Welcome to December Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, December 1, 2022
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68 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Well, being December and all, I would just like to pop in to tell our hosts how much I value their work and writing on this site. I am as guilty as anyone of being overly critical and combative at times, but this is the place I go to read well thought out and sober analysis of the seminal issues of the day. So … thank you!
And here is something that no one asked for, but we all probably really need.
Cocaine Bear
Hahahaha…..Newt Gingrich has a piece up about how Republicans need to stop understimating Joe Biden. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of linking to it here, but you’ll all probably see it on Memeorandum, anyways. It’s something else. He almost made it to admitting Republican policies aren’t that popular, but not quite.
And, if you needed further confirmation that Trump will destroy the Republican Party, here it is:
http://www.thebulwark.com/yes-he-will-burn-it-all-down/
Railroad Strike Legislation
This railroad situation is really sticky for the Democrats. If the strike happens, the economy might tank. But if they force a resolution on the unions it has a good chance of losing voters.
The house did add 7 days of sick leave, so hopefully that satisfies the unions and can still get through the senate.
@Jax: I’ve followed Newt throughout his career, and I definitely think he leans more toward opportunist than true-believer. He has always had these occasional moments where he briefly drops the loonie-right act and says something sensible and rational.
But it also feels like he hasn’t actually learned anything. His own political career was destroyed in part because of an expected red wave that failed to materialize, which ended up being (mostly correctly) blamed on him, due to his ill-advised impeachment against a sitting Democratic president (and the eventual revelation that he was carrying on his own extramarital liaison at the same time). That memory apparently has not stopped him from going all-in on the Hunter-laptop stuff (he recently called Biden “the most corrupt president in US history”).
@BugManDan: If a bill is passed forcing the unions to accept the deal, what is the consequences of still striking?
@BugManDan:
The sick leave bill is separate from the bill to force the contract. No way Republiqans vote to cost any wealthy corporation money.
That’s why it wasn’t bundled with the rest. It’s a poison pill for the GQP.
My question sis this: can a federal law mandate paid sick leave nation-wide? And, if so, why isn’t there one already?
That is actually in a separate bill which good on them for doing it, but it will need the vote of 10 GOP to overcome a GOP filibuster in the Senate. As I understand it, the hope is that it can be gotten thru under reconciliation rules but I don’t know how all that works or if it even applies here.
Without the risk of a rail strike I don’t know if the votes are there. TBH, I think the risk of a rail strike just might motivate the GOP even more to vote against it. You know, crash the economy, putting millions out of work and guaranteeing a GOP red wave election in ’24.
@BugManDan: People go to jail? The unions go under court supervision? A lot of people lose their jobs and get replaced?
Don’t know the particulars of the law but I suspect these tools and more, all of which have been used before for other reasons, can all be put into play.
I think if they are going to prevent a strike, the very least they can do is give the railworkers the 7 days of paid sick leave.
I’ve heard a number of bullsh!t arguments from the side of the businesses, such as “the rail workers have been okay with this in the past” (so what?), and “other businesses use combined paid time off” (again, so what? these are far more physical jobs than sitting in an office, also, because of the new efficiency scheduling, you have to schedule your time off, which is sort of hard to do when YOU ARE SICK, because getting sick is almost always unscheduled).
Bottom line, I support the prevention of a strike, but only if the workers are getting what they would if they were permitted to strike.
@Rick DeMent: First, many thanks for the kinds words.
Second, that is quite the cast for a film that I thought might be a joke when I saw the poster in a social media post yesterday.
@CSK:
Thanks for that. Very interesting. Sobering.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I know right, there are some decent actors in that movie including Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, Ray Liotta, and the always brilliant Margo Martindale.
So elon had his little tantrum and it was all much ado about nothing? Hmmm… he fired all the maids and butlers that used to work at twitter, I wonder who is going to clean up the mess of toys he threw on the floor and food at the wall?
