Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, September 29, 2025
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22 comments
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).
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How odd. The Trump Administration, including Kash Patel and the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Facebook senators (like Ted Cruz), right wing pundits and influencers, Fox News, etc. are not out screaming about the politics of the LDS Church shooter. Hmmm….
And silent about the Southport NC shooter…
@Scott: I had a very odd experience yesterday helping a neighbor work cattle. All people present are die-hard MAGA, with the exception of me. When the breaking news first hit, high-level outrage. By the time we got done and were sitting down to eat, more news about the “politics” and history of both the boat shooter and the church shooter was coming out. Everybody stopped talking about it. Like…..it just didn’t happen. Not news anymore. Talk about anything but that.
@Scott: There is a photo of a full size pickup truck with large American flags mounted in the bed of the truck in coverage. It’s nosed into the church. Captions I’ve seen don’t positively id it as the shooter’s truck but pickup trucks with big flags in the bed generally are maga centric.
As I noted a few days ago, although H1B visas get the most attention in tech, they are used in the medical field too.
Medical Groups Warn Against Visa Fees for Foreign Doctors
Between this, the Medicaid cuts, and the efforts to upend the ACA, along with huge tariffs on pharmaceuticals, I really do wonder how long our healthcare system will keep its head above water.
Both shooters were US military veterans. Are we failing to address the mental health needs of these people? Their mental health was adequate to allow induction and service which included tours in combat zones. They weren’t exposed to college professors. Perhaps a period of post combat recovery would help? We don’t need to create more Lee Harvey Oswald or Charles Whitman types.
@Jen:
He’s also making noise about tariffs on movies again.
Since taxing 100% of the box office take would kill movies, the one thing that would even remotely make any kind of sense would be to implement the tariff tax as 100% of the cost of the movie.
I’m confident Hollywood’s most creative people, the accountants, can show all their movies cost $1 to make.
Carried over from the last posting late Sunday ICYMI,
QAnon Shaman says he’s rightful president, sues Trump for $40 trillion
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/phoenix-qanon-shaman-files-40-trillion-lawsuit-against-trump-22763479
The TRVTH is out there? Really out there.
When you’ve lost the QANON shaman…
Good for Moldova turning another Russian election interference attempt around on itself. The pro EU team won despite them. In fact, the EU probably gained votes because errybody knew about the shenanigans and that motivated turnout.
Our better angels still got game.
My hope for today.
I hope that Schumer and Jeffries play hardball today in their meeting with Trump and company.
Know those two I don’t have much hope. They are not Reid and Pelosi.
Just finished listening to today’s The Daily. Big Tech Told Kids to Code. The Jobs Didn’t Follow.
Besides being depressing about broken promises, hopes and dreams, I have more questions. Do we have a generalized society problem about rate and speed of change that young people are not going to keep up with because that is the nature of human beings? (I am thinking way back to the premise of the book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler). Should kids these days avoid being specialized in their education so they are not trapped in a career that is no longer valid? What is the responsibility of the government, business, education system in failing to meet the needs? Of course they are no more prescient about that future than anyone else.
My young adult children are set on their career courses and seem to be thriving. How can I throw some future protection to them?
Sigh.
@Slugger:
Yes.
And the new “Warrior mentality” is going to make it worse. Warriors do not seek mental health services, because warriors are big and strong.
Several states and even the VA have been putting a lot of resources into reducing veteran homelessness and that’s actually having some effects, so there’s that — a widespread agreement that we need to be doing more.
I also wish that we were treating non-veteran homelessness as seriously and effectively. But I suppose if we went down that path it would lead to UBI and socialism.
Why was I so surprised the NFL announced Bad Bunny for the Super Bowl half-time? A good surprise, but BB is not known for being shy about advocating basic human rights and that doesn’t go over well with 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
If this goes by unchallenged by the usual suspects, I will be nonplussed.
For the past few months I’ve been hearing about pirating streaming services.
I’m not interested in doing that, as the rates are mostly reasonable and it’s easy to cancel and resubscribe anyway. But I’m curious how it works and what becomes available.
All I’ve heard so far is it requires an Amazon Fire TV stick.
Does anyone know anything more, or of a website that explains it?
@Jax:
But why tho?
Mormon church gunman was marine ‘who supported Trump’ (The Telegraph)
Ah, yes. The politics of a madman matters only matters when Trump, Bondi, and Patel can frame it as transgender ideology radical woke leftism or whatever.
@Slugger:
I don’t think our voting in reckless DOGE mass layoffs and the gutting of public healthcare is a positive indicator here.
@Jen: Jen-My group needed to hire several H1B staff. There weren’t other people to hire unless we offered a lot more pay and we were already at 60th-70th percentile in pay. We, and our hospitals, would have had to cut services or hire the dregs the recruiters were offering us like the guy who hadn’t been practicing medicine for the last 10 years, he was raising cattle, but was sure he could work in our level one trauma care unit and ICUs. This increase in costs for an H1B employee wouldn’t lead us to hire more Americans, it would just increase costs.
Steve
@DK:
I think Jax was being sardonic or faux-innocent in her query.
@DK:
I think Jax was being sardonic or faux-innocent in her query.
@DK:
I think Jax was being sardonic or faux-innocent in her query.
@Slugger:
@DK:
@Gustopher:
It may relate to “military culture” and lack of support for alienated veterans.
In this context though, I also think of the vast numbers of militery veterans in the UK and US after WW1 and WW2.
I never considered it growing up, but on later reflection, more than half the persons of my fathers and grandfathers generations that I knew were veterans, and not infrequently army close-combat veterans.
Perhaps it was less a problem because they were not, by and large, inculcated with any “warrior ethos”?
And also because the experience was so common that they had large numbers of people with similar experiences that they could talk to about it, if they needed to?
Whereas a peacetime professional military is rather more separated from common experience?
@DK: It was like witnessing in person the real-time memory-holing of right wing violence. When the news first broke, there were many angry remarks about “transgender furry left wing radicals”, then by dinner, when the news was reporting both men were veterans and showing pics of the one guys house with MAGA merch in front….it was so very strange to witness.
@Jax: Ha! Cognitive dissonance in real time.
@DK: Amongst people I know and like in real life. It was like the Eye of Sauron turned on and they became Orc’s. I don’t know how else to explain it.
I also don’t know how these people, my ride or die people with my cattle, can be so brainwashed. Or how they’re gonna get out of it, when the grifting stops. Like….it’s gonna hurt.
But it’s going to have to hurt. They voted for this particular stove, now they can touch it.