Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, April 12, 2025
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72 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor 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.
Here is a great piece on Preznit SFB at Defector. Linky:
“GiftLink“
watch from around 8:00 minutes for crazy Xtianist lunacy:
“YouTube”
These people are at the epicenter of Trump’s base, their influence is tremendous.
I think we already know this but…
The Trump administration’s conflicting messages to the public and the courts
A fun little interactive.
NOAA Scientists Are Cleaning Bathrooms and Reconsidering Lab Experiments After Contracts for Basic Services Expire
@Scott:
Link does not work.
@charontwo:
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a president, or any other world leader, use the phrase “kissing my ass” in a public speech before this.
@charontwo:
I believe this is the intended link:
The Trump administration’s conflicting messages to the public and the courts
@charontwo: Pretty funny when the one said even 5-year-olds have to say “good game” and admit they lost, then she says that Trump needed Musk to “rig the algorithm ’cause they can’t win on their own merit”. I also liked “Democrats usually balance the budget and end with a surplus”.
It was remarkable when the other one almost dropped her guard, saying “this person should be take…I mean, these people are too stupid to live”.
@Scott:
Per what [REDACTED] taught us in yesterday’s open thread, this will increase efficiency.
Trump administration now unaliving people Stalin style:
Trump administration lists thousands of living immigrants as dead to prompt them to leave
@Fortune:
Uh, didn’t see your “quotes” anywhere in the linked article that I read (2x) after your snark.
Remember, class, cite your sources, and show your fracking work!
I mean, c’mon, you claim to be the smartest person in this room. Don’t be lazy.
ETA apologies to all for stick-poking at 0650 PDT. I’m going back to caffeinated brew now.
@CSK:
With reference to the two Trump quotes in my Defector link upthread, I have some thoughts about Trump administration negotiations with other nations, especially China in the tariffs context. I plan to post when I get back, going for a morning walk now.
@Fortune:
It isn’t apparent to me what inferences you are drawing or what your interpretation of those remarks is.
I have a take of my own which is that the Christian extreme right has really perfected the art of getting its way through being adamant about non-negotiable positions.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I think the reply was to the post with the video.
I cannot claim to have read every comment, but I’ve never seen Fortune claim to be the smartest person here. Actually, does not seem like a claim they would make, but I could be wrong.
I bristled at the “basic reason skills” comment from yesterday. But I get why Fortune would feel comfortable saying that, given some of the comments they have had to endure. At the same time, it was a weird thing to say in the context of that conversation, because the quotes cited were not at all supportive of the claims made.
But, still.
@Scott:..Trash is piling up…
Trash has been piling up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC since January 20, 2025. Apparently in lieu of hauling it away the current occupants would rather wallow in it.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
@Kurtz:
@Fortune:
Apologies to all, apparently @Fortune was referring to @charontwo’s first post, not the second one he tagged. Caffeine starting to kick in. Prepare for Ludicrous Drive!
@Kurtz:
Fair comment, fairly noted. It’s just their tone sometimes strikes me as smug and self-centered, which I equate with SPITR syndrome from my career herding attorneys.
@Flat Earth Luddite: I think they are commenting on a video that was linked, not the article.
@Steven L. Taylor:
It took a while (mmm, coffee), but eventually I fingered that out. I usually avoid the ‘tube links (unless they involve cats or bands!). The rest seem to raise Luddite’s blood pressure.
Again, apologies for my earlier rant. To quote Emily Latella, “Nevermind”
Very nice piece today on the changes in bond yields and the value of the dollar, which are going in opposite directions. People are dumping our treasuries and that money is not staying in the US. There are a number of reasons why the US is the wealthiest large country in the world. One of those is because we have been viewed as a safe place to put money and that our fiscal management has been good/responsible, or at least better than anyone else. Trump is exploding this. If that trust goes away, and the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency we lose a major advantage and are much poorer in the long run.
Of note, this might actually eliminate the trade deficit, but it would be because we are too poor to buy imports.
