Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Thursday, April 16, 2026
·
23 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
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.
No, it can’t be Thursday until Wednesday is over.
If Wednesday’s over, why am I still at the office finishing a proposal that has to be delivered on Thursday at 1 pm? It makes no sense.
Part of the problem is the customer refused to release the requirements in Word format. We got a scanned PDF instead. Try converting dozens of pages with over a thousand products from that into an orderly Excel file with brands, prices, and totals (and VAT and sin taxes). We only got the Word file late on Monday. And then there were the 75 samples*. and all in les than a week total.
At that, we did a lot better than the food service team the other week. They had more time, everything in Word or Excel, less items to totalize in Excel, and they had to upload their proposal rather than deliver it. And they had more time, too boot.
They had until noon to finish the upload. I kid you not, they finished at 11:58 am. Worse, the boss was in the office and aware of this. If this had been a cartoon, he’d have pulled out his hair.
*One of te samples left over, long story, is labelled “breadcrumbs, one kilo.” It’s unbranded. It looks like no breadcrumbs I’ve ever seen, including those I made myself. Rather than just broken up, it looks like they ground the bread finely. It looks almost like flour or cornmeal.
I just have to snatch one and try it. Just to be more unconventional, I’ll use it to make oven-baked beef milanesas.
We also have something labeled “Paprika, one kilo,” unbranded. It’s orange. almost dayglo orange. I’ve no desire to try that.
Futurama fans have heard, probably, of the Futurama theorem, related to events in the episode The Prisoner of Benda.
The gist is the characters play around with a body-swapping machine. It has one drawback: you can swap bodies as many times as you like, but never with a body you’ve already been in. meaning if, say, Bender and Fry swap bodies, they cannot swap back. The theorem shows the solution to get everyone back to their original body.
This ep aired in 2010.
In 1999, Stargate SG-1 aired an ep titled Holiday. It centers around a body swapping machine with the same peculiarity. The plot is less fun, more serious, but essentially has the same problem to solve. There’s one deliberate body swap, with an unwitting subject, and then an accidental one.
Eventually Captain Carter (who else?*) figures out how to get everyone where they belong.
I’m not sure whether the solutions are the same or not. I’m lousy at math that way.
*Some times the writers are not as bright as her character is supposed to be. More than a few times she doesn’t see the obvious solution to a problem until well after she should.
Back in 2023, a show named Jury Duty came up on Amazon’s free streaming service, FreeVee, that seemed to hit the sweet spot of being a reality show that was funny but not cruel. Rather sweet actually.
That service disappeared but on Prime, a second similar show popped up in March titled Company Retreat. Everybody was a paid actor except one guy who was hired as a temp to support the company retreat for the HR department. It is also very good and I recommend it.
Right now, it seems the wife and I are looking for TV fare that is just gentle and funny and humane. Just started rewatching Ted Lasso on Apple and it just fits that bill.
What viewing choices are you all making?
Go ahead, Taco, you big coward, touch the stove with your tiny hands. I dare you.
TL;DR: If Wersh isn’t confirmed by May 15th, when Powell’s term expires, Powell can opt to remain as chair of the Fed, until a new chair gets confirmed. El Taco has threatened to fire him if he does this.
IMO, it makes sense to extend the term of service until a new chair can take over. You don’t want an important position to be vacant in the meantime, especially as it might take weeks to get a replacement.
Super devout religious warrior, Whiskey Pete, got made a fool when he quoted Samuel L Jackson’s made up Bible Passage from Pulp Fiction in a prayer group at the Pentagon.
https://x.com/EdKrassen/status/2044734646231953596?s=20
John Eastman’s license to practice law has been torched:
There IS justice for Trump enablers, although not for Don Jesus himself.
@Kathy:
Powell also has a position on the Fed Board of Governors until January 2028. Although Fed chairs have generally stepped down from the Board when their chairmanship expired, Powell has said he will remain on the Board until the administration’s criminal investigation into him has concluded.
@Scott:
Rooster on HBO has been very good–created by Bill Lawrence, who was behind Ted Lasso and Scrubs (among many other shows).
For extremely light fare, I’ve been really digging some shows on the streamer “Dropout”–especially V.I.P. One comedian is put through an extensive make up session to transform themselves into a whole new creature. They see the transformation and then have about an hour to plan out a character, after which they do an interview on a cable access type talk show. Here’s a sample with Bobby Moynihan.
“Make Some Noise” on the same streamer is also good. Short form improv similar to “Whose Line Is It Anyway.”
