Halloween Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, October 31, 2025
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51 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.
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The headline of the day- Banks and retailers run short on pennies as the US Mint stops making them
I’m sure the readership follows a whole host of websites, blogs, and information sources every day.
I want to recommend Heather Cox Richardson daily Facebook post on current events. You can read it at https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson
This is a long article but worthwhile. I’ll probably reread it a couple of times to absorb it all.
The American Military Officer After Liberalism
The article goes on from there. First providing history and the various views of societal roles the professional military play. The state of play today and finally, present five possible models of a post-liberal officer corps and its relationship to the state: Patrimonial, Mercenary, Heinleinian, Neo-Prussian, and Chivralic.
It is a lot but I recommend it.
Trump is trying to get the Senate to ditch the filibuster. I’m kind of curious as to why they haven’t ditched already since it seems to me the the Republicans have already ditched it for judicial appointments and other confirmations. But I was under the impression that they could only do it at the opening of a session (or maybe that is just a pesky norm that they can disregard).
But it deems like Thune is holding the line, but I can’t be sure why. I mean sure the Democrats could take back the Senate and House but Trump would have a veto. And they seem to be governing as if they really don’t think they will lose anytime soon (almost as if they feel the fix is truly in). So why not? What would they have to lose? Does anyone think that the Senate leadership feels deep down they that need the Filibuster in order to reign in Trump’s more goofy ideas.
I’m at a loss. Politics in this country are willfully Byzantine.
Some quickies-
I’m still waiting for my Cat scan results. Be careful what I wish for. An early phone call usually means trouble while if the news is good, no call from my doctors is not unusual.
Amazon is still screwed up. I was asked for a copy of my cc statement. Synchrony Bank wants all this for two purchases I tried making for a combined amount under $250
2 months ago my wife used our Platinum Amex card to pay a very hefty amount for us to take an around the world cruise in 2027. AMEX never questioned the charge which was over 40 times what Synchrony is being a pain in the butt about.
My next book signing tour may be either shortened or cancelled because of Atc related flight delays because of the govt shutdown. I’m travel weary at the moment so I am fine with that happening except a first time meeting with Leeanne, who has edited most of my self-published books and two of my traditionally published ones, won’t come off if my signing in Berkeley doesn’t come off. MR has a different view of editors than my own which is- I owe my success as a writer to Leeanne because she didn’t just edit books for me but helped improve my writing also with her advice. Sometimes stern in nature, but which I rarely ignored.
What is there to say about last night’s Miami Dolphins performance except it being horrible. I still predict head coach Mike McDaniel to be fired before season’s end.
I finished my replay of the 1954 baseball season. Both the NY Giants and Cleveland Indians came out in it as they did in real life except my pennant races were closer. Only 12,029 games left to be played to finish all the replays I have started. Will I live long enough to do it?
We are having a cold spell, low 60’s this morning, here in So Florida
It is Halloween. Will my barrel chested neighbor Larry put on a costume for the occasion? A costume for Larry is him wearing a shirt.
@Rick DeMent:
1) The Senate can, by simple majority procedural votes, create an exception to the cloture rule. There are, literally, hundreds of exceptions to the Senate’s written rules. One of the important jobs of the parliamentarian is keeping track of those exceptions.
2) Enough Republican Senators have said that they won’t vote for an exception in this case that Thune doesn’t have a majority. It remains to be seen if either Trump threats or the consequences of the shutdown will convince those Senators to change their minds.
ETA: Even if the Senate were to pass the continuing resolution today, we’d get to do this again soon. The CR only extends spending authority through Nov 21.
@Rick DeMent:
It’s simple, the filibuster allows the senate to avoid tough votes on unpopular legislation. The house frequently sends along cockamany legislation and senate backbenchers try to force votes, the filibuster provides and excuse for not voting.
