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More nukes

Dec 22nd, 2016 11:25 am | By

The Washington Post on Trump’s exciting nuclear plans that he shares on Twitter:

Trump’s tweet came shortly after Putin, during a defense ministry meeting, talked tough on nuclear weapons.

“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,” he said.

“He” being Putin. Trump of course would be unable to utter that sentence unless someone wrote it down first.

Russia and the United States have worked for decades at first limiting, and then reducing, the number and strength of nuclear arms they produced and maintained under a Cold War strategy of deterrence known as “mutually assured destruction.” Both Republican and Democratic presidents have

… Read the rest

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We’ll meet again

Dec 22nd, 2016 11:02 am | By

Currently in Trump –

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes

Stupid and dangerous.

He’s itching to use them. He said so during the campaign. There’s nothing in him that would tell him no, mustn’t do that. He wants to, so he will.… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 7 comments


Freedom of thought

Dec 22nd, 2016 10:38 am | By

The American Humanist Association on the Religious Freedom Act:

The American Humanist Association lobbied both Democrats and Republicans for inclusive language in HR 1150 that would recognize the rights of humanists, atheists and other nonreligious individuals, in addition to defending theistic religious minorities. The Act states that “the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is understood to protect theistic and non-theistic beliefs as well as the right not to profess or practice any religion.” The Act also condemns “specific targeting of non-theists, humanists, and atheists because of their beliefs” and attempts to forcibly compel “non-believers or non-theists to recant their beliefs or to convert.”

There’s an ambiguity in that last sentence, thanks to a word that could be a … Read the rest

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The right not to profess or practice any religion

Dec 22nd, 2016 9:39 am | By

Obama signed a newly fortified international religious freedom act last Friday, and for the first time ever it included us pesky no religion-havers.

“The new law has some really interesting language in it,” said Caroline Mala Corbin, professor of law at the University of Miami. “It takes an expansive view of religious liberty, saying freedom of religion is not just about the right to practice religion. It is also about the right to have your own views about religion including being agnostic and atheistic.”

You’d think that would be obvious, wouldn’t you – that freedom of religion would include refusal of and dissent from religion. It’s not much of a freedom if you’re not allowed to reject … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments


The remarks were cryptic and left room for broad interpretation

Dec 22nd, 2016 8:32 am | By

The video clip of Trump responding to a journalist’s question at the top of this NYT article neatly encapsulates what is so loathsome about him. What he says and the way he says it, complete with idiot pinching gesture, as if to say “I crush your head between my finger and thumb,” is a classic example of his moronic certainty of his own wisdom when in fact his head is an echoing empty space.

“You know my plans,” Mr. Trump said to reporters who asked whether the attack on Monday, in which a Tunisian is being sought, would cause him to re-evaluate his proposals to create a Muslim registry or to stop Muslim immigration to the United States. “All

… Read the rest

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It was cute but now it’s over

Dec 21st, 2016 5:38 pm | By

Oh that whole drain the swamp thing? He didn’t mean it. Or he did, but now he’s bored with it. Or both. It was “cute” but now it’s over – which is just as well, since the swamp is full of mastodons.

Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” catch phrase was “cute” but that the President-elect now disclaims it.

During an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition” Wednesday, host Rachel Martin asked if the former House speaker had been “working in the swamp, to use Donald Trump’s language.”

“I’m told he now just disclaims that. He now says it was cute, but he doesn’t want to use it anymore,” Gingrich said, referring to the phrase. “I’d

… Read the rest

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Truthy truth

Dec 21st, 2016 4:58 pm | By

Tom Tomorrow on living in a post-truth world:

That’s two out of the eight. The full strip.

 … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments


They would have liked him more

Dec 21st, 2016 4:08 pm | By

We were told during the campaign that there was a lot of bad stuff from Trump’s reality tv show The Apprentice, but also that nobody wanted to make it public because contracts and also because Trump is evil. Now we’re being told it again, with maybe a little bit more detail.

