Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, October 30, 2025
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53 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.
The headline of the day- UK newspaper apologizes for fake De Blasio interview criticizing Mamdani
Leaked memo details National Guard plan for a ‘quick reaction force’ in US cities
Military lawyers arrive to take bench in immigration courtrooms across US
Billboards outside US Southern Command urge troops not to ‘break the law’ in Caribbean strikes
Interesting piece of journalism.
The First 284 Days
@Scott: Many, if not all, of the newly minted immigration judges are JAGs deemed troublesome by Whiskey Pete…military lawyers who dared to mention the illegality of blowing up civilian boats in international waters. The inadvertent good in this move is the Trump Adm has accidentally acknowledged the longstanding dire need for more immigration judges.
AND – Whiskey Pete’s demand for National Guards in all states to establish QRFs by January strongly suggests President Miller-Vought’s agenda includes even MORE provocation for the 2026 midterms. They are not being very subtle about their yearning for the Insurrection Act to give their puppet, Grandpa Goofy, even more power.
@Charley in Cleveland: I wonder how being an immigration judge is going to affect the JAG officer’s performance reports. They will have to get input from DHS maybe? Will their performance reports be tainted if they don’t toe the DHS line?
Pretty sure this is not what they sign up for.
@Bill Jempty: It was not a fake de Blasio interview. It was a very real interview with Bill DeBlasio, who just happens to not be Bill de Blasio.
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/29/2025/british-newspaper-spoke-to-the-wrong-deblasio-not-an-imposter
I may have overquoted this tiny article. It’s so hard to cut things out, though, as it is so beautiful.
Bill DeBlasio is a hoot and a half. 1.5 hoots, for those who prefer the decimal system. 2.4 metric hoots.
I didn’t know that JD Vance studied under David Duke:
Appearing on a right-wing New York Post columnist’s podcast, Vice President JD Vance spent part of the hour-long episode on immigration, casting aside traditional notions of the American cultural melting pot.
Vance agreed with host Miranda Divine when she said it “creates division and hatred” for people of other cultural backgrounds to move into a neighborhood after he gave an example in which “20 people” price out U.S. citizens by moving into “a three-bedroom house.”
He went on to add: “It is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’ And the fact that we had an immigration system that actually promoted that division is a real, real disgrace.”
Me: JD Vance, I don’t want to live next to a stinking bigot like you!
What the heck is going on with Amazon?
Over the last week
I tried to get my SIL a gift card using my Amazon cc.
Amazon emailed me saying- We’ve noticed unusual payment activity and asked for me to verify my account
When I didn’ do it fast enough (I was traveling home from Italy), Amazon suspended my account. N
I sent Amazon copies of ID they requested. 24 hours later or last Sunday morning, my account was reinstated. My gift card order was cancelled however.
I bought a medical supply I regularly used and re-ordered the gift card.
Medical supply was delivered. As for the gift card it says delivery in 1 hour
4 days later my order page still says delivery in one hour.
On Monday Amazon again asked me to verify my identity and that I did quickly.
So what happens today when I try buying an ebook? I can’t. ‘Your account access is limited
We have noticed unusual activity on your account. To place order, verify account. If completed, see verification status. ‘
What the heck is going on with Amazon?
@Bill Jempty:
Are you using a VPN? Because that’s when I have trouble with Amazon log-in.
@Bill Jempty: I’m sure the Amazon AI can resolve it for you.
More AI discussion.
A first look at IBM’s new large language model that’s fine-tuned for defense applications
Update on the Gaza ceasefire: Hamas still clinging to power, Israel still honoring the ceasefire. . . in the periods of time between bombing runs.
I see that Israel currently occupies about 50% of Gaza. And I note that Jared Kushner, the ‘brains’ behind this deal, thinks Israel should be able to go ahead and start re-developing that 50%. Let’s repeat that: Israel, under IDF protection, would be allowed to start building in a space completely enveloping an even smaller Arab Gaza. What would we call the people building and living in captive Gaza? Why, settlers, of course.
