Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, June 8, 2026
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23 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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So much winning, decline in Canadian Tourists (obvious to me, long term Canadian tourists, simple border hopping to Blaine or Bellingham WA not included). #1, Myrtle Beach SC https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-where-canadian-travel-to-usa-is-falling-fastest/
Somehow I think this would be considered unconstitutional.
Army prescribes religious test for appearance waivers, trims sideburns in updated grooming standards
Apparently, it is up to the soldier to prove to the government the sincerity of their beliefs.
On a positive note:
House panel votes to reinstate non-Confederate base names and adopt ‘Department of War’
Since it’s hard to keep up with all the evil, here’s the wrap-up of the infamy of the US Attorneys office in Illinois. You know, the ones who made a federal case against protestors in Chicago for blocking an ICE car, then had to drop it because of prosecutorial misconduct, which is a polite way of saying, “terrorizing people with the battleaxe of the law for opposing the regime.”
A tiny bit of good news. As I was walking around my neighborhood yesterday, I saw a lot of honeybees. In recent years, the honeybees seemed to be AWOL on clusters of lavender and other blossoms. Other vespids were taking their place. I’d read about several diseases impacting their numbers and feared that this true friend of humanity was in trouble. Well, I saw a lot of the good guys (I don’t know the proper pronoun for worker insects) doing their important work. Yay! BTW, I saw some on rhododendrons; is their honey toxic?
@Slugger: Yes, sort of toxic in large quantities…it’s called mad honey.
@Richard Gardner:
I’m hearing the same from friends in my home state.
https://vtdigger.org/2025/06/18/as-canadians-stay-home-vermonts-tourism-industry-is-paying-the-price-for-trumps-rhetoric/
@Daryl: @Richard Gardner:
As Canadians in southern Ontario, my wife and I would take at least 2 weeklong trips and a couple of long weekends in the States each year, along with day trips for shopping or hockey games at least once a month. We haven’t been over since the beginning of 2025. Instead we have been to BC a couple of times and Nova Scotia for our weeklong trips, and some long weekends in Ontario. In a way we should thank Trump and his supporters as we now more fully appreciate our home country.
This seems like way too much disruption, just so El taco can be shown napping in a different venue.
@Kathy: I’m wondering if he’ll cancel at the last minute because he realizes how much booing or worse will take place among the spectators.
@Kathy:
@Mr. Prosser:
One thing that we can be sure of, the TV network will breakaway for a commercial when the felon is introduced.
I am becoming increasingly suspicious of the “blame Biden” mantra. I really do think this is a ploy to inure people to blame–make it pro forma. Whomever is next elected will inherit multiple, enormous messes, which will 100% be the fault of either Trump directly, or his administration.
By blaming Biden for really ridiculous stuff, like the screwworm problem (this is very, very obviously the fault of DOGE/Trump for cutting the research and tracking funds), we are essentially being conditioned to assume any casting of blame is inherently political. When the next administration (correctly) points out that x, y, and z disasters were all left by Trump, people are going to yawn and assume it’s just more politics as usual.
@Sleeping Dog: I hope his security is good, and that no one even tries to kill him.
He’s clearly on his way out, and we don’t need a martyr — we need an old, pathetic, broken man just collapsing.
@Jen: That’s a brilliant and important insight.
I’m having story issues again.
Imagine aliens can travel interstellar distances, but only at around 2-5% of the speed of light. This means voyages would take from decades to centuries. Time dilation would barely be noticeable (about 0.1% more for the stationary observer). So the ships are equipped with Clarke-level (ie magical) technology that produces a time stasis filed. TL;DR: inside such a field, time doesn’t pass.
This would allow for exploration. Now, maybe the crews won’t ever expect to return home. They’ll explore until they die. A god question is whether they’d reproduce in the meantime, given they’d be trapping their offspring to a life they may not want.
