Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, October 3, 2025
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38 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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BlueSky.
Last week I wrote that the far right wing Christian Nationalists have driven more people away from Christ. Here’s some evidence.
15,000 churches could close this year amid religious shift in U.S.
The U.S. could see an unprecedented 15,000 churches shut their doors this year, far more than the few thousand expected to open, according to denominational reports and church consultants.
Why it matters: The unprecedented contraction, expected to continue over the next decade, risks leaving gaps in communities nationwide — particularly rural ones, where churches often are crucial providers of food aid, child care and disaster relief.
@Scott: Least surprising headline:
Texas megachurch founder Robert Morris pleads guilty to child sex abuse
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Redux
The spreadsheet behind the Golden Dome sticker shock
It will take 3 years just to fully define the requirement.
For your Friday amusement, here are the 6 stages of project management that I learned 30 years ago.
Wild Enthusiasm
Disillusionment
Panic
Search for the Guilty
Punishment of the Innocent
Praise and Honors for Non-Participants.
@Scott:
So the party of “protecting children” feels that 6 months in prison is enough for this chud. The average sentence is closer to 18 years. If the guy was a liberal they would want to hang him.
Shaking my head.
@Scott:
I believe panic at declining church attendance has been a contributing factor in MAGA. You sit in a pew week after week and you’ll notice if you keep hearing fewer hosannas. And if all the heads are either silver or bald.
@Scott:
A ‘short eyes’ in an Oklahoma jail. I’m sure he’ll be juuuuust fine. I had an easy time in my 11 days in jail because I was a burglar of a business which is fairly high status. Property crime = good, if successful. Anything with children? You do your time in a segregated unit, or even solitary because in general population you will definitely get stabbed. Even bad guys have kids.
Four days ago Trump issued an EO guaranteeing the security of Qatar. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/assuring-the-security-of-the-state-of-qatar/
This strikes me as a treaty more or less. Senate advice and consent was not sought. I guess that the Constitution is a dead letter for the most part; we have not heard a peep for our “conservatives.”
On June 23, Qatar was attacked by Iran, and the EO appears to have been in response to that. The EO was held till after Israel’s attack inside Qatar on September 9. Interesting timing. I’m guessing that Bibi was consulted on the EO and told Trump to hold off until after his bombings in Doha.
I have to thank Trump for removing any masks from the presidential wielding of power.
So the right has another ridiculous issue to whine about because Bad Bunny, an American-born performer, will be the headliner at the Superbowl halftime show. Corey Lewandowski (shouldn’t he be in jail somewhere for sexual assault) has threatened to have ICE agents on premises. To do what, arrest some of his fans who might also have been born in Puerto Rico? I think I’ll have to download a few Bad Bunny songs to give him some financial support.
@Scott:
3.6 trillion at 20 years sounds like a more realistic starting point. But it won’t be either that fast or that cheap.
America getting smarter and dumber at the same time. It’s a foot race.
But sure, blame it on the new guy —- A.I.
More:
@Scott:
In Trump terms: “par for the course.”
Cue up Trump’s response: “Never heard of the guy. But I wish him well.”
Question: Is Trump’s association with sexual offenders higher than statistical averages for our population?
A.I. response “To provide a definitive statistical comparison between Donald Trump’s association with sex offenders and the population average, one would need comprehensive data that does not exist publicly. However, publicly documented evidence shows that Trump had a multi-decade friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a level of association that is highly unusual and not representative of the general population. “
—–
Probably why Trump has concerns about “getting into heaven,” because it cannot possibly be his bad money dealings and perpetual bearing of false witness to everyone on everything.
@Rob1:
Krugman has mentioned several times the money spent on AI, like building data centers, as the one thing holding up the economy.
This by itself is not a bad thing, provided all that money spent will produce something of value. Otherwise it may be as wasteful as paying some people to dig holes, and other people to fill them back up.
Last spring the Mexican government passed a new law for federal acquisitions. It’s very similar to the old law, but has some major changes*. We’re taking a course online twice weekly for six weeks to learn all about it. We’re also reading the law itself (it’s very tedious).
