Too many people have unlearned or simply forgotten the lessons of the schoolyard: bullies don't back off when you give them what they want, instead they ask for more. A hard pop on the nose is the only thing that can potentially make them retreat.
Why anyone at this point would spend tens of thousands of dollars to attend Columbia to get lectured, shat on, and handed to the police in exchange for their coin is a mystery. So Columbia is not only fucked with the Administration, they've effectively fucked themselves by saying to prospective students and their parents "come study here, we'd like you to give us your money before we throw you to the wolves."
Yep--bullies move on to easier targets when they encounter resistance. So Columbia has screwed itself by surrendering, only to be screwed yet again FOR surrendering. Meanwhile, the entire Rightwing machine has declared none of its members should hire Columbia grads because they're obviously too woke--so, Columbia's students are screwed.
It's an incomprehensible amount of money too, to attend Columbia. It seems, from my perspective, to be a school for rich kids, these days. I know some middle and poor kids who went, but that was 20 and 30 years ago. The cost now, when you factor in room and board, exceeds $110k per year.
"I mean, I knew academia was stuffed with gutless careerists but FUCK."
Uhhh... gutless careerists and the like are what our elite and leadership class have been for the last couple of decades. You know, just keeping the record clear.
As for academia generally, likewise their obvious failure to make kids reasonably smart. (Of course, there are other pressures keeping the youngs dumb and/or insufficiently engaged.)
And more specifically Donny and Columbia: he's got that bully's punk need to smack people around because he's a bully and, on top of that, an infantile piece of shit. Possibly also has an antipathy re Columbia because it's NYC regarding which he has issues. And those issues aren't mitigated at all in appreciation for the NYC media giving him his start as it were with fawning coverage. (CP5 coverage is maybe like the paradigmatic example.) He's a cunt that never, ever shows gratitude in any meaningful way. Loyalty for the POS is one way with it.
As for resistance: there's a limited upside thanks to the opposition party but every act helps.
Higher education is no longer (if it really ever was) about learning in general, but learning directed towards serving the corporate world with managers and administrators.
A hundred years ago it was basically finishing school for the 1% but there were always the cranks and obsessives who toiled in science, math, engineering, etc.
I worked in basic science and research departments (as an admin assist) and yes there are still people who care about science, learning, and critical thinking. They can still be gutless careerists, of course, especially at the higher echelons. On the other hand, I knew profs in a public university who could have worked at more prestigious institutions but were truly committed to education for the less privileged.
You're forgetting the land grant colleges established after the War of Northern Agression, IIRC. While the Ivys were focused on teaching the finer points of philosophy and which fork to use for turtle soup, some people understood America needed to teach people how to do more than farm and run general stores, churches, and bars.
After the Late Unpleasantness every single Southern state established agricultural/mechanical/technical schools (for White kids) so that they no longer had to import that knowledge base from up North.
Republican state legislators think we're a welding school, so we don't get 1% of the attention the UW gets. Doin' a lesson today on Global Temperature Anomaly (had to check that the NASA links I was using are still up).
There's plenty to be said about institutional corporatization and how bad administrators can be. But a big thing here is that name-brand ivies are being singled out for these public spectacles of witch hunting and punishment.
Those administrators sound like they are necessarily cautious, yet trying to meet the moment. The organizers "advised higher ed leaders: If there isn’t a federal or state law yet—or there’s wiggle room within the law—don’t overcomply." It's nothing new for the student bodies of community colleges to fit the forbidden word, "diverse," and there's likely to be more good faith from these administrators, unlike what we've seen from the objects of national spectacle.
Also, "name-brand Ivies" are being singled out because the Republicans need the active participation of the New York Times and Washington Post for their witch-hunt, and you couldn't get those people interested in what's happening at a non-ivy if you held a gun to their heads.
I now realize that the slogan, “I’m outta fucks to give,” is seriously misleading. I and the rest of the nonfascist world has plenty of “fuck you,” “fuck off, and “go fuck yourself” to say to these tinpot dictators. You mean to tell me Columbia couldn’t find one federal judge who graduated from there to tell Trump to fuck all the way off?
It's not Porgie's story that FDR interrupts - it's Nick Danger! He was about to solve the problem of all the duplicate characters from the flashback showing up in the regular story and the announcement breaks in to that!
