Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, February 28, 2024
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66 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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My bold prediction is Joe will win comfortably if he can replicate his performance on the Seth Meyers show Monday.
It’s like the Nixon JFK debates. If you close your eyes, Joe in no way sounded like a “”tired old man”. He was sharp, to the point, passionate with few gaffes. And did not stumble over pronunciations or syntax. In short, if he does more interviews (albeit this was a softball) with the same level of “performance” as evinced Monday, he will greatly mitigate the “too old” chorus.
Maybe his handlers gave him an “eight-ball” enema to boost his energy, but if this is what it takes to beat the unhinged lunatic T, it must be done.
Watch the clip and decide fof yourself.
Here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw0npm56wn0
And Here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fxuN3i84FNY
The headlines are full of Michigan “Uncommitted shows weakness for Biden”. Just for perspective, Uncommitted got 13%. Obama during his reelection? 11%
Just another day ending in ‘Y’: More than 50% of US funds for ‘climate-smart’ farming do not help crisis – report
@MarkedMan: Just for completeness:
-2012 Michigan Primary:
– 89% Obama
– 11% Uncommitted
– No other candidates on ballot
– 2024
– 81% Biden
– 13% Uncommitted
– 3% Williamson (dropped out)
– 3% Philips (dropped out)
It’s not an exact comparison because Obama didn’t have anyone else on the ballot, but considering there was a concerted and active effort to get people to vote Uncommitted, I don’t think it was much of an impact.
Why all the headlines? Easy story, more likely to get clicks than “Biden does well in Michigan”.
Trump only got 68% of the vote. Not many stories about that.
@MarkedMan: Phillips hasn’t dropped out yet, though he trailed Marianne Williamson who has dropped out.
@Kylopod: I stand corrected!
@MarkedMan:
@Kylopod:
Marianne Willimson “unsuspended” her campaign last night, after beating Phillips. She’s actively running again.
Williamson ‘unsuspending’ presidential campaign
@EddieInCA: !
I guess her book sales must be slumping…
I thought the “ice cream interview” with Biden was interesting. For those who don’t know, he was on the Seth Meyers show and they did a bit where they went to an ice cream shop together and got a cone. (Meyers often pokes fun at how much Joe Biden seems to like ice cream and how often that’s his go to food at fairs and places like that.) The press were there for some reason and proceeded to ask him serious questions about the potential for an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire… and then the subsequent stories were almost exclusively focused on how disrespectful it was that he was eating ice cream when answering a serious question. But, you know, that’s the quality of journalism we have.
In the end though, they missed what he was doing, or at least what I think he was doing. Like many things his administration does, he was trying to use one effort to accomplish multiple things. He came right out and stated, “I think we will have a ceasefire by the end of the weekend”, and then in additional comments on Seth Meyers show he made it clear that the challenge was coming from Israeli extreme right wingers in the government. So, he sent a message to pro-Palestinian Michigan voters right before the primary. He applied a lot of pressure to the Israeli government, who has been stalling. If it does fail he associated it with the Israeli right wing. And he has prepared the ground for speaking more harshly about the Israeli government if the ceasefire doesn’t come, and starting to create distance between the US and Israel.
I did finish Disenchantment yesterday.
Overall, I give it a B+.
Spoiler alert.
I guessed what would happen with Mora, but not how. I expected some interaction between her, Luci, Jerry, and God. That would have made more sense, given how others deaths had been handled in the show.
Me: Yesterday in the open forum vs reality.
My predictions for todays Michigan primary:
Biden – 75%. – 81.1%
Uncomiited – 15% – 13.3%
Phillips – 7% – 2.7%
Williamson – 3% – 3%
Trump – 60% – 68.2%
Haley – 30% – 26.8%
DeSantis – 5% – 1.2%
Uncomiited – 3% – 3%
Everyone else – 2% – .8%
Attempted murder indeed:
There was a lot more criminal abuse of the law against him than that. The kicker?
I salute his strength, courage, honesty, and most of all his simple joy at being alive.
A longish read but well worth it.
I’ve been thinking about AI’s challenge to, well, me, and I’m not worried much, in fact less than I was at first.
The book I’m working on is a two-hander (A plot, B plot, 2 leads) and I’m wondering whether the parallelism between A and B is something I should lean into, or whether I should lampshade it, or whether I need to shift either A or B into a less parallel structure. Can AI do that? Nope. And that diagnosis, while a judgment call, is still a pretty basic technical issue, a structural thing.
