D-Day Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, June 6, 2025
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49 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
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).
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Why Trump admires and idealizes Putin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmTeg0B9tH8
Since it is a D-Day anniversary, I lay this quote from Gen Eisenhower. It was prepared but never published. But could have been if events went bad.
From Heather Cox Richardson’s substack:
Fortunately, it wasn’t used.
Back when our leaders took responsibility.
Gross.
With Old Milk and No Soap, Trump Golf Club Gets a 32 on Inspection
More DOGE failures:
Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health
Completely predictable.
Put a bunch of people on a plane with plans to dump them abroad somewhere, without ensuring that both the agents and the deportees have the requisite shots for that region of the world…
This administration does not think anything through. Anything.
Retired Rear Admiral Who Served Under Trump Warns of Plans to Politicize Military Justice System
The deep corruption of our country goes on.
@Jen:
That’s nothing. This is award winning gross.
Speaking of D-day https://people.com/trump-baffles-german-chancellor-after-describing-d-day-as-not-a-great-day-11749273
This is the cringiest thing.
@Scott:
This is ultimately the problem with DOGE and has been repeated constantly by people who have been advocating to improve the systems that they were claiming to fix. All DOGE did was rampant headcutting and program elimination, not attacking the root cause. Their answer to a broken leg was just to amputate the damn thing and not close the wounds.
We are going to be suffering with the impact of DOGE for at least the next half decade. Or worse, the government will to increase spending to fix all of the mistakes DOGE made in the name of cutting spending.
And that’s not counting all the immediate costs of DOGE’s cost cutting measures:
DOGE says it has saved $160 billion. Those cuts have cost taxpayers $135 billion, one analysis says.
And let’s not also forget to tally all the immediate financial costs of those savings:
DOGE says it has saved $160 billion. Those cuts have cost taxpayers $135 billion, one analysis says.
I’ve been working on a post about all the recorded destruction that DOGE has done in it’s McKinsey-on-meth approach to “cutting” government programs, hopefully I’ll have that wrapped soon.
@Slugger:
What a fucking moron. It was the seminal event of the twentieth century.
@Matt Bernius: I just had my Social Security account suspended. Apparently for review of overpayments. Why do I suspect this has something to do with DOGE? Spent 2hrs, 40 min yesterday waiting for a call back. Sent to local office. Called them. Left message.
I don’t mind paying back if I was overpaid. But I do object to not receiving my monthly check while they do that. I estimate that it is a task that should take about 20 min.
If things don’t right themselves, my Congressional rep (and his constituent services people) are going to be paid a visit.
More winning in trump country.
The felonious TACO strikes again.
Interesting article on the high-cost of affordable housing in cities. As I read it, the main driver of the cost are the fees associated with financing the project.
To make use of the credits, which lower a company’s tax liability dollar-for-dollar, developers typically partner with big companies, such as banks, that have tax liabilities big enough to benefit from them. While the credits are awarded in significant amounts — often tens of millions of dollars — developers typically have to augment them with various other funding sources. The resulting financing structures require small armies of lawyers and accountants to manage, driving up development costs.
But the only reason I read this article is because some guy on twitter mentioned it and said we need zoning reform. I don’t know if that’s a reflex now or what. It seems to me an obvious solution is just cutting out the non-profits (often funded by big-time developers) and the finance side in search of tax credits, and have the government build housing directly, without everyone on the development side getting a cut. Yet if you follow the policy debate it’s zoning and the groups which are allegedly the stumbling blocks.
@Jen:
This sounds bad, and maybe it is, but the military containerizes just about everything needed for personnel support, including modules designed for human occupancy. The article refers to it as a metal shipping container, with no further details, but it is located on a Naval Base Camp, so it’s likely intended to house people.
Factoid: nuclear fission was discovered in 1938. Seven years later the first nukes were detonated.
More interesting, the discovery was made in Germany, which never managed to advance much in developing its own bomb.