I completely agree. This is vile theater. As you say, the Trump fascists use antisemitism as just one of many buzzwords -- in this case it's a ruse for their broad attack on universities and their endowments and research grants. The fact that it also makes it easy to divide and conquer is a lagniappe. For Russell Vought et al this is a crusade. JD Vance gave a keynote address in 2021 titled, "The Universities Are the Enemy." And it wasn't about antisemitism.
Exactly right, about the results of groveling to bullies.
But (a Monday?) There's a typo: Tubby "has put fash petal to the metal." If petals are part of this, they're on the most putrid smelling and toxic of species.
Hammering Flowers was the opener for the first punk show in San Francisco. Signaled to a grateful populace the end of the misbegotten flower power drek.
The always excellent Steve Shives tipped me off to a Politico piece on the assholes at Third Way. Last month they hosted a brainstorming session or "Comeback Retreat". The resulting list of bullet points recommends tossing everyone overboard, embracing GOP policy and outreach to big money donors. There is also a lot of verbiage that translates to, HOW CAN THE DEMOCRATS ATTRACT WORKING CLASS VOTERS, WHILE SELLING THEM OUT AT THE SAME TIME?
Churches!
Tailgate parties!
Gun shows!
Meet the brutes where they live and tell them we share their grievances.
Gun shows? Maybe they can pick up some "Liberal Hunting Permits."
Some folks have guns, and fantasize about taking over and killing a broad spectrum of people. Others just want to "kill" liberalism, primarily because they don't like it. Whether it wins or not, they don't like it. Theirs is a big tent indeed.
You know what churches are full of working-class voters? Black ones.
You know what schools also have tailgate parties (step shows)? HBCUs.
But this never, ever gets mentioned for fear of offending the mythical "middle-class" (i.e., White) voter. Which hasn't voted for a Democrat for President since 1964.
I'd like to see a Venn diagram between the ten Democrats (all but one of whom were White) who voted to censure Al Green last week and Third Way.
Sorry, my alarms went up when I saw "a Politico piece". Wonder why they're giving these losers such prominence? Their line will ALWAYS be "Democrats in disarray", highlighting the divisions, always with a ready quote from a Centrist about how the lefties are fuckin' everything up.
Last week Republican Congressional leaders told their members to cancel all town-hall meetings because their filthy constituents were showing up and complaining. Was the headline in Politico "Republicans cancel town-hall meetings"? Of course not, it was some shit like "Democrats scramble to respond to new Republican strategy." Complete with a quote from anonymous Congressional Dem staffer about how much he hated the people at Indivisible.
Mr. Shives ventured into the swamp to "gather the mangoes". He has a stronger stomach than me. The Politico article was everything one could expect from that particular group of shits. Still, it's always helpful to see what kind of hogswallop is currently getting mainlined into the "centrist" operatives. The Party of FDR is reeling from last November, and the jackals are circling. Shives did a good autopsy on his YouTube site.
Lord Haw Haw, so of course they give plenty of prominence to the Quislings.
I'm watching the Republican Continuing Resolution, 8% across-the-board cuts for all non-military discretionary spending, I'm feeling increasingly confident we'll get a 100% no from the Democrats in Congress. If that happens, don't expect the headline in Politico to be "Democrats United in Opposition", more like "Some Anonymous Democrat Says They Made a Big Mistake."
And if it fails, it will be because Johnson couldn't get all the Republicans on board, do NOT expect a "Republicans in disarray" headline if that happens.
(I'm hoping for the same ending as Lord Haw-Haw: drunk off your ass on your last broadcast, and, like Quisling, arrested, tried for treason and hanged)
I figure he'll run for president, and it'll be interesting to see how far he goes. Forward, march! Zero steps left, two steps right, zero steps left ...
The problem of course is big money, when it gives "charitably", thinking that buys the receiving organization. Columbia's previous groveling would always be insufficient: and seeing smarty pants profs humbled is MAGAt catnip.
Here we see it did: and even if the Big Money was government, Shitler shows who owns whom.
For the good that Columbia scholars and medicine has done it's now just bought and paid for.
The pretextual nature of the excuses (scary Palestinian "associated" with Hamas, and the perception of threat by Jewish students)is a higher grade of cynicism: the type necessary to come up with cynical reasons to declare the Insurrection Act in force, and Donnie's reich.