If I decide I want to send A or B off in a different tangent, can AI do that? Nope. Could AI generate a list of possible tangents? Sure. In the same way that an infinite number of monkeys typing for a million years will eventually write Hamlet. Can it decide which tangent is best? Nope. Can it choose between, “Brevity is the soul of wit,” and, “Shorter is funnier?” Nope. But Will could.
And that’s not even getting into the Big Issue: imagination, creation, originality. AI is a threat to a lot of people’s jobs, but not mine. Not in my lifetime. Maybe not ever.
After the AL Supreme Court stepped in it big time, Kevin Drum quotes a proposed corrective measure in the AL lege,
If this passes I am gonna move to Troy and start up an IVF clinic and meth lab.
Their priors have led them into a swamp of contradiction, but it’s apparently better to cycle through the contradictions than to reexamine their priors.
@gVOR10: This is what I’ve been talking about for a long time. Republican legislators no longer have any interest in or ability to legislate, and so they are terrible at it. They can’t get this legislation handed to them from their usual sources and so they are forced to expose their laughable ignorance
It’s official: winter ended very early this year.
the signs are many, but the decisive one is that today someone turned on the office AC at 9:15 am.
So, I should get my ice cream maker now instead of waiting til March. I’ve a feeling I’l want it soon. I’ve decided against the Ninja Creami, adn will likely get one of the many lower priced Cuisinart models.
Price is a big reason. But another is a realization. With the Creami, you can’t have your ice cream until one day after you’ve prepared the mix. that is, if you make your custard base, sorbet base, whatever on Monday, you need to put it in the freezer until Tuesday.
Sure, you could make it a day earlier. But that’s not the point. the point is you prepare the base one day and have it the next. With the other types you get it all done the same day. true, you need to freeze the bowl the day before, but not the mix.
It’s not a major distinction, and certainly one could live with it, but there it is.
I want to get two freezer bowls in order to try two kinds, besides, I like mixing sorbet and ice cream. I think I’ll start with coconut lemonade sorbet and yogurt mocha ice cream.
@gVOR10:
The people who make use of IVF services certainly don’t provide IVF services. They’re the one who will get stuck with leftover and/or non-viable embryos, and will either have to pay storage for the rest of their lives, or find others to “adopt” their embryos.
Nothing good ever comes from bad court decisions.
Mitch McConnell set to announce his exit as Senate GOP leader
Politico
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is set to announce on Wednesday that he will not run for another term as leader, ending a record-setting run atop the GOP conference.
The Kentucky Republican has served as party leader since 2007, the longest stint in Senate history.
Also reported by CNBC and AP.
@Mister Bluster:
I wonder who Trump will pick to replace him? Will there be a grovel-off? Whoever it is will have to promise to overturn the election.
So the Speaker of the House doesn’t have to be a member of the House. How about the Senate?
Could Trump be selected as the Senate GOP leader and succeed Mitch?
@Michael Reynolds: He won’t leave until after the election, and will remain in the Senate.
@MarkedMan:
How sad is it that we find that reassuring?
@MarkedMan:
How sad is it that we find that reassuring?
@Mister Bluster:
Oh, that’s wonderful news. Two reasons: 1. The senate GOP is now fucked. For the rest of the year and beyond. None of them have his skill, brains or ruthlessness. And a sizable number of the are some of the dumbest people on the planet. And 2. That means he’s dying. Huzzah! I have zero problem cheering for the death of such a malignant human. Die slowly, die horribly fucker.
@Michael Reynolds: I agree.
What you do is imagine the impact on a reader. This involves a capability called “theory of mind” although it doesn’t really have much to do with “theory” as in “theory of gravity”. Large language models have no theory of mind. Most animals have no theory of mind. They don’t have the ability to put themselves in another being’s shoes and predict their response. Humans have this. Dogs maybe have it. Chimpanzees do not have it.
Large language models are really good for generating “boilerplate” writing that goes with grant proposals, property appraisals, software documentation and so on. They reflect the both the wisdom and the foolishness of the Internet, since that’s what they trained on.
In your shoes, I wouldn’t be worried either.
So, if I read this correct, Trump’s lawyers are admitting that he lied to the AG when he assured them he had substantially more than $400M cash in hand?
He’s offering $100M, or a little over 20% of what the Judge ruled.
It will be interesting to see if this backlash against local officials giving sanctuary to illegal border crossers gets legs.
Here people in Athens, GA calling for mayor to resign. Calling people names is losing its power, especially given that Lakin Riley’s face was beaten to disfigurement by this Biden Buddy from Venezuela.
@Kathy: Were I an AL IVF patient and the clinic were abandoning my embryos, I’d put them in a closet and video record myself fervently praying to God to provide an unending source of liquid nitrogen. Then when the AL AG came after me argue I’d done all I could, it was God’s will that the little blastocysts died.
