Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, June 16, 2026
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21 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
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BlueSky.
Best thing about this weak-ass Iran memo is watching Vance destroy his already damaged career by shilling for it.
The two sides don’t agree on what’s in it. And Trump refuses to release it. Which tells me he is lying.
@Daryl: Vance was on NBC with Tom “Como te” Llamas last night, making one absurd claim after another, and managing to appear both smug and stupid as he recited talking points – “Because of President Trump’s leadership…” blah blah blah. The laughably vague MOU is “better than the JCPOA because Iran has to live up to its commitments” or it won’t get any money. Apparently JD has forgotten the wingnut hysteria that broke out when Obama released Iranian assets as part of the JCPOA, and was accused of paying for Iran’s cooperation. Now Trump will do the same thing and JD and his ilk will sing his praises.
Perhaps JD was thinking of the scene in 1945 on the American battleship, when Japan signed the MOU that ended WW2.
@Charley in Cleveland:
It’s all bullshit until we see documentation.
And Trump’s lies contain lies about other lies.
What’s getting little coverage is that the EU raised interest rates recently, and so did Japan this week. Apparently this can lead to divestment from US treasury bonds (that’s how the US finances its deficit spending) and US stocks as well.
Not so much because EU and Japanese bonds will pay higher rates, but because the US is no longer seen as either stable nor fiscally responsible.
This result would be bad at any time, but it will be worse when budget deficits are growing and the country needs to borrow more money. Perforce they’ll have to offer even higher rates, meaning the national debt will grow that much faster.
Doom predictions are common even in good times, and these are not good times. There are so many, eventually one will be right, or close enough.
And then, there’s that one gigantic colossal bubble of AI on the wall. If that bubble should happen to pop…
On other things, I saw a video on how to butcher a turkey to get separate pieces. It doesn’t seem so hard, but I definitely need to have the video on while I’m doing it. Between this and having to come to office on vacation to settle some loose ends, I deferred finally coking the turkey for next week.
Instead I went with something easy. Ground beef with bell pepper and onions, with a sauce made up of beef bouillon, and a little tomato puree, then mixed with plain white rice. It’s not an awesome dish by any means, but it’s surprisingly tasty for something so simple.
Trump claims that Qatar is the closest to Iran, “physically,” and that they can “walk right across the border.”
How does one man so frequently demonstrate how utterly clueless he is?
@Jen:
He must have some mighty BIG sharpies.
@Jen:
Practice.
Tom Sulivan at Digby’s place excerpts an Atlantic article on a recent study of conservatives.
Sullivan goes on to say that while the study and the Atlantic don’t mention Lakoff
IMHO Daniel Kahneman goes a long way toward explaining conservatives in Thinking, Fast and Slow. Intuition provides fast answers that feel right. Reason questions whether they’re right. Conservatives are content with the comfortable answer.
Lakoff observed that conservatives are well able to think through complex causation, but they default to simple morality, i.e. intuition.
Sullivan offers this as advice that voters don’t think the same way we engaged liberals think and we need to adjust our approach. Sound advice, but I would hope we would write off some conservatives before we give up reason.
The snoozefest has been playing at the office*. I ignore it, mostly: sometimes I chance to glance at the TV. Now and then I see a player or coach arguing with an official. And I wonder, how do they understand each other? Usually the official and player are from different countries, and may not have a language in common.
I suppose officials in such tournaments are required to speak several languages, but I don’t think the players are.
*BTW, turns out the streaming service they got the snoozefest package on is blocked by the corporate net server. I’ve no idea where they’re pulling the signal from.
Embarrassed by the near-immediate algae bloom in the Reflecting Pool, the administration is now dumping hydrogen peroxide in an effort to combat the greenish goo. They have a team of workers, emptying 3.5 gallon jugs into the pool. And there are nitwits out there who actually think the algae is some kind of intentional sabotage, rather than the very obvious ramification of painting the pool a color that absorbs light.
