Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, May 15, 2026
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34 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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
Trump’s assessment of Talarico is…bizarre.
He’s just throwing MAGA buzzwords out there and hoping they stick. Swiss cheese has fewer holes than his brain.
The foreign policy thing we are not paying attention to: Cuba is out of oil. The electricity is barely on a few hours a day in Havana. The rest of the country has gone dark. Thanks to the calcified imbecility of the Castro successor regime, and the cruelty of the loathsome reptile in the White House, an island of 10 million people just off our coast is a failed state. People will soon begin to starve. Many will try to get to the US on boats with gas engines minus the gas. A lot of desperate people will drown in the Caribbean. A lot of sick people needing meds will suffer and die. The government will likely pull an Ayatollah and massacre any uprising.
Trump is turning Cuba into another Haiti.
Cuba will need massive, years-long international efforts to avert complete disaster. Will the Trump administration help them? No, of course not. MAGA is not capable of building, MAGA only tears down. I wonder how the Miami Cuban exiles will feel about Marco Rubio when they start to see Cuban children with swollen bellies picking through garbage, and the return of epidemic disease, and desperate families floating face down in the Gulf. Will that be a mission accomplished moment for them?
That’s a fitting description of Trump 2.0. Just put this into Latin: “We came, we saw, we wrecked it.”
@Charley in Cleveland:
Venimus, vidimus, destruximus
I like it.
Picked up the latest “Dungeon Crawler Carl” book–A PARADE OF HORRIBLES, which came out earlier this week. These are wildly fun books, and the audiobooks may be one of the rare times when I enjoy having it read to me more than reading it myself.
Trump now says Iran will have to give up its nuclear ambitions for only 20 years, not forever.
@CSK:
With China helping Iran evade sanctions, his leverage to coerce that would be? what?
The Trump/Xi meeting ended without any major agreement announced to the public. Interesting to note that Nvidia will be allowed to sell some of its more advanced chips to China that had been held back for our national security concerns. No concessions by China were made. This was just a unilateral decision by our government. NVDA stock jumped. Coincidentally, Mr.Trump bought a bunch of NVDA stock recently https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20260515170/trump-discloses-big-buys-of-shares-in-boeing-and-nvidia-as-the-companies-look-set-to-gain-from-his-china-trip. He is a brilliant businessman.
@Charley in Cleveland:
ETTD
@Slugger: What happened to blind trusts? On the other hand, I recall a story from the W admin about Cheney telling the trustee of his “blind” trust to sell a particular stock. The striking thing about the story was that nobody cared.
@charontwo:
Beats me. Didn’t he say just the other day that he would accept no less than Iran permanently abandoning its quest to become a nuclear weapons power? It’s hard to keep up.
@Jen:
Hegseth’s next tattoo. Seriously, he would embrace it.
Thank GOODNESS we have a paragon of morality in the White House — Trump has been likened to Jesus, elevated to the inner circle of The Most High, accorded the wisdom of Solomon, recognized as having a “better understanding of the Bible than current Pope Leo, and described as a “zen-like” 4D chessmaster — He. Will. Sort. This. Out. with irreproachable “Christian” beneficence that will make heads spin and hearts bleed with undying love!
A Texas town may offer a preview of a Trump plan to force noncitizens from public housing
In Trump-god we trust! Amen! And pass the grift basket.
@Neil Hudelson: Funnily enough, my wife started reading these a few weeks ago and is now pushing them to me. Not that it takes a lot.
@Slugger:
It was noted yesterday that pretty much everyone knew President Trump was going to give China some access to top end tech from Nvidia. It really is the only way to stave off China’s desire to take over Taiwan. China already has a lot on their plate keeping control of around 1.5 billion folks, and adding Taiwan’s population to this list really does nothing to help China in the long run, but the tech access they would have if they controlled Taiwan, well…that is a whole different ball game.
Giving them some access to Nvidia’s chips is something that was inevitable (kind-of like Thanos), it does not matter if Trump were not our current President, anyone in the White House would agree to share tech if it meant that Taiwan does not get invaded by China.
So I can care less if folks think President Trump got rolled by China.