@Mister Bluster: Trump is effectively House Speaker anyway.
But the entire reason we saw a push to make Trump Speaker is because it’s second in the line of succession. If the office of president and vp were to become vacant tomorrow, we’d be looking at President Mike Johnson. Senate Minority Leader (or even Majority Leader) isn’t in the line of succession at all.
@Mister Bluster: For Mitch to give up power, he’s dying, he’s becoming incapacitated, or the Kochtopus money decided to shift from him to Trump or someone approved by Trump. Given his mental lock-ups and his hands that for a while looked like Dumbledore’s near the end, the first two are more likely. But the third leads to more entertaining, yet depressing, speculation. Perhaps they have a prediction on Trump’s veep pick and want to buy the favored candidate(s). Buying Pence long before he became veep was money well spent from their point of view.
@MarkedMan:
I guess those sneakers and bake sales didn’t bring in enough money.
@JKB:
I realize there’s no point suggesting you, um, be smarter. But if you look around the world right now, here’s part of what you’ll see: demographic collapse in almost every developed economy, China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, almost all of Europe. You know which country is not facing a demographic hole? The US of A. Is that cuz we have lots of babies? No, our fertility rate is at 1.64, which is not the 2.1 we’d need just to maintain.
The difference? Immigration.
It’s not just that no one is making babies, it’s that as result populations are aging at a fantastic rate, creating frightening imbalances between retiring workers on benefits, and taxpayers. And countries like Japan and China can no longer even hope to keep their populations from falling off a cliff, and in fairly short order. No young people = no babies. No babies = no rising generation of young workers. No young workers = stagnant or dropping domestic consumption, labor shortages, declining GDP.
The countries least capable of absorbing immigrants due to cultural factors, countries like Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, Italy, Greece, all of Eastern Europe, have no way to stave off population loss and aging.
We, by contrast, have this magical people faucet. Turn the knob and out pour all the young workers we cannot generate ourselves. Immigration is our economic superpower. We can simply summon workers, because historically we’ve managed to overrule dishonest bigots like you.
@Beth:
Maybe he’s just reached the end of support from the manufacturer. So even getting rebooted no longer helps.
Well, I won’t be that sorry to Mitch McConnell go, either.
I think he has been one of the most important Senators and Senate caucus leaders we’ve ever had. He’s had an enormous hand in reshaping how the Senate does things. I would be cautious about predicting things would be better under his replacement, though.
Because Mitch may have played hardball, but he’s also a negotiator. He doesn’t want shutdowns. His replacement might be a MAGA who loves some shutdown.
@Michael Reynolds:
Michael,
I did one book with two leads, both were expectant mothers, and other than a short chance encounter* near the end, the two stories inside the book were separate from one another.
This book which I have a personal connection** to ranks 27 of 29 of my books for sales. I have sold more copies*** of my dung beetles book.
*- Both mothers gave birth at the same hospital. Some nurses and other hospital personnel are in both stories. However the mothers met somewhere else.
**- One of the mothers gives birth but the child dies a short time later. Dear Wife and I had the same experience in 2003 and I began writing the story shortly afterwards but it brought back so many painful memories, it took me two years to finish.
Remember I wrote stories for free on the internet from 2000 to 2011. Most of these were removed from websites and put up for sale at Amazon. The expectant Moms ebook was one of them, Dung Beetles was the 2nd totally original ebook of mine.
***- The expectant mothers story is over 600 pages in length and priced 6.99. Dung beetles is 25 pages and priced .99.
@Michael Reynolds: Everything Republicans say on the border is blunted by the fact they killed their own bipartisan border bill because Trump told them to. So now voters know Biden endorsed a Republican border plan, and conservatives said no.
That’s why they’re not getting much mileage out of immigration fearmongering the past few days. They exposed themselves as phonies who don’t care about the border. They’re really mad now, claiming the media is ignoring them. It’s like, babes, the whole country is ignoring y’all now.
In a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville last Friday, Trump promised to protect Christians from persecution.
@CSK:
Wouldn’t that mean we’re now obliged to persecute Christians?
@Kathy:
I suppose it does, since I wasn’t aware that Christians had previously been persecuted recently in this country.
@gVOR10:
It’s clever. I love it.
But (you knew this was coming, no?), the state AG’s office would find someone who claims to speak with the Christian god(s), and testify to the effect your video is fake.
