Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Monday, April 6, 2026
·
19 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
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
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
Is there a national database a person gets entered into when they get a cancer diagnosis? I have coverage through BCBS-WY, applied through the ACA. They always do this thing where “Well, maybe your kids qualify for state Medicaid, we’ll try that first”. They never qualify, we’ve always been in that gray area where I make too much by just a little bit. It’s never a surprise when I get the denial letter.
The other day I got a full Medicaid coverage card for myself. The kids only got letters saying they qualify for behavioral health/mental health coverage, which is very odd. I don’t know how I could qualify, unless it was the cancer diagnosis.
AND THEN…..I got an email from Social Security explaining my benefits, and how I could apply for disability benefits if I expect to be out of work for more than a year, or have a “condition that will lead to death”.
It’s all very strange that it all happened at once. I feel like I got added to a database.
Whoa. This Montana voter initiative is interesting. Quoting the Daily Montanan:
The state supreme court has ruled in favor, but only to the extent of saying the initiative process can continue.
I agree with arguments our system enables what has happened to it. But then I ask myself how we went 250 years without a serious threat to democracy. (Except for that quickly quashed unpleasantness in the early 1860s.) My answers revolve around the utter corruption of the Republican Party and money. And the corruption is largely the result of the money. Wasn’t there something about, “root of all evil”?
Im in Ireland.
Week one: Dublin
Week two: Belfast. North Coast.
Week three: Galway (where I am now)
Week four: Innish Mor then back to Dublin to fly home.
Trip has been amazing. I’ve been to Ireland six times. First time ever not one local has bought me a pint. Never happened before. Despite being based in the cities, I venture out to the villages for “Real Ireland”.
Used to be people found out you were American they’d saddle up, but you a pint and chat for hours.
Those days are gone. These people HATE Trump and, by extension, many Americans.
Sucks.
Just a reminder that there is no bottom:
https://meidasnews.com/news/trump-posts-islamophobic-video-hours-after-unhinged-easter-threat-on-iran
He later posted that 85% of these people are on welfare.
When he goes I hope he is gasping for breath and in agony. And I’ll be drinking 19 year old scotch and smoking a Cuban (and I don’t even drink scotch or smoke cigars).
An email to the troops from recently fired Army Chief of Staff Gen Randy George:
Pretty sure there will be Trumpists who will be offended.
@Lucys Football:
I do! But not both at once. Cigars for work, whiskey for shutting down work. The Ardbeg has a 19 year-old but I have not tried it. I love me some peat but The Ardbeg is hardcore and the smell causes my wife to snarl at me. As for Cubans, they may be recovering but for a while after the Obama opening there was a decline in quality as Cuba pushed for more quantity. Nicaragua and Honduras make nice sticks. (I’m triggering @EddieInCA: by leaving out the DR.)
So, as I threatened, here’s how to make the instant pot chicken stock. The recipe is rather simple:
1 rotisserie chicken, dismembered and shredded.
1/2 carrot, sliced thinly
1/2 onion, sliced thinly
3-4 cloves of garlic, smashed (technically 2, but, come on!).
1 Tbsp. oil
2 liters water (technically 2 quarts, but that’s about 1.9 liters, so I just used 2)
Brown the carrot, onion, and garlic in the pot while you shred the chicken. Dump the chicken in the pot (yes, the meat as well; and I also dumped in the skin). Add the water (don’t go past the max fill line). Set to cook on high pressure for 40 minutes. Release the pressure slowly. Done.
Ok, I forgot to get a carrot, so I skipped that part. Also, the original recipe specifies a Costco rotisserie chicken, but I got mine from the supermarket. Finally, my pot doesn’t allow for gradual release of pressure, unless you’re willing to hold the release valve down (wearing an oven mitt, the steam is superheated*), so after a while trying I just opened it full.
Best stock I ever made.
Here’s the original video with the recipe. I don’t vouch for the scientific explanations, but do for the quality of the resulting stock.
Now, the video doesn’t say what to do with the meat afterward. I tasted it, and it had lost absolutely all its flavor. But the texture was still that of regular shredded chicken. So I saved most of it in the freezer for next week’s cooking, which will be chicken enchiladas.
I froze most of the stock, and made tomato soup with the rest. For this week’s entree I went with relatively simple burger patties and twice-baked potatoes.
