General Politics Three: But what is left/right?

[Kaitzilla]

What on Earth.

The Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was in the hospital (intensive care) for 4 days, and nobody told President Biden.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/06/politics/lloyd-austin-hospitalization-officials/index.html

President Joe Biden was not aware for days that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was hospitalized, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan ultimately informed Biden late Thursday afternoon, soon after Sullivan himself learned Austin had been hospitalized, the source said. Austin was admitted to the hospital on New Year’s Day due to complications from an elective surgery.

 

[Samson]

What on Earth.

The Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was in the hospital (intensive care) for 4 days, and nobody told President Biden.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/06/politics/lloyd-austin-hospitalization-officials/index.html

Have you never pulled a four day sicky and then made up a story for your boss to cover your self?

 

[Farm Boy]

No?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Typical GOP: Accuse others of doing what you have also done but kept secret.

Ackman’s Wife Apologizes for Plagiarism in Dissertation
BY JOSEPH PISANI

Neri Oxman, an architect and the wife of billionaire investor Bill Ackman, has apologized for instances of plagiarism in her 2010 dissertation.

A Business Insider article Thursday said she didn’t use quotation marks when quoting another work in several instances and paraphrased from a book without a citation. Ackman had pushed to oust Harvard University President Claudine Gay, who resigned Tuesday, in part because of allegations of plagiarism in her academic work. Oxman, who started New York-based design and technology company Oxman in 2020, wrote the dissertation when she was a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a professor at MIT’s Media Lab for about a decade, before leaving to focus on her firm.

“I regret and apologize for these errors,” Oxman said in a post on X on Thursday. Ackman was at the forefront of the effort to push out Gay because of her response to antisemitism at the school, as well as the plagiarism allegations. The Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, said that reviews of Gay’s work uncovered some instances of “inadequate citation,” but that the omissions didn’t meet the bar of outright research misconduct.
Gay, the first Black person to lead the university, is a scholar of race and politics. Many of Gay’s supporters said she was targeted in part because of her race.

Ackman remains focused on pressing for change at Harvard. He said that members of the Harvard Corporation should step down and called for disbanding the school’s office focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion. “You know that you struck a chord when they go after your wife,” he posted after the article was published. Ackman took to X again Friday evening to address a new article from Business Insider alleging additional instances of Oxman copying material without attribution in some of her academic writings. “It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family,” he wrote on X. Ackman also said he would launch a review of work by MIT’s faculty, president and board members for signs of plagiarism.


Architect Neri Oxman GARY HE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

MIT leaders are focusing on the institute’s work, a spokesperson said late Friday.

 

[Farm Boy]

Good. Keep the bar above table, not down in the smut.

 

[Gorbles]

"why is cancel culture so popular", asks conservatives who are (and have always been) very happy to use it themselves. Some bar, all right.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

 

[Farm Boy]

Ok, keep it low and skeezy, then. Integrity is for losers.

Unpopular opinions being the same thing as failures of citation, naturally. Probably the same thing as abuse of power in policing or corruption in elected officials, too. Feed those hungry painbodies.

 

[Gorbles]

Bad faith is bad faith, but I guess that's acceptable losses for some. Especially when you just have to slide in one not being as bad as the other. Of course.

It's always justified.

 

[Farm Boy]

Some unpopular opinions are worse than others. Like racial or sexual violence downplays. Derp.

 

[Gorbles]

I thought plagiarism was plagiarism, but with all these politically-motivated attacks, it's just so difficult to tell what is what.

 

[Plains-Cow]

Easy. Left is when your one hand makes an "L." Right is the direction of the road on Waluigi's hat.

 

[Smellincoffee]

At the end of the day they're both trying to take your money and use it for malicious purposes, so vote libertarian and take their insults as praise. Stopped giving a damn in 2007/08 during a Obama-Clinton debate when some part of me died and I realized there was no real difference between them. They (now meaning both wings of the uniparty in the USA) both support foreign wars, harmful meddling in the economy, and they both preach one thing and practice another -- so I just hate them both. Saves time and avoids the whole 'hope' thing. I appall and frustrate my liberal and conservative friends with equal-opportunity aplomb.

 

[Core Imposter]

I am sure Austin reported his leave to whoever is really running the country.

On the budget front Johnson reached a deal with Schumer and the Freedom Caucus condemned it. So, I guess Gaetz will try and pull the plug on Johnson throwing us into another two or three week search for a Speaker while the government is shut down. Biden doing the SOTU on March 7, a couple days after Super Tuesday and Trump trial start date. Investing in popcorn.

Oh, and waiting for the Fox News guy to ask in the next presser if Austin's pronouns should be updated.

 

[Core Imposter]

Typical GOP: Accuse others of doing what you have also done but kept secret.

Ackman’s Wife Apologizes for Plagiarism in Dissertation
BY JOSEPH PISANI

Neri Oxman, an architect and the wife of billionaire investor Bill Ackman, has apologized for instances of plagiarism in her 2010 dissertation.

