Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, April 22, 2026
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23 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.
This is so over the top. And not a word on how to pay for it. BTW, Trump is already responsible for about 25% of the national debt ($10B and counting).
Pentagon seeks funds for Golden Dome, drones, AI in largest-ever budget request
Add in $500B for the VA, $100B for National Intelligence budget, $33B for the National Nuclear Security Administration, you are well over $2 Trillion dollars.
As Trump said:
In wake of The Atlantic article on Kash Patel, the NYT The Daily coincidentally (or perhaps not), posted a podcast titled “Inside Kash Patel’s FBI”
Being a podcast regarding a Sunday New York Times Magazine article published back in Jan 22, 2026, it seems to be a piling on poor Ka$h Patel. I’ll shed a little tear.
Newton’s third law of international political motion: for every tit there is a tat, opposite if not equal.
Iran seized some ships in the Gulf, as one does.
@Kathy: On conservative sites I frequently see comments that Iran has been attacking us for 47 years. They ignore that we pushed the overthrow of their elected government 73 years ago, installing a repressive dictator, that we supported Iraq in a horribly bloody war against Iran, that we launched a failed military raid into their country, that we shot down an Iranian airliner, and that we’ve maintained sanctions against them for decades. We and they have maintained a state of hostility mostly out of habit, with no real causus belli.
Obama tried to end the tit for tat, but Trump couldn’t stand that, he’s unable to understand fair dealing or seduction.
Odds and ends while waiting for Week Too Effing Many of Hell Week to resume full force:
Do you ever get the feeling when Couch boy called El Taco “America’s hitler,” the latter took it as a compliment?
There are two kinds of stupidity. One is a limit on the ability to think critically, the second is unwillingness to do so. El Taco is blessed with both.
If you ground up bread fine enough so it has the consistency of flour, can you use that to make bread?
Another close call involving two aircraft, this time in the air. Remember this was what happened at Washington last year, with fatal consequences for all.
On top of all its other real problems, LLMs lack sufficient instructions, hints, or pointers as to how they can and should be used. A button labeled “ask Copilot” embedded in a PDF display on a browser doesn’t let you know what can be asked or what the bot can do. Perhaps “AI” companies should provide instructional documentation and videos.
On that vein, I’ve been playing dress up using Copilot on my home PC. It does relatively well, though it pays off to write very detailed, very specific prompts. It also works best, at least for me, on stages. I’d appreciate an app that can use a photo or even drawing of an outfit and adapt it to my photo. That would save lots of time in prompt writing.
We are moving. The guys are here packing and hauling.
We’ve done three years in a two bedroom condo which is also our workplace and we’re buying a house, here in Las Vegas. We have tried to talk ourselves into moving back to California, and we will eventually, but the house we’re buying costs more than 100K less than the house we bought in LA seven years ago, and a million less than that LA house would go for today. And there are the taxes. And the paralyzing LA traffic. And by staying away from LA we can afford to not be here during June, July and August every year. So, it’s a logical move, a rational move, a boring no-adventure, little-risk move.
Sigh.
I literally cannot keep track of the places I’ve lived. It’s more than 50, I know that. 14 states, 3 foreign countries.
Over time as our finances have improved we’ve tended to demand views. We’ve had views of San Francisco Bay, and of Italian vineyards, and of course, our three neighboring casinos. It’s a big leap from the days of, ‘what do you mean we have to co-exist with the roaches?’ We’re buying this new house because we get a distant view of The Strip and close-up views of the surrounding mountains.
But it’s still Vegas. It’s murderously hot for a third of the year. It’s almost devoid of natural life despite somehow having terrible pollen. There are three bookstores for about 2 million people. The grocery stores are mediocre. The medical care you want for something serious is all at Cedars or UCLA in LA. And there’s a whole world of homeless people living in the vast sewer system.
@gVOR10:
The failed military raid was supposed to rescue the hostages at the US embassy in Tehran. It’s hard to see that as a hostile act.
that aside, I agree. At some point, it’s better to take a step back and ask what interests are served by continued hostility.
