Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, November 16, 2025
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25 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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The headline of the day- Man Who Stuffed Parakeets in His Pants Faces Smuggling Charge
The Florida headline of the day- Florida man arrested after 36-hour foot chase through swamp
What follows is a series of 1%er problems and should evoke very little, if any sympathy.
We are in the process of attempting to move ourselves and two dogs to Portugal. The last time we moved overseas, back in 2008, it was much easier. We relocated two young children, two dogs, one cat and a Toyota RAV 4 to Italy. The visa process was so quick that by the time we got home from the consulate visit in Philly, the FedEx was waiting for us in Chapel Hill.
At that time we had a Pug (they can’t fly in baggage because humans bred them into suffocating mutant monsters) and a 90 pound Labrador Retriever. This time it’s another Pug (because my wife will not learn the lesson) and a mid-sized spaniel-ish mutt. No kids, no cat, no car.
The bureaucrats and the airline execs have worked their magic and made the whole thing an impossible and shockingly expensive prospect. Three months in we still don’t have our long stay visas. And moving the dogs has become a bureaucratic and logistical nightmare. We had to fly JSX, which will carry dogs in cabin, from Vegas to SF. Then took Bark Air – a jet right out of Succession – to Teterboro to make the next connection a week later. So, we’ve been in a Greenwich CT hotel for 5 days, two more still to come.
During that time we’ve been sweating out the arrival of USDA franking of our vet’s seven page record of the dogs’ health. The paranoia about rabies is batshit. There were 36 cases of rabies in dogs in the last yearly data. 36*, from the dog population of ~80,000,000. For comparison there thought to be between 150 and 250 cases of leprosy in the US annually. Been worried much about leprosy lately? We are required to travel with our own chip scanners lest the airline’s readers don’t work.
The USDA doc finally came Friday – four days before an un-cancellable flight. So it looks like this is on.
I’m actually understating the hassle significantly, and the expense of it all is embarrassing. Moving us and two dogs has cost probably ten times what it cost for the whole children/dogs/cat/car armada of the earlier move. And TBH, neither of us is fond of bacalhau.
*Will likely rise thanks to RFK Jr. and his Dunning-Kruger medical morons on left and right.
@Michael Reynolds:…
Happy Trails!
Looking forward to your dispatches from Portugal.
Why I hate the NFL playing football games in Europe- There is no television broadcast of us for the game here in the West palm beach market.
I am enough streaming services as it is and I watch little NFL play except for the Dolphins and the post season. Even with Paramount, Hulu, ESPN+, and Prime there is nothing for me to watch…
I have never liked the NFL playing games in Europe. That dislike goes back to my blogging days or when Miami played the NY Giants in London in 2007.
There are 10 times more people in South Florida at least than there are in Madrid who give a hoot about NFL football. Just another dose of greed on display.
@Michael Reynolds: Yep. We briefly considered a relocation to Portugal, and ultimately decided against it because the process is so backed up. They made it really easy, but that’s led to a huge backup. We have friends who purchased property there a number of years ago and they said it took a really long time to get their visas–years.
We are still considering the UK, but not until the dog (age 15) crosses over the Rainbow Bridge (or, if we win the lottery), for many of the reasons you’ve detailed.
Perhaps these couples should just engage in abstinance until they are ready to conceive a child.
The MAHA-Fueled Rise of Natural Family Planning
…
BTW, no one word on the man’s responsibility in the act of conception. Sound familiar?
@Scott:
“Casey Means, Mr. Trump’s nominee for surgeon general and another major figure in the MAHA movement, has said that the widespread use of hormonal birth control signals a “disrespect of life.”
If maga ever attained self awareness they would robably burst into flames.
@Michael Reynolds: Good luck with the move.
The next time I move, I want it to be the cemetery.
The sports headline of the day- Stats system at Target Center crashes during Nuggets-Wolves
@Scott: So, back in the day we called that the “rhythm method”. There were lots of jokes about it. It doesn’t work.
No really. It. Does. Not. Work.
Gametes are ornery, persistent little things. They will find a way to defy the odds. I have personal experience with this.
Abstinence, total abstinence always works! I think these MAHA influencers should speak up boldly for not doing it. The women should wear a red sash around their waists to show support for this policy and the political goals of their party.
Self enrichment mode on over-drive. Scant guardrails. Corrupt DOJ leadership. Corrupt 2/3rds SCOTUS. Compromised media.
Trump Buys At Least $82 Million In Bonds Since Late August, Disclosures Show
@Scott:
@Jay L. Gischer:
Per the quoted part, it’s not a matter of intelligence. it’s a matter of cycles being erratic and hard to pin down exactly. Ask couple who try very hard to actually conceive.
I might have mentioned a few trillion times biology is messy.
regarding yesterday’s side discussion on whether it would be legal to have the Sacklers extrajudicially executed. As I’m against the death penalty, it would be wrong to execute them even with due legal process.
What I haven’t decided is whether letting them off the hook without any significant penalty or retribution for their actions is actually worse. The way things are now, they’re being let off the hook by merely paying blood money.
And it’s not just the Sacklers and opioids, but far too many other companies that get light legal treatment after egregious lapses. Like Boeing and the two MAX crashes. In particular the second. The “fix” Boeing revealed after the first crash did not work to avoid the second. that’s hundreds of people dead, and the executives who ultimately are responsible for the products suffered nothing but perhaps financial penalties they could well afford.
