This Tuesday, January 8th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Crazy Rich Asians @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building:
Crazy Rich Asians (Comedy/Romance)
Tuesday, January 8, 12:30 pm
Rated PG-13. 2 hours (2018)
Rachel’s longtime boyfriend is taking her to his best friend’s wedding in Singapore. What starts as her first trip to Asia becomes something more complicated when she discovers her boyfriend’s family is Super-Super Rich, putting her under the microscope and in the crosshairs of other ladies out to land him. Based on a NY Times and international bestseller. Stars Constance Wu, Henry Golding and Ken Jeong (of TV’s “Dr.Ken” series).
There’s a certain kind of Republican who rationalizes Trump’s many vices because, well, Trump has nominated some conservative judges. (Hugh Hewitt, who’ll rationalize anything to keep a job on the Salem talk radio network comes to mind. SeeIt’s the Supreme Court, stupid.)
If there’s an equivalent of this, it’s a certain kind of Democrat who’ll rationalize incidents of sexual harassment or abuse of adult women for the sake of an otherwise progressive leader. So if Sanders ignores or Franken commits acts of harassment, a greater partisan or ideological goal is supposed to absolve them of culpability.
(Indeed, there’s been some of this in the local support for now-resigned UW-Whitewater chancellor Beverly Kopper, as though she were somehow the Great White Progressive Hope of the city.)
No, and no again.
These partisans aren’t owed their proposed compromises.
America’s a huge place: there are better Republicans than Trump, better Democrats than Sanders and Franken, and better chancellors for Whitewater than the ones this campus has recently had. (UW-Whitewater’s last two chancellors have been enmired in failure over sexual harassment and sexual assault cases.)
There’s no reason to compromise immorally and unnecessarily on fundamental standards of individual rights and dignity.
Those in Whitewater who hope for unquestioned compromises of that kind are living in the wrong place.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:36 PM, for 9h 11m 36s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1941, Pres. Roosevelt presents his Four Freedoms goals during his State of the Union address.
Before it became the chief sticking point in a government shutdown drama that threatens to consume his presidency at a critical moment, President Trump’s promise to build a wall on the southwestern border was a memory trick for an undisciplined candidate.
As Mr. Trump began exploring a presidential run in 2014, his political advisers landed on the idea of a border wall as a mnemonic device of sorts, a way to make sure their candidate — who hated reading from a script but loved boasting about himself and his talents as a builder — would remember to talk about getting tough on immigration, which was to be a signature issue in his nascent campaign.
“How do we get him to continue to talk about immigration?” Sam Nunberg, one of Mr. Trump’s early political advisers, recalled telling Roger J. Stone Jr., another adviser. “We’re going to get him to talk about he’s going to build a wall.”
Talk Mr. Trump did, and the line drew rapturous cheers from conservative audiences, thrilling the candidate and soon becoming a staple of campaign speeches. Chants of “Build the wall!” echoed through arenas throughout the country.
(Disturbingly funny: Trump’s advisors had so little respect for his intellectual ability that they fed him a simple word and idea to repeat again and again. Yet, Trump’s advisors, themselves, had so little ability that they failed to grasp that he’d believe literally in the rhetorical trope they gave him.)
The Supreme Court’s 1953 decision in Youngstown v. Sawyer would be critical in Congressional consideration of such a decision. In a canonical opinion by Justice Robert Jackson, the court invalidated President Truman’s attempt in 1952 to use his powers as commander in chief to nationalize steel mills in the face of labor strikes. The decision imposed fundamental constitutional limits on the president’s power to claim that a national emergency — in this case, the Korean War — allowed him to override express provisions preventing him from using those powers domestically.
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What this all adds up to is a potential crisis much graver than whatever immigration emergencies the president has in mind: A legally ignorant president forcing our troops to choose between his commands and the rule of law in a petty political struggle over a domestic political question.
Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-six. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:35 PM, for 9h 10m 27s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1855, King Camp Gillette, razor magnate, is born in Fond du Lac.
Without naming all potential areas for inquiry, the possibilities include: (1) the administration’s policy toward, and Trump’s financial interests in, various authoritarians and dictators around the world; (2) the administration’s policy toward, and Trump’s treatment of, democratic allies; (3) the administration’s Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and China policies; (4) the state of the workforce at foreign policy and national security agencies, especially the State Department, as well as foreign aid policies and plans; (5) the outcomes of the administration’s changes to Obama-era counterterrorism policies; (6) the administration’s cybersecurity policy and steps to defend against information warfare by foreign adversaries; (7) the administration’s southern border policies and actions and policy toward Central America; (8) the administration’s push for more nuclear weapons and the path forward with respect to arms control treaties; (9) the state of the United States’ human rights and democracy agenda; (10) the administration’s policy toward Israel and prospects for a two-state solution; and (11) the consequences of America’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord and the administration’s climate agenda.
