Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, January 10, 2024
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54 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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I read while eating breakfast. Without coffee in me yet, my eyes can do funny things sometimes.
Like today. I’m re-reading John Lecarre’s The Constant Gardener. Lecarre has a way with words, but what I thought I was reading would have been an award winner.
Near the book’s end, the title character AKA Justin Qualye is impersonating a journalist doing an interview. Lecarre wrote that Quayle put his notebook away next to his pens and spectacles.
I first read the sentence as next to his pen*s and test**les.
Maybe I should save that for a future ebook.
@Bill Jempty: Heh. Thanx for the chuckle, a nice way to start the day.
As for the court arguments yesterday, somebody should have posited whether a presidents absolute immunity would extend to assassinating Supreme Court justices.
Pretty sure even Thomas and Alito would rule against that.
My home town in the news–
As I sometimes wrote in my blogging days, ‘don’t you just love the Sunshine State?’
From the Washington Post:
The article also describes the spike in swatting incidents.
More from the ‘don’t you just love the Sunshine State files’.
I had surgery exactly 4 weeks ago today. On discharge I was supposed to have a home healthcare nurse come out to care for me.
Three days after I came home, I had a visit. The one where they take your info etc. I was told they’d be coming twice a week, that was what my insurance was permitting.
Well, they never came back. Even once. Luckily I did all right and my wife, who is not a nurse, was able to care for me. What would have happened if I hadn’t been so lucky? At one point in my hospital stay, doctors were talking about sending me home with a catheter inserted.
This agency is worthless, but a major hospital or insurance company send people to them for care. I dealt with Firstat 4 years ago, and the experience wasn’t good then either.
@Bill Jempty:
The phrase “spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch” has been around for a very long time. The usual history that’s given is as a mnemonic for Catholic schoolboys to remember the sequence to cross themselves. A friend about my age (70) says he learned it from an uncle as a checklist when leaving a hotel room.
ETA: I habitually pat my pants pockets whenever I’m leaving somewhere to check that all the right bulges — wallet, phone, keys — are there.
@Bill Jempty: What do you want to bet they charge your insurance for the 2 a week visits anyway?
@Kingdaddy:
You omitted the colon in your link.
I hope your health problems get better.
I’ve often thought that it’s going to be very difficult to find people either capable of or not afraid of serving as a juror in any Trump trial. There will invariably be threats and attempts at intimidation made by crazed MAGAs.
plus.thebulwark.com/p/good-luck-finding-impartial-jurors
This is going to go so well for him…hahahaha:
Trump planning to deliver closing argument in civil fraud trial: Reports
@CSK: I’ll volunteer.
@Mikey: If his lawyers allow it they should be disbarred for malpractice.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Of course you would, as would I, and we’d both get challenged and bounced by the defense.
@CSK: Not me, I’d perjure myself just for a chance to hang him.
@Mikey:
His lawyers have to let him do as he wishes. He has to persuade Engoron that he’s innocent, which will be virtually impossible.
It is possible that he’s grandstanding for the MAGAs.
@CSK:
Even a few months ago I would have said this is certainly true. But it seems more and more apparent that Trump is descending into dementia (no sarcasm here) and one of the unfortunate side affects is impulsiveness coupled with an inability to understand consequences. In his mind, such as it is, he could really have a shot at convincing the judge to see the error of his ways.
It’s a certainty. His whole life has been one long “LOOK AT ME!!!”
@CSK:
That would be my guess. He knows he’s going to lose anyway, so he’ll take the opportunity to make a campaign speech while wearing his “martyr to the Libs” hat.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t think I qualify, but I’d volunteer in a second.
On other matters, it looks unlikely I’ll catch the total eclipse this year. there are three places I can fly to, Mazatlan, Torreon, and Durango, but prices for each are too high, or the schedules are massively inconvenient.
Too bad. I know what I’ll be missing. On the other hand, my memories of the 1991 eclipse are very clear still.
I may have to look again for a vacation to the Maya sites around Cancun.
@MarkedMan:
Then Trump’s natural inability to understand consequences and impulsiveness are exacerbated by the dementia, is what you’re saying.
@DrDaveT:
I suppose, too, that he’s sufficiently deluded to think he could incite a mob of MAGAs to storm the courtroom and lynch Judge Engoron. After all, he did it on Jan. 6, 2021.
@Kathy: I have some friends in Arkansas in the path. This will be my second. My first went directly over my house.
