Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, July 12, 2025
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33 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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BlueSky.
Dear wife and I arrived home on Monday from our trip to the Virgin Islands. I got all the necessary research done for an upcoming book and have resolved a few problems I had with the plot I’m developing..
DW loved carnival in the USVI. It made the trip which she had been less than enthusiastic about when we set out into an enjoyable experience instead.
Some sad happenings took place while we were away and since coming home. Our 91-year-old neighbor Miriam fell and broke her hip a week ago last Wednesday. Her friend and our fellow neighbor Maria discovered Miriam a few hours after her fall.
Miriam is the neighbor DW and I gave our cat Misay* to since we’re traveling a lot now. Her own cat had died not too long ago, and Misay was a perfect new companion for Miriam. In the aftermath of her fall, Miriam was constantly expressing concern for Misay. Misay turned 18 years of age last June 17th.
With Miriam in the hospital and us out of town, Maria took Misay in. Before we got back from the VI, Misay began bleeding. To make a long story short, we took Misay to the vet last Tuesday. We were advised Misay needed surgery. Surgery on an 18-year-old cat is just postponing the inevitable. DW and I chose to put Misay to sleep. Miriam will be going to live in assisted living soon, so Misay couldn’t have rejoined her.
I hate myself for putting my longtime friend to sleep and the last few days have been very difficult for me. Dear Wife and I. got Misay when she was about 10 weeks old and had her till last March. Misay was a Bombay cat. She was very friendly and loved to sit in my lap or wedge herself between my legs as I watched television. Misay was still friendly and eating like normal when we had her put to sleep. Which makes me heavily regret what I did.
Dear wife is talking about us going to the Philippines for a visit. I’m travel weary at the moment. Since last May I have been to Australia, N Zealand, India, Turkey, gone on an Alaskan cruise, and did a 9 stop USA book signing tour. In September DW and I set off on a 3.5 week trip to Italy, then I have another book signing tour in November, then next January DW and I are taking a cruise to Antarctica. I’d just like to stay home for a while. I also have a bunch of doctor checkups in late August/early September before setting out on the Italy trip. I told DW how I feel. She is disappointed. I said for her to go home** without me but she don’t want to do that.
*- The waray word for cat. Misay is pronounced Miss sigh…
**- We’ll be going to the Philippines spring 2026 for the medical school graduation of our niece Mary Belle.
Condolences at the loss of your feline companion. Your decision was the best one to make so put aside your recriminations about it and focus on fond memories of Misay and caring for your friend and neighbor going to assisted living.
@Bill Jempty: Condolences on your cat. We’ve had many dogs over the years and letting them go can be hard. We had a long time vet that had a reputation for being grumpy and somewhat short with his words and customers but when it was time for Jasmine to go his demeanor was totally gentle. He had the kindest eyes at that time.
@Bill Jempty: So sorry to hear about Misay and Miriam, Bill. Big hugs.
The idiocy of our Sec of Agriculture brought this to mind.
When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace Migrant Farmworkers With High Schoolers
Needless to say, it didn’t work out.
Recommend reading the whole story. It is hard to excerpt because it is written as a story rather than a news article.
In the wake of the tragic flooding of the Guadalupe River, the fever swamps of the conspiratorial right have focused their crazed eyes on weather modification. An old boss of mine mocked this on LinkedIn by posting this episode of Sky King which dealt with cloud seeding. This weather control conspiracy goes back decades.
I fondly remember watching Sky King when I was 5 or 6.
@Bill Jempty:..peace, love and tears…
My old momcat was 17 when I had to put her down. It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do. That was over 30 years ago. Her picture is still on my refrigerator door.
And yet I still overestimate their intelligence. As much contempt as I have for MAGAts, it is still a shock to learn that they actually believed Epstein was hosting basically every Democrat for underage sex orgies. They believed this was literally true, and simultaneously managed to believe that Trump wasn’t as guilty as anyone, despite his name all over the flight logs and the photos of him with Epstein and the kind words for Ghislaine Maxwell and the sudden hesitation when Trump was asked about releasing the Epstein files.