@Steven L. Taylor: @Rick DeMent:
I listened to the WTF ep with Elizabeth Banks a few weeks ago. She directed it, and it sounds like a really creative, original movie of the type Hollywood tends not to make anymore. I did not watch her remake of Charlies Angels, but Pitch Perfect II was a a well-made comedy. This could be her breakout film as a director.
@Neil Hudelson: Good to know.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Reconciliation bills are limited to three topics: federal revenue (eg, taxes), federal spending on existing programs, and the debt limit. Substantive legislation is not allowed. “Railroads must give their unionized workers up to seven days of unscheduled sick leave every year” is substantive and will never get past the parliamentarian.
@Michael Reynolds:
You’re welcome. The following is a great line from a piece that has many of them:
“Complete and utter inperviousness to shame is one of Trump’s superpowers.”
@Michael Cain:
That isn’t a bad description, but I would quarrel slightly with your use of the word “substantive.” Quite a lot can be passed using reconciliation, since so much of federal government policy involves decisions about how funds are allocated. You can’t create a new government program or agency through reconciliation, but you can undermine one, which is one of the reasons why reconciliation benefits Republicans more than Democrats. Republicans have used it for their tax cuts and for things like eliminating the Obamacare’s individual mandate, where they technically left it on the books but set the penalty for not buying insurance to zero. Dems used it for their Covid relief package. They also used it in the passage of Obamacare, though that’s complicated and has led to a popular misconception that the law was “passed through reconciliation,” which isn’t quite accurate. (To briefly summarize: Dems passed the majority of elements of the law through a Senate bill with 60 votes to overcome a filibuster; that bill would not have been allowed under reconciliation because it made significant regulatory changes. But after the Dems unexpectedly lost their 60-seat majority when Scott Brown won his seat in a special election, they passed a separate bill through reconciliation that made some tweaks to the first bill, just so they could make it palatable to enough House Democrats to pass the Senate bill in the House.)
@Michael Cain:
The Parliametarian is only an obstacle for Democrats. Last time one ruled against Republicans, the Republicans fired them and got a new one who said it was okay.
@Stormy Dragon: That isn’t exactly true. The GOP did that during Bush’s presidency, but they declined to do so during Trump’s even when the parliamentarian was rejecting some of the things they proposed, which played a role in the collapse of the Obamacare repeal attempts. Trump was screaming on Twitter about the need to nuke the filibuster, and some other Republicans like Ted Cruz were suggesting just ignoring the parliamentarian. McConnell didn’t do any of that, and he accepted the parliamentarian’s rulings. I think he believed he could get most of what he wanted through reconciliation, so he didn’t see a point in undermining the filibuster. Of course, he unhesitatingly ended the filibuster for SCOTUS appointments so he could get Gorsuch (and eventually Kavanagh and Barrett) through.
@Michael Cain: Thanx, even to my ignorant ear it sounded off. I probably misread something somewhere or just as likely conflated 2 different stories.
Emancipation review – Will Smith flees slavery in fierce, sombre thriller
Looks good to me.
@OzarkHillbilly:
The government.
Elon is too big to fail.
“Government Bad. Government take money from Elon. DON’T LOOK AT MONEY MY LEFT HAND TAKING! Government bad!”
@OzarkHillbilly: ” You know, crash the economy, putting millions out of work and guaranteeing a GOP red wave election in ’24.”
You mean crash the economy just as the Republicans take over the House and prove incapable of doing anything about it? I can actually imagine them thinking this will work to their advantage…
I’m still morbidly following the car crash called Twitter as run by Elon Musk.
Am wondering if Musk is crazy enough to assume that he could set up a company where everyone in the world needs to pay Elon $8/month in order to have a Twitter account and control what was being posted under their name.
I also suspect that there’s going to be a huge stinkin’ scandal Very Soon Now when someone signs up under someone else’s (famous) name and sh*tpost and Elon’s “verifiers” won’t have caught it.
