Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, August 29, 2025
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19 comments
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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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We had a lightning strike two days ago. It set the condo building fire alarm, but for many residents here it fried Xfinity boxes and some television sets. Including ours* in the master bedroom. I guess its time to go to Best Buy this weekend.
More of a problem for residents here- Our building elevator was knocked out. Dear Wife and I live on the 2nd floor and don’t have mobility issues but we have 3rd and 4th floor neighbors who do. The elevator is supposedly going to be fixed today. Cross your fingers for us.
The HOA had a scheduled meeting last night. In the run up to it, multiple board members tried to get DW or I to run for a board vacancy. She and I weren’t interested mainly because of our extensive travel plans but also because I don’t like the interruptions that would happen as I try writing my books. Anyway the board vacancy was filled last night.
My muse is back is after a 4-5 week vacation. I’m penning a story set in the Virgin Islands.
I’m happy to report my suitcase is in storage at the moment. DW and I had a good time in New Orleans last week. It is however, less than 4 weeks before we depart for Italy and Switzerland**.
Since her retirement, DW has learned how to play bridge. Now she is teaching me how to play it so I can join her for weekly sessions with some of our neighbors.
*- Our Xfinity box and one television were knocked out, but two other televisions and computers survived the carnage.
**- DW’s cousin Betty has invited us to Zurich for the christening of her first grandchild. So DW and I have tacked on a side trip to Switzerland. We visited Betty and her husband Hubie on a Switzerland trip in 1997.
These people are just so f*cking incompetent.
Tulsi Gabbard Under Fire for Reportedly Revealing Undercover CIA Agent’s Name on X: ‘Sackable Offense’
About that gilding of the Oval Office…
RFK Jr. claims he’ll reveal the causes of autism “next month.”
Why the delay, I wonder? Taking his cue from Trump?
Just watched the 2016 Anthony Bourdain episode in Vietnam, when Bourdain shared a local meal with President Obama.
As they talked over a humble bowl of bún chả on a range of subjects amid working class Vietnamese, all sitting on plastic chairs, I was once again reminded of how intelligent, insightful, present, empathetic, and relevant Obama is regardless of the setting or circumstance.
Trump is none of these things. None. Cunning not intelligent. Oblivious not insightful. Pathologically self absorbed, not present. Utterly insensitive, not empathetic. And totally irrelevant to the actual human condition.
And yet 40% of Americans selected such an abject deficit of human capacity for their leader.
During the meal, Obama, with typical prescience (remember this was recorded in 2016), criticizes growing politicized sentiment for “building walls” around our American community — saying ” you don’t make peace with your friends, your make peace with your enemies.”
Trump, in his first 8 months, has recklessly made war on our friends and supplicated to our major security threats, upending decades long momentum towards cooperative global problem solving.
Trump’s approach to policy is consumately transactional. Obama’s approach also contains a transactional component — we make cooperative peace to get cooperative peace. But Obama’s approach is undergirded by humanitarian ideals. Trump on the other hand is purely a creature of self interest. And he is pulling our entire society down into that hole with himself and the 40% who were already on that path of self absorption. Our own ongoing popular culture has a lot to say about this arc of events.
@Kingdaddy: As a copyright practitioner, I can easily spot the differences between the Home Depot pieces and what ended up in the Oval. But that doesn’t change how absolutely common (and I mean that disparagingly – they’re so basic) the Oval looks. Still, it would be great for the designer that is selling at Home Depot to sue the White House for copyright infringement.
On an entirely different tack, I am beginning to wonder whether the Epstein files are actually the distraction to keep us from focusing on all the other government destroying, facistic story lines coming out of this administration.
@Joe:..Epstein files are actually the distraction…
Professor Taylor covered this recently.
Years ago I read a British novel that made an astute observation about America. When a character arrives home from a business trip to the states, he’s asked how things were “across the pond”. He responds “greed and fear, as always”.
Yep.
As per normal, the Cracker Barrel logo MAGA cause du jour was likely made larger by our hungry media, than it was actually felt on the street.
But it serves as metaphor for the whole MAGA raison d’etre — anxiety over societal change of the familiar. The logo might have lost its rocking chair, barrel, and “Uncle Herschel,” but the cornbread and gravy would likely have remained the same. No matter, it was this superficial change in the offing that served as portent to greater change.
