Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, April 2, 2025
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44 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.
Actor Val Kilmer has passed away. He was 65*. RIP.
*- I was surprised to learn he is older than me.
I am so sick of men not listening to me. I just had a man confidently waste £16 of mine because he wouldn’t listen. I know that my kids are entitled to discounted fares. I wanted to get two full freight Oyster cards because it’s not worth my time to constantly get new discounted tickets each fucking day. We should have an apartment within days and we can get started on the discount cards then.
My kids are about to be dumped out into an entirely new life. I just want to make it slightly easier on all of us. The marginal extra cost fine.
The best part was his idiotic happiness as he totally disregarded both what I was saying and the “I’m going to choke you face.”
@Bill Jempty:
Presaged in “Top Gun; Maverick”
Poor guy had a tough go of it
RIP
The Florida headline of the day- Republicans Randy Fine, Jimmy Patronis win House seats in Florida special elections
@Daryl: I never watched Top Gun.
@Beth:
My sometime editor Leeanne once said. “Men- You can’t live with them. You can’t shoot them.”
@Bill Jempty:
I’d settle for a Taser.
Tuesday’s Texas measles outbreak:
There have been 6 other cases in Texas in 2025 but those have been associated with international travel.
New Mexico: Now up to 48 cases. Up 1 case from last week.
Measles tracker: Follow cases, outbreaks and vaccination rates across the U.S.
Handy nationwide tracker. Measles across the US.
ANNOUNCER: This episode of measles is brought to you by Donald J. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. As Jack Reacher said, “Remember…you asked for this.”
Looks like Musk could buy Trump for $1/4B but not Wisconsin with his $20M and a cheesehead hat.
I’m going to Wisconsin, and Road America, at the end of May and I’ll gladly spend my tourism dollars there, now.
Really, what did anyone expect?
US officials object to European push to buy weapons locally
@Bill Jempty: You didn’t miss anything.
Atlantic piece on Project 2025:
Gift link:
“Gift”
Etc. all consistent with the culture war stuff the GOP is so obsessed with.
The MidSouth is predicted to get “generational “ flooding and strong tornadoes over the next few days. Memphis in the bullseye. 10-12 inches of rain and large hail. The weather service is warning not to assume areas that haven’t flooded in the past will not flood in this environment.
Hellzapoppin’!
@Scott:
Predicted things predictably happen as predicted.
European arms makers like a pay-day as much as the next guy; as do European politicians with arms related activity in their constituencies.
The bigger the budget, the more interesting the menu is.
@Scott:
@JohnSF:
Whoops, looks like the GOP accidentally killed the one thing that Americans actually make. So much greatness. Soon it’s just gonna be movies and Sprite you can actually drink.
@charontwo:
How many men can support a family on a single income? Would it be, damn few? How many women are willing to ignore their education and skillset to stay at home and make casseroles? Would that also be damn few? What happens to the economy if we magically remove women from the workplace and push them back into the home? Are we going to suddenly find a way to make children an economic benefit rather than a burden?
These people are morons.
@Scott:
@JohnSF:
@Beth:
Considering many European countries might conceivably face US forces, no way in hell should they trust US arms not to have some kind of back door, some means to be jammed, etc. Maybe not the dumb iron bombs and shells, but possible with guided weapons, and especially aircraft (though the F-14s Iran may still have work just well except for a lack of spare parts).
All aside the very natural impulse to 1) keep the money in their one countries or at least dependable allies, and 2) not to send more money to a potential rival/hostile country.
Just because the felon has a chief nazi to hobble his country, doesn’t mean everyone else should follow suit.
@Michael Reynolds:
Are we going to suddenly find a way to make children an economic benefit rather than a burden?
Wherever the GOP goes, awful plans follow.
Now is probably a great time to hold on to real estate in CA, IL, NY and MA. Those places won’t change their child labor laws to turn kids into slaves for farmers. Once people realize that their kids won’t get educated they’ll either leave or rejoice. The rejoicers will end up stupider and poorer.
