StrangeSox

I'm almost positive I posted about the UIUC-Steven Salaita story last year, but I can't find any related posts. In late 2013 or early 2014, UIUC offered a full tenure position to Steven Salaita (who was tenured at VTech at the time) in the American Indian Studies department. He accepted in early 2014, resigned his position (as did his wife) and moved to UIUC to start teaching in Fall 2014. In June of last year, he tweeted some offensive things about Israel, sparked by the latest exchange with Gaza. Wealthy donors and some Trustees starting heavily pressuring UIUC to "unhire" him, and eventually Chancellor Wise acquiesced. The university has since claimed that he was never formally hired since the BoT had not approved it yet (the BoT vote was scheduled to take place a couple of months after he would already have started teaching at UIUC and officially representing and acting on behalf of the university). Salaita filed a suit against UIUC. Last week, a judge issued a ruling on UIUC's motion to dismiss. He found that both UIUC and Salaita had executed the offer letter and that Salaita did in fact have a valid contract with UIUC. Shortly after this was announced, Chancellor Wise turned in her resignation. She was to move into another position at the school (the department she had come from originally) and take a $400,000 bonus. UIUC also released 1,100 pages of emails from Wise it had not previously released. She had been deliberately using a personal account instead of her official one to avoid discovery, and she even explicitly stated what she was doing and that she was also deleting sent messages in one email. Here's a summary of what's happen since then: Pretty much every step of the way, UIUC administration has screwed up. They show no signs of stopping. And apparently the board will capitulate to outside political pressure to void contracts and agreements at the drop of a hat. edit: this quote from Wise is pretty ironic: “Yesterday, in a decision apparently motivated more by politics than the interests of the University, the Board reneged on the promises in our negotiated agreement and initiated termination proceedings. This action was unprecedented, unwarranted, and completely contrary to the spirit of our negotiations last week.”

Editorial in the Tribune today wherein the writer said she was envious of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina because the horrific damage, loss of life and general disruption gave room to bust up public unions and city hall. Never mind that 10 years later, much of the city is still only half-rebuilt and many residents have been permanently dislocated. This line is probably the worst part, though:

obligatory

Jeb! is trying to rehabilitate his brother's disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. Everything was going just fine in Iraq until Obama withdrew prematurely (on the timetable that GW Bush had agreed to). More and more the argument that "the surge worked!" is popping up. It's true that it was effective in tamping down the violence in Iraq, but it was only ever a tool to give the Iraqi leadership the space and ability to negotiate and govern an end to the ongoing civil war. It wasn't a permanent solution to anything, and Iraq's leaders did essentially nothing and IIRC actually ramped up the sectarian persecution. Short of occupying Iraq during an ongoing civil war with a large troop presence indefinitely, I'm not sure what the people trying to paint a better picture of that disaster think could have happened.

Some conservatives in congress are threatening yet another government shutdown unless funding for planned parenthood is stripped from the federal budget this year. Governance by continual crisis is the best!

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Aug 14, 2015 -> 08:19 AM) He's not endorsing it taking away everyone's health coverage. Trump has specifically said he'd replace Obamacare with "something terrific". See? Policy done. He's going to make something terrific. Gold-plated TRUMP plans for everyone. Very classy.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 14, 2015 -> 07:54 AM) They seem to make perfect sense to me. His research relied directly on fetal tissue samples collected during abortion procedures, the very thing people are railing against PP for providing now. edit: here's a wapo article on the same subject, and this is the part of his explanation that really makes no sense: Pathologists have no job opining where the tissue came from, and other people needing comparative research need to have a baseline to compare to. It's a "baby" when its aborted but by the time the pathologists get it, it's just some tissue from a specimen with no need to worry about the source. But fetal tissue collection is bad, even though pathologists need it to catalog for future comparative research, which is good research that helps us better understand human health and extend lifetimes and treat illnesses. It just runs in circles.

I dunno that you can read that as greg saying he wants Trump to overturn the ACA. I read it as him saying "this is what trump said he'd do. is that even possible?" The answer to that would be that the next President could deliberately hamstring the federal administration of it as much as possible, but for the most part, no.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Aug 13, 2015 -> 09:30 PM) All I can say is no matter how expensive the suit, whether sixty three hundred dollars or a poultry three thousand dollars it will not grant you the respect you deserve. Come on. Lol

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 13, 2015 -> 08:52 PM) It looks like Trump is running away with the primaries. If he really wants the nomination he'll probably get it. He's really going to look like an asshole if he drops out while holding a big lead. Hillary basically gets a bye in the general election running against Trump. Of course she'd roll to victory no matter whom the Repubs came up with. I mean it truly is impossible to see any of the boring Republican candidates emerging. That leaves Trump who just might win the Repub. nomination if he really wants it. He doesn't actually appear to be running a campaign, setting up ground organizations etc

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 13, 2015 -> 05:51 PM) They didn't have a legacy candidate like Hillary though. Get her name recognition out of there, have a clean slate of basically unknown national candidates and the situation is much more similar. 2000,2004,2008 didn't run like that for the Democrats. It's not the quantity of the candidates but the quality and substance, though if you remove trump this year is less ridiculous than 2012.