It would be too easy to say the rush in the US to build the bomb was an overreaction. this si not entirely so. One big reason the nazis couldn’t advance much, was the relentless attacks on a Norwegian plant that supplied heavy water (water rich in deuterium) to the German researchers, carried out by British and Norwegian resistance forces.
Oh, the nazis lacked a lot of the talent that fled, checks notes, the nazis in Europe for Britain and the US. And just maybe some of the German physicist left behind were not very enthusiastic about their task. Not to mention the funds, personnel, slave labor, and materials wasted on von Braun’s rocket program (that required a lot more R&D than the bomb to prove successful in the 1950s)
@charontwo: I thought “sick societies elect sick people to positions of power” was enlightening. Thank you.
@Eusebio: The article says this:
I’m very familiar with how the military uses temp facilities (one of my school classrooms overseas was a Quonset hut). Conex containers are not that, and would be extraordinarily uncomfortable in 100+ degree heat, especially if you are sick, which most of them are.
@Jen: Scoring 86 on the recheck, while significant improvement, shows some level of system-based conditions lowering the effectiveness of the operation. Bad management maybe.
@Modulo Myself: “Sick societies elect sick people to positions of power.” It would seem that they also adopt dysfunctional systems to manage/operate/build public works.
I’ll begin by saying I’ve been a fan of the Steelers since the 70s.
Now that they’ve signed up notorious anti-vaxxer Aaron Rodgers, I hope they wind up 0-17.
Look, I was upset when they got dog torturer Michael Vick. This is much worse.
On related matters, they should thank Tomlin profusely, and tell him it’s time to move the team in a different direction. He’s done well enough, winning one of two Super Bowls. But for over a decade he hasn’t managed much in the playoffs. His record looks great, having had only one losing season, but going one and done in most playoff appearances just isn’t good enough.
On June 4th, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy won the Democratic Party presidential primaries in California and South Dakota. It was 2am cdt, June 5th in the midwest where I was watching him on TV address his supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after the victories. Even though I would not be 21 years old until January 1969 and not qualified to vote in the November 1968 Presidential election I had registered for the Draft at 18 when I was still in High School and I had a keen interest in who would be the next President USA.
Moments after RFK finished speaking and walked off camera word came over the air that he had been shot! I couldn’t believe it! The memory of his brother’s assassination not 5 years earlier flashed through my mind!
Apparently I woke up my dad. “Go to bed. It’s late.” he said.
“But Robert Kennedy just got shot!” I said.
Almost 24 hours later two friends and I boarded the Illinois Central passenger train in Homewood, Illinois to visit Carbondale to enroll in college at Southern Illinois University and look for housing. A train ride that I will never forget. Six hours and 300 miles. The conductor on the train was listening to his transistor radio for news. We were a few hours from our destination and it was still dark out on the morning of June 6th when he told us that he heard a report that Kennedy had died.
Lest we forget.
Robert F. Kennedy
1925-1968
RIP
@Jen:
Don’t get me wrong–being sick in the stifling heat amid acrid smoke would be miserable. But I’m saying that one person’s Conex container is another person’s containerized rigid-wall shelter with an environmental control unit and electrical service supplied by the Base. Now I don’t know that’s what they have, but it would not be unusual and I’m comfortable applying a bit of skepticism to the DHS statement given the lack of details.
The means of personnel detention would be the makeshift part.
@Kathy:
One and done in the playoffs is Jerry Jones business model.
@Modulo Myself:
I doubt it.
No doubt this is the #1 driver by far:
“The one on Euclid Street was a severely dilapidated apartment building that had to be gutted and rebuilt. The development cost included the purchase price of the properties and the expenses to rehabilitate them.
This is a lost revenue issue; talk to your Congressman:
“Among key drivers of such high prices are the financing costs associated with using Low-Income Housing Tax Credits”
Probably next is the developers fees, at $10-$15MM. Amortized over 50-100 units they would be. $150-$200K. But after all, this is government housing, with no incentives to manage costs.
Other cost drivers include wage requirements for construction workers that come with federal funding.
As someone who has been involved in large and extremely complex financings for 35 years, I can see “an army of” accts and lawyers bills being, say, $2.5MM. But again, amortized over 50-100 units you are talking $25-$50K per unit.
