Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor 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.
I saw something about this in LGM comments, apparently a lot of bullshit in the claims about this EO, there is NOT voluminous definition of “showerhead” in existing regulations, thirteen thousand words, claim is a lie, real “showerhead” definition existing is one sentence.
I really don’t understand why more isn’t being made of the abject incompetence being shown.
A not-very-detailed review;
Fire people, then rehire them. Fire some more people, then rehire them.
Put up tariffs, then back off. Put up more tariffs, the cave again.
Dumbass claims about 300 year olds getting SS, and condoms for Hamas.
Sharing sensitive military plans on an un-secure app.
Deporting people illegally.
Ukraine was going to be settled in 24 hours. Still nothing.
Looking back it truly has been a clown show. And yet it’s treated as though it’s all normal operating procedure.
@Daryl: If there’s one thing Trump understands, it’s the media. I don’t even think they realize how well he is manipulating them. They get distracted by every little kernel of “news,” much of which is just the “flood the zone with sh!t” that Steve Bannon ascribes to.
When you’re chasing the latest stupidity from this clown show, it pushes past egregious behavior off the front page.
Signalgate SHOULD have been the end to several careers. And yet, here we are, talking tariffs and shower heads.
@Daryl: Yeah, it’s totally ridiculous. But I think this is the end state of decades of GOP propaganda. Enough people are locked into their bubble of lies and spin that GOP politicians have to pander to them (though many of them are also in the bubble these days). In a normal time with relatively impartial media, we would have none of that and this idiocy would be rightly driven out. (See Nixon for a milder example.)
There so many issues that could and should be addressed by Executive Order, including:
1. Future Presidents shall be prohibited from wearing Tan Suits
2. With the exception of Gay Marriages, all Marriages shall be required to have Non-Disclosure Agreements
3. All Presidents are required to short sell their securities, equities, and crypto currencies prior to announcing Tariff Increases
other items of incompetence:
Ignore company requirements for factory creation – assume a company will magically onshore without any assurance of trained employees for that factory, raw materials procured for that factory, and/or tax implications of that factory.
Ignore employee salary requirements — Assume jobs in factory will be taken regardless of pay offered; Ignore labor market of period prior to start of offshoring — union over 30% and unemployment very low, so companies had to outbid each other for candidates.
@Steven L. Taylor: I didn’t mean to imply tariffs are unimportant! Sorry, I should have elaborated. With respect to the media, there’s just SO MUCH news, that the volume becomes untenable, and the important mixes with the unimportant, and journalists are unable to rank-order things because who knows from one day to the next.
Flooding the zone with big and small stories is a tactic. People don’t understand global trade. They do understand low-flow shower heads.
An executive order on shower heads?! Ohfercrissakes…if Biden said 1/10th of the baseless, stupid sh*t that Trump says every day the media would have been howling for a 25th Amendment intervention and Republicans would have demanded that the president be escorted to the Walter Reed psych center ASAP. And yet the corporate media dances around the fact that both Trump and Musk continually show that they are not compos mentis.
If there’s one thing Trump understands, it’s the media. I don’t even think they realize how well he is manipulating them.
The media is breathlessly reporting every verbal vomit Trump posts to Truth Social, fergawdsakes.
I get that what POTUS communicates is automatically “news-worthy,” but the power to dictate the story that the press had ceded to Trump with this laziness can not be overstated.
The right wing has been complaining about shower heads for decades. It even filtered into normie spaces on Seinfeld, that’s how long they’ve been complaining. Rush Limbaugh probably complained about it.
My only surprise is that he didn’t handle this pressing problem during his first term. Unless he did and the Radical Socialist Joe Biden came through and undid Trump’s Great Work.
I wonder it’s like the gas stoves. In California we hate our low flow shower heads, but we really fear our droughts. It might be a Left Coast FU (not that that’s worthy of an EO mind you).
@Kathy: Gas stoves are pretty safe, so far. I live in leftist eco-freaky Portland, OR, and not only do I still have a gas stove, the landlord buys the gas.
@Gustopher: Shower heads, low-flow faucets and toilets, and front-loading HE washing machines. Rush literally said people needed to have the right to buy washing machines that use more water and don’t get your clothes cleaner. Unfreaking believable.
@Argon: “ He could one popular thing that almost everyone wants: Get rid of the daylight savings time transitions.”
I like daylight savings time. I live close to 45 degrees north latitude. On standard time dawn is about 7:30 at winter solstice and dusk is about 4:30. Right now dawn is 6:08 but if we were still on standard time it would be 5:08 By summer solstice it’d be around 4:00 am. I would rather have more sunshine in the evenings instead of while I’m in bed.
@Scott O: I’d be happy if we re-sync the start and end dates of DST with rest of the industrialized world. It’d mean DST starts a couple of weeks later and ends a couple of weeks earlier in the US. A simple fix to keep time differences between countries/zones constant.
I saw something about this in LGM comments, apparently a lot of bullshit in the claims about this EO, there is NOT voluminous definition of “showerhead” in existing regulations, thirteen thousand words, claim is a lie, real “showerhead” definition existing is one sentence.
(Admittedly a pretty long sentence, but still …)
At least he’s not obsessed on which end of an egg to crack.
Trump: “I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair.”
Direct quote.
I really don’t understand why more isn’t being made of the abject incompetence being shown.
