Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, August 18, 2025
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37 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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The vibes I’m feeling is that Trump will sell out Ukraine and Zelensky all because of his vanity and neediness for a Nobel Peace Prize. Why else meet Putin before Zelensky and Europe. The US and Europe should have met before meeting Putin and be able to tell him how things are going to go down. We will not have peace in our time from this 21st Century Munich.
As if a measles outbreak this year was not enough:
Vaccine exemption requests in Texas spike in July, as some experts fear more families will opt out
Oh, FFS.
Trump-Zelensky summit: The suit question, again
I wore this ridiculous thing for you!
@Scott:
Unfortunately this is bi-partisan stupidity. The Left has been all-in on quack medicine for a long time. MAGA has appropriated bullshit nutrition and bullshit panics over bullshit toxins, and this magic vitamin, and that magic mineral, and ‘this one thing that will. . .’. Can crystals be far behind?
This is an example to me of a liberal weakness, this tolerance of utter nonsense, a refusal to call b.s. because it would be mean to ask some self-appointed nutrition influencer just WTF they’re talking about.
@Michael Reynolds: Yes, brain dead anti vax people had a stronghold in Marin County. Along with Hollywood types like Shirley McClain and her crystals don’t help.
@Michael Reynolds: that’s a bit harsh.
Back in the late eighties I almost died and alternative medicine played a role in my survival.
I developed some kind of wasting disorder. Like many in the music and arts world, we had no health insurance.
My hair fell out, I turned orange with jaundice. My white count was 24. I lost a ton of weight. No diagnosis. A hospital sent me home to die. I had horrible bed sores, I could only crawl to the bathroom.
In desperation, Mr becca contacted a local chiropractor who dealt in medicinal herbs. A natural nutritionist provided a very bland, totally fat free diet. We got an extracting juicer because they didn’t want me burning calories chewing and it’s easier on the body.
Gradually I got better. The one medical doctor who kept seeing me for bloodwork said I was a medical miracle. He wanted to write a book and promote it. I got a few random phone calls from people with dying loved one’s wanting to know what saved me. I resented whoever gave them my contact. What worked or didn’t work for me was a mystery. Still is. The thought of trying to capitalize on it was out of the question.
I still reference my Prescription for Nutritional Healing book, written by medical professionals, that goes well with traditional medicine.
The person who oversees the NIH and CDC has a long history of vaccine denial. RFK Jr. literally sets government policy regarding vaccines. I think that trumps Shirley MacLaine and some other Hollywood celebrities.
The Russians have a long history of displacing the indigenous people of Crimea. Tatars have lived in Crimea for two thousand years. The Czars expelled many, and the Communists put this eviction into high gear. After the fall of the USSR, this has continued. At this time, they comprise about 15% of the population of Crimea; they were the predominant ethnic group before Tsarist/Communist/Putinist actions. Has anyone asked Putin about the Tatars? Any state wanting to rule Crimea should clarify their policy toward the indigenous people.
There were a number of papers looking at vaccine resistance 15-20 years ago. Some of them were just done by researchers who had an interest in the topic and others in reaction to the celebrity driven vaccine skepticism. Note that at the time anti-vaxxers were perceived as all left winger liberals. What they found was that anti-vax attitudes were equally spread with pockets of anti-vaxxers on the right that were long embedded in our country, often religious based. On the left that has turned out to be something of a a fad, though it’s still there in small numbers. It has grown on the right.
Steve
@Slugger:
Well, to be fair, it has to be said the Tatars were simply the previous set of conquerors, rather than indgenes.
Who suceeded and largely displaced the Goths and the Greeks.
Though that’s no excuse for the Russian persecutions of them, of course.
By and large they seem to have found the rule of independent Ukraine preferable to that of Russia.
Heather Cox Richardson has some observations on the Mad Vlad-Taco meeting.
For instance:
DJT: ‘ No other country in the world uses mail-in voting‘
Copilot: According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and other sources, the following countries allow ALL voters to vote by mail: Canada, Germany, South Korea, Ireland, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Another 22 nations have limited mail-in voting.
How, how, can you trust a leader who is either out right lying or so badly informed ?
@Slugger:
Can’t completely ignore the Ottomans when talking about that time in the history of Crimea.
@Michael Reynolds:
This is bullshit. The left has not been all-in on quacks — the vast majority of the left has been in favor of universal health care, with real doctors.
Yes, a fair number of the anti-vaxxers tended to vote Democrat, but not because they were specifically courted or catered to by Democrats. Hippie-dippy new age shit has traditionally not gone over well with the evangelical crowd. Up until the Jewish space lasers started putting microchips into Covid vaccines, at least.
Sadly, most people tend to believe what they want to believe. Stupid is quite bi-partisan.
@Michael Reynolds:
My personal recollection, to include times when I would have considered myself conservative, I never thought that “liberals” writ large were supplement/crystals/woo-woo types, but those were fringe views. The fact that Jenny McCarthy was a major anti-vax voice meant that anti-vaxxers were on the fringe.
It seems ahistorical to blame this on mainstream liberals.
MAHA has become part of the governing coalition of the GOP. I do not recall anything of the sort by “liberals.”
I cannot imagine a mainstream Dem making RFK, Jr., HHS Secretary (indeed, he was considered fringe by Dems when he still identified as a Dem).
