Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, November 18, 2025
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58 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.
The White House Intervened on Behalf of Accused Sex Trafficker Andrew Tate During a Federal Investigation
Paul Ingrassia? That name rings a bell. Oh yes. Another fine fellow.
Trump taps Ingrassia for new role after texting scandal
Also Paul Ingrassia:
@Kingdaddy:
Only the sleaziest, most vulgar, need apply.
Actually only the sleaziest, must vulgar, would apply.
The headline of the day- New York village no longer accepting email and phone complaints after being inundated online
As we were accelerating down the runway on our Bark Air flight to Lisbon, we got word that we are 90% of the way to a TV series green light. Inconvenient timing, but I am experiencing actual joy. It won’t last, and obviously the Irony Gods will plunge this plane into the North Atlantic, but still, pretty happy. We have the 100% absolutely right producer for this project.
So, apparently about a fifth of the internet woke up feeling indisposed this morning.
Not OTB, Bluesky, Gmail, and a couple of other sites I check in the morning. Not most of the government websites I check for RFP publications, either. At least not so far.
@Kathy: l tried LGM and Balloon-Juice. No go.
Zhitter is down. I don’t do nazi, so I am just regurgitating online news. It’s a cloudflare problem.
As Jackson Lamb would say “First they blind you.”*
Slow Horses reference
@becca:
And the markets don’t seem to be doing very well either.
Not coincidentally, I recently read a Great Courses series on financial crises, panics, and crashes. IMO, the sooner a bubble bursts, the less worse things will get.
On the dot.com bubble, the lecturer noted two things: 1) intangible assets are not easy to accurately price, and 2) a lot of the booming dot.com companies had no business model at all.
Not that they weren’t making money, but that they lacked the means to make money at all.
The one salient difference between the dot.com bubble and the AI bubble, IMO, is that the latter is making use of money reserves held by the companies involved in the development (but not entirely), and not just outside venture capital.
Given the best known product of the generative AI revolution thus far is AI slop, I don’t quite see a bright future ahead.
Sites are back up.
Ryan Lizza is dishing on Olivia Nuzzi and it is delicious.
Her book tour is going to be brutal.
@becca:
Where????
@Kathy: @Kathy:
The ai bubble is being supported by debt. Just like 2008.
At least the housing market had actual houses involved.
And ai has an “insatiable appetite” for energy and Trump is going to try and ensure only the dirtiest, most polluting fossil fuels produce it. Inadequate infrastructure means the tax payers would pay dearly for this. Socialism is for the rich, as is the gop way.
Nvidia earnings come out tomorrow. Reportedly, Peter Thiel cashed out a while ago, but Palantir, may suffer a big blow, so he announced some weird finial backstop with Huang Jensen, another weird billionaire who is Nvidia kinda like Elmo is Tesla.
Tomorrow could be Black Wednesday. These ai invested tech companies are, what, 50% of the Trump economy?
@CSK:
I found it on LGM. Here’s a link to Lizza…
https://www.telos.news/p/part-1-how-i-found-out
If he’s telling the truth about her, she is vile.
When you come back to work from a three day weekend thinking you need time off, then ti wasn’t much of a three day weekend, was it?
TL;DR: I had to come in a few hours each Saturday and Sunday. I also cooked those days. I rested yesterday, but had no energy left to even think about writing…
Instead I played around with an LLM.
I may have found a use case for it: homogenizing literature.
Your brain wants new things that are familiar. This is why fads and trends happen, and why innovation can be difficult. Partly this is what Clarke called a failure of imagination in his book Profiles of the Future.
It’s also why cliches are embedded in stories, novels, TV shows, movies, etc.
I’ve noticed my fiction writing is not much like regular literature. I don’t always use conflict because, IMO, some stories don’t require it. I try to be logically consistent within the story universe, too. And I try hard not to indulge in cliches and stereotypes.
So, I asked myself “Self, what if I feed a story premise to Copilot and ask it to draw an outline?”
