Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, January 28, 2026
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53 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.
Christ on a crutch.
Ecuador says ICE agent attempted to enter its Minneapolis consulate
When Thom Tillis started to offer indirect criticism of Trump by saying he was being poorly advised, I thought he was being too cautious and likely ineffective. But as the atrocities mounted, Tillis hasn’t just persisted, he is being joined by other Republicans who realize there is no point in going directly at Trump – he is too vain to ever admit a mistake – so he has to be convinced that someone else is making him look bad. The “bad advice” meme has gained momentum, and while Trump still won’t admit to a mistake, he has clearly put Kristi Noem on notice by pulling the plug on Gruppenfuhrer Bovino, and leaving Herr Miller out of the sit down that Noem asked for. Trump is more willing to fire his way out of a jam than he ever will be to see his own fingerprints on one, so the “bad advice” approach may work after all.
@Charley in Cleveland:
Remember El Taco ahs said he consults himself for advice? the logic is inescapable.
In one of Fiona Hill’s books, she talks a bit of her time in the Taco 1.0 so-called administration. At one point, I forget exactly why, she tells her boss she should apologize to El Taco. The boss advises her not to, as no one in the Taco family ever admits error or apologizes for anything, and they look down on those who do.
It seems a New England head coach did not get into the Hall of Fame on his first year of eligibility.
Technical record aside, I don’t think his peers like him at all. Maybe they’d prefer to honor his record posthumously.
@Kathy: Well, he didn’t do so great in Cleveland where he went 36-44. That was the Art Modell Browns before Modell betrayed the city and took the team to Baltimore.
Me, bitter? What are you talking about?
@Kathy:
I think that’s hilarious. I figure the only real reason for this is that he’s just an absolute nightmare raging asshole. Like, if he was just kind of a competitive jerk, I’d guess that he’d get in first ballot just on record. This smells like he pissed of each individual voter enough to say screw him.
He’ll get in eventually, he’s earned it. He just won’t get the extra honor. That’s the cost of being a dick.
@Mikey: Yeah, I saw that last night–it is both astonishing and not surprising that these agents don’t understand they cannot barge into an embassy or consulate. Also, no “it wasn’t clearly marked”–there is a big sign indicating that it’s a consulate.
@Jen: As if they read signs. Reading signs is for libtards. We don’t need to read no stinking signs!
[What a bunch of maroons]
“I am giving Total Authorization for Ice to protect itself,..”
Trump, July 2025
I would suggest that Republican President Trump is responsible for United States Citizens being killed by agents of his government.
@Scott:
He didn’t have Brady in Cleveland.
@Beth:
I figured something like that. plus there’s the cheating scandal in the 2000s, the tuck rule, and the snow plow, among other things.
@Beth:
“I figure the only real reason for this is that he’s just an absolute nightmare raging asshole.”
Having been caught cheating twice (Signalgate and Deflategate) also is likely a reason.
The latest two Cautionary Tales podcast eps by Tim Harford deal with the life and early death of Tony Hsieh, one time CEO of Zappos and tech visionary. He was also a drug addict and alcoholic (if there’s a difference).
Coincidentally, one Adolf Muxk, Emperor Mars of God and Phobos, is planning an IPO for his ISP company, XpaceS, to coincide with his birthday and a planetary alignment.
@Beth: Problem is the dickishness of HoF voters here has ensured this year's cycle will still be focused on Pats drama — overshadowing those who made the cut. Belichick's snub is already dominating convo around this year's ceremony, sucking up all the air.
Just another example of voters failing to do what's obvious and right and thus punishing the wrong people in the process. NFL Hall of Fame 2026 and 2027 will now be All About Bill. Oops.
BB is a horses ass, but the HofF snub is petty. For all the, But for Brady, whiners, there’s no way to prove that TB would have won 6 super bowls with the Pats without BB.
It was BB’s decision to go for it against the Rams in the TB/BB super bowl, that won that game. Running out the clock and going to overtime, as many coaches would have done and John Madden famously advocated on TV. The Rams would have likely blown the Pats out in OT, as they had dominated the second half.* The opportunity to win the Seattle game was granted by a defensive play and the defense allowed the comeback against Atlanta.
