Welcome to September Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Friday, September 1, 2023
·
42 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
Consider my Fruede to be thoroughly schadened:
Hahahahaha….. https://www.ksl.com/article/50721031/police-stop-nebraska-man-for-bucking-the-law-with-a-bull-riding-shotgun-in-his-car
@OzarkHillbilly: I know we’ve discussed this ad nauseum, but in reading those recriminations (and this isn’t directed at you, just at those quoted in the article), I still feel the need to point out that Rudy was always an overrated racist jerk whose glowing reputation was based on fawning media coverage creating a myth around him that was never earned. Blaming Trump for his downfall lets him off the hook too easily. The effects of alcohol, age-related cognitive decline, and the desperation of a has-been trying to stay relevant, help explain why his bad tendencies that were always there became more visible to those who previously refused to see them.
Donald Trump didn’t happen to Rudy. Rudy happened to Rudy.
One other point I’d make about Rudy is that one of the things he shares with Trump was a capacity to latch onto something new in order to save a career in tail-spin. When Rudy became mayor, he was able to capitalize on the national hysteria over crime, and in that environment the racist undercurrent played well both nationally as well as in NYC. By the late ’90s, however, he became mired in scandal and his popularity dropped; it was why he never entered the 2000 Senate race against Hillary Clinton, where early on he was seen as an overwhelming favorite. The way he went on to use 9/11 to his advantage wasn’t how he built his lofty reputation, it was how he saved it.
@Kylopod: I’ll disagree to a small extent. Rudy is as he has always been, but associating himself with trump is the thing that made obvious how small and hollow a man he is.
In case you have anything left in the SCOTUS outrage tank, Clarence Thomas believes that filing deadlines and other legal niceties apply only to thee, not he.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/clarence-thomas-ethics-worst-supreme-court-votes.html
Today in news from Nebraska: US driver pulled over with huge African bull riding shotgun in car
Converted vehicle stopped in Nebraska with gigantic-horned Watusi bovine called Howdy Doody as passenger
@Kylopod:
Don’t count out self-reinforcing relationships. Benito thrives by sacrificing others on the altar of his ego. Rudy accepted the invitation.
Man who shot Black teenager Ralph Yarl must stand trial, Missouri judge rules
Seeing as Lester was never threatened, I really don’t see how that is going to work.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh, his lawyers will claim he felt threatened, and that’s really all that counts.
If this succeeds, next we’ll see some poor black person shot dead on the street from a distance, because some bigot felt threatened by their presence. Than it will be transwomen, gay men, immigrants, etc. And when a wingnut actually threatens someone with deadly force, and gets killed in legitimate self defense, the outrage from the MAGAs will be heard clear across the galaxy.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Its worked in other states. Kind of like the cop defense, that they felt threatened, sometimes the court or jury buys it.
I assume this is about the same scandal I posted about a few days ago:
https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/1697614800581193965
“MotherJones”
Link I posted earlier:
“Yastreblyansky”
Snip
I just finished a book by Masha Gessen on how Russia reverted to totalitarianism. It’s a narrative history centered on a handful of people, two of whom are well known, and the overall developments that took place between the mid-80s to the mid 2010s. The title is The Future is History.
I fund it very illuminating, and very depressing. Worse yet, there are some parallels to developments in the US, specifically targeting sexual and other minorities as the source of all problems.
Fortunately there are differences as well. For one thing, Russia has a more homogeneous political culture, and has for ages (well before communism, too). This means widespread targeting and abuse of trans and non-binary people finds no purchase in more liberal areas of the country. Federalism helps, too, as making nationwide bans on things like abortion or gender affirming care is all but impossible.
From the David Corn/MJ piece linked above:
https://twitter.com/AWeissmann_/status/1697359668954153168
There’s this notion floating about that intelligent beings arising many billions of years from now won’t be able to deduce the Big Bang, as much of the evidence for it will have vanished or become to diffuse.
This got me thinking whether in the future something along these lines might take place on Earth. Suppose a long, long, long, long, very long time from now, billions of years, humans are gone (for whatever reason), and eventually another species achieves intelligence. Would they be able to tell the age of the Earth?
After all, we largely made use of uranium, due to its long half life, to determine the age of our planet. But what about in the future?
Well, U-238, which makes up about 99.3% of all uranium, has a half life of around 4 billion years (that’s four thousand million years, so there’s no confusion). this means in 16 billion years there will be only 1/16 as much uranium 238 as there is now, along with decay products and the decay products of some of the decay products.
So, maybe they could tell by then the Earth is about 20 billion years old.
Should this world last so long. I can’t recall offhand the estimates of the Sun’s lifespan.
https://twitter.com/BrendanKeefe/status/1697307180355965200
I just ran across this quote in a piece about Joan Didion, who was engaging with (reporting?) Central American politics, I think in the 70’s.
Wow, that sounds like a primary in the US. Maybe more the R primary, but I wouldn’t exclude a D primary without an incumbent.
@Kylopod: Don’t know if you ever read Steve Gilliard over at The News Blog, but as a native New Yorker he gave some of the wittiest and trenchant analyses of Mr. 9-1-1 around.
@Kathy: My similar worry is more short term. If we manage to destroy civilization any remnant that tries to rebuild will have no useable stocks of metal ores or fossil fuels. They’d have to rely on scrap metal to develop any technology. They’d have to rely on renewables for fuel.
@gVOR10:
It largely depends on when and how civilization collapses.
