Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, March 24, 2026
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23 comments
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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I live in a state that had acknowledged (systemic) voter fraud in 2004 (WA). Like entire memory care facilities voting. Ballots being “found” up to a week after the election. Very sketchy (Governor’s race was under 500 votes and 3 or so recounts). Things got fixed and we are now 100% vote by mail (or drop box which I use, armored drop boxes with fire suppression, not your local mail box – recently one was taken out by a large pickup – pickup destroyed, fresh concrete to put the drop box back in place – OK .1% ADA ballot at the election center = polling station). The cost of implementing the SAVE Act is crippling to my county government – like 100 sheriff deputies cost (out of 650 including jail). Unfunded mandate. Stupid expense. Mr Trump, give us massive money to fund this silly idea otherwise hell no.
The idea of counting votes by hand is ludicrous. If my bank counted everything by hand….OMG, ever hear about this new thing called a computer? No, we have machines for that (please note I am NOT suggesting touch screens without a paper backup that can be hacked). If you only have polling stations then most all the silly bond and levy initiatives in the off cycle are going to pass because no one shows up to vote on a random Tuesday in April except the special interests – vice getting the August (or April) ballot in the mail and returning it (cough, I’m heavily involved in a April and August bond levy locally). BTW, the last major national proven voter fraud was 2018 in North Carolina – by a Republican Baptist preacher https://www.lawyerscommittee.org/north-carolina-voter-fraud/
If there’s a contest for the strangest headline this year, I think we have a winner:
Quadruple amputee cornhole champion facing murder charges in fatal shooting
How does exercise postpone dementia development? Here is one explanation. (Exercise is known to correlate negatively with cognitive decline).
“WaPo Gift”
etc.
Something to ponder, from Paul Campos at LGM:
The continued destruction of our shared reality, first by right-wing cable news and talk radio, then by Balkanized social media, and now by AI fakery doesn’t help matters.
So nice of Trump to take ownership of the empty pay envelopes TSA employees are receiving. He publicly ordered Republicans to vote against funding TSA, which Dems have said they are willing to do, unless the Dems agree to pass the SAVE Act, which has gone from “voter ID” to “show me your papers” to transphobia. (All that in the name of solving a non-existent problem.) Trump likes to say ownership is better than leasing, so he happily owns:
1. Tariff induced inflation.
2. An unnecessary war and its concomitant economic and environmental damage, and war crimes.
3. Long lines at the airport. And
4. An incompetent federal bureaucracy that has been stripped of institutional knowledge by 19 year old hackers.
As the ghost of Colin Powell would say, “You broke it, you bought it.”
@Kingdaddy:
From the comments, interesting demographic:
“Link“
@Jen:
Yes, I saw that and was wondering how someone with no hands managed to drive a car and fires a gun. And “cornholing” sounds faintly obscene.
@Charley in Cleveland:
The SAVE Act, as passed by the House and sitting in the Senate, affects only registration. It doesn’t specify any changes in voting. It will be enjoined almost instantly by the courts if for no other reason than the timeline: it requires the Election Assistance Commission to issue complete rules within 10 days of signing, and the states’ chief election officials to implement those rules within 30 days of signing. Which is silly on its face, as it will require states to change their software systems, a process that often takes years.
@Michael Cain:
Also the 10 day requirement would run afoul of the Administrative Procedures Act. The “Save” act was always window dressing to appease the
fuhrerfelon.Iran has been throwing missiles and drones at the various Gulf states. These have hit not just their territories, but also some of their ports and production facilities.
So, why haven’t they struck back?
Several years ago at a lotto stand, someone asked the attendant what the automatic pick was. The attendant explained the terminal randomly picks any number of combinations.
The customer then got some, and said “I suppose the machine knows more about which numbers to pick.”
Oh, be still, my rolling eyes.
Beyond the implied fallacy, there’s the faith in the machine, and the even bigger assumption that the machine “knows” anything. The very salient part if that the machine knows better.