Just like the issue of integrating transgender and LGBTQ into our larger community sent political “shockwaves” that rocked national elections, the actual substance of such change had near zero impact on the personal lives of those Americans who heedlessly threw their votes away against their own economic interest. The insecurity of offering civil rights to LGBTQ was promoted as a bigger threat than losing one’s access to healthcare for one’s entire family. Oh, well.
There is recent coverage of some Americans who fled the US with their families to Russia, to escape oppressive “liberal values.” Several cited mere exposure of their children to the issue homosexuality as a prime motivating factor. By the accounts presented, these people are not doing well in their new homeland. Apparently intolerance ultimately cuts into everyone’s sense of “freedom.” Grass is greener.
Oh well.
@Joe: We can walk and chew gum simultaneously, but a president’s history of sexualizing the underage is not a distraction. It’s perhaps the 2nd or 3rd worst presidential scandal ever, behind the same guy’s attempt coup and Jan. 6 terror attack (#1), and alongside him selling out the US and our allies to Putin.
A pedophile should not be president. It’s disqualifying.
For a decade, some of us have harped on the plethora of evidence of Trump’s sex crimes against children –including multiple public statements sexualizing his then-underage daughter, among other disturbing acts long in the public record. We are glad to see the Epstein files dustup catching up more Americans to where they should’ ve been long ago. So to the extent the Epstein files are a diversion, it’s only because they are just candles on an already baked cake.
It’s concerning more are not mortified. What’s the disconnect? Do Americans secretly approve of older adult sex acts with young-ish teens and preteens? Is that fueling the apathy?
I repeat: a pedophile should not be president. It’s gross and disqualifying, not a distraction. I imagine future historians wondering what mass madness allowed this to slide.
US Republican Senator Joni Ernst will not run for re-election, CBS News reports (Reuters)
If true, looks like either a wash or a win for Republicans actually. Because Ernst is not polling well purportedly, more beatable than an Iowa Trumper should be.
@DK: DK: Agree completely. Trump is a serial sexual assaulter. He was caught on tape bragging about it, and there are more than two dozen women who have accused him of it. But there are also women who were contestants in Miss Teen USA who said he would walk around backstage while teenage girls were getting changed. Combine that with his remarks about young girls, including his own daughter, and he certainly sounds like a pedo wannabee. At this point if he were just another guy no one would want him within 100 yards of their underage daughter.
How South Park avoids being sued for defamation by Trump.
The creators of South Park are supposedly protected from any legal recourse from the US President thanks to the ‘small-penis rule’.
As well as making jabs at his personality and his tendency to sue people, South Park has also made multiple jokes about the size of the President’s penis.
According to Satan, he ‘couldn’t even see anything’ when the cartoon version of Trump took off his trousers as he fumed: “It’s so f***ing small.” (South Park regularly shows Trump in bed with Satan on this season’s episodes).
For those who are unfamiliar, the small-penis rule is a strategy that could supposedly limit defamation liability for creators, including cartoonists.
Explaining the principle of the rule, Professor Michael Conklin wrote in the Nebraska Law Review: “The rule recommends that when an author utilises a fictional character to defame a real-life person, he should also give the character a small penis – the logic being that in order to sue, a plaintiff would have to admit that he is the fictional character, therefore admitting that he has a small penis.”
As I wrote above, our condo elevator was out of commission due to a lightning strike. It is still not working as more parts are needed to repair it.
@Bill Jempty:
Kathy’s First Law: Elevator repairs take a minimum of two days.
@Bill Jempty: @Kathy:
It took a year and a half for the elevator in my building to be repaired.
@CSK:
Replacing the main elevator at our apartment building took five months.
Appeals court upholds the Court of International Trade’s ruling that El Taco’s tariffs are illegal and unconstitutional.
There are two problems with this ruling: 1) the tariffs remain in place until October 14th while the decision is appealed to the fixer court. 2) the fixer court will rule in favor of El Taco.
And even if I’m wrong about the above prediction, El Taco can pass his tariffs through legislation. The question then would be whether the GQP does away with the legislative filibuster. I don’t think the GQP would fail to pass a tariffs bill at all.