SaturTabs
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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Tom Nichols is always worth reading, but that is one scary article.
The 25,000 lives saved per boat sunk is from back in October, when only five boats had been sunk. Enough more have been sunk that there should have been a significant decline in the US death rate now. Macrotrends reports that the death rate for 2025 increased slightly from 2024, continuing a trend that started in 2010. The temporary spike from Covid is clear in the graphic.
I’ve seen a variety of speculations about the cause of the increasing death rate. In 2010, the first Baby Boomers turned 64. My own hypothesis is that there are enough of us to mess with the statistics as we die off from the usual age-related causes.
@CSK: His scenarios assume business somewhat as usual. If Trump decides he’s serious about this, a single Wasp-class assault ship anchored in the fjord where Nuuk is located would be the dominant military presence* in Greenland as long as it stays there. Denmark, with some other European countries, holds an annual Greenland exercise. Descriptions of the 2025 version made a point about how difficult it was for those countries to move 500 personnel, two F-16s, one helicopter, and a frigate to Greenland. NATO has very little effective overseas force projection capabilities outside of US assets. The US has seven Wasp-class ships.
* Wikipedia suggests that a typical load for a Wasp-class ship is 1,900 Marines, a couple of big air-cushion landing craft, a couple of tanks, 4-6 F-35Bs, a half-dozen attack helicopters, many cargo/personnel helicopters, and lots of trucks. The Navy side is another 1,000 crew, anti-air and anti-ship missiles, close-in point defense, state-of-the-art radar, etc. And a better hospital than anything in Greenland.