@Bill Jempty: I’m just astounded that the fail-boy has so epically failed again. Think about it. Assuming that Trump and his lawyers are not lying yet again about only having $100M*, he is totally screwed by his own hand. He did a Trump and bragged to the AG that he had better than $400M cash on hand which he now admits (?) is a lie. (Why?! It’s not like having a business with that much cash on hand is a good thing!) Then he goes into court and does everything humanly possible to offend the judge, everyone that works with the judge, the judge’s family and anyone in any way remotely associated with the case, and also makes it clear he has no remorse and believes he did nothing wrong. As could be expected, the judge throws the book at him. Would the judge have thrown the book if he the Orange Idiot had told the truth? Would the judge changed the amount that needed to be put up? Quite possibly, or laid out a method to secure it in some other ways. But now Trump has to come crawling on his belly (or rather, his lawyers’ bellies) and admit that he was lying about his worth to an AG that was charging him about lying about his worth! Just to make himself look “good” in her eyes! And, please judge please, do me a favor! It’s too priceless. It is just so totally Trump.
*Of course, it’s very possible that he is lying about this, too. For what purpose? Who knows how the Trump mind works? If I had my guess, I would say that we will be finding out that all of that real estate that he has been claiming to own outright is encumbered up the wazoo.
@Beth:
I like your style.
@Bill Jempty:
600 pages is, IIRC, longer than any single book of mine, though I’ve come close. Of course I was under contract which makes motivation sooooo much easier. That’s a hard mountain to climb working essentially on spec.
@DK:
Trump and the MAGAts said the quiet part out loud. It’s one thing to tank a bill so you can have the issue, it’s another thing to say, ‘we’re tanking the bill so we can keep on scaring the suckers.’ Some folks might start to question your sincerity.
Via the NYT, actor and comedian Richard Lewis has died. RIP.
@MarkedMan:
Seems he has become aware no bonding company will do business with him. Some had predicted this, as bonding companies depend on the ability to put their client’s ass in a wringer and if Trump is elected dictator that would become impossible. You might go down in industry history as the greatest sucker of all time if you put your company in that position.
Obama’s comment to Trump during the hand-over: “Reality has a way of catching up to people.”
@MarkedMan: For Trump everything is a negotiation. He believes that the judgement is simply a first offer, and he is counteroffering.
Early in my career I was in a lawsuit over a commercial development and the judge in the case commented that every developer believes a written contract is simply the beginning point for negotiation. That’s certainly true of Trump.
@Kylopod:..Trump is effectively House Speaker anyway.
Indeed.
Just yesterday I stated:
@a country lawyer: I’m sure it’s a negotiation in his mind, but in my very much IANAL mind, he just admitted perjury. And it seems to me that is grounds for a criminal case.
@a country lawyer:
That is so hilariously wrong, from a schadenfreude point of view.
Still, you’d think even the world’s worst negotiator would know that, in a lawsuit, negotiations are only possible if one is willing to settle.
@EddieInCA: you’re pretty good at this. I recall that you predicted a Biden-Harris ticket long before I heard anyone else talking about it. Maybe some of the MSM’s pundits should be consulting you!
I watched the Biden interview with Seth Meyers. If you close your eyes, he sounds fine. Maybe he occasionally forgets a word implicit in a sentence, or makes a minor gaffe (for example, saying Eastern Europe instead of Western Europe, a mistake he quickly corrected), but otherwise, he seems cognitively OK.
But if you watch him move, it’s clear that he’s an old man. I’m not sure if his challenges lie in his joints, or his back (he is very stiff), or something else, but he seems elderly, in that sense.
However, Biden has a verbal tic that I think he needs to fix. He’ll frequently say something critical of Trump, or the Republicans, and then add a coda like, “Can you believe this guy?” For example, on the topic of Trump saying that Russia should have its way with any NATO ally not spending 2% of its GDP on defense, he asks, in what he thinks is a rhetorical question, “What are we doing here? What in God’s name are we doing here?” Unfortunately, for many people, it’s not a rhetorical question. They’re ignorant of the history of US foreign policy since 1945, or they don’t even know the purpose of NATO, or they genuinely believe that Russia is not a threat to them.
Instead, Biden needs to stop acting mortified, and start clearly stating the consequences. If Trump is elected, NATO is in serious jeopardy. If NATO is in jeopardy, Russia may not invade Western Europe, but it will be more aggressive in destabilizing the West, not to mention similar autocracies spreading mischief in other parts of the world. If this mischief is unchecked, then aside from preventable wars not being prevented, but we’ll face other risks — to the cost and availability of critical economies, the stability of markets, the core humanitarian values that we hold dear — that will come home in ways that will hurt everyone, including the most fervent MAGA voters.