This is the reason Ai is making inroads in society, despite its very limited usefulness. An awful lot of people believe the machine knows better.
@Kathy: Given the way humans pick numbers, there are going to be a lot of combinations that are unused — letting the machine pick for you gives you a higher chance of not having to share a prize if you win.
And that’s just if it is random. It would be possible to have the machine deliberately choose unpicked sets of numbers.
I don’t want to defend AI, but I’ve met people, and a whole lot of them are really dumb. If it came down to having to trust either of my brothers or an AI to make some kind of decision, I might go with the AI.
(My father should probably review all his advanced medical directives and get those in place so he is never dependent on my brothers — they live in the same city and might be the ones making decisions for him)
@Kathy: Probably fear of escalation and an opinion the likelihood this might end in just a few weeks -and with their de-salination plants still intact- remains high. They are utterly dependent on those de-sal plants.
Plus, assisting the Israelis kill fellow Muslims, even Shiites, is bad regional PR, to say the least.
@Kathy:
Going back to punch cards and mainframes, it was kind of a joke, but known to happen, that somebody would write a short program that did nothing but print (on green bar paper) the result he wanted. “Hey, it’s what the computer said.”
@Gustopher:
Your brothers might be using an LLM as well.
Computers aren’t really random, just more random than people. When I need to make up random numbers, I notice a definite pattern.
@gVOR10:
That’s a bit easier than getting an LLM to say what you want. Just not that different.
To those who grasp AI, which is definitely not me, a snip form Fortune on Anthropic testing would seem to indicate self awareness. It would seem it deliberately changed it’s behavior when it became aware it was being tested:
https://fortune.com/2025/10/06/anthropic-claude-sonnet-4-5-knows-when-its-being-tested-situational-awareness-safety-performance-concerns/
If a model realizes it’s being evaluated, it may tailor its behavior to pass certain tests, masking its true capabilities. Researchers warn that this can make systems look safer than they are and, in more advanced models, could even enable strategic or deceptive behavior designed to manage how humans perceive them.
Anthropic said that by its own metrics, Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the “most aligned” model yet. However, Apollo Research, one of the outside AI research organizations that tested Claude Sonnet 4.5, said in the report that it couldn’t rule out that the model’s low deception rates in tests was “at least partially driven by its evaluation awareness.”
Perhaps they should rename it “HAL 9000”?
@Kathy:
They never wanted or expected this, I suspect.
Even the Saudis.
Evertyhing I’ve seen indicates that they assumed, and were possibly assured, it would be a repeat of last years airstrikes. Limited to air defences, ballistic missiles realted targets, and residual nuclear-raslted targets. With the USS Roosevelt able to hit targets in eastern Iran that had prviously been difficult to reach
This to be the “stick” (plus a possible “carrot” of sanctions relief?) to press Iran into full and assured termination of nuclear enrichment, and possibly also concessions on missiles and “proxies”. In other word, a limited attack to coerce diplomacy
My speculation is that Trump and Netanyahu (with Witkoff, Kushner, Rubio and Hegseth as secondary players) went from this to a goal of more total Iranian capitulation on those matters by larger air campign. And then to rather vague hopes of by Trump of “regime change” as a possible bonus, due over-optimistic assessments of Iranian regime fragility.
My further specualtion from there (and this is at this point “guessology”) is that the IDF spotted the Khamenei meting on 28 Febraurary, and persuaded Trump to accept a “decapition” strike. After that, the IDF implemented a pre-planned “regime kill” target list, and the US also stepped up to general attacks on IRGC targets.
This triggered the inevitable, predicatable, and predicted, implementation of Iranian counter-blows on GCC targets, and closing the Straits of Hormuz.
To the dismay of the Gulf Arabs, who did not expect this sort of US/Isreali all-out assault.
To the disapointment of Trump, who’d bought into the narrative of prompt regime collapse, and was caught flat-footed when it did not happen.
