Simon and Schuster has cancelled its contract to publish Treason Caucus member Josh Hawley’s book… So… calling NS! This obscure neo-Nazi press has a real opportunity to get its name out there by signing America’s most famous homegrown neo-fascist to its list.
Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis gets it said.
Strange to think about, though, isn’t it? Donald Trump will in fact probably be unable to live in America; yet for the moment he is president of the country!
I predict he will live out his life alongside disgraced Spanish King Juan Carlos in Abu Dhabi, a luxurious retreat which welcomes any POS with money. Mr UD, along with many others, argues that he will feel most at home in Putin’s Russia.
Pelosi wants the stain removed.
Shopify regrets to inform Trumpers that it no longer carries MAGA merchandise.
Incoming Secretary Pete Buttigieg is gonna have to fly to Washington faster than he thought he’d have to. But he’d better be careful. MAGA goons are so drunk and violent on flights to and from DC that American Airlines has stopped serving liquor. The flight attendants union has asked that MAGA goons be barred from all upcoming flights out of DC.
Trump looked scared for another reason. Ask Danton and Robespierre what happens when violent revolutions get out of control. I mean, ask their heads.
Hawley … encourage[d] the crowd that would later breach the Capitol … pumping a fist at them as he went in to take his stand against American democracy. [He was foremost among those who] started yesterday’s whole sick show, and Congress should censure or expel [him] for [his] role.
**************
Update: Toxic seditionist Hawley receives a negative Rate My Professors evaluation from the law school where he used to teach. This letter, in which his former University of Missouri students beg him to resign from the Senate and look forward to the day when their school’s reputation is not “severely damaged” by association with him, is making the rounds.
**************
Second Update: “Hawley didn’t just own the libs, he gave permission to dark forces he is too childish, privileged and self-absorbed to understand. Hawley sold his soul to all that is ugly for the sake of his own personal celebrity.”
David Brooks, NYT.
In the race for the very bottom, UD’s calling it for West Virginia over Alabama (see Alabama’s entry below), cuz it jest don’t get no better than Derrick Evans!
A newly elected lawmaker from West Virginia was among the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the United States Capitol on Wednesday, filming as he stood among the crowd outside a door, rushed with them inside and then wandered through the halls along with the scores of others who had breached the building…
“We’re going in,” he says, at one point turning the camera to show himself wearing a helmet.
Suddenly the crowd moves quickly and the crowd rushes in, one woman screaming “We did it!” and Mr. Evans shouting “Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”
Statesmanship, West Virginia style! You bet yer ass baby!!!
We’ve known celebrated football coach Tommy Tuberville for a long time on this blog; he’s an old friend! Famous for Ponzi schemes, punching his coaches (on camera), beating his players, demanding university-budget-destroying payouts and if he doesn’t get them threatening lawsuits, Tuberville is your standard-issue big-time football coach. And with that financial and ethical history, his next step was obvious: US Senator from Alabama!
Tommy joined the Treason Caucus with incredible enthusiasm, condemning Biden’s fraudulent election to the very end and releasing a statement today that…
Oh. Alabama’s other congresspeople have released statements, but Tommy… Welp, guess Tommy’s not quarterbacking today! Haha! Where the hell’s Tommy?
Tommy?
Now I don’t want you to think UD‘s doin’ that thang where coastal elites make fun of Alabama accents and tell you people from Alabama’s real dumb so let me clarify by quoting some stuff Senator Tuberville, when he was in a more talkative mood, said about the US government he’s trying to bring down from his powerful position as a Senator.
Our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three branches of government — wasn’t set up that way,” [Senator-Elect Tommy] Tuberville said. “You know, the House, the Senate, and the executive... [A] guy can run for president of the United States and have an opportunity to win when he leans more to a Socialist type of government, you know, one-payer system in health care, raise taxes 20%, when the other half the country is basically voting for freedom, let us control our own lives, stay out of our life. And that’s concerning to me that we’re to the point now where we’ve got almost half the country voting for something that this country wasn’t built on. Very concerning and, you know, as I tell people, my dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of Socialism.