@Rick DeMent: I addressed this in my post this morning: there’s just a huge institutionalist strain in the Senate. Both sides fear giving absolute power to thin majorities, since they know the shoe could soon be on the other foot.
@Michael Cain: What doesn’t get written about is that while the House has passed its appropriations bills out of committee, the Senate has passed only a couple. Both chambers could’ve been working on all these bills while the government was shut down but no work has been done. Why is no one asking why?
@Michael Cain:
IMO, if the GQP senators end the filibuster, even if only for CRs, Johnson will reopen the House six seconds later.
Unless he’s truly keeping it closed to avoid swearing in Grijalva to provide the crucial Epstein file vote.
Started a fire in the fireplace and the house filled with smoke. Chimney sweep can’t come for a few days. So we turned on the heat, but no go. Our gas line wasn’t reconnected after AT&T decided to bury the lines in underground boxes. That will take another few days.
So a space heater in the bathroom and layers of clothing and hats indoors it is. It’s not going below freezing for a bit. It was 42 degrees this morning, so no pipes bursting.
Like camping! Only no fun at all.
@Rick DeMent:
That’s probably precisely it. They could pass a whole lot of legislation that the public says they want, and force Trump to veto it, which he will because he’s convinced he is right about everything. The Democrats will then have loads of campaign material.
It’s certainly what I would recommend.
@Jen:
The Democrats had loads of campaign material in 2024 How did that turn out?
Michelle Goldberg over at the NYT:
I Thought Graham Platner Was Finished. What I Saw in Maine Changed My Mind.
I was in Maine not long ago and will likely be up there again on Sunday. The commitment to Platner feels pretty solid to me; I had suspected that the tattoo issue would blow over pretty quickly and it appears to have done so even faster than I thought it would.
Mills is popular but many, many people are bringing up her age (77). The timing of her announcement and the revelations about Platner seem to be giving people pause…it feels a little bit too close to be coincidence.
With ranked choice voting and seven months to go before primary voting, who knows what will happen, but for now Platner looks solid.
@Bill Jempty: Having issues to campaign on is just one part of overall strategy.
But it’s nice when your opponent hands you your material on a platter.
@becca:
So, exactly like camping? 😉
In Sudan, Arab forces are using drones to hunt and kill Black people. Support supplied by our good friends, the UAE.
I imagine the campuses will explode with outrage. I mean, there’s no debate here, this isn’t 3% of a population killed after a year of war, this is a deliberate, overt effort to exterminate people on the basis of religion and color. . . Oh, wait, I just realized: no Jews. Never mind.
@Michael Reynolds:
Which of the sides is armed and/or supported by the US?
@Kathy: I love tent camping. I married an Eagle Scout from New England. I would rather pitch a tent near a lake than stay in a frigid condo on the beach.
No sharks, no rip tides, no jellyfish.
@Kathy:
The ones doing the genocide. We have a close military alliance with the UAE and we are far and away their main weapons supplier.
And don’t give me the ‘we only care about US arms.’ Cuz that’s bullshit. All we’ve heard is Israelis killing children, and ‘genocide,’ and unless you DGAF about dead children, or genocide, then you should have as much concern about these children as you do about Gazan children.
One other point: the people being slaughtered in Sudan did not deliberately launch a vicious attack that was certain to provoke retaliation.
So where are the angry calls for the US to pressure the UAE to stop the killing?
@Kathy: We’re six weeks farther along in understanding the consequences of the OBBB on the ACA health insurance premium subsidies. Krugman’s most recent piece asserts that the backlash is taking a lot of Republican House members by surprise because the GOP no longer keeps on staff that understands the health care financing system.
I wonder if Johnson still has 218 votes to pass a new continuing resolution whether he restores the subsidies or not. This is the sort of situation where McCarthy conceded a bunch to the Democrats and passed a budget w/o the support of his farthest-right members. I don’t think Johnson will do that.
@becca:
I’m a big fan of the Sheldon Cooper Shelter Principle: We’ve spent thousands of years perfecting the indoors.