And to the relative indiffrence of Netanyahu, for whom regime collapse would be a “nice to have” but if not essential.
The main point from the Jerusalem perspective is to degrade Iranian capabiliy, and come back for more later. If the US can be persuaded to pound Iran into “failed state” status, even better. From Bibis p.o.v. any blowback on the Arabs is a matter of “too bad; c’est la guerre.”
So the Gulf Arabs are still hoping, desperately, that something can be rescued from this mess.
Presumably that some sort of US/Iran is still available. And therefore not hitting Iran in the hope that this is still achievable.
The problem is now that Iran is making maximal demands of its own: compensation for damage, including from the GCC; the removal of US bases; guarantees against attack including on its proxies; even some sort of accepted control over the straits.
These demands are a nightmare for the GCC: they amount to de facto Iranian regional hegemony.
So now they seem to be moving to press the US that now this has begun (against their will) it must be finished in way that avoids Iranian domination over them.
That may likely be a cause for which they are prepared to commit to direct military action.
If the US does now back out, and Iran refuses to back off, the implications are massive, and hard to predict. Possibly the complete loss of US predominance in Arabia, and either Iranian predominance, or a new coalition of Powers stepping in.
Paramount has canceled Star Fleet Academy. They’ve already shot season two – because they’re not very bright and I guess they had an extra hundred million to burn.
@JohnSF:
I knew this was going to be bad. I didn’t think it would be catastrophic.
@JohnSF: Just embellishment to your insightful post: Trump may have assumed he could always end this unilaterally if went bad, and with the attention span of the US media these days, it would all be forgotten come the 26 elections, but that assumed the Iranians would also be looking to end it. Takes two to un-tango.
I forget who is supposed to have said during the Versailles negotiations at the end of WWI: “God gave us ten commandments. We broke them. Mr. Wilson has given us fourteen points. We shall see.”
El Taco has given Iran 15 points.
Salient: Iran not enriching any more nuclear material.
I don’t see that one ever happening.
And this: Any further use of its missiles will be for Iranian self-defence only
Much as I hate the regime of the Mad Mullahs, it wasn’t Iran that started shooting missiles this time. Arguably they’re employing them in self defense now. And given that Israel can bomb Iran any time they want, rational self defense would include missiles capable of reaching Israel.
I dare say the Iranians might have agreed to most of this, had El Taco not started a war.
Some levity to close out a crappy day:
NASA’s Isaacman has big dreams for a lunar base (good bye Gateway Lunar space station!), and a nuclear powered Mars rocket.
What’s funny is this bit:
Speaking about the broligarch lunar landers under development, the piece says, “Recent NASA oversight reports have warned that the companies’ efforts lag behind schedule and risk pushing the agency’s plans to land humans on the moon beyond the 2028 goal.”
Risk? Risk? There’s no risk. Humans won’t return to the Moon two years from now. That’s certainty, not risk.
Lofty NASA goals are nothing new. Having the next administration cut or eliminate them isn’t new, either. Not every administration does this, but enough do that progress is slow and halting.
I’d hoped private space companies would provide more consistency, but that’s not to be. In the end, XpaceS, Blue Origin, etc. have the capital to develop launch systems, but not to use them. Not unless there’s money to be made, like the Xtarlink business and Lex Bezos’ version of it.
I’m glad GPS came when it did. If it were to be done today, Adolf and Lex would charge us for using it.
@JohnSF:
I believe protocol demands that the losing side not make maximalist demands. It’s as if the Japanese after Nagasaki had demanded the return of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the removal of the US fleet from the western Pacific. The Iranians don’t seem to realize they lost. Like two weeks ago. I know they lost because my president told me so.
If Arab oil production facilities are successfully targeted this whole thing stops being funny. The poor will be left to try and outbid the rich for dwindling oil supplies. People will die from this. And maybe the Gulf residents themselves if the food and water get cut off.