Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, February 25, 2026
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30 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
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Thanks, I was pondering the drive. I don’t have any idea what the treatments will look like at this point, how often or how long or even what they will be. Huntsman’s is about 3.5 hours from my current location in Wyoming, with traffic. It appears Portland is over 2 hours from my place in Oregon. I also have renters that are currently residing in the houses on my place, with the exception of the studio that is definitely not big enough for my youngest daughter and I, so it will take some time to get that figured out. I was thinking maybe an AirBnb close to OHSU if they want to start right away.
I would love to meet you and Cracker! James or Steven, if you happen to be reading this, could you share my email address with Luddite, please?
One hour and forty-seven minutes…longest SOTU in history.
@CSK: I’d like your comment, but I can’t like anything about that man. 😉
Imma be pissy if he outlives me. But if it’s possible to haunt people, I will take on my patriotic duty and haunt the shit out of his entire administration.
@Jax:
It is my dearest wish you DO outlive that repulsive old fuck.
@CSK:
Fixed that for you.
@EddieInCA:
I think El Taco suffers from Ford Prefect Syndrome. If his mouth stops moving, his brain starts working.
We can see what happens when he can neither speak nor eat. His brain comes to such frightening realizations about himself, his character, his personality, and his actions, that it seeks refuge in catatonia while claiming to be resting his eyes.
@EddieInCA:
Okay, you made me laugh out loud. Thanks.
@Jax: OHSU has a place you can stay if it would be hard to make it to appointments due to travel
https://www.ohsu.edu/health/rood-family-pavilion
@CSK:
My work here is done for the day. You’re welcome.
@Erik: Thanks! I didn’t notice that when I was looking at their web page!
Also, thank you for being there for me on the Signal chat. You’ve been very helpful and I appreciate it greatly.
Perhaps Jen mentioned this and I missed it, but the people have had a couple of small victories over the regime here in NH the past couple of weeks.
A few months ago ICE approached Rockingham Cty about leasing ~150 beds in the county jail to house immigrant detainees awaiting processing. The county commissioners tabled the item pending an investigation. In the meantime, opponents flooded the monthly commissioner meetings, seeking to convince the board to reject ICE”s proposal. At the recent commissioner meeting they voted to reject the proposal
A larger brouhaha broke out in Merrimack, a wealthy Manchester suburb, when it became known that ICE was trying to purchase a warehouse for use as one of their concentration camps. This ensnared the governor when she was caught in a lie, when she denied prior notice, only to have documents leaked that one of her direct reports had been involved in the discussions with ICE. This week DHS withdrew their plans to purchase the facility.
Proceeding with the plans for the gulag would likely have resulted in, and may still cause, an R wipeout come fall.
A harbinger of future of warfare.
‘We don’t have infantry’: Ukraine’s war machine evolves into machine war
There is a lot more. It brought a recall from the Terminator movies. A vision of the future.
Today’s bumper sticker:
SIMON 88
This was supporting Senator Paul Simon in his unsuccessful bid for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. Among other political offices Paul Simon was my Democratic Senator in the United States Congress from Illinois (1985-1997). He was also my neighbor in Makanda Township.
The bumpersticker looked fresh and at a glance the car it was on was not anywhere near 34 years old so either the bumpersticker was kept out of the weather for a long time or it was a reproduction.
I would run into Senator Simon occasionally at the local market and we would exchange pleasantries. One of my regrets in life is that I never got him to autograph my copy of the
United States Constitution before he died in 2003.
@Jax:
You are going to get a lot of this from well-meaning but often annoying people. I am sorry to be one of them, but I stumbled across this and decided I felt worse not telling you, than I would for telling you. Despite guessing that you are quite capable of doing your own investigation.
Several years ago, I had a dream where I met someone from a a parallel universe. I asked whether I could visit their universe, and they said it was not possible, because “our universe is not made up of matter and energy.”
A few days ago, I had a sort of sequel. I forgot most of it, except for a man telling me “Our universe is made up of information. You should write that story.”
No, I’m not on any kind of medication. I have been sleeping fewer hours the past two weeks, working long days and even weekends.
Anyway, I kind of began thinking up a story. It may wind up being mostly dialogue. Cannot show something that has no form or shape or any physical properties at all…
Well, this seems not good. And somewhat suspicious.