Israel has all of its living hostages back and half of Gaza, and all it had to do was not occupy Gaza City, which no one in the IDF wanted to do anyway. And Hamas continues to rule over an even smaller collection of rubble. Rubble which continues to be bounced by new Israeli air raids.
Warm up that Nobel Peace Prize, this is going great.
@Bill Jempty:
This year I had a “a card scam” that used Amazon to make false charges. It went like this: we were traveling to the East Coast. I used a card that I reserve for travel. Someone somewhere on that trip grabbed the card data. They first opened an Amazon Prime membership about 3 months after the trip, I believe as a test, and waited. Then they ran a charge for a larger purchase. Then another. Then another. I missed the transactions because after the trip, I paid my own charges and put the card away. It did not come to my attention until I received a past due notice, with late fees of course. The credit card company was fairly responsive in reversing the charges but it was a bit of a process getting the fees/interest reversed. I suspect this may be a common M.O. that Amazon and our banks are up against.
@Scott: The large majority, 70%-80% of JAGs do not make a career out of the military. They join for experience and then mostly leave to work in government with a smaller percentage going into private practice. My bet is that there will be some screening so that anyone suspected of immigration sympathy will not be sent. I think that for some JAGs this will an annoyance but they planned on leaving anyway. For others, it will be chance to display their strong support for Hegseth/Trump by issuing nothing but denials. (For those who never were in the military politics is pretty important in the upper officer ranks.)
Steve
@Scott:
I wonder if Amazon’s Ai is programmed to preach the virtues of monopoly.
Speaking of AI, what if we’re at the UNIVAC stage of LLM/generative AI?
Consider, the first commercial computers, like UNIVAC, were huge, expensive, limited, and hard to use (the very earliest models, including the progenitor ENIAC, don’t even have screens).
So, huge, look at the monstrously sized data centers. Expensive, how much per data center? Limited, refer to your own experience.
Hard to use would seem not to follow, but IMO it does. A lot of what I do on my PC for work is hard to describe verbally. Even when someone tells me what they want me to do in an excel sheet, they’ll often quickly draw a sample table, not to mention make lots of hand gestures to indicate what goes where. Try verbalizing all that so the AI will do the table as requested. I’d rather do it myself.
But getting the LLM to do something is only a part of using it. Another part is what to do with the output. Most time, you can’t just make use of it as is. You’ll need to check it, or ask for modifications, or ask for corrections, or realize it’s not what you meant to get, etc. I’ve often thought the high profile “AI made up cases in legal brief” is as much a failure to check the work as of the LLM insistence in providing output.
At that, I don’t suppose UNIVAC ever told a user their program was brilliant and insightful and very much worth running.
@Michael Reynolds: Since coming home, I don’t remember having VPN on even once. When I was away, I did.
@steve222:
I suspect that’s what the administration is thinking, given that they’ve already fired so many immigration judges. From last week’s Inside Donald Trump’s Attack on Immigration Courts in the New Yorker,
Trump orders Pentagon to ‘immediately’ start testing nuclear weapons after three-decade embargo
NO(unnecessary) NO (incentivizes same) and NO(beyond overkill)
Calls to restart nuclear weapons tests stir dismay and debate among scientists
—
Because of course Heritage Foundation would —-
America Must Prepare to Test Nuclear Weapons
—
Trump joins other maximum leaders in their nuclear fetish because the only thing better than a public parade of their phallic symbol of power, is a flying exploding phallic display of power.
This is the test Trump described as a ‘very hard’ test. One he doesn’t think AOC or Jasmine Crockett could pass. Last night, after three drinks and a joint, and while waiting for melatonin to finally put me down for the night, I took the test. And here’s the thing: the test is so obviously easy that I feel ridiculous bragging that I aced it half drunk, stoned and sleepy.
If you have trouble with it, if you think it’s very hard, if you imagine that other people would struggle with it, and you are known to have been sober when you took it, you’re in the mental place where the Japanese PM would have to lead you by the hand as you wander around in a dementia funk.