Between that and Climate change, the Confederacy is going to become uninhabitable.
@Beth:
Personally, Luddite suggests a cattle prod to the groin. Or the throat. But then again, Luddite’s not a nice sociopath.
OTOH, I do make a nice ‘spro.
@becca: Stay safe, and check in when you can. Flooding is no joke.
@becca:
Tennessee’s about to be the testcase for what happens when you decimate FEMA staff.
If I had to guess, Memphis and its surrounding area voted pretty hard against Fascism. As has been the case so often, those getting hurt the most are the ones who stood strong against Trump.
Stay safe, friend, and let the OTB community know how we can help during the recovery.
@becca:
Please keep us posted about your well-being.
We may be having a real(ish) war shortly – an attack on Iran is likely. Trump says he wants talks with the Ayatollahs, but we had a deal with Iran (the JCPOA) which Trump unilaterally abrogated. So they should trust him now? We’ll have to see just how suicidal Iran’s government is. Between Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah and Hamas, and the US attacks on the Houthis, the Ayatollahs may decide on a prudent stand-down with hopes of rebuilding, or they may be feeling apocalyptic, in which case, bombs away.
I have no objection in principle to taking out Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. I’d rather do it when we had someone competent in the WH and the Pentagon. And I do wonder if Iran has some as-yet-unrevealed means for an asymmetric counterattack. Interestingly, there are stories that the KSA has whispered to Iran that they’re taking no part in this if it kicks off.
Simultaneously, Israel (our ally) gets ready to confront Turkey (our NATO ally) both using American weapons, in a fight over Syria. Why the hell Israel is freaking out over Turkey is beyond me. What’s the better alternative for Syria?
Meanwhile the PLAN (China’s Navy) has basically surrounded Taiwan in a very large ‘drill.’
Bullied by Putin and Xi Trump may need a war with Iran just to look like less of a beta cuck soy boy.
@Michael Reynolds:
I have only weak objections in principle, pre-emptive attack, civilian casualties, consideration of alternatives. But in practice it sounds like Iran has done a pretty thorough job of dispersing and hardening their facilities. A strike may be more provocative than effective.
I don’t think Trump will deliberately start a war. He’ll fall into one through bungling and confusion.
@gVOR10:
Some aspects of a nuclear weapons production chain are in principle not amenable to dispersal.
And hardening only gets you so far, when you talking about some units with rather massive power demands.
It’s not easy, or necessarily the best option, but it is probably do-able.
What remains to be seen is how Trump’s mercurial (to put it mildly) nature can deal with this issue.
It would probably be a lot more manageable if Trump’s clumsy diplomacy and enabling Netanyahu’s proclivity for military action as a solution to all his political problems had not pissed off almost every other state in the region and beyond.
Also, just how far into the administration communications various foreign intelligence agencies have now penetrated.
@Michael Reynolds:
Quick aside, the formal name for China’s Navy is the People’s Liberation Army Navy I find it hilarious.
Dead serious, too.
@Kathy: Even more amusing is the People’s Liberation Army Naval Air Force.
@becca: Try to stay safe. I was just looking at the GOES satellite loop for the last few hours and the storm is blowing up scary fast. Worst is currently in Arkansas/Missouri, but moving east.
Oscar Arias Sanchez, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president of Costa Rica, has had his visa revoked by Trump.
Sanchez has criticized Trump. I gather Donald’s feelings were hurt.
@charontwo:
Freedom to think and be exactly like me!!!!
“Freedom” in America is a blank slate upon which the politically ambitious can project their insincerity and obscure their true ambitions from the incurious.
@Rob1: When you start considering the alternatives to heterosexual, married, procreating couples you start getting things like billionaires having countless children from a wide assortment of women, using in vitro fertilization to select gender as part of an amazingly creepy eugenics thing.