I understand the Admin planning to use a disease as the mcguffin to declare the Scary Immigrant Insurgency...
Re: disease: absolutely. Trumpists don't if care millions die, even their own. Letting a pandemic rage would present many opportunities. They made a big deal about tyranny and that devil Fauci, but their tune will be different with Trump and Kennedy (I can't believe I just typed that) in charge.
Under the flag of defeating disease, they can go after practically anybody. Immigrants. The medical establishment. Businesses they don't like. They can have lockdowns that don't work. National emergency. Suspend elections, because if we didn't have free and fair elections before (in their telling), how can we have them in these pandemical conditions?
If the pandemic is COVID-adjacent, many MAGA who said COVID was a "plandemic" will decide that it was real (without forgiving anyone they pilloried). They will be fervently in favor of Trump turning the authoritarian dial up to eleven. At the same time, they will not hold him accountable for failing to actually combat the disease effectively.
They would be willing to: wear masks; stay at home; get vaccinated, or take orders from Kennedy under threat from the law; and/or die.
The pretextual nature of the excuses (scary Palestinian "associated" with Hamas, and the perception of threat by Jewish students
Not even the first time the Columbia powers that be tried this. Bari Weiss started her move to prominence by trying to get pro-Palestinian professors at Columbia fired
The Democratic party leadership isn't doing much better than academia as demonstrated by the hand-wringing over lukewarm protest at Trump's address coupled with ten Democrats signing on to censure one of their own for showing a little bit of fire at the same speech. The choice of Senator Elissa Slotkin, who I reluctantly voted for here in Michigan, to perform the rebuttal was extremely weak. You needed Bernie or AOC or Raskin to respond to this insanity, not more of this "Reagan would be turning over in his grave" bullshit. Slotkin was on my television this weekend looking like a deer in the headlights as fucking replacement level "journalist" Kristin Welker berated her because the Democrats didn't cut enough spending during the Biden administration. As it has been noted by others, if you can't get on TV as a Democrat and tell people why government spending is GOOD, either quit or get on the other goddamn team.
Funny how the stupid public continues to support government spending and government workers even though nobody's telling them they should. "Foreign aid" was the only item where even a near-majority (49%) support cuts. There ya go, Democrats, if you were looking for cover, you've to it! (feel like I'm trying to coax a kitten out from under the dryer.)
And most of the public has no idea how much of the budget is spent on foreign aid - I saw a poll where the respondents estimated as much as 25% was spent on other countries when the actual number is a little over 1%.
Reporters are generally allergic to basic arithmetic, so only one story in a thousand about USAID will mention what percent of the federal budget it is. Maybe they think that information is too "partisan."
And to your previous point, Tovarishch don't care how many losers support increases in fedfunding. Tovarishch gots other ideas what ta do wid alla da money.
Before leaping to antisemitism one presumes there must be semitism*. Seeing none (except in Israel), one wonders what all the local commotion** is about.
You cannot appease a lunatic with a smooth brain, so with Trump as president, it's smart to go by the modified axiom, "it's better to die on your feet than die on your knees."
For a reminder that humans can be better than this, read about the good people at Kentucky Health Justice Network. After Dobbs, they started helping women in Kentucky connect up with docs out-of-state, then after the KY state legislature passed laws banning gender-affirming care, they took on the job of helping trans youth in the state get help from docs in other, more civilized, places.
After Tubby's illegal threat to deny federal funding to ANY health care facility that did gender-affirming care, here's how their director reacted:
“One of the first things we needed to do was call the clinics in other states, making sure they weren’t going to start preemptively complying, and stop providing care.”
All in a day's work. The bastards are ALWAYS trying to shut you down, so you stay nimble and ready to find work-arounds:
"In abortion care, providers have shifted, where possible, toward counseling patients through self-managed abortions at home and sending pills by mail to states, [Dr. Lakshmi Sundaresan, a family medicine physician in Michigan] said. Evidence suggests this strategy has been broadly effective. In the year after Roe was overturned, the number of abortions went up, with experts attributing it to a rise in telemedicine and self-managed medication abortions."
My own Congressman, the awesome Marc Pocan, held a town hall meeting on the weekend in a small town on the far western edge of the district, right over the line from District 3, stomping grounds of Bubble Boy Derrick Van Orden. Place was packed, maybe even a few District 3 refugees came over, Pocan outlined the Republican government-gutting plan for an attentive audience.