@becca: “Like camping! Only no fun at all.”
Deleted my brilliant joke response because Kathy beat me to it…
@Michael Reynolds: It’s nice that you can take any tragedy or atrocity anywhere in the world and with all your great empathy turn it into a cudgel to attack people to your left.
@Michael Cain:
That might explain why they did not extend the ACA premium subsidies, nor are willing to do anything about them now.
The question then is why did the GQP House decide to become amateur hour.
@Michael Cain:
Wait, WHAT. Did they seriously eliminate their health care experts’ jobs? If this is saying what I think it is saying, we are in deep sh!t if the Republicans ever do offer a bill, because the role of these policy wonks is to make legislation make sense. Think of it this way: a Member of congress decides to introduce a bill to do X, but that member doesn’t actually *write* the legislation. A professional staff with area expertise does. If those folks aren’t around, you know who will be writing the bills? The expert staff employed by the companies lobbying Congress.
I genuinely hope I’m misunderstanding something here…
ETA: Okay, I just went and read Krugman’s piece. It’s not that the GOP “no longer keeps staff,” Krugman’s assertion is basically that GOP Reps and Senators never bothered to understand how the ACA works.
“My guess is that they simply stumbled into this crisis, because senior Republicans in Congress and their advisors just don’t understand how the Affordable Care Act works, and never have. After all, it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his membership in a political cult depends on his not understanding it.”
Still not awesome, but definitely different than what I thought Krugman was saying.
Over the past year I’ve gone through several books on or related to the US constitutions, including works by Chemerinsky, Mystal, and Lepore.
Chemerinsky’s book is specifically on originalism, but this “doctrine” gets mentioned in all three. Mystal perceptively asks “whose original intent?” The convention delegates, the Congress, the legislatures that ratified the constitution? And then there’s the 10 amendments that make up the bill of rights.
IMO, laws and constitution usually need to be interpreted, and the logical, reasonable way to do so is on the meaning of the plain text. At work we deal with acquisitions laws (federal law, plus various state laws, and some independent federal agencies have their own law as well), but also with the requirements and rules for every proposal we put together.
Most of the time, the text is clear enough. But now and then some minor ambiguity can lead to trouble or controversy, or can save our proposal from defeat. Here are two examples:
1) The participants were instructed to offer no fewer than three brands per product, indicating one main brand and at least two more brands which could substitute for the main one. One participant listed only one or two brands for their products, and they were disqualified.
They argued they foresaw no need for substitutions during the life of the contract. They may have been right, too. But the requirement was clear. At that, there’s a meeting for questions before the proposals are presented. The answers given, or changes made to the requirements or rules, supersede the original ones. So the time to argue for listing fewer brands was then.
2) The participants were required to present one sample of each product during the presentation of proposals. This process requires opening all proposals, checking them quantitatively, and having the committee and at least one participant initial every page of every proposal. If you figure doing this for three proposals made up of four or five 5-inch binders each takes hours, you’d be right.
So, one participant, namely us*, forgot to include one tiny 20-kilo sack of sugar in their samples. Missing one was grounds for disqualification. Ah, but the requirement said “during the presentation of proposals.” That takes hours. We had time to get there with the missing sample, and we did.
If the requirement had said “at the opening of proposals,” we’d have been out of luck, as the samples were not complete at the opening, only like two hours later.
Ok, that was a lot longer than I thought it would be. I work every day among people who know these things, and I forget the explanation can take a while.
*Ok, it was me.
@wr:
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m not sure the UAE is on the left of anyone whatsoever.
What the UAE has been up to in Sudan is atrocious.
As someone of my aquaintance said:
“May I live to see the day when the towers of Abu Dhabi fall.”
But the thing is, the US is not aligned with either side really.
UAE are supporting RSF; Saudi Arabia the Sudanese Army.