The actor Tom Arnold has claimed to have video of Donald Trump using racist language, obscenities and denigrating his own son in outtakes of The Apprentice.

[That is: using racist language and obscenities, and denigrating his own son]

“I have the outtakes to The Apprentice where he says every bad thing ever, every offensive, racist thing ever. It was him sitting in that chair saying the N-word, saying

… Read the rest

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Thriving with high birth rates

Dec 21st, 2016 11:43 am | By

Let’s read Giles Fraser’s Comment is Free piece that inspired Jesus and Mo. It is, predictably, retrograde in the extreme.

This week a doctor from north London was telling me about one of his patients, a lad of 20 who has lived in the borough of Hackney all his life. He was born here and grew up here. And he’s a bright boy – yet he speaks only a few very rudimentary words of English. The language he speaks at home and at school is Yiddish. Some may be appalled by the insularity of the community in which this young man was raised. But I admire it. In particular, I admire the resilience of a community that seeks to

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 10 comments


Stand up against the secular liberal hegemony

Dec 21st, 2016 11:19 am | By

The new Jesus and Mo:

The inspiration was Giles Fraser.

Jesus and Mo on Patreon.… Read the rest

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Evident defects of experience, judgment and character

Dec 21st, 2016 9:53 am | By

Martin Wolf on democrats, demagogues and despots:

There exists no such thing as “the people”; this is an imaginary entity. There are merely citizens whose choices not only may, but surely will, change. While a way must be found to aggregate those views, it will always be defective. Ultimately, democracy, or a democratic republic, provides a way for people with different views and even cultures to live side by side in reasonable harmony.

Yet institutions matter, too, because they set the rules of the game. Institutions may also fail. The US electoral college has failed doubly. Its selection of Mr Trump neither accords with the votes cast in the election nor reflects judgment of the candidate’s merits, as desired

… Read the rest

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Gingrich’s statement that wealth trumps the rule of law

Dec 21st, 2016 9:20 am | By

Ok so it turns out there’s a fix – if you’re worried that Trump’s many profit-seeking ventures might conflict with his ability to do the presidenting well, just change the rules to make it so that they can’t. Yeah. By the same token, can we change the rules so that it’s ok for me to rob banks?

Newt Gingrich has a take on how Donald Trump can keep from running afoul of U.S. ethics laws: Change the ethics laws.

…

Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and one-time potential running mate for Trump, says Trump should push Congress for legislation that accounts for a billionaire businessman in the White House.

“We’ve never seen this kind of wealth in

… Read the rest

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Flirting with fascism

Dec 20th, 2016 5:48 pm | By

Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Michael Flynn, met with the head of an Austrian anti-immigrant party that was founded by Nazis.

The leader of the Austrian far-right Freedom Party has signed what he called a cooperation agreement with Russia’s ruling party and recently met with Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the designated national security adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump of the United States.

Word of the agreement with Russia was the latest sign that the Kremlin is forging bonds with political parties across Europe in what some European leaders suspect is a coordinated attempt to meddle in their affairs and potentially weaken Western democracies. Many of these efforts are murky and involve obscure groups, and it is

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


A grilled-cheese sandwich over and over again

Dec 20th, 2016 3:14 pm | By

It takes only seven minutes to turn Alec Baldwin into Donald Trump.

A dusting of Clinique Stay-Matte powder in honey. A hand-stitched wig. Eyebrows glued up into tiny peaks. The rest is left to Alec Baldwin: the puckered lips, a studied lumbering gait and a wariness of humanizing a man he reviles.

The transformation of Mr. Baldwin, an outspoken liberal, into the president-elect, Donald J. Trump, for his running parody on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” entails a tangerine hairpiece and a tricky tightrope walk. It means balancing a veteran actor’s determination to subsume his identity into a character, even as, in his offstage life, he is firm in his belief that the man about to

… Read the rest

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It diverges from the best practices

Dec 20th, 2016 3:00 pm | By

The Trumps still haven’t grasped the basic norm that they’re not supposed to use the presidency as an excellent chance to make money by selling access to their wonderful selves.