So, to recap: Trump spent $14 million to paint the reflecting pool blue. It not only did NOT solve ANY of the pool’s problems, it made some of them worse. It’s a metaphor for everything he touches.
@Jen:
At this point, I think we’re lucky they haven’t dumped gasoline on the pool and set it on fire.
On other matters, I found another limited use case for LLMs.
I can ask one factual questions about aspects of a story I’m writing. For instance, what are the effects of a Type 1A supernova on a planetary system 40 light years away. This is a kind of targeted search, and of course I need to check the sources later.
Then I ask about a hollowed out asteroid with kilometer thick walls 20 light years away. The response (and see above about caution with the output) gets me to think of changes to the asteroid.
None of this gets the LLM to write any part of the story, but ti helps me to think about parts of it. It’s handy to have the info on hand, too, even if I need to check it later.
But all these uses I have found are limited, and hardly essential. I could just write far less detail, or have a less detailed backstory. not worth the hundreds of billions in data centers, and much less their ancillary effects on air and water pollution or electricity prices.
@Jen:
I’ll never be inured to the embarrassment this oaf incites.
On today’s substack, Paul Krugman compares America’s current condition with the fall fo the Roman Republic.
There are similarities. He tries to tie much of it with the vulgarity of the US ruling class, in fact the post is title The theory of the Vulgar Class. He has a point, but, as he also mentions, the gist is extreme inequality.
Short version, Rome grew rich from conquest in the east. The majority of the spoils went to those in the upper patrician class. The middle class, so to speak, the independent land owning farmers, got very little. Further, many of them were dispossessed. Many of the eastern campaigns took a long time, during which those serving in the legions couldn’t tend to their fields and livestock. TL;DR: the majority wound up selling their lands to the patrician class.
That’s quite analogous to America, and to some extent other high income countries. There have been no conquests, but the oligarchs have grown ludicrously wealthy from the growing economy, while the middle class has been squeezed by stagnated wages that don’t reflect productivity gains.
As I keep harping, that’s the problem. not just that Adolf is a trillionaire, but that the vast majority of the population aren’t doing as well economically as their parents did.
For a god treatment on the antecedents of the fall of the Roman Republic, I can recommend Mike Duncan’s “The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic.”
@Jen:
For those who didn’t see the context of that statement, it was during a meeting with the Qatari Emir.
@Kathy:
The official language used by referees during World Cup matches is English. A lot of the players have played professionally on international teams, and even if they haven’t, probably understand some amount of English gamespeak. As for the current match, I imagine the players from France and Senegal are chatting with one another in French.
@Jen: @Jen: When I lived in Arlington, VA I used to bike from Rosslyn across the Key Bridge, through Georgetown to PA Ave (the White House was immediately to the right), then to Capitol Hill. Took in the site from the Capitol steps looking west, then down the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial. The Reflecting Pool was never green. In fact, it reflected all around it. That was the point, right?
@Eusebio:
If I were a MAGA, I’d claim that either: A) Trump was just joshing with the emir or B) Trump was playing four-dimensional chess.
Trump’s intellect is like his knowledge, they’ll tell you: boundless.
@Eusebio:
I wonder what level of dialogue can be had.
I regard arguing with the referee as pointless. I don’t know of a single instance in which an NFL referee has reversed a call based on a player’s or coach’s argument; only when reviewing the replay in a challenge. I don’t recall either a referee or other official asking a player about what they did on the field before issuing a call. I assume all other sports, and even “sports” are like that.
At best it’s letting off steam. At worst it’s just a waste of time.
Though I can see some value in asking an official what the call is for, or to clarify why they made a given call. That might help spot any biases in said official.
@Eusebio: I was in a cab in D.C. 2002 when Senegal beat France in the World Cup. My driver from Cameroon was joyous. He said that they were dancing in the streets in Kinshaza. Francophone solidarité!
Iraq and Norway are having quite a match right now.