Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, March 27, 2025
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55 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former 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
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BlueSky.
Foreign Spies to Team Trump:
@Sleeping Dog:
Well, that was scathing.
@Sleeping Dog: Yep. I’ve been yelling about this since DOGE started its rampage, which ALSO weakens our defenses.
These people don’t know what they are doing and the people who voted for them don’t understand what’s at stake. It’s a very dangerous combination.
@Sleeping Dog:
Well, that’s certainly something.
It’s too bad that most ppl who support this administration can’t bother to understand what’s could be the cost of all of this.
When Dear Wife and I got back home from India, she said to me no more traveling for a while. I agreed with those sentiments.
Guess what? DW learned over a month ago that her baby sister is going to Istanbul at Easter and now my lovely Filipina wife has changed her mind and wantsUS to make that trip also.
I’d like to see Istanbul but not right now. Since I don’t have the remotest Istanbul set story idea, a trip there is going to be interesting but tiring and non-productive also. Nevertheless DW wants me to book seats on the same flight her sister is traveling on. I’m hoping all that Turkish Airlines plane’s business and 1st class seats are booked.
Other stuff
DW and I gave our almost 18 year old kitty to our 89 year neighbor Miriam. Miriam, who adores Misay, took care of our cat when we traveled to Australia and New Zealand last year and India this year. Miriam, whose own cat died about a year and a half ago, was lonely and frequently visiting to see how our kitty was doing. With me and DW’s extensive travel plans, we regrettably decided to let Misay be adopted. She’ll be in good hands but I will miss her.
From Jan 1 2015 to Jan 2024 I self-published operating as an S corp. Beginning last year I went traditional publishing. My s corp still operated for almost 6 months of 2024 before all my books were taken over. I miss the days I would wake up and check book sales and KDP reads.
March 15th every year is the deadline day for filing* an S corp’s tax return. The original plan was to shudder my S corp and dissolve the corporation between 3-15 and April 30 when the Florida annual report was due. I have chosen not to. Later or more probably sooner, I’m going to have a literary estate created. The S corp could be useful for that. I really need to get together with a attorney experienced with all of this. That probably won’t happen till I get back from Istanbul.
April 1st marks the 11th anniversary of me selling books to make a living. Due to having a small internet following, I made $300 that first month. I never expected to be where I am now. Where will I be in another 11 years? I’m betting six feet under.
Yesterday I watched a 1993 Law & Order episode with Daniel Dae Kim in it and today’s viewing is a late 1960’s episode of ‘The FBI’ with Jeff Bridges in it.
I’m still writing, playing strat-o-matic baseball, and driving my wife nuts.
*- Besides book writing and working as a nurse/radiology technician, I did seasonal tax work for many years. Learning how to do a 1120-S isn’t really very hard.
How Signal works:
“JPG”
(A discussion of how the relevant Signal chat was poorly run from an OPSEC view).
The blame game in the Signal fiasco is spreading faster than an Outback wildfire. The big question is, Will Waltz be the sole fall guy or is Alky Pete Hegseth in danger?
@SC_Birdflyte:
Diverting attention from the rest of the current news, tariffs etc.
A window into how the Trump regime functions, operates, who the players are and their status etc.
First it was Rodrigo Duterte.
Now Jair Bolsonaro.
Is this a hopeful pattern? Can other authoritarians/political criminals be next?
@Paul L.: The use of qualified immunity should be greatly restricted.
Judge: No qualified immunity for Harris County jail deputies in lawsuit over inmate’s diabetes death
@Paul L.:
Good question, what is your analysis?
There’s a reason it is called qualified immunity. It is not *immunity* per se; it shields police (and other political subdivision employees) from personal liability if they make a mistake on the job UNLESS there is the kind of gross negligence or recklessness that, in essence, puts the conduct outside the scope of the job. E.g., it isn’t a cop’s “job” to beat a prisoner senseless (or kneel on his neck for 9 minutes), and doing so lifts that QUALIFIED immunity shield.
NATO clarifies comments that four missing US soldiers had died during training in Lithuania
Not much news on this but sounds tragic.
On the other hand…
Really?
Here’s a defense for the Signal blunder:
It wasn’t Waltz who added a journalist to the super-secret, unclassified war planning, it was one of the Russian hackers who’ve broken into his phone.
See? they’re all completely innocent!
@Kathy: Reminds me of the old legal defense: I’m not guilty because I wasn’t there, and if I was there it wasn’t trespassing because I was invited; and I never hit the guy because I wasn’t there, but if I did, it was self defense. Can I go now?
@Scott: It’s difficult to brief Trump on things like missing soldiers because all of the briefings have to be converted to comic book form, and they must include positive, uplifting media references to his name on every page.
These things take time.
