Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
·
120 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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
‘Don’t be assholes’: Ted Cruz criticizes press reports over his Cancún trip
F*ck you Fled. You want respect? Try earning it.
@Kathy:
[ported post]
My guess? A lot.
Evaluation systems aren’t very good. Scaled scoring systems don’t distinguish as well at the tails as they do at the more populated parts of the curve. I’m also a firm believer in Goodhart’s Law about metrics and targets.
Because this is about law school, I will vent a little about a couple things. I have no problem with someone like HL92 being highly paid. He’s intelligent and from what he has said here, he worked his ass off to get where he is.
My feelings toward someone like John Roberts aren’t nearly as hostile as many of the posters here. HL92 confirmed what I already thought about him months ago. I just want to be clear that I’m not impugning all graduates of YHS or other ‘lesser’ T14 law schools.
I’m trying to figure out the best way to put this. Okay… Ted Cruz is intelligent. I just don’t think he’s a good person.
As a comparison, Josh Hawley’s intellect does not impress me. He strikes me as someone so calculated and rigid that it puts a hard cap on him as a thinker. I also despise people who go to law school as a career move toward elected office.
One of Hawley’s undergrad professors described the Senator as one of the most gifted students he has ever taught. I don’t know what to think of that, but I kind of got the impression from the guy’s quotes that he was being diplomatic about a former student. He and some other people who knew him at Stanford described him as someone who knew he was going to run for higher office early in life.
I’m suspicious of that kind of person.
Wow. Mount Etna, just Wow.
Maybe, but if so he sure is a dumb f*ck. Which is just to say that being intelligent is not the same as being smart.
@OzarkHillbilly: but he has no emotional intelligence.
IQ tells you that if you are in a freezing power outage water outage calamity and you have the means to hop it to Cancun, then wheels up in 30, duh.
EQ tells you you have means and your neighbors are suffering terribly and you can sacrifice a little bit to make a huge improvement in their lives and we should all have some empathy for each other and let me set a good example for my daughters that it’s not just all about providing luxury for yourself.
Very different intelligences.
@Teve: You say tomato, I say tomahto. Ted Cruz is as dumb as a box of rocks.
This is pretty funny.
Meatless school menu sparks political row in France
But the people pushing back against meatless menus aren’t ideological at all. As far as the elitist accusation, that’s pretty damned rich coming from “Government ministers.”
@sam: That is funny.
This website is worth a look: Forensic Architecture.
@Kurtz:
I’e heard the same about Bill Clinton–that he started running for the presidency since he was five years old.
@OzarkHillbilly: @Teve:
As I’ve said before, it’s the stupidity of arrogance.
@CSK: Of which he has plenty, tho I’ll be damned if I know what a groveling pissant like him has to be arrogant about.
@OzarkHillbilly:
It doesn’t matter. Cruz firmly believes he’s superior to the rest of us. So does an imbecilic churl such as Donald Trump. Their beliefs have nothing to do with reality.
@Kurtz: “One of Hawley’s undergrad professors described the Senator as one of the most gifted students he has ever taught. I don’t know what to think of that, but I kind of got the impression from the guy’s quotes that he was being diplomatic about a former student. ”
The elite circle jerk. If you’re in, you’re in, and the other in people will praise you highly. It won’t matter how evil you are, unless you harm other in people.
Mission Impossible?
No stopping her.
@OzarkHillbilly:
An enterprising young lass.
@CSK: She’s gonna go far.
@Barry: That doesn’t impress me and its likely true. A funny little thing about “human factors”: People who are truly gifted–are routinely gifted in one specific thing that isn’t translatable outside of that vertical silo of excellence. Occasionally there are Masters who demonstrate gifts in multiple areas but that becomes obvious pretty early on for those people.
He obviously isn’t a good politician because even a fool can see hitching a wagon to Trump is a bad bet. Smart Republicans stayed “Trump curious”–recognizing that full Trump is a dead end. Hawley cost himself a shot at the Presidency when he was photographed making that fist to the capital stormers. He will never be able to overcome this.
Cotton might not be as smart in the classroom–but neither he nor Hawley are in school now. Cotton proved more accumen at navigating human political terrain and kept his chances alive.
This is why I really don’t put much stock into “elite” label slapped on people that matriculate from Ivy league schools. At one time, sure, they had a lock on the best teachers and the best materials. The internet and the inflation of college educated people in general changed all that–there are hundreds of thousands of brilliant people who don’t have Ivy League legacy nor the desire for the career path the Ivy League tract enables—so they simply don’t even apply.
More dismembered body parts hijinx:
@Jim Brown 32:
That’s true, but never underestimate the power of the old boy network.
@Jim Brown 32:
As I move frequently, my wife and I have gone through a number of professionals. Every time we interview an accountant:
It never quite works. We look like grown-ups. (Elderly grown-ups, no less.) We sound like grown-ups. We can drive and everything. But when it comes to numbers, we just. . . can’t.
@Teve:
Do you realize Mars, Venus, and Titan are or were entirely inhabited by robots?
LGM had a post yesterday about vaccine Eeyorism, asking why people are still so pessimistic despite the good news of vaccine success.
I’ll tell you why I’m feeling pessimistic: there seems to be too little information about how the rollout is going, and what happens next. I know we’re currently on Phase 1, medical workers, people in long-term facilities, the elderly. So how’s that going? How far have they gotten in giving this pool of people their shots? No answers ask far.