The latter parts of the course promise to include means to use AI in reading the requests for proposals (monstrous documents of dozens to over 200 pages each), for identifying queries to raise at the questions meeting, and for assembling proposals.
I’m very skeptical.
I thought about getting an llm to read the old law and the new one, and to highlight major differences. I haven’t done so, and probably won’t. I’m not sure the llms I have access to can even do it, nor how to phrase the prompt, I keep imagining it will take me hours just to get them to do it, and then more time checking for errors.
So, I’m slogging through the text of the law.
@Rob1:
I would say that AI is strangling entry level jobs for some fields, but not in others.
For example, my daughter graduated from a top tier art school in 2024 with a degree in animation. Most studios have come to the conclusion that they can get animation which is 75% as good at 25% of the cost using AI, so they are simply not hiring entry level animators.
@Lucys Football:
Obviously being born brown in Puerto Rico doesn’t make Bad Bunny an American any more than being born Black in Hawaii made Obama an American. /s
@Kathy:
And yet, the energy needed to power these data centers is going to drive up prices for everyone.
Seems like the wrong time to eliminate health insurance subsidies, but what do I know…
RE: Bad Bunny — the number of Americans who don’t know that Puerto Rico is a US territory is probably really, really high.
@Rob1: I have looked at some reviews of AI programming tools. The consensus seems to be that the AI is kind of like a junior programmer. Useful, but needs a fair bit of guidance.
Which prompts the concern for hiring junior people. Senior people were once junior people. So we need to keep the pipeline stocked, and expect some loss in the pipeline. Some of them will depart for whatever reason.
Given how much the corporate world hates training these days, I’m not sure how to do that.
So, strangely, that may end up in a place where there are fewer programmers, who get paid even more. Which while I can understand how some people might want that, but it isn’t good for us as a culture.
@Jen: is there ever a good time to end the lifesaving subsidies? No.
I am ambivalent. The GOP is determined to blow up our healthcare, always have been. We the people have relied on their overweening desire to maintain office and having some semblance of shame to keep the wolves at bay. No more. There is no shame among scoundrels. I get the sense a lot more people understand we are damned if we do and surely damned if we don’t.
My daughter and SIL have been going to Florida for vacay, an old tradition of his family, since forever.
Next year they’re going to Puerto Rico and encouraging their Redneck Riviera* friends do the same.
* that’s not being snobby, that’s what everybody calls the Florida Panhandle beaches in these parts.
On re watching Trek, Wednesday’s ep was The Trouble with Tribbles. Instead of going to the next, Thursday I streamed DS9’s Trials and Tribble-ations.
It’s a decent Trek comedy ep, but nowhere as good as I thought it was on first watch, lo these many, many, many years ago. The visuals mixing live actors on older video hold up well enough (I’m sure there were details I didn’t notice). I think I found it less funny, but that might be the lingering effects of Lower Decks, which remains the best collection of Trek humor in the galaxy.
I laughed most when Bashir insists on enacting a time paradox, and O’Brien stops him. Julian then says “All right. Fine, but I can’t wait to get back to Deep Space 9 and see your face when you find out that I never existed.”
And even more when Worf claims the tribbles “were once considered mortal enemies of the Klingon Empire.”
Has anyone else noticed that Trump’s position on Ukraine changed dramatically at almost exactly the same time that the Epstein book and the famous Trump birthday card became public, to be very likely followed by the full Epstein files? Blackmail doesn’t work if the secret’s already been exposed.
@Kathy:
I’m sure somebody will come up with a reasonable use-case for the data-centres, once the current AI bubble goes *pop*.
The dot.com bubble got a lot of internet infrastructure built.
Railway mania in Europe led many to lose their shirts, and often their underwear also, but most of the resulting rail lines proved useful for the next 100 years or so.
@Michael Reynolds:
We have definitely noticed, but I also think that President Trump has also seen how Europe has stepped up and helped Ukraine degrade Russia’s primary means of keeping this conflict going indefinitely (or at least long enough for Russia to eke out a win), that being Ukraine’s shockingly successful assault on Russia’s oil and gas fields (in addition to some surprisingly effective arms depot attacks).