Now Tucker Carlson is trying to blame the whole thing on Mossad. No, seriously. I guess he couldn’t think of a way to blame it on Mexicans, and he’d have to first take Putin’s dick out of his mouth to blame the Russians, so who’s left? Yay for Jews, always available as scapegoats.
For close to a decade these MAGA zombies have been slandering every Democrat they could name – including Oprah FFS – as pedophiles. I assumed they knew it was bullshit. I assumed they did it with a wink. Nope. I guess people who can believe Donald Trump cares about them are capable of essentially limitless gullibility.
Remember that gross video of 45 building a resort in the devastated Gaza strip. Someone should do a mock up of that with “Trump Kerr County.”
The worst part about having pets is that you’re very likely to outlive them all.
@Scott:
Cloud seeding is a real thing, at least.
It’s been tried for decades, with a variety of seeding agents, under all sorts of conditions. To this day, there’s much controversy about its effectiveness. Long running scientific arguments where there’s a lot of experimentation, or which concern a regular practice, that won’t yield clear, unambiguous results, pretty much mean any effect is marginal at best.
So, you may have some light rain or snow rather than nothing, or moderate rain rather than light rain, but that’s about it. At best.
@Scott: An entire plot line centered around guy who owned his own airplane. Man, things were simpler then. We were so easily entertained. Sky King, Ripcord, Sea Hunt.
Now there has to be 3 drug cartels vying for the same territory, while the son of one drug boss is sleeping with the US President’s wife, who is secretly funneling government secrets to her Middle Eastern terrorist illegitimate half brother, all the while a nerdy cousin stumbles across a nuclear hackers plot to end America. During the course of one episode at least 20 people are violently murdered, and undulating naked bodies grace the screen as counterpoint every 10 minutes.
Sigh. Sky King had only to deliver a pack of antibiotics to a remote location to save the day, and hold our interest. The downfall, the soft underbelly of our human species may be our ever increasing desensitization and need for greater jolts of stimulation. A.I. will fill that bill nicely.
@Michael Reynolds: Yeah, and the weird thing is that the line from Mossad to Epstein would be far more circuitous than the short straight line from Trump to Epstein.
The programming has been successful — MAGA hates libs/Dems despite the overwhelmingly loathsome, despicable, and truly damaging behavior by MAGA Repubs. All sense and sensibility is on override. We’re in for a hella downward trajectory.
@Rob1: I’ve been struck by that. We used to watch Sgt. Friday solve a burglary. Now every plot has to involve an existential* threat to Western Civilization.
Trivia – in all the years of Dragnet, Friday only fired his weapon once, and that was off camera prior to an episode about an Internal Affairs investigation. And, incredibly by modern standards, the IA investigator was a stand-up guy not out to cover up anything or get anybody. I realize the show was a bit of a whitewash of the LAPD, but in terms of role models, it beat hell out of Dirty Harry.
* I regard the mis- and overuse of “existential” as an existential threat to the language.
@Rob1: I’d add Daktari to the list of TV shows about people in remote places (in this case, Africa) doing good things. I loved that show when I was a kid.
One of my early TV memories is Howdy Doody and the Peanut Gallery. I watched it all the time. One day when I was 7 years old the big kid down the block told me about a new TV show. The Mickey Mouse Club. He might have been a year older than me. He said I should watch it and that Howdy Doody was old stuff. It was on at the same time as Howdy on the other channel. Since he was the kid that had told me that there was no Santa Claus (that my parents later confirmed) I guess I trusted his judgement. But I was conflicted as I had been loyal to Howdy and Buffalo Bob and Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring for my entire TV life. How could I abandon them? Despite my guilt one day I changed the channel. I was instantly hooked! There was no going back! All those cute girls and their mouse ears had me. From that day on Howdy was just a block of wood.
@Kathy: That’s why I only keep giant tortoises and Greenland sharks
@Scott:
The effectiveness of cloud seeding may be exaggerated in the episode of Sky King, but other aspects of the weather were discussed fairly intelligently on this TV episode in the mid-1950’s:
Uncle Sky: [Looking at weather map on wall of meteorologist’s office] “Well it looks to me like there ought to be a stray storm around here someplace.”