Today, you look at this election, we have half this country that made some kind of movement, now they might not believe in it 100 percent, but they made some kind of movement toward socialism. So we’re fighting it right here on our own soil… I remember in 2000 Al Gore was president, United States, president elect, for 30 days – 30 days – and after 30 days, it got to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court says, no, George Bush is going to be the president…
Get to know your Treason Caucus! This the first of a series of introductions this blog will provide to the newest, and already most high-profile, congressional caucus.
The first of many (?) Republican members of congress calls for the Paranoid Schizophrenic in Chief to be removed via the 25th Amendment.
No one blames her family for taking weeks to announce it; when it happens (as UD knows from her own family), you just want to be alone with it, want to protect the privacy of a beloved, vulnerable, tormented soul.
And then there’s this.
… Jared Kushner’s father [in an email] told a friend that Trump’s actions are “beyond our control.” … [The] president has gotten untethered; there is no longer anyone at all to mediate, even in a craven or enabling way, between his impulses and those of his most delusional, violent supporters. And with his social media accounts shut down, we lack even the usual level of awful access to the pattern of his thoughts. The man who is nothing but performance has been cut off from the audience that gives him shape and meaning.
What is the president doing? Is there a president right now, really? The safety line has gone slack in the cave, and we are all waiting to see what kind of thing will come back out.
Great news, especially for our national security.
Go deep. Use every ounce of pornographic imagination you have for this one. What are you envisioning?
You’re holding back. You’re not letting yourself go there. But think of it this way. Desecrating the Capitol is nothing, killing and injuring people is nothing, almost destroying our democracy is nothing. It’s time for Trump to desecrate the delicate, vulnerable, spiritual lives of millions of Americans.
See him grab randomly at one of the fundamentalist idiots – his equivalent in tricksterism among the bible thumpers – who still think he’s god. See him go in front of the cameras clinging to this person, introducing her as his spiritual advisor, and then crying like Jimmy Swaggart (the men look identical – Trump doesn’t even have to do the theatrics – he can release Swaggart’s tape and say it’s him).
America, I have sinned before thee. Look upon me, a broken man with only his Lord and Savior to love and redeem him. More than half of America hates me! Hates my children! Hates my grandchildren! [Wails.] Have pity on the innocents, my fellow Americans! My grandchildren are not to blame for the sins of their grandfather. Do not scar their lives with rejection and contempt. I know you hate me but Jesus loves me and it doesn’t matter what I do he will always love me!! Right here and now I will be baptized again in the healing waters! [Spiritual advisor lowers him, fully clothed, into a bathtub.] Watch me! Watch the lord transform me into a born-again, humbled, leader! I let power go to my head I fully admit it! And the lord saith pride goeth before a fall and lord I have fallen so low! [Returns, dripping, to microphone.] I hereby renounce Satan and all his ways.
Here is an exact equivalence; here is what Donald Trump has done to us.
In 2012 ISIS men took over a university in Tunisia. Their first act: Replacing the Tunisian flag with the flag of ISIS.
Unlike here in the US, where whatever initial paltry police presence seems to have done virtually nothing, a very brave woman student at the Tunisian university confronted the ISIS thugs and tried to replace the national flag. They almost killed her.
So there we are. Here we are. Violent insurrectionists successfully replaced the American flag with a Trump flag.
“I had a little country once, but it don’t move no more.”
“Because you crushed it, Donnie. Maybe you didn’t mean to, but you’re such a big, strong, man! The biggest, strongest man!”
“I’m the biggest strongest man! … The greatest first term in presidential history!”
“Yes, Donnie. But see the mess you made at the Capitol yesterday?”
“I didn’t mean nuthin! I didn’t mean to kill it! I just wanted to play with it.”
“We know. We know. Don’t cry! Look – there’s only a little time left in your term. Pretty close to the whole country is traumatized and hates you and your family. Don’t you care about your family?”
“I love my family! I love to pet my family!”
“Then it’s time for you to issue a statement agreeing to the orderly transition of power.”
“But can I say in the statement Make America Great Again? [snivels] Can I still say MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?”
“Of course you can, Donnie. You can say lots of things that you think up all by yourself to say! But you HAVE to say that you agree to the peaceful transition of power.”
[wipes nose] “Okay, okay.”
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.
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