Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, March 31, 2026
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50 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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Chip Roy was my Congressman until we moved. He is a bigoted, racist, miserable human being. He is running for Texas Attorney General. A poobah in the incredibly misnamed “Freedom Caucus”.
A big noise in Texas politics right now is campaigning against Sharia Law and Muslims in general. That is just hiding the Republicans deep seated anti-Semitism. After the Jews, it will be Mormons or atheists or Unitarians.
We ended Reconstruction too soon.
Texas lawmaker ignites outrage after ‘No more Muslims’ message
Alternative headline: Gulf States Urge United States Fight Iran to the Last American.
Gulf allies privately make the case to Trump to keep fighting until Iran is decisively defeated
With birthright citizenship coming up for oral argument tomorrow, DJT once again puts his bottomless ignorance on display:
What is it that makes Trump believe everyone is taking advantage of him? That every single occurrence of every single day has a price tag? Where are the mental health professionals? Where’s Jake Tapper? The SCOTUS justices have to love having a carnival barker calling them dumb.
I am so glad that I’m retired from the Air Force.
Senator stalls 3 ‘unfit’ officer promotions in retort to Hegseth
I don’t know whether this is BS or not. But, I would point out, that we already have a massive military complex built. It is called the Pentagon.
Trump says massive military complex to be built beneath White House ballroom
Finally! A use for AI.
AI Voice Inspired by a Reality TV Star Calls 3,000 Pubs to Find the Cheapest Pint of Guinness in Ireland
“Wajeeh Lion”
Financial hanky-panky, no surprise from a Trump administration.
Excerpts:
@Scott:
No more corporatists? How’s he going to fund the Republican Party?
Are we finally seeing cracks in Trump’s base? As I (and others) have stated before, 36% (ish) seems to be Trump’s solid floor of support. Polls have gotten to 37, 36%, but never lower. Until now.
Zeteo has the early toplines from a UMASS Amhearst poll, and it shows a big shift:
-33% approval, 62% disapproval.
-8% approve of sending ground forces into Iran; 30% of self-identified MAGAs approve.
-59% believe the Trump admin is hiding Epstein information
-And finally “immigration – Trump’s signature issue – has “quickly become one of the president’s most pressing vulnerabilities.” Only 35% say he’s handled immigration well, and 60% say he hasn’t.”
https://zeteo.com/p/are-these-trumps-worst-poll-numbers-first-draft
@Neil Hudelson:
The polls are starting to look good. Nate, 50 Plus One and RCP show net negatives in the 17 to 20% underwater range. That’s an improvement. It’s been plateaued around negative 13 to 15 for a while. But I don’t put much weight on MAGA’s supposed anti-war stance. If they’re against ground troops it’s because they don’t think Trump is going to do it. If he does, MAGA will cartwheel over to support.
According to Nestle, 400,000+ Kit-Kat bars were stolen en route from Italy to Poland.
“The New Republic”
I think paywalled, but some excerpts:
The piece later points out Hegseth actually likes war crimes, affirmatively supports them.
@charontwo:
Pope Leo disagrees:
@Scott: You know, once upon a time, I was a regular on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog. There were lots of black folks in the commenting crew. Both they and Coates would give a figurative eyeroll at people exclaiming how racism was over due to Obama getting elected. It was one of the most important things I learned from the Golden Horde.
Racism will never be “over”. It’s built on a basic human characteristic: The tendency to categorize people into Us and Them. What we get to do is tinker with the definition of “Us” and “Them”. And we can tinker quite a lot. But that means every generation needs to make this effort. Every generation needs to actively create a world where racism can’t really get much traction. I think that world is possible. I don’t think a world with no racism is possible.
@Scott: The Gulf States battle hymn must be “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
@Michael Reynolds:
The key takeaway regarding the felon’s polling is that the trendline is downward, while his approval may bounce up and down, it never recovers to the prior high. It is a continue drip of support being lost. Now he’s down be approval only being MAGAts and hardcore R’s. Where the likely fracture in his support among the MAGAts will be among young conservatives, who are looking beyond him for their next leader.
@CSK:
I bet they’ll melt them down and recast them as crappy knockoffs of good chocolate.