Honestly, China has been rolling American Presidents on both sides of the political aisle for many decades now. A Democratic President would visit China and be told by their top Gov officials that they will be better stewards of their citizens, and then the President goes home to America and in the weeks, months, and years to come nothing changes and China continues to crack down on uprisings and the like to maintain a tight fisted grip on their citizens.
@Michael Reynolds:
Cuba has long been a Republican strawman-bogeyman with which to manipulate the American voters in general and pander to the Cuban-American caucus in particular. Better (and cheaper) to stoke rage and grief than resolve the underlying issues. If real détente was pursued, forty – fifty years ago, there would be Walmarts in Havana today, and the American consumer culture would have subverted the framework of Castro’s revolution long ago. English language + American consumer culture = force majeure. But no, Republican political strategy required locking Cubans in a time capsule.
@Rob1: Trump is such a faithful follower of Christ that he does this:
Trump administration sues Catholic diocese to seize land on religious site near El Paso for border barrier
I just tried to post a comment critical of AI. It was blocked.
Since this was blocked for. . . reasons. Let’s see if I can find a work-around.
I am busy starting all the utilities at the house we just bought. But we have to keep them on at the condo we are moving out of. In each case a helpful AyeYayYay! wastes my time. It’s become all about getting past the AyeYayYay! to reach a human, because even a very stupid human is still far better at handling things than an AyeYayYay!. Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? No.
700 billion invested in AyeYayYay!? And for what, exactly? A few research uses, like folding proteins more quickly?
This joins personal data collection as another pretend asset that doesn’t amount to anything much. By now literally everything about me is in some databank somewhere. I ask what I have been asking for years: so what? If you know as much about me as I know about myself, so what?
I’m about to furnish a new house. How does all that data affect my purchases? Not at all. I know all the available sources of furniture and consider them each in turn. Was it Beeg Dayta that led me to decide on Costco for lawn furniture? Was it Big Data that somehow led me to conclude that the same IKEA table we have in Portugal would be fine for here? Was it Beeg Dayta that convinced me to buy LG washer and dryer, or was it the appliance repairmen with 13K followers on YouTube?
Netflix, Amazon and YouTube all have algorithms supposedly designed to offer me things I’m interested in. They are never right, never helpful, on the contrary I keep having to purge my YouTube history just to escape the idiot embrace of their magical computer. None of my purchases are ever affected by Beeg Dayta knowing everything about me. So, what exactly is all that personal data worth?
Beeg Dayta: irrelevant to my life. AyeYayYay!: an annoying obstacle between me and a human.
Wow. A comment critical of our tech overlords was blocked several times. Then I disguised some words – see above – and bingo!
@Rob1:
It was only ten years ago, but, along with JCPOA, Obama tried to start that. Trump doesn’t understand seduction.
@inhumans99:
We can’t regulate AI because we need to beat China in the AI race!!11!!
We’re selling high end AI chips to China!!11!!!
@Michael Reynolds:
Earlier this week I had a very unusual experience. I needed to set up auto-pay for my wife’s prescriptions at the new pharmacy the memory care uses. I called the billing number. A woman answered on the first ring. “This is Delores!” She listened to me explain what I wanted and said I needed to fill out a form and return it. The PDF hit my inbox in about two minutes. I filled it out and e-mailed it back. In less than five minutes, I got another e-mail that said “Perfect! You’re in the system properly now.” An actual live human who could fix my problem in minutes.
@Kathy:
China is the world’s leading supplier of chips using 7nm and larger features, and really dominant at sizes above 20nm. They have managed to produce 5nm parts by kludging their 7nm production line, but the yields are horrible. What I really expected to come out, and why I though they had the techbros along, was to announce the US would no longer oppose ASML selling their best stuff to China, and China announcing they would be a serious alternate source to TSMC within a couple of years.
Since the Nvidia parts they can buy now are all produced by TSMC, I assume the logic with the deal they did do is to give China a reason to make sure nothing “accidentally” happens to the TSMC fabs.
