Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, November 22, 2025
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35 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
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
The Florida headline of the day- Florida deputy killed, others shot while serving eviction notice, sheriff says
The sports headline of the day- Panthers say Eetu Luostarinen out after ‘barbecuing mishap’
This is really unusual: overview of North Korean cell phones.
All the built-in censorship, limitations, restricted content, and monitoring tools embedded in the OS, prove overly optimistic the predictions from the early internet days that connectivity defeats attempts at censorship and control.
Really, under such a system you’d be better off without a phone.
Epstein Lite
Senators Launch Inquiry After a White House Official Intervened on Behalf of Andrew Tate During a Federal Investigation
Judge steps down for misconduct. The misconduct in question? Wearing an Elvis wig in court.
If they had focused on the “politicking” in the courtroom, it would have been better, IMHO.
@Jen: He was an elected judge so why be punished for politicking? Never understood that system. We have it in Texas also and judge elections just clutter up the ballots.
@Scott: IIRC our Dr. Taylor in A Different Democracy noted that with a few minor exceptions no one else in the world elects judges. Electing judges is even dumber than electing sheriffs.
November 22, 1963
I was a sophomore and I remember going to choir practice at Danville (Il) High School and hearing the news that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. I couldn’t believe it!
Walter Cronkite reports.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown: I was in 4th grade in Ocean Ave Elementary School in Northport NY. I was a rainy fall day. The teachers didn’t tell us the news but I remember feeling that something happened. There was a quietness and stillness that enveloped the school and hallways. I didn’t find out until after school at church choir what had happened.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown: @Scott:
I was in second grade in Albuquerque. It was like the world stopped. School was canceled and everyone was glued to their tube tvs. I saw Jack Ruby shoot Oswald in real time.
@becca: I was in second grade as well. The teacher (who was from England, of all things) told us. I opined that there was a mistake, and it was one of his numerous brothers. I was, of course, wrong.
Sheryl Crow’s song “Run, Baby Run” begins with the line, “She was born in November, 1963, the day Aldous Huxley died.”
Aldous Huxley died on November 22, 1963. The same day as Kennedy. This is quite the Easter egg buried in a song. I hear the song a bit differently knowing that.
@Bill Jempty: Shocked US driver calls 911: ‘I just had a bald eagle drop a cat through my windshield.
I remember the classroom going very still and the students just staring at one another.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
To borrow a line from my wife. I don’t remember because I was still small.
At the time of Kennedy’s assassination I was over a month from my 3rd birthday.
Apparently MTG has just resigned from Congress.
I didn’t see that coming.
I was just arriving at school in Rochefort, France, 9 years old. Mes copains said, ‘Michel, ton president et mort!’
Marjorie Taylor Green resigning is another data point in my theory that Trump is weakened. Nate has him at a new low for this term, just shy of 15 points underwater. His approval which toddled along at 45% is now 41%. I suspect he’ll continue a slow decline, but I won’t be happy till we’re well below his floor, say mid-30’s.
Epstein hurt him. The GOP rebellion on Epstein hurt him worse – a tyrant successfully defied is weakened. It’s that moment from TOS “Paradise Syndrome” when the amnesiac Kirk thinks he’s a god, and is revealed to be mortal. “Behold: a god who bleeds!” On top of that he’s getting nowhere with sub-SCOTUS courts, and something that I had not given much thought to is that wide consensus in the courts puts pressure on the Supremes. Then there’s the election losses, and the enthusiasm of his opponents in those races. And the ballroom and the gold tat and his indifference to affordability even as the tech oligarchs bow down. And Venezuela. And the lack of rallies. And the physical decline.
MTG has a nasty little fingers on the pulse of MAGA, and is pissed that Trump shut her out of a Senate race. She’s talking openly about losing the House and clearly angling for a presidential run – a run to succeed a man who she says pretty bluntly has forsaken MAGA in favor of corruption and foreign adventures.