I certainly agree with Atrios’ sentiment here,
More hope than expectation, I fear.
Several reports this AM that the AC/DC felon is considering walking away from his war and leave the rest of the world the problem of reopening the Strait. Last week Rubio tried to move the Europeans to help by claiming that Iran will collect a toll on ships passing through the Strait, if they don’t help the US open it.
It’s hard to comprehend how such a desperate threat was expected to be taken seriously. Paying the toll would be cheaper than a war. Of course, Iran and China would use this as an opportunity to break the regime of the petrodollar in oil trading.
@Scott:
But the Texas Oil producers are getting richer by selling domestic oil at global prices!
Way more profit!
@charontwo: Just to throw in my 2 cents FWIW, when will the Christian Nationalists starting quoting from the New Testament, you know the ACTUAL words of Jesus Christ versus what some writer imagined God saying?
@Jay L. Gischer:
First of all, hello from the Horde. I was also one of the regulars. The running joke I remember we had over there was that whenever a public figure would deny racism, we’d say “He lets them use his bathroom”–a reference to an incident in 2009 involving a Louisiana judge’s defense of his actions after he refused to marry an interracial couple.
With regard to the point about Obama: Shortly after his first election in ’08, there was a Daily Show bit with Larry Wilmore, where he says to Jon, “We’re straight.” Jon replies, “So racism is over?” Larry replies, “I said that we’re straight, not that we’re stupid.”
@Bobert:
Yes, for so called evangelicals that are trying to live the spirit of Jesus Christ, they do seem to ignore his teachings and you would think they were Jewish, for the amount of time the quote the old testament.
@gVOR10:
@Sleeping Dog:
Come now. Have you ever seen an infant wipe their own bottom and change their own diaper?
It’s in their nature to make a mess that others will clean up.
@CSK:..
That’s a lot of Chocolate!
(Smothers Brothers)
On today’s substack, Paul Krugman explains oil shipped out of the Gulf before the trump closure of Hormuz, is all near to reaching their destination. After that happens, there will be shortages of crude, as all too little is making its way out now.
What happens next is uncertain, but oil prices should continue to climb, and EL Taco’s delusions of negotiations will fail to calm down markets.
He’s alarmed, and says you should be, too.
I think this is one of those cases where nothing bad ever happens, until something bad happens.
A Federal Judge in Washington has issued a preliminary injunction halting construction of Trump’s ballroom.
Link
@gVOR10:
Corporations and corporatists are different things.
A corporation is a legal entity that allows investors to pool capital, and limits their liability to the sum of their investment.
A corporatist is a Jew.
Hope that helps!
@Kylopod: I recognized your handle from those days. Good times!
@Sleeping Dog: This is probably the best course of action at this point, so I assume Trump won’t actually do it.
@a country lawyer:
I imagine there will be vast quantities of ketchup hurled at the walls this evening.
The Supreme Court has ruled 8-1 that a ban on conversion therapy is a violation of a therapist’s first amendment rights, rejecting the argument that therapy is medical treatment which can and should be regulated.
Ineffective treatment that tortures the patient is a-ok!
No word on whether a therapist can counsel their patient and tell them to kill the president or something, or whether requiring a doctor to tell you if they find you have cancer would violate the doctor’s rights.
It’s 8-1, so there may be more to it than that, but on the face of it, it seems very bad.
I’m thinking of children who cannot consent to this abuse, and who can be sent for this abuse by their parents over kid’s objections.
Adults who want to be abused? — there are probably more fun ways, but I’m not going to yuck someone’s yum.
@CSK: or ketchup thrown at the gaping hole in the wall…
@Scott:
A bit unfair; the Gulf states did not ask for this war.
It seems what they had been told to expect was just a repeat of the limited strikes of last summer; then Israel and the US suddently went to a full-on “regime kill” operation.
And in response Iran started pounding them, and closed the Straits.
If the US walks away now, leaving Iran in control at Hormuz, their position is a nightmare. So naturally they are hoping that somehow the US can get them out of the midden the US has dropped them in. It seems rather likely that the US cannot, whether the US attempts either to walk away now, or Trump tries an inadequate esaclation to a limited ground operation.