“Why, Kathy,” Self replied, “surely it will strip away your style and make it look like every other story out there.”
I didn’t try the experiment, because I think that’s exactly what will happen.
But maybe I should. I can always ignore the LLM output. I’ve practice doing that.
@becca: If he’s telling the truth about her, she has some very, very big and entrenched problems. Also, that there are some men out there who seem to be attracted to very unstable women. I’m both sad and horrified by this story.
@CSK: I didn’t care enough to follow the link, but Scott Lemieux at LGM comments on and links to Lizza.
And at Eschaton, Atrios comments on this and “elite” journalism in general.
Nuzzi beclowned herself, and apparently a lot of the brotherhood is OK with that.
@becca:
Oh, it’s only the 50% or so that is not in recession.
One question is how much do mutual funds, retirement funds, banks, and plain old middle class individuals have been “investing” in AI by buying shares of MS, Nvidia, Oracle, et al? That’s what causes the harm when the bubble pops.
@becca:
@Jen:
Like, the more I read about her, the more I kinda love her. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s a corrupt asshole who is actively making shit worse everywhere.
But on the other, she’s quite clearly a kinda pretty, delusional, unstable, idiot with daddy issues and a kink for old useless men. As a kinda pretty unstable idiot with daddy issues and a fondness for tastefully appropriate younger men*, we stan. I bet she’s fun** to go clubbing with. The key is to get the old pervy guys to buy you drinks and then get her outta there before she starts dreaming of water tanks.
I frequently tell my partner that there are a lot of downsides to being with unstable women, but the upsides are, [chef’s kiss], intense. She’s just lucky that I’m self-aware enough to attempt to keep every nice and stable. Until I don’t.
*like 28-35. I’m not a pervert like Megyn Kelly.
**I have an interesting taste in “fun”.
@Jen: She wanted him to sign an NDA about their relationship and then suckerpunched him in her book. The deviousness undercuts any sympathy I could find for her.
In fairness, I’m not defending Lizza. He’s the one fell for her.
@Kathy:
@becca:
I was reading, maybe it was Krugman, it certainly wasn’t crank shit, that the only useful thing left over after the bubble pops will the the data center capacity.
The fact that OpenAI can burn through 48 billion a year for nothing tells me that we should be taxing rich people till their eyes bleed.
@becca:
@Jen:
@Beth:
Oh yes, a wicked woman no doubt, but also a classic character. Oh the pathos a relationship with such a woman would engender in a young man.
My daughter just texted me their family insurance is going up $400 a month. In red state Tennessee. They get their insurance through SIL’s work.
They are pissed.
@Beth: as far as those data centers go, they talk like they’ll just carpet the Great Plains with them. It’s insanity.
@Beth:
I read Krugman’s substack daily. He has mentioned several times the frantic economic activity around LLMs is the only thing keeping the US economy out of a recession.
We should tax capital a lot more. Agreed. Also ban share buybacks, increase the minimum wage and index it to inflation, support labor unions, get money out of politics, and a whole lot more.
You know, Open AI can fall back to being a non-profit after the bubble pops 😉
@Scott:
Andrew Tate, Gislaine Maxwell, Matt Gaetz, et. al. — sure seems like Trump’s White House is perv/predator friendly and adjacent. One would think the Cosmic Ping Pong Pizza pedo conspiracy afficianados would be up in arms. But no.
@becca:
A truly charming creature, not
Trump says US will sell F-35 stealth jets to Saudis as Prince Mohammed visits
Well this is a bad move given —
China, Saudi Arabia to hold joint naval drills
China surpassed the US as Saudi Arabia’s top trading partner around 2011, and has conducted a series of joint military execises with the desert kingdom over the past decade. Now, the US will share it’s most advanced technology with the Saudis? Sure, it kind of establishes a supply chain dependancy for those F-35 fighters. Or maybe it sets up conditions for reverse engineering and aftermarket copy cat parts.
We used to be fastidious about who got our advanced military technology. Has our national security imperative been defanged and demoted to undocumented workers/families and suspected South American drug runner boats that may just be fishing vessels? What a moronic mess.
