Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, November 10, 2025
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22 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 sports headlines of the day- Guardians’ Emmanuel Clase, Luis Ortiz indicted for pitch rigging
and
NCAA finds 6 players from 3 schools involved in fixing games
Sports gambling is now legal in the United States and athletes aren’t known for their brain power. I’m afraid we’re going to be seeing lots more of these stories. Could it become so bad these stories become like ‘Dog bites man’ ones?
Can’t help but to speculate that Trumps proposal to distribute tariff proceeds is just ploy to make it impossible to unwind his tariff scheme. While I believe that SCOTUS ought not have to weigh the difficulty of refunding tariffs already collected, distributing those funds to the public adds a level of impossibility.
The Supreme Court has declined to revisit Obergefell.
Supreme Court rejects long-shot effort to overturn same-sex marriage ruling
The court turned away an appeal filed by Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who was sued after refusing to issue a marriage license to a gay couple.
This Constitution (not your Holy Book) shall be the supreme Law of the Land…
I was made a bit ill as I watched the Washington\Detroit game yesterday when Trump was being fellated on live TV. My god the segment during the game was obnoxious as the segment went for almost the entire Commander drive into the end zone. Now I have seen in game interviews of celebrates from John Lennon to Ronald Ragan but never for that long, and never during live action.
Before anyone tells me it just because I don’t like Trump (which is true) … but no, not during play. I get that FOX is going to FOX, but wow, I honestly don’t know how much more cringe and inane it could get. I noticed he did mention anything about destroying the USFL the moment he got a team of his own, which is why the NFL would never approve him as an owner.
He deserved the boos.
@Jen:
This will probably end the talk of the USSC overturning Loving. I always thought that talk was done by chicken littles.
If the Democrats win the House (assuming fair midterm elections), and whether or not they take the Senate (same), should they impeach El Taco and about half the cabinet? Or just one or the other?
I see ample basis, from corruption to incompetence to disobeying court orders to lying in court to denying due process to malicious prosecution to war crimes.
It seems quite normal when you consider the current executive branch is more a criminal enterprise than a government.
On the NFL games yesterday, when exactly did Miami acquire a real football team? Buffalo at Miami seem like the kind of game the Bills ought to put away before half time. If it happened in the last two weeks of the season, they’d probably rest their starters.
And yet the Dolphins somehow shut out the Bills for three effing quarters.
On the other hand, the Chargers demolished the Steelers in the evening game. The safety in the first quarter was more a function of Rodgers fumbling the ball. I don’t think the defensive player realized the ball was loose, or he’d have attempted to get it.
That was all I managed to see. I was busy cooking the rest of the day.
@Kathy:
Yesterday’s game wasn’t without embarrassment for Miami. With no time run off the clock yet, McDaniel called a time out. To me he seemed to do in order to argue a penalty called on the fins. Later McDaniel would call time outs when Miami had their defense on the field.
The win over Buffalo is a mirage. Miami isn’t a good team and their coach doesn’t know what he’s doing.
@Rick DeMent:
I muted it and then when it wouldn’t stop I just turned it off. Which was a bummer cause I was enjoying the game and Vilma/Albert are generally decent to listen to.
Whoever the Z team calling the Saints game was dreadful.
The president chose this morning to threaten air traffic controllers.
Per the article, he “threatened to dock pay for air traffic controllers missing work during the government shutdown,” providing further evidence that the FAA’s toxic leadership goes all the way to the top. Recall that Transportation Sec Duffy threatened to fire controllers in early October, only to flip the switch in early November and say “They need support… They don’t need to be fired.”
The president doesn’t seem to understand that air traffic controllers absent during the shutdown would nearly all have been in a pay status such as sick leave, so they’re gonna get paid. Also from the article…
The president also said he would “recommend bonuses of $10,000 to each controller who didn’t take any time off during the shutdown.” If he has such power and influence, how about a financial incentive before the workers miss paychecks, or perhaps another misappropriation of funds to pay them, since those rules are not being followed anyway?
