Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, September 15, 2025
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39 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
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BlueSky.
Just got back from a week at the beach. Anything going on? Anything I missed?
I use such times to check out. Long walks on the beach with the wife (morning and evening). Sitting in a chair just reading books of little consequence. First book was a silly Dan Brown book, Origin, about conspiracies involving a tech billionaire, a secret revanchist Catholic group, and an almost conscious AI entity. Fun and fast.
Second book was Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara. In my youth and young adulthood, I read everything I could about the Civil War. Tramped all over the battlefields, etc. Gods and Generals is historical fiction but heavy on the history. The fiction was the imagined conversations of the principal actors: Robert E. Lee, Winfield Scott Hancock, Stonewall Jackson, and Joshua Chamberlain. The first 100 pages was the time leading up to the outbreak of the war. What really threw me was the depiction of the breakup of the US Army as a result of the election of Lincoln and succession of the states. Long time colleagues and friends, their Army families, their shared experiences and cultures. It happened regardless of rank from top to bottom. Parallelism to today is all too obvious. I found it profoundly sad.
I found myself curiously unmoved by the killing of Charlie Kirk. Didn’t care. Can’t care. Which disturbs me in a different way.
I did find it in me to be irritated if not outraged by the cynical use by Trump and company to fly flags at half-mast, provide AF Two to haul a body, and provide honors that are not earned.
I’m sure I’ll have more to write about as I get back in the groove but I got dogs to walk, chores to do, a bug splattered car to wash.
Interesting views on the National Guard deployment in DC. Excerpts from a long article.
Troops in DC encounter few crises, but plenty of walking and yard work
‘The whole thing is screwed up’: Farmers in deep-red Pennsylvania struggle to find workers (Politico)
Voting to bankrupt yourself is wild. He ran on tariff trade wars and mass deportation. Maybe they expected another bailout, like in Failed Trump Presidency, Part One?
@DK: “The whole thing is screwed up,” said John Painter, a three-time Trump voter who runs an organic dairy farm in Westfield. “We need people to do the jobs Americans are too spoiled to do.”
Gee, maybe people don’t want to do backbreaking work for $13 an hour. Especially if they can work at a Mickey D’s for a few dollars more. This guy saw what happened with the soybean farmers during Trump’s first term, and he kept voting for him? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice… Definitely no sympathy for this guy, he gets what he deserves.
Why did I ever think that the family farm provided it’s own labor by having more kids to work the fields?
Maybe it’s time for another roll in the hay!
@DK:
Bingo. I watched a video of a woman, a farmer, who politely demolished the fiction that these farmers – who she points are actually rich, as a rule – didn’t know what was going to happen. They just didn’t care be cause these staunch capitalists figured Trump would bribe them again.
Except he may think he no longer needs anyone’s votes.
No weekend when you have to go to the office is a true weekend*.
The problem is today’s Sept. 15th and we work only half a day, prior to the Independence Day holiday tomorrow. So we had to give up half a Sunday to catch up so we can leave early today….
Funny thing is I got home around 2 pm, had lunch, and took a nap. I woke up by 6 pm, and spent most of the rest of the day cooking (I’m bad at having two things on the stove at one time, too). I didn’t even remember the day’s NFL games until I was done. Now I’m puzzled why Mason Rudolph had two passes in the game against Seattle…
*Exception to the No True Weekend Fallacy.
@Lucys Football:
Pennsylvania still pinned to Federal Minimum wage of $7.25. Agree I would not do back breaking labor for that amount when I could easily cut lawns for triple that in an hour. I bet if you asked this guy if he could go back and change his vote, he would say no. Very little sympathy for this level of ignorance. The fact he uses the word spoiled when agriculture is one of the biggest sectors of government subsidies is baffling.
Prices have gone up at the green market in Union Square, but I haven’t noticed a lack of supply of anything. This summer was the same as always. Berries and asparagus giving way to peaches, heirloom tomatoes, and corn.
The farms are from Jersey or the Hudson Valley. If they’re not having problem finding employees, what’s the difference?
@Scott:
Before he was shot, I didn’t know who Kirk was. I don’t care either.
Don’t care about the Jeffrey Epstein stuff either. He was a sex offender who got coddled by the criminal justice system because of his $$$$. Epstein is dead now. Any so called news concerning him now is just noise to me. Any fantasizing it will be the downfall of Trump is forgetting how well all Trump’s legal battles of 2024 ended up.
Quite literally hundreds of millions of people have voted against their own economic interests for the past 45 years. One can perhaps excuse votes for Reagan and Bush the elder, as the effects of gush-up economics*, small government, and deregulation took time to become obvious and unmistakable.
