The current president of South Korea is a conservative jerk, but that doesn’t mean everything he says is wrong. Sometimes he’s on the money, especially when the truth is obvious.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol was caught on a hot mic Wednesday insulting U.S. Congress members as “idiots” who could be a potential embarrassment for President Biden if they did not approve funding for global public health.

A bit impolitic, maybe, but yeah, many members of congress are idiots. They don’t get elected for being smart.

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Maybe more impolitic than I thought. He spoke in Korean, and called them “saekki deul”, which apparently means something more like “sons of bitches”. Still accurate.

By the way, I discovered a video where I learned about the richly profane Korean vocabulary. Useful for learning what not to say around my Korean daughter-in-law.

There was a time, way back around the time Trump was elected, that there were people howling about how you can’t call Republicans “fascists” or “Nazis” because they weren’t literally German, or invading Czechoslovakia, or wearing toothbrush mustaches. It was annoyingly literal-minded, and the people most vociferously arguing for an extraordinarily narrow interpretation of the term all seemed to be sympathetic to fascism. People like Rich Lowry scribbled a lot of denials against Nazi comparisons.

Fortunately, we’re starting to see past the smokescreens and recognize that the historical correspondences are inescapable. Ken Burns has made a new documentary about the Holocaust, and while he tries to avoid contemporary comparisons, he finds them unavoidable. When asked if he intended to make a historical documentary that resonates so strongly with current events, Burns says he didn’t mean to.

I don’t think it was the intent. Every film we’ve worked on has sort of rhymed in the present. As we were working on this, we began to realize how much things were resonating with what’s going on now. The assault on the Capitol, the insurrection and other events in which we felt the institutions of our democracy were challenged enough that it was important for us to take this story and remind people what the consequences are of yielding to the various kind of nefarious aspects of the [authoritarian] playbook.

When Hitler came to power, he downplayed for a moment antisemitism and the platform of the Nazis and stepped up street warfare to give the German people a sense that civil war was imminent and that the causes of this were the communists and the socialists. He’s already in power because other conservatives think they can handle him. Those conservatives are worried that there is now what we would call a new progressive majority. And so they are doing everything to subvert the democratic process because they realize, in fact, in a democratic society, these things won’t hold. And so out of this comes the monstrous regime of Adolf Hitler, and one of the many horrific things — the most horrific — is the attempt to exterminate all of the 9 million Jews of Europe.

And he repeatedly denies it! He just couldn’t help it.

No, we don’t subscribe to any of that stuff. We’re just storytellers. Telling a complicated story. I don’t know what critical race theory is. It’s essentially a graduate school legal concept of how to frame certain arguments that has been appropriated by people to use as a cudgel to to beat them up over these various things.

I made a comment about the [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis play in Martha’s Vineyard as being a kind of an authoritarian response, just as it was when Disney says we don’t agree with you, he punishes them. When a state employee doesn’t do what he says, he fires them. That’s the authoritarian thing. It’s not the democratic way that you handle it. But the right-wing media has said that I’ve equated what DeSantis did with the Holocaust, which is obscene. I mean, literally obscene to do that. But it is also classic authoritarian playbook to sort of lie about what somebody just said in order to make it so outrageous that then you can deny the complexity of what’s being presented.

I agree that the magnitude of the horrors of Nazi Germany perpetrated is not at all comparable to what is going on right now. The appropriate comparison, though, is to the pre-war politics that laid the groundwork for the atrocities. There should be no doubt that while DeSantis hasn’t set up camps to murder immigrants, that’s what he wants to do, and would do if he could get away with it. Which he could, if we keep electing Republicans.

I think I’ve made it quite clear that I’m unimpressed with dead queens or live kings around here. I may have to rethink my opinion of British royals, though, thanks to this commentary.

This is vile: Murdoch's commentators are calling for a return to British colonialism. They're pushing to "bring back the British Empire", saying countries like India would be better off under European rule. pic.twitter.com/NghTbBYsCX

— Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission (@Murdoch_RC) September 19, 2022

If these wankers were to represent the majority opinion of their kind, I’d say we need to drag the corpse of the dead queen out of her vault and throw it in the Thames, and then lop off a few more royal heads. Great engine of civilization my ass. It was a system that benefited a minority population at the expense of all the people in the red part of this map. It was a great engine of exploitation that wrecked innumerable cultures.

Also, isn’t the USA a pretty good counter-example, showing that decolonization wasn’t a disaster? Counterpoint: the USA then went on to carry out its own exploitive conquests sans any royal family, so maybe we shouldn’t blame kings and queens so much as the whole ugly system.

The real question here, though, is how these guys plan to bring back the empire. I don’t think they have the military muscle for reconquest, and they got rid of the East India Company 150 years ago, and threw away their economic clout with Brexit. A couple of feeble old Tories shaking their fists at the sky and demanding their treasure back isn’t going to cut it.

