It’s November Forum!
Steven L. Taylor
·
Saturday, November 1, 2025
·
23 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
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.
Police report: Nancy Mace cursed and berated officers in airport altercation
Wasn’t there a time when Nancy Mace was simply a boring, moderate congress critter that was considered to be an upcoming R star? Somehow, on the way to being acceptable to the MAGAts, she’s become a lunatic.
Continuing yesterday’s comments on AI, @JohnSF and @Jax.
Some years ago an employee of a competitor quit and applied for a job with us. This is not uncommon, and we’ve employed people like that several times. In fact, three of the senior project managers used to work for the competition.
This guy was lower level, more like at my level. But we knew him a bit, having met him in presentations, sample deliveries, and questions meetings with several customers. He was pleasant, nice, easy to get along with (he also spoke English at my level of fluency*, so I could share jokes and books with him).
He stayed for about two months, then vanished suddenly. He just didn’t show up to work one day. He didn’t call to say he was ill or needed a day or two off, or anything. Attempts to contact him by phone and email got no response.
Then he shows up with his old employer at an opening of proposals, and they undercut us on price. Naturally we lost, they won, and of course he had been spying on us**.
Since then, we’re far more careful with what data we let others see. Ergo the concern with using AI for the very core of our business.
This is part of what I mean when I say we’re at a primitive level of LLM use. If the things could run on a local PC not connected to the internet, data security would be simple. But, as noted, we don’t have billion dollar data centers and accessories like an electric plant and a lake or river to cool it down.
*Far less impressive, since one of his parents is American and he was raised mostly in California.
**The really odd part is this was a very small project, as such things go. Short term, with al deliveries within two weeks, and worth less than $50,000 all told. They could have done much the same for a larger project, say a 12 month contract for $2 $3 million.
If you can’t say anything nice about the Heritage Foundation, come sit right down here next to… Mitch McConnell.
The Tucker-Fuentes debacle is kinda delicious, but still creepy and weird af.
It’s like they’re chewing off a leg caught in a trap of their own making.
@Kathy: The situation you describe might be the only sort of circumstance in which a California company can successfully sue an employee for violation of an NDA. Or didn’t you have one?
@Sleeping Dog:
It’s obvious congressman Mace is suffering from testosterone poisoning.
@Jay L. Gischer:
I’m not sure such things exist here, and I’ve never heard of the company using something like that.
When I saw this item about Southwest planning an airport lounge, I was very confused, because it’s not April 1st.
@Sleeping Dog: Mace has pretty clearly been trying to claw her way to more attention from the media and from voters. The behavior may be the direct result of that.
OR, it may be that the increased attention has resulted in us noticing behavior that was long established with her.
Meanwhile, given Mace’s biography, I would say that describing her as a bit genderqueer (not meant as an insult!) is fairly well justified. Remember that she was the first woman accepted at The Citadel. And her unease about trans people might be related to that.
We have seen a big surge of girls/women exploring the possibility that they might be trans men in the past decade. This as much as anything has motivated a surge of backlash. Some of the (pseudo) scientific writings that have been used to justify the wave of anti-trans legislation comes from this work (written by people who have never treated gender dysphoria, though they did have an opportunity to observe said treatment).
I am happy to pass along rumors that Mace is in fact a trans woman, but I think it might be more likely that she has some leanings toward being a trans man, which she has squashed in herself, and wishes to keep squashed.
I read that Trump gave a Great Gatsby theme party at Mar-a-Lago last night. Does no one in his circle actually read books these days?
@Slugger:
“These days”?
@Slugger:
Trump is Gatsby and Daisy is 14.
We didn’t join our daughter and fam for trick or treat this year. Mr becca had some heart surgery on Monday and he is doing nicely, but it put a hitch in his getalong for a minute.
Seems a lot were put off this year. Not near the number of neighborhood festivities and decor past Halloweens. Houses that used to be party central, dark and quiet.
I dread Christmas.
Interesting. Just saw this title on a YouTube:
The Butcher of Omaha Beach – A Forensic Investigation (No AI WW2 Documentary)
I’m seeing more and more human faces on videos. A quote AI attributes to a Netflix exec, but I remember hearing long before Netflix. “Nothing matters if the dogs don’t eat the dog food.”
We are the dogs. AI slop is the dog food.
@Kathy:
What’s next? Caviar served at Burger King?
I had to go somewhere far across town for a rather long engagement, and the parking rates were ridiculous. So I took an Uber both ways (I estimate parking would have been a bit cheaper, but not much).
