Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, December 13, 2025
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19 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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BlueSky.
Top Five Things I Miss In Portugal:
5) A garbage disposal.
4) Marijuana. Yes, it is decriminalized, but no, you can’t buy it. In Vegas there’s a weed shop every half mile.
3) Variety in food. Indian food you could slap a Gerber label on it’s so bland. The pizzas are, um, not great, at least so far. The base line flavor profile is codfish – bacalhau – and other simply-prepared seafood. Good as far as it goes. The Portuguese are good bakers but un-adventurous cooks.
2) A clothes dryer. We have a washing machine, but hang stuff on a rack. The result is stiff clothing that feels damp even when it’s not.
1) Embarrassing to admit, but: Amazon Prime. Amazon orders come from Amazon Spain, with very uncertain delivery dates. Vegas often offers same night delivery. We’ve been forced to go to actual malls and grocery stores. With actual IRL people.
And Five Things I Don’t Miss:
5) Meal delivery. Uber Eats is fast AF because it is delivered not in cars, but on motorcycles. Much quicker. And Uber rides are cheaper and much more available.
4) Incompetent American drivers who think it’s a competitive rather than co-operative undertaking. Related: massive SUVs and not a single Cybertruck.
3) Assholes in bars and restaurants braying like fucking donkeys. BWAH HAH HA! And related: the American allergy to quiet.
2) The ever-present undercurrent of violence, especially gun violence. Imagine: an entire country where not a single school has a metal detector. And zero active shooter drills. I imagine there are part of Lisbon where my wife shouldn’t walk down a dark street, but even in the worst neighborhoods, no one is drawing a gun.
1) MAGAts. The relief that comes from knowing that I am not surrounded by cruel, stupid, racist, hate-fueled people.
I’ll share another of NYTs series of editorials about defense. I didn’t share yesterday’s because it was all about spunky startups, which IMHO can only nibble at the edges of the massive problems.
Today they talk about production capacity, of which China has way more than we do, but generally less than we and our allies together. But we’re not working effectively with our allies. They do get into Trump’s failings but don’t go into his apparent desire to carve out a Western hemisphere sphere of influence, without Europe. (I suspect he really wants an oil producer alliance/cartel, us, the Saudis and other Arabs, and, somehow, Venezuela.)
Their example is that we don’t have enough Tomahawk cruise missiles to support a sustained war, and yet we killed a deal for Japan to produce them. I don’t know that this is a great example. Do we not have a reserve of Tomahawks because we can’t make them, or because we never ordered them? We couldn’t build a second production line and mothball it against future needs? Stockpile key material? The glaring current example is artillery shells for Ukraine. Munitions suppliers don’t want to invest in capacity for what may just be a year or two’s production. But our government could certainly incentivize them to do so. Congress doesn’t want to spend money, and military careers aren’t built, on projects that don’t produce flashy results.
And here’s another odd Emm story.
For some reason I can’t recall, I had a cardboard box in my room one day. It lay on its side (that I know why*). That day, as usual, Emm came up with me ro my room after lunch. Her routine was to rush into the bedroom as soon as I opened the door, and jump on the bed.
This time she rushed in, but made for the box and lay inside it, seemingly quite content to do so.
I hadn’t suspected she was claustrophilic until then. But then I thought back to our earlier dogs, Fuzz and Daisy. they liked lounging in the gap between the kitchen cabinets and the floor. Sometimes they lay under the couch in the living room, too.
By the time we got Emm, the kitchen had been remodeled and the gap below the cabinets vanished, and I rarely spent any time in the living room (as now I had a TV in my room). So she just hadn’t had the chance to indulge in enclosed spaces.
She did lie under the table when I ate, unless she was begging for food. I never connected the two.
Anyway, I spoiled her time in the box by trying to get a photo with my (early 2000s) cell phone. I told her “don’t move! don’t move!” and of course she immediately came out to see what had me so excited. I managed to snap a shot of Emm leaving the box.
*I tend to arrange things in unconventional ways. Like laying a box on its side, or leaving the handheld stapler standing vertically on the desk, park the car at a slight angle, etc.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m in agreement with you on 2 & 4 in the UK. I’m considering seeing if I can get a med card. I’m wondering if they will accept “Kier Starmer makes my PTSD worse” as a reason. The only thing giving me pause is I don’t want the NHS to know that I’m doing that and pull my ADHD meds. I’m sure there are a couple other diagnosis, but the NHS and British absolutely, institutionally, HATES with white hot fury both gender dysphoria and ADHD diagnosis. I fully expect Labour to ban both. It has been an expensive nightmare to get my ADHD meds.
Regarding the washer, when I was looking for a place for us I looked at a place where the estate agent said that the Japanese tenant was taking his washer with him. She gave me a look like “that guy’s an idiot for owning a washer ‘wink wink’”. I’m pretty sure that was one of the best washers on this whole island.