Amalija Knavs, Melania Trump’s 78-year-old mother, died yesterday in a Miami hospital. No cause of death was given.
@CSK:
Sounds about right. FWIW, I’ve long assumed that Trump has abused prescription drugs his whole life, given both his long term association with the sketchiest of doctors (he sent goons in to recover his medical records from one of them), and certain characteristics such as poor attention span, impulsiveness, slurring of speech, and, well, there’s a fairly long list.
If I’m correct in that, continued drug use also exacerbates everything.
This happened in NYC yesterday. Migrants who have been staying at Floyd Bennet Field (which is way out there and very exposed to the elements) were moved to a school overnight because of a storm (which was bad) and the students are going to be remote today.
Here’s one of the world’s richest men on twitter talking about how they are going to come for your homes now. Musk is a moron and his form of twitter is filled with the deplorable encouraging this behavior and misunderstanding difficult choices..but it’s interesting to me how weaponized and radicalized reactions to inconveniences have become.
People used to feel shame about not being able to be deal with life’s routines. Now, it is like a point of virtue to go nuts over any diversion from the daily routine, even if there is no malice. This goes back to Covid, where virtually nobody was out to get anybody and yet dealing with it became an oppressive nightmare for a certain type of person.
Of all the things in America, this might be the most alienating. I’m an impatient person and dislike inconvenienced but I can handle things about 1000% better than most of these people.
@Mikey: Talking heads last night were saying he won’t speak. That if he did, he’d be subject to cross-examination.
@gVOR10:
I assume that’s been made clear to Trump. He may believe he can bullshit and bluster his way through the cross-x.
Same here. I rage in private, where only my wife has to listen to my rantings (actually wears a head set so she can ignore me) but I would never do it in public. I have a right to complain, I don’t have a right to inflict such upon others.
@Mikey: This will be the same bullshit script that said that Trump was going to testify right up until the minute he was not.
If he tried to give the argument it would almost certainly be ground to a halt by regular objections to him referring to “facts” not in evidence and otherwise violating the basic rules around legal argument.
I think the reason Trump wants to testify is that he knows it will be reported on. He will say things that are over the top, but punch out his message, and he knows the press and social media will repeat them. This will get his message out. Which is what he cares about.
He might have dementia, but I’m no position to evaluate that. It might dilute or weaken his message. I do not think though that it accounts for his desire to put out his message, because he’s had that desire all his life, as Hillbilly says above.
@Joe: Yeah, he’s going to play the “I’ll testify! I’d even say it in court!” card until the last minute, when his lawyers will tell him he can’t because otherwise the judges would be influenced by his presidential past.
This is just another incarnation of “I’ll unveil X in N weeks”.
@Joe:
Yeah, no doubt, he’ll cancel at the last minute just like he did before.
Of course, part of me really wants him to get up on the stand and look like an absolute imbecile.
@Bill Jempty: I would definitely follow up to see if they are billing your insurance company for visits that have never happened. Especially if you have a cap on the # of annual home health visits your insurance will cover.
Also possible that the assigned caregiver is reporting that they’ve been showing up to the agency when they actually haven’t been.
@Jay L Gischer:
Probably not directly applicable, but my recollection of decades worth of Trump’s civil trials is that he was pretty good about taking his attorney’s advice. He was a very different person, at least in that respect
I never criticize Trump.
This Trump appointee Sopan Joshi defending the DOJ/FBI/Law Enforcement caste misconduct in FBI v. Fikre is the most weaselly bad faith argument I have ever heard.
This is the same legal standard that commenters here say I should hold myself to.
I hope I can reach the same low bar arguing in the future.
Judge Engoron has rescinded the permission he gave Trump to present his own closing argument tomorrow, because Trump would not agree to observe the preconditions Engoron had set.
Now watch the MAGAs start screeching about the First Amendment.
Le Turd d’Orange won’t be speaking in court tomorrow. No link because it would go to Xitter, but here’s the email Judge Engoron sent to the Turd’s lawyer:
We know the script that will follow, same as with the jury trial. The Turd’s Team of Kraken Lawyers missed a deadline or filed the wrong paperwork, so it’s all Judge Engoron being unfair and trying to make the Le Turd look bad.
Settlers killed a Palestinian teen. Israeli forces didn’t stop it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/01/09/israel-settler-violence-qusra-west-bank/
Seems like no defensible excuse, these “settlers” sound like your garden-variety terrorists, with one difference. They have the full support of the government and the military.
