Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, January 17, 2026
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3 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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My suggestion for an Oscars troll. Winners should offer to give their Oscars to Trump.
Adolf Muxk is throwing another tantrum (big surprise).
The chief nazi is upset Europe’s largest ultra low cost airline, Ryanair, is not interested in putting Xtarlink WiFi on its large fleets. Its CEO, Michael O’Leary, explained adding it increases fuel burn 2% (between the added mass of the system, and added drag from the fairing on the aerial), and most of his customers won’t pay for WiFi, especially since Ryanair’s average flight is just over an hour long.
I mislike ultra low cost airlines in principle. They’re responsible for the notions of tightly packing people in planes, fees for everything, buy on board everything, zero passenger entertainment, etc. Much of what makes modern air travel suck. Pitted against the nazi, though, I mislike Ryanair and O’Leary far less right now.
Anyway, O’Leary called Adolf and idiot. More precisely he said, “I would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon (sic) Musk (sic). He’s an idiot. Very wealthy, but he’s still an idiot.” And: “I frankly wouldn’t pay any attention to anything that Elon (sic) Musk (sic) puts on that cesspit of his called X (sic) . He was the guy who advocated to getting Donald (sic) Trump (sic) elected.”
Whereupon Adolf went on to prove O’Leary right: “Should I buy Ryan Air and put someone whose actual name is Ryan in charge?”
You know, because having a name similar to the company’s is both commonplace and the sole measure of business acumen. Adolf should get a legal name change to “TexlaXpaceSxAIXboring Adolf Muxk” in that case, no?
I almost wish Adolf would go through and buy Ryanair. BTW, the piece mentions a 50% premium on Ryanair’s stock, and claims it would be only a small percentage of Adolf’s net worth. True, and irrelevant. He did not buy Xitter with his own money. he borrowed and brought suckers along.
If he did buy Ryanair, we’d get an answer to the question How could flying possibly get any worse.
@Michael Reynolds: He might as well go for an EGOT while he is at it.