Which – I’m having trouble keeping track, but … – which I think is the next thing that’s gonna happen to Alan Dershowitz.

There is a pervasive culture of negligence, petty corruption and blame-shifting endemic to the Lebanese bureaucracy, all overseen by a political class defined by its incompetence and contempt for the public good… Emergency aid will only magnify public humiliation and helplessness. Yesterday’s explosion made clear that Lebanon is no longer a country where decent people can live secure and fulfilling lives.

A very angry opinion piece that wisely keeps its anger under control. But just barely.

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Another opinion piece, Washington Post:

[N]o one in government, no one with any responsibility for the care and well-being of Lebanon and its people, cares. They never have... People in government have brazenly stolen millions. The latest banking collapse had many reasons, but primarily it happened because we had a unified government that decided it was time to empty out the national bank and central reserves. Most parts of Lebanon have been getting no more than two or three hours of electricity a day because certain members of parliament have companies making millions selling and maintaining generators. Because of the lack of maintenance of the sewage system, the Lebanese are swimming in crap, literally...

We had a civil war that ended only when all the sides figured they could steal a lot more money if they cooperated.

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A third.

The Lebanese people have long suffered as a consequence of the actions and behavior of venal, incompetent individuals; of power-hungry politicians, businesspeople, and shadowy figures, and of geopolitical actors who have made the country their plaything at the expense of good governance… It’s not fate causing Lebanon’s tragedy. Perhaps the shared anger over this event can bring the Lebanese together to push back against the incompetent and the greedy, the functionaries, politicians, and outside players, who have hijacked their country and created conditions for the Lebanese people’s never-ending tragedy; admittedly a monumental task.

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We’re detecting a theme.

[E]vil has taken the form and character of a non-sovereign, irresponsible, criminal state that is hostile to its own population and the cultural urban fabric that makes Beirut a unique Mediterranean city.

… The prospect of a new uprising in the immediate aftermath of this incident is far fetched. But we should not delude ourselves into believing that this brutal, criminal state will succeed in making its populace a lifeless corpse.

With everyone talking about Sonny Boy’s cock-on-a-yacht display, it’s time to remind you that the Trump-BFF president of Libertine University has long been a laughable hypocrite. (Only a few at Libertine seem to mind.) He got it from his daddy, whose valedictory Christopher Hitchens memorably provided in this famous clip.

The Kansas Secretary of State, famous for scaring the shit out of the kiddies by mounting a huge gun in the Shawnee Memorial Day Parade, just lost his Senate primary.

On the bright side: He and BFF Donald Trump will both soon be free to go on a camping and fishing trip together at Yo! Semite! National Park.

Lo these many blogyears, UD has covered immense tons of political hoaxes – hoaxes that involve sociopathic ideologues creating/impersonating political victims. If you scan her HOAX category, you’ll discover many varieties of political victim hoax, dating way back, and you’ll probably ask yourself why they happen… i.e., what could possibly be the motive behind such bizarre, incredibly destructive, and self-defeating schemes (as with the latest such hoax, the hoaxers attempt, when the shit hits the fan, to “kill” their creation, but it rarely works).

Long ago, UD wrote an article about the Yasusada hoax, in which a white American dude created a fake atomic bomb-traumatized Japanese poet in order to … bring attention to atomic-bomb trauma? But faking it undermined our ability to trust “testimony.” Seemed an obviously contemptible thing to do, thought ol’ UD; yet she encountered plenty of people who said it doesn’t matter if there are all these liars out there making us think people like Yasusada exist and making their words (their creators’ words) move us to tears … cuz u know the end justifies the means, silly, so what if the speaker is not an actual person who suffered but a non-suffering amoral cynical manipulative POS hoaxer.

We can certainly anticipate similar defenses of the, er, troubled BethAnn McLaughlin, who created a persona packed with political victimization (recall UD‘s Rule of Hoax Revelation: Hoaxers typically cannot control themselves, and way over-endow their creations with political victim traits (or, if you’re trying to destroy someone, as in these two hoaxes (scroll down), with political victimizer traits), and nice trusting people rushed to adore her (the hoaxer’s creation, that is).

At some point, who knows why, things began to get out of hand for McLaughlin and her suffering hand puppet, so she gave her Covid, which you might say was a stroke of genius, but babe when you’re trying to prop up a vacancy the vacancy is likely to be even more troublesome ‘dead.’ Remember Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? George and Martha had a perfectly serviceable relationship with their hoax son until George tried to kill him.

