Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, March 9, 2025
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28 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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BlueSky.
A fun little ditty for your Sunday morning:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGlxQXTzluC/?igsh=MTFiNWZ6NGgzeHJ4cg==
When a trans activist is the rational Democrat voice
Here is a long piece that I feel is well worth a read, stuff I never knew about Admiral Stockdale.
Famously mocked by our wonderful media for “Who am I? Why am I here?”
This is a Medal of Honor winner (naval aviator) who spent 7 years as POW in North Vietnam, most of them being tortured relentlessly.
The point of the piece being our present situation with traitors controlling the Trump administration.
“Steve Schmidt“
@JKB:
Jewish students are a very high proportion of the Columbia student body, these are people your MAGA cuts are hurting.
Clue phone message: Pro Israel MAGA’s are a bunch of antisemites, even if they think Netanyahu is one of the “good ones.”
So I think in the spirit of DOGE they should save money by putting the maintenance of Air Force One in the hands of Space X. Musk has been doing such a good job and all.
A question, what’s Trump’s end game for tariffs? The legitimate use of tariffs, as per Hamilton’s scheme, is to protect emerging industries until they can compete. Infant industries aren’t why we have a trade deficit, it’s because labor costs are lower overseas, and in Mexico and to some extent Canada. Also too, capital inflow.
I used to “joke” that Reagan’s plan to bring back jobs from third world countries was to turn us into a third world country and catch the jobs coming around the backside. Is that Trump’s plan? To drive wages low enough we can compete with Cambodia?
@gVOR10: From what I can see, Trump’s end game with tariffs is to create a situation whereby he can sell indulgences and collect bribes from various factions – foreign and domestic.
The entire administration seems to be hell-bent on setting new records for corruption.
The Teapot Dome seems quaint.
When a MAGA bro is the rational Republican voice
Dave Portnoy takes another shot at ‘Co-President’ Elon Musk during Donald Trump speech
Kristi Noem to Margaret Brennan on CBS: “This is President Donald Trump’s country, where we have a border, where we have laws, and it applies equally to everybody.”
Trumperica? The United States of Trump?
@JKB: Can someone translate this for me?
All I see is a Wu person trying to claim a press release says the opposite of what it says. None of this makes any bloody sense to me.
@JKB: So you’re opposed to free speech. Got it.
Sadly our hosts are more committed to it than you are.
And, once again for those in the back, protesting Israel is not antisemitism. Many of the people protesting at Columbia were Jews themselves.
Trump told Maria Bartiromo this morning that he doesn’t rule out a recession in 2025, because “we’re bringing wealth cake to America. That’s a big thing.”
A recession would be “a period of transition.”
There’s a pattern I’ve observed a lot over the years. It’s the broad brush pattern. People make very broad accusation of “boomers are selfish” or “gun owners are murderers” or “liberals are fools” or “conservatives are rapists” and stuff like that.
This is very much a BSDI thing. I generally don’t bother to object to it in most forms, as I dislike tilting at windmills. It seems people love saying things in this way.
As regards Hamas and Columbia, I can easily reckon, and have seen some evidence to support it, that some people at Columbia indulged in this with regard to Jewish people, and some took it beyond making statements on blogs or social media. I think this is a problem – one of many problems, to be sure – but still a problem.
I don’t want to be distracted into some intramural squabble though. We all agree that we don’t like what Trump is doing.
AND, I don’t find it the least bit remarkable that a trans person might be a spokesperson. Every person who has transitioned has done something that is amazing and difficult – something that requires a very high level of courage and determination. That such person might be a spokesperson on other issues does not surprise me in the least.
They are a blessing to us. Not a plague to be eradicated. A blessing.
@CSK:
No. Dumbfuckistan.
@CSK:
One nation, under Donald, indivisible…
@gVOR10: Trump’s “end game”? Do I have to post the Mulaney clip again?
@Fortune: “Trump’s “end game”? Do I have to post the Mulaney clip again?”
Yes, because there is simply no way to make an argument more persuasively than continuing to post a clip of a comedian that has not convinced anyone the last three times you posted it.
Geeze, I realize that actually figuring out what you want to say and then saying it is hard, but why don’t you give it a go for once?
