But he’s not all about restaurants in Venice.
But he’s not all about restaurants in Venice.
Sacred the cause that McConnell’s defending–
The freedom we cherish, and love of our home
Ruthless the ruin that MAGA’s extending–
Their latest depravity McConnell has blown.
On with McConnell then,
Fight the old fight again,
Son of Nebraska
All valiant and true:
Make the vile Trumpers feel
Freedom’s avenging steel!
Strike for your country! McConnell, hurroo!
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“24 yrs of service is nothing to sneeze at, and Vance is running alongside a known draft dodger who has repeatedly disparaged veterans and Gold Star families. If Vance wants to critique a man’s honor, he should start with his running mate.”
This lil ol blog’s been telling you for a week it’s Walz. It’s Walz.
Wanna know how I knew?
Buttigieg is too closely associated with the Biden presidency.
Shapiro trends too urban, too intense. We’ve already got that in Harris.
Kelly’s only a so-so public speaker. And I’ve wondered throughout about the stamina of Gabby Giffords, diminished by a gun attack, in the context of a grueling national contest.
Don’t know about Beshear. Never seemed a front-runner.
I figured it had to be Walz after simply reading his Wiki page and watching a couple of his public presentations/interviews. Although I wonder about the obvious, like his knowledge of the international scene, I’m bowled over by the ECHT Americanness of the dude. I’ve called him Truman on steroids cuz the decency, straightforwardness, modesty thing is there in him like crazy. He seems to be the best of us.
I mean, barring unpleasant surprises about the dude, let me say it again: He seems to be the best of us.
UD likes that formulation.
This also is good: A writer calls him lethally calm.
Listen to France’s sports minister speak to Ukrainian athletes.
Wowsa. Mike Bloomberg, a Hopkins grad, goes to town.
Now that he has ignominiously exited Stanford’s presidency, retracting multiple papers as he goes, we can leave Marc Tessier-Lavigne behind, and take up the even ickier case of Harvard’s Francesca Gino.
Ja, Stanford, Harvard; and these are bigshots, humongous success stories, whose work is cited tens of thousands of times.
Both seem to have arrived at the ability to undermine vast fields of research through the simple expediency of making up their results.
Now Gino, as a social sciency biz school Ted Talk specimen, is no real surprise – probably fifty percent of the people who share her genotype are making shit up. T-L, however, does empirical research, so it’s more amazing when he (or his lab) just goes out and does irreproducible things.
Anyway, looks as though he’s going to fade into nothingness because he’s not going to get all shitty and vindictive and sue the people who outed him for $25 mill.
But that’s exactly what Gino’s up to; her fraudulence seems firmly established, but that doesn’t mean she can’t destroy the people who revealed her misconduct. Expensive lawyers, long horrible litigation… Why the hell shouldn’t they be just as ruined as she’s been.
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One scientist, who has discovered research fraud in another high-profile person, has decided to keep it to himself, because, he explains, he runs “a non-zero risk of financial ruin, and no real personal upside. Probably many researchers are making this same calculation at this moment.”
What’s keeping this latest set of fraud-outers from financial ruin is a GoFundMe page (to which UD has contributed) which has in only a few days amassed $326,000.
Hey babe I know he’s awfully old to be president, but ya gotta admit…
The event went off rather better than the hilarious DeSantis campaign launch. 90 of the school’s 119 graduates attended.
YES!
Free speech martyr Salman Rushdie makes a surprise appearance at a PEN event last night. Read all about it.
The imperial power dehumanizes the actual victim and claims to be the victim. When the victim opposes being attacked, being murdered, being colonized, the imperial power says that this is unreasonable, this is an illness, a phobia. … The term ‘Russophobia’ is an imperial strategy designed to change the subject from an actual war of aggression to the feelings of the aggressors, thereby suppressing the existence and the experience of the people who are the most harmed.
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The Russian Federation called for a UN Security Council session to discuss ‘Russophobia.’ This is Timothy Snyder’s contribution.

Photo: Valeria Mongelli/AFP via Getty Images
[T]housands of Georgians took to the streets of the country’s capital Tbilisi for two days of protests, waving EU flags and facing down riot police armed with water cannons and tear gas. The contentious [now withdrawn] legislation would have required all organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as foreign agents. The Georgian law was widely viewed as inspired by Vladimir Putin…
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SING IT.
Georgia, Georgia
The whole day through
As you march toward
Your place in the EU
I said Georgia
Georgia, what joy I find
Freedom’s old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind
Other arms reach out to you
Other eyes lie viciously
Still in peaceful crowds I see
The road leads back to you