Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, January 29, 2025
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79 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor 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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Everything is realigning and re-sorting:
In Trump’s Pentagon, a growing skepticism about US military power
It remains to be seen if it is good or bad for the country.
Republican suggests students work at McDonald’s instead of getting free school lunches (USA Today)
I do not think starving schoolkids will reduce prices or crime. Not so surprising from a Republican Party that also blocks sensible gun reforms, even as firearm death is the #1 killer of US kids.
Sign of things to come. The retributions will continue. It will not make us stronger.
Hegseth takes actions against Trump foe Mark Milley
Warfare in a highly connected world:
At least 11 Baltic cables have been damaged in 15 months, prompting NATO to up its guard
Trump and his cronies seem to be prepping MAGA world to accept higher prices (MSNBC)
@DK:
The Republican goal is to reinstitute slavery.
Now that homeless people can be arrested for being homeless, poor people who can’t handle inflation and the slashed social spending can be rounded up and sent to replace migrant labor as forced prison labor.
On another train of thought: Has there ever been a dumber Presidential spokesperson than Karoline Leavitt?
@Stormy Dragon: Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
“Raging Misogynist” Now Federal Government H.R.’s Top Lawyer
I got no words…
@Stormy Dragon: I am assuming the plan to harvest crops will be prison labor and re-indoctrination camp labor. I am not joking.
@SC_Birdflyte: She ran for Congress here in NH.
She’s really young for the press secretary job, I have a strong suspicion that her inexperience will surface sooner rather than later.
@Jen: She has all the attributes Trump wants – telegenic and loyal to a fault. The bullsh*t-o-meter shot into the blue zone when she vowed to never lie. Won’t be long before GOPer Congressmen are sexting her.
@Scott: Oh, BTW, Milley got a preemptive pardon from Biden. Still think that was a bad idea?
If Trump says something, take it as gospel until proven otherwise.
Irony is dead.
The West is trying to interfere in our elections, Russia moans
@Scott:
Well, we now know why the Defense IG was fired.
@Scott: “Investigating” Milley doesn’t require removing his security detail. Something else does: encouraging and abetting stochastic terrorism. Which, of course, is also what pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists does.
They didn’t wait at all to go after the US military. How implausible are loyalty oaths to the person of Trump, as a later step?
@SC_Birdflyte:
I had the chance to meet her during her congressional campaign, she was about 25 yo and not terribly sophisticated, pretty much everything she said was scripted. I came away feeling that questions that she didn’t answer weren’t as much evasion, but she didn’t understand them.
District NH 1 is about +2 R, yet in recent elections they’ve lost the district by 5-6%, because they’ve nominated crappy candidates. It’s to the point where the current Dem, Chris Pappas, who holds the seat is a lock for reelection in all but an enormous R wave.
@DK:
@Kingdaddy:
The upside this week is we get the first holiday of the year next Monday. Nominally Constitution day, though I wonder why we bother after what his majesty’s term did to it. Still, not working Monday ranks high.
I’ll try to finally make the last revisions to “Ours” and send it off to a magazine. I expect a rejection, but who knows.
Regarding Elon’s disturbingly revealing “salute” —— Catherine Rampell confronts his sanewashing to his face in the most excellent manner:
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1884085897236471939/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1884085897236471939¤tTweetUser=Acyn
Of course Jenning had to preface with typical MAGA hyperbole calling the the outrage “the biggest conspiracy.”
Not just a “flap” but a “conspiracy.” Not just a “conspiracy,” but “the biggest.”
One would think a certain degree of intellectual maturity and integrity could be expected from an educated middle aged man, but no.
@Jen: Because Trump prefers “enforcers” to “auditors. “
@becca: I also read Larry Oracle Ellison said electronic collars and constant drone surveillance were discussed as ways to keep us in line. The Magnificent Seven got plans!
Peter Thiel wants immortality, so he’s working that angle. I think he wants to set up a new Pantheon of Tech Immortals to rule the earth and beyond. Guy is really into remaking civilization and becoming a god. This is not nearly as hyperbolic as it should be.
If Thiel and his ilk achieve their goals, I imagine the future discourse on Old Time Religion and the Gods Tech Created will be invigorating.
I’m just glad I’m too old to die young.