He needs to stop assuming that people understand the way the world works, and start spelling out the consequences. Even if people weren’t delirious with MAGA fever dreams, memories fade. It has been a long time since the establishment of NATO, the founding of the IMF and the World Bank, and the creation of other parts of the global order that many take for granted, if they understand them at all. Rather than looking aghast, he needs to say why we should all be aghast. Less, “Come on, Jack!” More, “Here’s the straight line from awful Trump policy A to avoidable disaster B.”
“Can you believe this guy?” Sadly, many do, or they are unsure why they should believe in the alternative.
Immigration is great. Controlled entry with vetting of the applicant. Not controlling the border means that people we should not be letting in the country are coming in among the decent people that we should have a policy for admission.
As the world economy changes, people are coming from all over the world to Systemically Racist America where they know they’ll have better prospects than among the ‘elite’ of their own race or ethnicity.
@Kathy:
As absurd as it may sound, that’s pretty much always been Trump’s view of negotiations, going back to Art of the Deal. He wants to promote himself as a great negotiator, but what that means to him is yelling my-way-or-the-highway and making the other side relent through sheer force of will.
@Kylopod:
Trump once said: “I whine and I whine till I get what I want.”
@Kingdaddy: From your lips to the Biden Campaign Team’s ears, my friend. This is a really good point.
@Monala:
I’m also the guy who said Washington would beat Michigan in the College Football Championship.
So…. your mileage may vary. But I’ve said it loudly already here: Biden will not only win, but win comfortably, in 2024. Additionally, the Dems will retake the house. Senate will be tougher, but not out of reach.
Bookmark it and let’s check on Nov 7th.
@Kylopod:
@CSK:
Shouldn’t the world’s worst negotiator also know by now such antics don’t work in a courtroom?
Now, it’s very likely the monetary awards will be reduced on appeal. They usually are, although they also usually are set by juries. But if Lardass thinks he’ll get the verdicts reversed on appeal, new trials, or the money owed reduced to only a little pocket change, he’d better hire competent lawyers and pay them on time and in full.
@EddieInCA:
I actually did, and put it on my calendar (and that’s in the cloud, it will last past the end of the universe).
@Kathy:
He isn’t trying to win the trials. It’s a performance, and pretending he’s in a negotiation where he’s got leverage is all part of the act.
I don’t know if any of you followed the case of Tina Peters, a county clerk in Arizona who was involved in leaking voter data, then filming her hearing on an iPhone when it was expressly prohibited, and when the cops came to arrest her outside a bagel shop, footage of the incident is absolutely wild (and morbidly hilarious–at least I thought so). She kept yelling “Let go of me!” to the cops, and reportedly tried to kick one of them. Naturally, this only added to her legal woes. What struck me was her unflinching confidence, like she had authority over the cops and could end the situation by barking orders at them.
When you’re in deep shit, it’s fun to pretend you have it all under control.
@Michael Reynolds:
My books are available through Kindle Unlimited. I get paid so much per rages read. So I know the pages for all my books.
Only 3 are more than 480 pages. They are all over 600. 7 of my ebooks are 193 or less. The other 19 are between 213 and 480.
My yakuza epic is going to run over 2,000 when done. It will probably be published in parts.
@Kylopod: You forgot the threat of never ending litigation.
@Kylopod:
Sometimes you just gotta say screw it and keep going. YOLO.
@Kylopod:
Hm. Having lost touch with reality, or perhaps never having had it, would explain A lot of what Lardass does and says.
Illinois judge removes Trump from ballot because of ‘insurrectionist ban’
CNN
Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie Porter heavily relied on the prior finding by the Colorado Supreme Court, calling Colorado’s “rationale compelling.”
“The court also realizes the magnitude of this decision and its impact on the upcoming primary Illinois elections,” Porter wrote. “The Illinois State Board of Election shall remove Donald J. Trump from the ballot for the General Primary Election on March 19, 2024, or cause any votes cast for him to be suppressed.”
@Kathy: @CSK: Actually, it means that many Christians believe they are already being persecuted given that they have to live in a secular nation in which LGBTQ+s roam the streets uninhibited; in vitro fertilization, morning after birth control, and abortion clinics stay available; people run around breaking the sabbath
by going out to eat in restaurants after church(oops! 🙁 ); and all manner of other abuses.@a country lawyer: While I was in Korea, a business person expressed the relationship as “a contract is a rough approximation of the conditions under which business will be conducted.” (If I recall correctly, that person was looking for a English Language teacher for a private language school and was tired of foreign teachers expecting that contract terms outlining issues such as overtime pay, vacations, health insurance and pension premium payments, and such would be honored.)