@Rob1:
Maybe that’s part of the deal with Xi to keep the rare earths flowing?
BTW, crypto is losing value
I still don’t get what crypto is good for. Gold, at least, has some practical and ornamental uses. There must be something to crypto, even if it’s only to bribe politicians or something like that.
I think a lot of people are invested in crypto, too. That bubble is overdue to pop.
@Beth: In a very strange synchronicity, I just ran into this poem by Andrea Gibson, who passed away very recently::
Somehow, it seems relevant.
@Kathy:
According to Krugman crypto is for criming.
I just saw, on the breaking news ticker at CNBC, that trump wants to revoke ABC’s license because one of the reporters asked about Epstein. I guess it was at the Bone Saw presser.
@becca:
Yeah, deflecting attention for covering up pedophiles by covering up murderers is not exactly a good idea…
Has anyone told him ABC does not even have a broadcast license?
@Kathy: Here’s a fun fact that will make you understand crypto either more or less: Black people are more likely to invest in cryptocurrency than white people.
https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/payments-system-research-briefings/the-cryptic-nature-of-black-consumer-cryptocurrency-ownership/
It’s just a scam. If more Black people are investing in something created by white people, it’s just a scam. I don’t know the details or the outline of the scam, but it’s certainly scam shaped.
There’s a lot of stuff in this article, and thousands of other articles like this (search for “crypto black people” on Google) that shock me. Black people are more likely to own crypto than stocks.
Again, this just screams “scam.”
And then the article contains some things just seem insanely inaccurate.
That can’t possibly mean what it clearly seems to say that it means, can it?
I live in Seattle, so I’m pretty sure this is true here, but I assumed it was an outlier situation — so many people have been recruited by tech companies and moved here, and there was a tiny Black community that was just overrun numerically by newcomers.
@becca:..Trump blathers again…
Just read the CNBC story becca noted in their 13:39 post on this thread. It should be mentioned that ABC Network does not have a license. The individual affiliates do including the
5 (?) stations owned and operated by ABC. However any fair reading of Supreme Leader King Jong Trump’s remarks would suggest that even though this has been reported many times the Chump is just too stupid understand this.
Because I’m a bad person, I think that every Democrat that gets up to speak in either House or Senate should begin and end their speech with an oink oink.
@Rob1:
Our national security imperative is 1) Enriching Trump and his family and 2) Retaliating against any country that does not kiss Trump’s ass. Trump is literally incapable of caring about anyone or anything but himself. And I mean literally literally. Psychopaths don’t have any neurons devoted to empathy, sympathy or humanity. You might as well expect empathy from a crocodile.
@becca:
Okay, I checked out the telos link and saw that Ryan Lizza had some things to say about Keith Olbermann, who has been plenty critical of Lizza on his Countdown podcast. Olbermann is known for talking about his friendships and relationships, and so has had some things to say about Nuzzi, but the only criticism I’ve heard is her poor professional judgment in developing a personal relationship with RFK Jr when he was a subject of the presidential campaign she was covering.
There may not be a large overlap of people who are interested in Nuzzi’s antics and/or book and people who would listen to Olbermann, but the next Countdown with Keith Olbermann podcast, to be released Thursday (early morning), may be interesting. For those not accustomed to his presentation, Ben Affleck’s 2008 SNL portrayal of him on his old MSNBC show, while over the top, was just about spot on.
@Kathy: There’s a special division at Disney, unimaginatively named “ABC Owned Television Stations”, that owns several over-the-air stations that have broadcast licenses. In particular, ABC has almost always owned broadcast affiliates in the biggest US cities: New York, Chicago, LA, etc. So Trump’s threat is not completely idle.
@Rob1:
Selling F-35’s to the Saudi’s?
That’s a risky thing, unless the US retains full effective supervision.
Which is not entirely impossible.
I one had some converstions with an ex-RAF guy (a literal “high flyer”, lol) who after retiring took a job with British Aerospace as a senior manager of the operations of the UK supplied Tornado strike aircraft in Saudi.
