Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, January 30, 2026
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35 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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BlueSky.
Interesting astronomical photos:
“Link“
Same as it ever was.
Rich, bored and isolated: Why Texas oil country loves OnlyFans
The feds have arrested Don Lemon, and Trump has filed a 10 billion dollar lawsuit against the IRS for allowing his and his sons 2019 tax returns to be leaked to the NYT.
El Taco’s lost it (I know, water is wet).
He has de-certified all Canadian aircraft.
To begin with, he can’t do that. To finish it, removing an aircraft certification requires a finding of fact that the type in question is unsafe or wasn’t properly certified.
I assume this will be ignored. Aside from Bombardier business jets, the Big Three airlines in the US make use, though contractors and subsidiaries, of Canadian regional jets for regional flights, in addition to Delta and Breeze using the A-220 extensively.
This is insane.
@CSK:
I’m sure the lawsuit is without merit, so the IRS will likely settle for $20 billion.
Breaking: Fatso has had Don Lemon arrested. This after at least two courts refused to issue a warrant for his arrest. I’m no fan of Lemon’s but this is clearly a 1st Amendment issue where the fat f’er is bent on retribution.
Good news!! David Brooks has a final column in NYT announcing his retirement*.
I’m surprised to see he’s only 64, he writes much older. And he’s going out the way he lived, almost three thousand words, signifying nothing, except that he blames some vague collective failure of culture for our current woes. The alternative would be admitting it’s the complete moral and intellectual failure of the party he so long pretended he wasn’t supporting at every turn. At least until Trump drove him from politics into pop-sociology.
* No link, you don’t want to read it. It’s ten minutes you’d never get back.
@Daryl: Trump should have been declared a vexatious litigator years ago (which would require him to get advance approval from a court before filing a suit). At a minimum, the frivolous suit against the IRS should be stayed until he is out of office. As to arresting Lemon – once again Pam Bondi is willing to put the Constitution in the shredder in order to placate the vengeful Dotard. Trump doesn’t want Lemon in prison, he wants him to incur legal expenses and be embarrassed. How long will Congress and courts put up with this blatant abuse of power? Sadly, there is no end in sight.
@gVOR10: I started reading it but got bored. The complaints about education…were eye-rolling.
Behold, cultural orphans:
And then there was a comment decrying the decline in a liberal arts education, wherein people view college as just a training path to make money (oh David, WHO might have been pushing that nonsense?) and I just gave up on the piece.
So. Much. Navel. Gazing.
So, I’m happy to finally share something I’ve been working on for a couple of months.
Part of this project was to deal with with the effects of childhood trauma. It’s amazing the things you can talk yourself out of if you’ve been raised to believe that you’re just a joke and that all your dreams are stupid.
The other part of it was not getting play at Tío Pikachu’s before I left. I was planning to do this a a big dramatic surprise; and talked myself out of it.
Musically, these are songs and themes that are important to me. Sounds and feelings where I find my home. Many of these are songs that I listened to as a kid, but played in a different and sometimes more contemporary forms.
The picture is one I took of a house boat that sank back in like September of last year. It’s still there.
@gVOR10:
Thirty years ago David Brooks could be interesting or at least present an interesting perspective, but that is long in the past. Brooks of the trumpian era, like David French and Arthur Brooks, formerly AEI president have become at sea politically. As what passes as conservatism in the US drifts into revanchism and fascism they’ve not picked up an regrouped as Democrats, like many of the neo-cons have. But have drifted into paeans to our better selves, David & Arthur or into analysis like French.
Anybody get to go to the Melania debut last night and get to walk on the black carpet? Such a can’t-miss event.
Per ABC, the DOJ is releasing 3 million pages of the Epstein files.
Paul Krugman’s not impressed with the next Fed chair.
Ever the optimist, Krugman predicts, “The silver lining to his appointment is that he shouldn’t be able to do much damage”
But there’s one big caveat:
We’re cooked.
My personal silver lining is that I work for a company that makes 95% of its income from selling food to the Mexican government. Governments always have money and always pay their bills (eventually).
You know what AI will never be able to do? Conceive of Drops of God. I love this show.
Oh, no…Catherine O’Hara has passed away at age 71.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/arts/television/catherine-ohara-dead.html
Catherine O’Hara has died.
@Jen:
She was wonderful in The Parent Trap and so many other films.
I, like many others I would guess have actually seen quite a few of her films/tv shows because she starred in quite a lot of films/shows that became part of our popular culture (such as Beetlejuice, Home Alone, Schitt’s Creek, The Parent Trap, and so many others) and did not just end up working on high art/art house type films or shows.
She was such a recognizable actress in anything she did and will be missed.
RIP
@CSK:
Yeah, they say it’s all of them, that they didn’t protect El Taco, and that all victims were protected.
So we know none of that is true.
@Michael Reynolds:
AI can now produces slop based on it.
It’s what it does best.
More on the Canadian aircraft kerfuffle
Of note, Canadian authorities are asking for additional tests on the fuel icing systems on the Gulfstream jets. In fact, so did the FAA, but then it granted a three year exemption. So these planes haven’t been certified in Canada.
All this additional caution comes from the MAX disasters, as the FAA plainly did a terrible job in certifying a manifestly unsafe type.
