Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, August 8, 2025
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32 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).
Follow Steven on
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BlueSky.
The Florida headline of the day- British man charged with trying to drown daughter-in-law in Florida swimming pool
The Sports headline of the day- Crypto group says it orchestrated sex toy tosses in WNBA games
Trump TACOs again.
Trump won’t require Putin meet with Zelenskyy, contradicting earlier White House statement
Putin faces down Trump again. Trump meeting Putin without Zelensky is just where Putin wants him. Plays him like a fiddle.
All behold the successor to TACO: EMPANADA, or Everyone Makes Promises And Never Actually Does Anything.
@Bill Jempty:
Seems like there’d be a scarcity of dildo-throwing dildos willing to get arrested for… bringing attention to this bro group’s shitcoin meme.
A Tale of Two Cities —- It was better of times turned worse by the worser of kinds.
And
The human world increases the wobble on its own axis.
@Jen: There are a few other choice terms in Spanish that go to the heart of the matter as well.
@Rob1: Not that the niceties of the Constitution and the separation of powers matters these days, but the administration of the District of Columbia is Congress’ domain, not the executive’s.
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12577
August 8, 1974
President Richard M Nixon announces that he will resign effective noon August 9, 1974.
Nixon’s resignation was the one and only time that the owner of the local pub where I lived, a Nixon hater supreme, bought the house a round.
John Kyriannis
RIP
@Scott:
Ugh…Trump needs Zelensky in the room with him to stiffen his resolve against Putin. I predict our President will throw out some word salad after his meeting with Putin, declare that Ukraine is once again holding up peace talks and maybe say something like I am giving Putin (or more likely Zelensky, as Putin gets to skate free) another 30 days to talk with Ukraine (Russia) and make a deal or no more support for Ukraine (or the the most laughable threat against Putin to place more sanctions on Russia, as if that has done anything to make Russia change its mind about wanting to conquer all the surrounding countries in the region).
The surreal thing is I am probably right on target with my prediction. To be fair, I am not exactly special in making this prediction, as I have to assume millions of others are also coming up with what is admittedly not a particularly difficult prediction to make for the outcome of Trump’s meeting.
President Trump really messed up the optics of his upcoming meeting with Putin, as I think folks on both sides of the political aisle in the U.S. started to believe there was a sliver of a chance of something tangible to come out of his meeting with Russia and Ukraine’s leaders. Sigh, instead I am about to reveal that water is wet, and touching a hot stove will burn your fingers by saying Ukraine will get screwed over by our President once again.
There is a point at which Zelensky has to risk President Trump’s ire again and just refuse to meet with Trump and just pivot to only meeting with the leaders of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and a handful of other countries that are actually willing and able to continue to support Ukraine.
Trump keeps getting Zelensky slightly optimistic that this time his meeting with Putin will be different from past meetings, but he always yanks the football away at the last moment.
Zelensky should stop caring that our President will get enraged and spend weeks trashing him in the media, and at the end of the day it really is almost all in Europes best interest to keep Russia contained.
One of these days a ton of GOPers are going to roll out of bed and realize that our President is such a flipping coward and just turn on the guy. However, as I have joked about this in the past, this revelation may happen tomorrow, or it may happen decades from now, lol…and once again, sigh.
Nice demographics study at link. I think its fashionable, especially on the right, to bash young people so it’s nice to have real numbers. Contra to the picture painted by the right kids are getting educated, leaving the house and getting jobs at rates about as high or higher than in the past. They are getting married or having kids at lower rates.
https://conversableeconomist.com/2025/08/05/shifting-markers-of-adulthood/
Steve
Lately El Taco’s MO includes claiming someone agreed to something previously unreported, and all too often he targets comply rather than refute him.
See the claim that CBS/Paramount agreed to give him millions in free ad airtime, that FIFA let him keep the original trophy, etc.
Some do refuse the implied threat, or plain call him a liar. Harvard denying they agreed to a half billion “settlement”. Or the EU denying they will fund a $600 billion Taco slush fund.
