tear down posters and attack Jewish students.
As I said just days after October 7th, they revealed themselves and will be reviled. You can have your free speech, but not be free of the consequences when others decide not to hire or associate with you.
@Beth:
“You see? They never cared about the Palestinians. They just hate Jews.”
(Not to say that antisemitism isn’t a real issue, but Israel’s government sure knows how to milk it for all that it’s worth.)
@JKB:
Please don’t make anti-Semites sound like a ’50s doo wop group.
@Kathy: I was about to comment that Texas has a hugely diverse economy apart from oil, but thought a I better look that up. And it turns out that half of it’s total exports were based on oil, so you have a fair point. Although in fairness Texas has a far greater service economy than most oil based regimes, although I can’t find a number for how much of that is essentially an export vs. how much is generated within Texas
Which useful idiot said this:
A) Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung
B) JKB
Bonus points for answering the question: Does it matter who said it?
@Stormy Dragon: I did not! Poked another little hole in these Israeli PMs’ reasoning.
@Scott:
Government at the state level in TX is a Christian theocracy. The big blue cities like Houston, not so much. This is just a would-be theocrat fantasy, na ga hoppen, not enough people that crazy.
There is a popular belief in TX that TX retained the option to secede when it was admitted to the Union, because it had previously been the independent Republic of Texas, a nation. Unfortunately for that theory, a different binding precedent was established in April, 1865.
RIP, Zander.
https://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2023/11/last-post-please-read.html
[…]
@OzarkHillbilly:
There are two ways of solving that problem — eliminating poverty or eliminating people.
Since they need someone to do the cheap labor, I would assume they are either going to redefine them to not be people, or jail them for poverty and sentence them to work.
@MarkedMan:
I wonder what percentage of the Texas GDP is oil. Exports, i take it, means to other countries, not other states.
BTW, I neglected to observe NASA keeps the Johnson Space Center in Houston. That’s not only where they run all their crewed missions as well as some others, but also where most astronaut training facilities are. I’d like to see the compensation the US would extract for that, not to mention Army, Air Force, and Navy bases.
@Stormy Dragon:
I have great powers in the realm of physics. “Z-Space.” Also known as MSU – Making Shit Up.
@Stormy Dragon: Per your link,
Boy I didn’t see that coming. /s
@Franklin:
Gaza is not a nation and thus has no maritime rights. If, for example, they wanted to run fishing boats they’d have to get Israeli permission.
Widening out a bit there is a real potential for conflict around maritime rights in the eastern Med between Greece and Turkey. Short version: Greek islands, some basically a stone’s throw from Turkish beaches, have rights which severely limit Turkey’s ambitions. It’s another insoluble mess of the kind the ME is so good at producing.
@Franklin:
Are you calling my “Use A Spare Dakota As A Jewish Homeland” plan antisemitic? I want to use the army corps of engineers to move their Wailing Wall and enough top soil to cover the whole “God gave them this land”*. I welcome them into our country, and am willing to give them an entire Dakota — their choice of north or south! Would an antisemite do that?
Obviously not. It’s the people in the Dakotas that I have no respect for, not the Jewish Israelis.
Some of my best friends are Jews, but I don’t know any Dakotans.
(Moving top soil is no stupider than putting up a wire in Manhattan and claiming that it extends the home for the sabbath.)
@MarkedMan: You can’t have an ethnostate without ethnic cleansing or apartheid.
If you support Israel as a Jewish State, then you have to support one of the two.
I think ethnic cleansing gets a bad rap. It’s bad, but… Historically, it is implemented with genocide and violence, and that is less than awesome, but no one has seriously tried a mass resettlement with carrots rather than sticks. If it can be done, and that is a big if, it may be a less worse war crime than constantly bombing a civilian population. And less worse is … not good, per say, but less worse.
I don’t think moving Gazans a few miles west into Egypt would solve anything though. It would just make Egypt into another Lebanon, with a border region attacking Israel and getting routinely bombed.
If the government of the State of Israel is serious about a carrot-based ethnic cleansing, the best and most humane process would be the orderly movement of Israelis to a Spare Dakota, along with resettlement funds to move Spare Dakotans to Other Dakota.
@Gustopher: Wow. Just wow.
