[I’ve] seen dozens of other young men stay sober & become fruitful members of society, [so] these are not the only two options.
There are tens of thousands of stories like this one – ordinary Americans defending themselves — in this case, from the government trying to get between a boy and his dog — with their weapons. They do it to preserve the freedom to live as they wish. Bravo, young man.
[T]he most impressive achievement [Alabama Senator Richard] Shelby leaves behind is the military-industrial complex he supplied with lavish federal aerospace and defense contracts in Alabama’s 5th Congressional district, which sent [Mo] Brooks to Washington to chew off the “Big Government” hand that fed it. The local monument to the senator’s powerful career is the Shelby Center for Science and Technology at the University of Alabama Huntsville. The building is best known as the scene of the 2010 mass shooting in which Amy Bishop, a biology professor denied tenure, pulled a semi-automatic pistol out of her purse during a faculty meeting and executed three colleagues (she pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence).
On the bipartisan gun-safety bill recently signed into law, Shelby voted against even sending it to the Senate floor, leaving his A+ NRA rating unbloodied.
Shelby’s presumptive successor is of course a champion of the “God-given Second Amendment,” but she also sells herself as a “Mama on a mission.” To a future Senator [Katie] Britt, that means that “our children should be taught to love this country” — a nation so exceptional that our children die at their school desks in order to preserve our freedoms.
Even so, it don’t seem fair that respectable publications like Newsweek run articles sayin we gonna run our bloodhounds up down and all ’round the coochees of … certain people as they attempt to exit the state at transportation hubs. This scurrilous claim has been fact checked and is not true.
Let’s set things straight: The real story is that the state has set up a so-called WAND SQUAD composed of legislators, stationed at airports and train stations, who will be empowered to insert transducers into certain people. But never fear! They will definitely be using probe gel.
… Gravitas restaurant. The phrase is from their website.
I’d like all the details, but I respect her privacy.
… we can notch one little victory.
That only leaves Donald Trump (but – ne quittez pas! we’re def. working on it), Jerry Jones (who loves his coffee so strong it’ll blast the top of your head off), the world’s current trove of tinpot dictators (I already said Trump – who, though out of office, remains a terrible threat to humanity – I mean all the other guys), V. Putin, etc etc etc.
************
Though UD will admit to having had a soft spot for Boris. His tousled oddness carries with it a Gilbert and Sullivan Oscar Wilde PG Woodhouse Lord Peter Wimsey something that makes her heart go pitapat.
Doing it a day after a deadly shooting in a Chicago suburb, and a month-and-a-half after 19 children and two teachers were massacred in Uvalde, Texas … lacks morals, decorum, human decency, or any term you’d use for a person who trades their soul for a few dollars and a latte.
*************
More on the Dallas Cowboys coffee partnership.
Seems richly ironic, but once you drift into theocracy you can certainly expect this outcome.
And I know you’re more taken up with not being annihilated in an American gun massacre, but keep in mind that Harvard’s Adrian Vermeule and his merry band of authoritarian theocrats would love it if America looked like Israel. Only ruled by reactionary Catholics, not ultraorthodox Jews.
Ah cmon! It’s like all those HANG MIKE PENCE chants at our last president’s rallies: Just really, really, violent people having fun.
*********************
It’s nice to think of American kids experiencing their first cup of coffee in Cowboys stadium…
“What’ll it be, buddy?”
“Trying to decide, Dad. Suck my Glock, Kill-Myself-Colt, Mutilate-the-Missus-Mauser and Slaughter on Psychotic Ten-Year-Old Avenue all sound good!”
It’ s not dad’s fault that the kid’s massacre-hopes, in the actual event, fall short of expectations. Dad’s done his bit, enabling the little one to get AK-47s and everything else he needs for really widespread butchery; but once the bullets begin to whirl, wounded people have a way of hiding/running off, or, say, sacrificing themselves to save their children, and these behaviors, plus the imminent arrival of the authorities, will drive your total down for sure.
You try to do everything for your son, give him the best training and the bloodiest guns, yet his kill is pathetic compared to older, more seasoned psychotics like the Las Vegas shooter, whose toll puts all of America’s teenage/twentyish massacrists to shame.
Dads, for starters tell your mad shooters to look for a closed open space. What do I mean by this? The Las Vegas shooter chose an outdoor concert venue, for sure, but there were walls and gates aplenty, making it seriously difficult for people to get away and for authorities to get in. The concert space was also a good distance from stores or other interiors in which one might find shelter.
Another pointer for dads: At a concert, people are all tightly packed together, which makes a far better target than a sequential parade. Also – and here’s a fun fact – Paddock waited until night, when it’s much harder for people to see around them, and to figure out what’s going on.
I don’t want the Highland Park shooter’s father to feel more disappointment in his child than he already does, but Paddock killed 60 and wounded or injured one thousand.
True, your kid did better than the massacrist not far from UD‘s town, who, had he not chickened out, might well have shot to pieces my old friend Di, who was walking to the grocery store on the street right below him as he tried to get up the nerve to kill everyone.
UD proposes that, as soon as gunny dads realize their kid is psychotic and wants to accumulate guns and bombs so he can kill everyone, they ship the kid off to an Idaho militia camp. The state of Idaho is hugely friendly to massed psychotics with guns, and these groups will straighten these kids out in no time.
It’s all in the timing.
********************
By the way – this blog can also reveal that Nick Kyrgios will be Donald Trump’s chosen running mate in his next presidential bid.
[Philadelphia Mayor Jim] Kenney complained of a lack of gun control in Pennsylvania. The holiday had started out “laid-back” and “chill” before … multiple shootings, he told reporters, “but we live in America, and we have the Second Amendment, and we have the Supreme Court of the United States telling everybody they can carry a gun wherever they want.” He went on to say he would “take care of guns” if he could, but said lawmakers “won’t let” the necessary gun-control measures go anywhere. “This is a gun country, it’s crazy, we’re the most armed country in world history and we’re one of the least [safe]. Until Americans decide that they want to give up the guns, and give up the opportunity to get guns, we’re gonna have this problem,” he said, before adding: “I’ll be happy when I’m not… mayor.”
Trump’s candidate for Illinois governor hits the ground running.
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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