@Rob1:
Fingers crossed for a return to above ground testing here in Nevada. We need some economic diversification. Also, the tests should be visible from the top floors of casino hotels – imagine the up-charges. They could have special Bomb Watch dinners in the Stratosphere revolving restaurant. And there must be a way to tie it in to F1.
@Rob1: Bear in mind that neither Russia nor China has tested nuclear weapons since the 90s. Only North Korea has.
@Michael Reynolds: Some photos:
The Reckless History Of U.S. Nuclear Testing, In 55 Unbelievable Photos
@Michael Reynolds:
I suggest a visit to the Atomic Testing Museum. There are photos of mushroom clouds as seen from the top of Vegas casinos at the time. Today’s taller buildings would make for better viewing.
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s a cognitive assessment test, not an IQ or other kind of intelligence test. Most healthy people in the world can pass it easily. Just as most sober people in the world would pass a sobriety test easily.
@Rob1:
@Scott:
It’s like when he babbled about reciprocal tariffs. “I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
There are three reasons to test nukes: 1) to see if they work (see the Trinity test), 2) to see what they do (lots such tests in the 40s and 50s), 3) to see if they still work (radioactive decay can affect their performance).
The first two are totally unnecessary. We know they work and what they do. The third can be very accurately replaced with simulations (albeit using supercomputers), and taking samples of the radioactive materials inside (I think the initiators and maybe tritium are the issue here, rather than the uranium and plutonium cores).
BTW, there’s a partial test ban treaty that restricts any tests of nukes underground. So, no glorious mushroom clouds to sell to the tourists in Vegas (despite my earlier comment).
The reasons for not testing above ground, underwater, or in space are rather obvious. fallout, fallout and water contamination, and EMP that will kill all satellites within range.
So it’s all pseudo-manly posturing. Mo different from a gorilla beating its chest, or a chimp throwing his fe… oh, never mind.
I love a big boomboom. Let’s light up some nukes! And let’s combine the testing with other policy objectives. Drop one on Venezuela; that will show those narcoterrorists. We are at war with them. Alternatively, drop one on Portland; there are five or six people in giant frog costumes in front of the ICE building every night!
Of course a nuke pop off would put the US on the same level as North Korea, and we have seen that Trump loves that country.
Here’s your bright economic news you can use:
When the economy, real estate market and my business were humming along it would take me close to a week from the time I ordered a title commitment to when it would show up in my inbox. A couple of years at the peak I was doing enough business on my own that I would get favorable speed on some things.
My business took a hit when a client sold their mortgage portfolio, so I lost some volume benefits. But now, I’m getting title commitments back in 24 hours. Real estate attorneys have also started acting like it’s 2008 again. I hate it.
Just finished the limited series Task on hbomax. Very good show. Mark Ruffalo is amazing.
Season 3 of The Diplomat is really enthralling. Great dialog. The creator, Debra Cahn, is a West Wing and Homeland alumni. Allison Janey and Bradley Whitford are President and First Husband, respectively.
Pretty sad state of affairs when a tv show’s writers display a greater understanding of how important diplomacy is to the safety and security of the world and how easy civilization can go south evenwith the best in charge. Shudder thinking how on a razor’s edge we are today.
@becca:
That comment on Janney and Whitford is a spoiler for those still watching seasons 1 and 2…
I’m on season 3, but streaming one ep per week. Today it’s ep. 3.
SPOILER ALERT!
Do you by the notion of the US ambassador instigating a vote of no confidence on the UK PM? No matter how big a douchebag he happens to be?
@Kathy:
Exactly. My doctor gave me one a few years ago. He apologized, saying it was part of the insurance company’s protocol at my age. I amused myself drawing Roman numerals and elaborate hands on the clock. I believe it’s only given if required by insurance or if there’s some indication of impairment. As the insurance thing probably doesn’t apply to the prez, draw your own conclusions.
So, turns out the VP of an idiot Taco is not allowed to be smarter than El Taco.