*I lived in StL then and walked the dogs after the game, boy there were a lot of glum Rams fans. Thinking about it, I wish Ozarkhillbilly was still around so I could kid him.
After yesterday’s assault on Ilhan Omar, trump once again accused the victim of wrongdoing. And all the while, he’s the one who’s been seeking to inspire stochastic violence against Omar, as well as other democrats and rivals. Per ABC News,
Here is the problem with crony capitalism. Canada is being pressured by Administration officials to continue its deal with Lockheed Martin for F35 advanced fighter jets despite Lockheed not delivering the first part of the deal and saying that the price is $27.7 billion instead of the $16 billion agreed on. Underperforming and overpriced should not expect to be rewarded. Administration officials should be talking to Lockheed instead of the customer. The F35 has been in production a decade, and it’s reasonable to think that they have a good idea about production speed and cost, but instead they are using the Administration to make threats. That aint how free market capitalism works if there is such a thing.
@Jen:
Indeed there is. Here’s a picture of the main entrance to the consulate. Huge-ass sign over the doors that says “CONSULATE OF ECUADOR.”
I’ve been thinking lately of very long human lives. Consider lives extending for thousands of years. What would that be like?
How would memory hold up? Would we also extend the lives of our pets? When would people get bored enough with life to end it? What would people do in their daily lives? How would reproduction need to be controlled to avoid drowning humanity in its own waste? Would millenarians embark on interstellar voyages taking them off Earth for centuries or millenia?
I got a vague notion for two parallel stories. One shows long, long lives as a burden, the other does the opposite.
@Mikey:
Maybe no one in ICE can read
Ilhan Omar was attacked at a Town Hall event.
Randy Fine, a rep from FL, is a complete douche bag.
El Taco has a new fundraising email.
WARNING: the following link contains ugly images that may induce nausea.
Here it is
Notice what is being used a slur.
@CSK: Well, maybe not “no one” but…
Noem’s rush to bolster ICE’s members means applicants who can ‘barely read or write’ are being accepted, report says
Expect a barrage of new social media posts on the Federal Reserve, they just voted to keep rates steady.
@Kathy: I suspect the main factor is he’s still actively coaching and could take an NFL coaching job again in the future. Philip Rivers’ return after being retired for four seasons may have made the selection committee nervous about the possibility of having active players/coaches in the HOF.
ETA: “Will Belichick take one of the head coach openings in the NFL at the end of the season?” was certainly discussed by writers and TV crews this year.
@Michael Cain:
Dick LeBeau was an active coach, defensive coordinator, when he got inducted in 2010 as a player*.
Bellichick only played in college, as far as I can tell.
*There was some controversy on whether his playing career qualified. No one doubted his coaching career did, and it was understood the induction was a workaround for the latter.
@Jen:
Oh, swell. Illiterate thugs.
@Kathy: Check out Ian R. McLeod’s Recrossing the Styx for the burden theme or Rudy Rucker’s Ware Tetrology and Frederick Pohl’s Hee Chee Saga, for slightly different views on robotic enhancement and of course, Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Meanwhile, in the Middle East:
The Abraham Lincoln CSG is now in the the Arabian Sea, and Trump is pressing Iran to “deal”.
Though I confess I’m a little surprised the Ford has not been sent to the Med/Red, and possible another CSG sent to the Indian Ocean.
I wonder if the play is not going to be to start with direct strikes but with tanker seizures, and dare Iran to respond?
While in Syria, the Kurds in Kobani seem to be under siege.
It rather looks like the US has green-lighted Turkey and Syria to force the Kurds to submit.
And the Kurds are about to be sold out, again.
@Mr. Prosser:
I read the Hee Chee books for some reason I can’t recall now. There are some intriguing aspects to it, but many of the characters are rather unpleasant. I liked The Space Merchants better
I left Ellison’s story half read. Horror still baffles me.
I just ran across this article outlining some polling data. It seems relevant to a discussion we have been having:
Opinion doesn’t usually change this much or this fast. The authors outline why this might be different:
I’m breaking this down because it is an answer to a question I have posed here before. People are slow to change, but they DO sometimes change. Why? How does that happen.