If about 20% of America’s oil and gas production capacity was for the most part destroyed, you would have long lines everywhere in the U.S., along with gas priced at $20-30 a gallon (and my hypothetical price of gas under this scenario is probably way to low), if you could even find a station that had gas to sell. It is beyond shocking that Ukraine has been so successful at hitting Russia/Putin where it counts, in their/his pocketbook.
I remember when Andy had his posts up noting that Ukraine was destined to lose in the long-term due to a need for a constant flow of arms and ammunition, and how production of such material was barely ramping up at the time of his posts, and it is amazing how fast Europe was to come to their senses and realize that they had to step up production and go to a war footing now vs later because the wolf was indeed at their door and waiting to blow their house down once this wolf was done trampling all over Ukraine.
Europe’s actions are starting to very much make America look a bit timid and weak in the shadow of Putin, so President Trump really needs to stop loudly saying he is prepared to back Ukraine but really doing nothing of the sort, he needs to put action to his words.
@Michael Reynolds:
I personally doubt it; more likely Trump is just peeved that Putin is not persuadable on this.
I rather doubt that Trump will actually provide much to Ukraine (though I hope I’m wrong) but just kindly allow Europeans to purchase US weapons for transfer.
A cunning plan, to be sure.
If only Europe did not, in fact, have a rather sizable armaments biz on its own account, and lots of companies ans politicians and lobbyists looking for a pay-day.
It will work for while; until it doesn’t.
I must confess though, to a wistful mental image of Budanov calling the White House and saying “Mr President! Hello! Somehow we seem to have acquired a lot of pictures and flight logs and so forth relating to yourself and a certain, Epshteen, is it? I’m sure it’s all nothing, but …”
lol
Fiction is sometimes preferable to reality.
@Jen:
Driving up demand while killing new solar and wind energy projects and promoting instead a less economical means for producing more power (aka coal), will not raise prices on anyone because that would be against El Taco’s wishes, and everyone know reality bends to his whim.
@JohnSF:
Last year Apple made a big deal about its “Apple Intelligence” in their then new phone lineup. Later it turned out there was little of that, and most would come online over time in software updates. This year, from what tech review videos I’ve seen, they acted as if “Apple Intelligence” never even existed.
BTW, Apple removed the ICE block app from its store.
I assume installed copies remain functional. I don’t know if one can install non-app store apps in an iphone.
Cowards.
So what can you do with buildings larger than some small cities filled with racks upon racks of GPUs? Videogame streaming? Use it for actual AI software like those that research folding proteins? Farm bitcoin?
Okay, I am spamming this open thread to talk about something cool in my life and really does not belong tacked on to my post talking about Ukraine.
It had recently come to my attention that Heritage Auctions allows you to send them some pictures, and a description for a free eval of whether or not your collectible items were auctionable (or at least qualified to be worthy of being auctioned via Heritage).
I owned some pieces of Original Comic Artwork, and one of the pieces was from Todd McFarlane’s run on Marvel’s Spider-Man title, along with a few other nice but not as valuable pieces as the McFarlane piece. I knew the McFarlane piece was potentially worth good money, but really had no clue as to its true potential worth. It is a piece my Dad bought for me from one of McFarlane’s first convention appearances in Los Angeles, CA at the Shrine auditorium back in the early 90s. Todd also signed the artwork. I should note, I was at the Con with my Dad. I had it professionally framed with archival materials asap and the piece to this day looks fantastic without the usual browning sections you see on older pieces of original comic art.
Heritage says go ahead and submit for an eval and in about a week you will get a response even if it boils down to you have a nice collectible but it’s estimated value does not makes it eligible to send to Heritage to sell as a consignment piece. I submitted my art for a free eval on a Sunday afternoon, and on Monday I get a reply from the VP of Comics at Heritage (he is based out of their TX HQ) that the McFarlane really is a nice piece and would be a good fit for their Comic Art Signature Auction on Nov 21-23.