@Eusebio:
Oh, he should definitely stay until the last second. IN the second place, it keeps El Taco from appointing another lapdog to the Fed.
But in the first place, it would annoy El Taco no end
@Scott: I am rewatching Shetland on Britbox. Murder is much more civilized on the Scottish Isles. Brokenwood on Acorn is quirky cozy crime in New Zealand. Deadloch’s first season is shot in Tasmania and very funny. There’s a new season out that does not disappoint. Māori and other indigenous culture are treated with a lot of respect in both shows from Down Under, even though history belies them.
Hope Street is smarmy, but the Northern Ireland coast is so beautiful I don’t care. And you can never go wrong with Simon West in All Creatures Great and Small.
@Neil Hudelson: My daughter subscribes to Dropout. She likes Make Some Noise also. Watched it a couple of times with her. Very silly.
Hmmm. She’s an attorney also. Coincidence?
@Scott: Fisk and Derry Girls, both on Netflix, are comfort watches for me–both make me laugh no matter how many times I watch.
@becca: My husband and I both enjoy Shetland, and frequently joke that the murder rate seems very high for the population levels…and, fully agree with your assessment of Deadloch (but, warning to sensitive viewers, they use the word c*^t like professional chefs use salt and butter–liberally and frequently).
@Scott: “The Good Place” got me and my wife through the first Trump term, with multiple re-watches of the entire series since. I almost didn’t watch it, just because 30 minute comedies are not my thing, but I saw that both Kristen Bell and Ted Dansen were in it and it was created by Michael Schur. So glad I did. Smart, funny, well paced, and uplifting.
@Jen: absolutely adore DGs. Too bad the Troubles ended and deprived us of more episodes, right? That Clinton guy was such a killjoy…
There’s a kids show on Netflix called Centaurworld. It’s like nothing I have seen before. It’s an animated show with lots of original music and crazy creative characters. The voice actors include Hamilton veterans. I highly recommend checking it out.
Musing on the felon’s fighting with Powell and using the pretext of cost overruns in the updating of the Fed building to accuse him of a crime. Pretty much every observer sees him losing this fight, that he’s cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Powell won’t leave as chair till his term is up in May and won’t leave the board till the DoJ investigation is shut down. Tillis won’t allow hearings on Powell’s replacement until the investigation is dropped and all the while the calendar turns.
If the felon keeps this up, he may find that he’ll never get his person as Fed chair. If the Dems take the Senate in November, any number of losing R senators who have no political future, may simply decide to take a pound of trump’s flesh as sweet revenge.
@Scott/@Neil Hudelson: We have been enjoying “Rooster” as well–another Lawrence show we like, and which has a similar vibe, is “Shrinking” on Apple TV.
Other things we have been watching: “The Pitt” (which I highly recommend), and I am pleased that “Hacks,” “For All Mankind,” and “Your Friends and Neighbors” are all back.
@MarkedMan: The “Good Place” was great!
For a light-hearted Danson/Schur vehicle, I recommend Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside” (short seasons, and note that, IMHO, season 1 was fair superior to season 2, although still worth it in the main).
“Stars and Bars“
“Stars and Bars“
@Steven L. Taylor:
We watch Bill Lawrence shows, but TBH his eternally quippy dialog wears thin. We had not known ahead of time that ROOSTER was one of his, but about 10 minutes in we were both calling it. It’s a very distinct style.
Mike Schur is a better writer. He’s really good and pulls off difficult-to-execute premises like GOOD PLACE. I could write a Bill Lawrence show, Mike Schur maybe not.
ETA: I just realized that my standard for good writing is, ‘could I do it?’ Lawrence? Meh. Vince Gilligan? He’s good, as in, no I couldn’t write it.
@becca:
Deadloch?
Would that be a sort of Scottish/Tasmanian version of Deadpool?
😉
Missed yesterday’s The Veep, the Pope, and Just War Theory
So I’ll say it here:
The MAGA theory of “Just War” seems indeed to be: just war.
@JohnSF: sure! if Ryan Reynolds was transformed into a lesbian detective married to a very horny veterinarian.
@MarkedMan:
@Steven L. Taylor:
The Good Place is one of my favorite TV shows ever. I’ve rewatched twice since I first watched it.
Man on the Inside is good, too. The second season was fine, but I felt like bringing back characters from the first season felt a bit forced at times. It may also have crowded out characters in the new milieu Charles infiltrates.
I wonder if for the third season they’ll manage to bring along characters from the previous two seasons as well. It feels like additive television.