Lazy Sunday Morning Tabs
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, May 24, 2026
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8 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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My first thought about phones for Christians is that it is a grift/scam of some sort. Will probably promise use of Trump phones. On the small chance I am wrong this will mostly be signaling. The “christians” will always find ways to get their porn. They arent going to the Yale site to read about trans equality anyway.
Also, the green card thing would create havoc where I worked. We were chronically tight or short staffed. We had a handful of H1B people and if they have to leave to apply for green cards we would need to close services. We had people from Canada, India, Ghana and elsewhere. The odds of things going well in all of those places is low.
Steve
Steve
As I understand it, some $350M in private donations for the ballroom have already been received. What isn’t funded is the (apparently enormous) underground military complex that’s supposed to go beneath the ballroom to replace the deep bunker that was rendered unusable during demolition of the East Wing. Oh, and unspecified “security measures” to be built elsewhere.
I go back and forth on whether I’m relieved or disturbed that the administration doesn’t seem able to lay out an actual plan for anything, rather than making random isolated unconnected decisions.
@steve222:
A phone network for Christians. I presume this will be like Mint Mobile, where I buy my service: a back-office operation that signs people up, but customers use T-Mobile’s network. Verizon has a web page telling people how to do it for the Verizon network.
Tangentially, I signed up for Mint Mobile because it was cheap and I could always bail later. I have been pleasantly surprised that it has been exactly what they promised. T-Mobile coverage, $15/month, minimal customer support. They even did what they said they would at the end of my first three months: I got e-mail prior to renewal suggesting that I should renew to a cheaper plan, and how to make the change.
@Michael Cain:
If the Epstein Ballroom and hitler Bunker had been built before Bibi’s war on Iran, not only would Iran had been conquered in two days, but triumphant ‘Murikan troops would be advancing towards India just to surpass the extent of Alexander’s conquests.
I think this is a good thing. Rather than trying to censor everything for everyone, create a walled garden for the deeply offended and disturbed. I encourage experiments in this area.
I’ve been vaguely thinking of something along these lines every time I see states and countries trying to add age-verification to websites to “protect the children.” The kids aren’t getting groomed by going into adult spaces, so much as by having the adults going into kid’s spaces. Roblox is more of a predators playground than PornHub, but no one is talking about that.
It would need incessant monitoring to identify and remove adults, and careful cultivation of the content. And constant debates about what is allowed inside the garden.
I’m thinking “hide the queers” would be an add on subscription on top of a more general adult-free space (also a subscription), because why wouldn’t you tap that revenue stream? And it would leave the default reasonable.
I expect they will try to create carve outs for certain favored countries. White countries. Perhaps for carefully vetted applicants only, to ensure they have good, American values.
Hear the Sound of my Feet Walking Drown the Sound of my Voice Talking
Odd Bodkins
Dan O’neill
It is a shame because some consultant type, I don’t remember who, but it wasn’t Carville even though it sounds like Carville, suggested a Dem campaign should start handing out sledgehammers to donors, promising we’d all get together in DC and tear down Trump’s ballroom and whatever else he manages to build and/or deface.