I am responsible for all the laundry for 4 people and it makes me crazy. I am constantly doing laundry. We’ve got a relatively new flat with a relatively new combo washer/dryer. It’s tiny. Holds maybe half a load that a U.S. washer holds. Then because it’s a combo I can’t have two loads going at once. The dryer cycle takes roughly 3 hours to mostly get things dry. I caved and bought a giant “airer”. The Brits look at me like I’m insane for using the dryer. I don’t care, they don’t know how to walk.
Also, JohnSF probably knows the name of the company, but my dad used to call the British consumer electronics company the “Prince of Darkness”. I understand that a whole lot better now.
This whole housewife shit would be so much better if I had quaaludes and other real drugs.
@Beth:
Older American sports car guys all know the name. Why do the British drink warm beer? Lucas refrigerators.
Possibly unfair. I had the hood latches fail on my old MG-B so the hood flew up and wrapped itself over the top of the windshield. That’s a rush, and it was in traffic. I was able to get off on the shoulder and had enough tools with me to remove four bolts and take it off so I could drive home. But it took awhile to get a replacement so I drove it without a hood for a month in thunderstorm season. Never missed a beat.
@Kathy:
What breed of dog is Emm? Keep the stories about her coming, please.
@gVOR10:
Lucas, lol. Yup. That was definitely a source of British trauma for him.
I asked a new friend why there is no ice in the drinks. She was like “it’s a myth we drink warm beer. It’s just cold here so we don’t need it.” I pointed out that Chicago is routinely colder and we have ice in our drinks. I simply do not understand why this county can’t produce good, actually cold ice. The ice here sucks.
Also, ice seems to be such a weird American thing. Like I did not know just how much I would miss actual useful ice.
@Beth:
When I lived in Edinburgh, two of the bigger challenges were getting ice for a drink and getting a decent cup of coffee.
@CSK:
I was never sure what she was. I think she was a mix of poodle and Maltese. She was tiny and had floppy ears, like a toy poodle, but not curly hair. Not straight, either. All black, with a very small white patch on her chest.
@CSK:
Oh, the coffee is my other nightmare. Like, I understand it’s not a cultural thing, but why is it so disgustingly terrible? It’s so gross.
Our solution to that has been to have anyone we know that is passing through from the states bring us a couple of bags of Kirkland Medium Roast. lol, and I make people bring me giardinera cause I can’t get real pizza here.
@Beth:
In my experience, the pizza was abysmal, too. I gather from what you say, it hasn’t noticeably improved in 50 years.
@CSK:
Yeah, like, I admit that my view on pizza is heavily skewed being a Chicagoan. Chicago has at least 2 native styles (deep dish & tavern) and you can get Neapolitan, Detroit, or NYC style easily. It’s a riches of styles and quality.
London really only has Neapolitan and whatever the fuck Papa John’s is. Most of the pizza here has been aggressively fine. It’s acceptable food, but it doesn’t nourish the soul.
@Beth:
@CSK:
A lot depends on what you’re used to.
Take pizza. If you get stuff like Pizza Hut or Dominos as pizza while growing up, that’s what you’ll expect pizza to be. Unless and until you eat something better, you’ll find chain restaurant mediocre pizza to be good.
Much the same goes for coffee. Though it’s more complicated, as it depends on the source of the beans and such. I’ve no idea what coffee is sold in the UK. In Mexico, commercial roasted, ground, bagged coffee is decent. Coffee from a small roaster is far superior, especially from small roasters in coffee producing states like Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Veracruz.
@Beth:
I remember about 40 years ago, in a Seville café, in August*, trying to get enough ice to make iced tea. Hot tea and one small, grudging ice cube. Which does not produce iced tea, it produces diluted hot tea. Our perfectly nice fridge here at Casa Miori** does not have an ice maker – had to order ice cube trays on Amazon as Continente (basically Target) doesn’t have them. The ice situation has improved somewhat since then in Europe, but no question: when it comes to ice it’s USA! USA!
Our choice of dogs is quite eccentric here. All our neighbors have either huge mastiffs or huge German Shepherds. We have our very pretty, neurotic spaniel/papillon-ish mutt and our Pug who is, um, very much not pretty but arguably cute.*** I’ve long since reached the age where I don’t mind being seen as eccentric. I mean, I am, so might as well own it.
* Think Hell. Or, to be fair, Vegas.
** Doesn’t seem to mean anything.
*** A cross between Homer Simpson and a chest-burster.
@Kathy: @Beth:
It was as if the Brits went out of their way to make the coffee awful.
@CSK:
The Boston Tea Party?
We shall have our revenge!
British coffee is less bad than it used to be; but still not a patch on anything on the Continent.
Belgium is pretty good.
@Beth:
That used to be the nickname of Lucas in the car industry, that much I know.
@Beth:
British ice is warmer ice.
That’s just physics. 😉
Best pizza I ever had was in France.
Brittany, near Auray, iirc.
Those I had in Italy were less good, oddly enough.
But Italian ice cream (or rather gelato) is utterly amazing.