*Water boils at a 100 C at sea level (92 C in Mexico City), but the resulting steam can get hotter than that. In the instant pot, it’s at least at 120 C. So you’re looking at third degree burns, even as the steam mixes with the cold ambient air. Be careful handling it.
@Kathy: I make this regularly but with some variations.
One rotisserie chicken. I disassemble it and freeze the meat for later. Usually for a stir fry or tray bake.
All bones, skins go in the instant pot. Carrots, celery, garlic, onions, peppercorns, couple of glugs of apple cider vinegar (helps to draw out the marrow from the bones). Sprigs of rosemary, parsley, almost anything from the garden. Max out the water, seal and cook for 2 hours.
I put about 1 1/2 cups hot broth in 2 cup mason jars, seal them and put in the refrigerator. Usually get about 7 jars. I do this about every other week. The broth is used for rice and pasta and soup bases.
One thing I do is put all vegetable scraps (onion skins, roots, carrot tops and shavings, etc) in a ziplock and put in the freezer. A full gallon size bag of scraps can be tossed into the instant pot for the broth.
@Scott:
I’ve done stock using bones only. It’s good, but I’ve always felt meat should go into it as well.
I also thought of adding more herbs and spices, like whole peppercorns and rosemary. Then I decided that would best be added when making soup or stew or sauce. But whatever works for you.
Generational trauma in overdrive – the sins of the fathers
Death, displacement and military duties: children plunged into crisis by Middle East war
—
War’s enduring legacy: How does trauma haunt future generations?
Humanity really needs to come to terms with the total, longitudinal impact of our warring behavior on our future capacity for sustaining healthy societal relationships, which in turn rests upon our capacity for healthy personal relationships.
@Jax:
I live under the assumption that all my data is out there.
Very, very late reply* to @ Jay L. Gischer
It’s not so much I think LLMs are bad, though they present lots of new issues, as they are largely useless for what I do. Partly it’s that I lack the patience to elicit the output I want, which it’s really a good thing for things like writing, as I have to produce the writing myself. I would love it if they were useful for my job, but so far they’re not.
Now, among the new issues is the matter of students who get the AI to write their papers, and in the meantime they learn nothing about reading the source material, thin king about it, and composing their thoughts into a coherent essay.
Or people who pretty much outsource their thin king on personal matters, including relationships, to LLMs that are programmed to give answers regardless of truth or accuracy. Or whether stories, novels, movies, etc. written by LLMs, or merely with their help, wind up plagiarizing other works. These “generative” AI don’t produce original content, but merely regurgitate what they were trained on.
The models out there, be they Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini, are pretty much test models, and we’re the ones being tested on.
So, maybe Anthropic is the not so bad guy, like the communists as opposed to the nazis in WWII.
*Got caught up on the weekend with a Passover thing.
In the good old days BCP (before cell phones) anyone who was a subscriber to local telephone service had their name, address and telephone number published in the local exchange telephone directory. These telephone books were widely distributed to private homes and businesses. They were also placed with pay phones. Telephone customers could request and pay for a non listed number. Phone companies also provided partial listings. No address with a listed phone number or an initial with a last name. Some phone numbers not published in the phone book could be obtained from a Directory Assistance Operator. This data was not limited to your local exchange. Out of town directories could be ordered from the phone company. I would go to the Southern Illinois University Library and find telephone books from across the country and many foreign countries.
Before the advent of the telephone City Directories were compiled with names addresses and other information about citizens that was made public.
Like it or not any notion that personal data was somehow more private in the past is nostalgic schmaltz.
@gVOR10:
Would you really say that we were a democracy when millions of people were held as slaves, half the adult population had no vote, and voting was often restricted in other ways with property requirements and poll taxes to make sure that only the right people were voting?
We’ve only really been a semi-functional multi-ethnic democracy since the civil rights acts passed in the 1960s. And even since then, you would have to put an asterisk by that and lay out large numbers of exceptions that bend the system.
There was a moment in the mid 1860s where we were making major strides towards becoming a democracy, with the Reconstruction Amendments and the Reconstruction itself, but America kind of gave up on most of that.
And primaries used to be far less democratic — limiting who the limited democracy could vote for.
