Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, June 25, 2025
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52 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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BlueSky.
I thought the worst outcome in Iran would be if they were hit but still had their nuclear program. Au contraire! The worst outcome is hitting Iran, failing to ‘obliterate’ their program, and then declaring in impossible-to-walk-back language that it was PERFECT!!! An absolute and TOTAL SUCCESS!!!! The greatest military victory since Cannae!!!!!.* And explicitly and repeatedly rejecting the suggestion that we’d need a follow-up attack, or two. Or ten.
Because now it seems we did not totally obliterate their nuke program. And we can’t really do a goddam thing about it because the game show host, the rapist, the fraud, the blustering bullying loudmouth, the QVC huckster of worthless crap, the ignoramus-in-chief, the fucking amateur, has made Iran’s nuclear program untouchable. You don’t have to do a follow-up raid on a PERFECT TOTAL OBLITERATION SUCCESS!!!!!!
Jesus fucking Christ. This fuckwit just issued what amounts to a protection order for Iran. And now? Now Iran will absolutely get busy working on a bomb.
*Sorry, of course he wouldn’t say Cannae. It would be the greatest victory since the STOLEN 2020 election, which he won by HUGE margins and which gave him a MANDATE and the failing New York Times and the bad bad people at CNN and Obama and Biden and blah blah blah, yack, yack, yack, DEI, sir sir, woke Mexicans with big calves. . .
Adding to Trump’s FUBAR, not only has Iran at minimum retained capacity for nuclear production, but now our world’s adversaries know the precise limits of our much vaunted “bunker buster” bombs.
There will be plenty of analysis at Fordo ground zero, producing data that will be incorporated into hardening existing targets and improving design of future facilities. China, Russia, North Korea eagerly await the complied reports.
Additionally, data was likely collected on the B-2 operational characteristics and signatures. A.I. can do wonders with all that data.
We gave up the significant military advantage of deterence generated by “uncertainty” around unknown capacity.
Cost of each B-2: 2.1 billion dollars
Cost of bunker busters: 28 million dollars for 8 units.
Trump’s erratic antics may work well for huckstering steaks, guitars, crypto, condominiums, University degrees etc., but have no place in the high stakes arena of national defense and global diplomacy, where there exist a limited number of “marks” all of whom are paying very close attention.
Trump, the FUBAR President.
Trump net approval hits new low in Economist/YouGov poll (The Hill)
Completely and totally obliterated.
@Rob1:
That is a critical point. We’ve shown our cards to all our adversaries.
Zohran Mamdani reportedly trounced Cuomo in the dem primary for NYC mayor.
He will take on Curtis Sliwa, the GOP pick.
Yes, THAT Curtis Sliwa.
I have no idea how this plays in NYC. Maybe wr will stop in and give a thought.
@Kingdaddy: @Rob1:
I picked up a rumor, and I don’t recall where, some YouTube IIRC, that a number of large Chinese cargo jets flew from China, through the ‘Stans, and then disappeared at the border of Iran – presumably turning off their transponders. And this was after the start of the 12 Day War (as it will forever be known, even in year three). What did they bring in? What did they take out? And was part of what they brought in technicians and gear to analyze US capabilities?
Whether or not that particular rumor is true, the Russians and Chinese almost certainly had gear and experts on the ground watching this raid and taking notes. It would be fun to play poker with Trump. After a dozen hands, any of us could own his golden toilet.
@Kingdaddy: President Trumpflation and his team are chaotic, weak, obviously incompetent, and have no credibility. Constantly contradicting themselves with childish stupidity.
The president refutes his intel and advisors, repeatedly and publicly humiliating his Sec. of State, Vice President, Director of National Intelligence, and Sec. of Defense. All five are confused fools — all saying different things — about Iran’s capabilities, the outcome of the strikes, etc.
Then there’s the waging war in the midst of diplomatic negotiations — to recreate Obama’s deal Trump unwisely tore up because of his black penis envy. And the question of whether Netanyahu deliberately sabotaged US diplomacy, and whether Trump allowed it or just reacted to it. Either way: weak. Biden was weak-on-Bibi, but this is wild, much worse.