Isreal would have an overwhelming majority Jewish population far into the future, essentially indefinitely if it wasn’t currently annexing land with 4-5 million Palestinians. So what you are really saying is, “Yes, there is ethnic cleansing going on. But it’s only because we are stealing their land and so therefore we have to. So no harm.”
@JKB:
I’ve not been following the baking, but the beheaded babies story has no primary sources or photographs, and everyone reputable who has repeated it has walked it back.
Given the amount of propaganda and lies, I would be wary of believing in any specific atrocity unless it is well-documented with first hand confirmation.
I would be similarly wary of believing in the good deeds of the IDF that are intermixed with bombing, sniping, etc. This war is being fought with propaganda as well as bombs and missiles.
I would be especially wary of random Twitter posts and pictures, as they are routinely being shown to be pictures of other wars, movies, etc., used to provide fake evidence for fake narratives.
An Israeli government spokesman recently tweeted out claims of Palestinian crisis actors (Pallywood, he called it), using behind the scenes footage of a movie.
https://twitter.com/ofirgendelman/status/1722561334858961025
Was he fooled, or was he doing it deliberately… you can decide for yourself.
@Gustopher:
Unfortunately, it appears that the beheadings did happen:
I think parsing the specifics of those deaths is a really problematic route to go down. A large number of civilians of all ages were brutally killed by Hamas during the attack.
Likewise, an even larger number of civilians have been killed as collateral damage in the ensuing siege on Gaza.
And none of those civilians deserved what has happened (or continues to happen) to them.
@charontwo: OTOH, Texas may have the right to split into 5 states. And a couple of those states may wish to remain with the US.
Divide and Conquer
Are not going to talk about Congressional behavior that wouldn’t be tolerated in most households?
Markwayne Mullin is unbowed after nearly coming to blows in a hearing Tuesday: “I’m not afraid of biting.”
Now if I were in the House, I would be sharing some reading with the good Congressman.
5 BOOKS ABOUT BITING FOR TODDLERS
@Scott:
I too like to bite when things start getting frisky. Is Mr. Markwayne also saying he’s a biting bottom? Is that how he shows his love, affection, and oral fixation?
We need to lighten up the tone here! Allow me to share a couple of bumper sticker themes/memes/bon mots that I saw the other day.
And on a less sanguine note:
@Scott: A Texas independent of the USA has a majority of Spanish speakers. Soon their schools will hail the Alamo as the site where gentes amatan de la libertad won a victory against slave holding land grabbers from los EEU.
@Matt Bernius: It’s really weird that it would be updated a month after the fact, after so many people had walked back their reporting. And, if they cannot determine if the head was removed by knife or RPG, that seems to suggest they are still unsure about basic facts.
The initial reports of 40 decapitated babies is still overselling it. Not that I am pro-decapitation, pro-baby, or think Hamas aren’t capable of it. Hamas is a bunch of awful people who do awful things.
My larger point, of information being wildly distorted coming out of Israel/Gaza still stands though. Information being distorted to provoke an emotional reaction and cut off rational thought.
I think this also results in Israel making many of the same mistakes we made after 9/11, except those mistakes are happening in its own (occupied) borders and when it goes badly will go badly much closer to home.
@Slugger: You can’t have an ethnostate without ethnic cleansing or apartheid.
If you support Texas as a White State, then you have to support one of the two.
(I assume Preacher Claver Kamau-Imani may not support a White ethnostate, being brown, but he seems to be of the Church of Ye nee Kanye West*, so who can tell?)
The fine Preacher tweeted out this once:
Amendments, how do they work? (Alternately: Numbers, how do they work?)
——
*: this statement is not intended to be literal truth, but might be for all I know. Black Republicans of the looney variety confuse me.
Finally I found a flu vaccine. In fact, I found three.
Past the government restricting its use by state healthcare agencies to vulnerable populations, everyone else got started later this year. Last year I got it the last week of October, and I could have gotten it two weeks earlier easily. It’s already halfway through November, but now it’s available in several pharmacies.
I figure I’ll get it Saturday after going to the supermarket. And make sure it goes on the left arm, so as not to spoil the week’s cooking.
I’m making the second iteration of marinated chicken thighs, this time reserving the peanut butter for the sauce. And hopefully I won’t forget the coconut milk for the rice this time.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Well, we can try.
Here’s one: how long is a long time?