Is that what we want? Is that what freedom looks like to you?
It’s a hop skip and a jump from there to Brave New World style caste systems based on genetic lines being created in factories, and religions around Henry Ford, everyone being drugged on Soma, and banning Shakespeare and then introducing a noble savage plot that resolves in the noble savage killing himself because he’s in a terrible book and just can’t go on any longer. Also sexaphone concerts. And universal healthcare.
Is that what you want?
@charontwo:
So many people missed the point there, but the far right got it. It wasn’t a warning, it was encouragement. If you work hard, organize and pull yourself up by the bootstraps, you can destroy freedom in a single generation.
@becca: We’re about 30 miles west of Nashville and the wind is really building up. I expect the rain to hit within the hour and I can tell it’s going to be nasty
@a country lawyer:
It is about to rain cats and dogs. Just don’t step in a poodle.
Trump administration admits a Ukraine ceasefire ain’t happening. Trump gives away the farm, and Vlad still bitch-slaps him. Putin never wanted a peace deal, he still thinks he’s winning. This ceasefire was never anything but Trump babbling on the campaign trail, and the dumb fuck must have actually thought his master would give it to him.
@Gustopher: I really wish I didn’t see how your interpretation works.
@Gustopher:
@just nutha:
Even in our niave youth, we knew the revolution from the left didn’t have the legs to walk all the way to the finish line.
OTOH , I didn’t seriously think the right could pull it off in my lifetime. Obviously, Cassandra the Seer I’m not.
@Gustopher:
You forgot the “/s” right? Other wise, what total b.s.
Elon is an aberration on an order of magnitude. We have many productive, non-gender typical people in non-typical relationships who contribute greatly to a civil, sustainable
society.
This kind of mania (if I’m hearing you correctly and I hope I’m not), that seeks to stamp out any deviation from straight collar, “Christian” conservative concepts of marriage by dragging us backwards in time to a repressed regulation of personal relationships (which have always taken place undercover anyway) is misguided political subterfuge, and thoroughly contrary to any pretense of “freedom.”
A crazed, megalomaniacal narcissistic billionaire is gonna be doing meglomanical narcissistic crap regardless of what relationship norms we embrace or enforce. Elon’s “many loves” is the least of his bad behaviors in our society.
The choice isn’t between accepting wider variance in personal relations or Elon’s eugenics-for-billionaires. That’s a false choice.
And things get really weird when one considers that the straight-narrow conservative Christians are just fine with Elon’s ongoing destruction of “liberal” programs despite his decidedly amoral/immoral bent. Which just proves that this is really not about God, Jesus, or morality for the religious Right, but is solely about political expediency.
Freedom and morality to me looks like “live and let live” as long as no one is oppressed, exploited, or abused, and the underaged are a protected status.
@Rob1: Pretty sure Gus was being ironic.
Ugh…..my good friend, Cat Urbikigt, posted this today. She’s been a good friend and a mentor for a long time. One of the few “Sane Republicans” I know. We serve on one board together, and I’m not sure I want to be on the board anymore without her. They’re going to ask me to take over her job, and I don’t have the time. Or the knowledge. I only did it because they needed a cattle representative.
https://caturbigkit.substack.com/p/the-bad-news?r=13nezy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&fbclid=IwY2xjawJaT3pleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVFlfrFaBaB1NyQtCWC_io-by4m3jDQ5teuROJCinv6iFzfMI7QBX0vN1w_aem_4ldEIkVahbKHUnN_K4lxUQ&triedRedirect=true
@Jax:
I’m really sorry to hear about your friend. She sounds like an interesting and fierce woman.
Take care of yourself and trust that you’ll do the next right thing.
@Mimai: We have an OTB Cool Kids Signal Chat if you want to join. We were just talking about you, if you want to join. I am tiedyejax.74
CSK, Becca (I need pics of Sadie!), Jen, Kathy, please join the Signal chat. I’d love to keep talking to you!