@Sleeping Dog: Elsewhere I read Brooks is going to The Atlantic. That’s OK, I don’t subscribe to Atlantic. I don’t recall Brooks much before he started his 23 years at NYT. I recall his early days at NYT as a pretend centrist, really a Republican concern troll. ‘I have Democrats best interests at heart when I say they should drop abortion as an issue.’
Like all successful pundits, he grew an audience by telling them what they wanted to hear, and that worked with an audience at NYT until Trump. Brooks then had to make a decision, Abandon Trump, or abandon his income. But until then, he was one of the people responsible for building the modern Republican Party.
@inhumans99:
Doh, I was thinking of Maureen O’Hara, who actually starred in the 1961 The Parent Trap.
Several of y’all probably read my comment and are all like, that dude inhumans99 is a bit confused, lol.
@inhumans99: Nah. I thought of the later version of The Parent Trap and this prompted, “Oh, wow, was she in that, too?” cuz I never saw it.
What I did see is lots of SCTV on late night. She has spent an entire career (on and off) working with Eugene Levy, who is also a very funny guy. Both of them had what I would call “slow burn” careers. Very good, and just kept getting better. As opposed to the meteor that was John Candy, for instance.
As an aside, Joe Flaherty never seemed to do as well career-wise as the others, and I never quite saw why. He seemed really funny to me.
It’s not all bad news today. The overpriced bribe Trophy Wife documentary is having dreadful box office numbers.
What I found interesting is this:
Makes perfect sense. Lex Bezos can promise as wide a release as he wants, but theaters won’t take up an unpopular film that will lead to empty theaters and a drop in weekly concession sales. So, he has to pay theaters to show the bribe movie.
@Kathy: This Houston Chronicle article came out two days ago:
In some Texas cities, the Melania Trump movie could play to empty theaters
I suspect that various county Republican clubs are going to suck it up and buy tickets.
@Jen: Mr. Brooks, the least insightful man known to live, intoned:
Ok, here’s the thing — I’ve heard this argument from other people, put in a much more interesting and relevant way. I’m not sure I buy it, because my immediate thought is “what about Europeans living in Europe?” But here goes.
White Supremacy hurts white people. The creation of Whiteness flattens our cultural heritage and takes away everything that brought us to where we are. All of the traditions, foods, culture, arts are given up to achieve White. Italian and Irish communities faded away as these people were accepted as White. The great melting pot of Whiteness creates a thin homogenized paste that is utterly unfilling.
I don’t buy it, as there are lots of white supremacists in Europe who very clearly know where they came from, and it sounds like White people trying to claim a version of the loss of culture that enslaved Black folks had forced upon them as they were torn from their communities in Africa and brought here in chains.
I will grant that the only uniquely White American folklore seems to be Johnny Appleseed, a few made up facts about early presidents, The Lost Cause of the Noble South And The War Of Northern Aggression, and the 2020 Election Was Stolen. This seems a poor trade for Robin Hood and Baba Yaga.
But, I think it’s really interesting that David Brooks seems to be repeating it without any reference to White Supremacy, and is instead blaming the educators in their ivory towers.
@Mr. Prosser:
“Worst night I ever spent in a theater!” -Abe Lincoln
@gVOR10:
While I’d read Brooks earlier, I did enjoy his articles based his book Bobos in Paradise. He really seemed to capture the vibe of a particular mileue. But yes, his years at the Times are pretty forgettable, he seldom wrote anything that made you consider that he really had a point, nor did he write much that would draw outrage, except from those quarters that are always outraged.
@Scott:
I’m surprised El Taco and his rabid MAGAts aren’t ranting about how trophy Wife was snubbed for the Academy Awards.
I’m sure it will sweep the Razzies, though.
Donald Trump has not been golfing since Jan 11th, and this is now tied with the longest stretch of him not golfing as President this term.
https://didtrumpgolftoday.com/
It’s possible that he has golfed his last ball, that his bloated carcass can no longer be trusted to behave in public for that long and that he will soon be dead.
Huzzah!
Also, the White House is doctoring photos of Trump to make his hands look normal.
https://bsky.app/profile/joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3mdm4rsp57s2c
Let’s hope this is the most successful doctoring going on, and Dr. Oz and RFKJr are in charge of his health.
(I expect that Trump will keep dragging his fetid near-corpse about for a while yet, and that even when it happens it won’t fix that much short term, but it’s nice to dream. I just hope that Biden gets to go to his funeral. I just want this for Old Joe — is that so bad?)
@Kathy:
“Longer review”
excerpts:
Apparently mostly dreadfully boring.
Trump announces August auto race in downtown Washington
Once again, I am having trouble telling fact from fiction. The next Democratic administration needs to include a General Fucknuttery Czar to keep this up — and they should ideally be either an actual general, or a minor member of the Russian royal family if not both (Sure, the last Czar and his family were killed, but surely some previous Czar had a brother or something, and there are descendants from them).
So they released the Epstein files to distract from the ICE murders?
@dazedandconfused:
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Lololololol basically what the American presidency is now, trying to govern this loony bin.
One fine day a fox walking through the forest near the US border with Canada spots a herd of elk running north really fast.
So the fox asks them, “Hey! Where are you heading so fast?”
“Canada!” one of them answers.
“But why?”
“There’s an order to deport all camels to a slaughterhouse in El Salvador.”
“But you’re not camels!”
“Yeah? Try proving to ICE you’re not a camel!”