I spoke with him and found that I could drive my pieces down to their Beverly Hills, CA location to submit, and did so this past weekend. My 4 pieces of artwork had to have an estimated value of at least $10,000 for them to consider, and my McFarlane piece alone met their criteria.
I am giddy about this as it is not every day that I have something that is considered popular and valuable enough to be an auction piece at a place like Heritage (they recently sold a Frazetta original for over 13 million, yes…million, and it is not even one of Frazetta’s best works in my humble opinion).
Hopefully, after this is all said and done I will have some extra money to invest for when I retire, and I can certainly do with some catch up on that front.
I should mention specifics, I own the original artwork for Spider-Man Issue 4 Page 11.
I am practically telling everyone I know (IRL and on-line) about how excited I am about this turn of luck I have experienced.
@inhumans99:
Europe is still divided on this, and hence still not having the impact it could.
See Germany still not willing to supply Taurus ALCM’s, and various countries (Germany, Spain, Greece) still not prepared to stomp on the Russian “shadow fleet” tankers.
But, in terms of key munitions (155mm shells and barrels, in particular) and key components for Ukrainian weapons, Europe is now supplying on a major scale.
And European munitions output is now much greater than in 2021, and still ramping.
Regarding the UAF refinery strikes, Philips O’Brien had an interesting substack recently, pointing out how the attacks are now more precisely hitting the key central targets in the refineries ie the “crackers” (and I’d add, the related catalytic units, and vacuum stills).
These are not things that are happy bunnies when exposed to shrapnel and high temperature fires.
And they are also not that easy to replace.
I still expect, pessimistically, that Trumps words will not result in any actions beyond an “offer” to Europe: you buy our US weapons for Ukraine.
Which is better than nothing.
And will last until Europe can replace said US weapons.
Which may be sooner than many MAGA imagine.
@inhumans99:
I have a dear friend who works for Raytheon (technically RTX), and he says the US population has no idea how close Russia’s economy is to completely collapsing. Putin can no longer paper over the losses of young men, and the actual energy crisis enveloping his nation. Rick Wilson, on his podcast, said almost the same thing. I highly recommend anyone interested in the Ukraine/Russia was to listen.
https://youtu.be/_ILAMub1-y8?si=XPfERJrRS53vuE6I
Bottom line is that Ukraine, which has some very good engineers and coders, has revolutionized drone warfare. They’re building their own drones, missles, and bombs that are, literally, destroying the much larger Russian military. I’m starting to think they’re not only going to win, but they’re going to get back Crimea and the Donbas region. They’re going to keep. picking off Russian military targets, while avoiding civilian deaths, unlike the Russians, which keeps world opinion on their side.
@inhumans99:
@JohnSF:
To steal a phrase, it seems Mad Vlad and El Taco have awakened a sleeping giant.
@Jay L. Gischer:
My experience of AI assisted coding is that it can be very useful, to a rather amateurish VBA coder like myself.
So long as you can work out the “pseudo-code” of what you want to achieve in the first place, and then have just enough knowledge to spot where the AI code has gone wrong.
Which it often does.
Personally, I still run Excel 2003 on a home PC, because that was the last version that had a useful local syntax help system, before it switched to its hopeless “online help”.
When doing some VBA, I still find it easier to work in Excel 2003, then translate to the current version.
AI does make that easier, I will grant.
Also, porting a sensibly structrured database over to another DBS.
But for mission-critical coding, as opposed to “just make it work” kludges (which is what I tend to do) it’s just not up to the mark.
And that’s setting aside the whole problem of the “trifecta of doom” if if you let AI, with it’s none prompt vulnerabilty, loose on secure data and ALSO allow access to external instructions and communication.
Sooner or later, some silly company that permits such is going to find itself robbed down to its underpants.
@Kathy:
It looks like Apple is actually being sensible.
They seem to have looked at the dangers of the “trifecta of doom” and realised AI enabled prompted “on-the-fly” coding could comprehensively bork the whole Apple ecosysytem, not to mention all their users data and financial security.
@Kathy:
Games with actual non-determined plots and AI-enabled NPC character interaction?
That would actually be a massive possible market.