Another possibility would be to crew the exploration ships with AIs (plural), who could control mindless robots of many sorts to explore interesting planets, to effect repairs, etc. They wouldn’t strictly need a time stasis field, but one would reduce wear and tear on the ship, and on their systems, and allow for much longer voyages, with many stops at many solar systems.
Which options makes more sense, an AI crew or a living crew?
Regarding the LA and California’s ballot count, I don’t see this as political as much at Peter Principle. Dean Logan is the head of elections in LA County and 20 years ago was in elections in King County WA during a similar count/recount/recount/recount.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/meet-man-running-la-vote-184846466.html
@Jen: That is the same methodology as “weaponization of justice” and “election theft”. Accuse the other so you can do the crime yourself. Every accusation is a confession with these guys.
@Jen: @Kingdaddy:
This is a tried and true playbook applied specifically to political accountability.
It leverages the emergent property of our electoral system: two viable parties. The duty-motivated voters and the ones with intermittent or passing interest in politics cast themselves as the non-crazies rationally making choices when they do choose to engage.
Because there are two choices, when a particular issue causes widespread concern (most of the time, household finances; maybe the occasional military quagmire), the natural choice is to blame primary government avatar—the President.
As a side effect, the widespread perception of unreasonable partisans lends itself toward the soft middle oscillating between vote and abstention.
The playbook has worked in other domains. E.g. science vs. economic interests (smoking, AGW); immigration, which prompts multi-faceted moral and pragmatic questions across religion, government, and economics; race relations and social cohesion; crime.
If an issue is controversial, even if facts are clear, reduce reality to a question of perspective and opinion. If there is a broad consensus, manufacture controversy.
Primed default biases, about politics and self-interest, American individualism and exceptionalism, formed over generations, power the levers identified above in favor of a generic conservatism.
And, of course, when people perceive they are doing fine economically and socially, any identified problems external to the bulk of the country need to be dealt with incrementally and carefully so as not to ruin a good thing.
@Mr. Prosser:
I actually think that folks will keep themselves in check at the game and shouted boos will be and far between.
At the end of the day the fans who were lucky and/or wealthy enough to afford a ticket to the game are really there to see the Knicks play and since it has been so long since they made the Finals I think fans just want to enjoy the moment and a cavalcade of boos would just sour the experience for most game attendees, regardless of which side of the political aisle you lean on.
Apple announced a new Siri, now to be called Siri AI (what else?)
I’m a fan of not-Apple, meaning nothing I use is related to Apple*. So I don’t know much about what the latest phones are like or what they do. From watching videos about phones now and then**, I get the impression Apple’s fallen behind integrating AI functions people actually want on their phones.
I also don’t use many such functions in my own Android phone. I gave up on google Assistant, now rebranded as Gemini Assistant, years ago. I just found little use for it. I never activated Alexa on Audible (or I deactivated it when it showed up). So, not much for voice assistants at all.
*Which makes the fact that I’ve an icloud account awkward.
** Sometimes reviewers rave about lesser known phone brands (ie not Apple or Samsung), but when they casually mention what phones they actually use day to day, it’s always the latest iphone pro max or the latest Samsung S something ultra.
@inhumans99:
I wonder what the prediction markets say. I won’t access them at work.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the booing morphs into “lock him up” either.
OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, and holder of the patent for the keyboard without a spacebar (one presumes), formally announced their intention to launch their IPO.
I don’t know. The piece states: “The transition to a public company will give Wall Street a window into OpenAI’s finances as the company pours billions into AI infrastructure and computing resources.”
Do they really want to show their finances in public?
I wonder, too, how much financial data they share with the investors who’ve pumped billions into the company already. If the Theranos case is a guide, and I sincerely hope not, they may be getting away with murder disguised as funding. not literal murder, though several AI companies face lawsuits alleging their chatbots have aided shootings and suicides.
A stock crash of one or more of the big AI companies might eb good for them. it would definitely be good for the rest of us. With their influence diminished, we might eb able to place some restraints and demand safeguards and efective guardrails.
@inhumans99:
The boos have it
More on this story as it develops.
No way he wasn’t going to get booed in New York