I wonder who wrote this exception?

The North Carolina congress has endorsed more funding for their university system, which is nice. There’s a catch, though.

The board approved new rules for which subjects can have distinguished professorships. They will now only be given in STEM-related (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

Subjects outside of this category will keep the distinguished professorship positions they’ve already established, but are no longer allowed to create new ones.

Wow. I don’t know who decided that this was a good idea, but I’m certain they know absolutely nothing about education. You can’t have a good university if you treat the arts and humanities and social sciences as second-rate afterthoughts.

I hope the STEM professors at UNC are raising a stink right now. Although getting a 7% salary increase is a good strategy for buying silence.

Air those grievances!

A resolution has been made to censure Marjorie Taylor Greene on pretty much inarguable grounds. You can just read the resolution yourself, or if you enjoy angry rhetoric, you can watch Becca Balint read it aloud, although it will take a while to get through it all.

None of it really matters, since all the pundits agree that it will be simply tabled by the Republicans, who don’t mind a lying, bottom-feeding scumbag thriving in their party. There isn’t a single person with any integrity there.

The great American memory hole

This country has a weird cognitive impairment — we keep forgetting that we’re full of fascists. Our history is loaded with openly bigoted authoritarians who preach their garbage to widespread acclaim, and when the their raging Naziism gets smacked down hard by reality and events, we just blithely forget their sins to keep them on their pedestal.

I am reminded of this every time I fly out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. The main terminal is named after Charles Lindbergh, the famous pilot who also just happened to be a white supremacist, an America Firster (AFC), anti-Semite, and, until the stories of atrocities started to trickle out of Europe, a Nazi sympathizer.

While the AFC garnered significant support from middle- and upper- class American gentiles, their highwater mark came on Sept. 11, 1941, when Charles Lindbergh gave a speech at an AFC event in Des Moines, Iowa — a speech that left the permanent stain on his memory to this day.

“The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration,” Lindbergh said, before going on to add later about Jewish-American groups: “Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government,” and that they were the only ones who wanted war over the resistance of the American public who did not.

We know he was an anti-Semite. We still put up statues honoring Lindberg. Where’s a neurologist when you need one?

Seth Cotlar provides a long list of the stuff we’ve forgotten.

We as a nation absolutely did not have to go easy on the memory of Kirkpatrick or Elizabeth Dilling, or Gerald LK Smith, or Henry Ford, or Charles Lindbergh, let alone put that last guy’s name on airport terminals. Normalizing such people as mere “anti-communists” or “fundamentalist Christians” or “ultraconservative patriots” or “principled isolationists” was a mistake. So was minimizing them as irrelevant “kooks” or “crackpots.” Both impulses did a real disservice to the nation’s political memory by weakening our antifascist defenses and atrophying our pro-democratic muscles. Gerald LK Smith, for example, had a mailing list of over 3 million names in the 1960s. The Liberty Lobby’s neo-Nazi radio show could be heard on over 470 AM radio stations in that decade. Calling these folks “crackpots” did nothing to stem the torrent of fascist bile they poured into the reservoir of our political culture on a daily basis, bile that was generally ignored as irrelevant by the vast majority of Americans and interpreted as perfectly normal, “patriotic, pro-Christian, anti-Communist Americanism” by the millions of people to whom it appealed.

It was the rare public figure in the Cold War era who would have either a) forthrightly labeled such people “fascists” or b) taken the anti-democratic threat they posed seriously enough to pay much attention to them. Because these fascists were white, because the majority of them were elderly, because the rank and file of these movements was working or middle class, because the wealthy people who funded these fascist movements were usually respected “upstanding citizens,” because most of them were Christians, because they called themselves “patriotic lovers of the Constitution;” all of their violent ideation, all of their hateful bigotry got written off as eccentric personality quirks, rather than features of an organized and enduring fascistic strain in American politics.

I blame the deep scars of the Civil War. In 1865, we were in such a mad rush to “heal” the damage of the war that we papered over the criminality of the Confederacy, and it just became a habit. We have never addressed the poison of racism and anti-Semitism in this country, which allows the infection to persist and flourish, and now it has completely taken over the Republican party.

Maybe the fact of having a Twitter account is sufficient to explain anti-social tendencies?

Please don’t have me arrested. Last year, I went into the local hospital for counseling — the depression was too much, I knew I needed help. I only went in for a few sessions before deciding nothing was going to help, other than my usual thorough bottling up of everything, but now I am a marked man. If I do anything socially unacceptable, you know, like pissing on the shoes of the next Republican I meet, you can bet it’ll be on the local newspaper with the declaration that I have “mental health issues,” and the police will put out an APB for the “mentally ill” man wandering the streets of Stevens County.

