Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, September 25, 2025
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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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
Loving County has 2020 Census population of 64. This story has all the makings of a movie farce.
He promised free homes to his followers if they moved to West Texas. The goal: Take over the government.
We shall see how this turns out. BTW, none of these people will be getting oil and gas rights, no matter how much land is bought. Those property rights are separate.
@Scott: This sounds like roughly the same MO for the Free State Project here in New Hampshire. No free homes though.
In the world of political whiplash, I wonder how the OPM’s threatened RIFs in the case of a budget stalemate will hit those recently invited to take their jobs back after a 9-month DOGE hiatus.
@Scott:
@Jen:
But in a county of 64 people it might succeed. After all, while the free state project failed, they did manage to gain control of the Town of Grafton that had roughly a 1000 residents at the time.
Today in History
September 25, 1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor (1930-2023) became the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court when she was sworn in as the 102nd justice.
WikiP
Serendipity. I’ve been reading a history of the Royal Navy. I was struck by,
And here I though the Federalist Society had invented the “Unitary Executive”.
A few days ago there was some mention here of the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement . Conventional wisdom seems to be it was a mistake by the Brits, ending the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles and allowing Germany a much larger Navy. The author, one N. A. M. Rodger, sees it as a British victory. Germany had already breached Versailles and the treaty constrained Germany to building a “balanced fleet”, which they wanted to do. Otherwise they might have built a fleet, especially U-boats, for commerce raiding, which has brought England near defeat in WWI. As it was, the Germans cheerfully agreed to build battleships instead of submarines. The Brits had estimated, correctly, that Germany didn’t actually have the dockyard capacity to build their planned battleships. In the event, a lot of Germany’s limited steel supply went into unfinished ships instead of panzers.
Re: Kimmel, I just listened to the Puck News pod ‘The Town’ and they dissected the Kimmel/Disney/Nexstar issue. Takeaways:
1) The leverage is on Disney’s side.
2) Disney can fuck with the rebellious affiliates in ways that don’t leave them an opening for a lawsuit, little pinpricks as Matt Belloni said, little humiliations to knock them down a peg.
3) Brendan Carr doesn’t really have much power, he’s mouthing off with not much to back him up. Somewhere down the line, if ABC goes to renew a company-owned station, Carr could raise objections. Which is not going to bring the Mouse to heel.
4) If Nexstar wants to pull off a merger, the federal government is not their only worry. State AGs can throw wrenches into the works. (Spanners, for @JohnSF). IOW, it may be the affiliates who need to cave and bring Kimmel back to make peace with California, New York, Washington etc…
5) As @Gustopher mentioned yesterday, the network, Disney/ABC, has a nuclear option for the affiliates: they can turn off football. They almost certainly won’t (and I think it’d be a mistake) but they could.
6) They pointed to the fact that Kimmel’s comeback monolog scored 6 million viewers on the broadcast – more than triple his normal viewership – and 20 million on YouTube. Net effect: Kimmel became more important and with broader reach.
7) The orange strongman and future Nobel laureate who solved both the Cambodia/Albania war, and the Azerbaijan/Albania war, is reduced to threatening a lawsuit that will be instantly dismissed.
I would add that Disney won, Trump lost, and at least a few corporate spines were stiffened. Behold, a god who bleeds! (Steven Taylor will get that reference.)
What do you make of the Taco threat of mass firings of government employees in the event of a shutdown?
I don’t think it’s a bluff. But one has to remember there were mass firings earlies this year when government was operating normally and with all due funding; not to mention a lot of the authorized funds were not spent as authorized.
So, assuming the Senate caves* and passes a resolution to keep the government open, there would still be mass firings further down the road. The threat is just a pretext to blame it all on the Democrats.
You’d think they’d have learned something from the DOGe fiasco.
Why are we supporting the Argentinian peso? https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/view-us-support-boosts-argentina-stocks-bonds-peso-2025-09-24/
I have been to Argentina. Wonderful place, great people. I wish them well. However, I don’t see any reason to give them billions. The era of the communist menace is over (We won!). Our tariffs have led China to prefer Argentina as a source for soybeans. That should be enough of a boost at American farmers expense. Direct shipping them money does not make sense.
Link goes to a good piece looking at the polls that have been taken on political violence. People really like to quote the polls that claim 20%-30% of liberals support political violence. However, as Cohn (the author notes) these are usually open ended questions like “Is political violence ever justified?” Our country was founded on acts of political violence. If various political figures throughout history had been assassinated maybe we dont get WW2 or millions starved in China. Fortunately, some polls have gone ahead and asked more specific questions as noted below from the linked article. So next time someone uses that claim about so many liberals supporting violence, remember these numbers.