I think it depends “for what”. If an elevator doors takes a minute to close, that’s a very long time. For most other things, one minute is not a long time.
So take this hypothetical:
Suppose sentient beings set up an immortal, very capable AI and give it one task (not that one). Namely, to determine a means to preserve life past the natural end of the universe, whatever and whenever that end happens to be (ie Big Rip, Big Bounce, Big Heat Death*, etc.)
Ok, if one hundred billion years later the AI is till working things out, was that a long time? The universe will last far longer than that (latest estimate I read is that red dwarf stars can last trillions of years, producing energy every second of those years). So the deadline is far away.
Now, the problem may have no solution, but assuming it does, is one hundred thousand million years a long time? If the AI does nothing but study the universe in pursuit of its one goal, wouldn’t it have learned all it can possibly learn by then? Including the obvious “replace itself with an even more capable successor to carry out the one task.”
*No one calls heat death big or puts in in capitals, but I didn’t want it to feel left out.
@Slugger: I expect that an early legislative act would declare Spanish speaker not persons/citizens/whatever.
On a lighter note, I finally got my covid shot today.
Apparently part of the delay was Luddite, the rest of the delay was having to wait for the microchips from the flu shot and DPT vaccine to stop interacting with each other.
As I wandered through Costco following the shot, I noticed that my 5G and 6G reception weren’t any better, but my connection to their Wi-Fi hotspot was nearly instantaneous. Well played Costco.
@Kathy:
I don’t think the flu vaccine will significantly affect the flavor of your right arm, if that is what you are cooking, so that concern may be misplaced.
However, cooking the arm you were vaccinated in would likely interfere with the effectiveness of the vaccination. I have not seen any peer reviewed studies covering this, though, so this is just a layperson’s semi-educated guess. Consult with qualified medical personnel and chefs as needed.
Boy, am I glad I had other things to do today.
@Gustopher: You’re killin me, here. 😛 😛 You’ve been at a superior level of fuckaboutery all day!!
Interesting article about the hospital Israel raided, discusses how hospitals are protected under international law, how they can lose that protection, and how the protection starts again (probably doesn’t matter since Israel seems to only use international law when it benefits them). WaPo article, but does not appear to have a paywall.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-israel-built-its-case-to-raid-gaza-s-al-shifa-hospital/ar-AA1jZQgp?ocid=msedgntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=b1341f53bde441398575623ee02c6774&ei=10
@Gustopher: Based on what Bibi has said in the past why would you assume they are mistakes?
@Beth:
I caught the ‘rona on a small cruise ship in the summer of ’22, and it hit me the same way — some minor cough and scratchy throat, but mostly incredible fatigue. I slept nearly a full day around, in a hotel room in Croatia. Two days later I was fine. And yes, I was fully vaccinated for the time, which I think means I’d had 2 rounds.
@Gustopher:
Does the partition of India count?
@Beth:
@DrDaveT:
Based on the many variants of the trump virus, plus what we’ve learned about vaccines against respiratory viruses*, and my very incomplete understanding of the immune system and infection, the relevant efficacy of vaccines should be measured in the rates at which they prevent severe disease (ie does not require hospitalization), and death.
Most symptoms in any disease are caused by the actions of the innate immune system. Vaccines help most inasmuch as they have the right or nearly right antibody producing B cells, and the right or nearly right helper and killer T cells.
These two matter as they impede viral replication, and also shut down the cells that produce cytokines. The latter are what gets the innate system all riled up. And the innate system operates in a “we need to destroy the villages in order to save the province” kind of way.
The Paxlovid ought to help, as it messes with viral replication inside the cells. It may even do that without killing most cells, as opposed to what killer T cells do. Just make sure you take the full course of it.
*I think vaccines against bacterial respiratory infections, like pneumonia, perform better.
@DrDaveT:
Thankfully, I can already feel it receding. Like, it was blammo, you’re dead, and now i’m like, half dead. This is still awful. I took an edible and hopefully when I wake up tomorrow it’ll be better. It has to be, I have a party this weekend. Well, I was supposed to have 3 parties, but I’m standing firm (for now) on one.
@DrDaveT:
I think that ended up with a lot of sticks.
@Scott:
I have no objection, let them go.
My passport is updated so I should be able to visit friends and family members without any problem, right?