No link available. Asked about flying during the shutdown, here’s what Vance said “What I worry more about is that, if you have, let’s say a pilot who’s now missed two paychecks,…”
So, now airline pilots are employed by the federal government and are not receiving paychecks during the shutdown?
And on other news, Sam Altman wants to do an IPO with a valuation of $1 trillion (that’s one thousand billion dollars, for those keeping track of large numbers).
Not overlooking the fact that Open AI began life about a decade ago as a nonprofit, the revenue cited in the piece ($4.3 billion in the first half of 2025) does not strike me as justifying the very high valuation.
Maybe this is how the bubble will pop.
Not likely. Far more likely, investors will fight among themselves to overpay through the nose for a piece of the latest overhyped techs tock. Remember how high Netscape closed on its IPO in 1995? $58.25, which was well over twice the asking price.
So, more likely the Open AI IPO will only further inflate the bubble. Thus making the pop all the more spectacular, as Hollywood demands.
The “good” news is the AI bubble may pop and cause a major recession in time for the 2028 election. Before this year, I’d have thought this an unacceptably high price to rid the world of El Taco (he will run for a third term). Now it’s still that, because it won’t even rid of the troublesome Taco. Instead it will be what triggers martial law to secure the election.
@gVOR10: This cognitive evaluation is the test that conclusively determined that my brother was sinking into the dementia which eventually took him. I particularly remember his inability to draw clock faces.
@Joe: The younger generation will be drawing digital clock faces. So many cannot even read an analogue clock.
@Kathy:
Apologies to spoilering. That was inconsiderate.
As far as the possibility of meddling in foreign politics at the highest of levels, even if it’s an ambassador, sure I think it’s possible. John le Carre, son of a spook, said things were seldom what they seem, only what they want you to see.
@gVOR10:
Two more things:
1) It’s a diagnostic test. One may as well brag about acing a COVID test (I’ve done that as a joke).
2) I’ve not paid much attention this time. Last time he bragged about it on the 2020 campaign, repeating over and over “person, woman, man, camera, tv” as though that were impressive. Seeing as how the test has more sections, I wonder how he did drawing a clock or subtracting numbers.
BTW, those five words quoted above wouldn’t have been on a cognitive assessment test. The words are not supposed to be related in sound or meaning. So, he probably made them up.
As I noted earlier, it’s not about difficulty, but a measure of neurological health.
@becca:
I think I’d buy an ambassador meddling like that in a weak, maybe non-friendly country, and maybe several even have done so in real life. Meddling like that with the major ally, without even informing the president, strikes me as unthinkable.
But that’s just my opinion.
@Scott:
I can’t read an analog clock. Especially ones without numbers. Roman numerals are dicey. It’s just nonsense. I also don’t know left and right. I understand that they exist as concepts, but in reality, absolutely not. I also have trouble writing “p” “q”, “s” “g” & “d” “b”. Every single time I write a lowercase “b” I have to think “b for beth”.
I used to feel pretty stupid because this. One of wild things about having kids is seeing that some of your problems are genetic. Looking back at him, it’s likely my grandpa had the same set of issues. Unfortunately, he only had alcohol and bullshit masculinity to treat them and that cause a whole host of other issues for the family.
Relating to yesterday’s thread on the AI bubble (because it is):
Kathy:
I reacll an engineer telling me the reason is much of the cooling water gets either vented as steam, or discharged as hot water.
Condensing and/or cooling the water in the “external circuit” to recycle would iteslf require even more energy.
Similar to why large thermal power plants tend to have massive cooling towers that vent steam and discharge hot to warm water.
The water in the “internal circuit” generally is recycled, in a closed loop, by heat exchange in a condensor to the external circuit.
@Beth: I can’t tell left from right either. If someone tells me turn right, I put my left hand on my right wrist to let me know left from right.
@becca:
@Kathy:
“Friendly nation” ambassadors seem often to have played roles in mediating discussions between parties in “friendly” countries in political crises.
But mostly very quietly, as enabling “honest brokers”.