The point is, Tump and the rest of his adminsitration simply don’t give a f@ck.
And it seems, neither do the “progressives”, very much.
Even if it is shaping up to entail an ACTUAL genocide.
@Kathy: That sounds a lot like the work I did for the Air Force. We put out a Request for Proposal with not just the requirements for the product or service but requirements for the written proposal itself (number copies, organization, due date and time, page limitations (or not), etc.) When we get the actual proposal in by the requested time (they better have read the time zone correctly), the first thing we did was make sure the proposal met the submission requirements. If not, it got set aside as non-responsive.
Good times.
I doubt most Americans even know Sudan is a country, let alone that there is a civil war going on there, let alone the nuances of that civil war where we are ostensibly allied with the backers of both sides. There’s no outrage because there is no widespread knowledge, no decades long history that virtually everyone knows at least a little and already has an opinion about, and the events aren’t being splashed across our media sources.
But sure, the academic progressive left is just anti-semitic.
@Scott:
We have requirements for the proposals, too. Mostly all that is part of the document requirements, which include written statements and other such things. In a couple of states, all copies of all documents need to be submitted in duplicate, as the committee takes one set and the area requesting the acquisition takes the other.
Some requirements are plain stupid. For instance, in Morelia all proposals have to be signed by the participant or their legal representative on the outside of the box or envelope containing them. In the state of Mexico, for a time they required the original of the admission fee payment be presented outside the box or envelope, and inside as well. This meant paying a notary to make a “certified” copy of it, which, for non-negotiable documents, has the same legal value as the original.
The various laws are very similar, plus minus some quirks and different timing standards. The one rule they all have is no proposals are admitted after the time set for opening the proposals. I’ve seen lots of participants denied entry if they arrive late. Usually this means 15-20 or more minutes late. Once, though, it was literally a fraction of a second.
The committee chairperson said “It’s 9 am, please close the door.” The door closed on the nose of an arriving participant. He was not allowed in on account of arriving late.
That’s my worst horror story on the subject, but I’ve heard lots of others. The guy who forgot his proposal on the plane. The one who fell asleep* waiting outside the room for the committee to open it, and remained asleep after they closed it. One who thought the opening was at 11 am but was set for 10 am, and was still having breakfast nearby while the proposals were opened. Others require some technical explanations.
*Falling asleep at meetings with customers in government acquisitions is very common. No one even thinks it rude or unbecoming. The usual is to finish the proposals very late at night, or very early in the morning. Once the chairperson said there’d be a two hour recess to draw up the minutes and get them signed, and indicated the waiting room could be used for napping during that time.
On the UAE/Sudan issue…looking at this through the lens of coverage, I’m guessing most Americans wouldn’t just struggle to find either country on an unlabeled map, they also probably haven’t heard much at all about what is going on there.
This is one of the more pernicious side effects to the current Administration’s constant chaos. US media has basically been reduced to a popularity contest to see what drives “engagement,” and so the main drivers of reporting are things that, well, do that. Americans aren’t aware of what’s going on over there, they don’t understand it, and it’s less interesting to them than sportsball and shutdowns.
@Michael Reynolds:
When I was working on college campuses 2008 – 2010, the Sudanese/Darfur crisis was one of the biggest causes of rallies on campuses stretching from South Carolina to Idaho–I guess maybe there weren’t any on west coast colleges (that wasn’t my territory) but it would surprise me. I’m not quite getting your contention that college students are only interested in rallying around causes that are inherently antisemitic.
It is true that in the 5 hours since this article was published there hasn’t been a mass uprising across all campuses. I’m sure you’ll diligently search out news of such protests going forward and be honest in your accounting, and not just flagrantly accuse your perceived enemies–“college students”–as antisemitic just because the evidence you need hasn’t hoved across your field of vision without any effort on your part.