Steve
Strangest thing that I saw yesterday: Purple does not actually exist.
Purple exists only in our brains
@Flat Earth Luddite: I just shake my head. Sometimes, I chuckle, laugh out loud, etc. Then again, I grew up in that millieu. You were associated with a congregation that left the LCMS as I recall. Different worlds.
The Defector link upthread contained three Trump quotes about tariffs/foreign trade:
These being examples of Trump’s increasing shortage of tact, discretion and inhibition. And, also, of Trump’s very delusional crackpot beliefs about foreign trade and economics.
America’s economic, military, and soft power accustom the U.S. to getting its way, mostly. Thus, Trump takes it for granted he gets his way dealing with other nations. (“L’etat c’est moi” or the royal “we”).
So, China.
Trump, most Americans, a lot of Very Smart People on Wall Street, in government etc.believe that, as the U.S. imports so much from China, that the U.S. has the upper hand in any negotiation or confrontation with China over trade. Some of the newsletters I subscribe to say that no, it’s China with the upper hand.
China has, for years, been growing its own domestic economy so that it is much less reliant on exports. And, it has been diversifying who it exports to. Too, China is a source for some minerals and products not produced in the U.S.
I believe tariff behavior towards China is partially about dominance – he wants to make Xi grovel, confident he has the upper hand (see the Trump quotes upthread). The culture in far Eastern cultures like Japan and China is very much about preserving face, not losing face. So Xi will be powerfully motivated to avoid being humiliated.
I leave it to you all to work out the implications. FAFO and the U.S. has surely been FA.
@steve:
The less confidence there is in the dollar, the higher the interest rate needed for the U.S. Treasury to sell its longer term notes and bonds. The GOP budget with its $5T deficit may not be very viable, or it might have pretty bad consequences.
Countries that do not issue the world’s default reserve currency have problems running persistent budget deficits.
Trump just caved on iPhones. Check Trump’s bank balance.
@Michael Reynolds:
Apple just airlifted 600 tons of iPhones from India to avoid Trump’s tariffs.
@Liberal Capitalist:
I read that, too. Same goes for magenta.
I’ve only read the media reports. I have not spent time thinking about it, either. So, I’m agnostic on this.
From a purely physical perspective, there is no wavelength associated with purple.
Purple results from the brain resolving the large interval in wavelength between red and blue. Fair enough. But I saw some explanations that argued that extremely large intervals in wavelength are not “supposed to happen.” I’m not exactly sure what that is supposed to mean. Again, I have not looked at how scientists would explain it formally.
To declare purple does not exist, or as some headlines put it, our brains “make it up”, strikes me as interpretive. What I mean is that form of the statement carries a lot of philosophical baggage.
For one thing, our brains fill in gaps in signal constantly.
Additionally, individuals do not perceive (experience) each color—specific wavelength or not—the same way. I read years back that some individuals have a wider variety of cone cells than average, so they can perceive more granular differences between colors than most.
Here is the rub, science media is difficult. Communicating science to lay people – a form of abstraction – is difficult. The more information lost in abstraction, the easier it is to communicate the wrong idea. Moreover, scientists who have strong philosophical views, e.g. idealism, realism, often pretend their position must be correct and that can color (ugh) their conclusion.
@charontwo: My interpretation is those two ladies are lunatics, as are the two ladies in the clip they showed.
@Liberal Capitalist:..@Kurtz:..
Purple exists only in our brains
And country music…Dang Me
Here is a breakdown, with charts and bar graphs, of what gets tariffed, from where, at what rate:
“Link“
@Liberal Capitalist: That’s a pretty good, succinct piece on color and perception of color. It also reminds me of a crack I saw years ago on empiricism and experimentation – all the theorizing, philosophizing, and meditating in the world would not have discovered the existence of ultraviolet.
@Liberal Capitalist:
IIRC, in the science and philosophy classes I took (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth), all colors are actually mearly perceptions of our conscious minds. Colors do not actually exist, they are only concepts and interpretations which we struggle to wrap our heads around.
