Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, February 24, 2026
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27 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.
So are we playing any drinking games for the SOTU, or are we afraid we’ll get entirely too drunk every time we have to take a shot when he mentions stolen elections and the great economy? 😉
@Jax: I know my blood pressure could not handle the SOTU speech. I mean, we’ve already been warned that it will be long…the airing of grievances and victim mentality will be epic, I’m sure.
I’ll wait for the post-speech analysis, as it were.
Also, it doesn’t even start until 9 p.m. and that’s wind-down time for me. I need to read for about an hour before I go to sleep (quiets the brain), so I haven’t watched a SOTU for years. I actually think Bush (43) was the last time I watched, or maybe Obama.
@Jen:
If I wanted to watch a demented geezer ramble incoherently about things he knows nothing about while he spews hateful words interspersed with narcissistic fantasies and delusions, for God’s sake why would I?
Re on the AG thread yesterday, I think the issue in Escape wasn’t designing the hyperdrive ship, but that its operation would harm the human crew, and that had crashed the computer of the competitor company. The US Robots team, namely Dr. Calvin, instruct their positronic brain computer, aka Brain to reject any portion of the info that harms humans, but they downplay the importance of any harm to the point Brain can pass off temporary, reversible harm as a joke.
Unfortunately I’ve lost my copy of I, Robot. So, I can’t check that out.
BTW:
“Spock, are you pondering what I’m pondering?”
“I think so, Jim. But what if the Klingon won’t wear the nylons?”
@Jax:
@Jen:
We know that Dr. T and Prof. J will watch this shitshow for us and be honest communicators of what is said. Relax, watch a movie, navel gaze.
@Jax:
Let us know how you are.
@CSK: Well, I’m extremely frustrated with Huntsman’s. They again released the results of my biopsy on the MyChart app, and I still haven’t heard much from a human who works there besides a brief phone call with some dude who said he’d have a meeting with the doctors Thursday and would get back to me. There are some anomalies in my biopsy, it indicates two different possible types of pancreatic cancer that don’t usually exist in unison.
My mom and daughters and I are all flying out to Oregon this weekend so I can show them my new place, then we’re going to head over to the coast for a couple days and play tourist. Hopefully see some whales and stuff. We’ve never gone on a “girls trip” before, I wanted to go do something with all of them while I still feel pretty good.
I did get a hold of the pancreatic specialist unit at OHSU Knights in Portland. They got a hold of my test results and are going to try to get me in the 3rd, while I’m still in Oregon.
I’m not sure how much faith I have in Huntsman’s right now.
I am not going to the betting sites, but I have two small bets:
1) I bet he insults some of the Supreme Court Justices with a stronger statement than his disagreement with their decision.
2) Given that the men’s gold medal hockey team has agreed to come and the women’s gold medal hockey team has declined the invitation, I bet he cannot acknowledge the men’s attendance without negatively commenting about the women’s absence.
I will wait for the reporting to see how I do. I have no intention of spending my time on it.
@Jax:
Were I you, I’d be tempted to tell Huntsman’s to bugger off. OSHU is ranked #1 in Oregon for strong outcomes. That’s what you need, and that’s what we want for you.
@Joe: I’m an ignoramus on team invites to SOTU or the WH. Is it expected that all members show up and do non-attendees need to send regrets?
The Seahawks are not going to the White House. Trump wants sycophants. He will wind up inviting class D minor league all stars because they will be the only ones who want to show up.
@Mr. Prosser: Usually some of them show up, but rarely all. Roberts shows up pretty reliably, but I understand Gorsuch stopped coming some time ago on the principal that it was too political for his taste.
The men’s hockey team at the SOTU? That’s messed up. I checked it out and heard the goalie say something about the opportunity to visit the White House, so either some of them are confused or I don’t know the whole story. Also saw that Quinn Hughes said they were excited to go, which is even more messed up because he plays for the Minnesota Wild. They play 15 minutes from the Whipple federal building, which is not within walking distance of much but where detainees are released at all hours with no means of transport and without protection from the winter weather. I guess this administration’s pseudo-amateur-military occupation of the Twin Cities and resulting violence hasn’t meant much to him.
@Sleeping Dog:
I hope our hosts don’t feel obligated on my account.
@CSK: My cousins are certain it’s a sign from the cosmos and my Dad up above that THIS is why/how I found that place in Oregon, and it’s where I’m supposed to be. 😉
I was just glad OHSU listened, especially after they saw the results of my CT scan and the biopsy. This whole experience with Huntsman’s has been nuts.
@Jax:
When you feel up to it, let us know how it’s going with OSHU.
@Eusebio: Hockey is by far the whitest of the four major men’s team sports. Probably not nearly the amount of social awareness you would see in football or basketball which have very low percentages of white players. Baseball is a special case because you have a very large percentage of Hispanic players. My understanding is that Trump is very popular among white professional athletes. The NHL as a whole might be a problem for him since most players are Canadian and a lot are European but USA hockey is a bunch of young white guys, many of whom might spend their time listening to Joe Rogan and watching UFC (if you really want vile, overt racism, the UFC is not a bad place to begin).
@Lucys Football: I would not discount Trump support in the NHL because of European and Canadian players. Wayne Gretzky, one of Canada’s two best hockey players ever, is seen as a Trump supporter here. I live near his winery in Niagara and it has lost a lot of business because of this despite the elimination of US wine sales in Ontario.
Scenario on how Artificial General Intelligence might crash the economy.
I’m not sure I buy the parts I could understand. I do buy the notion that if AI can replace humans at many jobs, it makes sense to assume employment would go down while GDP continues to go up.
The USSR fought Elon’s Germany between 22nd June 1941 and 8th May 1945. That’s 3 years and ten and a half months.
Mad Vlad’s Russia has been at war with Ukraine for longer than that, a full four years.
I guess that’s why Vlad calls it a special military operation rather than the Greater Patriotic War, or some other grandiose name that would render El Taco apoplectic with jealousy.
Via The Hill, Trump promises that his SOTU tonight will be “long.” I’m delighted I don’t have to sit through it.
@Kathy: The situation far more like WW1 than 2. Nobody could figure out how to overcome the trenches, and now nobody can figure out how to overcome the drones.
@Kathy:
I’ve been waiting for him to copy the “special military operation” designation. He does, after all, seem determined to copy putin’s move of launching a military assault just after the Winter Olympics.
For the SOTU the Dems should not boycott it. They should all show up, but if Trump gets silly (sure to happen) they should start walking out one or two at a time in precisely the same manner audiences walk out of insufferably boring movies.
@CSK: I would rather smear my naked crotch with a can of dog food and stride confidently into a holding pen of ravenous wolves than listen to the orange shitgoblin blather along at a thousand lies an hour.
@dazedandconfused:
WWI ended when Germany couldn’t fight any more.
It remains to be seen which side in this war reaches that stage sooner.
@dazedandconfused:
It would have to be a Golden Military Operation.
@Jax:
Enjoy your time in Oregon. I treated at sisters of Providence I in portland, and OHSU also has a stellar reputation.
If you wind up in the Portland area, I hope that we can get together for a cup of wormwood or something similar.
Also, if you wind up moving your treatment up to puddle town, locations south of Salem become rough as far as a commute for treatment. Speaking from my experience, anything more than a 30 or 40 minute drive each way is really really ugly. I was doing my own driving and it was rough.
Seriously, keep in touch with us all, I know everyone here is pulling for you.