A not-very-detailed review;
Fire people, then rehire them. Fire some more people, then rehire them.
Put up tariffs, then back off. Put up more tariffs, the cave again.
Dumbass claims about 300 year olds getting SS, and condoms for Hamas.
Sharing sensitive military plans on an un-secure app.
Deporting people illegally.
Ukraine was going to be settled in 24 hours. Still nothing.
Looking back it truly has been a clown show. And yet it’s treated as though it’s all normal operating procedure.
@Daryl:
Hey, don’t you know? Trump’s a master strategist. He’s thinking circles around the Dems.
@Kathy:
Depressingly relevant song: https://youtu.be/ccJO26Dkgp8?si=prD8QJjqb3_CoPVh
@Daryl: If there’s one thing Trump understands, it’s the media. I don’t even think they realize how well he is manipulating them. They get distracted by every little kernel of “news,” much of which is just the “flood the zone with sh!t” that Steve Bannon ascribes to.
When you’re chasing the latest stupidity from this clown show, it pushes past egregious behavior off the front page.
Signalgate SHOULD have been the end to several careers. And yet, here we are, talking tariffs and shower heads.
@CSK: I saw the extended quote that conjured up way too much about the idea of that man in a shower. I threw up a little in my mouth.
@Jen:
Granted, showerheads are unimportant.
The tariffs, however, are hugely important. As bad a the Signal stuff was, the damage he is doing with the tariffs is, IMHO, far more important.
@Daryl: Yeah, it’s totally ridiculous. But I think this is the end state of decades of GOP propaganda. Enough people are locked into their bubble of lies and spin that GOP politicians have to pander to them (though many of them are also in the bubble these days). In a normal time with relatively impartial media, we would have none of that and this idiocy would be rightly driven out. (See Nixon for a milder example.)
What about the long awaited order to keep gas stoves and ovens safe from Biden’s Ban?
He could one popular thing that almost everyone wants: Get rid of the daylight savings time transitions.
Will he? Unlikely.
There so many issues that could and should be addressed by Executive Order, including:
1. Future Presidents shall be prohibited from wearing Tan Suits
2. With the exception of Gay Marriages, all Marriages shall be required to have Non-Disclosure Agreements
3. All Presidents are required to short sell their securities, equities, and crypto currencies prior to announcing Tariff Increases
other items of incompetence:
Ignore company requirements for factory creation – assume a company will magically onshore without any assurance of trained employees for that factory, raw materials procured for that factory, and/or tax implications of that factory.
Ignore employee salary requirements — Assume jobs in factory will be taken regardless of pay offered; Ignore labor market of period prior to start of offshoring — union over 30% and unemployment very low, so companies had to outbid each other for candidates.
@Steven L. Taylor: I didn’t mean to imply tariffs are unimportant! Sorry, I should have elaborated. With respect to the media, there’s just SO MUCH news, that the volume becomes untenable, and the important mixes with the unimportant, and journalists are unable to rank-order things because who knows from one day to the next.
Flooding the zone with big and small stories is a tactic. People don’t understand global trade. They do understand low-flow shower heads.
@Argon:
Count your blessings.
Bad as DST jumping back and forth is, there’s something worse: permanent DST.
The British phrase “what a shower” springs to mind whenever I think about the current administration.
So, pretty appropriate.
An executive order on shower heads?! Ohfercrissakes…if Biden said 1/10th of the baseless, stupid sh*t that Trump says every day the media would have been howling for a 25th Amendment intervention and Republicans would have demanded that the president be escorted to the Walter Reed psych center ASAP. And yet the corporate media dances around the fact that both Trump and Musk continually show that they are not compos mentis.
@Jen:
The media is breathlessly reporting every verbal vomit Trump posts to Truth Social, fergawdsakes.
I get that what POTUS communicates is automatically “news-worthy,” but the power to dictate the story that the press had ceded to Trump with this laziness can not be overstated.
The right wing has been complaining about shower heads for decades. It even filtered into normie spaces on Seinfeld, that’s how long they’ve been complaining. Rush Limbaugh probably complained about it.
My only surprise is that he didn’t handle this pressing problem during his first term. Unless he did and the Radical Socialist Joe Biden came through and undid Trump’s Great Work.
I wonder it’s like the gas stoves. In California we hate our low flow shower heads, but we really fear our droughts. It might be a Left Coast FU (not that that’s worthy of an EO mind you).
@Kathy: Gas stoves are pretty safe, so far. I live in leftist eco-freaky Portland, OR, and not only do I still have a gas stove, the landlord buys the gas.
@Gustopher: Shower heads, low-flow faucets and toilets, and front-loading HE washing machines. Rush literally said people needed to have the right to buy washing machines that use more water and don’t get your clothes cleaner. Unfreaking believable.
@Argon: “ He could one popular thing that almost everyone wants: Get rid of the daylight savings time transitions.”
I like daylight savings time. I live close to 45 degrees north latitude. On standard time dawn is about 7:30 at winter solstice and dusk is about 4:30. Right now dawn is 6:08 but if we were still on standard time it would be 5:08 By summer solstice it’d be around 4:00 am. I would rather have more sunshine in the evenings instead of while I’m in bed.
@Scott O: I’d be happy if we re-sync the start and end dates of DST with rest of the industrialized world. It’d mean DST starts a couple of weeks later and ends a couple of weeks earlier in the US. A simple fix to keep time differences between countries/zones constant.