Too many people have unlearned or simply forgotten the lessons of the schoolyard: bullies don't back off when you give them what they want, instead they ask for more. A hard pop on the nose is the only thing that can potentially make them retreat.
Why anyone at this point would spend tens of thousands of dollars to attend Columbia to get lectured, shat on, and handed to the police in exchange for their coin is a mystery. So Columbia is not only fucked with the Administration, they've effectively fucked themselves by saying to prospective students and their parents "come study here, we'd like you to give us your money before we throw you to the wolves."
Yep--bullies move on to easier targets when they encounter resistance. So Columbia has screwed itself by surrendering, only to be screwed yet again FOR surrendering. Meanwhile, the entire Rightwing machine has declared none of its members should hire Columbia grads because they're obviously too woke--so, Columbia's students are screwed.
(If said ukase includes the Columbia School of Journalism that may not be a bad thing. . .)
Maybe it can be the safety school for right-wing kids who couldn't get into a college in Florida.
It's an incomprehensible amount of money too, to attend Columbia. It seems, from my perspective, to be a school for rich kids, these days. I know some middle and poor kids who went, but that was 20 and 30 years ago. The cost now, when you factor in room and board, exceeds $110k per year.
"I mean, I knew academia was stuffed with gutless careerists but FUCK."
Uhhh... gutless careerists and the like are what our elite and leadership class have been for the last couple of decades. You know, just keeping the record clear.
As for academia generally, likewise their obvious failure to make kids reasonably smart. (Of course, there are other pressures keeping the youngs dumb and/or insufficiently engaged.)
And more specifically Donny and Columbia: he's got that bully's punk need to smack people around because he's a bully and, on top of that, an infantile piece of shit. Possibly also has an antipathy re Columbia because it's NYC regarding which he has issues. And those issues aren't mitigated at all in appreciation for the NYC media giving him his start as it were with fawning coverage. (CP5 coverage is maybe like the paradigmatic example.) He's a cunt that never, ever shows gratitude in any meaningful way. Loyalty for the POS is one way with it.
As for resistance: there's a limited upside thanks to the opposition party but every act helps.
Higher education is no longer (if it really ever was) about learning in general, but learning directed towards serving the corporate world with managers and administrators.
If it ever was? I can tell you that it was. And maybe still is in many places.
A hundred years ago it was basically finishing school for the 1% but there were always the cranks and obsessives who toiled in science, math, engineering, etc.
I worked in basic science and research departments (as an admin assist) and yes there are still people who care about science, learning, and critical thinking. They can still be gutless careerists, of course, especially at the higher echelons. On the other hand, I knew profs in a public university who could have worked at more prestigious institutions but were truly committed to education for the less privileged.
You're forgetting the land grant colleges established after the War of Northern Agression, IIRC. While the Ivys were focused on teaching the finer points of philosophy and which fork to use for turtle soup, some people understood America needed to teach people how to do more than farm and run general stores, churches, and bars.
After the Late Unpleasantness every single Southern state established agricultural/mechanical/technical schools (for White kids) so that they no longer had to import that knowledge base from up North.
Regular contact with actual college students helps here. Plenty of idealism combined with an understanding that they're gonna need to make a living.
Eh. I was like a liberal arts major so college was more than a trade skool.
That "like" is doing a medium-weight lift.
Speaking from experience, even the trade schools teach some humanities and shore up literacy. Don't knock 'em —
Republican state legislators think we're a welding school, so we don't get 1% of the attention the UW gets. Doin' a lesson today on Global Temperature Anomaly (had to check that the NASA links I was using are still up).
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/?intent=121
There's plenty to be said about institutional corporatization and how bad administrators can be. But a big thing here is that name-brand ivies are being singled out for these public spectacles of witch hunting and punishment.
There are plenty of less exalted schools around the country. Many have already faced anti-DEI legislation from rabid state legislatures. I happened to see this, about administrators in different states networking around how to respond to these attacks. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/state-policy/2025/01/27/grassroots-college-leader-group-resists-anti-dei#
Those administrators sound like they are necessarily cautious, yet trying to meet the moment. The organizers "advised higher ed leaders: If there isn’t a federal or state law yet—or there’s wiggle room within the law—don’t overcomply." It's nothing new for the student bodies of community colleges to fit the forbidden word, "diverse," and there's likely to be more good faith from these administrators, unlike what we've seen from the objects of national spectacle.