@wr: “Biden did that.”
I love the fact that all those Biden “I did that.” stickers have suddenly disappeared from all the gas pumps.
@BugManDan:
I wonder if that addition was related to all the lefty progs in the House who keep seeking perfect failure instead of imperfect success?
@OzarkHillbilly: I wonder if those “Biden Did That” stickers are still available. I might want to put up a few. Drove past Walmart this morning, they were under $3. Maybe also a couple of “Let’s Go Brandon” stickers. I don’t expect my neighbors are drawing any conclusions about Arabs and oil companies from the rapid fall in prices after the election.
@wr: “You mean crash the economy just as the Republicans take over the House and prove incapable of doing anything about it? I can actually imagine them thinking this will work to their advantage…”
On the other side of the coin though, the possibility of them deciding to try bat-shirt crazy stuff that the Democrats can’t possibly go along with and then blaming “Democratic obstructionism and THE SQUAD AND AOC (!!!!!!!)” is pretty strong. Beyond the fact that it’s a go to move for them, the public is stupid enough to buy into it. Lounsbery will post about the vices of perfect failure ruining the chance of imperfect success, and I shudder to think of how the “reach out to the moderates” people will react.
I found a really curious piece over at Martin Longman’s place. It’s paywalled though.
It will be hard to post only excerpts and yet have it to make sense, but I’ll try:
https://progresspond.com/2022/11/30/why-the-u-s-house-should-emulate-the-alaska-senate/
snip
snip
snip
Apparently, Kanye West and Nick Fuentes were guests of Alex Jones on Infowars today, and Ye took the opportunity to sing the praises of Hitler and the Nazis.
Even Jones was taken aback.
@CSK: Here’s a quote from the interview:
For those who may not know, “Jewish mafia” is a phrase Jones has been using for years.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Meanwhile Thierry Breton attempts to draw Musk’s attention to the annoying little legal requirements of conducting a media operation in the EU.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: ” the possibility of them deciding to try bat-shirt crazy stuff that the Democrats can’t possibly go along with and then blaming “Democratic obstructionism and THE SQUAD AND AOC (!!!!!!!)” is pretty strong. Beyond the fact that it’s a go to move for them, the public is stupid enough to buy into it. Lounsbery ”
Well, sure, the Lounsburys of the world will always buy into it, because what the Rs will try to do to fix the economy is to kill Social Security and Medicare and people like Lounsbury — or people like the person Lounsbury poses as, whichever the case may be — hate entitlements and the people who receive them. And so of course they assume they actually represent the “real Americans” as well as the vast majority of voters, when they are really a tiny (and corrupt and decadent) minority.
@Kylopod:
I didn’t know that. Actually, I’ve never heard Jones’s show nor looked at his website. What I know is what I’ve read about him.
@CSK:
“I find that hard to believe.”
Do you ever have one of those days there’s so much work, you can’t do your job until you clear all the other stuff first?
I’m looking at a longish Sunday work time just to keep up.
@CSK: Well the “Jewish mafia” thing has been reported in articles before. Here’s one example:
Here’s another:
@JohnSF: Wasn’t Twitter Blue or Gray or whatever supposed to have rolled out on 29 Nov? Was that pushed back?
@Kylopod:
It’s astonishing that in a country which includes such characters as Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, this stain of a person needs to make up a Jewish mafia.
@Scott:
Not a scooby, to be honest.
I’m not following all the gory details, just occasionally checking the news and sniggering.
Currently taking bets on TTETIAS (“time till Elon turns into a snake”) even though IT NEVER HELPS!
@Kathy: The funny thing is that actual Jewish mobsters don’t get brought up much in anti-Semitic propaganda. My guess is that they make Jews seem too cool.
