Month: February 2017

Tea-Publican legislators, doing the bidding of our corporate overlords, are coming for your constitutional rights

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I warned you about this earlier this year. Arizona’s authoritarian Tea-Publicans are coming for your constitutional rights.

The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) has a lengthy report, A raft of bills would make Arizona’s initiative process more difficult:

More than a century after Arizona’s voters gave themselves a Constitution and the right to write laws, legislators still can’t quite accept the fact that they have competition.

And this year [Tea-Publican] legislators, backed by powerful business interests including the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, are preparing to launch a sustained assault on the initiative process.

Legislators this year have proposed a rash of bills designed to make the initiative process more difficult. They’re proposing tougher signature-gathering requirements for groups seeking to change the law and restrictions on funding streams for initiative campaigns.

They’re also seeking an outright repeal of the Voter Protection Act, which prevents lawmakers from simply repealing voter-approved laws, or even changing them unless that change has bipartisan support and furthers the intent of the proposition.

Failing that, they’re hoping voters will at least go along with some reforms to the Voter Protection Act.

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Trump embraces the ‘Madman in The White House’ foreign policy of Richard Nixon

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This week Trump’s National Security Advisor, retired Lt. Gen.Michael Flynn, took a break from his regular stint on Russia Television (RT) to announce that the Trump administration is putting Iran “on notice” for a recent ballistic missile test.

“On notice” is not a diplomatic term of art, and no one knows what it means. Team Trump puts Iran ‘on notice,’ won’t explain what that means:

The trouble is, no one seems able to say what “on notice” means in the context of U.S. foreign policy. Sure, we remember Stephen Colbert’s “on notice” board, but when it comes to the White House, it remains an unexplained mystery.

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Note, among those who are confused is CentCom. “We saw the statement as well,” a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which runs operations in the Middle East, told The Guardian. “This is still at the policy level, and we are waiting for something to come down the line. We have not been asked to change anything operationally in the region.”

So, the rookie White House is making vague pronouncements about the Middle East, while the amateur president tweets recklessly and his administration says nothing to the military personnel who need a heads-up about such things.

Stephen Colbert is sick of Donald Trump stealing his act, so he brought out the “On Notice” board and put the President on notice.

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Grassroots Community Rally Supporting Refugee Resettlement

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“Is this the new “Great America”? It infringes on Tucson’s “Immigrant Friendly” status. It stops/reduces refugee resettlement in America. It blocks refugees from Syria. It bans visitors from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen. It it is a penstroke away from becoming an executive order. Come help organize a greater voice against unAmerican injustices … Read more

Get to know the ‘de facto president’ Stephen K. Bannon

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Screen Shot 2017-01-30 at 7.57.21 AMThe other day I posited the possibility that “Stephen K. Bannon may be more than just ‘Trump’s Brain.’ It is becoming increasingly evident that he is the ‘power behind the throne’ so to speak, a ‘shadow president’ who is pulling the strings of his puppet. And that should deeply concern all Americans.”  ‘Trump’s brain’, Stephen K. Bannon, elevated to National Security Council.

Shortly thereafter the New York Times in an editorial asked, President Bannon?

Plenty of presidents have had prominent political advisers, and some of those advisers have been suspected of quietly setting policy behind the scenes (recall Karl Rove or, if your memory stretches back far enough, Dick Morris). But we’ve never witnessed a political aide move as brazenly to consolidate power as Stephen Bannon — nor have we seen one do quite so much damage so quickly to his putative boss’s popular standing or pretenses of competence.

Mr. Bannon supercharged Breitbart News as a platform for inciting the alt-right, did the same with the Trump campaign and is now repeating the act with the Trump White House itself. That was perhaps to be expected, though the speed with which President Trump has moved to alienate Mexicans (by declaring they would pay for a border wall), Jews (by disregarding their unique experience of the Holocaust) and Muslims (the ban) has been impressive. Mr. Trump never showed much inclination to reach beyond the minority base of voters that delivered his Electoral College victory, and Mr. Bannon, whose fingerprints were on each of those initiatives, is helping make sure he doesn’t.

But a new executive order, politicizing the process for national security decisions, suggests Mr. Bannon is positioning himself not merely as a Svengali but as the de facto president.

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Free talk on Reclaiming Conversation in a Digital Age

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“Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age”
A free public lecture by MIT professor Sherry Turkle
Friday, Feb. 3, 7:30 p.m. | UA’s ENR2 Rm N120, 1064 E. Lowell St.

 

“A generation has grown up feeling that “it would rather text than talk,” along with believing that it is possible to share our attention during almost everything we do. What are the costs of a “flight from conversation” in personal life, among one’s family and friends? What are the costs in the work world? And, most importantly, what can we do about it?

Professor, author, consultant and researcher Sherry Turkle has spent the last 30 years studying the psychology of people’s relationships with technology. She is the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT, as well as the founder and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self.

Referred to by many as the “Margaret Mead of digital culture,” Professor Turkle has investigated the intersection of digital technology and human relationships from the early days of personal computers to our current world of robotics, artificial intelligence, social networking and mobile connectivity. Her New York Times best-seller, “Reclaiming Conversation™: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age” (Penguin Press, October 2015), focuses on the importance of conversation in digital cultures, including business and the professions.

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