Then there is the next phase, critical infrastructure workers, people with serious medical conditions, people over age 50 raising children not their own (to be honest, as someone over 50 raising her own child, I’m ticked off that I’m specifically excluded from this pool): this phase is set, but when do they anticipate it should begin, or how long it should take? Again, no answers.
Then there is everyone else, many of whom are at risk or essential, for whom no information has been given about when they might be eligible: Teachers. Retail workers in non-grocery settings. Human service workers.
They say that by July everyone should have had an opportunity to be vaccinated, but at this rate it doesn’t seem like it. Now add to that all the people who will refuse the vaccine, and who still refuse to mask up — there’s plenty of reasons to feel pessimistic.
@Michael Reynolds: Even tho mine are fairly simple, one of the best things I ever did was hand over my tax duties to an accountant. $35 (now $60) to avoid the anxiousness and panic attacks that come with the certainty I was gonna screw ’em all up was money well spent.
@Jim Brown 32:
I think you’re right. Sometimes seemingly inconsequential things are enough to destroy a candidacy. Howard Dean’s scream being a capital example. It seemed insignificant but reporters and late-night hosts humiliated him for it and he was done. Hawley’s fist…you can find literally thousands of photos of skinheads with swastikas making raised fist salutes like that, it wouldn’t take very many ads interchanging their photos with his photo to end him. I’m sure he thought it was an inconsequential sign of support but he might’ve lost everything right there.
@sam: Hilarious, nothing funnier than domestic violence, decapitation (you go Kathy Griffin), shocking people in public who may have underlying medical conditions, and posting video of them blackies with their eyes so wide all you see is the sclera.
It reminded me of this side-splitter from Oregon.
@Monala:
I had the impression the various drug companies developing vaccines would have been busy churning out doses while the trials progressed through all phases. Obviously this did not happen.
On the one hand, it makes sense not to expend resources on uncertain outcomes. Suppose Moderna’s shot were only minimally effective, and they had a billion doses made. On the other, the roll out has been slow.
The good news is the FDA will likely approve the Johnson & Johnson Janssen vaccine soon. It’s less effective than Pfizer’s and Moderna’s, but 1) it’s a one-dose vaccine, and 2) it’s about as good as AstraZeneca’s.
Regardless of efficacy, all vaccines thus far seem very effective at preventing severe symptoms, hospitalizations, and deaths. Given long-haul COVID, this may not be enough. It is what we have, though, and still better than no vaccine.
@Monala:
In the past week, I’ve seen summaries tracking vaccination progress at the Times, Atlantic and Vox and the Times, this AM has an article up on estimating when we’ll achieve herd immunity. There are caveats with everything published and sorting through what are qualified opinion vs. emotional responses can be challenging, but the info is there. Last week there was an analysis out on comparing the US progress on vaccination to the world’s and we’re doing well. As difficult as that may seem.
Josh Hawley is a Yale Law grad. When he says his loss of a book deal is a violation of his 1st Amendment rights, make no mistake, he is absolutely, 100%, beyond a shadow of a doubt aware that what he’s saying is laughable bullshit. But he says it anyway. It’s not because he’s an idiot–far from it. It’s because he knows his constituents are.
The same is true of Ted Cruz when he says Beto is going to ban BBQ. The same is true of Tucker Carlson when he says Jill Biden going by the Dr. title risks making people think she’s a physician. I have no idea if these men ever lose sleep over the things they say, but judging from the available evidence, I see no indication of it. When your entire career is based on fleecing the suckers, you tend to get used to it after a while, especially in a business where people are rewarded for their shamelessness.
@Teve: I’d bet a money that it did. The photo is visceral. Everytime I see it–I want to punch that guy in the face.
Not because its Josh Hawley– I don’t know him and he probably is a nice young man in individual settings–but that the photo screams “White Power!” Something about it triggers an emotional response. Had the photographer being at a different angle–a second late or a second early– that picture might not have the circulation that it did.
But one thing Hawley will learn is that life will and does hit the detour button on the best laid of plans. My path was commercial software developing–I ended up in Counter-Terrorism [shoulder shruggs]
@Sleeping Dog: I’ve seen some of those but they’re not giving the answers I’m looking for . They give percentages who have been vaccinated. Ok, how does that compare to the percentages who should have been vaccinated by now? In other words, in my state about 10% have been vaccinated. What percentage is that of everyone who is eligible in Phase 1? 20%, 50%, 90%? That would tell me how well they are doing with the rollout.
Also for those of us currently unassigned to a phase: when do they anticipate it happening? For instance, if I knew I’d be eligible by say, April 20th, I’d feel a lot better.
@Teve:
Also unfair, an artifact of directional miking isolating his voice from the crowd noise he was trying to be heard over.
@Monala: The Washington Post has a running tally on it’s home page. As of today:
– 44.5M people have received at least one dose
representing:
– 36.6% of the prioritized population
– 13.4% of the total population
They give the breakdown for each state, too
@Owen:
Dude…
@Teve: @charon: The thing to realize about the Dean Scream is that it wasn’t just some unfortunate gaffe that came out of nowhere to destroy him. (Whether it did destroy him isn’t as clear as some people think–it happened after he did more poorly than expected in the Iowa caucus, so it’s very possible his campaign was going downhill on its own.) It helped reinforce an image he already had as a loose cannon. It’s not clear another politician doing the same thing would have had the same impact. It might not have been noticed at all. But the media were predisposed to think of him as Crazy Howard. So what it really speaks to is the media’s habit of attaching a simplistic narrative to every politician and interpreting everything they do through that lens.