Cuban Government Says Troops Kill 4 on Florida Speedboat
@Scott:
This is another reason why NATO needs to stop being so insular, and use Ukarainian veterans to train NATO forces for the new modes of warfare.
Though, the NATO counter-argument, which I’ve heard, is that a capacity to establish air-supremacy and conduct intensive “dislocation/isolation” strikes in depth from the outset would allow maneuvre forces to operate.
It would seem sensible to allow for and plan for both increased emphasis on the necessity of air superiority and the increased use of drone warfare vs isolated enemy forces.
@Michael Reynolds:
This is very good news.
@Jen:
No access, dammit.
@CSK:..
From Al Jezeera:
Cuban border agents fire upon Florida-tagged speedboat, killing four
@Michael Reynolds:
This is very good news.
@Jen:
No access, dammit.@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
Thanks!
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
Thanks! I don’t know what happened above.
Larry Summers is resigning from Harvard because of his Epstein connections.
Richard Axel, a Nobel laureate, is resigning from Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute, also because of his Epstein connections.
@CSK:..
Now and then my comments will post twice. If I notice the error in time I will attempt to delete the duplicate. Otherwise…squirrels.
@CSK:
Any word on when will they get jobs with the Taco so-called administration?
Today in ICE Killing People, they dumped a blind guy off at a random location and didn’t tell anyone. He was then found dead.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/25/border-patrol-refugee-buffalo
Local police are at least pretending to treat this seriously.
——
By the way, there have been a lot of reports out of Minnesota of ICE and ICE-affiliated Goons detaining protesters, keeping their phones, and dumping them out in the middle of nowhere in terrible weather. Whether these are credible or not, I have no idea.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown: I think it’s kind of charming that this website is so flaky and yet mostly functional.
It’s like an elderly cat.
I’m writing some high fantasy. May never even try to sell it, but it’s this thing that’s been in the back of my mind for a long time. And for the last 3 days I couldn’t. I knew I should, but I’ve also been in this exact head space before. It’s things churning off-camera. You have to be patient, but if you watch the pot long enough, up comes the crab claw and you grab it.
So, I had one of my leads just. . . somehow just wrong. It’s this thing where it’s as if your subconscious mind is trying to tell you, you’ve got it wrong. It’s not very verbal so it just says, ‘Nope.” Occasionally, “You don’t have it.” And then “it” gives you the answer. Oh, that’s what was wrong. As soon as you know what’s wrong you know what’s right. It’s that moment of sudden illumination that makes writing fun for me. Well, that and the money. And the autonomy. And workdays spent in sweats, alternating between an Ashton Maduro and a joint. Normal people with real jobs still have another hour of work by the time we declare cocktail hour.
But all that aside, it’s the least cynical of my pleasures as a writer. Eureka! I’ve discovered something I probably won’t even end up using, but the eureka is still fun. It’s the feeling that something has happened inside my skull that I did not plan or cause. Most people call that inspiration, I call it probably evidence of a mental disorder.
@Michael Reynolds: Thanks, I did see that, I was a little pissy it needed to be crowd-funded for the funding to continue, then I wondered how I could get to Spain to volunteer for the trials. 😉
I’m all in on any possible leads on treating this. Thank you.
Also, estate planning. I’m not sure if I need a trust like my parents had to hold the land in Oregon, that seemed like a giant pain in all our asses that STILL hasn’t been dealt with 2 1/2 years after Dad’s death and AFTER we’ve sold the ranch, but I hear it’s the way to go for taxes. Any tips would be appreciated.
@Gustopher:
In his Saturday column, What I Saw at the Battle of Minneapolis, Jonathan V. Last addressed reports of ICE dumping people outside in the Minnesota winter, and what he witnessed…(the Bulwark, excerpt paywalled)
@Michael Reynolds: “It’s the feeling that something has happened inside my skull that I did not plan or cause. ”
I’ve been having more of those moments in writing this novel I’m almost done with than I did over 40 years of TV — probably because I chose to free myself from the tyranny of outlines here.
Favorite moment was a bunch of pages I wrote as a pastiche of a Victorian novel. Pure indulgence, because it was absolutely unnecessary and totally self-indulgent. Just fun to write, but figured I’d have to cut it on the rewrite.
A week later I realized it would actually provide the key to solving the central mystery of the book.
That was a great moment.