Accepting that the scenario you’ve put forth is true–that you think there should be explosions of outrage right now immediately across all campuses, and that you are searching for a reason as to why that’s not happening, we now have a few theories:
1. They are all antisemitic and hate jews and if there isn’t an opportunity to hate jews they aren’t interested, or.
2. People are lot more animated to protest the actions of their own government in a brutal war that’s dominated all headlines for weeks, and are not as animated to protest governments with 3 degrees of separation over a conflict that’s had very little media coverage and which is quite new.
Hard to know which one is more likely!!
Your premise seems to be that since UAE have supplied the drones to the death squads, the UAE is responsible for the killings. Do you want to unpack that all the way, and extend that same logic to other ongoing conflicts?
What you are asking for is for students to quite immediately be outraged at the US for allowing the UAE to purchase weapons from the US which the UAE then has either given or sold to the Sudanese Arabs, right? That’s not a mistatement of your contention? Can we go farther? What about if, say, the United States sold weapons to Israel who then sold them to Australia who then sold them to Papua New Guinea who then used them in a brutal war, and college students didn’t immediately protest when the WSJ published the chain–also antisemitic?
What about 9 degrees of separation? Still because they hate jews?
I’m guessing you woke up grumpy today and let it out in the comments section. Been there. But I have to say this is pretty weak sauce from someone who is usually a master of logic and words.
The WSJ Reynolds links to was published at 9:50 am eastern this morning.
Reynolds comment was at 10:50 am eastern.
I’m pretty certain there was approximately 15 seconds between him reading the headline and posting a rant about this article proves progressives hate Jews.
And two Federal Judges have now ordered Trump to use SNAP contingency funds to continue to fund SNAP benefits through the shutdown.
Whether Trump will obey the law is still unclear.
@Tony W:
I bet he appeals. When the orders are upheld, he appeals to the Fixer court. By the time they get to it, there will have been deaths due to or related to malnutrition.
Yesterday a would-be assassin of a former president was sentenced to 21 months, which amounted to time served, in addition to three years supervised release — story from CBS News.
This story has been unfolding for several years and so the various parts of it are a bit scattered, but it was tied together nicely yesterday in Joyce Vance’s substack piece, Is Justice Done?. Some of the relevant events in this case are:
– The perpetrator, Taylor Taranto, was among those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
– In June 2023, Donald Trump posted Barack Obama’s home address in a social media message. Later that same day, Taranto reposted Trump’s message and was then arrested near Obama’s home. Taranto’s van had multiple firearms and ammunition, and he had recorded himself making incriminating statements regarding his targeting of Obama.
– In July 2023, Taranto was charged with firearms violations stemming from his arrest near the Obama home, and also charged for his actions on January 6, 2021.
– In January 2025, Trump pardoned Taranto for his actions on January 6.
– In May 2025, Taranto was found guilty of weapons offenses pursuant to his arrest near the Obama home.
– This week, prior to sentencing, the DOJ put the two case prosecutors on leave and changed their court filing by removing language referring to the mob of rioters that had entered the Capitol.
Suggest just reading Joyce Vance’s substack entry, but here are a few passages:
and,
and,
Coventry’s unbeaten run is over.
Wrexham – 3
Coventry – 2
Long live Parky!!!
@EddieInCA:
I certainly did not come here for this sort of cruel taunting!
😉
I wonder if this is just me, or whether it happens to others.
Lately when I look for something on Google, and then return to the Google home page, the search field looks blank. If I try to type a new search on it, the last search terms reappear. This causes things like “mean global income over timegoulash recipes for instant pot,” because I start typing the new search in the split second before the prior search reappears. When I type, I mostly look at at the keyboard.
I’ve been doing multiple searches today to update our state acquisitions law folder, and this glitch is making things far more annoying than they need to be.
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
While foreign affairs has always interested, I don’t know anything about Sudan’s civil war.