The car on the way back was a BYD electric. It was really nice. I tried not to frill the driver extensively about it. He did say it cost him around $15 for a full charge, and gets around 400 km in range.
As contrast, the gas bill for my Honda is around $50 and the range per tank, depending on traffic, oscillates between 290-350 km. BTW, an EV doesn’t lose range in heavy traffic where it spends long stretches at a standstill.
If I could charge at home and my employer didn’t pay for gas…
Other than that, the car was rather nice. It felt of good quality, right there with Toyota or Honda. It’s a sedan, but the right hand passenger door slides open, like a minivan.
@Bill Jempty:
The activist investors really made a number on the airline. They started charging for bags, assigned seating, and extra legroom seats. there’s talk now of a first class (US domestic).
It will become a clone of Delta, United, and AA.
Meantime, there’s lots of chatter that United may gobble up JetBlue.
@Michael Reynolds:
I recall visiting the US Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer some twenty years agao.
And then my father and I walked up to the path overlooking Omaha Beach, where the wind was blowing in from the sea.
Dad looked out and said:
“Christ almighty, I could defend this with a squad of Boy Scouts, some grannies with brooms, and a few machine guns. If I ever meet one of the men who took this beach, I’ll salute him and ask him to let me shake his hand.”
And my father was a bomber rear-gunner, so he had a fair appreciation of a risky proposition.
OMAHA was a bloody business.
May their memory be a blessing.
@JohnSF:
I visited when I had two young children with me, who of course understood nothing. They ran around the beach and ended up fighting, and my first thought was that it was inappropriate in a sacred place. But my second thought was that those men didn’t die to be worshipped, they died so civilization could go on. We were civilized, after a fashion.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but Oradour-sur-Glane is a terribly haunting place. No kids there, thankfully. To be visited once, not to be repeated.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m not really a “war tour” type; nor were my father or mother.
But in Europe you can’t help but encounter it, at times, and reflect on how damn pernicious some people can be, and the consequences of dealing with that.
Such places I have encountered:
The Menin Gate in Ypres, where a lot of one grandfathers comrades names are inscribed.
A bridge over the Loir at Chateaudun, where every year, on the anniversary date, two children are appointed to lay flowers to the American soldier who was killed crossing it.
The memorial near Cassino to the Poles:
Our souls with God
Our lives in Italy
Our hearts to Poland
Our world rests upon a mountain of struggle and sacrifice that has enabled us to live lives we accept as “normal” and “natural” and the default.
It is not necessarily so.
See also the Union Army 1861-65, come to that. Had they not prevailed, the world could have been a far worse place than we might care to imagine.
Those I have known of that vintage did not regard themsleves as godlike heroes; just ordinary men faced with an unpleasant necessity.
Although ignoring most Trump tweets is sound policy, this one deserves some attention:
https://nypost.com/2025/11/01/us-news/trump-threatens-to-go-into-nigeria-guns-a-blazing-if-slaughter-of-christians-doesnt-stop/
I rather doubt the US military could “wipe out” Boko Haram and other Islamic militias operating in five African countries at all, let alone quickly. Finding a way through 240 million hostile Nigerians to get at them would be a feat in itself.
@Michael Reynolds:
@JohnSF:
There was a promo in the History channel long ago, before it became reality shows and pawn shops, that showed a girl and her mother hunting for shells on the beach, now and then superimposed on images of soldiers storming the same beach.
Make of it what you will.
@Ken_L:
I’ve been thinking about posting something for some time on the increasing general crisis in northern Africa.
Sudan is the most extreme example.
But Mali is also seems close to collapse.
And the Eritrean situation seems close to going hot
The entire Sahel belt is in a bad place: the French who were perviously stabilising it as best they could have largely pulled out, due to a combination of local armies preferring the Russian mercs, becuse they, unlike the French, did not keep telling them they needed to make a deal with the “nomads”, not just kill them.
And now the Russians turn out to be f@cking useless, and only interested in looting, killing. and buggering off.
Meanwhile, the UAE are also busy sposoring various bad actors.
The cahos in the northern Sahel looks liable to spread south, eg into Nigeria.
And perhaps into Congo where in the north-east Rwandan operations have seriosly undercut central control.
And the Trump administration simply does not seem to have a f@cking clue about what is actually going on.
@Kathy:
I once had a picnic lunch in the lee of of one of the remnants of the Mulberry piers.
And, for that matter, watched children flying kites on the field of Edge Hill.
Time fades away.
As it should.
Generally, not always.
There are still some WW1 battle zones that are deemed too toxic for access.