The Vivek and Vancy SHHHHOOOOOWWWW!!

We’re a couple of shits
We loved old Don to bits
But now that he’s a loser 

We will kick his saggy tits

We’re a couple of fucks
We smell like a garbage truck

This Sunday we will wash it off

In a big old church yuk yuk

***************

Old Don has asked us up for tea
We don’t know how to get there, no siree
No, siree

We would drive up Penn Avenue, but we haven’t got the price
We would skate up Penn Avenue, but there isn’t any ice
We would ride on a bicycle, but we haven’t got a bike

So we’ll run from the Avenue
Yes, we’ll run from the Avenue
Yes, to run from the Avenue’s what we like
—

It’s Porning Again in America

Remember the Trumpians’ manifesto, Project 2025? It demanded that pornography be outlawed.

Given the predilections of the Republican elite, however, I’m thinking they would have exempted any form of sadism.

****************

Anyway, among the reasons to thank the Lord we Dems prevailed in the midterms is the blessed assurance that JD Vance and other sadism-adjacents will certainly forget all about that morsel.

“[You can see them trying] to shake off the Trump stink.”

Buttigieg has been trying out the Trump stink meme, and it’s a good one.

Vance can’t keep “the Trump stink” off of him.

I hope others pick it up. It’s… piquant.

L’essence de l’Amérique

‘The suspect had a gun and said, “Give me your money or I will kill you,” and, “I already killed two people; there are no cameras here,” the report said.

The woman told the suspect her purse was inside and offered to leave her car keys while she retrieved it, according to the report. She then returned and handed the suspect money.

The suspect returned her keys and told her, “Have a blessed day.” ’

The Sado-State

‘The cancel culture of the MAGA right inflicted immense cruelty on its enemies, and MAGA relished their pain…

[The Republican Party has become like Trump.] That’s why a loathsome politician like Vivek Ramaswamy runs an ad exploiting the rape of a child. That’s why an equally loathsome politician like JD Vance spreads gross lies about immigrants far and wide even as innocent people suffer from the pain and shame that he caused.

That’s why grotesque racists like Bo French felt that they had a home in the Republican Party. After all, if the president can condemn entire groups of immigrants based on their countries of origin, then why can’t every other Republican who wants to broadcast his own bigotry do so? That’s why hundreds of thousands of Texas primary voters could look at Ken Paxton — and all of his adultery and corruption — and say, “Yep. That’s exactly the man we need in the Senate.”

… They made the conscious decision to follow, defend and pledge allegiance to an unstable, hateful man, and now — at long last — they’re experiencing the inevitable consequences of their inexcusable moral compromises.’

‘Uh, yo, watch your man, then you should watch your mouth. Bitches.’

We are watching. Us and Nicki.

A curious little B Story, unnoticed in all the Blue Wave excitement….

… is the flight of America’s Catholic theocrats – Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, Sohrab Ahmari, JD Vance, and others – to Tristan da Cunha (the others include, from Hungary, Viktor Orban, from Austria, Pater Waldstein, and from England, Thomas Pink).

Tristan da Cunha is the site of the world’s most remote Catholic settlement. After the New Integralists spent Tuesday watching the heavens disappear with a roar, the elements destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it laid bare (Peter 3:10), they sought refuge – a place unpolluted by liberals – and they found it. Here.

Name-dropping.

Chris Van Hollen’s being mentioned for Majority Leader.

Dayum. I sort of a little bit know the guy. Our paths have crossed several times because we’re both old Peter Galbraith buddies. He’s courtly, kind, thoughtful. At least that’s what I’ve seen.

Headline of the Day

‘Scott Colom Flips Forrest County,

Named for Ku Klux Klan Founder

Nathan Bedford Forrest’

Trump Contemplates his Triumphal Arch.

All experience is an arch wherethro’ 

Gleams my unraveling world, whose marginal utility fades 

For ever and forever when I move…

*****************

My gray spirit yearns in desire 

To follow money like a sinking star, 

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought…

******************

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave billions and billions — 

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil 

This labour, by swift rapacity, to make hills 

Of cryptocurrency, and thro’ illicit trades,

Subdue them to our private accounts…

*******************

You and I are old; 

Old age hath yet the despot and dishonour.

Death closes all: but something ere the end, 

Some work of ignoble note, may yet be done…

***********************

It may be that blue waves wash us down: 

It may be we shall touch the prison’s bars. 

Yet tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ 

We are not now that evil which in old days 

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; 

One equal temper of psychotic hearts, 

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

‘[T]here was no bigger loser on Tuesday than Elon Musk, who spent over $400 million backing Republicans. He poured more than half of that sum into Texas, his home since 2020, when he left California out of anger at regulation and Covid restrictions. He later moved most of his business empire to Texas and even built his own town, Starbase, there. Musk almost single-handedly funded the Senate campaign of Texas’ widely despised attorney general, Ken Paxton. He tweeted obsessively about James Talarico, Paxton’s opponent, amplifying conspiracy theories that Talarico was in a mental hospital when he was really sick with the flu.’

Michelle Goldberg, a wonderful writer always worth reading, reviews Elon’s spending habits.

Cassidy’s Revenge

Lawyers from [Harmeet Dhillon’s Civil Rights] office .. carried out some DOJ efforts that critics said were political vendettas, such as an unsuccessful attempt to indict former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson over her testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee.

The inept apparatchik carrying out Trump’s insane orders has resigned, having lost virtually all the insane cases the insane Trump made her file.

‘Trump is entering the washed-up rock star phase of his presidency’

‘After a decade of Trump on the political scene, he is entering his Fat Elvis phase: tired, old, overweight, awful-sounding and embarrassing-looking.’

UD’s take on this would, of course, be literary. From a 2024 post:

Trump himself looks … like Humbert Humbert at the conclusion of Lolita: a washed-up roué who has trouble getting it up even for the debauching of a nation.

Already things are changing in significant ways.

The new Texas AG has announced that, unlike colossally creepy Ken Paxton, he won’t sue out of state docs for mailing abortion pills to Texas.

The state will “cease using Texas abortion laws as an instrument of persecution and intimidation, harassment and political showboating. All four of those things have happened.” Under colossally creepy Paxton.

There’s big good news. And there’s small good news.

Don’t overlook a judge having just ruled against super-icky F. Giro in her fruitless GIMME A BUNCH OF MONEY PLUS MY JOB BACK quest. Harvard dumped her when her research was revealed to be bogus to the max, but since then she’s hit up the courts as she seeks retenuring and all the trimmings.

Harvard (endowment $68 billion) seems able to afford any further litigation from her, so the beat goes on.

All of my posts about her.

Devastating detail here. With the help of moneybag friends who perceive no difference between doctored and undoctored research, Giro will undoubtedly continue her romp through the courts. Subsidizing her is as crazy as giving money to Republican political candidates.

Next Page »

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

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