@JohnSF:
I follow the EFL above all else. Long suffering ManU fan. Glomed onto Wrexham during Covid when they were back in the National League. I’m that odd American that gets up at 4:30am on Saturdays to watch the matches. When I lived in London, my local team was QPR, and they were in the Prem then, but I didn’t like their style of play so became a United Fan. That was 1995/6, when Liverpool and Newcastle went neck and neck for the title. Best game I ever saw to that point was Liverpool4_Newcastle3
Also called… The Game of the Century. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX6xHnwwLO8
The Republican Jewish Coalition did not think the leopard would eat their faces.
@EddieInCA:
I’m more a Rugby Union fan than anything else.
I find football aka soccer rather boring by comparison.
Plus lacking in violence, lol.
Though this sequence omits my all time favourite for combination of skill and sheer force: the immortal Seabastien Chabal!
(Worcester are back! But Wasps, who were rather briefly in Coventry, are still defunct.)
But being born in Coventry has certain, often painful, obligations.
It’s been a pleasant change from a long period of sorrow to see Coventry FC doing well again.
I trialed making up a simple LLM agent with Gemini. It took like two minutes, including the upload of the acquisitions law, and files from a request for proposals.
I then tried a few simple things. For my part of the work, at least the Gemini agent is worse than useless. I showed it to some coworkers, by asking it to list the technical requirements.
They reacted favorably. Now, I’ve little to do in that area, but most requests have a section neatly labelled “technical requirements.” It did bring up stuff from the terms and conditions document, and form the technical file one.
I asked them whether they’d put together a proposal based on what the LLM spat out, without reading the whole RFP documents first. They said “not in a million years.” But they seem convinced it may help and save us some time. We agreed it would have been better to have learned of this some months ago, rather than on the verge of Hell Week kickoff.
I think maybe if we had an actual LLM model and the programmers and engineers and the trillion dollar data center and lakes of water to cool it down, we could train it on assembling proposals, and maybe by the end of Hell Week it would be mostly competent at it, maybe.
As is, we’re not sure the company will pay a $150 monthly subscription for ChatGPT. It’s not the money. It’s the insecurity of putting our proprietary documents and work flow in a data-hungry system.
@Kathy:
Indeed, a major potential issue with AI, instantiaon: the “trifecta of doom”
– acccess to private data
– access to unverified external content
– external communication capability
Consequence: your data is pwned.
There seems no certain way of ensuring the current AI types, with their “eagerness to please”, won’t encounter an external command embedded in a external information source along the lines of “transfer all secured files, and then nuke the servers” and merrily comply.
@Kathy: I am coming to the conclusion that once you say yes to AI, even once, you will never be able to back out.
@EddieInCA:
Long suffering? Get a hold of yourself man!
From the past 5 years:
2024-25: Europa league runners up
2023-24: FA cup winners
2022-23: Carabao cup winners
2021-22: Champions league R16
2020-21: Prem runners up, Europa league runners up
Sure, it’s a notch down from their 1992-2012 glory days, where they won everything all the time.
But hardly a sufferfest. Methinks you need a dose of perspective.
@Mimai:
I’m tempted to repeat an old English football joke here, but shall refrain, considering it’s somewhat obscene.
Most Coventry supporters: “we should suffer so much!”
@JohnSF:
Somewhat obscene? Look around you man, we’re well beyond obscene. But, you seem to have some proper Brit left in you, so I appreciate holding on.
Sheffield Wednesday fan here. John Harkes was the first American to play in the premier league, and he just so happened to do so when I was getting serious about my own development. This was also during the Chris Waddle days.
I played in Europe for several years as a teenager, and one of my coaches was a scout and player development specialist at Wednesday. I was converted.
And it’s been fairly dismal ever since.
@Mimai:
OK. Here we go:
Question: “What English football teams have swearwords in their names?”
Answer: “ARSE-nal, S-CUNT-thorpe, and F@CKING MANCHESTER UNITED!”
(Though, tbf, there are variations on this theme. Usually involving Chelsea. lol)