Basically the entire BAe team were ex-RAF (“apart, of course, from the chap from ‘6”) and the terms of the contract were that, though there were nominal Saudi “managers” and “engineers”, all avionics and weapons systems were managed by the BAe team, and any repairs or updates or maintainence of such were done by them, and any replaced parts were shipped back to the UK in secured consignments.
Whether the US arranges similar terms?
Let’s hope so.
How are we going to get from 427-1 in the House to “No Republiqans voted for it”? And how long will it take? Weeks?
@Michael Reynolds: So our national security apparatus has become a paper (overed) tiger? Man, and we spent so much money on that sucker.
@JohnSF: So how does that work if the F-35s are used in future joint military exercises with China, up close and personal to the aircraft’s operational envelope?
The House passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act by a vote of 427 to 1. The lone ‘no’ vote was Clay Higgins, who said the bill in its current form would hurt a lot of innocent people.
Representative Summer Lee (PA) predicted last week (Thursday, I believe) that the bill would pass the House unanimously. That was a bold prediction at a time when only a few Republicans had publicly committed to voting for it and news outlets were reporting that dozens more may support it. That was also several days before trump publicly flipped and said the House should pass it.
Edit: As @Kathy: already posted.
Mobster mentality in the Oval Office:
Trump shrugs off Khashoggi murder during Saudi prince’s White House visit
— Ehhh, it is what it is [shrugs]. Fuhgeddaboudit. Leave the saw, take the cannoli.
@Rob1:
It would allow China a lot of observation of F-35 electonic emissions etc; especially if the Saudi pilot involved was “cooperative”.
But far less than if they god their hands on the hardware and software.
Overall, as I said: risky, without very strict supervision terms.
I’d be inclined NOT to risk it.
Privately tell the Saudis: “if you hold joint exercises with the PLAN, no deal.”
But Trump and his administration seems to reflexively genuflect to Riyadh, for some reason.
Shared taste in decor, perhaps?
@Gustopher:
Crypto makes sense as a scam or an overvalued fad, like tulips*.
Still, a higher percentage of Black people may own crypto, but more white people own crypto. Three being more whites overall, 13% of them are likely more than 18% of blacks.
Anyway, I don’t see how who owns how much denotes a scam or not.
@Michael Cain:
I did know ABC owned some affiliates. honestly, I though they owned more. But if you strip ABC of its license(s), what of the other affiliates owned by someone else?
I won’t say the courts would find that illegal, though the would. Only because the Fixer Curt might think it’s A OK.
@Michael Reynolds:
This.
Further, a serious problem with Trump, and many of his mini-morons are that they are stupid socipaths.
A more intelligent version might be able to do without “empathy, sympathy or humanity”, but nonetheless be able to calculate advantage rationally (see eg Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, etc)
Trump’s default to kayfabe, bullying, and personal animosity has shot himself in the foot repeatedly over his own declared policies re China.
And led him, inevitably, to over-boast, then back down when it turns out Xi has outsmarted him.
Machiavelli redone by a moron.
(I suspect Rubio is taking up day-drinking; Rubio is an over-ambitious suck-up, but I probably just smart enough to realise how epically Trump is screwing up. )
@Kathy:
427-1. May one hope Dread Justice Roberts and his accomplices may start losing faith in the persistence of the Trump Reich?
@gVOR10:
There was buzz since the discharge petition moved that some Republiqans would vote for it. Then El Taco instructed them to pass it last Sunday, and today nearly all of them did.
Why? because they think the files should be released, or because their Taco Supremo commanded them?
Kathy’s First Law: nothing is ever that simple.
@Michael Reynolds:
Like the one in my avatar that has a human hand sticking out of its mouth?
@Michael Reynolds:
C0ngrats. Unlike some of our brethren, I don’t get jealous of another author’s success.
You write YA fiction and I write LGBT. Neither of which describes us personally.