But that was pathos and need, and we are – just like Nick – appalled and pitying at the thought of the emotional desperation that generated that boy. No one, OTOH, really wants to enter the vile psyche of a person capable of exploiting the kindness, trust, indignation, and idealism of large numbers of people by turning what is most serious and true and needed in them into a sick personal joke. “Ms. McLaughlin has prompted particular frustration and disgust by posing as a Hopi woman, right as the coronavirus has caused disproportionate harm to Indigenous communities in the United States.”

Bottom line, stated by a Native American journalist: “[I]t does change our ability to advocate for ourselves when we are constantly being replaced by frauds…”

Certainly your blogueuse fears to venture too far into these farts of darkness. Let us simply say that they are satisfying a profound need for attention coupled with an equally profound hatred of the world (imagine how pleasurable it has been for McLaughlin to contemplate what she’s putting over on everyone).

… up and running.

America’s hard-working medical professionals.

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Looks as though they’re selling the house. Quite a spread. Crime pays, can’t be denied.

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Plus you gotta admire the guy’s balls.

LIGOTTI and [his business] Whole Health filed a civil suit in 2016 alleging that [United Health Care] withheld payments [to him] in violation of ERISA.

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And while we’re at it we need to ultrasound your uterus.

[One patient told government investigators she reluctantly agreed to a gynecological ultrasound] “just to get [Ligotti’s staff] to shut up [about it].“

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Ligotti was “adamant that every patient submit urine during every visit. … LIGOTTI would get angry with employees who forgot to collect urine and yelled at them to fill cups with toilet water if they had to.”

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UD has a sneaking admiration for deep, committed, relentless, crooks. Ligotti and his wife know they have been under investigation for years, and have responded with an absurd time-consuming lawsuit, letters expressing faux outrage that someone seems to be abusing Ligotti’s medical privileges, an attempt to file for bankruptcy because their three properties worth millions are, you know, worth zero, and a successful attempt to get a PPP loan.

“Poor Evelyn,” wrote Cecil Beaton on the occasion of his friend Evelyn Waugh’s demise. “Died of snobbery.”

Poor Herman died of stupidity – the sort of stupidity that makes one wonder how he survived for as long as 75 years.

LOL.

… but …

As if one needed any more reasons to loathe Liberty U.

… in feras.

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He does tend to stir the creative imagination. Also really great writing. This, says Scathing Online Schoolmarm, is unbeatable. Highlights from a tightly organized, tonally controlled, brilliantly concise, little masterpiece:

no pollster left to lie to him

listened to the lethal quackery

harmful and bizarre

result of a country run by a crackpot

dereliction of duty, son.

fevered with viral hot spots.

Of late, Trump has been itching for a riot.

Nixon is a notch higher in the hell-scape

He’s Trump with a pious veneer

a timely bootlick.

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And see what he’s about in his final paragraph? See all the ys, all the ee sounds that come off the page? The writer knows how to make prose poetic, and therefore much more coherent and powerful.

But there’s another image, equally satisfying. Trump could play one last gambit in the dictator’s checklist and refuse to leave office on Jan. 20 — election or no election — as required by the Constitution. If he does this, a weary nation would be rewarded with a presidential perp walk, as Trump is escorted out of the White House and into infamy by the military police.

If you lack the alliteration, assonance, perfect-wordism, and tonal cool this writer enjoys in abundance, sorry. Not everybody gets the style goodies. But you can learn a lot by reading him carefully.

One of America’s most prominent conservatives, Steven G. Calabresi, is calling for impeachment and removal, asap.

It would have been nice if Trump had postponed going full Kanye West until after the election. Unfortunately, he is breaking apart far faster than one might have anticipated, and this endangers us all.

… which is so unDershlike; but maybe he – in the face of newly-released documents accusing him of sex with an underage trafficked girl – has decided to take Elizabeth Dye’s advice and shut up.

A strange man, Harvard’s Dersh. No one in public life brings more passion to the defense of genital mutilation (male and female); and few in public life stand so starkly accused of repeated sex with a minor on a privately owned island reportedly given over to orgies. A strange melange of real and alleged enthusiasms. A strange person to represent more prominently than anyone else Harvard Law School.

They love him in Texas.