A Business Insider article Thursday said she didn’t use quotation marks when quoting another work in several instances and paraphrased from a book without a citation. Ackman had pushed to oust Harvard University President Claudine Gay, who resigned Tuesday, in part because of allegations of plagiarism in her academic work. Oxman, who started New York-based design and technology company Oxman in 2020, wrote the dissertation when she was a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a professor at MIT’s Media Lab for about a decade, before leaving to focus on her firm.

“I regret and apologize for these errors,” Oxman said in a post on X on Thursday. Ackman was at the forefront of the effort to push out Gay because of her response to antisemitism at the school, as well as the plagiarism allegations. The Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, said that reviews of Gay’s work uncovered some instances of “inadequate citation,” but that the omissions didn’t meet the bar of outright research misconduct.
Gay, the first Black person to lead the university, is a scholar of race and politics. Many of Gay’s supporters said she was targeted in part because of her race.

Ackman remains focused on pressing for change at Harvard. He said that members of the Harvard Corporation should step down and called for disbanding the school’s office focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion. “You know that you struck a chord when they go after your wife,” he posted after the article was published. Ackman took to X again Friday evening to address a new article from Business Insider alleging additional instances of Oxman copying material without attribution in some of her academic writings. “It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family,” he wrote on X. Ackman also said he would launch a review of work by MIT’s faculty, president and board members for signs of plagiarism.


Architect Neri Oxman GARY HE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

MIT leaders are focusing on the institute’s work, a spokesperson said late Friday.

Being shorted by Ackman isn't always a bad thing.

 

[amadeus]

Ackwho? i had the same feeling about President Gay (my inner self chuckles at the name. I never got past this stage) and whoever runs Harvard isn’t going to make a difference in my life.

Way I saw it is she was pulling in $900K a year to tell people she got a prestigious job, go to parties, and schmooze for money from big snobs, and she blew it by opening her big yap.

Amadeus for Harvard President—he’ll keep his opinions on controversial issues to himself, if he has any. (I’ll even do it for two-thirds pay.)

 

[Samson]

Sheikh Hasina wins fifth term in Bangladesh amid turnout controversy

Sheikh Hasina has secured her fifth term as Bangladeshi prime minister in an election whose outcome was decided the moment its schedule was announced in early November when the main opposition boycotted the poll.

The surprise was who came second.

Instead of any political party, independent candidates secured a total of 63 seats, the second highest after Hasina’s Awami League (AL), which won 222, creating a problem of finding a parliamentary opposition.

The current opposition, the Jatiya Party, managed to secure just 11 of the 300 parliamentary seats, according to the Election Commission.

Almost all the winning independent contenders were people who had been rejected by the AL but were asked by the party leadership to stand as “dummy candidates” to give the election a competitive veneer in front of the world.

After polling closed at 4pm (10:00 GMT on Sunday), the Election Commission (EC) said turnout was 40 percent.

But many were doubtful it was even that high.

“I don’t know about the rest of the country but I think I have not seen such an empty Dhaka in years,” Abdullah Yusuf, an engineer in the Dhanmondi area of the capital, told Al Jazeera.

“It felt like the initial COVID days. I crossed two polling centres midday and didn’t see many people besides Awami League activists who were wearing badges. EC’s claim of 40 percent is quite absurd.”

“It’s hard to believe the turnout was 40 percent, especially given the fact that the chief election commissioner himself uttered 28 percent first while briefing the media and then changed it to 40 percent all of a sudden,” said Sakhawat Hossain, a former election commissioner.

The turnout figure, which was shown on the dashboard at the EC headquarters hours after the briefing, was 28 percent, and a photo of it was widely circulated in the country’s social media and received criticism. Al Jazeera checked and verified that figure.

Sharmin Murshid, the head of the reputed election observer organisation Brotee, told Al Jazeera that a jump from 27 to 40 in a span of an hour or so was “ridiculous” and had “tainted the EC reputation severely”.

“It was a sure way to further lose the confidence of the people and credibility which it did not have to start with,” she said. “This was not an election, rather it was an exercise in casting votes by one party for one party,” she added.

BNP leaders, meanwhile, termed even 28 percent very high, saying that most of the polling booths across the country had been empty throughout the day. The opposition party earlier declared a 48-hour “hartal”, equivalent to a total strike, from Saturday morning, which it believed also reduced turnout.

While the last two national elections were tainted with dozens of deaths and severe violence, Sunday’s poll saw only one death and very few clashes, making it one of the most peaceful polls in the South Asian nation’s history.

 

[EvaDK]

@Birdjaguar

To answer your question about our Queen abdicating; yes most people here see it as a sound and reasonable decision. Her health is poor and her son is ready to take the royal house in a more modern direction. Not that I'm much of a royalist myself though...

 

[Birdjaguar]

Thanks. You're not a Royalist? I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.

 

[amadeus]

I wouldn’t do that. If I’m claiming the Divine Right and Protector of the Faith, I’m monarchying all the way to the finish line, not bailing out when some lameo parliament thinks I’m too frail to meet with the vice-ambassador from Craptown.