Cooking report while I wait for something to do at work…
I keep making the same mistake every time I cook chilaquiles (or enchiladas for that matter). I forget to save some of the sauce before mixing in the corn chips (or bathing the enchiladas in sauce before putting them in the oven).
The corn tortillas are as absorbent as sponges. So they absorb all the sauce you pour on them or mix them with. Freshly cooked, they don’t have time to absorb it all. After a day, they feel a bit dry and can use some fresh sauce on top.
They’re not dried up, and still taste fine, but the texture feels a little off…
In restaurants, they often lay the corn chips on a plate, and ladle sauce on top after adding shredded chicken, if any. This doesn’t work well, IMO, unless you let them soak for a few minutes. Otherwise they’re chips and salsa, not chilaquiles.
@Kathy:
I suspect the AP article James Joyner posted is probably right, Trump was informed there were nearly 100 Rs in the house who were going to buck him on this…so he chose to hop on the train instead of being run over by it. It’s not much, but it’s comforting to know there is a limit, any limit really, to what the Rs will tolerate from King Donald the First.
The MAGA Carta: “You can diddle us all you want, but we draw the line at our kids.”
@JohnSF: maybe it’s more like harem envy. I bet that’s it.
So is Trump at this point planning to have the senate bury the bill? Would he veto the bill himself? He could also just declare there’s an ongoing investigation and thus the files cannot be released. After all Trump just demanded that the DOJ investigate Democratic connections to Epstein.
@becca:
And a whole lot of water. Meanwhile water in general continues it’s path of becoming the new black gold.
Sucks for the locals when an AI datacenter is built. Every service suddenly becomes a lot more expensive..
@Rob1: Seeing an aircraft in operation leaves opportunities for the aircraft’s owners/builders to alter the perceived capabilities. Having first hand access to the craft itself via a friendly nation is an entirely different thing. The USA traditionally provided export versions of relevant components/software. I’m not sure what version saudi arabia will get and I’m definitely not confident in the current administrations ability to limit leaks.
@dazedandconfused:
“If I lead, follow! If you don’t follow, I’ll move in the same direction you want to go and pretend I led you there!!111!”
It does sound like the beloathed Taco.
@Matt:
Schumer–who, for all his flaws, knows how to do some shit–moved to have it deemed passed by the Senate, and his motion was carried, so the bill was sent directly to the President’s desk with no amendments. It also means the Senate passed it unanimously, so good luck vetoing it.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:..The individual affiliates do including the 5 (?) stations owned and operated by ABC.
This was true in the past however:
Currently under this formula ABC currently owns and operates 8 TV stations in markets across the country.
WikiP
For those that do not know, most federal employees can’t make more than a Congress-critter, unlness a MD like Fauci. All the 4-Star Generals, make less than the High Scholl Principals in my District (Superentendent way more). Maxed out at $174k/year (not including allowances).
I’ve seen some memes about Admiral Holsey, who is STILL on active duty and in charge of Southern Command (near Miami) for the next month (Dec 12) = he is about to retire (2 years early – should have been at Southern Command until Nov 2027). He can’t just give 2-weeks notice. . He likely will retire as a Vice Admiral (one step down, 3-star) as he hasn’t served long enough as a 4-star. He’ll make more in retirement than on Active Duty due to the restriction that no General/Admiral can make more in salary (not including allowances) than a Congressman (~$174K), with retirement pay based on what he should have been making (he’s making less than my local high school principal, really – urban district in WA). His Deputy will take over until a replacement is nominated and confirmed by the US Senate (um, they just back to work). This Deputy is a 3-star who will be showing up at a table of 4-stars, joy (actually the 4-stars will understand). Today every senior officer O-6 to O-9 (all flag officers plus senior O-6) are making the same wage. Except for patriotism, why stay? You get promoted, zero salary increase. ZERO, over the entire General/Admiral world. A Colonel (O-6) makes the same money as the Chairman (CJCS). Really (not including allowances)_
@Mikey: Cool thanks for the update. I’ve been out of the loop for a while due to life.