The question regarding Hawley is how much traditional media matters to a Republican’s future in the post-Trump world.
@Monala: My default setting is a weird mix of skepticism and optimism, with a healthy splash of anxiety. For whatever reason, I’m sanguine about the vaccine rollout because the way I view it, they’re working out all of the distribution issues now, and things should pick up in a month or so, maybe even less time.
There’s little information because it’s all so decentralized. New Hampshire is not like New York which is not like Texas, Arizona, or South Dakota. It’s inaccurate to say it’s going well and smoothly, but it’s also inaccurate to say that it’s going poorly. Jax noted that they have more shots than willing participants where she is, but CSK correctly noted that Massachusetts doesn’t have anywhere near enough.
These things will get sorted out, sooner rather than later. My guess is that in another month or so, it will be far easier to find and get a shot than it is today.
I am willing to admit that this could well be wishful thinking. We’ll see! 🙂
@Jen:
Interestingly, I received just last night an email from my healthcare network (Mass. General/Brigham and Women’s) saying that they’d received dosages and would be notifying me to make an appointment when my turn in the queue arrived.
They also emphasized that they’d NOT be giving the vaccine to caretakers of those over 75. Charlie Baker announced last week that caretakers would be eligible for shots, and there was an immediate uproar over the possibility of pretend-caretakers scamming the system.
@charon: Yeah. I never dug into it, but saw a couple videos of the famous “scream”, that left me going, “Huh, that was it?” But Dean was a Dem, and Dems are so boring. The supposedly liberal MSM has to stoke outrage with what they can get. I hope Biden never wears a tan suit.
@Jen:
While I’m eager to get a COVID vaccine, and will feel relieved four weeks after I do get it, I’m more concerned that as many people as possible get vaccinated as quickly as possible. it’s the masking issue all over: the more people do it, the safer we all are. You are far safer if a million people around you get vaccinated than if you alone are.
BTW, I hope someone’s won a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for developing mRNA technology, and another for the non-reproductive viral vector vaccines.
@CSK: Yes, I saw/heard that…we watch Greater Boston every night on PBS and I’m not surprised they dialed that back. Our flap here in NH was the ski patrol getting prioritized as first responders (Sununu’s family are investors/part owners of a ski resort).
I’ve sort of reached a point where I’m not entirely sure I care if the prioritization lists are being strictly adhered to, as long as they are generally being adhered to (if that makes sense). Bottom line I don’t want the state gumming things up and delaying shots over questions about whether someone is 74 and a half, or if their two comorbidities have been correctly assessed. Close is fine. Keep things moving. The more people we have vaccinated the better. Fighting about whether teachers or grocery store workers should be next in line is exhausting.
One of the first things I see on my phones news feed is that Pence has met with Trump and is reconnecting himself to Trump’s hip (although it seems he never was disconnected in the first place) so he can tout his and Trump’s accomplishments over the past four years and use this to help re-take the Senate in 2022.
You know what, I am not angry at Pence for turning around and kissing Trump’s ring…this is where the Republican Party is now and it is just something they have to do.
Could they have chosen someone less odious than Trump as the guy whose ring they would have to kiss moving forward, sure (but to be fair, as we just witnessed, someone like Cruz is basically just a technically smarter and just as uncaring and callous individual as Trump, so it seems like the GOP was going to end up with someone like Trump as their standard bearer no matter what), but they have Trump who almost literally wants to have folks who fete him kiss the ring so it is what it is.
Knowing how quick the GOP is to forgive Trump for his rhetoric that led to the January 6 insurrection does not make me angry, it is just news that is a bit depressing to take in but the GOP has done nothing over the course of the past few decades(!!) to break free and push back against the rhetoric of the Limbaugh’s, Gingrich’s, and Trump’s of their party so folks like Trump are all that is left to hover over the party like the sword of Damocles.
As many folks have often said over the past several years, the GOP gets the standard bearer that it deserves so it does track that Trump is now the go to guy to bow down in front of and get his blessing to move forward with whatever plans and actions you want to execute for the good of the Party.
I turn 50 later this year and for most of my lifetime I really have not seen the GOP try to turn the ship around from the direction it was headed in, so it seems that they are doomed to just sail in one direction. That direction has seen them notch some wins for their Party, but I think the wins will only start to come about with increasing violent actions towards the opposition party from the GOP’s “Base,” and heaven help them if their violence accelerates an actual Civil conflict taking place in the United States.
I feel that too many people in the South who would like to see the South Rise Again have become too distanced from how bloody this ascension of the South would be. Liberals get called lots of names but at the end of the day we can fight just as hard as a Southerner would for our lives and a lot of blood would have to water the soil (Conservative and Liberal) for the South to be able to wrest full control of the United States Government out of the hands of Liberals.
We only have to look to our neighbors in Latin American to realize how deadly such a conflict would be for both sides, or folks in the South could just read up on the Civil War itself to start to understand how high a toll both sides paid when the conflict eventually ended.
Anyway, this post is long enough and I guess I could have shortened it by my saying that being surprised Pence is going back to embracing Trump is like expressing surprise that water is wet.
@Kathy:
Katalin Kariko (Germany) and Drew Weissman (Pennsylvania) may be up for it this fall.