It’s interesting to contemplate just what the country is supposed to do with a weak, lame duck POTUS with three years left. I don’t know that the US politics has a precedent quite like this. (Prof. Steven may). It feels like the end times of Viserys Targaryen, a dying king being eaten by flesh rot.
ETA: And then there’s the talk of making it into heaven.
@Jay L. Gischer: she announced her leaving office after her congressional pension kicks in. Smart girl.
I wonder how she will spend her last few weeks in office? Hopefully, she does not go gentle into that goodnight and grabs some gop skulls on the way out. Metaphorically, of course.
@becca:
Is MTG an example of a saying I used to use frequently. “I may be crazy but I’m not stupid.”
@Bill Jempty: oh, I never once thought MTG to be stupid. She has the same ruthless cunning Trump’s handlers have.
But I take your point.
@Bill Jempty:
At the time, I hadn’t been born yet.
@Kathy:
“At the time, I hadn’t been born yet.”
Me neither.
Via LGM I came across this essay by poli sci prof Eric Schickler. I had wanted to bring this up in comments on Dr. Taylor’s post yesterday “Expertise Matters” but got tied up. …
Prof. Schickler goes deep into Dr. Taylors concerns about structure, adding,
Schickler looks at what happened to Congress, the American state, and civil society, providing some answers to my recurring question, “OK, but it more or less worked for 200 years, what changed?”: nationalized polarization, the Unitary Executive theory developed under Reagan and supported by conservative Supreme Courts, Trump’s eagerness to use the power of the presidency to compel compliance from civil institution and the difficulty of collective action.
He concludes,
Well worth reading the whole essay. And I think I’ll buy his book.
I was 17 in high school English class. We had speakers in every classroom that proclaimed the pledge of allegiance followed by important news likethe voting for homecoming queen. The principal came on and said that the President had been shot. My class descended into silence, one girl burst into tears, and one guy fist pumped and cheered. A few minutes later they fed the CBS newscast in, and we heard Walter Cronkite tell us that JFK was dead. We were all solemn with several in tears. What did this mean for the country? The Cuban missile affair was in my mind. Would the Soviets take advantage of this situation to launch their missiles? I was a big reader of scifi at that time and convinced that a nuclear armaggeddon was close.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown: I was a sophomore in college and that day I had no morning classes and had slept in. I was driving in to an afternoon physics lab in my ’68 VW which had only an AM radio and the only thing on the radio was the star-spangled banner. When I pulled into the parking lot, I heard the announcer report that the President had been killed.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown: I too was a sophomore. We were in the lunchroom when the head football coach came in and announced the shooting over the PA. I’d never heard that cavernous room so silent.
@Michael Reynolds: A three-year lame duck is a huge concern and my first worry is what devilment will be going on to mess up the mid-term elections. Everyone seems complacent that the voting and counting will go off without a hitch. If no one in state SOS offices starts paying attention and preparing for the undermining being planned right now we are screwed.
@gVOR10:
This answer must include acknowledgement of the penetrating effectiveness of opinion formation (and manipulation) through burgeoning technological innovations of TV, internet, mobile data/comm, and social media, and now, artificial intelligence. With these unfolding developments, ideas, bigotry, and disinformation could be disseminated efficiently, cost effectively, and broadly, as never before. The ability to repeat, repeat, repeat specific messaging to specific groups targeted for vulnerability ensures the effectiveness of creating durable impressions.
Coupled with explosive technological development is the concerted honing of psychologically based techniques in manipulation of language and visual imagery through split testing of test subject groups to refine strategies for maximum effectiveness of visceral manipulation. There now exists a massive database of results available to strategists, compliments of 100 years of Madison Avenue advertising and psych/social academic endeavor. We talked ourselves into the spot we now find ourselves.
Whiskey Pete mistakenly invades Mexico.
US troops INVADE Mexico in dramatic escalation of tensions as Pentagon scrambles to contain the fallout
What happens when your rogue President and his rogue administration confuses what belongs to others with what belongs to him/them/they. Lines get blurred, physically and morally.
Poeple who work at rating and checking AI (aka LLMs) warn: Do not use AI.