So the outcome of all this may be Iran as emerging hegemon of the Gulf, and the the US being squeezed out. Trump and Netanyahu end up screwing everyone, including the US, Israel, and themselves.
@Scott:
My Congressman, Adam Smith, who is a pretty smart cookie on military affairs, is saying the Gulfies are asking for that but when asked t0 specify exactly what that would look like have no clear idea, just like most everybody else. I suspect they are going to be disappointed as well.
@Sleeping Dog:
And Trump has said similarly:
And Hegseth:
Yes, well, that’s a pig that’s not going to be flying anywhere.
No US allies, not UK , nor European, nor Japan, nor any others, are going to stick warships in the Straits as Hormuz as missile sponges.
Sod that.
And sod still more any idea of a NATO expeditionary land force at the Straits.
We have little problem called Russia on our doorstep, and even had we not, little inclination to see our military getting killed to save Trump’s blushes.
The Iranian surcharges will be of little weight in that scale.
And most European now see US membership of NATO as a dead-letter anyway, at least under Trump (or Vance, going forward.)
Seeing as only about 5% of Gulf oil goes to Europe (little more than the 4% that goes to the US) those most concerned will be China, India, Pakistan, Japan, and other Asian countries.
There are whole load of major strategic/political implications of all this that may play out.
@Gustopher: What the therapist in question claims she wants to do is to help people cope with living as straight people while having desires that are, er, undesirable. She explicitly denies trying to make them into heterosexuals or completely erase those desires.
I can see why this is a bit nuts, but I don’t think it’s conversion therapy.
AND, in the country I would like to live in, I don’t really see why a government shouldn’t be required to demonstrate a compelling interest in any law they set down. “Demonstrate a compelling interest” is legal speak for “tell us why this is any of your business”. This seems to me like it ought to be a conservative position, which is why I often get mistaken for a conservative, I guess.
Furthermore, strict scrutiny would definitively and immediately void all the laws on the books prohibiting gender-affirming care. Except that the current court is sticking it’s fingers in its ears and saying, “LALALA I’m not listening”. I think that Sotomayor and Kagan are playing a long game, thinking that affirming a strict scrutiny standard is probably for the best in the long run. The more contradictions get into the judicial record, the easier it is to overturn some of them.
Unpleasant as it is, I can live with this a lot more than with some of their recent decisions.
One indicator of how pissed off European public opinion is.
The far-right AfD part in Germany, that JD Vance was courting last spring, has just come out calling for the removal of US bases from Germany.
The thing the MAGA right tends to forget about European right populist-nationalists is that they are nationalists. Who have a condiderable heritage of disdain for all Americans of any sort.
If they have any inclinations to internationalism, its very much in a European context.
Whose basic assumptions are rather different to those of the American right (though these days that’s a bit of an ideological mash-up).
@JohnSF:
El Taco divides his time speaking on Europe in two ways: 1) we don’t need them, 2) they’re SOBs for not letting us use bases on their territory we need so much for this warexursionnotwarmilitaryoperationregimechangenegotiationoilgrab.
At some point Europe may just decide it wants to keep the Germans in, the Russians down, and the Americans out.
@JohnSF:
All this is scaring the east Asians, including Australia, spitless. There is now a strong incentive for the industrial Asian nations to ally with China, the only rational super-power left, for collective oil security.
@Kathy:
The daft thing is, most have been permitting base use.
The B-52’s and B-1’s are sortieing out of Fairford and Lakenheath in the UK.
Rammstein in Germany is the CENTCOM HQ that is managing US operations.
The USS Ford was at Souda Bay in Greece for repairs, and is now at Split, in Croatia, for ongoing repair/resupply and shore leave.
etc etc
Other US allies (Turkey, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Canada, etc) have also refused to have anything to do with this farce.
But the administration and MAGA are spitting venom almost exclusively at Europe, for some reason.
I have to suspect it’s some odd quirk of MAGA politics, maybe even psychology.
Did Europe beat them up at school, grab their lunch money and steal their girlfriend, or something?
It’s just a bit of a weird focus, almost an obsession; that somehow modern Europe is their antithesis?
Another thing is the repeated MAGA claim that “Europe has open borders!” when it most certainly does not. Internal “free movement” and “borderless zone” applies only internally, but MAGA seem unable to grasp the distinction. (As did many Brexiters, tbf).
