Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, November 23, 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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
The sports headline of the day- UAB football player accused of stabbing 2 teammates before game
The headline of the day- Patel Under Scrutiny for Use of SWAT Teams to Protect His Girlfriend
The G-20 met without Trump. That’s right: without the President of the United States, without the so-called Leader of the Free World. And they were giddy with relief. European and British commentary is savage, as well it should be. The Trump’s ‘peace deal’ for Ukraine was a Google translation of a Russian document. It is DOA.
The humiliation is just inconceivable.
@Michael Reynolds:
Making America Greatly Abhorred
* when offensiveness becomes lifestyle
@Michael Reynolds:
Yup, Rubio spent yesterday at the Halifax security conference walking back the Ruskie sponsored, take it or leave it, peace proposal.
Someday, there will be an insider account of what’s going on w/in the felon’s WH. It’s pretty obvious that he’s not making the decisions and is simply parroting what he’s been told to say.
The correct method of dealing with a former president felon/insurrectionist
Brazil’s former President Bolsonaro arrested days before starting his 27-year prison sentence
This is why I keep saying we need a word that means the oposite of surprise:
Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls
Maybe you could charge them a tariff? 😛
@Sleeping Dog:
In a thread not long after last year’s election, I said Rubio was a flyweight. People were foaming at the mouth about other Trump nominees but a SOS who has trouble saying anything wise or original is a big problem.
DOGE dirge
Musk’s DOGE ‘doesn’t exist’ anymore with eight months left on charter
It’s the waste, stupid! It’s the stupidity, wastoid!
@Kathy:
That word might be “obdurate.”
When I have repeatedly pointed out to MAGA associates that their social media sources have been exposed as foreign actors, their eyes glaze over and they often respond with “I don’t know that.”
@Kathy: Marge said in her swan song that many maga megaphones are really hired help.
This is a banner week for potus and his confused and demoralized base. Between his warmongering about Venezuela, shoving ai down throats that don’t want to swallow, and loving on Mamdani, the internet is full of stories of maga on the skids.
Who could have possibly guessed?
@Rob1:
Oops, sorry, I didn’t see your comment. I was eating Maltesers and thus pre-occupied.
Meanwhile, our reality show Transportation Secretary is busy telling people packed onto planes like sardines that they should dress up.
This is the dumbest timeline.
@Jen:
What, an author of dung beetles fiction wearing Target clothes while flying First or Business Class is breaking some rule?
I see Water Girl at Balloon Juice agrees with me that MTG’s decision to resign predated her break with Trump.
I think she’ll fail and fade from public view, unless she gets a FOX gig or some such, but failure of a plan is not evidence for non-existence of the plan. If she gets a FOX gig, that would be evidence FOX is looking at post-Trump plans.
Does everyone understand why Trump refused to support MTG’s ambitions? It’s simple: he doesn’t want to fuck her, and he refuses to have any woman around him who he doesn’t want to fuck. That’s what we’re dealing with. A 79 year-old sexual predator, a rapist, who cannot tolerate an un-attractive woman in his presence. How creatures like Karoline Leavitt can stand it, I don’t know.
@Michael Reynolds: I also don’t want to fuck MTG, and want nothing to do with her.
I feel a little bad each time I realize I have something in common with Trump.
MAGAtsphere loses it over a pink sweater.
This ties in with some Youtube philosophy I caught the other day, termed narcissistic individualism: the inability to accept that some things are not about you.
TL;DR: you don’t like to wear pink, then don’t wear pink.
@Kathy: when my stepfather, not a likeable guy, passed away the only good thing I could think to say about him to include in his eulogy was that “he wasn’t afraid to wear pink”.
He had an array of pastel Izod golf shirts and one was baby pink. Being the homophobic racist that he was, I was kinda impressed.
EU 24 point counterproposal to the disgraceful Trump-Putin abomination:
The full text of the EU plan to end the war in Ukraine is published by The Telegraph
Pretty much diametrically opposite of Putin’s plan for conquest ushered along by Rubio and Witkoff.
For Ukraine it includes the return of the entire population of kidnapped Ukrainian children, guarantee and assurance of full sovereignity, zero military concessions, return control of Zaporizhizhia nuclear power plant, prohibition of military action to settle territorial claims, EU membership, optional NATO membership at discretion of that Alliance, full compensation by Russia for the impact of its war —- among other items.
Missing is a mechanism for addressing the many war crimes perpetrated by known Russian actors.
Not holding any hope for this morally-ethically correct EU version, I shall continue my regular contibutions to Ukraine.
Bottomline: Russia’s depraved, marauding invasion of Ukraine has also been a retrogade assault on the civil compact between modern nations, arrived at through the long bloody history of human civilization. On this crowded planet today, there is no more available “free space” for those people who want more or feel lacking. It is therefore a critical point in our shared human endevour to respect each others spaces and seek civil process for our needs — like we are taught in kindergarten most everywhere. And, pathological personalities must be “screened” from leadership, here and abroad.
@Rob1:
The one single good thing Trump has done is to force Europe to stand up. The end of the American age may presage the birth of a new European age. The new multipolarity may not be working out quite the way Putin and Xi thought it would.
@Kathy:
Hilarious.
My father had a pink sweater back in the 1990’s.
(Albeit possibly a more muted “salmon” shade, and absent the collar embroidery.)
And I have a pink and white rugby shirt, and a pale pink “smart shirt”
Some MAGA-men seem to have serious problems re lack of self-confidence.
@Michael Reynolds:
The problem is Europe keeps hoping against hope that sanity will prevail in Washington.
The Geneva summit is absent Trump, and with Rubio in Geneva, the Vance/Kushner/(Hegseth if sober?) etc faction will be continuing to press Trump to shaft Ukraine, and threaten Europe.
I’m banging my head on the desk in frustration: it should have been patently obvious since 2017, and still more since 2024, that Trump was not a reliable ally, and that Europe needed to both re-arm at scale, create an EDC type common procurement/logistics/air defence/intel etc system, and prep to take control of NATO SHAPE/SACEUR from the US.
Almost a decade of wasted time, largely because Germany and Poland refused to see the “Ami’s” were no longer guaranteed to be allies, and the UK was consumed with Brexity navel-gazing nonsense.
@JohnSF:
QFE. Wish I could upvote a million times.
Just had this discussion with a Ukranian friend yesterday. Putin invaded Ukraine twelve years ago. Russian forces mass murdered MH17 passengers eleven years. We increasingly insane Americans first elected incompetent, unqualified Putin-puppet pedo Trump over the wonderful Hillary Clinton nine years ago. Putin escalated his imperialistic Ukraine warmongering with an attempt to decapitate Kyiv nearly four years ago. Weaponized Russian drones have flown into Polish and German airspace.
Europe has had plenty of time to accept reality and build up its defenses, weaponry, and militaries — to assist Ukraine and protect European territorial integrity. They yet dilly-dally, caught flat-flooted as MAGA traitors try to force the West to surrender to a poorly translated Russian wishlist.
How can they still not be prepared to defend themselves against the odious Trump-Putin Axis of Evil? At this late date, Europe has nothing to blame but it’s own decadance. It’s actually absurd. What is the EU waiting on? Ruski tanks rolling into Warszawa?
I want to know why Trump and Vance despise Europeans so much. Maybe the Amerikkkan right hates pureblood white people or something.