The unhinged, dementia-addled ALL CAPS Truth Social ranting — including on the Nobel. Just an abnormal freak. Weird af.
And the premature declarations of “mission accomplished,” putting the White House deeper into battle with the Pentagon, is just sad. (Troops deployed by orange Hitler to attack Americans openly complain about the mission, lack of pay, poor accommodations. While Trump blocks aid to Americans in disaster areas he refuses to visit.)
The Epstein-bestie rapist is a mess on economic policy with his stupid tariffs, domestic policy, legislative policy, foreign policy. Very dangerous. Xi, Kim Jong, and Putin have to be pretty happy.
The Taco war reminds me of this: Let’s burn it and say we dumped it in the sewer
The only thing that Trump “totally and completely obliterated” was the JCPOA that had put inspectors on the ground in Iran, and would have kept it’s uranium processing below weapons grade. The vaunted *deal* that Orange Julius was demanding before the B-2s flew, and now insists Iran will have no choice but to make, was already in place in 2017. In Trump’s perverse view it had a serious flaw that was more important than keeping Iran out of the nuclear bomb club: Obama’s fingerprints were all over it.
Military Domestic Violence Convictions Skyrocketed After Commanders Were Removed from Process
Is this a big middle finger to Trump?
Canada, EU sign defense pact that could enable joint weapons work
I wonder if there is a Canada-Denmark agreement in the works WRT Greenland.
For reasons too dumb to go into I’m in Netherlands, in the KLM lounge at Schipol. (Infinitely better than the TAP lounge in Lisbon. Equals the BA lounge at Heathrow.) Coming to Netherlands always comes with the shock of realizing that at 6’1″ I am not tall, not here. In Portugal I could basically beat up anyone as long as they came at me slowly. In Portugal I’m big and tall. Here I’m slightly taller than the women, the almost-universally attractive women. I’m a Morlock amidst the Eloi.
@becca:
It’s hard to process at the moment. The numbers are staggering. No one saw it coming. A few polls put Mamdani close enough to Cuomo to win in later rounds. Supposedly, Mamdani’s internal polls were showing this. But he went out and crushed him.
My take is that the Democrats have talked themselves into treating educated people under 50 like they’re a small alien colony of no interest to regular humans. That was Cuomo’s strategy, and it bit them in the ass: Mamdani ran an amazing campaign which linked the concerns of Bed-Stuy leftists to regular people. The result was hysteria–billionaires pumping in millions to stop the expansion of a small successful program for free bus fare and a rent freeze (which has happened before in the city). Meanwhile, Israel became comedy, with everyone but Mamdani and Brad Lander looking like fools.
My other take is that anyone who endorsed Cuomo (you know, the normal NYC pols like Jim Clyburn and Bill Clinton) needs to get the hell out of national politics for the good of the party.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yep, the tallest people on earth are the Dutch.
Check again, they don’t work there, either. 🙁
@Michael Reynolds:
(In my best Trump voice):
Yes, it will always be known as THE TWELVE DAY WAR. There was the Six Day War, and now the Twelve Day War. I could have made it The Three Day War, or even The One Day War but I talked to my Generals and they said to give it more time. Such good Generals. Nobody has Generals like my Generals. I have the Best Generals. And the Best Bombs. Maybe next time I’ll do a One Day War. Or a One Hour War. I need a bigger BOMB. Maybe we’ll make a 60,000 lb Bomb at our Bomb Factory. But our B-2 could only carry one. So maybe we’ll make a B-4 bomber to carry two Bigly Bunker Busters. Hand me a sharpie.
@Scott:
Should we expect this to be the next target in Whiskey Pete’s crusade to return warrior culture to our military? Magic 8-ball says “highly likely.”
@Michael Reynolds: It could be worse. Comparisons of current vital statistics with those from when I was with Kaiser before Korea show that I’ve shrunk almost 3 inches.
Former Massachusetts senator, Scott Brown, has announced for NH’s R nomination for senate seat being vacated by Jeanne Shaheen (D). This is Brown’s second attempt to claim this seat. The first question will be can Brown get the R nomination. He’ll be the party professional favorite, but R voters have been heavy into MAGAt candidates for national races in recent years.