To make use of the credits, which lower a company’s tax liability dollar-for-dollar, developers typically partner with big companies, such as banks, that have tax liabilities big enough to benefit from them. While the credits are awarded in significant amounts — often tens of millions of dollars — developers typically have to augment them with various other funding sources. The resulting financing structures require small armies of lawyers and accountants to manage, driving up development costs. BS.
The whole model of buying and fixing properties in premium neighborhoods, with Taj Mahal features, not incentivizing developers to control their fees, and taxpayer funding is a piss poor model.
@Scott:
While I regret your troubles they were completely predictable once the Musk-bros moved in.
Also…they tell us what we are going to be paid. If there is an overpayment it’s their own fault. They should adjust the payment, eat the loss and move on.
@Daryl: I don’t agree with this. If there are overpayments, I expect to pay them back and not get a freebie. After all, this is not like a private business but the public’s money. This problem is happening with the VA also. What I can advocate for is a generous repayment schedule.
Some days ago I snarked about Jake Tapper caring more about his career than anything else. But I’m an amateur, here’s a semi-pro, Paul Campos at LGM, in a piece titled Jake Tapper is killing America,
I also agree with this take on Dems and the Biden problem.
@Kathy:
What I always found fascinating was that the neutron, the critical particle for controlled fission, was theorized in 1930 and detected in 1932. 15 years from a workable theory for the structure of the atomic nucleus to the bomb.
Years ago I happened to visit the Smithsonian technology museum when they had a big exhibit about the work from the neutron-as-theory up to the first sustained chain reaction at the U of Chicago in 1942. Part of it was a whole collection of letters sent between the top US scientists at the time. I found them to be fascinating reading, including comments along the lines of “You’ll recall the experiment we discussed last January. I have a new graduate student starting in September that I believe is bright enough to design that.”
@Scott:
It might have something to do with DOGE. It also might not. Social Security has always done periodic audits (despite lies to the contrary).
What definitely has something to do with DOGE is the lack of customer service as a key part of the personnel savings from DOGE were related to cutting front-line staff. Which is especially challenging for someone in your position.
@Matt Bernius:
Closer to amputating the hand of the person next door, but sure.
@gVOR10: I really wish CNN would fire Tapper for holding back his story of Biden’s decline until after the election when it wasn’t relevant.
Not that I believe Tapper’s claim (Biden was old and frail, not senile, as far as I can see), but because if it was true, Tapper was not acting as a responsible journalist, and if it isn’t true, Tapper is not acting as a responsible journalist. And, the practice of ”saving it for the book” is hurting America as well as the press.
@Michael Cain: “You’ll recall the experiment we discussed last January. I have a new graduate student starting in September that I believe is bright enough to design that.” Sounds like John Archibald Wheeler referring to Richard Feynman.
@Michael Cain:
IMO, it was mostly a rare confluence of discoveries and the technology to be able to measure them.
I’m still uncertain whether the people responsible for the advances in atomic and nuclear theory were extraordinary, or whether most were just there at the right time.
Take Otto Hahn. He didn’t realize he’d achieved fission until Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch figured out what his results meant. Hahn alone was awarded a Nobel Prize.
@gVOR10:
Given the situation, Dems handled the Biden debacle as well as possible. Yes it would have been preferable for there to have been a competitive selection process, but that could only have occurred under one of two circumstances. That Biden had announced his decision back in December or waited to make the announcement a couple of days before the convention, allowing the procedures of the convention to execute the process.
Given that there were several weeks between Biden’s decision and the convention, waiting for the convention would have led to a knife fight within the party.
@Modulo Myself: I don’t think there’s just one problem with housing costs, and that there is a simple set of policies that would work everywhere.
In west coast cities like Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, the problem isn’t just a lack of affordable housing, but a lack of housing in general, and these cities are relatively low density compared to somewhere like NYC.
I think zoning changes can do a lot to build up density. You can go a long way by replacing single family, free standing structure zoning with allowing duplexes in most neighborhoods in Seattle (I would put an extra property tax on single family zoning, so if people want that neighborhood it exists, but costs more).