IMO people vote for the narrative even more than for the promised results, and not based on the actual results of the policies as implemented.
*Might as well call it what it really is, not what the propaganda says it’s called.
Well we have gotten to the point where quoting people verbatim will get you fired and stating falsehoods means you are a red state governor or a member of the Administration and a major news outlet will publish it without comment or correction.
Utah Governor is still pushing a false narrative
I understand that there is still a lot to unpack and still more to know about the shooter, but one thing we no for sure is the Governor is straight up peddling misinformation at this point saying unequivocally the shooter was a leftist. While I agree that his politics are hard to put into a category, it’s clear he isn’t some wild-eyed liberal and saying so is simply false witness (He also openly confessed to hoping the shooter was a liberal).
@DK:
But very reliable sources within the administration are telling us that Americans are taking those jobs. Economic advisor Kevin Hassett stood outside the White House after the release of the September 5th jobs report and said,
Another group of farmers whining.
Long-term unemployment at post-pandemic high, straining workers and economy (WaPo)
Donald Tariff Trumpflation doing a bang-up job of making his desired rate cut more likely. Bullying Powell doesn’t work? Just crash the economy: then he’ll have to lower rates. Problem solved!
The farm issue is getting a lot of coverage recently but we also are facing growing labor shortages in the construction, hospitality and restaurant businesses just to name a few. In health care the long term care facilities have been hit pretty hard.
Steve
MAGA voter ‘regrets’ voting for Trump after his Irish wife is detained by ICE and faces deportation (Irish Star)
May God forgive my petty and sinful soul for laughing, and the Angels cleanse me of this vindictiveness, but this reads like an SNL sketch, or a Daily Show segment.
Have the day you voted for, Brownie.
@steve222: Farmers get more attention (and subsidies and bailouts) because as proper Orwell devotees, we Americans believe “All men are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”
@Eusebio: pfft hahaha Did Hassett maintain a straight face? Did the reporters?
@DK:
My Wife is a straight up anchor baby. Born to UK national here under a work visa. In the run up to the last election she was worried that she would be targeted under another Trump term. I told her she was fine as there were not worried about white people. Now I’m not so sure. She has a Democratic voting registrations which now seems good enough to be deported.
Tenured Texas State University Professor Fired for Speech at Conference, Accused of Inciting Violence
The “incitement” was a talk he gave at a conference of socialists. It was very, very anodyne, very hypothetical. A lawsuit is quite likely to be successful. I expect the president of the university doesn’t care. It isn’t his money, after all, and he’s getting himself out of the crosshairs. Maybe he’s all in on the propaganda value.
Just for funsies, I took a look at thefire.org to see if their news section had an item about it. Free speech in higher education is their beat, right?
It did not.
@DK:
It’s the COVID Schadenfreude all over again.
The Trek re-watch has led me to appreciate Fry’s comment on futurama about TOS: “79 episodes, about 30 good ones.”
I won’t got into details. I know some eps feel slow to me because I’d seen them before and I know how they end. So there’s no suspense, no mystery for those.
And yet, yesterday I watched “Mirror, Mirror,” the original ep with the Mirror Universe. I remembered it quite well, and it was as good as I recalled. The ep before that was “The Changeling,” the one that was re-written for the first Trek movie. I had seen it before, and remembered the solution and ending, but little else. I found it quite good, too, even though I knew how it ended.
One thing, though, I can see why trekkies become nitpickers (I’m a recovering Trekkie**). Especially when there are contradictions right in the script.
Item: Nomad hits the Enterprise with the equivalent energy of all too many photon torpedoes. The shields go down by 20%. Ok. Kirk fires back 1 (one) photon torpedo.
Item: the photon torpedo hits the target, but it has no effect.
Item: Kirk marvels at what kind of ship can withstand a direct hit by a photon torpedo.
I can conclude the eps were written and shot so fast, there was little time for editing…
**I still see the nits, I just don’t pick them.
NYT has an interesting column under the title Our Booming Stock Market is in Peril (gift link). The author is a Canadian Business prof. He’s afraid the stock market is dying,
Venture capital seems to be buying all the medical and dental practices around me. And building car washes, which was apparently an investor fad for awhile.
He blames it mostly on over-regulation of public companies and wants Congress to fix it. But he notes much of the over-regulation has, like so much else. been privatized. There are apparently large VC investors who impose their own requirements.
Much of this sounds like the “savings glut” that drove the bubble that burst in 2008. I sometimes worry that Economics still operates under an assumption that capital availability is the choke point when we seem to be awash in capital.
How about a joke? I heard this one from two old Jewish humorists on C-SPAN (of all unlikely places) talking about the value of humor during hard times. I wish I could remember their names. Anyway, they really liked this joke and so I.