@becca:
Oh, please. everyone knows the way to become a god is to die and get deification from the Senate. If Theil were serious, he’d have departed long ago.
Peter Zeihan has an interesting point that may already have been mentioned here. By designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorists, their victims are automatically granted asylum. And since millions of Mexicans are in fact victims of the cartels. . .
Jesse Welles “The Inaugeration” released last week:
https://youtu.be/4s5fMiLdBsY?si=mqcB5RbFsYbI-_Ey
@Michael Reynolds:
Not just Mexicans, but many Central American and Haitian immigrants passing through Mexico, too.
Happy Sentencing of Senator Menendez day to all who celebrate it!
https://abcnews.go.com/US/bob-menendez-sentencing-corruption-case/story?id=118186976
Over 90 years ago, the USSR embraced Lysenkoism as the official theory in biology, condemning genetic as “bourgeois pseudoscience.” This led not only to stagnation and massive waste in life sciences research, but also to some agricultural disasters.
This is common when people try to make science conform to political ideology. It happened with the nazis in the 30s and 40s, who dismissed a lot of modern quantum and atomic theory as “Jewish physics.” We saw it happen in the US with the COVID vaccines, albeit without clear labels.
And this is what I very much fear will happen in America again, even if Jr. by some miracle doesn’t get confirmed to head the HHS. Rabid ideologues have to bend and twist everything to their view of the world, even things that cannot be bent or twisted, like science and reality.
Interesting, a number of R senators want trump to release the Epstein files.
Interesting to know why they want them released, yes, perhaps a Dem or two may be named, but so could a number of R’s, strating with prez felon.
@Scott: There’s a classic line about people who are capable of “fwking up a sh*t sandwich” that applies.
@Stormy Dragon:
Because prison labor has proven so efficient at harvesting crops in the recent past. Indeed. Great plan.![🙁](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/svg/1f641.svg)
TIL: zip codes aren’t there to tell where a letter is supposed to end up, they’re actually an ordered list of the USPS facilities the letter must pass through to get there starting from the zone sorting center
First digit is the zone sorting center, digits 2-3 are the sectional center facility, digits 4-5 are the associate post office, and the +4 is the delivery route
@Stormy Dragon: Wow. I never knew that. I’ve learned something today. Thanks!
@SC_Birdflyte:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFZENwLuHok/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
@Stormy Dragon: Makes sense given that the “zip” acronym was for “zone improvement program,” IIRC. I’d have identified the +4 as “stop number” given that multiples I’ve seen from mistake deliveries and in the master directory at the PO* appear to be roughly sequential.
*I don’t remember why, but years ago, I had the need to find out the +4 extension for an address. The directory is probably replaced by the cloud now.
@Daryl: “They have their facts, and we have our alternate facts.” The perfect merger of postmodernism and corruption.
Breaking from CNN: The White House OMB has rescinded the federal aid freeze.
@CSK:
Without even trying to blame it on Biden?
That would really be newsworthy.
So, Trump has caved on the freezing grants and loans issue:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv48540n4po
Weak, just weak.![😀](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/svg/1f600.svg)
@CSK:
Can’t wait for one of our resident MAGAs to explain how it’s all n-dimensional chess. Oh wait, that’s right: they don’t try to justify Trump’s idiocies, they yell, ‘squirrel!’ and ‘whaddabout?’ and run from the room.
@Kathy:
One day after the freeze order was issued.
@just nutha:..
The way I’ve said it in the past: “They’re so stupid they’ed fuck up a wet dream!”
@CSK: WA! I have to admit, that happened waaaay faster than I thought it would. Be interesting to find out the backstory (but we probably never will).
@Michael Reynolds:
Well, Trump has often said he likes chaos. He got it.
@Mister Bluster: Never heard it expressed that way. Interesting.
@just nutha:
I’m eagerly awaiting the MAGA rationalizations.
Despite Trump’s demand that interest rates be lowered immediately, the Fed is leaving them unchanged.
@CSK:
Can anybody make sense of that?
@Kathy:
It’s conventional wisdom that autocrats screw up because they get surrounded by yes men and don’t get good information. I’m realizing of late that there’s more to it.