1st district congress critter, Chris Pappas is the leading Dem for the seat.
NH has a semi open primary system and registered independents tend to vote in the primary that is of the most interest. But it is too early to make a determination on that.
@Michael Reynolds:..Netherlands…
Trump is there too…
@Michael Reynolds: Riding the metro in Amsterdam is even worse. Everywhere else you’re mixed in among the tourists. The metro is almost all locals.
@CSK: “Yep, the tallest people on earth are the Dutch.”
Must be an evolutionary adaptation for people standing below sea level–it enables them to see the world around them.
@Rob1: “Additionally, data was likely collected on the B-2 operational characteristics and signatures.”
In addition to tactics. For example, this attack unveiled the ‘decoy B-2 formation flying the other direction and having a later ETA’ tactic.
I found an empty package of smoked mussels on the sidewalk. Open. Crusty. Plastic pack 8×12×2. Big volume. Who needs that many smoked mussels?
Why would you litter that on the street? I strongly desire that litterers go directly to hell. You suck. You are a bad person if you litter. Fuck you!
@de stijl:
Well, I suppose it could have fallen unnoticed from someone’s trash beg. Or it escaped the attention of the sanitation guys when they were loading rubbish into the truck.
If it was a big bag, it might have been restaurant refuse.
Or a dog rummaged in the trash and dropped the bag there.
Lots of possibilities.
@becca: “Maybe wr will stop in and give a thought”
Since you asked…
I have to say, I like and admire what I’ve seen of Mamdani. I didn’t rank him first, because I’m generally concerned about people in executive positions with no executive experience. (The disastrous Oakland mayoralty of former congresswoman Barbara Lee is too often what you get…) So I put the present and former comptrollers first, with Mamdani third.
But he is what a lot of Dems say we really need right now — he’s young, he’s energetic, he’s bursting with ideas… and he really seems to like and care about the voters, which is what I think got him the win. Days before the election he walked the length of Manhattan, talking to people all the way.
So I’m cautiously optimistic about him as mayor, assuming he wins the general.
But the real news is the total rejection of Cuomo. Because Cuomo is everything people hate about Democrats, and the opposite of what every endless piece of “whither the Democratic party?” insists we need.
Cuomo is a corrupt hack. When he was governor, he governed mostly as a moderate Republican and constantly gave power to the Rs in the legislator, holding it back from the Dems, who’d actually won the majority. Under his mismanagement we built the single most expensive mile of subway in the world, sent old folks to nursing homes to die of Covid (which he then lied about) and ran an administration by and for insiders only.
But hacks run all the time. The distinction here was that the entire old school Democratic machine rallied around him — even though they knew he was terrible. Bloomberg, Jim Clyburn, Bill Clinton teamed up with Trump-supporting billionaires to make sure that NYC remained governed by someone who would always make sure that the lives of the super-rich and ultra-connected would not be touched in the slightest.
This is the kind of politicking that brings us Donald Trump — the admission that the people in charge of a party really only care about themselves and their fellow party-members, and not at all about the people they are supposed to serve.
That’s what Cuomo’s candidacy was all about. And his campaign was all about bullshit non-issues — Mamdani said he wouldn’t visit Israel on being elected because he wanted to focus on New York was given as proof of his antisemitism. Cuomo is such a hack he couldn’t even be bothered to campaign, apparently believing that this job was so beneath him that the voters simply owed it to him. And his defeat was a statement by voters that we want leaders who will look out for our needs — even if we maybe don’t agree with him on every issue.
That’s the lesson that should resonate from this. I know the Morning Joes of the world are screaming about how commies will destroy the Democrats, but maybe they should try listening to voters instead of donors.
@CSK:
Or an asshole. Or a homeless person who wanted very dense cash to protein ratio. Probably big cash for smoked mussels, I assume. Probably not. Seems unlikely. This was a boogie asshole.
It could have been an act of Frigg. Could have been invisible aliens binging on smoked mussels.
No restaurants on this block.
Occam’s razor says asshole litterer. Ymmv.
Do you agree litter is bad? What do you do when you encounter litter? Do you assume somebody else will fetch it and bin it for you? Do you walk past?
Lots of possibilities.