So, no the Sacklers should not be executed, with or without legal due process. They should be in prison.
@Scott:
It’s not very knowledgeable to be unaware that there is a wide variance in the experience of menstruation cycles among women so as to render charting unreliable.
Also, if many males have difficulty with the diligence of using condoms, what are the chances their impulses will be tamed by charting especially given the retrograde patriarchy of the MAGA death cult, a cult particularly characterized by “poor impulse control” across the scope of human behaviors.
The MAGA movement draws strong support from ultra orthodox, neanderthal Catholics now embedded everywhere in rightwing political and governmental presence all the way up to SCOTUS. The selection of Pope Leo must be driving them nuts especially since he set his sights on demoting Opus Dei and continually sermonizes on topics counter to MAGA bigotry. A schism might be in the offing, except for the tantalizing prospect of regaining the “most prestigious mitre” in all of Catholic-dom. They are drawn to shining absolute power like moths. The MAGA compulsion, at it core, is driven by a confluence of personality disorders. Fact.
@Kathy: Mitt Romney and Dread Justice Roberts tell me corporations are people and have rights. But have they ever jailed one?
@Jen:
Unless you have citizenship, I’d think extra hard about moving to the UK. LabToReform (all hard right) are trying to decide if immigrants should be shot on the street and visa holders expelled. I would not be surprised if Starmer decided to try and save his premiership by choking an immigrant on tv.
@Slugger: Same sex relations really cuts down on unplanned pregnancy for cisgender folks. It’s as effective as abstinence. I don’t know why this isn’t considered the most natural form of family planning.
It’s more complicated for transgender folks, but I have faith that most of them can do the math required to maintain that level of effectiveness.
@Beth: I think Jen is white, straight and cisgender, so she may be an acceptable immigrant.
(Apologies to Jen if I have misremembered something.)
Not sure why someone would relocate to a different country going through a flirtation with fascism when we have fascism at home, but maybe health insurance makes it worthwhile.
@Kathy:
Was there reason to believe that the “fix” would not actually fix anything?
There’s a world of difference between not foreseeing the unforseeable, negligence, criminal negligence and murder, and I really don’t know where the facts lay with Boeing.
And then you have things like self-driving cars which have the potential to be less deadly, but which even in the best case will mean who gets killed will change.
(I would like penalties to be strong enough that companies want a strong regulatory state that can provide legal immunity and/or cover when people inevitably do get killed by products and services. It would also put a lot of those “how many people getting killed is too many” decisions into an ostensibly responsive public agency that doesn’t financially benefit from an answer of “more dead people”)
@Gustopher:
The way those three parties are winding themselves up over immigration, I don’t think that will matter.
It’s sorta like watching the Dems cave to the GOP on immigration as the GOP gets more insane. Except those three parties all agree that immigration should be stopped. They just disagree about how racist they should be about it.
The stupidest part about all this immigration bullshit in the U.S. and UK, is that I’m a citizen of both since birth. The only difference is I had to send a little more paperwork in the UK. The worst hurdle I had in the UK was getting a counter-signatory that met the rules on my picture. Making it more hilariously stupid: 1. I wouldn’t have needed the counter-signatory had I applied from the U.S., and 2. The only counter-signatory I could use was a dual US-EU national, who acquire his Italian citizenship the same way as me.
So I’m automatically a citizen, but someone who has worked hard and has proved that gets shafted, but me, plop, I’m in.
But I am scared that Starmer is going to do something and either voids the visas people like my partner have or cause her company decided to just move to the EU. Or, my kids need to be present here for 3 years before I can pass on my citizenship, I don’t want them to mess with that.
Remember when Republican Senator Bobby Jindal warned that the GOP was becoming “the party of stupid”? That was 2013.
Too bad no one listened.
@Beth: Basically, everything @Gustopher: said, plus married to a British citizen. A good friend of mine was similarly situated and it was a pretty straightforward move for her, but that was around 8 or 9 years ago, so who knows. The bottom line for us is that if the Republicans keep f*cking around with the ACA, I’m going to be faced with around 5 years where I am too young to qualify for Medicare, but unable to get an individual policy (prior illness), because I get booted off my husband’s policy when he qualifies for Medicare. We need to have something in place, and right now the UK is the most feasible option. None of this is ideal, but I’ve moved around a lot and so picking up and relocating isn’t scary (PITA, but not scary).
@Gustopher:
It’s somewhat complicated. Essentially the fix did cut off MCAS, but also left the stabilizer trim in a nose down attitude and turned off the electric trim controls.
The reason Boeing is responsible, though, is that the MCAS could activate based on data from one angle of attack sensor. AS in most of aviation controls and sensors, there are two, on on each side of the nose. It’s not common for different sensors to give contradictory readings, but it does happen. There are ways to deal with that, including in some cases a third sensor as backup.
The feature to display an angle of attack disagree warning was a paid extra option, not standard. Some airlines chose not to incur the extra expense. But Boeing didn’t disclose the presence of MCAs, or how it worked, or include it in type certification training, or that it was defective (it would recur until the trim stabilizer was cut, which also disengaged the autopilot).
IMO, all the above indicates clear criminal negligence. As the old Law and Order show put it: depraved indifference to human life.