“Among attentive respondents, Bright Line Watch found 4 percent who said it is “ever justified” to commit “violent felonies” to advance “political goals.” A More in Common poll found that 3 percent to 4 percent of Trump and Biden supporters thought “physically attacking” the other side was justified if they thought the election was stolen. The Polarization Research Lab found that, among other examples, 2 percent of Americans “supported arson” against the opposing political party headquarters. Only about 1 percent supported murder.”
As an aside, Pew had had done some polls to try to find out how often people actually read questions closely. The result was that when asked 12% of people claimed they had a license to operate a nuclear submarine.
https://archive.ph/UXxOv#selection-933.0-945.159
Steve
@Michael Reynolds: The Man Who Would Be King?
Hmmm. So, I have been ranting that Democrats should STFU about Trump’s ‘plunging poll numbers,’ because they were not plunging at all in the top-line horse race. They have been pretty rock steady since Spring. I believe polls won’t matter until we start to see Trump’s 45% floor start to crack. Well:
9/22: Morning Consult 46%, Economist 43%.
9/23: Quinnipiac 38%, Reuters 41%, Gallup 40%.
Nate Silver has the spread at exactly 10% under water, 43.4%. Not real change, but it equals Trump’s two lowest points in April and July.
I would not declare a trend, but one may be developing. If a week from now we see high 30’s the union will be safe. Trump has never managed to grow beyond his 45% base, he has attracted no new converts, which is in itself a very important fact. His ceiling is very much intact, and his floor has not risen, and may at last start to crack.
@Joe:
Maybe, actually. (Great movie.) But I was thinking Star Trek TOS, ‘Paradise Syndrome.’
Excellent Shatner ham.
What new fresh hell.
Hegseth orders rare, urgent meeting of hundreds of generals, admirals
This is a wow! if the results hold up. A 75% slowing of Huntington’s Disease, a brutal disease.
@Slugger:
Currency, sovereign default, and other financial crises tend to spread regionally and/or affect more than just the country where they originate. See the 2008-09 Great Recession.
That said, Argentina has a long, long history of default, the latest, I think, as recently as the 2000s. And neither South America nor the world collapsed on that.
The question is whether the Taco so-called administration is trying to prevent a regional crisis, or they are also trying to prop up El Loco Milei because he’s a strong kisser of the orange ass’ ass.
@Scott:
Mommm! Dad’s drunk again!
@Kathy: “So, assuming the Senate caves* and passes a resolution to keep the government open, there would still be mass firings further down the road. The threat is just a pretext to blame it all on the Democrats.”
Even Chuck Schumer is aware of that this time — he’s been saying exactly that on TV.
@wr:
The GQP leadership, such as it is, may break the legislative filibuster rather than own the shutdown.
If they have agency after all, and don’t want a shutdown.
Oklahoma tries to make the Bible great again
Americans United celebrates Christian Nationalist Ryan Walters’ resignation
“This is a win for Oklahomans. They’re better off without Walters. At every turn Ryan Walters abused the power of his government office as he attempted to impose his personal religious beliefs on Oklahoma school children. And time and again, he lost in court to Americans United, our local allies, and the brave parents, students, faith leaders, teachers and public education advocates who fought his Christian Nationalist agenda.”
@gVOR10:
I still incline to the old opinion of the agreement: that it was a disaster.
As Germany intended to build a balanced fleet anyway, the constraint on u-boat construction was not any deal with the British, but German steel output.
Given the quantities required for the expanding Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, the total available for naval construction had definite limits.
Within those limits, the desire for a surface fleet meant that Germany had to choose between surface ships and submarines.
The steel intended for further battleships (and carriers) was largely simply recycled in 1941.
The agreement did not even require Germany to limit submarine numbers to a percentage less then the Royal Navy; the 50% “limit” could be changed to 100% at any time Germany chose, providing it gave notification of such intent.
The agreement did not compel Germany to build battleships: that was a choice.
The only “hard” limit was of a total Kriegsmarine tonnage at 35% of the Royal Navy.
In the event, battleships turned out to be a potent threat to the British convoys, and dealing with them involved a lot of British effort.
The crippling of the German escort and cruiser force was largely the product of the often overlooked fiece naval fighting during the invasion of Norway, in which Germany lost three cruisers and ten destroyers.
All told, imho, the UK gained little, and at the expense of badly damaging relations with France.
The whole approach seems to have stemmed from a widespread belief among the British political class (and beyond, and one that still crops up) that Germany had been “hard done by” at Versailles, that the Nazis could somehow be brought to peaceable reasonableness by concessions, and the French were being irritating on the issue.
And a generalised belief in negotiated arms limits.
Churchill argued at the time that the only real outcome was “… to authorize Germany to build to her utmost capacity for five or six years to come.”
I reckon Churchil was right.