It won’t solve everything, but it will reduce some of the pressure on housing costs, particularly for the middle class. Whether this would trickle down is debatable, but traditionally a 20-30 year old luxury apartment is now a “cheap” apartment.
(The linkage between house density and apartments is extra strong here since there are many people who want to buy a house but cannot find one, who are in rentals driving up the price there)
Cities in California have the added problems of Prop-13, which makes it unaffordable for a lot of people to move. They either need to scrap that, or create a system where the benefits are portable — both options that would create weird disruptions and incentives. But you can’t build denser housing if the people living there now cannot afford to move.
But these are all supply-side suggestions.
The Trump administration is pursuing a demand-side approach, with a goal of deporting 20M people, encouraging everyone else to drink raw milk and stop getting vaccines, and cutting efforts to monitor and contain bird flu.
This could also be effective.
@Sleeping Dog:
A knife fight and the loss of weeks of already-compressed campaign time, and anyone other than Kamala would not have had the legal ability to assume the campaign assets of the Biden campaign. In other words, a knife fight AND a potential that whomever emerged would have been legally required to start from scratch to build a national campaign.
@Scott:
I don’t think you should be subjected to this. I think it’s very unfortunate. But the reflexive accusation to DOGE is unwarranted. War story:
The IRS and State of New York decided I had avoided taxes. The issue was residency. They said I lived in NY, and owed NY taxes. I lived in CT. Never lived in NY.
I had home ownership documents. Deeds etc. They insisted I was a NY resident no matter what. And thousands of dollars in accountants fees to defend.
Finally they decided “oh, you’re right, you never lived in NY. Sorry”. Thousands of dollars.
The heavy hand of government.
Oh, it was 2003. No one knew what DOGE was.
I truly shudder to think what this will look like, if Trump succeeds in getting it built:
http://www.rawstory.com/trump-ballroom/
The East Room is 80 feet by 37 feet. More than sufficient, I should think.
So, Mr. Abrego García, wrongfully deported and illegally and unconstitutionally sent to a gulag for life, is flying back to the US.
But, get this, to face charges that he “..participated in a years-long conspiracy to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to the interior of the country.”
I find that hard to believe.
@Kathy:
What a bullshit face-saver from TACO.
@Beth:
Apparently they weren’t going to bring him back, and thus abide by the SC decision, unless and until they had something to charge him with.
@Eusebio: Interesting. I’m comfortable applying a little skepticism in the other direction because the DHS/ICE is in charge of this fiasco (ETA:) and because of the self-same lack of details. To each their own.
@Beth:
If you removed all the bullshit, El Taco would stand about two feet tall.
@Gustopher:
This is actually a decent idea, which is why I’m sure that it will never come into effect.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I’m slightly grumpy about that idea, because I’m living in an area which already has very high real estate tax rates and I don’t want anything else pushing up the cost of owning the lovely architecture around here. Plus it’s creating more impetus for developers to grab single family houses, knock them down, and replace them with crappy “luxury” high rises.
@Daryl:
That’s why the Cowboys need a new owner. I’m baffled they don’t even seem to notice this.
Good news. I just typed up my vacation request for the second half of June.
The plan, assuming no major disasters, is to finish “Betrayal” and get started on “The Third Necropolis.”
If the weather cools down enough, I may waste one day making tomato soup.
@Grumpy realist: Okay by me. But you may have to figure out how you’re going to deal with the people who end up unhoused as your Real Estate prices continue to rise.
Everything costs someone something. “Just as long as it’s not me paying” has been the policy so far. How’s that been working out?
The sad thing:
On June 6 1944, the US, UK, Canada, Free French, and other allies, began to reclaim Europe from horror and tyranny. At least in part.
On June 6 2025, many European genuinely fear that the US might perfer to partner with tyrants, on the basis that MAGA reckon “autocrats ain’t woke can be sold to the base and pwn the libs.”
As Theoden said in the film: “How did it come to this?”