@Jen:
It makes perfect sense.
I’m not having fits of anxiety over when I get the shot, because ever since this pandemic started, I haven’t really gone anywhere (but to Market Basket and the NH State Liquor Store), I wear a mask, I socially distance, and I wash my hands.
Thank God I like to read. I can’t imagine what people who don’t like to read do with themselves. Go nuts?
@Kathy:
I think I may have some insight here, with the caveat that my experience is based on Medical Device development and FDA approval of such, and not Pharmaceuticals, but I’m pretty darn sure they are equivalent.
A medical device (or drug) is not approved in and of itself but rather the device as manufactured and controlled is approved. You give the FDA not just proof of safety and efficacy but proof that you have vetted your manufacturing process from stem to stern and can repeatedly manufacture the product so it conforms to the design. You also have to show that your quality system will catch any deviations during manufacturing, distribution, post-market, etc.
The net is that they most definitely produced product on an actual line before submitting for approval. This product is not considered released product, but some or most of it may be transferred to stock once approval is reached. In medical device manufacturing we balance the amount we make (must be more than sufficient to prove all of the above with enough extra in case the FDA questions our statistics) with the caution that the FDA might delay approval or have questions and the clock starts ticking on shelf life. A very real concern I’ve dealt with is that we print a “Use By” date on the product and if the FDA took so long that we couldn’t make our guarantee we have to scrap all the product.
Finally, in this case I know that multiple manufacturing lines and entire plants are being built to make these drugs and much of this capacity is coming on line afterwards. An entire plant is being built down the road from my company’s UK facility and that isn’t scheduled to come on line until May. So my guess is that they got to approval with a single line fastest to set up and are simultaneously adding capacity.
@Monala:
IIRC correctly the Times, on or about 2/14 ran a graph comparing where each state was in vaccination progress some time in January to a few days before publication. It compared the percentage of the population that had been vaccinated along with the percentage of does used. It was pretty interesting.
Also, even state level data doesn’t give a good picture of the local situation.
Are you looking for a quantitative answer to what is a personal risk assessment question?
@Jen: I’m fairly optimistic about rollout (much to the surprise of my family as they think of me as the resident cynic). I think we on the left side of the aisle underestimate just how well the majority of states and local entities do on their own, without federal guidance or help. We are so used to combatting the nihilism of the Republicans that we are almost afraid to acknowledge that, yes, the US is doing better on this rollout than our European counterparts in part because we have states and local governments getting in the mix early and not waiting for Feds to develop comprehensive plans. The Republicans under Trump were never going to offer help because of their fundamental nature, but aggressive and competent State and local rollouts coupled with an increasingly active Fed Response is about as good as we could hope for.
@Kylopod:
Fox ran the clip many, many times to drive it into the mainstream media. At least once per half hour, talking about how Dean was unhinged. And then the other networks started “reporting on the controversy”.
And it definitely smacked the Dean campaign down, and made it harder to recover from the poor Iowa showing in New Hampshire.
This was Fox, in two days, destroying a campaign. The campaign might have lost anyway — insurgents tend to. But this was the right wing killing a candidacy.
And Fox didn’t run any of the other times Dean raised his voice and might look insane — things like “I’m tired of listening to the fundamentalist preachers! I want my country back!” might get people to agree with him.
I’m still angry about it. Dean’s campaign was the first time I got involved in politics, and I saw how easily the work of countless volunteers can be destroyed by a corporation with deep pockets and an agenda — I knew it in the abstract before, but this is when I really knew it.
@MarkedMan: I thought the point of Warp Speed was that we were doing these things in parallel, and would bail out manufacturers if they started mass producing a dud.
Well, I can think of a way to speed things up if we have another pandemic…
Fanne Fox, a name from scandals past, has died.
@Sleeping Dog:
Ah, the Argentinian Fireball.
Last night I did a video interview with the company that’s going to be manufacturing the Vaxart oral/pill vaccine when it gets approved. They have a current capacity to produce 1 million tests per day–with capacity ramping up to 2 million per day later in the year.
They have the capacity–and have contracted–to produce 1 billion doses of vaccine per year. And, again, these are pills. Completely stable at room temperature. Vaxart just came out of small phase 1 clinical trials and showed very promising results–no serious side effects, very good targeted T-cell response. The antibody response, however, was low, so some people are skittish about it (stock dropped 57% on that news!).
The great thing about the lyophilization technique (basically freeze drying) is that it works with a lot of other testing kits and vaccines. They’re focusing on COVID right now, but one of the other products they’re looking at is daily cancer-response tests so medications can be adjusted on a daily basis.
On a tangent: Normally I do these interviews in my living room using BBC-style precautions (wipe-downs, 2-meter distance, masked until in place, and a glass partition between myself and the guest). Because I’m only set up for 1 guest, we held the interview at their facility and remained masked. I got this comment (promptly deleted) in response to the video:
.
{sigh}
@Neil Hudelson: You’re right, I should have just told Sam I didn’t think it was funny.
@Gustopher:
I didn’t realize that, or I forgot. It’s a good reminder of how much sway Fox had over the other networks back then–it didn’t end with John Ellis in 2000.
It’s also an illustration of how hard it is to dislodge a smear once it becomes a joke. Try to debunk it, and people think you’re being a killjoy. That was the problem with Al Gore and “invented the Internet.” Once it became a punchline on late-night, refuting it became a lost cause.
