"The Democratic Game Plan for Making Trump Miserable — and Regaining Power."

By Ed Kilgore in New York Magazine.

"My greatest concern is the lack of public awareness about this existential threat, the absence of a vigorous public debate about the nuclear-war plans of Russia and the United States..."

"...  the silent consent to the roughly fifteen thousand nuclear weapons in the world. These machines have been carefully and ingeniously designed to kill us. Complacency increases the odds that, some day, they will. The 'Titanic Effect' is a term used by software designers to explain how things can quietly go wrong in a complex technological system: the safer you assume the system to be, the more dangerous it is becoming."

Writes Eric Schlosser, author of "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety," in "WORLD WAR THREE, BY MISTAKE/Harsh political rhetoric, combined with the vulnerability of the nuclear command-and-control system, has made the risk of global catastrophe greater than ever," in The New Yorker.

ADDED: See "Donald Trump on Nuclear Weapons: ‘Let It Be an Arms Race,'" by Ed Levitz in New York Magazine:

On Thursday, Donald Trump went nuclear. Specifically, the president-elect appeared to upend a decades-old bipartisan consensus that less is more when it comes to nuclear weapons.... 'The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.'...

If one squints very hard one can make out a scintilla of logic in this premise. Shortly before Trump’s nuclear tweet on Thursday, Vladimir Putin told the Russian people, “We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems.”

Thus, when Trump says he wants an arms race because America would win it, he really means, “Vlad, buddy, don’t do this. You’re not gonna like how it ends.”

Or, so Trumpworld would like us to believe

"An off-campus event that a small number of students attended now gives rise to on-campus discipline because students (who did not even witness the event) feel compelled to 'avoid the resulting negative environment.'"

"If this is the standard, then anything and everything can create a 'hostile educational environment,'" writes Josh Blackman, commenting on the University of Oregon Law School decision that lawprof Nancy Shurtz — previously discussed on this blog here — committed racial harassment and created a "hostile educational environment" by wearing blackface at a Halloween costume party.

Shurtz was dumb to think it would work out well to dress in blackface, but she seems to have been sincere in thinking she was provoking a beneficial conversation about racism by dressing as the black male doctor who'd written a book she liked, "Black Man in a White Coat."

The law school acknowledged that "Professor Shurtz did not demonstrate ill intent in her choice of costume." But the point was that "her actions had a negative impact on the university’s learning environment" because of how students would have thought about it. And: "[T]he effects of Shurtz’s costume constitute disruption to the University significant enough to outweigh Shurtz’s interests in academic freedom and freedom of speech in the type of speech at issue."

Blackman gave a talk about intellectual diversity at the the University of Oregon Law School recently and afterwards:

One student told me that he attempted to defend Prof. Shurtz’s First Amendment rights on Facebook, and he was savagely attacked by other students, who charged that he was racist. Another student said that certain professors were dedicating class time to the issue (which upset some students), and other professors were not dedicating class time to the issue (which upset other students). Another mentioned the “fear of retribution” among students on the right. Another said that only one professor on campus offered a tepid response of Shurtz, and this professor was lambasted by colleagues. All noted that there was a tension in the air, and a distinct fear of defending Professor Shurtz’s rights.

What sad, timid people!

"Defying extraordinary pressure from President-elect Donald J. Trump and furious lobbying by Israel..."

"... the Obama administration on Friday allowed the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution that condemned Israeli settlement construction," the NYT reports.

The administration’s decision not to veto the measure.... broke a longstanding American policy of serving as Israel’s sturdiest diplomatic shield at the United Nations....

The vote came a day after Mr. Trump personally intervened to keep the measure, proposed by Egypt, from coming up for a vote on Thursday, as scheduled. Mr. Trump’s aides said he had spoken to Mr. Netanyahu. Both men also spoke to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Egypt postponed the vote.

Trump responded:

As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2016

"Vladimir Putin, Unsurprised by Trump’s Remarks, Says Russia Wants No Nuclear Arms Race."