@Lucys Football: Exactly.
@Kathy:
Another excerpt from that piece:
Emphasis added by moi.
Between the excerpt about Levitt and Witkoff looking “stressed” and “ashen,” the truncated meeting, and the observation above by Nichols, what on earth could have happened?
George Conway says he has a feeling Trump will quit NATO tonight.
Still in the hospital.
@Steven L. Taylor:
You never lived in Marin County.
@dazedandconfused:
The Tatars rather pre-dated the Ottomans; who the accepted as overlords because the Sultans “made them an offer they couldn’t refuse”.
And because the Tatars were massively economically linked to the Ottomans because of their role in the slave trade.
There are, in fact, historical bases for the Greek and Slavic enmity regarding the Tatars.
Which, yet again, does not excuse their presecution by Russians and Soviets.
The Ukrainians, generally, seem inclined to let bygones be bygones.
After all, the Cossacks often gave back as good, or bad, as they got.
@Michael Reynolds: Perhaps you haven’t heard of the composition fallacy. Marin County, or some of the people who live in Marin County, are not the same as California, Democrats, the Left, or any other aggregate to whom you might point.
The current occupant is the first person in that position to assertively, deliberately lose ground in the fight against cancer.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/research-trump-cuts-ucla-nih-nci-funding-grants-war-on-cancer?r=39orwl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
@Bobert:
Including Russia. Of course that may not be an example of voting integrity.
@Jen:
That is a room full of serious people, at least on one side of the table.
And not the sort to dash to DC without very serious reasons.
The intial talk was that it would just be Stubb and Rutte.
Getting the “Big Five” all there as well is significant.
I wonder why Tusk has not turned up as well?
Possibly sick to death of trying to be polite to American idiots?
Just seen some videos of the European/Trump press confrence.
lol
Meloni rather obviously flirting at Trump.
But just watch her expressions when he’s not looking.
The amusing thing being she wouldn’t tolerate him for a second if she didn’t think it necessary.
Odds on her punching a door panel in tonight: quite high.
She has a reputation for being unwilling to suffer fools gladly, if at all.
Meanwhile Merz, Macron and Starmer look decidedly fed up.
At least initial reports seem to be that the bracing may have worked.
Trump has NOT demanded Ukrainian capitulation, or cut off assistance.
And seems to have accepted that a security guarantee for Ukraine must be part of a peace deal.
That will have ruined Putin’s digestion this evening, lol.
I suspect the final outcome will be Trump gets Europe to fund the weapons flow to Ukraine, and will process that as a “win” in his tiny mind.
And will perhaps still try for a “deal” with Putin based on easing US sanctions?
@JohnSF:
The presidents and PMs of France, the UK and Italy are babysitting. The utter contempt the entire world has for Trump is breathtaking. This is the leader of what is by far the most powerful and consequential of nations. This toddler. This buffoon.
@Michael Reynolds:
The trick is trying to hide it.
Until we no longer have to.
See Meloni.
And why I suspect Tusk did not turn up; Tusk was a streetfighter, who seems to have run out of patience with the other, more orange, Donald.
I have to admit, in the long list of US Presidents, I can’t think of a single one, offhand, more contemptible and wilfully stupid than Trump.
Not Nixon, not Harding, not even Buchanan.
And this man sits in the office where Lincoln, Grant, FDR, and (my personal hero) Truman sat.
Among others.
It still stupefies me that it could have happened twice.
@JohnSF: @Michael Reynolds: @JohnSF:
They all learned the lesson of TACO. Trump is a bully if the opponent is weaker. He caves at the first sign of strength. See Putin. See united Europe.
@Bobert:..How, how, can you trust a leader who is either out right lying or so badly informed?
Someone in the press corp should ask Trump when he is going to suspend the Constitution.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
“The constitution is whatever I say it is. Says it right here in the WWE kayfabe guide to US politics. And all my Cabinet agree. So does Congress. And Justice Thomas says its fine. What more do you want, losers? Now buy my memecoins!”
Trump left in the middle of the meeting with the European leaders to get on a call with Putin and left them waiting for 40 minutes. Unbelievable.
@Michael Reynolds: Yeah, but that’s a very different claim. That there were fringe types in Marin County is not a surprise.
That is quite different than making sweeping statements about “liberals.”
@Scott:
Well, Zelensky is more restrained and mature than I am.
I would have worn a Tan Suit with an Obama lapel pin.
@Scott:
Trump’s problem now is he’s caught between a rock and a hard place.
He really wants a deal with Putin.
But that requires Ukraine to agree.
And while he might be able to attempt bully Ukraine into submission in isolation, he can hardly do so if Ukraine is being backed up by the key Europeans, who regard it as an existential matter for their own security.
Incidentally, JD Vance seems to be rather notably shy this time round.
Perhaps he’s fearful of getting punched in the snoot by Meloni?
@Scott:
Trump’s problem now is he’s caught between a rock and a hard place.
He really wants a deal with Putin.
But that requires Ukraine to agree.
And while he might be able to attempt bully Ukraine into submission in isolation, he can hardly do so if Ukraine is being backed up by the key Europeans, who regard it as an existential matter for their own security.
Incidentally, JD Vance seems to be rather notably shy this time round.
Perhaps he’s fearful of getting punched in the snoot by Meloni?