If successful, the resolution would prevent the Treasury Department from lifting sanctions on the Deripaska-controlled companies EN+, Rusal, and EuroSibEnergo. A mechanism in the 2017 Russia sanctions package, the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), would trigger the reversal. Passed overwhelmingly by Congress over Trump’s objections, CAATSA allows the House and Senate to block White House efforts to alter sanctions by passing a joint resolution of disapproval within 30 days of the administration’s announcement.
Lawmakers involved in the talks told The Daily Beast that CAATSA appeared to be the best legislative vehicle to block the lifting of sanctions on the Deripaska-linked businesses.
Deripaska has proven to be an inviting target for lawmakers. His ties to Trump’s former campaign chief Paul Manafort, which Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has investigated, run deep. And the nature of the deal concerns Democrats. Lord Barker, a former U.K. energy minister who now sits as a member of the House of Lords, chairs EN+ and helped negotiate the terms under which the Treasury Department would lift the sanctions on the businesses. Barker’s Russia ties have concerned some of his British colleagues, as The Daily Mail has detailed. The Guardian reported that a parliamentary committee asked Barker for information about his work for EN+, and he refused to provide anything publicly because of his work trying to lift U.S. sanctions.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:34 PM, for 9h 09m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
David Frum asks Why Is Trump Spouting Russian Propaganda? (“The president’s endorsement of the U.S.S.R.’s invasion of Afghanistan echoes a narrative promoted by Vladimir Putin”):
Let’s go to the replay:
The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there.
To appreciate the shock value of Trump’s words, it’s necessary to dust off some Cold War history. Those of us who grew up in the last phases of the Cold War used to know it all by heart, but I admit I had to do a little Googling to refresh my faded memories.
It’s amazing enough that any U.S. president would retrospectively endorse the Soviet invasion. What’s even more amazing is that he would do so using the very same falsehoods originally invoked by the Soviets themselves: “terrorists” and “bandit elements.”
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It has been an important ideological project of the Putin regime to rehabilitate and justify the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Putin does not care so much about Afghanistan, but he cares a lot about the image of the U.S.S.R. In 2005, Putin described the collapse of the Soviet Union as (depending on your preferred translation) “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” or “a major geopolitical disaster of the 20th century”—but clearly a thing very much to be regretted.
The report by Russia Today (RT) report came a day after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced that Russia has missed the December 31, 2018 deadline for compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code. By that deadline, the Russian authorities were supposed to meet two conditions imposed by WADA’s Executive Committee back in September.
Also on January 2, 16 national anti-doping organizations issued a joint statement calling on WADA to suspend Russia immediately, stating: “Russia has failed to meet its obligations.”
RT’s January 2 report used language implying that it was the World Anti-Doping Agency’s own fault for not being able to access Moscow laboratory (LIMS) data, and that WADA president Craig Reedie had seemingly expressed disappointment toward his own organization.
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WADA followed with a statement on January 2 leaving no space for doubt about who the organization blamed for the failure: “We are extremely disappointed that the Dec. 31 deadline imposed on Russia by WADA has not been adhered to by the Russian authorities.”
In February 2016, Giulianna Di Lauro, a Latino outreach strategist for Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential operation, complained to her supervisor that she had been harassed by a campaign surrogate whom she drove to events ahead of the Democratic primary in Nevada.
She said the surrogate told her she had “beautiful curly hair” and asked if he could touch it, Ms. Di Lauro said in an interview. Thinking he would just touch a strand, she consented. But she said that he ran his hand through her hair in a “sexual way” and continued to grab, touch and “push my boundaries” for the rest of the day.
“I just wanted to be done with it so badly,” she said.
When she reported the incident to Bill Velazquez, a manager on the Latino outreach team, he told her, “I bet you would have liked it if he were younger,” according to her account and another woman who witnessed the exchange. Then he laughed.
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In an interview Wednesday night on CNN, Mr. Sanders said he was proud of his 2016 campaign and attributed any missteps with staff members to the explosive growth that was sometimes overwhelming. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that we did everything right, in terms of human resources,” he told Anderson Cooper.
“I certainly apologize to any woman who felt she was not treated appropriately, and of course if I run we will do better the next time,” he said.
Asked if he knew about the staff complaints, he said, “I was a little bit busy running around the country trying to make the case.”
As a general rule, contested elections are preferable to uncontested ones. That rule applies in Whitewater: there have been too few contested elections, and too many of the same people carrying on as though political offices were freehold estates.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:33 PM, for 9h 08m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 5.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Fire Department Board of Directors is scheduled to meet at 6:30 PM.
Gov.-elect Tony Evers said he’ll visit the troubled Lincoln Hills juvenile prison during his first week in office, a move he said will let people working and serving time there know that he cares about what happens to them.
The visit would stand in sharp contrast to the approach of Gov. Scott Walker, who never visited Lincoln Hills or any other Wisconsin correctional facility during his eight years in office.