I shouldn’t have tried. Everyone is supposed to be 100% capable of bootstrapping themselves into happy, well-adjusted confidence, no matter what their circumstances, and failure to be constantly grinning like a used car salesman is a sign of weakness. That glum fellow over there in the corner could snap at any instant, you know.

I’m seeing it right now. There’s a killer on a rampage in Lewiston, Maine, and what does every news story have to say?

Police said Card had spent two weeks at a mental health facility this summer and was subsequently released.

He checked in to get his mental health evaluated (a good thing), and was released (presumably a good thing). This will now taint every story about his criminal act. It’s front and center, even though it may be entirely irrelevant. I can think of a lot of prominent individuals who ought to get a mental health consult who don’t.

There are other factors that are far more indicative of a problem. A history of domestic violence, for instance.

Robert Card, the alleged perpetrator of the shootings in Lewiston, carries a troubled personal history that is now under intense scrutiny. A retired military officer, Card has confronted legal troubles in the past, including multiple arrests for domestic violence and other offenses. Notably, one of his ex-wives had obtained a restraining order against him, revealing the troubling dynamics that marked some of his previous relationships. While the investigation continues, no conclusive evidence has yet linked his past behavioral issues to the recent shooting incidents.

Another telling bias in the stories is that many say “he may have voted for Barack Obama” — as if that’s an unlikely, weird thing. Only a few so far have been bold enough to say he’s politically right-wing.

Heavy reviewed the page shortly before it was suspended by X. It shows that Card followed and/or liked posts by X’s CEO, Elon Musk, and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban as well as a professor who studies terrorism and a number of prominent conservative politicians and pundits, including Donald Trump Jr. and Tucker Carlson. He also liked and shared posts by CNBC, as well as posts on finance.

In March, he liked a tweet by Trump that read, “Given the incredible rise of trans/non-binary mass shooters in the last few years… by far the largest group committing as a percentage of population… maybe, rather than talking about guns we should be talking about lunatics pushing their gender affirming bulls*** on our kids?”

Man, Twitter was lightning-fast in pulling that account. A fan of Elon Musk was a mass-murderer? Better cover that up quick. Also, he was transphobic? That complicates that Trumpian narrative. For the record, there have been only four non-cisgendered mass shooters.

“4 shooters out of over 300 mass shooters since 2009 are transgender or non binary. That’s just 1.3 percent of all shooters,” Anthony Zenkus, a lecturer in social work at Columbia University, wrote on Twitter. “You just proved our point: 99 percent of mass shooters in the United States are cis gendered.”

Also for the record, I don’t think liking Elon Musk or Tucker Carlson is indicative of a tendency to go shoot up a bowling alley, because an awful, embarrassing lot of stupid people like them without any attempt to go on a murder rampage. It is just an indictment of our media that they are doing this ill-informed pattern-seeking, looking for any feeble correlation to rationalize a contemptible crime.

Maybe we should be more concerned with condemning domestic violence, or any history of violence, than with people’s efforts to improve their mental health.

Or better yet, let’s also do a better job of regulating guns.

The Christianist ghouls are crawling out now

You know they’ve been lurking there all along. Here’s Ray Comfort, using the ongoing war in Gaza to justify his loony beliefs.

After the horrific attack of Hamas on Israel and the devastating response, it would be easier to floss the back teeth of the lions at the LA Zoo at feeding time than broker peace between Israel and Hamas.

Anyone who could do that would certainly work a miracle. And so, some would say the stage is set for that one man of sin, the Antichrist, who will bring temporary peace between the Arab and the Jew.

Many Christians believe that Daniel 9:27 is a key prophetic verse that speaks of the Antichrist establishing a peace treaty with Israel, which he then breaks.

The twisty part of all this is that the ghouls want a peacemaker to emerge, but only because he will have to betray any resolution. That’s the important part. Their desire is to see the chaos spawning the apocalypse, leading to the extermination of non-Christians. Isn’t it nice that Ray Comfort has cause to find glee in a war?

The best of the Republican Party

Imagine if Chauncey Gardiner were a malignant cancer.

The drunken game of musical chairs has ended, and creationist/election denier/bigot/Trump vassal Mike Johnson has won. It was a revealing game, because this should have been an opportunity to show off the very best of their party, the people who would represent the Republican vision of the future. Instead, we got a peek at what they think is great, and got serving of sewage sludge.