There was a deeper issue in this whole episode. Dean was the only serious candidate (I’m not counting Kucinich or Sharpton) to be saying openly that going into Iraq was a mistake. Today that’s the consensus position across the entire political spectrum, but back then it was still regarded as a radical position, outside the mainstream. I think it also spooked some Dems, due to the ghost of McGovern (figuratively speaking–he was still alive!). When Obama ran on the same issue four years later, it didn’t sink his campaign, partly because Obama had a more charismatic, less caustic demeanor than Dean, but mostly because the entire public had shifted on the issue as the war effort was exposed as a dismal failure. Dean’s 2004 campaign laid the groundwork for Obama, but he wasn’t the messenger able to deliver it. As stupid as the Dean Scream controversy was (really–it’s by far the dumbest political controversy in modern history), it was a reflection of the fact that the mainstream media wasn’t ready for the truths Dean was telling. Fox may have been the impetus, but the fact that the MSM accepted the narrative was a sign of their own biases.
@Teve: Or as my inner Manichaean would put it. Ted Cruz is an example of a bad human being and Beto and AOC are examples of good human beings. And my advice to Ted would be that if he doesn’t want people to act like assholes around him, he should stop being one himself.
@Kylopod:
Like Teve’s mention of the late night comics/talk shows – exactly.
@OzarkHillbilly: “…it could not serve 29,000 children in two hours if there was a choice of meat and vegetarian menus.”
I’m not sure that I get why that would be true (haven’t ever seen how a typical school canteen works in France), but *being forced* to eat a vegetarian selection for lunch has got to be pretty close to the apex of First World Problems.
@OzarkHillbilly:
According to Greek Mythology, Mount Etna was created when Zeus buried the giant monster Typhon (picture an ancient Greek version of Cthulhu), and the mountain’s restlessness is the result of Typhon trying to escape imprisonment.
@Monala: The scale is daunting. Assume manufacture of 1 million doses a day (are we at that level? higher? lower? I don’t know, but I gave up following this because of the scale). We get to a billion doses in 3 years then. And the population of the world is nearly 8 billion (which surprised me, I told my brother a little over 4 in an email yesterday, but I looked it up for this). I don’t know how one can expect reasonable projections on this scale. I get that it’s frustrating (and I agree that you should be bumped up–and I should be told to wait because as a nearly 70 y.o. single, predominantly antisocial male, my ability to distance is almost unfathomable compared to that of others, but…), but the previous administration’s approach was tell people what they want/we want them to hear, so no news may look like a step back, but it’s not.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh shirt! At Casa Luddite,that’s where the booze is!
@Gustopher:
The manufacturers were definitely doing things in parallel, as ground was broken on the UK facility I mentioned before we were close to approval (I don’t remember whether it is Moderna or Pfizer), but it takes a long time to build new production. And as far as I know Warp Speed was only about guaranteeing sales if a successful vaccine was produced. I don’t think Trump Administration officials actually had any input to the planning (and are probably better off they didn’t)
Cyrus Vance has broadened his investigation to include Donny junior.
@Jim Brown 32: “–but that the photo screams ‘White Power!'”
For some portion of roughly 74 million voters, the reaction is the opposite of yours. The rest of them may be willing to fall in line for someone with an “(R)” after their name. They did just this last year, after all.
We can hope that Hawley’s aspirations have faded, I remain guardedly pessimistic.
@Jen: A national graph can be found at
https://www.bing.com/search?q=Coronavirus+vaccine&FORM=covwpt&tf=U2VydmljZT1HZW5lcmljQW5zd2VycyBTY2VuYXJpbz1Db3JvbmFWaXJ1c01MIFBvc2l0aW9uPVRPUCBSYW5raW5nRGF0YT1UcnVlIEZvcmNlUGxhY2U9VHJ1ZSBQYWlycz1pbnRlbnQ6Q2hlY2tDb3JvbmFWYWNjaW5lO2Fib3ZlbmV3czp0cnVlOyB8&hs=bv0jSPAtjPk3PWMO7eF%2flGg%2b9zqvVt63VmgFiPRQQj8%3d
that shows that every state has, roughly, the same vaccination rates as other states. We’re all at about 13% of the total and at 2 or 3% having gotten 2nd doses. (Assumed from a dozen or so random checks on an interactive map.)
Owen, buddy, perhaps you are just being coy or arch. I don’t know where you are posting from and what the local language nuances are, but most of the people you are posting with here – North American English speakers – probably did a spit take at your use of “blackies.” It’s a term I would attribute to British English speakers roughly equating to an American talking about “colored folks” or some less acceptable term.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Fortunately, in those days refrigerators didn’t have the foothold built conveniently into the door at that spot. (And I also don’t remember you keeping booze in the house at all when Ludditella was a toddler.)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
It might have changed, but as recently as a decade ago students in French schools sat down to lunches with actual flatware and cloth napkins. School lunches consisted of four courses (yes really), and a bread basket.
It’s not chicken fingers and pizza either, it’s stuff like mixed salad greens with vinaigrette, roast chicken, etc. and it’s almost always prepared on-site.
The French are really serious about their food. And table manners.
Finally found a linky:
https://www.republicanleader.gov/whats-up-in-texas/
@Jen:
Their menus certainly beat the hell out of what I recall American school menus from when I was a kid. In particular I used dread “American chop suey”–a concoction of stewed tomatoes, overcooked elbow macaroni, and hamburger. Totally tasteless in my view, though my counterparts seemed to adore it.