The model is that one must recieve information, understand it, find it relevant and discrepant, as well as credible. Then opinions can change quickly.
Which is what appears to be happening now with regard to ICE.
40 years ago today, the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-51L exploded a minute after takeoff, killing all aboard.
Lost on that mission were Shuttle Commander Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, Mission Specialists Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, and Judith A. Resnik, and Payload Specialists Gregory Jarvis, a civilian and engineer for Hughes Aircraft, and Christa McAuliffe, a civilian and the first schoolteacher selected to go into space.
Like all of us who are of age to remember that terrible day, I remember exactly where I was: Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, about to start the third week of USAF Basic Training. My training unit learned of the disaster when two of us went to the Orderly Room to do some paperwork, and came back with the news they’d seen on the TV there.
High Flight
By John Gillespie Magee Jr.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air ….
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
@Jen:
Eminently sensible as the US dollar is losing value against the currencies of creditor nations.
Though I wonder if there was a suggestion to raise rates…
@JohnSF:
Much of what El Taco does at all levels is performative. He can drop a few bombs on Iran and claim the Mother of All Victories just fine with one carrier.
@Mikey:
There’s a study that disputes this 🙂
Actually I believe most recollections that are not overly dramatic, and do not involve rending of garments and wailing.
Curiously, fewer people remember where they were when they heard Columbia had disintegrated on reentry. Probably because there was no dramatic footage, and because a lot of people wouldn’t understand what “disintegrated on reentry” even means.
@Kathy:
I was on Air Force Reserve duty that day. My wife called and told me about Columbia. I think I was the first in my unit to learn of it, I gathered everyone and told them the terrible news.
@Jay L. Gischer: An interesting piece, indeed.
This.
@Kathy: The horror or horribleness of Ellison’s tale is the fact the main character lost mortality or the ability to call an end to existence. The AI took him too literally. At least the characters in the other stories, even the ones who “uploaded” to mainframe existence, had the ability to end it.
@Mikey: It was a bright, sunny day at Eglin AFB when I heard about the Challenger explosion. About 1100 CDT. I was a captain at the time serving as an executive officer. The boss’ secretary was sitting right next to me when we heard. Her first words were: OMG, the teacher!
As for the Columbia, I had to actually look up when it happened. It was Feb 1st, 2003. A Saturday. I was already retired out of the AF. Probably didn’t hear about it until much later in the day.
@Kathy:
True.
But how many times can you do that?
“I ended the Iranian nuclear weapons program with an airstrike. Now I just ended it again! Yay me!”
Doubtless the dimmer MAGA will lap it up, as ever.
But rinse-and-repeat on that is likely to have diminshing returns with the less committed.
I wonder if Trump is hoping for a “Venezuela” outcome: squeeze Iran on tankers, threaten decapitation, and hope for an IRGC replacement of Khamenei that will sideline nukes and regional proxy war, in return for being left to enjoy their ill-gotten in peace?
It would be a plan, but one I suspect may miscalculate the drivers of Iranian regime politics.
@Mikey:
I don’t remember. I even had to look up when it happened. I recall a lot of the controversy afterward, from the choice of insulating foam to the refusal of NASA to even look for damage. But the one thing I recall clearly is a trip to Orlando in 2006. I decided not to revisit the Kennedy Space Center, because I was still angry about Columbia.
@Mr. Prosser:
Well, it matters more they are being tortured.
@Mikey:
@Scott:
I recall both Challenger and Columbia, though I can’t remember where I was at the time.
Just that both times I wept.
I still do when I listen to “Dernier Rendez-Vous (Ron’s Piece)” on Jean Michel Jarre’s “Rendezvous”
Playing it again now.
My lord, 40 years.
How the time goes.
Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
@JohnSF:
The chocolate ration was increased to 20 grams per week.
Part of what follows this in the book goes like this:
There’s no bottom to MAGAts. El Taco thinks this is so for everyone else as well. That’s why he gets mad when people question his blatant lies.
@CSK:
I suspect they may have been referring to the information about what a “consulate” is and the rules pertaining thereto not being posted. It’s a three-syllable word, after all. Probably assumed it was Equatorian for “restaurant”.