NYT headline.

The Student Coalition for Progress calls on the UW–Madison administration to revoke the charter of the Young Americans for Freedom and force them into "intensive diversity training."

The Badger Herald reports.

Maybe the Student Coalition for Progress should be invited into some intensive freedom of speech training.

"I hesitate to make it about being a woman, but there have been times when I’ve improvised, they’ve laughed at my joke and then given it to my male co-star."

"Given my joke away... Or it’s been me saying, ‘I really don’t think this line is gonna work,’ and being told, ‘Just say it, just say it, if it doesn’t work we’ll cut it out’ — and they didn’t cut it out, and it really didn’t work!'"

Said Emma Stone.

"All the jokes, it hurt at first. Now, I don’t care. I laugh, too... I don’t know how I survived."

In case you are wondering how Lorena Bobbitt is doing.

It's not easy being everybody's punchline.

ADDED: This made me think of the New York Magazine article I just saw, "Here’s How Women Artists Are Reacting to a Donald Trump Presidency." It had this illustration:

"Ivanka and Jared at JFK T5, flying commercial. My husband chasing them down to harass them. #banalityofevil."

One tweet exemplifies the idiotic short-sightedness of freewheeling Trump-hating.

People with only Trump-hating friends are creating viral stories that will obviously work against their anti-Trump agenda.

It's especially bad when privileged people flaunt hostility aimed at the women — Ivanka and Melania.

In addition to that harassing of Ivanka on the plane yesterday, there are the artists who — after selling artwork to Ivanka — are demanding that she remove it from her walls:

“She frequents the art world, what’s sometimes called ‘the New York liberal bubble,’” curator Alison Gingeras, a leader of the movement, explained to The New Yorker. “So we already know we can speak with her, and we want to appeal to her personal stakes.”

Thus far, however, Ivanka has not responded to the “Dear Ivanka” protestors, nor to the many fears and anxieties they’ve disclosed. And until she does, the art world must continue to take a stand.

There has long been an economic divide between the people who make art and the people who buy it, but now more than ever artists working to resist the normalization of hate and protect the rights of marginalized communities are realizing the art marketplace is no longer an apolitical business.

And I just stumbled into this story about Olivia Wilde* Instagramming about her haircut: "Feelin myself apparently. Thanks to the master @harryjoshhair for the chop. #nomoremelaniahair.”
_________________________________

* I know: Who's Olivia Wilde? I had to look it up. Got to the Wikipedia page. Was instantly distracted by the photograph:



I'll concede that she really did have a looks-too-much-like-Melania problem. Maybe before it was the sense that Melania looked like her, and the tables got horrifyingly reversed.

"Berlin truck terrorist Anis Amri has been shot dead after a gunfight with police in Milan in the early hours of this morning."

The Tunisian pulled a gun from his backpack, screamed 'Allahu Akbar' and opened fire on two officers – hitting one in the shoulder – before being shot dead after getting off a train from France."

Goodbye to Irene.

Irene Katele, 1958-2016. From this blog, you know her as Irene (the commenter).

Here's her blog, Amber Reunion, which begins here, on September 16, 2011:

Atlantic Ocean, June 1949. This is where everything began. These happy folks are my parents, as immigrants, aboard the "General W.M. Black," the vessel that transported them to the United States. They were Displaced Persons from Lithuania, and they had lived since the end of World War II in the American-occupied zone of Germany.

The ship sailed from Bremerhaven. My Mom was shocked by how small it was. Men and women slept in separate quarters, and everyone ate oatmeal. Most of the passengers got sick during the trip. My parents had never felt better.