Then we get into color photography, and Luddite’s brain siezes up and implodes.
ETA, the same thing happens to Luddite when theology, philosophy, or poetry are discussed.
More discussion, some of it a bit technical, of the market gyrations last week, also some speculation of what might possibly happen next, various contingencies.
“Adam Tooze“
@gVOR10: On the other side, philosophy, theory (as a concept), and meditation have no need of ultraviolet. And, correspondingly, ultraviolet has no need of philosophy, theory, and meditation. Everything in its season and to its own purpose.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Oh come on now, you grok theology, philosophy, and poetry just fine. You just don’t use them to explain biochemistry and global warming. And vice versa.
@Kurtz:
That’s interesting. I’ve noticed that the older I get the harder it is to see something being presented in blue light. It’s gotten to the point where I simply can’t see it.
It’s like it’s completely drowned out. In some blue lights I’m practically blinded.
Blue birds aren’t really blue. We have lots of them up here, and it always amazes me that our minds can play this trick on us. Because they appear not just blue, but vivid blue. I came upon a small flock recently where two birds were going at each other, a mating disagreement probably. They had attracted an audience fluttering around them. It was a cloud of blue bickering birds. One finally hit the dirt just as Sadie and I got really close, but recovered quickly, thankfully, and they all flew away. The end.
Here is a thread about hedge funds and bonds:
https://x.com/allie_canal/status/1910701382631371191
“Link”
“Link“
@Scott: That piece on conflicting messages was the first place I’ve ever seen the claims about Mahmoud Khalil having undisclosed ties to foreign organizations and powers.
I don’t mean to address the validity or impact of these claims so much as I want to express my distress that my information stream never revealed this to me. One would think that the government would have been shouting that to the rafters, but no.
@Beth:
Do you maybe have cataracts?
Cataracts block blue light, but that seems pretty severe for just cataracts. (I did notice post the first eye cataract surgery that the two eyes saw colors differently, like the difference between “daylight” fluorescents and “warm white” fluorescents).
@becca:
There is no blue pigment causing the color, the feathers physically selectively pass blue wavelengths because of the physical thickness of the reflective layer.
@Liberal Capitalist:
Was the reported information reality or merely a feverish opioid dream? No way to know, but IMO they’re frantically trying to find some shirt to stick to the wall. YMMV
@Beth:
Just as an aside, one way to see the world as those with the red-green variety of color blindness do is to view the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou”, it seems the sienna filter that film was shot through made us all view it as if we were all red-green “blind”. I have a friend who has that condition, and when I asked if he noticed the effect he said that to him it was a film just like any other, except for there being no true whites. That the grass had been all turned to brown? He had no idea what I was talking about. “Looked like normal grass to me.”
A site that attempts the same thing: https://enchroma.com/blogs/beyond-color/how-color-blind-see
There are several different types of color blindness, but by far this is the most common.
@charontwo:
Actually, I think I remembered wrong, the actual effect comes from ridges on the surface that are spaced such that the only wavelengths that reflect back are the blue, the other wavelengths cancel out.
JFC. We need far, far more resources to go into police deescalation training.
This poor family.
Intellectually disabled teen shot by Idaho police dies after being removed from life support
I am gonna need Drew/Fester/Guarneri/Mojito/Connor, the World’s Greatest Businessman, to ‘splain to me how Trump’s sudden fainting spell on China tariffs is a brilliant ploy, and totally not the opposite of what he thought was brilliant yesterday.
Now, I am no economist, I’m not even a real estate developer, or a game show host, or a rapist, but it seems to me that Trump’s brilliant negotiating tactics means backing down preemptively on tariffing all the things we actually buy from China (phones, chips, TVs) while keeping tariffs on the crap we don’t need (seriously, lumber?). Do I have that right? Did the Great Negotiator just surrender on everything that matters in US-China trade in exchange for what? What did our stable genius get in exchange for his surrender?