A young Gentile man meets a nice Jewish girl and wants to marry her and is happy to convert to Judaism for the honor, but is nervous about the bris. He goes
to talk to his future brother in law about it.
His brother in law said “I don’t remember much because I was only eight days old, but I couldn’t walk for a year!”.
Ba-dum
Can anyone explain how this works?
F.B.I. Head Says Note and DNA Link Suspect to Kirk Killing
[…] Speaking on the “Fox & Friends” television show Monday morning, Mr. Patel said that Mr. Robinson had suggested before the shooting that he was going to kill Mr. Kirk, in a text message exchange and in a written note. He said that the note was destroyed but that the authorities were able to reconstruct it. […]
The only thing I can think of would be paper in a shredder–that can be destroyed and then reconstructed.
Speaking of shredding, Oliver North and Fawn Hall got married last month.
@becca:
The Right has never been funny, funny used to belong to the Left. I get so tired of earnestly humorless activists who think humor is unserious, trivial, anathema to their terribly, terribly serious cause.
Who doesn’t think humor is trivial? Oppressed people. For a long time three groups, each oppressed in different ways, dominated humor in the US: Jews, Blacks and Irish. In more recent times woman have joined up. People told jokes in Auschwitz, in the cotton fields of Alabama, during the potato famine, FFS. Only the privileged don’t need humor.
@Jen:
I thought that was a joke. I had to follow the link to make sure… there may have been more about the tights he admitted to buying with Iran Contra funds at the hearings.
@Michael Reynolds:
St. Ronnie used to tell hilarious jokes about red/MAGAt states.
On the other hand, they may have been about the Soviet Union. it’s hard to tell these days.
@Rick DeMent:
(Alleged) free speech absolutists respond:
*crickets chirping*
Oh.
@DK:
This Administration had a Plan – Project 2025, which Trump said he never heard of – that was explicit in telling us all that they planned to apprehend/expel/deport ALL of those they have identified as being here illegally.
So it’s completely understandable that Brown mistakenly thought that only criminals would be pulled off the street and renditioned to wherever Stephen Miller wants them sent. How could he have known that this Administration brands all the people – including non-hispanic gringos who have overstayed visas – as criminals?
Hate to say it but … hashtag Schadenfreude
@Jen:
DEI Hire Kash Patel may be speaking imprecisely.
Deleted files on a computer can often be reconstructed. And I would be surprised if things deleted in Google Docs, Microsoft Office365*, iCloud Notes, or Adobe PDF Files for Online Pedophiles** are deleted.
And even if it were recovered/reconstructed, and the process was well documented and trustworthy (do you trust this administration?), you still have the analysts trying to figure out what “Notices Bulge. OwO!” means.
Black-Pilled Groyper shit is a language onto itself. Most people are not well equipped to find meaning there, particularly if they don’t want to. And that’s before we get into Nick Fuentes and the catboy.
*: fuck you, leap years!
**: what are the odds they don’t have this or something like it?
ETA: The governor of Utah reading the shell casings was kind of amazing. “If you read this you are gay lmao” Meanwhile, the FBI will be searching for the secret meaning.
@becca: Oh, I know a few Jewish people and the bris jokes are endless.
@Jen:
Patel, as a head of the FBI, is in so far over his head I almost feel sorry for him. He just might be “promoted” out of that job.
I recall looking at population projects maybe 15 or even 20 years ago and seeing them show a shrinkage in the workforce. This was in the context of Social Security projections.
Now that is upon us, and instead of trying to fill the gap, this administration is making it worse by deporting every last person they plausibly can. Because … I don’t know why, maybe it’s because they hate them all (a 40 something Irish woman? WTF? Who does this help? and so on)
Because they are led by, and kowtow to, a guy who is so wrapped up in ideas like:
Never admit a mistake.
Never say “I don’t know”
Never apologize
That he can’t learn anything, and he can’t bear to listen to someone say things that don’t match his preconceived notions. This makes it impossible to learn. It renders you ignorant. You will make terrible mistakes because you give more weight to the idea in your head rather than the world before you.
Read this on the interwebs… it should be spread far and wide….
Accurate, I would say.
Some levity to close out the day:
Neil deGrasse Tyson sort of channeling Sheldon Cooper over whipped cream.
@al Ameda:
But if only someone would have told America that this administration would zealously implement this Project 2025… oh yeah, like Kamala Harris during her debate with Trump (auto-generated transcript):
To which Trump responded by denying Project 2025 three or four times.
Gratuitous debate bonus… Harris warned us that Putin would dog walk Trump (auto-generated transcript):
@DK:
So, a moron? Like 47% of America?
@DrDaveT: Never forget that half the country is below average.