Saying stupid things and leading the primary polling aren't the same thing. Yeah, Kucinich was an oddball, but he was always an also-ran who never really came close. They do not really compare to the level of support and vacuousness that Bachmann, Cain, Trump etc. have.

Ben Carson Once Did Research On Fetal Brain Tissue his explanations for why it was different in his case don't really make a lot of sense.

~*both sides*~

There really hasn't been the same sort of clown show on the Democrat side that was the 2012 Republican primaries (Bachmann, Cain, insert-flavor-of-the-week) or how this year's is starting out for them again (trump, mainly). edit: whether or not you agree with the story some are putting forth regarding what Trump represents, Matt Bai still misstates (or misunderstands) what other people are actually saying about him.

It tells us about Republican primary voters and who may ultimately get the nomination and what they might have to do/say on their way. The underlying story being presented is sort of the opposite of what Matt Bai thinks it is. It's not that the entirety of the Republican party backs Trump or what he's saying or that a majority of the general population does. But there is minority of Republican voters who lap up his "gives no f***s" attitude, the nativism, the sexism, the racism, and that may be influential enough in the primary season that it will damage the Republican (whoever he ends up being) in the general election by forcing them to tack hard to the right. The "both sides!" without any actual examples is a nice touch, though. Matt Bai is pretty consistently wrong, such as when he predicted that Jon Hunstman would eventually be the reasonable, aspiring politician that would be the Republican nominee in 2012.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Aug 13, 2015 -> 01:11 PM) Yeah, the year before my first kid started kindergarten, our district switched to a calendar that runs 9 on/2 off/9 on/2 off/9 on/2 off/9 on, which leaves 8 weeks for summer break. This is the way I look at it: Everybody else is taking family vacations from July 30-August 12 while my kids are in school. We can take family vacations from October 4-17 while everybody else's kids are in school. Hotels are a little bit cheaper and popular tourist attractions will be less crowded. We're actually coming up to Chicago the week of October 11. I expect the museums to be much less crowded than if we were there right now. This is the downside of my wife being a teacher. We can basically only travel during peak tourist seasons.

You also posted a big, long explanation years ago in some filibuster thread about how the pricing of the futures market (or something along those lines) indicates that it isn't really just speculative bubbles or deliberately driving up prices.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Aug 13, 2015 -> 11:04 AM) 2.28 Mike...oh man, I'm even sadder now. Can one of you guys bring me out a big gas truck at those prices and park it in an abandoned lot so I can use it as my own personal pump. I swear, in Cali, every 3 months a refinery blows up or is shut down and prices immediately skyrocket 50 cents and then take ages to come back down. I am convinced it is people just milking the whole process. Whole reason oil was ever as high as it was had more to do with the hedge fun money / speculators than anything else, imo. uh oh now you've done it, ss2k5 is gonna take exception to that one

Yeah, gotta agree there. It was neat, but it wasn't spectacular or anything.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 13, 2015 -> 09:03 AM) Maybe that's a bit excessive, it's still so hypocritical to be putting down female colleagues in your male-dominated industry, then turning around and being moral authority #1 on meatheads in these cases. Bernstein reminds me a lot of Bill Maher at times--huge blowhard who will sneer at and shout down anyone and everything, but also a huge asshole himself with plenty of his own crappy personality traits, words and actions.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Aug 13, 2015 -> 07:13 AM) I hope everybody filled up their gas tanks yesterday. yeah what the heck happened

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 11, 2015 -> 04:24 PM) Which, frankly, is the heart of the current taxi industry. I'm not exactly well-versed in the criticisms, but I think the idea is that it takes all the bad of the taxi industry and then dumps other costs on the drivers on top of it all while exploiting or just simply ignoring numerous regulations. Plus there's the issue of the drivers' insurance probably not covering an ad hoc livery service.

no I'm pretty sure liberal bloggers and twittereerererss aren't going after lobbyists and votes edit: is there a big taxi lobby out there anyway?

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Aug 11, 2015 -> 03:40 PM) Yea, Geno was sticking his finger in the guys face when he got punched sightly more understandable but still incredibly dumb