@de stijl:
I don’t litter. If I can, I’ll dispose of any random litter I see in the nearest waste receptacle. But not all litter was intentionally dropped by human hands.
@de stijl:
Boogie should be bougie. The lack of edit function is apparent.
@Michael Reynolds:
I had to doublecheck my memory of The Time Machine, as I thought this was such a badly chosen metaphor that I could not possibly be right.
Per Wikipedia:
Please do not eat the Dutch.
@CSK:
Good for you. Keep on being a good person.
This is very interesting:
http://www.salon.com/2025/06/25/evangelicals-push-trump-into-conflict-with-iran/
@Michael Reynolds:
for a long time Netherlands has had the tallest men and women on average in Europe for sure, maybe the world (not (sure). Guys are generally 6 feet tall, women 5’7″ ish.
I’m 5’8″ so I’m not looking to clear the bar anywhere.
@al Ameda:
I’m 5’10” – straight average.
As far as I know my height has impacted me zero in my life.
What’s the tinder / hinge cliche? 6 foot, 6 figures, 6 pack. IOW, roughly a 0.02 match. One person in 5,000. Good luck! They will think you’re a shallow gold-digger into hot bods and dismiss you immediately. Your romantic ideal will swipe left on you because you do not meet their requirements.
Hot people couple with other hot people. It totally makes sense.
@Michael Reynolds:
Who gives a fuck how tall you are? It’s a thing you can’t change and it’s meaningless unless you think it is. (It isn’t.) No one who matters at all, at least to you, cares. At all.
And if they do, they are bad people with shallow morals. Shitty people.
Deal with people taller than you. Which half the people forever have had to do.
The only people who make it any sort of thing at all are awful and not worth considering.
@de stijl:
I think Michael Reynolds was just making an observation. Of course, what you say is true about the only people who resent tall people, or care about height, are indeed, pretty shitty human beings.
I can tell you from my own observation that plenty of men dislike tall women. I don’t know why. Perhaps a tall woman makes them feel inadequate or insecure.
@de stijl: What happened to your brain between 14:55 and 15:26?
I think anyone taller than me is a freak and a physical obstacle in my life.
At six and a half feet tall, there are very few of them, and I can’t just see over their heads and I hate it. I have no idea how people of a shorter stature navigate crowds of any size.
Presumably this is something I had to deal with in my childhood, but I’ve clearly lost those learned skills.
I assume women have some sort of undetected ability to sense magnetic fields, and can navigate semi-reliably by knowing which way is north. There is no other plausible explanation.
I’m sub-5′. I don’t really realize how very short I am until I see photos I’m in with other people. *shrugs*
I am looking forward to this heat breaking. It’s making people spicy.
@CSK: Interesting but unsurprising, at least not to me. I’ve been hearing about that end-times stuff since I worked with some of these evangelical groups on campaigns back in the ’90s.
Yep.
@de stijl:
Oh you are so wrong. Among my various unearned ‘privileges’ – whiteness, maleness, symmetricalness (wait, that’s actually a word, Google?) – I definitely count tallness and shoulderiness (Ok that at least is not a word). Almost all women prefer men taller than they are and at my original 6’2″ (life has beaten an inch off me, @just nutha: I feel your pain) I was taller than just about 99% of women.
@CSK:
I like tall women. Katherine is 5’8″ Tall, leggy, smart and a little mean, that’s my kind of girl. I think she enjoys the challenge of bullying someone bigger than she is. She wasn’t going to open the door for just any poor, wild-eyed, paranoid, self-destructive sociopath, she wanted some height.
@Jen:
It’s only surprising to me in the sense that I find all this God talk so alien to my own experience. Except for four years in Edinburgh, and a summer in England, I’ve lived my entire life in the northeast U.S., mostly in New England, in a rather intellectually and culturally sophisticated environment. And, as I’ve several times mentioned, I wasn’t raised in any religion, so that just supplements my alienation.
I do wonder though, how all those fundamentalists/evangelicals who so revere Trump canNOT see him for what he is: a shameless, amoral huckster who uses them and then laughs at them behind their backs?
@Michael Reynolds:
Kudos to you.