Steve Scalise, white supremacist and anti-Semite? Jim Jordan, notorious enabler of sexual assault? Tom Emmer, dullard and heir to Michele Bachmann’s electorate? They finally settle on a low-key (most people don’t know how awful he is yet) Trump stooge. This is their best? He won because he was a cipher!

Finally, on Tuesday night, House Republicans picked the name “Johnson” out of the phone book. He was acceptable because he was unknown on Capitol Hill, even to many Republicans. During Wednesday’s roll-call vote on the House floor, Kay Granger (R-Tex.), chair of the Appropriations Committee, rose and mistakenly voted for “Mike Rogers” — the chairman of the Armed Services committee — before correcting herself to Mike Johnson. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), in a statement congratulating the new speaker, called him Jim Johnson. Susan Collins of Maine, top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told CNN’s Lauren Fox Wednesday morning that she’d have to Google him.

Johnson’s anonymity was his greatest asset. In just his seventh year in Congress, he hadn’t been around long enough, or had enough power, to make enemies. He is the least-experienced speaker in a century and a half. But he has also been an avid election denier, Trump defender and promoter of the deep-state conspiracy, which appealed to the MAGA hard-liners who had defeated McCarthy, Scalise and Emmer.

The Republican party is fucking done, or the United States is done, a failed state. The next election has become even more important, because we have to purge these losers from the government.

Do you want a creationist for Speaker of the House?

After chewing up 3 nominees in the last few weeks, the Republicans have thrown up a fourth ugly slug: Mike Johnson, a far right goober from Louisiana. Nothing good comes out of Louisiana politics, but I also know something else about him. He’s a creationist. He writes for Answers in Genesis. Several years ago, he wrote a hilarious letter to the Lexington Herald-Leader, complaining about Dan Phelps, friend of the blog.

It’s always ironic when a self-professed man of science allows his emotions and ideology to cloud his reason. But that’s exactly what Daniel Phelps has done in his most recent rant against the Ark Encounter theme park.

You know what’s really ironic? When a theocrat and openly anti-science loon tells a professional scientist that his mind is clouded by emotions and ideology.

Phelps’ Aug. 17 column made a number of unfounded allegations against the Ark Encounter, its investors, and even supportive state officials. Phelps’ diatribe reveals quite clearly his own political agenda and his utter contempt for religion and people of faith.

That’s not Phelps’ political agenda at all. On the other hand, you can see Johnson’s agenda on display in his organization’s Model Bylaws for Christian Churches. He’s a Christian Nationalist. I think it’s safe to say he has utter contempt for secularism.

Unlike Ark Encounter proponents, Phelps shows no tolerance for points of view different than his own, and rabid hostility towards those who disagree.

Oh yeah? Doesn’t the Ark Encounter require a “Statement of Faith” as well as a “Salvation Testimony” and a “Creation Statement Belief?” They sure do. Who has a rabid hostility to different points of view?

He is willing to sacrifice hundreds of millions of dollars in new economic development and thousands of jobs for Kentucky. If his proposition were followed, the commonwealth would be legally liable for blatantly unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. Phelps’ preference — that religious groups should be denied equal access to tax incentive programs and also forced to hire people who openly disagree with their main beliefs — is not only unfair, it is clearly unlawful.

Hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs? I didn’t know conservative Christians could indulge in mind-altering substance, because no, the numbers show that Ken Ham and AiG lied about the potential economic benefits, and their promises remain unfulfilled.

His discriminatory ideas have been repeatedly invalidated by the Supreme Court, lower courts and federal and state statutes. Phelps may be a trained geologist, but a constitutional law expert he is not.

Mike Johnson claims to be a constitutional law expert, so that burn doesn’t even sting.

Johnson might end up getting the votes he needs. He’s anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-Ukraine, and a good buddy of Donald Trump. The people who will vote for him probably think the creationism is a bonus.

I would hope no Democrats to vote for this creepy authoritarian, but the media, as usual, think that supporting a repulsive idiot is the answer. I approve of Roy Edroso’s response to that bullshit.

The Republicans finally got their act together enough to elect this asshole.

Maybe they’ll act as a MAGA repellent?

This piece of paper has survived the last couple of years, which is an accomplishment. I got my first COVID vaccination in March of 2021.

There are a couple more labels on the back, but now the card is full up, and the clinics don’t even bother with giving you evidence that you’re vaccinated. I’ve got 6 vaccinations documented on this thing, and yesterday I got my 7th COVID booster. Last week I got the pneumonia and shingles vaccine, too. I’m just fully loaded with vaccines at this time.