To put it all into perspective, our democracy is younger than many of the people in our government. We’ve had a commitment to the pretense of democracy for a lot longer, but only the pretense, and only so long as the right people are in power.
And there’s been a constant effort to undermine the party that Black folks were voting for as soon as Black folks were voting enough to sway elections. Clinton was considered illegitimate and low class not because his election depended on Perot splitting the vote, but because his election depended on Black folk.
The anti-federalists were right, and Alexander Burr deserves his own musical just for shooting Hamilton in the face! (I would allow a little historical revisionism in that musical, for drama, like completely rewriting Burr… but the constitution was constructed to keep a certain wealthy class in power)
And, honestly, we probably would have be better off if the Loyalists won the Revolutionary War — England abolished slavery in England in 1772*, and then throughout the empire with major legislation beginning in 1883 (although it took a lot longer, and that act exempted India), and while I wouldn’t say that the rest of the former English empire is all unicorns and rainbows when it comes to race, a careful unwinding of slavery starting earlier seems to have turned out less worse.
We didn’t go 250 years without a serious threat to our democracy, we went about 200 years before there was a serious threat of democracy, and have been struggling to push that back, because (all together now) … we’re a republic not a democracy!**
*: huh, that’s only a few years before the revolution, I was just looking up when those 1833 acts were passed and saw that.
**: Does Dr. Taylor feel physical pain when those words appear on the website? I’d rather we were a democracy. I think our flirtation with democracy has been America’s best era.
So, Artemis 2 rounded the Moon and is headed back to Earth.
I feel the same way eclipse newbies do when they watch a partial solar eclipse: Is that it?
You’ll hear much about breaking Apolo 13’s distance record, by about 6,000 km. That’s about an Earth radius, so not nothing.
The one big difference, perhaps, is that Artemis 2 will see the far side of the Moon under daylight conditions, whereas the Apollo astronauts needed the near side in daylight so the far side might have been wholly or largely dark.
I suppose that’s nice. But, contra my usual argument, lots of probes have mapped and observed both sides of the Moon under daytime conditions.
It’s a test flight.
@EddieInCA:
Most Americans have no idea that ‘affordability’ isn’t just what WE PAY at the pump. I have family who have lived in Europe (the UK, Switzerland, and France) for over 4 decades and one told me yesterday that prices at the pump throughout Europe are skyrocketing … you know, just as any person who is moderately informed about global oil supply and transport would expect.
Enjoy the rest of your journey.
@Scott: @Kathy: Two words: lemongrass.
@Michael Reynolds:
Re: Cgars… Well played, sir. Well played.
Love Whiskey and Bourbon, but hate those peat Whiskeys. HATE THEM. But my wife LOVES peat whiskey. She had three different ones tonight at this place.
Apollo 8 flew on late December 1968. Originally, it was meant to go into Earth orbit to test the Lunar Module (LM), but the latter wouldn’t be ready in time. So NASA went for something spectacular in the meantime: the first ship launched from Earth to orbit the Moon.
Three months later, Apollo 9 carried out the LM tests in orbit. Two months after that, Apollo 10 tested the LM in lunar orbit, where they also conducted a descent test without landing on the Moon. That happened three months later, in August 1969 by the crew of Apollo 11.
Artemis 3 was supposed to be the first lunar landing of the Artemis program (if it is a program). That has changed to tests of the lunar lander in Earth orbit. The problem is no lunar lander is even close to ready, nor are the means to get it to the orbit of the Moon. The two contenders, Xtarship and Blue Moon, are not even in construction. the former doesn’t even have a launch vehicle (and it has to be Xtarship). The latter does, The New Glenn rocket, but lacks the means to get to the Moon on its own.
This is why I’m not excited about this iteration of crewed lunar voyages. The whole thing seems wasteful, hurried, expensive, and maybe more a jobs programs for broligarchs. El Taco just wants bragging rights, and who knows what Adolf and Lex want besides launch contracts. It’s clear their youthful enthusiasm for space exploration does not involve using their vast fortunes to further it.
XspaceS is an internet service provider that launches its own satellites. Blue Origin is attempting to become just that, too.
I’ve said a number of times there’s no return on investment for space exploration. All the money to be made in space, thus far, is in Earth’s orbit, and that market chugs along just fine. Anything else is a money pit, a very expensive one, too.