Trump’s 50 year mortgage proposal is money in the bank for me and others who currently own a house. The fifty mortgage would lower monthly payments which, of course, would push up the price of the underlying property. Price and yield have a reciprocal relationship which I’m sure a brilliant real estate investor would know. The holders of assets are unlikely to let the buyers of houses get all the gravy.
Wife is flying back today from NC. First leg to DCA went without a hitch. Second leg had the connecting plane a little late but now the delay is because the jet has too much fuel and they have to pump some out. That’s a first for me!
@Kathy: @Bill Jempty:
The teams who are annual Super Bowl contenders seem to have a different way of moving through the season from the teams that are only contenders in seasons wherein injury luck and an easier schedule align.
If a team has an S-tier QB or a deep, well-constructed roster, they spend the first 3 quarters of the season trying to find ways to minimize the effects of their weaknesses.
Mahomes and Lamar benefit from playing for well run organizations with excellent head coaches. Allen has an above average head coach and a middle of the pack organization.
The other two truly elite QBs:
Burrow has a questionable a head coach and a bottom of the barrel organization. Herbert has an excellent head coach and a bad organization.
@Scott:
I can think of several reasons for that, from not receiving scheduled cargo, to a mistake in the fuel calculations, to a different alternate airport, etc. The bottom line is carrying excess fuel costs money, because it takes fuel to carry more fuel. A short(ish) delay si preferable most times.
@Bill Jempty:
I expect nothing from the Dolphins for a long time to come.
I was just very surprised they shut out the Bills that long.
@Kurtz:
But all it takes it’s a hot shot QB and you’ll win every game! 😛
I seem to be in a snarkier mood than usual today…
Odds and ends…
I’m continuously surprised that people can’t deal with large numbers. Not El Taco promising a $2,000 tariff rebate to taxpayers, which would cost more than all the tariff revenue collected (even if the Fixers don’t make him send it back). But the Texla board.
The “pay” package they proposed would be equivalent to giving Adolf Muxk two hundred and thirty seven million dollars every f**king day for ten years.
Do you get why the French went wild with the guillotine in the 1790s?
Moving on. The experiment with chicken milanesas stuffed with chorizo and cheese was mostly successful. I need a different ratio, like spreading chorizo all over the inside before rolling the milanesa. Other than that, it was perfect (for those bites with chorizo and cheese in them).
I made a topping with browned onions, mashed roasted garlic, mayo, mustard, and ketchup. Browned, nearly blackened, because I was also making a large portion of fried rice for the week’s dinners, and neglected to turn off the heat on the pan with the onions….
I roasted the garlic in the air fryer. It works well, but perhaps I should have wrapped the cloves in foil or something. Some bits burned, and these bits then got molecularly bonded to the garlic press. I had to let it soak in boiling water to loosen them up (the press is steel, so that wouldn’t hurt it).
I also tried running a premise on Copilot, using the advice it gave me the other day to preface by saying “Be brutally honest.”
It was more honest than usual, not sycophantic this time, and not enthusiastic. Not brutal, either. It told me the premise was common in spy thrillers, which I knew. When I explained the setting is an interstellar human society occupying many solar systems and planets, and who’ve never even heard of Earth, much less America, it did a near 180 and told me this improved the premise from a 5/10 to an 8/10…
Maybe the honesty didn’t take.
On the other hand, it never said either brilliant or insightful.
Last, there’s this video of Amy Shira Teitel, who also does Vintage Space, about the state of content these days on social media.
She makes several points, but what I want to highlight is the explanation she invokes about novelty. The gist is: your brain wants something new that is familiar.
I think I’ve always known this, but hadn’t heard it expressed concisely and clearly before.
@Eusebio:
Heard the morning from a retired air traffic controller that his fellow controllers have been working a “ton of overtime”, including six day weeks for months at this high stress job. Also that they are contractually obligatedto call off if they are not “at the top of their game” (fit to work).
This suggests that they don’t have to be actually sick, but rather that they feel that they are not fatigued and fully ready for the stress of the job that day.
I don’t have any idea if this is accurate, but it would stand to be reasonable, considering the responsibility they carry.
Trump’s demand that they get back to work or else, seems to display an basic ignorance of the import and impact of the controller’s job.
The ends weren’t done with the odds.