@CSK:
How the hell did “back” become “cake”?
@wr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhkZMxgPxXU
@CSK:
Pretty sure that they want this ‘period of transition’ – ‘recession’ – to be over with before the 2026 election festivities are fully underway.
@CSK:
…except of course, not to Trump. Or to the criminals he pardons.
It really is impossible to parody these people.
@Fortune: I don’t get your point. (And when does the guy who tells jokes get to go on stage?)
@gVOR10:
Why the whole country? We could make some of those middle states a Free Enterprise Zone, products could be designed along the coasts (even Right Wing money is along a coast these days, just near the Gulf of The Americas), and get produced in the Free Enterprise Zone.
The FEZ could be freed from burdensome government regulations, like minimum wage, union protections, overtime laws, child labor laws, federally subsidized flood insurance, etc. The citizens can be made Super Citizens with lower marginal tax rates, provided they stay in The Zone, and a constitutionally protected right to say the n-word with a hard-r. Their own dollar, pegged at $0.01 USD, so nearly everyone is a millionaire.
We can give them their own President. Overlapping with the US President, perhaps. Donald J. Trump presidential of the United States AND Middle America. (Middle ‘Merica?)
We don’t need Cambodia, we can have Cambodia at home (except without the socialized healthcare Cambodia has). Maybe skip the Killing Fields.
Has any country colonized themselves? I think we might be pioneering new forms of American Exceptionalism.
@CSK:
Like the 1930’s were really just an adjustment to a financial and commercial system centred on the US domestic economy.
With just a few incidental difficulties.
I think we need a new government program to get sad baristas to weep into reservoirs and onto glaciers, so everyone can drink liberal tears.
I got lots of good ideas today.
@Gustopher:
Oh shit! Holy fuck! Hahahahbahabajanjaah fuck. I should have thought about that. If they kill FEMA, they are going to idiotically kill flood insurance. That will make millions of homes completely unsellable. Not just in the stupid places like FL or LA.
So, IL is an attorney state for residential real estate transactions. Maybe not so much downstate, but certainly in Cook and the Collar counties. And that’s where most of the people in the state live. It is standard practice in our attorney approval letters to make the transaction contingent on not having to get flood insurance. It’s partly an ass covering move, but also, your client will want an out if the seller doesn’t disclose the flood plain and the lender says you need it. If the subsidy goes away, people won’t be able to get affordable loans and the value of those houses will be destroyed. So many properties are in weird little flood plains.
Now, many of those houses shouldn’t have been built anyway and most of those ex-urbs should exist and they are likely to die horrible deaths without flood insurance. OMG I love it.
The house I grew up in is in a weird flood plain. It’s basically in a weird little topographical dip next a creek that routinely floods. They constructed a couple of berms when I was a kid but it still flooded at least 3 times. The best was when my idiot dad’s boat sank in our semi-legal driveway. They eventually got it connected to the Deep Tunnel Project and later set up a pumping station (they had to eminent domain a neighbor’s house to do it. But I’m sure it’s still on a flood plain. Hmm, hey Zillow, how much for my nightmare home:$434,000. Having gained roughly $200,000 in value since 2015. I suspect that number isn’t quite accurate. But 2 things jump out, it should be worth a lot more, and it could be worth a lot less.
Kinda shocked that it only sold for $255k after the foreclosure. But it could be worthless.
Next great idea: increase art funding, particularly art schools.
Look, how many lives would have been saved if Hitler went to art school? Imagine what would have happened if the founders of the Bauhaus movement not gotten architecture and art degrees!
Opposing funding for the arts is antisemitic.
(Do I know Gropius was antisemitic? No. Do I know that his second choice career would have been genocidal politics? Also no. In fact, I had to quickly check Wikipedia to make sure he was not actually Jewish. He did flee Germany because of the Nazis and his association with “degenerate” (aka Jewish) modern art… but I’m sure that’s because Hitler was jealous of his artistic success)
@Gustopher:
I’m reminded of this scene in Babylon 5, in the ep Acts of Sacrifice. Choice quote: “you create a work force without a power base to challenge you.”