… Changed’ graph, and note
how the shape of the future

looks just like a woman.

While unexpected, the death [of the Duke of Westminster] has not come completely out of the blue.

“He was a depressive and had been unwell for many years,” a source tells The Daily Beast.

… hangs out with its star, Rebel Wilson.

The child does get around.

… with Donald Trump today coming close to suggesting Hillary Clinton should be shot.

*******************

UD thinks it’s time to roll out the term Kafkaesque to describe what this nation will be going through until the beginning of November if the Republican party is unable to figure out a way to replace Trump as their candidate. We are experiencing, for the first time in our history, the presidential campaign of a person who exhibits signs of serious mental disturbance.

***********

Michael Hayden thinks the Secret Service should interview Trump; UD thinks instead that the relevant security outfit should interview his personal physician. Trump behaves like a person with an opioid dependency. (“He’s almost like someone with an addiction who can’t stop,” [one Republic political operative] said. “Until he gets help and admits it, he won’t be able to change.” — UD would suggest that he may indeed be a person with an addiction…)

***********

For anyone who cares about the future of American politics, the comment represents a dwindling commitment to politics itself, to the notion that, through rhetoric and competition, we might find a common way as a people. Instead, the Republican candidate made a casual nod to the final force of arms. At this stage, so little that Trump says shocks us, but, now and then, it is worth stepping back and regarding the full damage of it all: the wounds to our fading global image of openness and generosity; the stomping on our admiration for intelligence, eloquence, or honesty; and now the blithe contempt for safe and civil government.

*******************

UD thanks Greg.

#7.

#8.

#26.

POETRY BOOKS ARE NOT ALWAYS FINANCIALLY VIABLE

Enter Père Trubu, shredding a copy of the New York Times:

FIFTY FAILED ELITES! That’s all they are! By my green candle, Madam, I’ll chop every one of them up into tiny bits and flush them down this gold-plated crapper!

Mère Trubu:

OOOOhhh but ooh Père Trubu also that nasty Senator Collins called you a nasty little merrrdddrrrrre plus she’s not voting for you. What’re we gonna do, Père Trubu? Your campaign’s the one in the crapper! How’re you going to be PRESIDENT and eat all the Boston Cream Pie you want and sit around and tell everybody what to do? Come on Pa Trubu: BE A MAN.

PT:

Pschittabugger and buggerapschitt Ma Trubu another word out of you my lady and I’ll shove your stinking face in the crapper! [Rushes into the bathroom; returns brandishing an unmentionable brush.] DON’T MAKE ME USE THIS. [Chases Mère Trubu about the penthouse. She screams.]

MT:

You MORON. You COWARD. You must capture the Clinton woman and JAIL HER.

PT:

Fuck me Madam brilliant idea HOW do you propose that I do it?

MT:

You must sneak up behind her while she’s giving a speech and scream THUS EVER TO TYRANTS and give her a big fat rap on the head with your brush and drag her off.

PT:

You’re a genius my fine woman but wait what if it doesn’t work and I get caught and I get put in jail?

MT:

You MORON. You COWARD. No one will expect a presidential candidate to do something like that so you will have the advantage of surprise. For once in your life SHOW SOME GUTS.

PT:

Call me a coward again Ma Trubu and I’ll smash your teeth in! [Again runs after her with the brush. She screams. End of Act Two.]

… fails to endorse – indeed denounces – Trump (H/T: TPM).

Remarkable, thinks UD. Given that the 538 Election Forecast has Trump at 98.4%, Clinton at 1.5% in Oklahoma.

… Titties, by Loudmouthed Dickens.

***************

In the grand oratorical tradition of Winston Churchill.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous titties and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere.

**************

Why the Freudian slip?

Cannot stop thinking about Barney Frank, subject of a 2011 Trump tweet.

Barney Frank looked disgusting–nipples protruding–in his blue shirt before Congress. Very very disrespectful.

… looking strong and determined on the university’s official website.

His two teammates who’ve recently been convicted of rape have had their pages taken down.

But Rashad Canty, just arrested for human trafficking, has not had his Vandy Football page taken down.

