His take on his famous memo keeps changing. Where is his sedition today?
Makes UD think of the classic song, featured in The Big Lebowski.
One, a now-arrested foreign agent whose anti-American, illegal behavior “strikes at the very heart of our democracy,” was a hugely admired best friend of Donald Trump. The other, unrelentingly attacked by Donald Trump as a disloyal non-citizen of America, is ranked one of the best presidents this country has ever had.
Both men bear foreign names. Trump darkly ridiculed Obama’s names. He had nothing bad to say about Barrack’s foreign name, or about his two Lebanese grandparents. He constantly implied Obama was an African and a Muslim because he had African roots.
One has to assume Tom Barrack and Donald Trump had a big laugh about this – the two Barracks.
‘FRANTIC TRUMP AIDES WORRIED “DRUNK” AND “WEAVING” GIULIANI WOULD START BREAKING VALUABLE WHITE HOUSE CHINA’
… Alan Dershowitz.
Nobody does it better.
As usual, Obama understates.
Early one morning, half past four
FBI come knocking at my door
Ukraine run all ’round my brain
First come Igor, then come Lev
Diggin up dirt on the streets of Kiev
Ukraine run all ’round my brain
Donnie, Donnie, save me quick!
This Ukraine ’bout to make me sick
Ukraine run all ’round my brain
Many university medical school positions come with words like “voluntary” and “courtesy” attached; unlike tenured medical faculty, clinical faculty enjoy little more than the professional use of titles like “professor,” and, if you’re Bandy Lee, affiliations like “Yale.”
Untenured, and needing to be renewed every few years, associated medical faculty positions are fragile. As Lee – famous for having led the “Trump is dangerously insane” charge – has just discovered. Yale has fired her – chosen not to renew her, if you like – because in diagnosing a public figure without ever having met him, let alone analyzed him in a professional setting, she broke the Goldwater Rule. What really tipped Yale over, though, was a letter of complaint it received from rich, well-connected, and incredibly litigious Alan Dershowitz, also branded psychotic by Lee, and not happy about it. Lee is suing Yale.
First, a quick, surgical contrast between tenured and untenured at Yale medical school. Michael Simons, a powerful, tenured presence there, was found guilty of sexual harassment way back in 2013. And then – wow.
Details from Simons’ case date back to 2010, when he sent a romantic letter to a female junior colleague, who subsequently told him that she did not reciprocate his feelings. According to Simons’ complaint, the letter was “a declaration of love and romantic interest of the sort men have sent to women from time immemorial.”
She started up a relationship with another doctor who subsequently faced professional difficulties, which the two alleged was due to Simons’ interference.
In 2013, the junior colleague filed a sexual harassment complaint with the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct. Former Connecticut Superior Court Judge Beverly Hodgson investigated the claim and found Simons guilty of sexual harassment, and the UWC recommended he be suspended as chief of cardiology for five years. Simons appealed and the suspension was ultimately reduced to 18 months.
But details of the proceedings surfaced in a subsequent New York Times investigation. Later in 2013, Simons resigned as chief of cardiology, and his complaint alleges the University forced his resignation due to the public outcry.
Simons continued to hold the position of the Robert W. Berliner chair of cardiology until Nancy Berliner ’75 MED ’79, the daughter of Robert Berliner and a former professor at the School of Medicine, objected to Simons’ professorship. In July of 2018, the University transferred Simons to the Von Zedtwitz Chair.
The action prompted public backlash, including an open letter from medical school students, alumni and faculty that amassed more than 1,000 signatures. The University then removed Simons from the position.
In October 2019, Simons filed a complaint against the University.
Hey, why not find a third chair! If not the Berliner, then the Von Zedtwitz, and if not the Von Zedtwitz the … something from the middle of the alphabet… Berliner comes early, Von Zedtwitz at the end… maybe Mr Simons would care to see something in a Smith?
And yes, you read that right – it’s been twenty years since Simons purportedly harassed, and he remains in excellent, though non-chaired, status at Yale. He also remains an infuriated, vengeful troublemaker, a scalpel in the side of the school, which first dealt with him by conferring multiple chairs upon him, and now spends its time simultaneously boasting he’s on the faculty and angrily batting down his latest litigation.
Yale’s folie à deux with the hugely compensated, hugely pissed Simons will play on till the cows come home cuz that’s how tenure rolls.
And now back to Bandy Lee. Her fragile condition means that punishment for something maybe a bit less egregious than fucking with the junior staff is rapid dismissal.
UD blows somewhat hot and cold on Lee and her fellow invoke the 25th amendment Trump-diagnosers. No one who watched Trump in his notorious debate with Biden could fail to be grateful to Lee and Co for having, years before, laid out the framework for understanding the obscenity playing out in front of us. In short, they weren’t far off in their clinical appraisal of Trump.
OTOH: It really is a crude, easily corruptible, and unethical sort of thing, using your position as a professional analyst to lend special credibility to a judgment as extreme as mentally unfit for office. UD‘s extended remarks on the matter are here.
… the insurrection. Federico Klein goes all-out for Trumpism.
The former American president Donald Trump was found guilty on Monday by a court in New York on charges of corruption and influence peddling.
The verdict was the culmination of just one of several long-running legal entanglements that are coming to a head for Mr. Trump, 74, who led the United States from 2017 to 2021 and is still widely popular among conservatives…
He received a three-year prison sentence, with two of those years suspended. However, it was widely expected that Mr. Trump would appeal, a process that would place the sentence on hold…
Mr. Trump, who lost his bid for re-election in 2021, has denied wrongdoing in a complex web of financial impropriety cases that has plagued him since he left office.
Pride of ‘Bama Tommy Tuberville forgot to lie to Politico about having told Trump his vice-president’s life was in danger.
[T]he detail that Tuberville informed Trump his vice president was in danger is a new and potentially significant development for House prosecutors seeking Trump’s conviction: it occurred just around the time that Trump sent a tweet attacking Pence for not having “the courage” to unilaterally stop Joe Biden’s victory. And Trump never indicated publicly that he was aware of Pence’s plight, even hours after Tuberville says he told him.
Whoops! Instead of leaving your quarterback vulnerable to attacks from the civilized world that he reveled in the thought of his vp dying from mob violence, you were supposed to (didn’t you read the offensive play charts?) say that the president had no idea where Mike Pence and his family were.
Senior aides to the House impeachment managers said Thursday that they considered Tuberville’s comments to be new information that confirms their case that Trump abandoned Pence and Congress to the mob rather than attempting to quell the violence.
“It squares with what we already know, that the president knew his vice president was in danger and did nothing,” said one of the aides, adding, “We will have more to speak on that point today.”
Or as the fully embarrassed Alabama media puts it:
There are only a few ways to interpret this. Either Trump didn’t care his vice president was in danger and recklessly put his life at further risk. Or Trump did care — and wanted him pursued, or hurt, or killed.
40 Percent of U.S. COVID Deaths Could Have Been Averted If It Weren’t for Trump: [Lancet] Report
“I am Bruce Castor, prosecutor for the former president…”
LOL. The very first words of Trump’s impeachment defense attorney have him identifying himself as his prosecutor. He quickly corrected himself, but really mes petites – you don’t have to read The Psychopathology of Everyday Life to figure out what’s going on there.
I’m surprised he didn’t open up his formal remarks by saying I am Bruce Castor, prostitute for the former president…