Unless of course he and his buddies bought Apple stock based on insider information and market manipulation?
Is Trump a) an idiot, b) a crook or c) both?
@Beth:
Don’t tell that to the dogmatic scientists nor the journalists who quote them.
I gotta be honest, maybe I’m wrong, but all those articles smell like trash. It seems far more complicated than that. And I also wonder if the scientists who claim physics is the only true science.
Come to think of it, where the hell is Mimai to give us some sort of explanation from the psychometric side?
@Michael Reynolds:
Sudden panic about the inflation impact, and the realisation that some electronic components can only be sourced at scale from China.
The thing about economic warfare, as with actual war, is that if you are serious about it, you “staff it out” before going active, if you possibly can.
Of course, if you are an administration made up of fools, sycophants and ideologues, presided over by a short-tempered narcissistic know-nothing, you aren’t going to do that.
And then get all upset when reality applies a knee to the ‘nads.
@becca:
They’re just mildly melancholic. 🙂
@JohnSF:
Can you imagine the sneering contempt in Beijing? Moscow? UK, France, Germany, the whole fucking world?
We could literally have elected a baboon, and he’d have done less damage. Trump is the laughingstock of the entire planet.
@CSK:
Ah, but we only get the sanitized version of the real history.
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! And kiss my ass.”
“Ich bin ein asskissed!”
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, And people not kissing my ass.”
And from the UK:
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. And the opportunity to kiss my ass.”
(lol, in private Churchill might actually have said that, being a Brit.)
@Michael Reynolds:
“These are not serious people” is a phrase currently getting used quite a lot, I suspect.
Certainly by me, at any rate.
Here’s an explanation of how the rapist got his tariffs slapped down.
TL;DR: Canada, the EU, and Japan got together and began unloading their US Treasury bond holdings, which are around $2.8 trillion, or just under 1/4 of all the US debt held by foreign governments. This caused prices to go down and yields to go up.
@charontwo:
Thanks for that link.
I really needed the chuckle.
A major benefit of frequenting OTB, Twitter, and BlueSky, is to be reminded that a majority of Americans are not MAGA.
If you just relied on the more traditional media, it might be easy to lose sight of that reality.
@Kathy:
That is very interesting. A Canada, EU, Japan bond sell-off? That bought the pause. Did China’s threat to dump 760 billion in US debt buy today’s digital carve-out?
Whatever Elon thinks he saved is small potatoes next to higher borrowing costs.
@Kathy:
My read on the data is that US hedgies began selling bonds at scale to meet margin calls on cratering stocks.
Then the internationals simply stopped buying, or sold in fairly small scale, so the hedge selling escalated.
And the message to the US was pretty clear: “If you expect us to help stabilise US bonds, think again, schmuck.”
There is an old British saying that applies: “Don’t piss on my leg and then say that it’s raining.”
Still less ask to borrow an umbrella.
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s not funny, the bond market action is showing a lot of fear.
It isn’t just Trump, there are people around Trump egging him on with this tariff crap:
Polling shows the public predominately hates the tariffs, but his people are cherry picking polls of just his supporters to tell him the public likes the tariffs.
“TNR”
@JohnSF:
You’re hearing opinions you want to hear. That doesn’t mean a majority of people agree with them. Look what happened last November and other than me and MR, I don’t remember anyone else around here thinking Trump would win.
Your being closer to reality is in question. See above.
@dazedandconfused: Carnivores like dogs and cats have only blue and green sensors, not blue, green and red – so they are all red-green colorblind – the same for ungulates like deer.
So, for them, orange looks the same as green, and a tiger’s coloring is nice camouflage.
@Bill Jempty:
Perhaps.
But the actual election results and polling data seem to indicate that MAGA “true believers” are a minority. The primary drivers of voting seems to have been various discontents, not ideology.
I was inclined to think the last US election would be a squeaker.
Though I grant, I did not expect the Republicans to take the House and Senate as well.