UD understands Vandy’s problem. The most demanding job on that campus is football-player-webpage-dismantler. You had the two convicted guys, and you’ve also got the two players waiting for their rape trials to begin. They’re both still represented on the team pages.

All of these are former players, by the way – the two awaiting trial for rape, and the one awaiting trial for human trafficking. But all of them shine brightly, the pride of Vanderbilt University, on official team pages.

********

UD thanks John.

[A]mong college Republicans at the University of Pennsylvania, “Everybody hates Trump,” said Matt Shapiro, executive director of the university’s campus Republican organization.

“On campus it’s a disaster,” said Shapiro, 21, a political science and history major. “People are almost embarrassed he went to our school. People love to say that he transferred here: ‘Oh, at least he didn’t start here.’”

One downside of making lots of money as a doc is all those strictly – really! strictly! – non-profit organizations demanding you take more and more absolutely positively necessary certification exams which strangely enough cost you a fortune and if you don’t pay up we’ll put a thingie on your record that says you aren’t certified which is like ooh scary gonna hurt your career…

All Strictly Non-Profit, let us reiterate! Ignore the “multimillion dollar apartments which offer owners chauffeur driven late model BMWs” the American Board of Internal Medicine has gifted to itself out of your fees!

**************

Yes, the ever-chiseling ABIM is an organization always able to come up with another crisis in patient care that cries out for another expensive set of certifying exams.

The ABIM has gotten so disgusting, however, that this dude has formed a breakaway certifying organization that charges hugely less and is drawing so many grossed-out docs away from the BMW organization that the BMW organization is now going Uh haha just kidding we’re going to… uh… pull back on some of these tests and … uh… maybe look at what we’re charging… and I mean hold on cuz we’re on it we promise…

****************

Sadly, the doc-chiseling starts well before ABIM has a chance to start threatening you with anemic certification. There’s the notorious Step 2 Clinical Skills exam, about which more and more med students are making a fuss.

Hundreds of medical students at the University of Maryland, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University are joining a nationwide campaign to eliminate a standardized licensing test they say is redundant and a financial burden.

Students say that the test – the Step 2 Clinical Skills exam, which measures bedside manner and real-world problem-solving while students interact with people acting as patients – should be replaced with an alternative exam that the nation’s medical schools could administer free.

The Step 2 exam is expensive: There is a $1,275 registration fee, and because the test is offered in just five cities, students often have to bear the cost of travel and lodging.

… “There have to be better and more efficient ways to test students,” said James S. Gessner, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society. “There is absolutely no reason to bring students to five testing centers at a huge cost when the material can be administered on-site at schools.”

Yeah, but if they did that, the organization behind the test would be out $36 million a year.

… with “Hardship Relief and Grants
for Faculty Development funds.”

A worthy place to donate, thinks UD.

… but the one who comes closest to the original is Washington State University’s Mike Leach, a man who arrives at each new job trailing a longer and longer shitstream.

Variant doesn’t quite say it, actually. Leach

keeps a framed, autographed picture of Trump on the wall in his office in Pullman, Wash.

Leach has learned everything he knows from Trump: hit back hard; sue the shit out of everyone; discover conspiracies everywhere.

Leach’s latest is a perennial favorite: a media conspiracy. Some of his lads were allegedly involved in a fight at a recent party, and there are reports that one of them broke a fellow student’s jaw. Badly. He did it by kicking him repeatedly in said jaw while the student was unconscious on the floor.

Asked about it, Leach said it was all lies, all a media conspiracy.

When given the chance to correct any facts about the situation that he alleges the media got wrong, Leach said there were “too many to address…”

*********************

See, this is what UD loves about Trump and Trump wannabes like Leach. They really don’t give a shit. They’ll just go out there and say anything… make a hail mary pass… kick the ball down the field see where that sucker ends up… The President was born in Kenya. I won’t tell you the facts about a situation whose facts I don’t know because there are too many facts that I know. Just go there. Just do it. Just brazen that fucker out. It’s an amazing spectacle, and Donald Trump is here to prove that it can take you far.

*********************

Trump has done fairly well with high-profile, unconventional college coaches. But his past two big endorsements — Bobby Knight and … Leach, were fired for, respectively, putting their hands on a student, and making a player stand in a shed.

Hillary did it.