Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, September 2, 2025
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35 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).
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BlueSky.
Just got back from a weeks long stay in Park City, Utah. In my older age, I enjoy ski resorts in the summer, just as I like beach resorts in the winter. It is the calmness, the lack of crowds, and the opportunity to truly unwind and chat up the locals.
Towns like Park City are originally mining towns with an origination story often different from the rest of the state. Utah’s origination story is that of the Mormons with a culture that continues to this day. Park City’s miners brought their Irish Catholic sensibilities without the civilizing attributes of families which came later.
There are a lot of locals that have been there for generations. There are locals who came in the 70s and 80s and have lived through the changes of the last 50-60 years. There is a type of volunteerism that continues in the building of trails, in the drive to preserve the environment, in the pride of community that underlines and resists the worst aspects of the tourist business.
Chatted up one local small business owner who described three major changes in the town from the time she arrived in the early 80s. (Why she ended up in Park City in her early 20s, I’m not sure. But she came and stayed). One was the corporate takeover of the ski slopes and industry, second was Winter Olympics in 2002, the last was COVID and the influx of wealthy outsiders fleeing cities and then trying to run the town and schools. Today, a tech billionaire has bought the local newspaper and is considering further investments and apparently he has “thoughts” on how things should change. There seems to be a vigorous political campaign for mayor and city council with tons of yard and window signs pushing various candidates. I didn’t get a good sense of who was who or what was what but there was a lot of political energy.
Anyway, the weather was perfect, the hiking glorious, the altitude somewhat punishing on this old body. Discovered the joys of ebikes in navigating hilly roads and paved bike trails.
And marveled at how healthy many local older seniors seemed to be.
President Obama continues to live rent-free in Trump’s head.
Trump’s fallout with PM Modi is largely due to Trump’s insistence that he “solved” the India-Pakistan war and was responsible for the ceasefire, and has repeatedly pressed Modi to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
I wish someone from Nobel would make a statement that anyone who engages in aggressive lobbying is not eligible for the prize just to shut him up. Good grief.
@Jen: I think it would be funnier if Modi or one of the others would nominate Marco Rubio instead.
@Scott:
I’ve lived along the Colorado Front Range for approaching 40 years now. I am firmly convinced that living at altitude is conducive to overall health. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to take my 71-year-old butt out to do 20 miles on the bicycle :^)
Regardless of the push by Hegseth and the coterie of racist civilians now running the Pentagon, I want to know who are lower ranked active duty military that are the awful collaborationist moles that will need to be purged later.
Portrait of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee with Slave Rehung at West Point
Right up there with Mother Teresa, R. Buckminster Fuller and Thurgood Marshall.
Survivorship bias. Old people in high altitude towns are healthy. When people age, they typically move to lower altitude areas to avoid the stress of hypoxia and snow. Actually, old people moving away from snow is ubiquitous. This leaves the remaining old people looking surprisingly healthy. I read a Colorado based study a long time ago that documented moving closer to sea level with age.
Any speculation on the big 2:00 PM announcement? I start from the premise they’re lying about it being a big announcement and it’ll be a carefully staged proof of life. If he’s seated, the press should ask him to stand up.
@gVOR10:..If he’s seated, the press should ask him to stand up.
The press should ask him many things. They can start by asking him if he thinks that Democrats, who he has said he hates, have the right to vote.
@gVOR10: I was going to ask the same thing.
Maybe declaring war on Venezuela?
Something about a housing shortage EMERGENCY, perhaps?
Announcing a redesign of Old Glory, with 52 gold stars, because projecting strength through the Power of Positive Aspirational Thinking will surely bring Greenland and Canada into the fold?
@gVOR10: There seems to be some agreement on Bluesky that it’s about the Department of Defense/Department of War renaming, but probably also a proof of life thing in the mix. He looked very ill in one of the pictures I saw over the weekend–almost unrecognizable, but he was upright and walking.
@gVOR10:
I am highly confident it will be “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”
Let’s see if he even takes questions.
@Michael Cain:
What’s the altitude above sea level for those communities?
Mexico City sits at around 2,250 meters above sea level (around 7,380 ft for those metrically impaired). I can’t say the population is more or less healthy than elsewhere.
Crime Crackdown in D.C. Shows Trump Administration’s Uneasy Relationship With Guns Gift link.
Anyone who thought about dictators knows that they’ll come for the guns and now the gun rights lobby is getting nervous.
@Kathy: Park City sits at 7,000 ft. Walking around was easy but once we started climbing on trails, we were breathing pretty heavy. At least for the first couple of days.
@Scott:
Well, you need more force to move weight than you do to move mass.
@Sleeping Dog: There are a few quoted gun strokers who may be bothered by this, but I don’t see their objection becoming widespread unless the feds in DC take guns from white people.