@Rob1: Farley at LGM has a brief summary of where things stand with Cuba. Kinda sounds like Trump may be about to do something stupid with Cuba to distract from having done something stupid with Iran. Apparently we must destroy Cuba to save Cuba.
It looks like the TESLA Solar Roof is dead. I considered it years ago, and waited and waited. https://electrek.co/2026/05/14/tesla-solar-roof-promise-vs-reality-pivot-panels/
@Richard Gardner:
It was never convincing that combining PV into roofing material was a good idea, especially as PV cells, modules, and panels became cheaper to produce. I vaguely recall coming upon a FoxNews solar bad story perhaps 15 years ago, with Brett Baier interviewing an upstart business owner whose solar roof product was just not working out in the market. The unspoken conclusion could have been “not every PV product is a good idea.” There are other examples such as Solyndra–an interesting concept that could in theory simplify installation, but turned out to be not competitive with traditional panels that could both be produced relatively cheaply and yield more kW from a given rooftop.
So not surprisingly, absent some significant technological advances, colonizing Mars–or whatever we’re talking about–is probably not a good idea.
Edit: There are undoubtedly sensible niche applications of construction materials with built-in PV.
Senator John Cornyn is considered our least right wing radical Senator. Here is verbatim what he wrote in his latest Official Senate Newsletter.
He is just another vile, neo-Confederate bigot. we need a revived Reconstruction.
So, late yesterday SCOTUS ruled to allow the sale of mifepristone online. Alito and Thomas both dissented in writing. Both mentioned the Comstock Act.
Alito wrote that
Thing is, the opinion – that Alito wrote himself – does not declare that the Constitution forbids abortion, only that the Constitution does not address the question at all. Was he lying then, or lying now? Or maybe he’s just deranged?
Meanwhile, Clarence Thomas:
Thing is, nobody has anywhere claimed that selling mifepristone is a criminal act. Also, the Comstock Act? Really? We are in “bring back the Comstock Act!” territory? Yeah, that will win you lots of votes.
So we are to the point where we see hyperbolic rhetoric in dissents to shadow docket rulings. And complaints that shadow docket rulings are made without argument by someone who has endorsed lots of the same.
Man, I really didn’t like Antonin Scalia, but he’s being eclipsed. Also, RBG did seem to like him, so that was a big plus in Scalia’s favor. Also, he ended up championing habeas corpus in opposition to the Bush administration.
@Scott: Conservatives need enemies. It’s a defining characteristic. Cornyn needs to run against an enemy, especially as GOPs have nothing else to offer. And his voters seem to need their Orwellian two minute hates, so they can feel superior to someone.
@Jay L. Gischer:
After Scalia died, Ginsburg said she and he were “best buddies.” They shared a passion for fine wine and opera. Scalia said Ginsburg made him a better justice.
Yet another confirmation that Trump’s is a government by spectacle. One after another. Problem is, sometimes the fireworks get out of control and burn down the tent.
U.S. Plans To Indict Cuba’s Raul Castro, DOJ Official Says
A HuffPo update an hour ago reports that the Trump Administration plans to “announce criminal charges” against the 94 year old Raul Castro next Wednesday.
It there is a “silver lining” to be extracted from this it is that Trump will establish (reassert?) precedent for indicting “old guys” for international crimes against humanity long after the fact.
Look, what humans do, humans can undo. I’m talking about the SCOTUS cronyism b.s. giving Trump immunity. If The People say he doesn’t have immunity, he won’t have immunity. And Trump is building up momentum towards that end.
And Trump keeps building the case against himself:
Trump Has Found Yet Another Profit Center: Stock Trading
Orange looks good on him.
Oy vey, Jared Polis went and blundered. Badly.
I mean, commuting the sentence of Tina Peters, about the only person left justly imprisoned for trying to overthrow the US government. I cant even.
@Kathy: The worst part of this is the State of Colorado will still not get the appropriated money for a water pipeline to supply water to an area of the state where arsenic is at high levels in well water. It will not get the money appropriated for purchase of in-stream flow rights in the Colorado River. It will not get FEMA money for the heavy damages from last year’s wildfires and floods and will not get funding for this year’s wildfire season. Polis is a chump, rhymes with trump.