"don’t overcomply"
Aux Barricades!
My heroes! Thanks for this, and MORE PLEASE.
Also, "name-brand Ivies" are being singled out because the Republicans need the active participation of the New York Times and Washington Post for their witch-hunt, and you couldn't get those people interested in what's happening at a non-ivy if you held a gun to their heads.
I now realize that the slogan, “I’m outta fucks to give,” is seriously misleading. I and the rest of the nonfascist world has plenty of “fuck you,” “fuck off, and “go fuck yourself” to say to these tinpot dictators. You mean to tell me Columbia couldn’t find one federal judge who graduated from there to tell Trump to fuck all the way off?
Look at you - up on the ramparts! Liberty, Equality, Fraternity !
Word.
Thanks for being upbeat.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71SHw-APMuL.jpg
I'm out here throwing up "enemy of the state" smoke signals every day. Come and get me, coppers!
The Cody Jarret of Substack
"coppers!" pronounced "koppuhs!"? Or "koawghpizz!"?
Those goldurn federal penny-stealers not gonna get my coppers!
Crazy Cousin Steve, once again failing to catch the drift...
Gaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!
It's not Porgie's story that FDR interrupts - it's Nick Danger! He was about to solve the problem of all the duplicate characters from the flashback showing up in the regular story and the announcement breaks in to that!
Whoops, sorry. Correcting it now.
I gotta listen to that again soon. It's been a few years.
POPS!
He's a student like you
Helping Porcelain make the bed.
He's so good with the help!
I completely agree. This is vile theater. As you say, the Trump fascists use antisemitism as just one of many buzzwords -- in this case it's a ruse for their broad attack on universities and their endowments and research grants. The fact that it also makes it easy to divide and conquer is a lagniappe. For Russell Vought et al this is a crusade. JD Vance gave a keynote address in 2021 titled, "The Universities Are the Enemy." And it wasn't about antisemitism.
As an insider, he oughta know...
Exactly right, about the results of groveling to bullies.
But (a Monday?) There's a typo: Tubby "has put fash petal to the metal." If petals are part of this, they're on the most putrid smelling and toxic of species.
Ha ha, OK fixing that too, thanks
I think if you'd written "metal to the petal" it would have been okay. He probably spent a lot of time hammering flowers as a child.
Hammering Flowers was the opener for the first punk show in San Francisco. Signaled to a grateful populace the end of the misbegotten flower power drek.
"Listen to the Flower Pe-GAAAH!"
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oabIrttKgPE
Thanks for this – was envisioning something...uh...different...not in a good way.
That was at Mabuhay Gardens? The Flowers would only play the Gardens, or so I have read
The always excellent Steve Shives tipped me off to a Politico piece on the assholes at Third Way. Last month they hosted a brainstorming session or "Comeback Retreat". The resulting list of bullet points recommends tossing everyone overboard, embracing GOP policy and outreach to big money donors. There is also a lot of verbiage that translates to, HOW CAN THE DEMOCRATS ATTRACT WORKING CLASS VOTERS, WHILE SELLING THEM OUT AT THE SAME TIME?
Churches!
Tailgate parties!
Gun shows!
Meet the brutes where they live and tell them we share their grievances.
Gun shows? Maybe they can pick up some "Liberal Hunting Permits."
Some folks have guns, and fantasize about taking over and killing a broad spectrum of people. Others just want to "kill" liberalism, primarily because they don't like it. Whether it wins or not, they don't like it. Theirs is a big tent indeed.
Church Gun Shows!
[just back from "southern Carolina, where the palm tree meets the pine"]
Also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2q_FUOwfl4
Shootout at the Social!
You know what churches are full of working-class voters? Black ones.
You know what schools also have tailgate parties (step shows)? HBCUs.
But this never, ever gets mentioned for fear of offending the mythical "middle-class" (i.e., White) voter. Which hasn't voted for a Democrat for President since 1964.
I'd like to see a Venn diagram between the ten Democrats (all but one of whom were White) who voted to censure Al Green last week and Third Way.