@Kylopod:
Oh, I have no trouble whatsoever believing you. But, as I say, even Jones seemed taken aback by the level of Ye’s vituperation. Brad Reed at Rawstory had a reaction very similar to mine:
http://www.rawstory.com/kanye-west-hitler-2658811377/
The warfare will never end:
From Politico:
https://congressionalintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/Meet-James-Comer.pdf
@JohnSF:
I believe that Musk is going to ignore Barton and force the EU into an action. The question is, will the EU have the gumption to shut twitter down in Europe. It’s a reasonable gamble on Musk’s part.
@Kylopod:
There’s some level of admiration in the US for the mob for some reason. Exhibit A, the large number of movies about famous mobsters. The Untouchables is atypical in that the protagonist is Elliot Ness rather than Al Capone.
Maybe because they supplied booze during prohibition.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I assume the Muskrat is just lying, and will start claiming that Apple reneged on a deal if/when Twitter gets booted from the App Store for allowing hate speech.
A week or so ago he claimed that he had a deal with the woke leaders of antifa or whatever to not go after advertisers, and that various advertisers pulling out was evidence the deal was being broken. At least Apple is a namable entity rather than the mysterious deal with woke leaders.
@CSK:
Anything is possible, but that isn’t how he has responded to his myriad failures in the past. Sure, he lashes out and trashes his former partners… for a while. But then he disappears into the wilderness and when he comes back out it’s as if the airline/casino/football league/etc never existed. Seriously, when was the last time you heard Trump mention anything he failed at?
@MarkedMan:
In his mind, he’s never failed.
@MarkedMan:
But he wouldn’t see destroying the Republican Party as a failure on his part. He would be giving them what they deserve for denying him. He lives for revenge.
@CSK:
Delete. Repeat.
@Sleeping Dog:
I’m not sure how the legalities might work out.
IANAL
I assume the Commission would start proceedings under DSA.
But the interesting thing is how that might interact with national prosecutors proceedings, both re GDPR regulations and DSA.
Not to mention Irish employment law:
In the words of Tim O’Connor:
Also Tim:
I hope everyone gets the joke from the gif 🙂 Made me laugh.
@Sleeping Dog:
Point is that perhaps even more than the US system the EU Commission is a remorselessly legalistic.
Another EU saying: “Troika always wins.”
@Kathy: Even worse. It’s a corporatist Jewish mafia. When did conservatives start worrying about what corporations do?
@Kathy: I agree. And that’s why I think the actual history of Jews in organized crime isn’t really the source of anti-Semitism that one might expect it to be. Italian-Americans get shit for it, but it’s never been the angle that most anti-Semites grasp onto. Instead, they talk about Rothschilds and the bankers and the Hollywood moguls. And I do think that’s in part because the gangsters are too glamorous. The Jews that are part of the evil cabal secretly controlling the world have never been glamorous, They’re the ugly, putrid, cowardly nerd villains that the gigachads could beat the shit out of, but who survive because of their scheming and bribery and nefarious influence in all facets of society.
And just like that, Judge Cannon’s clear path to become Chief Justice of the Best Court Ever in a future, gods forbid Benito administration goes up in smoke.
Now she’s just a loser.
TL;DR the special master review of the stolen classified documents seized in Mar A Lardo has been halted by the 11th circuit court of appeals.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
A while back I was reading a book that was supposedly a history of capitalism in the West, but as I got into the book, I was surprised that a significant amount of attention was paid to the history of anti-Semitism in Europe. Because that’s kind of where the whole stereotype arose in the first place: Jews who were locked out of many professions and forbidden to own land started to gravitate toward banking. Christians, who believed usury was a sin, would employ Jews for that purpose. Important early thinkers in the development of capitalism such as Voltaire were heavily anti-Semitic, and the way they incorporated that into their beliefs was that they used Jews as the scapegoat for all the problems with capitalism they didn’t want to own up to. Capitalism was this great source of economic opportunity. But all the negative consequences–the greed, the exploitation, the inequality–that was all on the Jews.