After years of creating an alternate reality in which Jews and communists stabbed the German Army in the back on the verge of victory, Hitler had to attack Jews and communists. Besides Aryan superiority, I expect there was a lot of detailed Nazi alternate reality I’m unaware of. I have a rule that conservatives come to believe their bullshit. But even if they know better, once they’ve spent decades painting government workers as useless drones, they have to cut them. Even if they know foreign aid amounts to round off in the budget, they have to kill it. Even if they know DEI is about as meaningful as corporate mission statements, they have to root it out. Or at least pretend to do these things. They have to maintain the kayfabe.
@Scott:
Not without using doubletriplethink, and I haven’t had lunch yet.
It goes kind of like this: the spending is frozen but the meo instructing the freeze has been rescinded so the spending is not frozen but it’s frozen and it’s all everyone else’s fault but the rapist felon of the tiny hands.
@just nutha: Years ago I used to work on specialty printing systems and learned a lot about how mail gets delivered. This was in the golden age of mail order catalogues and our systems would address them, pulling from a list. The very cheapest rate for mailing (which translates into the one that requires the most effort) is the Zip+4 plus Walk Sort. Every postal worker in the US puts the precise sequence they walk their route. You need to have a certain minimum number of addresses for each carrier, and you sort them in reverse order of their route and bundle them. Then they can just pull the top one off the stack as they come to the next house that gets one.
I won’t bore everyone with the details, other than to say despite the fact that I was just working on something to proliferate junk mail, it was one of the most satisfying systems I ever worked on, with hundreds of tricky details involving how catalogues are assembled, how often one is damaged in the process, the intricacies of postal regulations, and the limitations of processing power.
I’ve been saying since 2016 that the most important thing to know about Trump is that he is a moron, and him completely losing his marbles only exacerbates that. Rescinded or no, he will continue to f*ck things up beyond all imagining. Think stupidity levels on the order of Brexit if the political leaders had fired every government employee.
@Scott: The rest of the tweet:
Taken together I think this means that everyone in government must spend or not spend money according to the whim of Trump, and that it is a firing offense to guess wrong.
In other daily outrage it appears that on the way to dissolving the Department of Education to get those issues back to the states, Trump has signed another EO directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth(?) to submit a report with a plan to “prohibit federal funding for schools that include what the administration describes as “gender ideology and critical race theory in the classroom” and provide for more charter schools. So we get the federal government out of education by getting it more involved.
@Joe: See, this type of thing drives me nuts.
A whole thread the other day on “malicious compliance,” and nobody can really–not really–assess what exactly these clowns even MEAN. There is NO “critical race theory” in the classrooms (as anyone who knows anything can tell you, CRT is a legal theory taught in law school and graduate programs). So what does this even mean for a classroom? If someone decides to err on the side of caution and just eliminate every mention of race, including bog-standard stuff like Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights era, are they being “malicious” or compliant?
I tend to think this is by design. Throw a bunch of nebulous crap out there, frighten people into being overly cautious, and boom, the Civil War is about “states rights” again.
Good lord.
@MarkedMan:
I’ll give Trump some credit for possessing a speck of rudimentary cunning. (He certainly is top drawer at manipulating the MAGAs.) But in addition to being a malevolent churl who delights in cruelty for its own sake, he’s a total ignoramus. He knows literally nothing about history, science, diplomacy, philosophy, or any other subject worth pursuing.
@CSK: They won’t need any. A headline I read at MSN just a while ago had Trump saying OMB was wrong, the freeze isn’t rescinded.
ETA: I repeat, the backstory here would be interesting.
@Scott: I think it’s all part of the “facts/alternate facts” thing so characteristic of this (ongoing) administration, but make sense of it, ummm, no.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I’m reminded of one of Asimov’s classic robot stories, fittingly titled “Liar.” It concerns a mind reading robot who, well, SPOILER ALERT, tells lies in order to obey the first law of robotics. this states “A robot may not harm a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.”
The felon operates under a similar law: the rapist felon may not make the rapist felon look bad, nor though inaction allow the rapist felon to look bad.
The spending freeze makes him look bad, so he rescinds it. But this makes him look bad, too, so he unrescinds it. But this makes him look bad, so he rerescindes it. so, if he rescinds it he looks bad, but if he doesn’t he looks bad. If he does it’s bad if he doesn’t it’s bad.