Nor is Iran the only case. There’s Cuba. despicable as its government is, by all rational measures it ceased to be any kind of political or strategic threat in the 90s when the USSR collapsed. The feud has been kept up by Cuban exiles and their descendants.
Rep. David Scott, a Georgia Democrat seeking his 13th term in Congress, dies at age 80
I’m sad for this guy’s family. However, can we (or Congress) pass a rule for mandatory retirement at, let’s be generous here, 75?
The US stock market is going up today. So is the price of crude oil. Now I’ve made a comfortable chunk of change over the years being in the stock market but I don’t understand the market today or this year. I’m kind of like Warren Buffet in this way. If I don’t understand an investment, I don’t make that investment.
Happy Earth Day to All!
Hey, said my name is called Disturbance
I’ll shout and scream, I’ll kill the king
I’ll rail at all his servants
@Scott: As long as we are on the subject of Ka$h Patel:
Judge tosses Kash Patel’s defamation suit against former MSNBC contributor
The judge wrote:
Laugh of the day.
Whatever Amazon’s doing with the extra cash it gets from fixing prices, it’s not taking better care of their warehouse employees.
Called it. El Taco is giving Spirit half a billion dollars in bailout money.
Of course, they’re blaming Biden for blocking the merger with JetBlue.
Maybe. But JetBlue is also in financial difficulties, and looking very much like it wants to be acquired by United. Perhaps a merger would have saved both airlines, perhaps JetSpirit would have died a larger airline. Perhaps it would have been better for Spirit to have taken Frontier’s merger offer, as Frontier, unlike the other two, is doing relatively well.
Spirit is in chapter 11 right now, after having emerged from it a few months ago. It was in trouble long before the Taco oil price hikes worked their magic.
Dave Mason 79 RIP
Traffic
Encore
Navy secretary stepping down 13 months into job Leaving in the middle of a Navy blockade, something isn’t adding up.
BTW last week’s report of poor rations on ships was mostly made up. The portions shown were for “mid-rats,” the midnight snack meal. However the logistics chain to get food halfway around the world is complicated and shortages do happen – my boat ran out of apple cider mix packets, the horror.
@Richard Gardner:
This part of The Guardian’s live blog doesn’t exactly fill one with confidence on the acting secretary of the Navy:
New acting US navy secretary Hung Cao once expressed fears that witches could take over Virginia
Sometimes it feels the Taco so-called administration if filled with grifters and weirdoes with a passion for cruelty. At other times, it just feels like a day than ends in “Y”.
I’ve heard this warning from many Christians: even the devil can quote scripture.
@Richard Gardner: The Secretary was asked to step down, so presumably there was something he was unwilling to do, as simple incompetence does not merit firing in this administration.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown: I didn’t realize he wrote Feelin’ Alright One of my all time favorites as done by Joe Cocker.
@Mr. Prosser:..Joe Cocker..
I had the Traffic album when it was released years ago. I think Winwood was 16 then. Seems like I read that his mother drove him to band rehearsal as he was too young to get a drivers license.
Joe Cocker doing Beatles I Get by With a Little Help From my Friends brings me to tears.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:..Winwood…
Google tells me that Steve Winwood was born in May 1948 four months after me. He was in The Spencer Davis Group 1963-‘67 so that was likely when his mom drove him to band practice. We share the same middle name. That would be where any similarity ends. While I did sing in my High School choir (class of 1966) since then I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.
I tried to get meta with the AI (not with Meta’s AI). I asked Copilot what instructions it would give to people when it comes to using an LLM. It replied with lots of advice, much of which was sensible, some of which was not.
And all of which was scraped off the internet, as people post more and more about how to make use of LLMs.
Inevitably people will use LLMs to write instructions on their use, and the models will scrape their own output, and so on. Doublepluslop.
Brave new world that hath such models in it…
I don’t object to LLMs per se. I keep trying to find ways to use them. now and then I come up on use cases that seem to be the real thing, with caveats, but few apply to me (like how to get them to summarize legal briefs rather than draft them).
What I resent and I’m beginning to hate, is how they’re being pushed onto more places, and how intrusive they’re becoming.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown: “since then I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.” Roll With it , Baby