@Teve: Don’t cry, Timmy. We didn’t send Perseverance on a one way death trip to Mars; we sent it to a farm upstate where it can play with the other rovers…
COVID update at work. The person hospitalized is expected to be discharged soon. Maybe now they’ll choose to wear a mask (yeah, right). And one who’s been out for a month recovering at home, no longer has symptoms but keeps testing positive.
@Kathy:
That sounds like a cue to ask whether you’ve read Code of the Lifemaker by James P. Hogan…
@charon:
If I lived in Texas, I’d get some of Musk’s roofing solar tiles and two or three big storage batteries as well.
And what’s this about the Sun? Do they really depend on clean energy for light and warmth? That is so un-Texan. Roof the state over and light it and heat it with natural gas like God intended.
@CSK: It really is remarkable. At one of those links, I was just reviewing the sample menu from October of 2013. For Monday: Lentil & tomato salad, followed by roast pork or turkey, petite peas with carrots. Brie for the cheese course, followed by kiwi, with afternoon break of yogurt and crepes. Tuesday: Cucumber vinaigrette, salmon lasagna, spinach, fromage fondu, and fruit compote. Etc.
Thesis: ever since the Southern strategy completed the GOP were pre-Trumpers, but the establishment had control because they were gatekeepers to media. On the rise of the Internet the base was able to organize and get control. If the Internet had existed in the 60s George Wallace would have been the nominee.
@DrDaveT:
I’d never even heard of it til today.
I saw a meme yesterday that Mars was inhabited only by robots. That’s true. But so were Venus for a few minutes at a time, and Titan for a while. We could also count Jupiter, as a portion of the Galileo mission involved a probe that penetrated the atmosphere. Likewise the Moon for several years, but humans inhabited it for a couple of days a few times.
@Jen:
I too followed the link and saw the exact same menus there. My mouth is watering. I would have killed for a school lunch like that when I was a kid.
@CSK:
While our school food wasn’t that fancy, it was good. This, of course was back in the days before the feds dictated what ingredients could be used.
Our head lunch lady was a farm mother, and the the food we got was wholesome midwestern fare. We’d go through the line a second time some days. And everybody wanted the recipe for the white cornmeal bars with powdered sugar frosting.
When asked by Fox News to comment on Tiger Woods’ auto accident, Donald Trump spoke of awarding Woods the Presidential Medal of Honor: “Because it was Tiger, everyone wanted to be there. Everyone went crazy. It was a big event. He considered this to be one of the great honors of his life.”
It’s always all about Lardass (sorry, Prof. Joyner), no matter the occasion. Just being in his presence is the greatest experience–no, honor–of anyone’s life.
@Mu Yixiao:
Well, I’d want the iced cornmeal bar recipe, too.
@Kylopod:
I don’t think it was the war that motivated Fox’s hatred. We were in the war, we were stuck with the war, not liking the war was almost meaningless at that point.
It was about health care, civil unions (wow, things have changed), and carrying the culture war back to the Republicans — since only Republicans are allowed to have a fire in their belly.
“Even a guy with a pickup truck with a confederate flag on the back deserves affordable health care” was a scary message to Fox. It rejects the division on culture issues, and signals to Republican voters that this is a guy who is going to try to help them despite the divisions. And when all you have to motivate your base is division, that’s scary.
Al Sharpton was not a fan of that line.*
It was because he called bullshit on Republican culture issues.
I have a friend from Vermont who was quite convinced that Dean had some kind of psychotic break because he went from a boring, generic, middle-of-the-road Governor to a firebrand from “the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party” overnight.
——
*: I can’t blame him, obviously. But it was a different time when some decent people flew that flag because they weren’t really thinking about it, as opposed to now where the few who fly it know exactly what they are doing.
You have to punch Nazis. But you also have to reach out to others and invite them back into the fold.
@Gustopher:
I’ve never really understood why people in Vermont and New Hampshire would display the Confederate flag, since doubtless some of them had ancestors who fought and died for the Union. I suppose it was an easy way to advertise that you were a rebel.
@Jen:
@CSK:
CSK, I believe Jen maybe an age where it was determined that ketchup was a vegetable.
Wonderful menus in France and people stay so thin.
@Mu Yixiao:
I’m glad for you. You were lucky.
Yes, of course, quality of local school food is entirely controlled by which ingredients the feds will let you use. (Insert eye roll here.) Note that the feds do not actually forbid any (legal) ingredients; they just choose not to subsidize schools that use unhealthy ingredients. Sort of negative socialism — if you want the handout, you have to play by the federal rules. Exactly the kind of system conservatives have always favored.
The flip side of local control of everything about schools is that quality varies radically from one school district to the next — quality of education, quality of environment, quality of food, physical safety, you name it. I attended five different elementary schools in three different states back in the ’60s and ’70s, and the food ranged from inedible to delicious. That was before the whole peanut allergy thing radically transformed how school cafeterias have to operate…
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
That’s because you never looked above the fridge. That’s where the crock pot, turkey platter, brandy and scotch were all kept. Vodka and gin were in the freezer with the ice cream. Refrigerator, of course was full top to bottom with Mt. Dew and Pepsi for SWMBO. Ludditella figured knew this early, but didn’t get into my brandy until middle school, IIRC.