Unfortunately the felon rapist’s brain can’t become inactive when stuck in this loop of a dilema, as evidence suggests he has no brain to inactivate.
@Jen: I’ve actually seen lessons tailored to include CRT at the high school level. It’s really pretty clever: Have the students summarize what the 14th, 15th, and 16th Amendments promise. Compare that to the reality of the Jim Crow era in practice. Draw attention in summary to the promise of freedom, equality, and franchise as they compare to the reality of sharecropping, segregation, and literacy tests combined with prohibitive poll taxes. Have the students speculate on what went wrong and why.*
I’ll note that it doesn’t happen often, but for a corrupter of young minds, it’s really rewarding to see that other teachers do “get it” at least occasionally.
*This step is the real superpower of critical thinking (and simultaneously, the kryptonite of it). Allowing the students to speculate expansively and helping them sort and evaluate the speculation is where teaching them “how to (go about) think”(ing) rather than “what to think” (conclude) happens. Lotta wrong answers==lotta learning. (For some–hopefully most–students; not everybody gets it–or cares to–which is the kryptonite part.)
@Neil Hudelson:
Eleven years.
See, he should have run for president.
@Michael Reynolds: Interesting, but it remains to be seen if we are still a nation based on rule-of-law or a nation based on the orders of one man who is the law. Depends on if the judicial branch is willing to take on the task of challenging him, and if that occurs, whether or not those challenges will be respected. The judicial branch depends on the executive branch for anything beyond producing paperwork. We’ve been here before:
President Andrew Jackson is famous for the quote, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”. However, the quote is likely apocryphal and first appeared in a book published after Jackson’s death. Jackson did not enforce the Supreme Court’s decision in Worcester v. Georgia (1832). Instead, he ignored the ruling and sent federal troops to evict the Cherokee people from their land.
The Sam Altman is accusing DeepSeek of stealing openai intellectual property.
I’ll leave it there.
@becca:
Well Altman stole the IP from all of us, so turnabout is fair play.
Text from AOC:
The pivot to class begins? This is somewhat reassuring. But the main thrust needs a sharper edge, more anger, less guilting. Pity is a weak motivator, anger is more effective. Define the target clearly, ‘affluent group’ is mush. ‘Brawlers,’ meh, sure, but maybe not le most juste. And the poor don’t vote, working people do, so the last graf is off. But the direction is encouraging.
@dazedandconfused:
On the 1 to 10 scale of confidence, ten being total confidence, I give the judicial branch a 4 if I’m feeling optimistic. The last decade have shown me that despite being at least a little cynical, I had too high an opinion of Americans. I never thought we were ten feet tall, but I didn’t think so many of us were such fucking cowards.
@CSK:
Donald Trump has only one cunning thing, meaning a learned behavior that requires some amount of intelligence: He always gets his money up front and lets everyone else take all the risks. He learned that after his bankruptcies. But his two greatest assets aren’t really cunning. The first is he is an absolute master at what is essentially the nigerian prince scam: finding gullible, not very ethical people, who are entranced by Trump and all the money they can make WITH him, and then metaphorically putting his arm on their shoulder and saying “You and me buddy, man, what a team we make!”, while getting them to pay all their money over to him via intermediary schemes. The second thing that he is a shear genius at: getting everyone around him to fight each other to the death for the “reward” of being in his inner circle. For now. As a parent I’ve seen enough older siblings who seemed to be innately born with those skills so I can’t say they are cunning. (My wife, the youngest of four all one year apart, marvels that her siblings, when they were all still single digits in age, could get her to do so many things with simply a, “If you want to be in the club….” “If you want to be in the club you have to ask Mom if we can stay up late to watch the show”. “If you want to be in the club, you have to walk over to our friends’ house and ask them to come over and play”. There was no club! There was never a club!)
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s early yet.
@dazedandconfused: Yeah, we’re only 10,499 days into this 9 day presidency. Lots of room to fuck shit up and break things in the next 4 years.
I have never been less proud to be an American, I want the fuck out, but I am so tied to my land.