@Michael Reynolds:
I don’t understand. Are you foolin’?
It’s looking like you are an unrepentant alpha asshole who enjoys his various privileges. Why would it matter that someone is taller than you?
You sound like an alpha dick asshole. If you are going for a different feel or vibe, it missed. Please tell me I’m reading this incorrectly.
You are giving shitty Andrew Tate alpha asshole energy.
I will assume you were going for brazen satire.
(Wtf was that?! I understood his message and intent correctly, right?)
It looks genuine! I’m very perplexed.
@de stijl:
I think you’re way overreacting to what to me was just a simple, neutral observation about height variations in different countries. I’m a tall woman. I’ve taken some flak for that, but…I’m cool. A comment about tall Dutch people doesn’t bother me in the least. The Dutch are tall.
Seriously: Please calm down about this. It’s of no consequence.
@CSK: I am a short guy. I am happily married to a woman shorter than me. This is the standard pattern. I am going to illustrate the issue by telling you about something that happened to me one night.
About 12 years ago, my wife had a brain tumor. It was in the frontal lobe, and she has a family history of epilepsy, so it was giving her frontal lobe seizures – which manifest themselves as highly repetitive behavior and derealization. She was experiencing these symptoms one evening, marching back and forth around the house, flipping light switches off and on, and muttering the same words.
Eventually I got her to go to the ER. Obviously there was nothing urgent, and it was a night where they had multiple gunshot victims so it took us a long time to get roomed, and longer to get her looked at. (eventually they did a CAT scan which showed the tumor – treatment was successful and she’s still with me!)
While we were waiting in the ER to be roomed, there was some dumb celebrity chat program on the TV. At one point one of the women complained about some celebrity couple where she was quite short and she was quite tall. She said that short women should lay off the tall men so she could have some.
I felt like throwing a rock through that TV.
It illustrates the reality that there are a lot of women out there – I’m not saying you are one – who won’t consider any romance with a man shorter than they are. It’s a dealbreaker. It was very frustrating to me when I was single. Taller male friends have remarked that they noticed this happening – women taller than me or even the same height just would look right past me.
How many experiences like that do you imagine it takes for a short man to expect rejection and become resentful, even if you don’t have that attitude?
Living well is the best revenge, and I have a marriage that has lasted 37 years now. So I don’t have all that much resentment. But I do have the knowledge that hetero women can be very judgemental about male bodies, just in a way that’s different from men.
And by the way, we have a social bias against short men that is very similar to our social bias against fat women. For instance: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1785314/
@Jay L Gischer:
I don’t disagree with you at all. (And…let me offer you my heartiest congratulations on a long and happy marriage.) Height is, undeniably, a deal breaker for many people.
Let me tell you about my most recent experience: A few years ago, I was sent to a doctor who treated me with absolute contempt and thinly veiled hostility. I was stunned by this, because I’m accustomed to being treated like an intelligent, well-informed adult by medical people.
Someone present took me aside and hissed: “You’re taller than he is. He hates that.”
It now appers Trump has ordered the lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil sales to China.
For reasons best known to the monkeys dancing inside his head.
WTF?
Certainly seems Bibi may have outsmarted himself on all this.
Being 6′, I’m reasonably relaxed about height, mostly.
Though my tiny 5′ 11″ brother is obviously at a severe disadantage.
While other brother at 6′ 1″ calling both of us “shorty” is obviously an obnoxiousness I can object to.
😉
I obtain a reasonable perspective from knowing quite a few rugby players who make all three of us look like shrimps, lol
@de stijl:
It is safest to assume that I’m always speaking from a position of self mockery. I take issues very seriously but I never take myself seriously. I am a comical creature, a weirdo, a one off and 90% of the time if I am being self-referential the tone is droll.
@Michael Reynolds: Thank you, but I feel absolutely no pain about it at all. When my parents got the asthma diagnosis for me shortly after I was born, the prognosis was that I would live to 35 or 40. Maybe.
That was 1952. I’m doing pretty well.
@JohnSF:
It makes sense for him to do that as the price of gas is a political issue. Bloomberg should’ve been smart enough to figure that out.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-declares-china-can-purchase-iranian-oil-market-signals-cautious-optimism