@Sleeping Dog:
I remember a funny t-shirt that featured an image of Reagan and a bottle of ketchup with the legend: “Which is the vegetable?”
@CSK:
Well, the tomato is a fruit.
@DrDaveT:
My peanut allergy in kindergarten was so severe i went into a. shock and my throat closed. Thankfully we were a mile from a hospital or you guys wouldn’t have the benefit of my erudite and sophisticated input. When the school had p. butter my grandmother had to show up and i sat in her car and ate a sammich, because merely entering the cafeteria could have killed me.
@Kathy:
I know. Ironically, it’s also a good source of Vitamins A and C and potassium.
@Jen: Sounds a lot like Korea–except for the cloth napkins part. I’m still at a loss to understand how having both a meat and a meatless choice slows the process down, but I’m willing to take the mayor’s word for it. Sounds pretty good, too.
@CSK:
Taken per calorie, I think ketchup ought to qualify as sugar cane sauce flavored with tomato, rather than tomato sauce.
@CSK: We had decent lunches in Seattle when I was growing up. At least most days. I had allergies, so mostly I brought my lunch from home, but when I did eat hot lunch, it was always light years ahead of ANYTHING I ever ate at a school in my adult life until I went to Korea. Having people who can and want to cook makes all the difference. Schools growing up and the ones I experienced in Korea always had cooks operating the kitchens.
@Kathy: They don’t NEED to wear a mask anymore, they have IMMUNITY [eye roll emoji here].
@CSK:
Clinton isn’t exactly a paragon of virtue. I’m not his biggest fan.
@Kathy: hypoglycemic roommate i had in Raleigh only cooked a few things, like his own tomato sauce. “Dude that stuff at the supermarket has as much sugar as Coke”.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Two or three times in my life, I got infected by a different strain of common cold while I was already sick with common cold. This is possible because different viruses cause it, and there are different variants for each virus type.
I’m sure the same thing can happen with COVID, as variants have evolved since we first came across this trump* of a virus.
*Hey, it’s small, nasty brutal, destructive, and cares only about itself.
@Teve:
I sympathize. I lack the patience to cook my own pasta sauce, but I do buy tomato sauce (no sugar), and add herbs and spices. It’s cheaper, too. I also make non-tomato sauces, like sauteed mushrooms with onions dumped into a blender with a splash of milk, some cottage cheese and garlic.
@Mu Yixiao: “This, of course was back in the days before the feds dictated what ingredients could be used.” I think you’ve got this part backwards, but if it keeps you valuing your freedom, carry on. Fifty and sixty years ago, when I was eating school lunches, the government had requirements of WHAT SORTS OF FOODS constituted the “Class A lunch” that qualified for the subsidy, but by the time I was in the produce business, selling fresh fruits and vegetables to schools beyond apples had become difficult because the school districts were starting to divorce themselves from the subsidies so that they could bring Taco Bell and Godfather products into the mix. They were willing to buy precut carrot and celery sticks, but those were too expensive and didn’t qualify for the subsidy, so they mostly passed on anything that wasn’t iceberg lettuce, apples, and oranges. A typical school also bought one box of petite bananas (150 count) to make banana logs for one lunch in a week.
But yeah, it was Federal regulations that killed school lunches. Okay.
He’s a self absorbed asshole, thru and thru.
@Neil Hudelson: Don’t bother.
I think it was in the 1990s that schools started contracting with fast-food suppliers to feed their students. That made McDonald’s et al. quite happy.
@Kathy:
Pro tip: for American bottled tomato products, the stuff in the bottle labeled “ketchup” (or “catsup”) is way too sweet and bland, but the stuff in the bottle labeled “chili sauce” is much closer to real home-made ketchup.
(And yes, labeling it “chili sauce” ought to be illegal false advertising, but whatchagonnadoo?)
Heinz tomato ketchup: 4 grams sugar per tablespoon
Heinz chili sauce: 3 grams sugar per tablespoon, same ingredient list
@DrDaveT:
I much prefer “chili sauce” to ketchup.
@Kurtz:
Understood (and understandable).
And yet, the sleaziest Democratic President since… Woodrow Wilson? Grover Cleveland? Andrew Johnson? …is less sleazy and more honest about public matters than at least half of the last 6 Republican Presidents.
(And yes, Ronald Reagan was both sleazier and more dishonest than Bill Clinton in every way that matters.)
And here I thought they were advertising they were an asshole.
@DrDaveT:
I used to work in the administrative building for the Madison School District. It’s where their central kitchen is located. The central kitchen would cook meals for all the schools (~25) and truck them out every morning. I talked to the head of food services frequently and he had nothing good to say about the regulations that started back then (c. 2000). In order to keep the subsidies (approx 45% of students were on free/reduced lunch) they had to use lower-quality, pre-packaged, processed stuff from Rheinhart or Sysco. Previously, they’d been getting a lot of their fruit, produce, and meats from locally-sourced farms and co-ops.
After that (c. 2012) I worked with the head of food service for my small town school district. She said the same things, but added that under Michelle Obama’s “rules”, they had to serve food that kids wouldn’t eat. This is bolstered by studies showing that a staggering amount of what’s prepared in schools gets thrown away (WWF estimates 530,000 tons of food worth $1.7 billion is wasted in school cafeterias).
We’re literally throwing money in the dumpster and letting kids go hungry to satisfy rules that make no sense.
