Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, November 30, 2025
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21 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 headline of the day- Trump orders the closure of Venezuelan airspace
The Florida headline of the day- Tommy Zeigler, longest-serving Florida death row inmate, granted hearing on DNA evidence
Masters and US Open Champion golfer Fuzzy Zoeller has passed away at age 74. Fuzzy, his real first and middle names were Frank Urban, had a colorful personality and was gregarious in nature. A big contrast from today’s top golfers who all seem to have as much personality as my coffee cup. Zoeller’s propensity to talk caused him trouble when he made some Tiger Woods related comments. I rather remember him for his personality and his two major championship wins which I watched as they happened. RIP.
The sports headline of the day- No backup plan for Olympic ice hockey arena as construction goes down to the wire
Trump’s approval rating is at 36%. There’s 3 full years left, how hot is this damn stove gonna get?!
I have three BIL and one SIL all with birthdays in a short space of time. DW’s brother Leonido better known as Eding, turned 59 today. I nicknamed Eding ‘Interpreter’ because when eating meals at my future in-laws home when I first came to visit them, he was seated next to me and Eding helped me to understand what was being said.
Another BIL is going to work again as a cruise ship musician. It is Leonico also known as Bebe. Bebe worked as a musician on Holland America and Carnival ships for most of a decade before being deported in 2005 for a visa violation.
Bebe will be working again for HAL. I see many HAL cruises in my future and right now I have 4 of them already scheduled for between today and May 2027.
Our cruise port pickup will be arriving in a few minutes. DW and I will be visiting Nassau, The Turks and Caicos, The Dominican Republic, plus HAL’s private island in the Bahamas. I am not all that much interested in these places but DW wanted to take a cruise. I’ll enjoy 7 days of the entertainment that comes with living on a floating hotel.
While I will have internet access and my laptop on the cruise, I am not likely to be posting much here. Just like when I was on a Alaska cruise earlier this year. Everyone be safe and have fun.
@Jax: I just looked up Nixon’s approval rate. At the end, it was 24%.
That kind of gives an answer to “why were Republicans of that era so much more civic-minded, and willing to impeach Nixon”.
I have long held that while we have a lot of checks and balances – a lot of ways to stop something from becoming policy/law – if something had the approval of 70% of America, it would happen.
So, should Trump’s approval drop that low, impeachment is on the table. Also, the more of the Project 2025 agenda that gets accomplished, the less useful he is to the people who wanted that.
@Bill Jempty:
It is all professional athletes today who seemingly only capable of the most anodyne statements. No one could write a book about a baseball team today like Ball Four, because the players have all been tamed and the personality beat out of them.
@Sleeping Dog:..the players have all been tamed and the personality beat out of them.
I read Ball Four years ago. Jim Bouton wrote about other players indiscretions. I believe he later admitted to his own failings. Do you think that today’s professional athletes follow the
Johnny Cash mantra and Walk the Line?
The money involved is enormously bigger these days. There is a large body of “journalists” who would dearly love to be the ones breaking the news about a misbehaving athlete. I would not be surprised if we eventually get to the practices of the old movie studios, where big stars had minders whenever they were out in public.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
Players, particularly stars (no one cares about replacement level players), today come with personal management teams whose purpose is in part, to buff the players public image and keep them away from situations that damage that image. So yes, to an extent the do walk the line.
Blades of grass (roots) keep shoving their way up through the cracks in the concrete encasing our politics.
A teenager redrew the Alabama voting map – and it’s now state law
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
I was just thinking about Bouton and his book. Fun read and one of the few sports books I burned time on.
The “nature of the beast” becomes clearer as transnational ambition trumps national loyalty. So much for “America 1st” false platitude.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the main focus of the US-Russia peace talks is to get commercial advantage for American companies, and personal benefits for individuals linked to the Trump Administration
* Gentry Beach (real name, stranger than fiction)
Betrayal of the highest order.
Know your (would be) oligarch:
Gentry Beach, a college friend of Donald Trump Jr. and campaign donor to his father, has been in talks to acquire a stake in a Russian Arctic gas project if it is released from sanctions. Another Trump donor, Stephen P. Lynch, paid $600,000 this year to a lobbyist close to Trump
–
Who is Gentry Beach, the man pushing Trump business deals in Pakistan, Turkey and Bangladesh?
The article then details Beach’s excursions to Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Turkey, representing himself as a Trump sanctioned deal maker for the extraction of resources like gold, rare earth minerals, as well as development of high end real estate and data infrastructure.
The tentacles of aligned ambitions stretching out from the Trump nerve center. Makes Hunter Biden look like an amateur.
Andrew McCarthy has a piece in the National Review (Conservative – Buckley) about Trump politicizing the military with lawfare against Sen Kelley. I recommend reading the whole thing.
He also thinks making the video was a bad decision, but Trump over responded as usual.
Those responsible for executing Hegseth’s “No Quarter” orders may be getting nervous, if the news reports are anywhere near the truth. The Senate and House armed services committees have each begun bipartisan investigations. Several members of Congress have condemned killing survivors of suspected drug boat strikes, but I don’t know that any have announced support of such a practice.
On one this morning’s Sunday shows, Rep Mike Turner was asked about reports of a follow-on strike, and said, “I agree…if that occurred… that that would be an illegal act.” Rep Don Bacon had similar comments.
Some of those involved may have felt reassured by Adm. Bradley’s guidance that “the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo,” per the WaPo report cited in yesterday’s topic. But it’s difficult to see how the chain of command avoids accountability if investigations verify the reports, even if the harm is limited to one event that killed two people, out of the nearly one hundred boat strike fatalities so far. Their best hope is for a MAGA-friendly president after Jan 20, 2029.
@Richard Gardner:
Whatever happened to ” if you see something say something?” It’s what we elect our representatives to do. Half our representatives remain silent and complicit. They are failing America.
It’s quite likely that some future administration could prosecute several members of the felon’s admin for acts conducted and they are likely expecting pardons. So it will be interesting, if he leaves office before completing his term, if Vance will expend political capital to pardon them.
@Eusebio:
Indeed, nobody above E-6 was prosecuted for Abu Ghraib, for instance, even though we had a POTUS and vice pres openly admitting they ordered it. But in this one I strongly suspect the focus is going to be on the officers who ordered it, not the kid who pushed the button. There can be no false quibbling that he did that wrong.
@Rob1:
I believe that the vast majority of Republican legislators support Trump’s blend of strength, lawlessness, and idiocy because: (1) they like his pugnacious in-you-face style, (2) they still fear him and his base, and (3) if anything goes wrong they naively believe that he (Trump) will be blamed.
Until further notice, congressional Republicans will remain self-neutered.