My biggest worry is this part:
I may be wrong here, but it seems to me that if the bots admit ignorance, engagement goes down. I say this not only because engagement is the key goal in social media, but because I’ve seen bot after bot try to keep the conversation going.
In my early exploration of LLMs, they’d answer and that would be it. Now they answer and offer follow on questions or tasks you might want to pursue. This is not necessarily sinister, but it comes up regardless of the matter under discussion.
Right now I asked it when did the Steelers last win a playoff game. It answered. Fine. then it asked “Want me to also list their playoff appearances and results since that 2017 win?”
Now, it had already mentioned subsequent playoff appearances in its answer. So while its question is not unrelated, it’s probably not something I want or need to know. It feels like it’s driving engagement.
I said “no, thanks.” And it replied, “As requested, I will not proceed with the action. If you need anything else—like current season stats or historical comparisons—just let me know!” It also presented more follow on questions below this.
So, it can’t possibly say “I don’t know.”
Regarding the “Ukraine peace deal”:
Some people have run linguistic analyses, after noting its somewhat odd grammar.
The conclusion being: much of it is direct transliteration from Russian into English.
So, either Witkoff was just being a stenographer.
Or this is Dmitriev leaking Russian versions direct to some media?
It would be interresting if the reporters concrned actually “outed” their sources on this.
Yeah “journalistic ethics, confidentiallity”, yadda yadda.
But the source may be a crucial bit of information on what this entire f@cked up process is based on.
And also:
Trump officials’ meeting with Russian in Miami
ftlog, will these f@ckwits not learn that trying to play “super secret diplomat” games is aking for trouble?
I’m not sure what is most remarkable about Witkoff’s “peace plan” to end the Ukraine War. Not the fact that it represents pretty much a complete capitulation to Russia’s demands – it’s clear that’s been Witkoff’s position since February. No, I’m referring to its insufferable arrogance in dictating to third parties who were not even involved in the talks that created it (“Ukraine has the right to EU membership and will receive short-term preferential access to the European market while this issue is under consideration”). To the amateurish, ignorant provisions (“A full and comprehensive non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine, and Europe”, ignoring the fact that “Europe” cannot possibly be a party to agreements of any kind). To the crass greed (“US$100 billion of frozen Russian assets will be invested in U.S.-led efforts for Ukraine’s reconstruction and investment. The United States will receive 50% of the profits from this initiative.” America will also be paid an unspecified amount, presumably by Ukraine, for a meaningless “security guarantee”).
The provision that I initially found puzzling was point 8: “European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland.” Why on earth would they insert such a strange clause? Then the penny dropped. Putin must have demanded that NATO stop basing planes in Poland (including the Polish air force?) and dropping the demand was inserted as a Russian “concession”.
Witkoff is either a Russian asset or the biggest fool to be given responsibility for US foreign policy since, well, Rudy Giuliani.
@Ken_L:
Witkoff, imho, is just another in a long line of amateur “wannabes” who think they can resolve international crises due to their “bizness skillz”.
There have been lots of such, historically.
Some business execs have a problem, as Harry Callaghan might have said, “Not realising their limitations.”
They think corporate deal-making can apply to the MUCH more serious field of war.
The entire “plan” is a pile of steaming shite, to put it politely.
The entire thing would be laughable, if it was not so serious.
It seems to be Witkoff basically taking dictation from Dmitriev, and just modifying a few bits.
And then Dmitriev leaking the “agreement”.
And then Witkoff getting Vance/Kushner/Hegseth etc to back him up in saying:
“Hey, Mr President! We got a deal! Now let’s just force Zelensky to accept it, and there’s your Nobel and mucho grifto!”
It really is hard to overstate how f@cking pissed off the UK, Europe, and above all Ukraine, are about this.
@JohnSF: Just to demonstrate how on top of things the regime is:
Giving Zelenskyy four days to accept a “plan” that his own administration disowns is a new benchmark for Trumpian incoherence.
@Ken_L:
Channeling Berchthold, 1914:
“Who rules in Berlin?”