Last week, Eric Trump tried auctioning a coffee date with his sister Ivanka to raise money for a children’s hospital. Now, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. are named as part of a nonprofit venture that offered the chance to rub elbows with their father during inauguration weekend and go hunting or fishing with the sons in exchange for $1 million donations that would go to conservation charities.

It’s a wonder they haven’t set up a tent on 57th street selling lemonade and/or a chance to be grabbed by their daddy.… Read the rest

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Guest post: The only appropriate reaction is to charge at the danger with your hair on fire

Dec 20th, 2016 2:35 pm | By

Originally a comment by quixote on Somewhat laid-back.

I grew up in a Russian family, Russian was my first language, and I’ve lived in the US since forever, but post-Joe McCarthy. I’ve always thought the “better dead than Red” testerical nonsense in this country to be evidence of softening of the brain.

I mean, the Russians’ idea of a national sport is watching a chess match. Weird, yes. Dangerous, no.

And now this. This, take it from one who knows, is different. There’s a guy who made his bones running the KGB. The KGB, godammit! Americans seem to have no concept what that means. You’ve got to be some kind of intelligent extraterrestrial fungus without a shred of human … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments
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Somewhat laid-back

Dec 20th, 2016 11:37 am | By

I’m still wondering why the official reaction to Putin’s role in the recent US election is so…mellow. The Guardian reports that so is former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The former CIA director and defense secretary Robert Gates has criticised the Obama administration and congressional leaders of both parties for a “somewhat laid-back” response to the discovery of Russian interference in the US presidential election.

Not a thing to be laid-back about, wouldn’t you think?

Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Gates said a “thinly disguised” operation by Russia had aimed to undermine the credibility of the American election and was to weaken Hillary Clinton.

“Given the unprecedented nature of it and the magnitude of the

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments


Bailing

Dec 20th, 2016 10:59 am | By

Another item to be filed under “Terrifying” –

[Part of me wants to turn my back, ignore the whole thing, maybe revert to being a literature nerd…but the rest of me feels the need to know the truth, if only for planning reasons. Stockpile? Find out the lethal dose of something? These questions don’t answer themselves.]

The White House is struggling to prevent a crippling exodus of foreign policy staffers eager to leave before the arrival of the Trump administration, according to current and former officials.

The top level officials in the National Security Council (NSC) are political appointees who have to submit resignations and leave in a normal transition. The rest of the 400 NSC staff are career civil

… Read the rest

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Government by Twitter

Dec 20th, 2016 10:18 am | By

So another feature of Trump world is that he tweets shit that’s wrong, and that he would know was wrong if he took the security briefings he’s supposed to take. But it’s no biggy, because it’s only China.

Donald Trump launched his Twitter campaign against China’s seizure of a U.S. Navy research submersible last week to great fanfare ― and, as it turns out, hours after the crisis had already been defused.

It’s unclear whether the president-elect or his aides knew that fact ― it would have been included in the intelligence briefing available to him each morning ― before he sent out his misspelled missive of outrage at 7:30 a.m. Saturday.

“China steals United States Navy research drone in

… Read the rest

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Maximum sleaze

Dec 19th, 2016 4:57 pm | By

Good lord.

Think Progress reports:

The Embassy of Kuwait allegedly cancelled a contract with a Washington, D.C. hotel days after the presidential election, citing political pressure to hold its National Day celebration at the Trump International Hotel instead.

A source tells ThinkProgress that the Kuwaiti embassy, which has regularly held the event at the Four Seasons in Georgetown, abruptly canceled its reservation after members of the Trump Organization pressured the ambassador to hold the event at the hotel owned by the president-elect. The source, who has direct knowledge of the arrangements between the hotels and the embassy, spoke to ThinkProgress on the condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorized to speak publicly. ThinkProgress was also able to

… Read the rest

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