Sure seems so. Here are a few examples that illustrate the problem.

Christian Glass had his car stuck on a dirt road, and called for help. He needed a tow truck, or a ride to someplace safe. He hadn’t committed any crimes, he just wanted some simple roadside assistance. Instead, he got a bunch of aggressive, armed deputies who ordered him out of the car and threatened to break his windows…and then they did break his car windows, shot him with a beanbag gun, tased him, and then, when he was rightfully panicking at the inappropriate response, shot him dead.

Why?

None of this makes sense. He was frightened, was worried that the cops might hurt him, and he was right: he’s dead. There was no cause for violence, but that’s all cops know how to do. So they violented him.

At the same time, with such a limited repertoire of possible responses, the cops come equipped with an unassailable sense of entitlement, confident that they are always right.

If anyone wants to talk about entitlement, cops should probably be top of the list. pic.twitter.com/OtlZZhiAfa

— Read Class Struggle Unionism by Joe Burns (@JoshuaPotash) September 14, 2022

PSA to everyone out there, I’m speaking for myself but I’m probably speaking for other officers out there if we’re driving on the freeway in our police car, get the fuck out of the way. If us officers stay behind you long enough, we can find a reason to pull you over.

We all know this. We’re used to it. If a cop wants to charge you with something, they can find a reason, no matter how blameless your behavior. It’s not about enforcing the law, it’s about their power trip.

This officer knows she could get in trouble for making this fact explicit, so notice how she keeps her badge number hidden behind a filter, but it didn’t help her. It was quickly figured out that this is Breanna Straus of the Federal Way, Washington police force. What saved her was the refusal of the thin blue line to address the problem of rotten cops: she only got a 10 hour suspension. It was less than a slap on the wrist, it was a gentle caress.

You might want to be very careful driving near Sea-Tac, she’s back at work. There are rarely any penalties for being an asshole and a cop.

Part of the reason for that is that cops lie. They are expert liars, skilled at concealing how useless and counterproductive they are. Look at how baldly they lied about everything in Uvalde — they’re authorities, you know, and you will learn to respect their authoritative assertions, or they will find a reason to arrest you.

THREE HUNDRED SEVENTY SIX police were standing around playing pocket pool for over an hour while kids were shot, and then they made multiple verifiable lies about the event afterwards. To answer the question in the title…YES. Definitely.

Just look to Kansas.

A plan to restructure the school and allow the firing of faculty members with only a 30-day notice is expected to be approved this week by the Kansas Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s higher education. If adopted, the “workforce management plan” would effectively suspend tenure for the fall 2022 semester.

A semester doesn’t seem like much, but it’s enough time to wreck careers and burn down programs that have taken decades to build. It’s enough time to change an institution that has contributed to the common good in Kansas for more than 150 years to one that is dedicated to … well, we just don’t know yet.

Yikes. We’re hired on a legal contract…but they can just tear it up and throw it away like that? How can they do that? Simple answer: Republicans.

There’s little doubt that the university’s move to end tenure is in response to pressure from the deeply conservative Kansas Legislature, and I’ve heard the former university provost Gary Wyatt say as much. Once, in a department meeting, he told us that legislators viewed tenured professors as “the enemy.” Then again, at a faculty address this fall, he said the campus would have to come to grips with the reality that we live in a state that is mostly Republican, with a legislature that is GOP dominated. How much clearer could he make it? To his credit, Wyatt is one of the few administrators willing to speak the truth on the issue.

They don’t care. They’re willing to wreck the state for their failed ideology. And the hired gun they employ to do the dirty work is the new president of the university, Ken Hush. How he was hired was appalling.

The same week KBOR extended the “workforce management” policy, it also hired a new president for Emporia State: Ken Hush. An ESU alum and former college tennis star, Hush had served as interim president since November 2021. Hush is a former CEO of Koch Carbon and, according to the Federal Election Commission database, a contributor of tens of thousands of dollars to KochPAC, which predominately funds conservative candidates for Congress.

Hush’s appointment as president came as a surprise to campus because many assumed a presidential search would select someone from the outside with an advanced degree. Hush holds a dual major bachelor’s, in business and marketing, making him the least academically credentialed of the leaders of the six universities in Kansas.

The presidential search process, unlike all previous searches at ESU, was a closed one, veiled in secrecy. There was no announcement of finalists or opportunities for faculty, students and staff to evaluate them, whoever they were. The chairman of the search committee was another former ESU tennis athlete, Greg Kossover — and a major donor to the new tennis complex on campus.

The selection of Hush at first seemed an odd fit.

Although he had served on the Wichita State University board of trustees, he didn’t have a deep background in public service in a classroom setting. He had run a Koch company that specialized in bulk commodities of coal and petroleum coke, and contributed heavily to a PAC that funded candidates who were often climate change deniers.

The libertarian Koch brothers, of course, kicked off the current culture war during the Obama years with their support of the Tea Party. The university and KBOR both refused to release a resume or curriculum vitae for Hush, something that most schools share with pride.