@Kathy:
Yes, full on MAGA, for sure.
But there’s an awful lot of semi-MAGA or non-MAGA Republicans who pay little attention to roreign news at all, who might scratch their head’s a bit over “We are destroying the Iranian nuclear weapons programme. Again.”
Or even perhaps: “We are removing the Iranian regime!” if the Iranian regime is obviously not removed.
There are indications that a similar problem may be in play re Venezuela, which is arguably a lot more liable to US pressure than Iran.
And see also the evident Trump administration effort to force Ukraine to a capitulation cease-fire, so that Trump can claim “much great success!”
The Trump adminstration is great on performative yawping.
Rather less so on actually getting anything substantive done, whenever the road gets rough.
Hard core MAGA may take the removal of Maduro, and a similar removal of Khamenei, as “job done”.
Other key voters may not be inclined to so mistake display for reality.
@Mikey: There are two writers which pilots, the ones given to reading books anyway, universally hold head and shoulders above all others: Earnest Gann and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the latter given the nod as the better poet. Most of St. Ex’s poetry is in prose, unfortunately, but the man dispensed wisdom by the ton.
If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work; teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
@Kathy:
In addition to Clarke City and the Stars and its precursor Against the Fall of Night, there’s Greg Bear’s Eon.
Where most of the “geshels” live in virtuality.
Brian Stableford’s Emortality sequence.
And though it does not emphasise it, Bank’s Culture is also a civilization of extreme potential longevity as routine.
Also the later parts of Niven’s “Known Space” novels, come to that.
@dazedandconfused:
I’ve still got de Saint-Exupery’s Little Prince somewhere among my disoganised shelves.
I’ll have to and find it.
@JohnSF:
I bet in 1984 most people swallowed the party’s lies because they didn’t pay attention to the news, either. even though that was most of what programming the ever present telescreens showed.
@Kathy:
My (fairly commonplace) view of 1984 is that it was both a satire of the Soviet Union and fascism transferred to the UK, and also of the willingness of so many British (and American) intellectuals to retcon history and their own previous opinions to conform to current political exigencies.
Orwell loathed the hypocrisy he saw in parts of the British left, and right, in the 1930s/40’s.
And with good reason.
I’ve recently be reading some history of the period, and the combination of sanctmonious but ineffectual “righteousness” and cynical opportunism really does ring some bells right now,
@Kathy: I dunno, man, in 1984 I was my parents’ personal “satellite dish mover”, and I can guarantee they weren’t watching the news all that much. 😉
@JohnSF:
IMO, the difference between the USSR and nazi Germany lay in whom they persecuted savagely, and even this was not always clear.
@Jax:
I had a chance in the 90s to house sit for someone with an old style satellite dish. Even with the printed guide and remote machinery to move it, changing channels could be a chore. At some point, I kind of left it stuck on CNN unless I found in the guide a specific block of shows or a movie I wanted to see.
Letting it stick on CNN got me a lot of coverage of Sojourner, NASA’s first tiny Mars rover.
@Kathy:
Indeed. But still more, Orwell’s refrence point was the ability of the British “intellectuals” to shift their opinion of good and bad depending on the circumstances.
And to “memory hole” their prior opinions.
The left re the shift from “Popular Front” to “Pact” to “Second Front Now!”
The right from fascism as bulwark to fascism as foe.
And I suspect also McCarthyism in the US was also a part of his conception that “Oceania” could become similar to “Eurasia” in its degradation of humanity to ideology.
Well, that may end up being true, if we are unlucky.
Though amazingly enough, Europe seems a little more resistant, this time around.
So far.
@Jay L. Gischer: The real question is how durable this is. Can one high-profile act of violence (assault, murder) cause the pendulum to swing back the other direction, or will the balance of the problem remain in DHS’s column? I honestly don’t know.
Sooooo…..Everlast made an anthem. With video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9XyCpdJ7SY
And Bruce Springsteen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWKSoxG1K7w
@Jax:
Violent confrontations are what Trump, Miller, all of them are trying to provoke.
Everlast can fuck right off too.