This may all sound incredibly esoteric, but I’ve been amazed to discover in the years since I read that book how current this type of thinking still is. The other day Tim Pool had the three stooges on (Kanye, Fuentes, and Milo), and Kanye got mad and walked out in mid-interview, despite the fact that Pool gave one of the most smarmy and weak-ass responses to Kanye’s anti-Semitism that I have seen in the past few weeks.
The thing is, Pool’s show in the past has not been above pushing anti-Semitic tropes. He’s just a little more coded about it than Kanye. I saw this segment where he was discussing the show Squid Game (which I haven’t seen) and the creator’s public statements that he intended the show as a critique of capitalism. Pool responded that the show unwittingly revealed the problems with communism, and one of his co-hosts agreed and said the problems that leftists identify aren’t problems with capitalism itself, but with powerful, sinister people like the Rothschilds.
Similarly, in many of Kanye’s recent interviews he vacillates between talking about the Jews controlling everything and bragging about his own great wealth. It’s clear he loves capitalism until it causes him problems, and he needs someone to blame those problems on. That type of thinking is actually pretty widespread among conservatives, whether Jews are the villains or not–there’s always some group that’s causing the things they don’t like in the business world–the more mainstream right-wingers just call it wokeness. They don’t talk about the Jewish mafia, but they do talk about the alphabet mafia. At the same time, they’re still pushing for tax breaks and deregulation. They know where the bottom line always rests.
Test
“Trump can appeal the ruling to either the full bench of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court, but both prospects are seen as a long-shot.”
Politico
…………
bedrock I like it.
Is that the same as boilerplate?
@gVOR08: My step son in law is a bit of a RWNJ (nice guy, we go fishing, we talk about gardening… Politics? Hell no!) I espied a small stack of Biden “I did that!” stickers on their countertop last spring. I thought about stealing a few (OK ok, all of them) but didn’t. If I didn’t love my wife as much as I do (her daughter is married to him) I’d ask him what he thinks of the price of gasoline now.
@Kylopod:
I almost mentioned the connection of Jews in European banking.
Reading about ancient history, there’s mention now and then of Jewish communities in Rome and in Egypt, and presumably others existed elsewhere. There’s never much mention of what they did for a living. In Rome, land was eventually owned mostly by the nobility (Patricians) through much of the empire. This leads naturally to feudalism. So Jews probably didn’t own land in Rome. they surely did in Judea when it was a Roman province, though.
Egypt’s land was also mostly owned by nobles, but also by the priests of Amun and other gods. But some small landholders did exist. But then, Egypt has a massively long recorded history of over two thousand years. So things changed.
@JohnSF:
Sort of like the Delaware Chancery courts, which is why Musk relented and bought twitter. They weren’t going to put up with his BS.
@Kathy: From my understanding, connection between Jews and the money business emerged in the late Middle Ages, coinciding with the collapse of feudalism and rise of capitalism.
There are a few possible antecedents to the stereotype, such as Judas selling Jesus out for thirty pieces of silver. But I don’t think that at the time that was incorporated into a larger narrative of Jews being greedy.
Jewish mafia? They come and put half a bagel in your bed when they are mad at you?
Steve
@CSK:
I’m second to none in my contempt for Trump, but I just don’t think history bears this out. If the past is a guide and he loses the nom he will angrily trash the nominee and those he blames in his rancid little brain. But he will eventually retreat and internally disassociate himself from anything having to do with failure.
The only thing that prevents me from putting my own money down on this is that it will be such a huge failure in everyone’s eyes that the press will never lose interest and forget about him for a while, which was always what enabled him in the past. Still, continuously talking about his failures has never been Trump’s MO in the past, however viciously he blamed his partners at the time.
@MarkedMan:
No, no. Trump wouldn’t see it as a failure on his part. He’d see himself as the victim of ingrates. He even said he was a victim the night he announced his candidacy.
@de stijl: “Test”
Congratulations — you passed!