I’m still waiting for my magnetic powers to kick in, and I don’t pee microchips yet. Maybe my super-saiyan powers need one more dose? I’ll keep on getting my shots as recommended, because I don’t want to be responsible for giving my students a terrible disease.

The one thing I do have is a sore throat, a general ache, and fatigue, like I always get the day after one of these shots.

You didn’t want Tom Emmer anyway

You know, Tom Emmer (R-loonytown) was elected from the same district that cursed Minnesota with Michele Bachmann, right? He was a bad choice for the house speaker, but the Republicans nominated him anyway.

He got to bask in the glory of possibly becoming the Speaker of the House, 3rd in line for the presidency, before everyone counted the votes and realized there was no way he could be elected to the position.

So Emmer quit. Goodbye, Tom Emmer. We didn’t have time to complain about you.

It’s OK to be indifferent to the lives of Palestinian civilians

I heard that people were walking out on Dave Chappelle’s comedy shows, and I was not surprised — he has a history of being offensive and expressing contempt for gay and trans people. But then I learned why they were walking out.

During his show at TD Garden on Thursday, Dave Chappelle spoke out about the Israel-Gaza conflict, which spurred a walkout by some of his audience members. According to The Wall Street Journal, the comedian first condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel before slamming Israel’s bombing of Gaza and the United States of “aiding the slaughter of innocent civilians.”

Chappelle’s comments were made after he said that he didn’t think students should lose job offers for being pro-Palestine. An audience member then demanded Chappelle to “shut up,” which elicited an emotional response from the comedian. Chappelle proceeded to bash the Israeli government for cutting off water and other essentials to Gaza and accused it of killing innocent people, according to those in attendance at the Boston show.

A few members of the crowd cheered and shouted “Free Palestine” in support of Chappelle, while others yelled, “What about Hamas,” the attendees said. Some individuals got up and left the show. At the end of his routine, Chappelle reportedly added that “two wrongs don’t make a right,” when speaking about Israeli policies and the Hamas attacks.

But wait, I marveled, I agree with Chappelle in this one case. I think that’s the only humane position to take, to both condemn Hamas and their terror attacks, and to condemn the state of Israel for their hateful history. This does not excuse his other views by any means, but he is not approving of Hamas’ cruelty; he is simply also not approving of Israel’s cruel policies.

Fortunately, I am not a comedian, so I’m safe from ‘cancellation’ (not that Chappelle is cancelled — members of an audience have always had the right to disagree with a comic.) And then I read that a prominent academic has lost his editor position for expecting sympathy for the Palestinian people.

Michael Eisen, editor-in-chief of the prominent open access journal eLife and a longtime critic of traditional journals, says he is losing that job for publicly endorsing a satirical article that criticized people dying in Gaza for not condemning the recent attacks on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas.

“I have been informed that I am being replaced as the Editor in Chief of @eLife for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians,” Eisen tweeted today.

The furor began on 13 October when Eisen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, praised one of The Onion’s fake news stories on X, formerly Twitter. The story bore the headline “Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas.” Eisen said “The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together. I wish there were a @TheOnion university.”

Here’s the tweet that got him fired.

And the “offensive” tweet from The Onion.

And here’s a sampling of the responses.

I agree with Hector Rivera; they’re proving his point. Eisen was not approving of beheading babies, there was absolutely nothing heartless and callous said by Eisen. He was not expressing moral ambiguity, but moral clarity, by expecting that we’d have the same respect for all human life. I guess his big mistake was expecting that people would have some sympathy for all the civilians currently targeted for death by the Israeli military.

Hamas and Israel mark each day of war with new numbers measuring the accumulation of death and destruction. The Gaza Health Ministry said more than 5,000 Gaza residents have been killed so far, including 436 in the past 24 hours, primarily in the enclave’s south, where Israel has told more than 1 million Gazans to seek shelter from air raids in the north. The ministry’s figures, which could not be independently confirmed, are not broken down between civilians and militants.

Palestinian babies don’t count, I presume. I made a quick search of a few sites where the anti-“cancel culture” fanatics hang out, Bari Weiss, Heterodox “University”, Jerry Coyne, FIRE, etc. — ouch, that was painful, I normally avoid that crowd, with good reason — and surprise, surprise: they’re not raising a hullabaloo about the Eisen dismissal. They’re all about hating the right people, so I shouldn’t be surprised at all — hating Palestinians is a fine thing to do now, since, don’t you know, they’re all Hamas.

Look, see all the Hamas terrorists fleeing the righteous wrath of the holy IDF?

If you don’t agree they should all be shot or bombed, you should be ashamed and be fired.