@Kathy:
I wonder if Trump’s lawyers “forgot” to respond to Engoron because they desperately don’t want Trump getting on the stand and opening his big, stupid facial anus.
I never criticize Trump.
Of course you don’t.
Because then you would be criticizing god’s work.
“You know, it really doesn`t matter what (the media) write as long as you`ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”
Trump doing god’s work.
For Dr. Taylor, who may well have already read the source material, a comment on two party systems. Over at LGM Paul Campos quotes a NYT column by Thomas Edsall (gift linked by Campos) quoting political scientist Pippa Norris who says the stress from divisions in society particularly grow,
Jesse Watters of Fox thinks that Taylor Swift is doing “girlboss psyops” for the government, convincing her huge fan base to vote for Biden.
This is the kind of thing that should be obvious, but somehow it hasn’t come up until now: France’s post is trialing changing rooms in post offices.
The idea is you collect clothing ordered online, try it on, and then are able to return it on the spot if it doesn’t fit.
Merchants are against it. Naturally. I can imagine many people don’t return ill-fitting or unflattering clothes ordered online, because of the hassle of going back to the post office or whatever other drop off points there are.
This seems to be common among many businesses. In life insurance, for example, a number of policies lapse, after premiums have been paid for decades, and thus never collect on the death benefit (this has to be one of the most ironic terms ever devised). Less morbid, lots of gift cards are never used to buy anything.
@Bill Jempty:
First off, I wish you peace, I wish you well, Bill.
Second, we Americans put up with a healthcare system that leaves us with too many of these kind of outcomes.
For some reason right wing world is upset about dishwashers. Trump supposedly made dishwashers great again, but Biden reversed Trump’s executive order. Now all dishwashers take 2 hours and dont clean well, except it’s not true. Energy and water restrictions apply only to the “normal”setting on your dishwasher. Other setting can use as much as they want. Most dishwashers have a n Express or Quick setting that takes about an hour. When rated the quality of cleaning is not related to how much water or energy they use but rather the quality of the machine, just like in the 90s when some worked better than others. So, on normal setting the machines now use about 70% less energy and 75% less water, but you can use more water and energy if you want by changing the cycle.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/dishwashers-trump-efficiency/
Steve
@Gromitt Gunn:
The nursing agency didn’t bill my insurer for any visits. Including the one where they came.
This outfit is a bunch of clowns. Am I insulting clowns by saying that?
@steve:
Are these people ever not upset about something trivial, and oblivious to real dangers?
On other matters, when the latest 737 MAX incident happened, early reports spoke about the cockpit door being blown open. This was used in news pieces to illustrate the magnitude of the depressurization event.
On the aviation blogs yesterday, there were notes that Boeing designed the cockpit door to open in the event of depressurization. I don’t know the significance or value of this, but the pieces also noted Boeing didn’t bother to inform the FAA or the airlines about this feature.
Is anyone surprised?
Christie out…
And in other news…
“She’s going to get smoked, and you and I both know it,” Mr. Christie seems to have said, presumably referring to Nikki Haley.
The link is NYT. Don’t know why it works for me. Hope it works for all.
And it begins…
Biden takes lead over Trump in Pennsylvania
Keep it up, Joe. Keep being Joe. Keep your focus on the American people, and let the GOP self-destruct.
@EddieInCA:
Alternate headline: “Some Voters See Calendar Says 2024, Start To Notice There’s a Presidential Election”
In a close election, it’s silly to panic, to declare victory, or to make breathless predictions based on public polling taken more than a few months before the actual vote.
But I guess political nerds/junkies need something to fill airtime — and consultants need to justify bilking candidates and donors.
@Kathy:
Sounds like nonsense to me. Everything about a modification to a commercial aircraft is documented and subject to FAA review, and unless a bulkhead is designed to take the strains of pressurization it almost certainly can not, so the doors should be designed to blow before the entire bulkhead does.
@dazedandconfused:
PS: It appears a solution has been found.
@DK:
100%
@Kathy: My grandfather had a policy I learned about 5 years after his death.
I filed a claim and they told me that it was denied because the policy had lapsed two years prior – that is to say, 3 years after he died.
I then had to appeal and re-submit the death certificate and get the insurance commissioner involved.
Eventually, they paid, but it seems like an entire business model based on hiding from, or flat-out denying, their obligations.
Come to think of it, most insurance is that way.
I remember my wife calling our health insurance company on a claim they had denied wrongly – she told them “Look. I’m retired and a little bored. I have nothing better to do than to call you people up every single day and discuss this claim.”
They paid too.