I still hope that the US can revert to rational governance in the not-to-distant future.
The main question for us forriners is: will the Republicans sober up?
Because otherwise, as Benjamin Haddad (French Minister for European Affairs) said
I really dislike the implications of a US is that is MAGA-fied; therefore, perhaps, I’m inclined to try to see a potential good outcome.
But I’m also really bothering my MP about planning for the less good.
I suspect his personal office is really getting fed up with me, lol.
But at least I’ve not been told to sod off, yet.
@charontwo: Night vision factors into that too. More rods and fewer cones allows for better night vision. I’ve seen somewhere that all nearly all the critters with good night vision have much less color vision than we do.
@charontwo:
Which raises the question: would there not be a large evolutionary driver for full colour vision?
Was that simply ruled out by the nature of the eyes and optic neurology?
Any evolutionary biologists in the house?
@dazedandconfused:
Aha!
Of course.
Optimise for low-light vision, likely trade-off re colour vision.
iirc, the ape-line primate colour vision is considered likely to be driven by the need for identifying both edible fruit and predators in daytime.
@JohnSF:
It’s more sensible to assume a variety of factors contributing directly and indirectly to massive changes in a complex system, rather than just one.
@Liberal Capitalist:
That’s the key: vision is nothing at all like “experiencing the wavelengths of light that are entering our eyes”. Even more than for audio or taste or smell, vision is a completely constructed interface to the physical world. It happens subconsciously in the back of your head.
Ironically, AI researchers picked visual image interpretation (“computer vision”) as one of the first areas of AI to work on, because it seemed so easy and natural. Joke’s on them — it seems easy and natural to us because it’s entirely subconscious and we’ve evolved to be outstanding at it. 70 years later, we’re just starting to figure out how to make computers good at it…
The bond markets are not noted for their sense of humour.
Closing rate US Treasuries 4.88%
Monday will be interesting.
For arbitrary values of “interesting”.
@Kathy:
Indeed; once you are a long way down one evolutionary contingency tree, it’s rather difficult to reverse course.
But I do wonder: are there any ungulates that have recovered colour vision?
Or is it not a key driver vs those for scent and hearing?
@DrDaveT:
@Liberal Capitalist:
Old problem.
All sensations are arguably the product of arbitrary mental response to external stimuli.
The important lesson of modern science is that philosophical categorisation is less significant than what actually happens regarding organisms, or atoms, or whatever else.
Reality and perception are distinct, but connected, because a organism must be able to perceive external reality accurately enough to survive.
Nothing else matters very much.
@Bill Jempty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqdBIY4ZvCA
@Bill Jempty: Well, I recall my position as being that the Democrats could win, but the win would depend on Democrats convincing all of there constituencies showing up to vote for Harris.
But you can count me as a “Trump can’t win” if you need to. I understand how threatened you and MR both feel about other people knowing stuff.
@Bill Jempty: People do gravitate toward reading or hearing stuff that makes them feel good, away from stuff that upsets them.
The people around “strong men” style leaders like Putin and Trump act on knowing this, which explains the New Republic piece I recently quoted. The people around Trump want to preserve their access, so they tell him stuff that makes him feel good. For example, tell him the voters like his tariffs (based on polling his core supporters), avoid the bad news so many voters are pissed off and/or frightened by them.
@Michael Reynolds:
But that is the point, isn’t it? Based on the propaganda-for-profit from hate TV and radio, those that elected him not only expected but demand that he destroy government.
What need does a survivalist christian “nationalist” need of global trade? There will be plenty for the strongman with guns to take from the weak after the collapse.
Their fever dreams have told them that they will be the new power in the american wilderness.
@Bill Jempty:
I was quite vocal about this country not being ready to elect a woman let alone a black woman from day one. Even though Obama sounded white enough I don’t think he would of been able to win after Biden’s term as his first run for the office. Obama had the advantage of rolling in as the economy cratered due to an unpopular republican president.
The media did an excellent job of carrying water for Trump.