@Jen: I’m guessing carefully staged proof of life with a mostly benign announcement that goes a bit off the rails when he says he took an IQ test and he did better than the doctor giving it, that the District of Columbia is now the District of Trump, and that the 2020 election was stolen.
MAGA will be impressed.
@Jen: This is in Politico.
@Scott: That’s hardly worth an Oval Office presser, but same with renaming the Defense Department…would it be fair to guess this is an attempt to quell all of the illness rumors? Which, if he just sits behind the Resolute Desk and never gets up probably won’t end the way they are hoping.
@Gustopher: YEP.
@Scott:
And I don’t suppose the purpose of the move is to accommodate the aging U.S. Space Command population by moving them from an altitude of 6,000 ft to 600 ft above sea level.
You know who took his personal train to meet up with The Boyz at the China summit today?
@Slugger:
This would not surprise me. Although I’d think that snow, and really the generally harsher climates at higher altitude, would be the dominant factor. Since increased altitude normally correlates to lower temperature, more clouds, more precipitation, and stronger winds, there could be a tendency for people to avoid higher altitudes as they become more vulnerable.
People can acclimatize to moderately high altitudes, but latitude and regional climate are factors. The tree line in Montana’s Glacier National Park is about 5,000 feet lower than the tree line in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, even though both are on the continental divide. Maybe this is the trees’ way of telling us that 6,000 feet is impossibly harsh even with abundant precipitation in northern Montana, but is quite accommodating (if there’s a source of water) in Colorado. And people seem to thrive at 7,380 feet in Mexico City, not to mention the several South American capitals that are considerably higher.
@Eusebio: Seems like a mistake to move the space command further from space.
Random thought I had on the Kristi Noem thread, which seems better suited for here (if anywhere) — are beauty standards splitting along political lines in this country?
I assume she’s trying to look good, and likely succeeding for some audience (I used to work with a creepy guy who thought that she was hot), but… I don’t get it.
I am living in a bubble in Seattle, and I am a bit face blind, and I am queer (of the bi/pan variety) so I might not be the best judge of these things, but I don’t think I’m seeing her soul and recoiling at that.
——
ETA: the guy who thought she was hot was creepy for other reasons. Although spontaneously bringing up how hot he thought the governor of some random state was didn’t help.
I’m just saying, “Governor Hot Or Not” would be a very silly game and barely creepy at all. Maybe a tier list? He brought it up spontaneously in a meeting.
Trump just said the Space Force something or other is being moved from Colorado to Alabama because Colorado went to all mail in voting. Automatically corrupt mail in voting.
So I guess Republican voters in Colorado should not have their votes count.
(He has been standing the entire time.)
Some part of the Space Force command will stay in Colorado because of geography. A few miles out on the prairie east of Denver is the only place in the US that (a) is close to a major metro area, (b) the last geostationary satellite visible to the west can also reach Japan and most of Australia, and (c) the last satellite visible to the east can reach Europe and much of Africa. To reach Japan and Australia from Alabama will require two satellite hops, not one. That peculiarity of geography is one of the reasons Colorado has so much space-related business (more per capita than any other state).
Ball Aerospace built the mirrors and other optics for the Webb telescope in Boulder, CO. A mile down the road from me here in Fort Collins is a modest building with a company name on it that no one would recognize, that designs and builds specialized sensors for Dept of Defense satellites.
Why bother moving? We are cutting our space science budget https://www.npr.org/2025/07/26/nx-s1-5481304/nasa-employees-deferred-resignation-program
We can just let China do space exploration.
Many of these space science people are geeks who don’t care about Bama v Auburn. Risks turning Alabama blue.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
Looks like a I got a prediction right today.
@Gustopher:
There’s been quite a bit written about this, and yes.
Kristi Noem and the MAGA Beauty Aesthetic
The hair is called “Utah curls” — center part, long hair, hot rollers or curling iron. Popularized by Mormon mom-influencers.
Heavy makeup with a flat/matte finish and either “yes, we’ve had work done” or a suggestion of it (very plumped lips) is also key. Add prominent cross jewelry and heels, and bodycon clothes.
It all looks very uncomfortable to me, and not at all flattering. As the discussion notes, they look like Kardashian knock-offs.
ETA: Another link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/opinion/maga-beauty-viral-women.html
So, I guess we’re removing that last “C” and going with Centers for Disease then, huh?
Kennedy wants to limit CDC’s role to infectious diseases
@Jen:
@Scott:
I’ve got to say, my heart would be so happy if the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Zelenskyy, and if at the Award Ceremony, Zelenskyy paused to say, ‘I’d like to say ‘thank you’ to JD Vance.’
@al Ameda: This needs to happen.
@al Ameda: This needs to happen.