Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, August 19, 2025
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11 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.
Mom of the Year, here. All summer long I was thinking the 1st Day of school was the 19th (today). It was yesterday. My first clue was all the 1st Day of School pics on Facebook. 😉 😉
Thank God I’ve only got two more years of this.
A Maine police officer is being deported. The town and police department did everything they were supposed to do in verifying the officer was legal to work in the US.
The administration has said this:
WTAF is “reckless reliance”? How TF are you supposed to hire people if the system you are required to use is borked?
@Jen: Reckless reliance on OUR SYSTEM! This is akin to the Animal House scene after Flounder’s brother’s car has been wrecked, and Tim Matheson’s character, rather than apologizing, says, “Face it Flounder, you f**ked up. You trusted us.”
@Jen:
If you can’t trust Homeland Security, who can you trust?
Just more of the deficient mentality of “unaccountability” exhibited by this administration top down. Who knew that the self-agrandizing conceit of “moral-ethical superiority” only applies to about half of Americans? The other half voted for this $#!%. No congruency or personal integrity.
And this is the cohort that wants to force display of the Ten Commandments upon our public schools. Hey guys, crack open “the good book” — mote, log, eye.
The redistricting farce in the Texas Legislature rolls on.
Fort Worth Rep. Nicole Collier refuses to leave Texas House, protesting state trooper escorts
Texas lawmaker stuck in House floor over GOP ‘permission slip’ rule
Fort Worth Rep. Nicole Collier remains on House floor Tuesday after refusing escort: ‘I refuse to sign away my dignity.’
No one asks for my opinion but it is time for some Gavin Newsome like guerrilla theater and mockery.
Just came in from doing some yard work. The west side still in the shade so not bad.
Not bad now.
It’s supposed to be over 100 degrees today, with a heat index of 111. We had a respite from the heat a couple of weeks ago, courtesy of Canadian wildfires smoke and ash. The deadly heat has returned with a vengeance.
All those energy chugging ai data centers running on trump’s beloved dirty energy, on our cobbled together grid, using far more of the commons than they will ever give back.
Grr-r….
The new ICE vehicles, with DEFEND THE HOMELAND emblazoned on them (along with the current occupant’s name), are a clear tell, according to Jonathan V. Last:
@becca:
I almost likened the product of those data centers to cheap plastic toys. But even cheap plastic toys have more value than most of the ephemeral AI dreck that the data centers are generating. At least with cheap plastic toys, like those bags of green army men that were everywhere 50 years ago, we got to play with them, along with our friends sometimes. We got to discover them in storage, and have some happy memories of our childhoods. AI slop just comes and goes in a nanosecond, not making our lives better now, and not even giving us a moment of inexpensive nostalgia years later. It’s more like a narcotic that we consume, and then it disappears, except for the craving among the unwise and unlucky for more consumption.
I felt like cooking something simple with fries on the side. Skipping my thought process, I wound up with meatballs in creamy chipotle and tomato broth. It was rather close to my recipe for tomato soup, but not quite.
In a blender liquefy 100 grams of chipotles (less if you don’t care for the heat), a 400 can of tomatoes (this were sliced as well as peeled and cooked) with all the juice, about 2-4 Tbsp cottage cheese, some cilantro, and like 1/4 cup chicken broth (or any other kind of broth).
This goes into a pot where I’d sautéed some onions and garlic, add 1 3/4 cups of chicken broth, and bring to a slow boil on medium heat. Meantime I placed the meatballs for 5 minutes in the air fryer at 180 C, just to brown them. When the broth boils, add the meatballs and any juices, reduce heat to minimum and let the broth reduce while the meatballs cook through. For seasoning I added ground pepper and paprika.
I dumped frozen fries into the air fryer while the broth reduced.
I serve the meatballs over plain white rice in a bowl. the whole thing took under 90 minutes.
Trump says the Smithsonian is out of control. Too much focus on how bad slavery was.
CNN
How can any one think that Trump is a stinking bigot?
I realize this comes across as amoral, because it is, but US interests are not in ending the war in Ukraine. This war has been the foreign policy slash military gift of all time. For very little actual outlay and very little risk we have seen one of our two potential adversaries bled like a stuck pig. Putin’s economy is wrecked, he’s out of armor, his military is exposed as third rate, the Ukrainians have shut down 20% of his oil refining, and the US military has had a wake-up call that may just keep us better defended.
I know we all love peace blah blah blah but ending this profitable, arms-length war in favor of – this is today’s plan – having US air assets controlling the skies over Ukraine, I mean. . . Does that not seem a wee bit problematic? Not that Putin would ever contemplate such a thing, but who the fuck thought that would ever be on the table? And is it actually on the table? Please tell me we are not enforcing a no-fly zone against Russian jets.