I had to visit someone at a hospital Saturday Nov 1. It’s very far away, and the parking rates are highway robbery (about $4.75 per hour USD; for Mexico this is robbery). Worse, there’s no nearby parking you can walk from.
So I took Uber round trip. The cost was only a little more than the parking would have been.
The thing is on the return leg the driver asked whether we should take the toll road Waze indicated. I told him I had no electronic card to pay for the toll. He said he did. So, ok. I left him a bigger tip to make up for that.
Today I get an email from Uber saying the fares been adjusted, due to the toll paid during that trip…
I’m not going to ask for part of the tip back, even if that were possible. But I wish I’d known this ahead of time. I still would have tipped, but the normal amount (I always tip Uber drivers, sometimes in cash rather than the app).
BTW, the toll amounted to 71 pesos, which is about $3.84. That’s crazy high for an urban toll road, IMO. This time, meh. But lots of people take such roads daily. That’s like over $150 a month. No wonder they’re still known to have light traffic…
Successfully made it to Eugene. TSA line was way shorter than last time I flew out here, made it thru in 10 minutes flat!
I’m a researcher and clinician, among other things.
In my field, the norm is to pre-register hypotheses/analyses, define outcomes and time horizons a priori, spell out what evidence would actually count as support or refutation, etc.
It hasn’t always been this way, and we’ve still got a ways to go, but it’s been an important development that injects rigour and reduces motivated reasoning, post-hoc rationalizing, etc.
In doing so, it makes the work more clinically relevant and impactful — in a good way.
ETA: And it makes us, who do the work, better too — individually and collectively.
Crazy tight race for the Seattle mayor, suddenly about 100 votes out of 266k ballots, now suddenly in favor of the “self-described socialist.” Two Democrats (top 2 system primary) and today the count reversed. One Socialist (Wilson) against an ineffective Dem incumbent (Harrell).. Wilson, the DSA candidate has never actually run anything (nor had a regular job) but started a Transit riders lobbying group. Activist class (rich kids). First time running for office, parents pay her child care bill. Harrell was on Seattle City Council before running for mayor and is generally regarded as ineffective (but he has a well left of center City Council to contend with – at least Sawant is gone – her birth country India won’t let her visit – degree in Marxist Economics, not out of the History Department). Tuesday night’s ballot release had Harrell winning but the gap closed as mail-in ballots came in (what, commies, er, Progressives use the mail at the last day when most everyone uses the drop boxes? 65.5% drop boxes, 34.3% mail in WA this election (rest mostly ADA ballots) – don’t have data for just King County). BTW, WA does drop-box/mail voting right – in 2008 I was against it but I now have no problem, it is working out fine..
Seattle mayoral race tightens as Katie Wilson edges ahead of Bruce Harrell in latest count
Anyway, certain recount. I’ll be popping the popcorn as I watch the recount unfold. Reminds me of King County (Seattle) in 2004, finding more ballots every day. I do think the system is relatively decent now, fewer systemic issues (2004, lots of issues like entire Alzheimer facilities voting 100% (at least 2 confirmed in Snohomish County).
There was a DSA candidate in my city (near Seattle) council district that got only 30% of the vote despite lots of outside DSA money (raised more than the incumbent who I donated to at $1 less than the reporting requirement so I don’t get into the donor database – think Michael Reynolds has made similar comments). Campaigned on the city needing a policy on Palestine and all the knee jerk issues and zero on how to fund pot hole repairs and such. You bet I had the incumbent’s sign in my front yard (a first generation Cambodian USMC vet whose mother fled the Killling Fields, vice a young activist (26?) white woman calling for minimum wage hikes (I’ll accept her preferred pronouns, just find it annoying as she is so strident IT IS SHE/HER!)).
Meanwhile I’ll keep working on street repairs, new bike paths, tree canopies and such. I am a community activist and organizer but totally different from these Quixotic folks. But they are so damn smart, just ask them. And I’m the old dude (still under Social Security age) that is blocking their unaffordable ideas.
Sorry, this went into rant slightly. I have little patience for Commies (as bad as Fascists that they deplore in their ignorance of Socialism & Totalitarianism).