Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, December 29, 2025
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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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It’s been off-and-on rainy here in Estoril, but sunny today. So I roped up Astrid (the very pretty, neurotic spaniel/Papillon mix) and Boss (the, let’s say, cute, and belligerent Pug), grabbed my canvas shopping bag and walked down the winding calçada sidewalks to Gleba, one of several neighborhood bakeries, and the immediately-adjacent Continente Bom Dia which is about halfway between a 7-11 and a small grocery store.
Estoril (shtoo-rdeel) is a sort of Beverly Hills-ish neighborhood where our three story, four bedroom, four bath, two kitchen, pool and garage rental is a cottage. Everyone here has massive dogs, Mastiffs and Shepherds imprisoned behind the walls and fences of massive estates. At one spot there’s a ten foot wall and three giant dogs perch on the heights loudly threatening our dogs. Boss is ready to throw down. Astrid’s too cool to acknowledge them.
The Portuguese are dog-lovers. They’ll no more smile at a passing human than a Frenchman would, but they will greet Astrid and especially Boss. There’s something about bulging eyes and a half inch of pink tongue forever poking through her underbite that’s endearing.
The flowers are still in bloom, and with my deep knowledge of botany I was able to identify what I believe are called ‘small yellow’ as well as ‘large yellow’ flowers. Also small orange and even purple flowers. SoCal weather.
Picked up bleach and sandwich bags and raspberry preserves at Continente, and a big loaf of pão Alentejo and a couple of croissants that would do a Paris boulangerie proud. Still don’t have our visas and we’re eating up our Schengen time, so things remain tentative. Still not loving the cuisine, but the Portuguese can bake with the best.
And now I’m in an IKEA rocker on the patio, the Atlantic to my left. The ocean is very blue today with the sky clear. The weather may be SoCal but the air is not. There’s no smog, and no wildfire smoke, so I do what I can to foul the air with a Davidoff Nicaragua Toro and make it just a bit more homey.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m very happy you’re smoking a $26 cigar. If you’re going to foul the Portuguese air, you might as well do it in style.
@Michael Reynolds:
Meanwhile in Worcestrshire, the temperature is 6° C, the sky is grey, my central heating boiler has turned up its toes, and I have no cigars.
Dammit.
otoh, I do have an electric radiator, a gas fire, and a good bottle of 20-year old tawny port.
Things could be worse. 😉
My father was partial to Romeo y Julieta Dominican cigars, iirc.
Never been a real cigar guy myself, but they did smell nice.
Maybe I should take up smoking a pipe to fit in with my overall image?
Also, space heating.
lol
This has gotta be the shortest open forum ever.
oh, heck, Luddite will throw this one into the mix, in the spirit of “WTFF, dude?” I mean, seriously. Certainly demonstrating the spirit of Compassionate Conservatism, or something.
Indiana’s Senate majority leader is facing backlash over a Christmas social media post featuring AI-generated images of him punching and kicking Santa Claus outside the Indiana Statehouse while surrounded by cheering spectators.
“When you find out the North Pole is trying to bring more bureaucratic overreach & unfunded mandates down the chimney disguised as ‘Christmas cheer.’ Not on my watch. We The People run Indiana, not the bureaucrats,” said the post.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Hiyah Luddite!
Merry Christmas!
Some politicians really need to observe the basic thing of “don’t yap when you don’t have to”.
Dear Senator: “It’s f@kin’ Christmas, man. Just shut th’ f@ck up.”
At least most Brit pols have the good grace to stay home and get stinko over the hols.
@CSK:
I’m still deep in Hell Week, and realized yesterday I haven’t had a day off since November 17th.
It’s not so much the Hell Week work, as the market price studies. They keep coming and coming, and are as much work, for me, as any Hell Week proposal. There just aren’t enough hours in the work week to do all that, never mind petty cash reimbursements and pre-processing supplier invoices for accounting. So I keep coming in on Saturdays and Sundays between 5 and 8 hours every time… Add doing the week’s cooking and laundry, too.
But there’s always time for a rant.
FIFA president and Taco ass-kisser defends outrageous world cup ticket prices thus: The sheep want to be fleeced.
I don’t recall prices for the 86 cup. I know they were far lower, in dollar terms adjusted for inflation, than tickets today. The scandal back then was tickets were sold as “series.” Meaning you had to buy all the tickets for a given seat for all the games in a city. So, tickets for Mex City, where two stadiums hosted games, were quite high.
Some people bought series in order to resell individual match tickets, some resold whole series. With all that, lots of tickets went unsold. So once games started, tickets for single matches went on sale. A lot more people could afford that.