Trump announces 25% tariffs on all foreign-made vehicles, certain auto parts
So the Democratic Party message should be: “President Trump raises taxes on hardworking Americans to fund tax cuts for the wealthy”. No more, no less. But no, we’ll get arcane (but accurate) messages on trade, protections, economics, etc.
I would suggest that this Red Decoder Screen is at least as secure as Signal and won’t bust the budget much to the approval of President Musk and First Lady Donalda.
$5 Pack of 8.
I have taken to placing call to my federal legislators twice or three times a week to file complaints against my representatives. (Actually call each of my reps three offices)
Today’s complaint is that my rep is allowing Trump to usurp legislative prerogatives, by not objecting to the EO on voter registration. By the EO the executive has proscribed HIS rules for the states to conduct voter registrations, and ordered penalties for noncompliance. Noncompliance will adversely impact the state and its residents.
Going to town halls, (nothing scheduled for the next six months) is ineffective. Street protests require significant coordination. But tying up the reps personnel and phone lines just might get the message across that this constituent is very angry.
How Elon Musk’s SpaceX Secretly Allows Investment From China
@Paul L.: As usual, you seem to believe you’ve made a point without actually expressing the point you’re trying to make. Zadeh is a convoluted case on qualified immunity, so much so that the proudly Federalist Society Judge Willett felt the need to express his discomfort with finding that qualified immunity did in fact shield Texas Medical Board investigators who did a warrantless search of Dr. Zadeh’s medical records, even though that search violated the 4th amendment. The 5th Circuit’s decision is part of a muddled federal court approach to qualified immunity that the Supreme Court has contributed to, and will eventually have to sort out. Willett’s quote would lead some to believe that he had dissented in Zadeh, but he didn’t. But of course you already knew that. Didn’t you?
@Mister Bluster: I read this and thought of you.
A University, a Rural Town and Their Fight to Survive Trump’s War on Higher Education
It is a informative long form article that we don’t get very often.
Chris Pappas will run for open NH Senate seat.
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/27/chris-pappas-new-hampshire-senate
Currently 1st district congress critter (district is +2 R), considered a moderate on most issues and gets a lot of support from small business owners. Gay and supportive of social justice initiatives but not a leader, generally his positions conform to the center of NH politics. He’ll be tough to beat in the general and it will take an R with the recognition. and base of a Sununu or Ayote. (current Gov) to beat him.
@Sleeping Dog:
Apparently it’s widespread…
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/pete-hegseth-mike-waltz-tulsi-gabbard-private-data-and-passwords-of-senior-u-s-security-officials-found-online-a-14221f90-e5c2-48e5-bc63-10b705521fb7
Yes, the administration is a security shitshow, no two ways about it. Be prepared for future episodes. Best bet for the next big security scandal, will be the Starlink that’s been installed over the WH. If Ruskies and/or the Chinese haven’t hacked Starlink already, they are now working on it. We could be lucky and some enterprising 16 yo might do it first and then brag about it on tik toc
I saw the post on proving citizenship and voting pretty late last night, so I wanted to share this here. There was discussion about what it takes to obtain identity documents. When I lost all my documents in a house fire several years ago, I was able to replace them all online. I had to verify my identity by answering questions about previous addresses, employment, and finances. My documents were then mailed to me.
I did have to go in person to replace my daughter’s documents because as a minor, she didn’t have a work/life/financial history to verify. To verify her identity, the various agencies accepted proof of my identity plus school and medical records for my daughter.
Large language AI bots are getting out of hand.
It’s one thing to have an unobtrusive Copilot button or Aria icon in Edge and Opera. it’s a different one to have small popups and other nagware urging use of the AI agent in Acrobat. and the latest update of Whatsapp* has an “Ask Meta AI icon next to the new message icon.
Granted these bots might be useful summarizing a document, in the case of Acrobat, but do they have to be so pushy? and if you need help composing messages in a chat app, you must be among the Signal Gang of incompetents.
*I don’t like it, but it’s the message app everyone in the office uses.
@Monala: I should add that the one identity document I didn’t lose was my driver’s license. Just a few weeks earlier, my daughter had encouraged me to put my license inside my phone case, so I’d always have it with me. When we escaped the fire, we only had enough time to grab our phones. I can’t imagine how difficult it would have been in those early days if I didn’t have my license with me. One of the first things I did was went to the bank to get a new debit and credit card. I was then able to rent a car and get us a hotel room.
Welp, at least one guy who knows more than I do likes the whole “Deep State” conspiracy theory behind Signalgate.
@Scott:..SIU-Home of the Dawgs…
Thanks for the plug!
As I’m sure I have mentioned in the past I arrived in Carbondale in 1968 to attend SIU and finish college. After five more years of allegedly attending classes I dropped out with no degree other than a major in Sex and Drugs and a minor in Rock and Roll.
Fifty seven years later I still live in Southern Illinois about four miles south of the SIU campus in Makanda Township.