Also, all the possible actual science and engineering etc uses of such massive computation capacity: catalyst and enzyme design, protein folding models, ecosystems modelling, genome to proteome mapping, climatic models, telescope data analysis, etc etc etc.
@inhumans99:
1) I don’t think your post qualifies as spam.
2) Congrats on the find! May it fetch a lot.
@EddieInCA:
There is also pretty surely a good deal of sorta-unattributed Ukraine/Europe/UK technology co-operation going on.
See the connections of the UK Milanion Group to the development of the Ukrainian Flamingo cruise missile.
Not to mention the developing cross-connections re drone warfare.
@EddieInCA:
That’s why I think we need to demand that Ukraine join NATO. They fight, and they fight smart.
That said, every drug smuggler, pervert, assassin and ex-spouse will thank them. This will quickly metastasize. Cheap, easily-operated, with a wide variety of discreditable uses. If I’m going to rob a bank I place drones over lines of approach to warn of cops. Stalkers will have a field day. OTOH, why should I wait 30 minutes to get my Door Dash and have to tip the driver and the building valet, when I could have my dumplings flown directly to me here on my balcony?
I have a fearless prediction: drones will be more disruptive over the next decade than AI.
@Kathy:
I’ll be honest, this worries me a bit.
Europe did not exactly have a stellar record the last time around of being a global Power.
It’s lot more relaxing to simply potter in the garden, and let the world go by.
But if the world will not permit you to do so?
“You should have let me sleep!”
As I’ve said before: the primary European problem is co-ordination.
It already spends on defence on a par to China.
But is crippled by seperate national defence establishments making for massive inefficiency due to function duplication and separated procurement.
France has been saying this since the 1960’s; but now a lot of others are beginning to think the French were right all along.
It will only take a relatively small amount of trans-national defence integration to produce massive efficiency gains.
The question then, is what happens when “the Ents wake up and find that they are strong”?
@Michael Reynolds:
I know some UK army folks who were involved in training Ukrainians.
Their conclusion, re the UAF NCO’s and officers, was mostly “they should be teaching us”
They were not as adept at NATO style “combined operations”, perhaps.
But when it came to “trench fighting” close combat and drone warfare, they were probably better.
The UAF is now perhaps one of the most effective European armies ever.
(On a par with the British Army of 1918, to introduce a personal historical obsession)
@JohnSF:
Yeah, the period of European dominance included long bouts of colonialism, resource extraction (theft?), and culminated in two (2) world wars.
I assume they’ve learned something, besides stepping out of the way of the US.
@JohnSF: +100 for LOTR reference.
@Kathy:
otoh, a lot of Europeans tend to incline to the view that just because the Germans went nuts, (twice) that does not make us culpable for them, due simply to geographic proximity.
Resource extraction is overrated as a driver, imho.
Those with resources are, on the whole, inclined to sell them, and usually at market rates.
What else are they going to do with them?
Those who acquire them also tend do the same with them.
During the peak period of European imperial expansion in the 19th century, the key resources of coal, iron, copper, etc were largely produced in Europe.
What was key, perhaps, was the Atlantic sugar/slavery economy of the 18th century; which was both enormously profitable, and massively impacted the social patterns of the Americas, and not in a good way.
The US remains a predominant Power.
But a unified Europe would be arguably at least as formidable a potential challenger to the US as China.
If their interests came to differ.
That is one reason why the post-WW2 US leadership was sensible: it developed a system in which the US was the predominant Power, but also one its allies were fairly comfortable with.
Not just in military terms (NATO etc) but also economics (IMF, World Bank, GATT, etc etc etc) and the diplomatic basis of the UN and so forth.
Now MAGA, being rather dim, looks on all its grievances and concludes: “We wuz cheated! Give us what we wants, and salve our grump! Horrid rotten globalists! We hates you! You haz welfare becuase you robs us!”
(Yep, MAGA = Gollum)
Never stopping to consider that a world in which Europe and Japan are reasonably content allies and trading partners and co-investors is likely rather preferable to Hobbesian international “war of all against all” as per the 19th Century or the 1930’s.