* 51% of grains offered must be whole grain (this includes things like the breading on the fish sticks (this was specifically sited)).
* Kids must take the offered fruit or veg in order for the meal to be reimbursed (how much of that ends up in the trash, uneaten?)
* And… I kid you not:
Federal Register Vol. 77 No. 17
As a side effect of these rules, a lot of traditional ethnic foods are “banned” from school lunches because they don’t use standard , approved ingredients. The cooks are limited in the variety they can offer because ingredient quantities are mandated. And locally-sourced ingredients are severely curtailed because of labeling requirements.
We should make sure that our school kids are getting good meals that meet their dietary needs. But we also need to leave room for cafeterias to meet the cultural tastes of their customers and have the ability to adjust to how kids actually eat.
It’s better to have “okay food” in bellies than to have “healthy food” in trash cans.
@Kathy:
The Reagan admin viewed it as a vegetable. Go figure
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
See my previous response; 530,000 tons of wasted food worth $1.7B.
“Healthy lunches” mean jack shit if the kids aren’t eating them. But if it makes you feel like you’re “doing something”, carry on.
@Mu Yixiao: My kid’s probably one of the few in the nation that likes the foods Michelle Obama wanted them to eat. She absolutely will not eat anything with cheese in it, so on those days she always had the raw broccoli and carrot/celery sticks to eat! 😉
The nice lunch ladies at her school now have figured out her aversion to cheese, and one of the ol grandma types always sets a “cheese free” option aside for her.
@OzarkHillbilly:
That goes without saying.
@Mu Yixiao: What kids eat, and how much, matters. It matters a lot.
It apparently matters even more than gym class. I find this surprising and am interested to see follow up studies. Wasting food is horrible, but if kids are eating crap at home, school might be the only place they get food that’s actually good for them. I don’t think they should be forced to eat it (the “must have a fruit to be reimbursed” is particularly stupid) but that doesn’t mean standards get thrown out the window.
Michelle Obama was right.
Excerpt:
@Kurtz:
“I also despise people who go to law school as a career move toward elected office” and “someone who knew he was going to run for higher office early in life. I’m suspicious of that kind of person.”
I’m interested in hearing more about this. Do you despise such people because of a mean serving an end (law school -> elected office), because of the mean itself (law school), because of the end itself (elected office)?
And is your suspicion because of someone knowing early in life what they want to do (in general) or knowing they want to do elected office specifically?
I got an email notice from my healthcare network that I can schedule my vaccine. I have done so. Took about 90 seconds. It will be given at Mass. General Hospital.
@CSK: My arm’s freakin killing me today. Like somebody punched it as hard as they can multiple times. All-day headache, and a metallic taste in my mouth. Will DEFINITELY be taking the day after my second shot off work.
I like to think the metallic taste is my new COVID battle-bots assembling themselves in my immune system. 😉
@MarkedMan:
That makes a lot of sense. In food distribution proposals, we’re asked to list such things as warehouses, trucks, processing equipment, etc. What’s the use of having a drug if you can’t manufacture it in large enough quantities?
But beyond that, there were reports of mass manufacturing while the trials were ongoing, beyond the concepts you describe. I should have checked beyond regular media, they usually get these things wrong.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
In a 1950s era book, The Caves of Steel, Asimov posits an Earth so over populated, that people must live in underground cities to conserve energy, all food is rationed and it’s mostly processed yeast grown from cellulose and chemicals.
The incredibly large population that gave him nightmare visions* was 8 billion.
I feel like I should start digging a new home 😉
*It’s worth noting Asimov was a claustrophile, so large underground cities without natural light, rife with crowds, and so on, didn’t give him nightmares.
@Mu Yixiao: Ah! My examples are from 1960-1980. I agree a lot has changed in the interim.
@Jen:
It has long been known in the workout community that you can’t make up for more eating with more exercise. The old phrase they have for it is “you can’t out run your mouth”
There’s a well understood biological explanation for this. There is something called your resting metabolism, it’s how much energy you burn when you’re watching TV sitting on the couch laying in bed, not doing much your body burns a certain amount of calories. So you might think, well I can eat 500 extra calories OK, and just exercise 500 more calories and that’ll all work out, except it won’t. Because the more you exercise, the more your body turns down your resting metabolic rate. So yeah maybe you exercise 500 cal worth, but after doing that a week your body turns down your resting metabolic rate so that before, you were sitting around doing nothing and burning 1600 cal a day, but now your body wants to conserve energy so when you sit around doing nothing watching TV, you’re only burning 1300 or 1400 cal. So now you’ve got a net increase in calories.
@Mu Yixiao:
Thanks for the information. As you probably guessed, most of this post-dates my direct experience with the system. The Law of Unintended Consequences rears its ugly head again.
(I will note that genuinely hungry people don’t generally throw away food just because it’s not as tasty as they’d prefer. But I agree that wastage is a big problem, and kids accustomed to fast food can be malnourished without being hungry.)
Of course, in the bigger picture the need for the subsidies is driven by the unwillingness of the locals to pay the taxes required to support feeding (and educating) the local kids. If the locals don’t like the federal rules — as well they might not — all they have to do is pony up the cash to feed the kids whatever works best. There are a few places in the country that are simply too poor to do that, but only a few. If the federal subsidies didn’t exist, what do you think the local response would be?
Your Travel Guide to the Rudderless Right-Wing Web After Trump