Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, March 19, 2026
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26 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).
Follow Steven on
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BlueSky.
This is a great news story. So enjoy. This year’s Grand Champion artwork “Between Boots and Moccasins” by a Pasadena high school student auctioned for $525K. I am astonished by the quality of the art.
Here are the 10 highest-selling student art auction winners in Houston rodeo history
On the other side of the spectrum:
John Cornyn and Ken Paxton are trying to drown each other in AI slop
I know it’s part of the strategy, but sometimes the news is just too much. I can see how KKK and Nazi rhetoric took hold – to some degree, they did so out of sheer exhaustion and the resulting overwhelmed complacency of the population.
@Scott:
I turned off my ad blocker and then hit a paywall.
@Scott: Those are great, thanks!
@CSK: Try this.
@CSK: Try this. They are the Top Two for this year.
Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo™ Showcases 2026 Award-Winning Student Artwork
Any of this sound familiar?
US weighs military reinforcements as Iran war enters possible new phase
@Scott:
Donald can’t acknowledge/accept he holds a losing hand, so he pushes more chips into the pot.
Donald, you don’t have the cards.
@Scott:
Cheryl Rofer has a post up at LGM over how totally impractical that idea is.
Latest on the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford:
Damn, that’s hard on the sailors and their families back home.
…
@charontwo: @charontwo:
Headline from ultra MAGA Trump supporter The Gateway Pundit:
Besides making me laugh, it is a clue that the Trump support is starting to crack.
@Jon: @Scott:
Thank you both!
@Scott:
I’m confused. If Iran is Trump’s war of choice, and Graham supports Trump, then why is Graham a “warpig”? Yeah, yeah, I know it’s the GP,
@charontwo:
The behavior of someone who had a bankruptcy in the casino business.
Thanks to terrible Trump-Vance DOGE Project 2025 policy, the US has lost jobs in three straight months. Which has not happened since…COVID? 2008?
Embarrassing that some still cling to the cringe “fiscal conservative” nonsense. Conservatives suck at economics.
@charontwo:
The Martingale “strategy” holds that one should double one’s bet after losing a play or hand. That way you’ll recover all your losses when you win (spoiler alert: that’s not how gambling works).
The bankroll needed for such a strategy is huge. So no one really plays that way, at least not more than for a few throws of the dice. So I don’t expect El Taco will send two more carriers to the region. I do expect some escalation. His so-called administration is already moving expensive ammo from other areas, like Asia, to the Gulf.
Leaving aside gaming analogies, IMO the best El Taco can realistically expect is a Pyrrhic victory. What he’s most likely to get is a Pyrrhic stalemate (ie “one more stalemate like this and I will be utterly ruined”).
@DK:
But the stock market is up and will never come down. And the rich are getting richer. It’s all working as intended.
All money to the oligarchs!
This sounds like a job I could do
Headline: US startup advertises ‘AI bully’ role to test patience of leading chatbots.
But, who knows how long it will last, and whether the startup will pay in cash or stock options that may or may not be worthless when the bubble pops.
@DK: “conservatives” also don’t really care about “small government”. The EPA, Space Force and DHS birthed by GOP administrations.
@Scott:
As should have been screamingly obvious from the outset.
A full-scale attack on the Iranian regime (as opposed to limited strikes on misiles or air defences or similar) would mean they would in turn use every lever at their disposal, of which Hormuz is an obvious one.
I’ll bet my last beer every government aside from Trumps clown-show regarded this as entirely predictable.
Including Israel; with the difference there that Bibi is honey-badger.
And honey badger don’t care.
I have a sneaking suspicion that when the assembly of Khamenei and other high-level persons was detected, Netanyahu decided to “take the shot”, knowing the likely consequences, and bluffed Trump into approving it, with Trump utterly failing to to realise what that implied: no holds barred.
@charontwo:
As with securing the straits, it’s entirely obvious (or at least damn well should be) that recovering the enriched uranuim, whether buried under rubble and/or in deep storage, in a “non-permissive” situation, is not some sort of Delta Force “fly in, kill bad guys, grab it, fly out” B-movie fantasy.
It’s going to need protracted control of a large area (perhaps at three separate sites? depending) for clearing location, establish a secured area, excavation, retrieval, and removal. It will get bloody.
Still more, securing a large area of the Hormuz northern shore to clear out drone teams, set up areas of control and anti-drone systems, supress fire from the inland mountains, and likely serious grounf fighting to secure towns and villages, and control main land approaches.
That also is going to be a hard row to hoe.
Is it doable: probably yes.
Has the US got the ground forces and support logistics in place to do so?
It would seem not.
Hormuz means an operation on scale not that far off the Iraq War 2003.
Uranium recovery on a par to Afghanistan 2001.
A uranium recovery operation does not have to be prolonged for more than a month, perhaps.
Hormuz, if the Pasdaran continue to rule in most of Iran: who knows?
Years?
This utterly idiotic administration, combined with Netayahu’s calculations, has jammed the US into a mincing machine.
With the Gulf States and the entire global economy as collateral damage.
Incidentally, if Trump does go for a major land invasion of Iran, what is the probabilty that the Republican Party in the United States Congress could actually become vertebrates, and be willing to put their own reputations on the line to demand to able yo vote “yay” or “nay” on a war?
There are lions in Africa that have encountered a similar problem with honey badgers. In the matter of de-escalation, the weasel has a vote…
@JohnSF: High.
At last a “hill to die on” for the silently pissed off Rs, many of whom will be his most strident defenders in the past, the Marge Greens, as it were. They will find allies in the ranks of the rational.
Trump is doing precisely the things they believed he wouldn’t. Ideologues only put up with just so much. Will they be successful I dare not guess.
@JohnSF: Low. Very, very low.
The reason Congress abdicates* their authority so often is that they are cowards who don’t want to accept any consequences. They want the trappings of power without any of the responsibility.**
They have already voted against having to accept responsibility with a war powers resolution, and will shift to “supporting the troops” to avoid having to take any stand.
I fear @dazedandconfused is giving them far, far too much credit. If forced, 10% might defect, but I’m sure they will be replaced with Democrats in swing districts who think that they need to play nice and “support the troops.”
If the economy collapses, all bets are off. But so long as they can convince themselves doing nothing is the same as saving their filthy hides, they will be all for doing nothing and letting the administration do whatever it wants.
—-
*: abrogates? Pick your favorite verb for deferring to another authority that has utterly appalling implications for their complete lack of moral character.
**: if the trappings of power were less appealing, or the responsibility harder to avoid, the US government would function better. This is largely why I want to kill the filibuster, as it allows them to safely support horrible things, knowing it will never matter.
@JohnSF: If Trump launches a ground invasion of Iran, it means he can do so without significant (initial) blowback from his party. He backs down when the revolt is already too big to contain, a la, his 11th hour reversals on Greenland threats of the Epstein Files bill.
Trump hasn’t put troops there yet because too many Republicans would balk. So if he sends troops, assume that opposition has already been neutered.