I’m taking my last tranche of vacation time for the year (Mexico has a crazy generous regulation on vacation days). The plan is to use up one weekend to write a short story for a historical fiction contest. That is, I’ll spend a weekend on it and either write it or not.
The next two weeks I want to write a longer story provisionally called The Third Necropolis. This may change, as perhaps three are too many, and the word necropolis gives away the first twist in the story.
I write posts like these because somehow they help me clarify my ideas.
@Kathy:
Enjoy your time away from work, maybe a chance to not pay attention to this upside down world we all live in.
Be safe, be well, and have fun!
@inhumans99: They will turn on him on the day after it develops that he can’t hurt them, for whatever reason.
They are afraid of him. And not just “he will primary me” afraid. That’s become clear in the remarks and affect of several of them. Lisa Murkowski has no reason to be afraid of a primary threat, she has beaten them before. Alaskans like her. And yet she seemed terrified the day she voted to pass the BBB.
@inhumans99:
There must be some obscure, ineffable, unknowable reason why such time tends to be the most enjoyable time.
Greetings from Beth Israel Med. Center in Boston. Thankfully, PT and OT are over for the day. I can sit on the side of the bed and stand for a few seconds! Yippee!!!
@steve222:
Conservatives have become fond of bemoaning the lower marriage and child bearing rates. They see them as signs of moral depravity. I tend to attribute it more to reliable birth control.
@gVOR10: LGM has a post up about somebody blaming declining birth rates on smartphones and withdrawal from relationships.
@gVOR10:
Anything that lets them ignore wage stagnation and trickle-up economics, eh?
Jim Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, has passed away at age 97. RIP.
@Kathy:
@gVOR10:
iirc there was a study in Italy fairly recently that indicated that a major factor in couples who might want more children, all things being equal, not having them, was the cost of larger housing and childcare, especially if one partner was earning less money due to childcare costs.
Given contraception, larger families happen rather less.
So, the obvious policy, if boosting birth rates is the goal, is to provide more affordable housing for young families (which does NOT have to be US style suburbs) and state child care support.
It’s notable that, iirc, France has the second highest fertility rate in the OECD.
And that has a fairly high probability, imho, of France having lower housing costs than most, and considerable child care support.
Will the ends, will the means.
(Or else fantasize, MAGA-stylee, about a magical return to an imaginary 1950’s. And fail. European historical demographics rather indicates that legally forbidding contraception won’t get it done. )
William Webster, the only person to serve as both Director of Central Intelligence and FBI Director, has died at age 101.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/us/william-h-webster-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.c08.jB8N.FVjXJn3k_EQs&smid=url-share
@JohnSF:
I just pictured Dana Carvey doing his Church Lady character, modifying her catch phrase to “Could it be… SOCIALISM!”
In the original catch phrase its “SATAN!” Which captures how the GQP views and labels such policies.
@Kathy:
I always chuckle when American “conservatives” screech “socialism!” about policies that are, if not always agreed upon, at least regarded as not beyond reasonable discussion, by European conservatives dating back to Bismarck or Salisbury.
If not before: iirc King Henry III of France:
“If God gives me more life, I will make sure that no peasant in my realm will be so poor as to not have a chicken in his pot, of a Sunday.”
Communism or what?
I listened to the latest Ancient Geeks (Fantastic Four) and really enjoyed it, but apparently Dr. Taylor has not seen Thunderbolts* and he must rectify this ASAP. It is a wonderful movie and one of the best of the MCU.
@CSK:
Good to hear, sounds like you are about ready to start plotting your escape…:)
@JohnSF:
Especially since it’s only now with El Taco let loose, that the US is close to becoming a command economy.
@dazedandconfused:
If going to rehab counts as an escape, then I guess I’ll be doing that this coming Monday.
@Kathy:
“We had to become the socialists, in order to defeat the socialists.”
Paging George Owell.
Also James Blish, for that matter.
@Kathy:
If only the commands weren’t so silly.
That seems to be historical evidenced dictator problem, for some reason: they tend to default to dimwit.
(There are few exceptions: Augustus Caesar, perhaps?)
@JohnSF:
Perhaps. Also Sulla.
But Rome had practice with the lawful, limited magistracy of Dictator.