A US ambassador trying to arrange a VOC re a UK PM would be playing with fire, as it would be almost certain to leak, Westminster being as it is.
Also, and I wonder if the programme made this clear, there are two, quite different, types of “vote of confidence” in UK politics.
Firstly: a party vote on the Party Leader (who in this case would be the PM): that is an intenal party matter, and confined to the MP’s of that party.
The Conservatives have formal procedures for such; the Labour Party, on the other hand, does not.
Secondly: a Commons Vote of Confidence, which is upon the government, not the PM as such.
And is a vote of ALL the MP’s.
A ministry that “has lost the confidence of the House” must then reconstruct a coalition of support, or yield to ministry that can do so, or call an election.
Constitutional lawyers tend to disagree over whether a PM that has “lost the confidence of the House” is entitled to insist on an election, if a new ministry can plainly be be formed by the current House.
It’s one of the few areas where the Monarch might have a decisive (private) voice.
(Ironically, the Commons itself does not get to vote on a dissolution of Parliament: it remains a Royal preorogative power.)
@becca:
@JohnSF:
SPOILER ALERT!
I forget the exact story line. The move seems to have been among the cabinet, instigated by the ambassador and the UK foreign minister.
I’ve an inconsistent tolerance for unrealistic portrayals in movies and TV. In this case, I don’t buy the notion, but I can take it for the plot and entertainment value it delivers.
@Beth:
@Scott:
I’ve a 50/50 success rate in telling left from right. Sometimes when Waze instructs “keep right” I’ll keep left, thinking I’m keeping right. When I got the fist COVID shot, I offered my right arm thinking I was offering the left.
@JohnSF:
And the current merry band of idiots would find the most racist way possible to screw it up. It’s spectacular how bad at everything they seem to be.
You would have thought after Raynor got the boot they would have double checked the skeletons to make sure they were well hidden in various closets.
@Scott:
@Kathy:
It’s real fun to drive with me. In Chicago I’ve got an ADHD riddled map in my brain that works 85% of the time. The other 15% of the time it’s me spacing out on autopilot cause I’m going a similar route to a slightly different place. Sometimes I’ll end up at the wrong place and be confused.
But the real joy is when giving or receiving directions. “Turn right, no that’s left!” Or “turn left, I mean right, sorry” x 10.
I gotta say though, finding out I’m not alone in this is quite nice.
I’m linking this tweet not for JV Dunce’s inane ‘well maybe UAP’s are alien but maybe they’re angels.’ but to see if anyone has the same reaction I did – somebody stuck JD’s head on Trump’s suit, tie, and body.
@Scott: Maybe my area is just way behind the times but every class room around here still has an analogue clock.
@Matt: Every single clock in every classroom in the high school I attended in this town has an analogue clock, and not one of them show the real time. Even the ones in the hallways. I asked my kid how they know what actual time it is, and she said the computers the school supplies and the class bells.
@Jax: That’s weird as shit. Are they just local battery powered only el cheepo chinese things that can’t keep time?? How does that happen? I’ve never run into a school building that didn’t have the analogue clocks synched up.
We have an analog clock on an office wall, but it’s like five minutes ahead of actual time. We usually adjust it only when the battery runs down. We used to do it for daylight savings and then back to standard time, but Mexico left that system a couple of years ago. The damned AA battery it uses lasts a very long time.
Me, to tell time there’s the PC, the cell phone, the microwave, the coffee maker, and at home also the stove and the oven, plus the TV.
@Beth:
This happens to me a lot when I’m going to Walmart, and instead wind up going to a nearby store called City Market. I go to the latter almost every weekend, and to Walmart seldom. The difference is turning left and going straight vs turning left and then turning left again.
They’re even connected through a sky bridge, though it’s a fair walk from one to the other, plus an elevator ride.
For a crazy legal loophole, a member of the Yakima nation (tribal) is suing the government for the new tariffs violating their 1855 Treaty rights that
I’ll note their license plates say at the bottom “Treaty of 1855”