Biden drops out.

‘Bout time.

Limerick

What’s happening now with Joe Biden
Makes the other side think that it’s died and
Gone all up to heaven.
For 24/7
We’re watching Adventure Poseidon

There’ll always be a San Francisco.

… Phil Matier, a former political columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, … asked all the [mayoral] candidates: Would you support criminal consequences for homelessness? 

Unsurprisingly, most candidates didn’t have a straight answer, and many tried to deflect the question. But the moderator pressed each until they gave their position. 

[Ahsha] Safaí deflected until the moderator had to jump in and ask him for a clear answer on whether he supported criminal consequences or not. Safaí could only offer “maybe,” which left the crowd laughing. 

Et tu, Barack?

The unseen but clearly felt presence of Mr. Obama in particular has brought a Shakespearean quality to the drama now playing out, given their eight-year partnership.

‘If one of your main lines of attack on Trump is his mendacity, it was probably not a great idea to tell the entire country that Biden was, in Joe Scarborough’s words, “far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been — intellectually, analytically…”’

UD has taken a break from MSNBC. Used to watch it all the time. Can’t anymore. I hope that will change.

The comment is from Andrew Sullivan.

O City city…

Our postmodern Waste Lands get all turned and twisted…

1] Nawlins don’t do gun control, and as things along those lines get even worse (concealed carry, blahblah) AND as murders remain astounding, the city’s gotta do some real thinkin bout how to keep the carnage to a reasonable level… Reasonable defined here as before the point at which local hospitals are so overwhelmed that the city’s gotta pay for the bloodied to be coptered out.

Now keep in mind that the state of Louisiana could give a shit about educating its people, so it takes a whole hell of a lot for it to, say, open a school. But lookee here – the city came up with a devilishly clever go ’round in response to the latest BIG GUNS FOR ALL legislation there.

The plan is to open a vocational-technical school in the Eighth District Police Station. According to state law, guns are prohibited within 1,000 feet of a school. Signage will alert visitors of the firearm-free zone.

IN. IN the police station. See what they did there? At least the cops will have a small measure of protection. And if the price is having to educate at least a small slice of the population, so be it.

2] It’s official. SF has declared that after almost a decade of massive, city-destroying, filth and crime, the time for compassion is over.

‘We have had to move from a compassionate city to a city of accountability, and I have been leading the efforts to ensure that we are addressing this issue differently than we have before,’ [the mayor] said on Thursday in a change of tack on the issue. 

‘We are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments which may even include criminal penalties,’ she explained, with the ‘sweeps’ scheduled to begin in less than two weeks once staff are retrained to follow new legal guidance.

Of course, aside from the fact that there’s nothing remotely compassionate about what SF has been doing all these years, I think the city will find that thousands of people who have long considered themselves owners of the city’s streets will not be very nice about the change of tack.

‘O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of her nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. She had won the victory over herself. She loved Big Brother.’

Er, not exactly. But color UD impressed by the soft-spoken thing Trump did for half of his convention speech.

‘How to Catch: Fly fishing by stripping a streamer with a baitfish pattern, or gear angling using deep-diving lures or vertical jigging in deeper water.’

UD enjoys reading articles featuring sentences that might as well be in Swahili.

More and more Dems worry that we are entering …

aging pope territory.

A scan of up to the minute news suggests Biden may soon drop out of the race.

Will Schiff…

… be the one to make a diff?

The Spy Who Came in From the Vuitton

So it hit the wires (see post below this one) only an hour or so ago — though Sue-Mi Terry seems to have been spying for South Korea for almost two decades! — but already at lunch UD and Mr UD were all over the story, wondering in particular if Terry’s famous neo-con mate, Max Boot, could possibly NOT have known what the missus was up to.

“Did she rent a storage unit for the luxury bags? If not, he had to ask himself how she managed to own three million dollars worth of clutch purses,” mused UD.

“And… she’d have to have a separate bank account for the South Korean cash,” said Mr UD. “But basically it would be hard as hell to hide what she was up to, and what she was earning in gifts and cash, from him.”

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

In short, Les UDs, FWIW, figure her husband probably knew.

‘Okay so I’ll have one of these ones and one of those ones’

The indictment includes photographs of [Sue Mi] Terry meeting with South Korean officials who prosecutors contend served as her “handlers” for that country’s National Intelligence Service, including photos of one agent shopping for a Louis Vuitton handbag with Terry in a Washington store and the two of them departing together, with the agent carrying it in a shopping bag.

Birmingham AL: 5 for 5


“We had five homicides in the first five days of July.”

To bring the point home, Mayor Randall Woodfin displayed the city’s armes de choix:

At one point, Woodfin swung [an] AR-15 in a way that caused some council members to ask him to not point the weapon in their direction. “Council, I apologize – I didn’t mean to,” Woodfin said. “I’m sorry.”

When he picked up [a] Micro Draco, he said, “Finger’s not on the trigger, everybody,” to calm any nerves. “Nowhere near it.”

‘Because we live in an insane country, military sniper rifles are marketed to civilians who lack any good reason to own one. Had Crooks been a sophisticated … killer …, Trump would probably be dead now. Thankfully, Crooks was not, and Trump received only a minor wound to his outer ear. Crooks was fairly clumsy with guns—so much so, two high school classmates told ABC News, that he was rejected by the school’s rifle team. “He didn’t just not make the team,” one classmate said. “He was asked not to come back because of how bad a shot he was. It was considered, like, dangerous.” The AR-15 and its ilk are frequently the gun of choice for this variety of psychopath because it makes up in destructiveness what it lacks in precision.’

Timothy Noah.

Violence and chaos at a soccer game? What next??

If you’re going to be daft enough to stage one of these riots, you should at least warn non-combatants to stay away.

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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