@Ken_L:
This is what I was referencing in the Gitmo thread:
https://eladnehorai.substack.com/p/the-deeper-reasons-democrats-lost
I don’t know if I found that here or through Yastreblyansky’s blog (which I found through here).
It’s too long and too well argued to excerpt and retain anything. I highly recommend reading it. I think it nails a lot of the underlying slide.
I think a lot of people simply gave up. Why bother if no one is going to be held accountable, if the message is going to be that government doesn’t work (a lie), if rich assholes and companies are just going to wildly rip us off and sell us absolute garbage and then have the gall to demand we deify them. I think a lot of people simply gave up. Everyone forgot. Everyone forgot then gave up. Well, not Black women, they remember, they just decided to stop saving our asses. I don’t blame them.
I spent hours on the phone yesterday trying to determine if the OMB memo (which I don’t believe has actually been recinded*) effected my clients: 1. A charity that provides independent living for developmentally disabled adults. They are relying on a HUD grant administered through local county government to buy a house in the county so they can support the community, the government, us. 2. An elderly couple who is receiving a grant to make repairs to their home so they can live in it and their porch doesn’t fall on their neighbor’s house or start a fire when it knocks down a power line. 3. A LLC trying to sell an investment property. The Buyer has a federally supported lender trying to increase Black homeownership. I talked to another attorney today and it sounds like Chicago will be in a world of hurt if Federal support goes away. Guess what, that Federal support is shot through everywhere. I can’t wait till the Federal spigot shuts off and FL dies. I’ll be 100% honest, I want cis-het people to feel the pain and terror I feel now. I know this makes me as bad as them. I don’t care. Nothing is going to change until people are forced to remember.
*I don’t mean this in a conspiratorial way. Yes, it was rescinded and apparently un-rescinded by the press secretary. I think we all know that this is still the ultimate goal, even if they are going to fuck it up a few times.
@Beth:
I think he misses something else — most normies* have completely memory-holed 2020. It wasn’t a fun time, it was in fact a horrific, traumatizing time, so it just got shrunk.
In 2024, you could ask people if they were better off than they were 4 years ago, and they would say no, somehow oblivious to the fact that 4 years ago, there were body bags in refrigerator trucks because the morgues had run out of space. That people were washing their groceries. That a motorcycle festival became a super spreader event. That people like Herman Cain died at a Trump rally. That the President nearly died.
Just bottled it all up, and put it on a shelf somewhere they never have to think about it.
And, if you don’t remember 2020 or 2021, 2022-2024 were not awesome.
——
*: normies is just people who don’t follow politics on a daily basis.
@Gustopher:
I don’t know if he misses it. A lot of people saw that the Government could actually move and work to protect them. That maybe it all didn’t have to be a nightmare all the time and then it was immediately back to the nightmare now without help. That kinda trauma just gets flat erased. I could be wrong though.
Also, completely different, you ever come across music that is so wildly different and new, yet absolutely familiar and you have to tell everyone:
https://youtu.be/T1tcUfUhR5U?si=XUMT7UdNvW5PAndN
I know a lot of people thing DJing is just pushing buttons and blah. Sometimes when it’s lazy it is. This is the opposite of that. What he’s doing there is nothing short of beautiful and amazing. Mother it would be amazing to hear this on a proper sound system.
@Beth:
Keep up the good fight, Beth. It may not be much, but Luddite’s in your corner!
@Beth: via @Flat Earth Luddite: And cracker, too. And thanks for the link. Keep on keepin on!
@Beth:
Forking freaking A!!!!!!!!
Wowsers Penny!
https://bsky.app/profile/ericcolumbus.bsky.social/post/3lgwhxg35nk2h
It’s possible that this is not 8th dimensional chess. I’m not sure if the idiocy and incompetence will spare us all or doom us all.
Also, this is how we end up with an acting FBI director who calls himself “The Drizz.”
@Beth:
FWIW, I have heard similar stories from a bunch of people about who are doing similar work.
And in a different track of my life, I know a home that’s received a visit from ICE (not related to anyone living in the house). These times are hard to describe to anyone who isn’t used to experiencing the feeling of being an outsider*.
—
* – I can’t find the right words for this–I know a LOT of people feel like outsiders. And I think people who are a member of or doing direct work with truly marginalized communities is just fundamentally different.