Hey @JohnSF: what are you more excited for, your “Britcard” or Farage as PM.
Personally, I don’t know if I’m more excited for the segregation and getting to see Starmer looking like he shit his pants while sucking on an electrified lemon.
And to your last comment, as a citizen of both the U.S. and UK, I’ve come to realize that the French were right more than us.
Hey, ladies! Here’s what you’ve been waiting for!
Alex Jones sports Hitler mustache in shocking broadcast: ‘It had a wild effect on women’
Or men.
P.S. I so apologize if you have a sensitive gag reflex.
Paul Krugman’s substack today is about Argentina and the Taco rescue.
@Beth:
A sort of ID card is not necessarily a bad idea: a lot of current “black/grey economy” work runs on the basis that employers or “contact issuers” have “(im)plausible deniability” about employee and contractor National Insurance and tax status.
A card, that could firmly establish such credentials, and with heavy penalties for any employer not confirming NI status with it, which could also serve multiple other functions (drivers licence, etc etc) seems a reasonable way of dealing with employers/contract issuers who currently dodge their obligations.
As to Farage, much as he annoys me, I think his chances of becoming PM are limited.
Current polling, as ever, has a high “grump” factor.
Reform has an electoral mountain to climb, and their local party organisation is still lacking.
The council gains they made are often resulting not in forming a solid local party machine base, but the disillusion of actually dealing with the mundane realities of council operations, and their inability to bring the jubilee by next Thursday lunchtime.
The probability is that Reform splits the vote on the right, and enables LibDems to take seats in the more properous areas; Labour fall back, but can still form a government with LibDem support.
What could bugger that is if Burnham allows his ambitions to run away with him, and mounts a Labour leadership challenge.
Thet would paralyze the government for at least 6 months.
And could lead to a left alignment winning on the basis of fantasy economics.
Cue possible bond market crisis (the bond rates are worryingly high already) and a Labour collapse in the 2026 local elections, and massive pressure for an early general election.
That is Farage’s dream scenario.
The problem of the Starmer cabinet is that they continue to be in “reactive mode”, and hoping that some imagined “interlude of peace and quiet” will solve everything.
They continue to be unable to clearly set out a long-term strategy for public investment, tax reform, and growth. And the mending of the dilapidated public sector.
Also, to take the fight to Farage, by combining popular policies with pointing out the fatuity of populism, and the idiotic attempt of Reform to import “culture wars” to the UK.
Overall: could be better, could be worse.
And could get a lot worse if the left decides it’s time for another round of self-indulgent in-fighting.
@Scott:
lol.
Looks like The Boys From Brazil ended up with a Hitler/Mussolini mix.
@Michael Reynolds: I am confident Star Trek stole this from Kipling (and I only watched the movie – yes, great movie).
@JohnSF:
I know I’m still trying to figure all this out, but let me tell you, I’ve seen this movie before, I know exactly how it ends.
As best I can tell, the reason Starmer and his merry band of chuds is that they fundamentally agree with Farage that the rich and powerful are better than the rest of us and that the rules don’t apply to the rich and powerful (or Starmer & co) only the rest of us.
Starmer also seems genuinely shocked that people aren’t throwing rose petals everywhere he walks. He’s another right-wing hack that doesn’t seem to grasp that ordinary people don’t want this shit. They don’t want it from the Tories, they don’t want it from Labour. The people that do actually want it will get it right from Farage’s tit.
I’m not actually super opposed to the id card, except for the fact that it will be used to bar me from bathrooms and all that data is going to go straight to Palantir.
As for fantasy economics, I mean, we’ve been living through 40 years of Regan-Thatcher fantasy economics. Why not a new fantasy.
But, like I said, I’m still trying to figure this all out. I need to register to vote. Especially since you just gave me one vital piece of information: early elections are possible. I know this much, I’m not voting for a Labour Party that has McSweeny (Epstein/election irregularities), Streeting (Third Spaces Segregationist), or Starmer (fart sniffer) anywhere near power. I don’t care if Dame Hillier seems like a decent person. Labour is toast, because like the Democrats, it can’t decide if it’s actually for regular people or if it’s an arm of billionaire whims.
And screw them both for turning me into a socialist.
@Scott: He goes out in public like that? Does he know that this country is filled with unstable people with easy access to guns? Does he know that GI Robot is beloved for his line “GI Robot would like to kill Nazis with you. Would you like to kill Nazis with GI Robot?”
He’ll be lucky if he just gets punched in the face like Richard Spencer.
His family should stage an intervention, and get him to a mental hospital where he can get the help he needs.
I do not want to see the media calling him an important advocate for free speech or whatever when he becomes the next dead right wing podcaster. I’d prefer not to vomit a little bit in the back of my throat and then swallow it back down.