If by massive nuclear war, for instance, then getting the richer sources of metals, concrete, and knowledge, among other things, will be deadly for several decades, if not much longer.
If by supervolcano, mass coronal ejection, supernova irradiation, asteroid collision, deadly pathogen, then the outlook is better.
As to fuel, there will be plenty of trees and too few humans. They make reasonable fuel. Some coal should still be available as remnants no longer profitable at strip mines.
Stories of a civilizational collapse, though, are far more interesting than ones about rebuilding.
If I had even a smidgen of sympathy for Trump I’d feel sorry for him. As it is…
http://www.axios.com/2023/09/01/trump-loyal-network-pen-pals-notes
@Kathy:
Humans make terrible fuel. I don’t think this Planet Of The Trees scenario is going to pan out, plus there’s a shortage.
@Sleeping Dog: I know it has. I still don’t see how it can possibly work. If I was on the jury, it wouldn’t.
@CSK:
He comes across as a pervert who spends all his days masturbating his ego.
@Gustopher:
The trees would have to render and refine the humans first. They could develop means to extract a wealth of trace elements, too, like potassium, calcium, sodium, iron, etc. And what remains can be used as fertilizer. Zero waste.
@Kathy:
Oh, definitely. But what a job for his loyal aides, though. Imagine having to spend your days massaging the ego and catering to the insecurities of a physically and mentally decrepit badly aging oaf. I wonder if they roll their eyes and snicker behind his back.
@CSK:
what makes you assume his aides are not as pathological as he is?
@OzarkHillbilly: You know Missouri better than I do. Will a jury find in favor of: a wounded black kid or an old white man who was “standing his ground?”
@Kathy:
Well, I could reply that that would be impossible on the grounds that no one’s more pathological than The Former Guy.
I think a few of them are whacked as badly as he is. Liz Harrington, for one. Others probably stick with him because they can’t find employment elsewhere.
@gVOR10: I take a less dim (well, sort of) view in the event that we really destroy civilization–a daunting task, even for us. The first few hundred years of survivors will be so focused on merely living at all, that they won’t be thinking past bronze age or iron age technologies.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Old white man shoots young black man, of course the old white man was scared, wouldn’t you be? It’ll only take one on the jury that harbors that belief.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Can we get 12 of you for the jury? (In a criminal trial it will only take one “not you,” remember.)
ETA: And in a tort claim, Yarl will still need 7 or 8 of “you.”
@CSK:
Of course. My mistake.
@Kathy: Carcasses already supply most of the provision for non-human parasites now. The abundance of riches following the end of civilization will be taxing for parasites at first, but they will rise to the occasion. Flora will follow.
@gVOR10:
Actually, the scrap metal would make vastly superior (albeit distributed) resource of metals to a lot of ore bodies, IIRC.
And at least in the UK there a still a lot of relatively easily accessible coal and peat deposits that have been shut down for environmental reasons or because they can’t compete with gas and imported open-cast coal.
Anyway, give it a couple of tens of millions of years, and high CO2 hot-house conditions, and our intelligent rabbit successors will have plenty of new fossil fuels to play with.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Being as it’s KC, they just might favor the innocent black kid who knocked on the wrong door.
@Kathy:
I think some eggheads (anyone smarter than myself might do) should contemplate the conditioning presented by Old Testament doctrine. Particularly the aspect of that a God, above all, demands to be worshiped. Trump is presenting a demand to be worshiped in perhaps the way the Christian fundis have been conditioned to react positively towards, unapologetically.
Just a thought…
@Just nutha ignint cracker: He would never get a verdict of “innocent” out of any jury I was on. Bankrupting the gutless pos thru another trial and endless legal fees is something at least. I may not be able to vote 12 times but I can still cost him a bunch more money with a hung jury. I hope.
No, and I am an old, arthritic, bursitic, copd’d white man who lives in the country. I’m just not a f’n coward.
True story: Not long ago I saw a car parked at the top of my driveway. Couldn’t tell much but that it was a private vehicle. I could hear a voice as someone was talking on their phone. This was right after this kid got shot and the women in NY was killed for stopping at the wrong driveway to turn around.
I walked up my drive (WITHOUT A F’N GUN DAWG F’N DAMMIT!!!!) to see what was up and if I could direct them to where they were trying to go. Turned out it was a 30 yo black woman with an Amazon package for me who was absolutely terrified to drive down my drive and deliver the package and her dispatcher was telling her, “Don’t worry about it.”. Me? I could not blame her.
I know STL. The first 40 yrs of my life were pretty much defined by those streets. A black woman from N STL or the near south side in Washington Co was as close to an alien world as one could get. Her fear was beyond my ability to assuage.
I kept telling her, “Your safe here. Here, you are OK. Nobody is going to fuck with you in my drive. I’ve got you. You’re OK…..” And on and on and on. Tears are running down her face and the rage is rising up with in me. I wanted to give her a hug, but… Yeah, not then, not in that situation.
I am still pissed off. The last time I had to deal with that level of fear in another person was 30 yrs ago and there were dead people lying in the street.
This doesn’t have to be.
@dazedandconfused:
Now that is a very interesting idea.
@OzarkHillbilly: I bow to your wisdom on Missouri. As I said, I don’t know given that I don’t live there.
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve never seen a jury vote someone innocent that I can recall.
ETA: The level of fear you were seeing in her is unacceptable; I will agree. Sadly, I have no control over that issue, either.
@dazedandconfused:
They already had a golden idol at a CPAC. Like good Christians faithfully obedient to the ten commandments should.