Meteorologist: “Oh there are. For instance, here’s a real whopper over here to the west. And when that hits, somebody’s really going to get wet.”
Uncle Sky: “How wet?”
Meteorologist: “Oh it might be eight, ten inches, maybe more. But it’ll miss the mountains here by a couple hundred miles.”
Teenage niece: “That’s too bad.”
Meteorologist: “Oh no, it’s a good thing. You see, if all that rain hit here after the dry spell, we’d be sure to have floods. It’d do a lot of damage.”
What have we learned in 70 years? According to some… no one could have predicted this, no one could have been ready for this, no one’s ever seen anything like this.
@Franklin: Which would bring up the coin flip question: who cares for them when you die, unless I realized you’re being facetious. Custodial ownership of lives/living creatures is problematical.
@Eusebio: Those who do not learn from the past are fated to repeat it. And few bother to learn from the past. As a social studies student once asked me, “why do we have to study all this shit?”
Timeline cleanser On Lake Lucerne by Alma Deutscher.
@Scott:
Just for humor…
That show was before my time, but certainly it inspired a lot of kids to become pilots. But when I hear “Sky King” I think of Kris Kristopherson’s back-handed tribute to his Army helicopter instructor. It’s still being played at flight schools every now and again.
@just nutha: Good point, I should add guardians for Otto and Augusta to my last will and testament
@Franklin: Birds can also live a really long time. One of our neighbors has two, and he didn’t get them until one of his daughters committed to caring for them if they end up outliving him.
@gVOR10:
My father was a big city police officer for about 30 years – through the 50’s, 60s, and 70’s – of which about 20 was on a number of district beats, and 10 in supervising parking enforcment. My father was an expert marksman, and he had to go out to the range annually to certify his competence in using a firearm. He told me that although he had to draw his weapon three times, he never fired his weapon while in service on the force.
Today it seems that the default is to use force. I understand that it’s a different time to be sure, but the mid 60s and early 70s were a rough time too.
@Bill Jempty: Sorry to hear the bad news about your cat.
““HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been spotted leaving a Washington, D.C., tanning salon in recent weeks, drawing scrutiny for participating in an activity with well-known health risks, including skin cancer.
“In fact, the National Toxicology Program, which falls under Kennedy’s purview at HHS, has determined that UV radiation, from the sun or artificial devices like sunbeds and sunlamps, is a known carcinogen. Many states have passed laws prohibiting minors from indoor tanning; and professional groups including the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) support bans on the production and sale of tanning equipment for nonmedical uses.
“Still, Kennedy may be among the approximately 7.8 million adults in the U.S. to engage in indoor tanning, according to the AAD.”
Why doesnt he just wear what Trump wears and turn orange?
https://angrybearblog.com/2025/07/americas-health-hypocrite
Steve
@steve222:
Darkening one’s skin to resemble an Oompa Loompa is not technically Blackface, but it is uncomfortably close. I can see why he would be hesitant.
Totally normal. This is exactly what a US president should be focused on, right?
https://bsky.app/profile/joshgerstein.bsky.social/post/3ltse4nz4522z
Sod politics.
It looks like object 3I/Atlas may be an extra-solar body billions of years older than the Solar System.
(Bets on it not commencing decceleration maneuvers? LOL)
Also, analysis of some fossils is now enabling protein identification for mammalian and avian lineages for tens of millions of years backtime.
This can have massive implications in contructing post K/T evolutionary history.
Just came back from watching the latest Superman movie. No spoilers.
It was pretty ok, as a popcorn summer film. No boring moments, no drawn out sequences, competent enough acting, effects, cinematography, etc.
But I can see why the bigots hate it. the heroes are an illegal alien, DEI hires, women, two token white males, and a dog. While the villain is a white male.
@Kathy:
TBF, almost all the Superman villains have been white males.
Vote Zod.
You know it makes sense. 😉
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