Sorry, my alarms went up when I saw "a Politico piece". Wonder why they're giving these losers such prominence? Their line will ALWAYS be "Democrats in disarray", highlighting the divisions, always with a ready quote from a Centrist about how the lefties are fuckin' everything up.
Last week Republican Congressional leaders told their members to cancel all town-hall meetings because their filthy constituents were showing up and complaining. Was the headline in Politico "Republicans cancel town-hall meetings"? Of course not, it was some shit like "Democrats scramble to respond to new Republican strategy." Complete with a quote from anonymous Congressional Dem staffer about how much he hated the people at Indivisible.
Lord Haw Haw for the Internet Age.
In total agreement!
Mr. Shives ventured into the swamp to "gather the mangoes". He has a stronger stomach than me. The Politico article was everything one could expect from that particular group of shits. Still, it's always helpful to see what kind of hogswallop is currently getting mainlined into the "centrist" operatives. The Party of FDR is reeling from last November, and the jackals are circling. Shives did a good autopsy on his YouTube site.
https://youtu.be/r0gWeYU_SIo?si=gBxRRdXfMl4H6jB3
Lord Haw Haw, so of course they give plenty of prominence to the Quislings.
I'm watching the Republican Continuing Resolution, 8% across-the-board cuts for all non-military discretionary spending, I'm feeling increasingly confident we'll get a 100% no from the Democrats in Congress. If that happens, don't expect the headline in Politico to be "Democrats United in Opposition", more like "Some Anonymous Democrat Says They Made a Big Mistake."
And if it fails, it will be because Johnson couldn't get all the Republicans on board, do NOT expect a "Republicans in disarray" headline if that happens.
(I'm hoping for the same ending as Lord Haw-Haw: drunk off your ass on your last broadcast, and, like Quisling, arrested, tried for treason and hanged)
Did anyone get a recording of that? Might be fun to listen to.
Times like these, people show you who they are and what they’re made of. Looking at you too, Newscum.
I figure he'll run for president, and it'll be interesting to see how far he goes. Forward, march! Zero steps left, two steps right, zero steps left ...
But... but... THE FOCUS GROUPS
Even with the Firesign bobble, this is so right.
The problem of course is big money, when it gives "charitably", thinking that buys the receiving organization. Columbia's previous groveling would always be insufficient: and seeing smarty pants profs humbled is MAGAt catnip.
Here we see it did: and even if the Big Money was government, Shitler shows who owns whom.
For the good that Columbia scholars and medicine has done it's now just bought and paid for.
The pretextual nature of the excuses (scary Palestinian "associated" with Hamas, and the perception of threat by Jewish students)is a higher grade of cynicism: the type necessary to come up with cynical reasons to declare the Insurrection Act in force, and Donnie's reich.
I understand the Admin planning to use a disease as the mcguffin to declare the Scary Immigrant Insurgency...
Re: disease: absolutely. Trumpists don't if care millions die, even their own. Letting a pandemic rage would present many opportunities. They made a big deal about tyranny and that devil Fauci, but their tune will be different with Trump and Kennedy (I can't believe I just typed that) in charge.
Under the flag of defeating disease, they can go after practically anybody. Immigrants. The medical establishment. Businesses they don't like. They can have lockdowns that don't work. National emergency. Suspend elections, because if we didn't have free and fair elections before (in their telling), how can we have them in these pandemical conditions?
If the pandemic is COVID-adjacent, many MAGA who said COVID was a "plandemic" will decide that it was real (without forgiving anyone they pilloried). They will be fervently in favor of Trump turning the authoritarian dial up to eleven. At the same time, they will not hold him accountable for failing to actually combat the disease effectively.
They would be willing to: wear masks; stay at home; get vaccinated, or take orders from Kennedy under threat from the law; and/or die.
No doubt this is an option on their table. Nat E. Mergency will be recruited to lead the way.
"You know who else used disease for a national cleansing..."
Beware White people bearing free blankets.
The pretextual nature of the excuses (scary Palestinian "associated" with Hamas, and the perception of threat by Jewish students
Not even the first time the Columbia powers that be tried this. Bari Weiss started her move to prominence by trying to get pro-Palestinian professors at Columbia fired
Remember when 'fellow travellers' with the Ruskies were ousted root and branch*? Man, those were the good ol' days...
Tovarishch really championed the poor downtrodden kleptillionnaires this time...