Or the repeated claims that “Muslims are taking over Europe!” when the overall percentage is 6%.
(Varying: Bosnia and Albania are Muslim-majority, and have been for centuries)
It’s as if Europe is somehow a caricature projection of various MAGA complexes and paranoias.
While the adminstration is saying in effect:“We want nothing to do with European alliances any more, you ingrates. But only after we have no immediate need for your bases, obvs.”
It’s all a rather sorry and squalid end for the Atlantic Alliance.
@dazedandconfused:
Exactly.
Some possible consequences going forward (this is all highly specualtive, of course):
– The GCC terminates defence agreements with the US under Iranian pressure (possibly apart from Saudi Arabia?)
– China increases its influence in the Gulf region bothe via Iran anad as a “broker” between Iran and Arabians.
– The flow of petrotrade in dollars steadily declines as flows focus on Asia via purchasing and shipment security cooperation.
– China, India and others work out an Asian modus vivendi re Iran to ensure oil flow and Iran not getting to big for its boots.
– Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, India, Pakistan are increasingly inclined, perhaps, to detente with China and among each other to guarantee hydrocarbon flows.
– China rapidly builds pipelines for Russian oil and gas as an insurance policy, as well as increasing its non-carbon sources.
– NATO becomes effectively defunct; Europe combines moves for strategic autonomy with possible overtures to China as a restrainer of Russia.
– The slow decline of the petrodollar leads to less demand for US Treasuries; higher bond rates increase debt service costs, and make deficits more problematic; deficit contraints make US politics even more zero sum.
– Israel sees the “Abraham Accords” blow away like dust on the desert wind; attempts at local domination increase both Arab and European annoyance. (Possible collapse of Netanyahu/Likud political position as alternative, but don’t bet heavily on that.)
– Turkey attempts to shore up its position in Middle East/Arabia as an alternative pillar to Iran and a possible partner for any “Asian coalition” in the Gulf.
All seven gas stations in Sleepytown that were holding at $3.999/gal of regular unleaded for about a week are now charging $4.299/gal. A 30¢/gal increase. No discounts applied.
@JohnSF:
Ayn Rand liked to bash Europe a lot.
Overall Europe has a free enterprise economic base with more regulation and a broader welfare state. Also far less corruption, and prefers using soft power. Guns are not as freely available.
It’s unamerican, and rather successful.
That might be it. Or maybe the mere fact that the Euro is worth more than the Dollar.
El Taco went and signed an executive order to restrict mail in voting.
This is the kind of thing that needs to be fast-tracked on an emergency basis to the fixer court, though I’ve no idea what mental pretzels Uncle Thomas, Scalito, and the other four will conjure in order not to strike it down.
It should be noted that when the US was attacked Europe (NATO) responded strongly in our support. Nothing in NATO about starting wars of choice.
Steve
@Kathy:
California will disregard it, dead letter style.
I have been following several long running discussions on smartphones and their effects on teens. A recurring theme is that the suicide rate has increased among teen girls. What is rarely mentioned is that rates also increased among boys and in raw numbers the boys’ rate is 3 times that of girls. I cant tell if this is just because people dont know or if it’s a concerted attempt to blame girls/women for being overly emotional, weak and more susceptible than boys to peer pressure. I think the latter.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-to-learn/202309/dramatic-changes-in-teen-suicide-rates-over-seven-decades
@JohnSF:
In every point there’s the tacit assumption that the US is finished as a world power. And it’s a very good list. Not a happy list, but a good one.
Did I just hear that the US demanded Poland ship all its Patriots to the Gulf? That can’t be right, can it? Trump and Hegseth have really lost their fucking minds now.
@JohnSF:
Americans feel inferior to Europeans in many ways. You’re White people with really old stuff and museums. Also you’re thin, while we use Ozempic to chase donuts, and you’re vaguely effeminate, by which we mean sophisticated and don’t even have guns. You can summarize the American attitude toward Europe as, “You guys think you’re so cool, well you’re not.”
Basically I’m saying we just want your love, your admiration, your gratitude, and the surrender of your independent national wills to a child-raping psychopath supported entirely by morons and parasites.