It's full of "family photos dating back to the 1860s": "Tambov, Russia, 1912. This is my paternal Grandmother, Tatjana. Tatjana was about sixteen when she posed for this photo. I love the shoes!"/"Soviet Union, 1940. The is my paternal Grandmother's mother, Nina. After the Russian Revolution and the execution of her husband, Pavel, Nina continued to live in the Soviet Union. Nina's expression, the way she holds the wildflowers, her hat, and her ill-fitting stockings speak to me."/"In the 1930s, my Mom's maternal aunt, Dora, adopted the glamorous look that came into fashion on the eve of World War II. Think Marlene Dietrich with auburn hair. The first stories I heard about Dora pivot on her forward-looking viewpoint. More provincially wired people found her views and behaviors scandalous. Others recognized that Dora simply was born about sixty years too early."

There are many stories and photographs of growing up in Chicago in the 1960s — like: "When I was growing up, I learned about holiday customs. Lithuanians, for example, celebrate Christmas on the night of Christmas Eve ("Kūčios")":

The Kūčios meal consists of twelve meatless dishes, one to represent each of the Apostles. All of the foods are cold dishes so that the hostess does not have to cook on such a solemn day. On Christmas Eve, we primarily eat vegetable salads, gefilte fish, and marinated herrings. Lots of herring: herring is served at least four ways.

Enforcement of these traditions is inflexible. During one memorable Christmas Eve, we had a guest who did not eat fish. Cold fish therefore was out of the question. My Mom roasted and served a duck. My Dad spit bullets about the breach of Kūčios protocol. Even now, over thirty years later, my Mom usually says on Kūčios, "Do you remember when I roasted a duck on Kūčios?!!" as if that were a really screwball, Lucille Ball-like, thing to do.

There's mindbogglingly intricate knitting. (Sometimes that knitting came to me and you saw it on this blog —  like here.)

And there were many vignettes involving poodles. (Sometimes those poodles made it onto my blog, like here and here.)

What a great life she lived! How lucky we were to have known her!

In the Wisconsin Capitol rotunda....

... a Christmas tree with lots of Christmas badgers.

I heard singing and experienced it as Christmas music — I was focused on the visual, not the audio — and finally I noticed the words — "Solidarity forever, solidarity forever..." It was the Solidarity Singers, a longstanding vestige of the 2011 protests. It's a free-speech forum, the Wisconsin rotunda. You don't have to sing about Christmas, but you can sing about Christmas.

ADDED: Did I hear "Solidarity Forever"? I'm not sure. I heard the word "solidarity," but I think it might have been labor union words sung to the tune of a Christmas carol. On their Facebook page, I see words like "God Bless You Very Wealthy Men."

"I don’t want anything this Christmas. Not one thing. And I have never felt more festive...."

"Call me cheap. But you’re still not getting anything this Christmas."

"You have teachers coming up to you saying, ‘Don’t go into the profession because you’re limiting your potential.'"

"You’re looking at them, like, ‘What?’" — said a 22-year-old student who is studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to be a teacher.

“Teachers don’t do themselves a favor,” said Amy Traynor, the state’s 2012 middle school teacher of the year. “Too many teachers are talking students out of being teachers.”

"For decades, the news media benefitted from the deference paid by courts to the judgments of newspaper editors."

"The judge in federal court treated Gawker’s editors as if they were running a newspaper, and he declined to second-guess them about what constitutes the news. The jury in state court did the opposite. The question now is whether the law, instead of treating every publication as a newspaper, will start to treat all publications as Web sites—with the same skepticism and hostility displayed by the jury in Tampa. The new President and his fellow-billionaires, like Thiel, will certainly welcome a legal environment that is less forgiving of media organizations. Trump’s victory, along with Hulk Hogan’s, suggests that the public may well take their side, too."

Writes Jeffrey Toobin in "Gawker's Demise and the Trump-Era Threat to the First Amendment/Hulk Hogan’s smashing legal victory shows us that publishing the truth may no longer be enough."

Snowden is right: You can't outsource bullshit detection.

I'm paraphrasing. He said:

“The problem of fake news isn’t solved by hoping for a referee but rather because we as participants, we as citizens, we as users of these services help each other. The answer to bad speech is not censorship. The answer to bad speech is more speech. We have to exercise and spread the idea that critical thinking matters now more than ever, given the fact that lies seem to be getting very popular.”