*The only reason I posted this was so I could write 'root and branch', 'cause it is so cool.
The Democratic party leadership isn't doing much better than academia as demonstrated by the hand-wringing over lukewarm protest at Trump's address coupled with ten Democrats signing on to censure one of their own for showing a little bit of fire at the same speech. The choice of Senator Elissa Slotkin, who I reluctantly voted for here in Michigan, to perform the rebuttal was extremely weak. You needed Bernie or AOC or Raskin to respond to this insanity, not more of this "Reagan would be turning over in his grave" bullshit. Slotkin was on my television this weekend looking like a deer in the headlights as fucking replacement level "journalist" Kristin Welker berated her because the Democrats didn't cut enough spending during the Biden administration. As it has been noted by others, if you can't get on TV as a Democrat and tell people why government spending is GOOD, either quit or get on the other goddamn team.
Funny how the stupid public continues to support government spending and government workers even though nobody's telling them they should. "Foreign aid" was the only item where even a near-majority (49%) support cuts. There ya go, Democrats, if you were looking for cover, you've to it! (feel like I'm trying to coax a kitten out from under the dryer.)
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/51707-as-trump-cuts-federal-funding-most-americans-support-increases
And most of the public has no idea how much of the budget is spent on foreign aid - I saw a poll where the respondents estimated as much as 25% was spent on other countries when the actual number is a little over 1%.
Reporters are generally allergic to basic arithmetic, so only one story in a thousand about USAID will mention what percent of the federal budget it is. Maybe they think that information is too "partisan."
And to your previous point, Tovarishch don't care how many losers support increases in fedfunding. Tovarishch gots other ideas what ta do wid alla da money.
He's not the kitten I'm trying to coax out from under the dryer.
Personally, I'd be more inclined to drop the damn dryer on 'im a few times just for sport. It's a Maytag – I'm pretty sure it'll be alright...
Tovarishch be goin' What Would My Daddy Vladi Do?
Before leaping to antisemitism one presumes there must be semitism*. Seeing none (except in Israel), one wonders what all the local commotion** is about.
*Half a tism is better than none, possibly...
**locomotion, for short, which leads directly to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKpVQm41f8Y
I'm so old I remember when antisemitism was A Thing in the Soviet Union that people fled to the US to avoid (and we helped them).
think we should Cause Co-Motion! but Who's Gonna Care?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l9DF1dUO2k
You cannot appease a lunatic with a smooth brain, so with Trump as president, it's smart to go by the modified axiom, "it's better to die on your feet than die on your knees."
2 marks for smooth brain...
What a fine inverted snark. "Smooth brain, dude – reeeeaalll smooth..."
For a reminder that humans can be better than this, read about the good people at Kentucky Health Justice Network. After Dobbs, they started helping women in Kentucky connect up with docs out-of-state, then after the KY state legislature passed laws banning gender-affirming care, they took on the job of helping trans youth in the state get help from docs in other, more civilized, places.
After Tubby's illegal threat to deny federal funding to ANY health care facility that did gender-affirming care, here's how their director reacted:
“One of the first things we needed to do was call the clinics in other states, making sure they weren’t going to start preemptively complying, and stop providing care.”
All in a day's work. The bastards are ALWAYS trying to shut you down, so you stay nimble and ready to find work-arounds:
"In abortion care, providers have shifted, where possible, toward counseling patients through self-managed abortions at home and sending pills by mail to states, [Dr. Lakshmi Sundaresan, a family medicine physician in Michigan] said. Evidence suggests this strategy has been broadly effective. In the year after Roe was overturned, the number of abortions went up, with experts attributing it to a rise in telemedicine and self-managed medication abortions."
Full story at The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/2025/03/09/abortion-trans-health-care-doctors-trump/
And a donate link, if anyone is so inclined:
https://www.kentuckyhealthjusticenetwork.org/donate.html
And a lot of GOP governors will take their marching orders from Trump -- "If he can do it, so can I." Hell, a lot of them already have.
My own Congressman, the awesome Marc Pocan, held a town hall meeting on the weekend in a small town on the far western edge of the district, right over the line from District 3, stomping grounds of Bubble Boy Derrick Van Orden. Place was packed, maybe even a few District 3 refugees came over, Pocan outlined the Republican government-gutting plan for an attentive audience.