If I could I would conjure up a Wizard who would entice about 10,000 High School graduates to attend SIU for the Fall semester 2025. Fall semester 2024 saw an increase in enrollment to 11,790. A 3.8% increase over Fall semester of 2023.
I have never met Molly Parker although I am familiar with her reporting.
Point of information. The photo captioned:
“A mix of empty businesses and city buildings seen in a window reflection in downtown Carbondale. The university is the largest employer in the region.”
was shot from inside a storefront recently vacated by Phoenix Cycles. Phoenix Cycles did not go out of business. It relocated to another downtown storefront nearby.
Flight bookings between Canada and the US are down 70%
In the future, scholars will argue about the cause for nanoseconds.
@Jay L Gischer:
“Maybe not”
More at the link
@Jay L Gischer:
Way to complicated. Walz met Goldberg publically at least once, at an event that Goldberg acted as host. There are pictures of the them together. Walz as a congress critter on the intelligence beat and Goldberg a reporter on intelligence matters exchange info. How Goldberg got invited to the Houthi group is another question.
Perhaps it was that fellow on the grassy knoll.
@Sleeping Dog: Perhaps you missed the jocular discussion yesterday of “maybe this was some NSA hacker who hacked Walz’ phone and added JG that way, just to make the point” I still think that is highly, highly unlikely.
Walz is clearly completely befuddled by this. And of course, Laura Ingraham roasted him for even having JG’s contact info.
Meanwhile, the whole “we’re gonna brief Elon Musk on war plans against China” thing was clearly leaked by someone in the Pentagon. There is no other explanation.
Wait-a-minute. Wasn’t the election a “mandate?”
The myth of a nationally self-contained manufacturing economy gets a shot at the big time. Welcome back to the 1950’s! Now if we could just find a war somewhere, or some place to invade.
@Rob1:
She’s described in the article as “former congresswoman,” if so that’s already an empty seat. Me suspects that AP will issue a correction.
Ah the Times get’s it right. She gave up her leadership and committee assignments but didn’t resign
@Sleeping Dog: @Jay L Gischer: Could we start exiting more closely to avoid mixing “Walz” and “Waltz?”
@Rob1: I’m waiting for a Five year plan or a Great Leap Forward from this administration. Nothing better than a centrally planned economy.
@just nutha: Fair point!
@charontwo: Yes, the Trump administration is bombing Yemen, but it’s really all Jeffrey Goldberg’s fault because he wrote about the important story he was pulled into and not about what this substacker wants him to write about.
@Scott:
Depressingly accurate.
Democrats are very poor at messaging, and … they let Republicans define them at every turn.
@Kathy:
One thing AI does seem to have been very useful for is improving the performance of OCR software for digitizing rather complex text into PDFs with “text behind image”.
We do quite a bit of this with old books and journals not available in native electronic form.
About a dozen years ago the performance was very patchy, and involved a lot of manual editing and verification effort.
The current versions with algorithms trained by AI a massive more effective at the task
@Scott:
Looking at the pics, another case of “Never test the depth of water with your vehicle.” People die every year assuming that pond over the “road” has to, it just HAS to, be shallow.
“Greenland visit cancelled after locals refuse to welcome Usha Vance
The US Second Lady had been due to spend several days in Greenland on a ‘cultural visit.’
Danish broadcaster TV2 has reported that part of Mrs Vance’s visit to the capital of Nuuk was cancelled after US representatives failed to find any locals who wanted to greet the Second Lady.”
So, how will the MAGA spin this? Seems pretty obvious that Greenland doesn’t want to “become” part of the US.
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/greenland-visit-cancelled-after-locals-refuse-to-welcome-usha-vance-391306/
So the shark has been jumped.
Bondi actually went to, “but her emails!!!”
Un-flippin-believable.
@JohnSF:
I did some OCR the other day on a document. I wish I could say how it turned out, but just as I was done, we got the same document in the original Word format.
@wr:
I took a much different read as the point of the piece, I read it as an explanation of how and why Goldberg was deliberately read into being a part of and thus privy to the Signal conversation.
ETA: And, also, that there was no “whistleblowing” by some hypothetical “Deep State,” public revelation of the conversation was unintended by the administration.
@Rob1: Indeed it was. Sadly for your side, someone in the Trump circle has figured out that eroding the House majority also erodes the strength of the “mandate.” Can’t win ’em all.
@Daryl: That is insane. Just nuts. Good lord that is some chutzpah.
@Min:
Easy, emphasize how rude it is for people to refuse to accept a “good will tour”-ist.
@Jen:
It’s a desperation ploy.
@Daryl: I have the utmost respect for everyone in the room who did not groan, but wanted to.
@Min:
Damn. Now we’re gonna invade for sure.
@Rob1: Maybe not. They can try saying that they didn’t believe that Trump would send a [racial epithet, deleted]. That could work.