We’ve gone through several chancellors at my university during my tenure here, and every time, hiring a new one was a major effort involving a national search, multiple candidates, multiple interviews, faculty consultation, a thorough review of their qualifications, and draining amounts of work by a committee. This guy was just hired because the Koch’s said so?

Note to self: we currently have an acting chancellor, and I presume will eventually hire a different person. Thumbs down on any applicants from Kansas, unless they’re refugees with solid qualifications fleeing the imperial regime of Kochistan.

Tragedy and waste, that’s all anyone will get out of the war in Ukraine. It seems to have entered a phase where exhausted, demoralized Russians get to run away.

In the end, the Russians fled any way they could on Friday, on stolen bicycles, disguised as locals. Hours after Ukrainian soldiers poured into the area, hundreds of Russian soldiers encamped in this village were gone, many after their units abandoned them, leaving behind stunned residents to face the ruins of 28 weeks of occupation.

“They just dropped rifles on the ground,” Olena Matvienko said Sunday as she stood, still disoriented, in a village littered with ammo crates and torched vehicles, including a Russian tank loaded on a flatbed. The first investigators from Kharkiv had just pulled in to collect the bodies of civilians shot by Russians, some that have been lying exposed for months.

Russia has announced that they are regrouping in the face of the Ukrainian surge.

Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the north-east of the country has inflicted an extraordinary defeat on Moscow, prompting the Russian army to pull back thousands of troops after suffering a series of battlefield defeats.
Ukraine appears to have regained control of the two key cities of Kupiansk and Izium after a major counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region in recent days, after wrongfooting Russian forces with a much-publicised Ukrainian southern offensive to distract Russia from the real one being prepared in the Kharkiv region.
Photos published by the Ukrainian security forces showed troops raising the national flag in Kupiansk, an important logistical hub for Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, where rail lines linking Russia to eastern Ukraine converge and which, in the last months, has supplied Russian forces in north-eastern Ukraine.

Nobody has won. Russia is spasming and continues to rain missiles on civilian targets. Ukraine has retaken narrow strips of land that were theirs to begin with. Putin must react savagely to this embarrassment; there are whisperings of discontent among the militaristic factions in his country, and he will be deposed if he loses his strongman reputation. I want Ukraine to win, to be honest, but let’s be willing to face the facts and see every bloody step forward as an action that will demand more blood.

It’s fun! He is such a bad doctor and a dishonest candidate. He also tortures and kills puppies. That’s almost comically villainous.

In 2004, complaints about Dr. Mehmet Oz’s dog experiments were cited in a report from an internal investigation into allegations of poor animal care made by Dr. Catherine Dell’Orto, a post-doctoral veterinarian. See also individual reports of Dr. Oz’s dog experiments. According to the report, “highly invasive and stressful experiments” on dogs were performed without a “humane end point.” AWA violations included a litter of whelped puppies killed by painful cardiac injection:

“The screams of these puppies could be heard through closed doors. All of these puppies, lying in a plastic garbage bag, were killed in the presence of their litter mates.”

Subsequent applications for grants to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by Dr. Oz have been denied. In 2004, Columbia paid $2,000 in fines to the USDA.

I have to make a significant caveat to that accusation, though. Almost all the sources are from PETA, and PETA is not trustworthy. I haven’t been able to find a source outside PETA for the claims (there is an NYT article from that time, buried deep behind a paywall), but that NIH cut his support is a more significant fact…but on the other hand, a $2000 fine is kind of insignificant. I also have no idea what the purpose of the experiments was — why was a TV doctor doing that?

True confession: I’ve euthanized puppies in the past (not in over 40 years, though!), and why would you do it with cardiac injection, and why would you do it en masse? Something is wrong there. Ask a vet who has to put animals to sleep — you do it quietly, respectfully, and with a sedative injection that lets them die peacefully. Screaming animals means you’re doing it wrong.

But then, Oz has always been an ethical nightmare. He has been featured in the AMA Journal of Ethics, and not positively.

Columbia’s affiliation with Oz had been under fire long before he launched a surprise Senate run in late November. In 2015, when Oz testified before the Senate about his endorsement of shady “miracle” cures, a group of some of the country’s top medical professionals sent Columbia a blistering letter demanding the renowned medical school fire the Oprah-blessed daytime star.

“Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops,” the physicians wrote. “Worst of all, he has manifested an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.”

Columbia University has also severed all ties with him (rather murkily, unfortunately).

After years of criticism, Columbia University Medical Center has finally—quietly—cut public ties with celebrity doctor turned Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz.

The acclaimed teaching hospital, where Oz held senior positions like vice chair of surgery and director of integrated medicine for years, stripped his personal pages from their website in mid-January.

I had no idea Columbia was in Pennsylvania, though.

Can we all forget Oz after the November elections? I look forward to that.