Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, May 30, 2026
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29 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.
Well, loading day is here. If it don’t fit on the truck, it ain’t going.
Wish me luck!
@Jax: Good luck, Jax. Soo much luck.
@Jax:
All the very best to you!
@Jax:
Best fortune to you, Jax.
@Jax:
Do well.
For a fat guy who lives on junk food, (or for anybody), these are incredibly good numbers. Are they true?
BP: 105/71
Cholesterol:
Total: 143
Triglycerides: 104
HDL: 70
LDL: 53
=========
Fasting glucose: 83
A1c: 5.3
These are fantastically great numbers, which makes me wonder why he would take the following meds, seems inconsistant:
Rosuvastatin
Ezetmibe
Aspirin
Two cholesterol control meds seems unwarranted with those great lipid panel numbers, just saying.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/92d39277-a383-42cc-86f7-5ff70b677778.pdf
@charontwo:
Anything coming out of this WH needs to be taken with a grain of salt. To lie is the default proposition.
@Sleeping Dog:
A physician has his name on this. Is it ethical for him to lie?
@charontwo: Not that I believe the report, but I got put on Rosuvastatin after my most recent physical because my HDL levels were a bit high; everything else was just fine. Presumably, someone on the medication would register with normal cholesterol levels.
@charontwo:
Didn’t Trump’s New York doctor Harold Bornstein claim that the glowing report he wrote about Trump’s health in 2015 was dictated to him by Trump?
@charontwo:
@James Joyner:
To second @james, the statins will reduce the cholesterol level.
Regarding the statement being signed by a physician, when has ethics gotten in the way of anything out of this WH? Attorney’s take ethical oaths as well and arguably somewhere between dozens and hundreds have behaved in manners of that violate the oath.
Ethics are but a guard rail and are effective only when individuals make a good faith effort to act within the boundaries.
I think the commentariat here and the headliners are missing a revolution that’s brewing. The anti-AI, anti data center backlash is going to be the biggest issue in the 2028 election. Not war, not inflation, not social justice: AI. The winning candidate will be the person prepared to lead the revolution.
@charontwo:
No. What’s your point?
@charontwo:
Okay, let’s take the vitals and lab results one at a time: Age is true, height is… an obvious lie. I’m done.
Those heart vitals and lipid panel numbers could be mine from my last doctor visit and labs, except that resting heart rate is much higher than mine. And IANAD, but we don’t know the cholesterol drug dosages, so those meds could comprise aggressive treatment. Just a typical dose of one such drug, in my experience, can result in a drastic reduction of total and LDL cholesterol (e.g., from kinda bad to very, very good).
@James Joyner:
I am not a doctor, but that seems strange. I like having high HDL levels, the higher the better, or so I have been told. Also, high HDL gets the ratio of Total/HDL lower which is a number that gets watched.
@James Joyner:
Once again, IANAD, but I think you meant your LDL levels were a bit high.
Edit: Per @charontwo:
@Eusebio:
Apparently being President gets you examined much more intensively than any normal shlub, but I still found it curious that they even did an echocardiogram to check ejection fraction.
@gVOR10:
My point is I find the whole thing odd, don’t understand.
@charontwo:
Those numbers? I don’t even believe he’s 6’3″ or 238 lb. Who am I gonna believe, his personal physician or all the photos of his platform heels, fat arse, and carefully tailored dark blue tents. Obese is defined as BMI >=30. The reported 6’3″ and 238 lb = 29.7 BMI. They took his height with his lifts and looked up his weight.
(I’ve mentioned my pet peeve with “intelligent” spell check. It takes a fat finger most readers would read over without noticing and turns it into gibberish. I just discovered it has a new annoying trick. I typed “238 lb =” and it helpfully added “107.955 kg”. Which, quoting Talleyrand, is worse than a crime, it’s a mistake. Not only did I not want a conversion, a conversion should carry the same precision as the original.)
@gVOR10:
This was a common problem in my college science and math classes, when calculators were first introduced. “But my calculator says 3.79555543333!”
Keep in mind if you assume everything coming out of the dictator’s palace is a lie, you’ll only be right 99% of the time.
Not that it’s a pressing issue, the LLM/AI industry is foisting new units of measure on the world.
For instance, they measure “compute” in watts, as in how much power a data center uses. The measure for AI utilization is tokens.
The latter can get confusing. You may hear some company uses up like $6 million worth of tokens per day. When you try to find out what a token is (outside of the common definition), what you’re most likely to run across first is something like “it’s four characters.”
You then need to make the leap that LLM/AI companies charge money per token used up ir processed, before nay of it makes sense.
This video has a succinct definition
BTW, I find this channel rather interesting. The host, who goes by El (go figure), is rather pro-AI but she thinks it’s not being used right. She may have a point.
In any case, when/if the bubble pops, data centers and LLMs will still be here. They won’t vanish any more than the world wide web did when that bubble popped. So, if there is some real use for this technology, we’d best figure out what it is and how best to use it.
@Jax:
Sending you all the good karma I’ve got left right now.
Peace and good health.
Check this out:
http://www.aliens.gov
Sweet Jesus.
Trump is planning to replace the musical acts who bailed on him with…himself.
@CSK:
He could do a rendition of Rob Dilan’s “Blowin’ up the World”:
How many boats must one man sink
Before he can get the peace prize?
Yes and how many wars must one man start
Before he can get the peace prize?
the answer, my friend
Is blowin’ up the world.
The answer is blowin’ up the world.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
My first college physics lab session was mostly the TA lecturing on the difference between accuracy, precision, and how to do error propagation calculations.
@Kathy:
Haven’t looked at it yet, but my own opinion is trained neural networks are a useful tool. So are regression, Markov processes, finite element analysis, and other sorts of applied math. I’m always skeptical about black-box models.
@charontwo: Well, I take some of that stuff, plus some other medications and my numbers are even better. But let’s be clear: My numbers are good because of the medication I take.
@Jay L. Gischer:
Same. I have the blood panels of a young athlete. Thank you Zocor. BP under control. Thank you Losartan. Don’t have to wake up to pee three times. Thank you Flomax. Haven’t killed anyone. Thank you Buproprion and Androgel. Not as fat as I used to be. Thank you Mounjaro. Haven’t killed myself. Thank you alcohol and weed.
Come to think of it, two mild cases of Covid, thanks to Moderna and Paxlovid. I should have bought pharma stocks.