Domestic disinformation and misinformation isn’t new. Outlandish conspiracy theories like Pizzagate went viral before 2018. Infowars, a pivotal progenitor of internet misinformation, has been online since 1999. “What’s new is the technology that makes it easy to set up websites, write dubious stories, modify videos, and spread them through social media, which gives them exposure that’s unprecedented,” explains Alan Rosenblatt, director of digital research at Lake Research Partners and a professor at George Washington University.
Before social media could amplify information in the way it does now, Infowars’ outrageous claims, including one that the 2010 film Machete was a part of a government plot to incite a race war, went relatively unnoticed. Now, hoaxes rip across the internet, leaving wakes big enough to cascade into national discourse.
In 2018, major technology giants finally deplatformed prominent hoax peddlers like Infowars creator Alex Jones, but his impact couldn’t be reversed. Even though he’s no longer on Facebook and Twitter, Jones’ domestic misinformation playbook is still etched into far-right internet circles.
President Trump, 12 days into a government shutdown and facing new scrutiny from emboldened Democrats, inaugurated the new year Wednesday with a Cabinet meeting. It quickly became a 95-minute stream-of-consciousness defense of his presidency and worldview, filled with falsehoods, revisionist history and self-aggrandizement.
(Ninety-five minutes: now we know how long crushed Adderall can keep a morbidly obese, septuagenarian man going.)
One wondrous result of the 2018 election, we will discover, is the near-total irrelevance of Trump’s tweets. He can say whatever wacky thing he wants, throw out whatever insults he pleases, but Pelosi (D-Calif.), the incoming House speaker, is not going to be thrown off track or even alarmed. She takes his tweets as confirmation he is clueless and unstable.
Incoming Gov. Tony Evers said Wednesday he would not go along with parts of lame-duck laws that curb his powers, maintaining that GOP lawmakers or their supporters would have to sue him over the issue.
“I’m anticipating most of the provisions will be challenged and I’m guessing I will be a defendant rather than a plaintiff,” Evers said in an interview Wednesday at his transition office.
The Democrat’s stance changes the dynamic in the fight over the lame-duck legislation by prodding Republicans into initiating litigation instead of doing so himself.
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Evers likened the situation to attempts by Walker and GOP lawmakers to chip into his authority over state rules as the state schools superintendent. Allies of Evers sued and won before the state Supreme Court the first time Republicans tried to diminish his powers. A second lawsuit over the issue — this one brought by Evers’ opponents — is now before the state’s high court.
“Having gone through this in my previous job as state superintendent, I think it’s more likely that I will be sued because I’m now the chief executive of the state,” Evers said of a potential legal fight over the lame-duck legislation “Same thing happened when I was state superintendent — I was sued. So that’s where I anticipate most of the action to be.”
41 He sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
42 A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents.
43 Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, “Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury.
44 For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”
Falwell, a self-professed evangelical, here speaks in direct opposition to plain Christian teaching. (Indeed, his full interview with the Washington Post reveals error after error, as though Falwell had never seen, let alone read, a New Testament. No doubt he has read one; it’s simply that what he’s saying now is not found in the faith he professes.)
Falwell and his ilk are mistaken if they think those of us who are religious – or candidly anyone who can read a text – will yield to his contrivances.
For many years, I would begin the year with predictions for the twelve months ahead. Events since 2016 have made predictions harder, but one can still discern some short-term developments for the city. These prospects, of course, form an online of topics to ponder, and about which to write (often requiring that one return to the same topic many times as needed throughout the year). A few general issues for Whitewater appear below, listed alphabetically.
Assault Awareness and Prevention. The campus wants healing, and the city needs enlightenment, but both will come only through a process of truth and reconciliation. Whitewater has slipped closer to Missoula or Steubenville than any town should. Those communities do not have reputation problems — they have had, so to speak, individual injury problems. The latter led to the former.
Community. There are green shoots in this city even in hard times. They’re not to be found at the Whitewater CDA, or city government, but in local organizing efforts (for food, clothing, necessities). These are worthy efforts that will make a difference in residents’ lives. For all the hard problems to address, these are the soft (yet durable) solutions to applaud.
Economy, National. Recession or not, growth will decline enough so that it will feel like a recession for many. See Low Growth as Decline.
Evers. He has a tall order before him, but I think he’ll grow on more and more Wisconsinites.
Print Publications. Putting the expression ‘circling the drain’ to good use.
Schools. The most important work isn’t a referendum; it’s everything afterward.
Town-Gown. Accreditation, coffee, dogs, and shopping (however attractive in the moment) won’t be enough to bridge the gap between campus and the community beyond.
Trumpism. There is no greater threat to an American community than a bigoted, self-dealing authoritarianism that holds federal executive power in its grip.
WEDC, CDA, CIA, FBI, whatever… If there’s ever been a risible failure for Whitewater, it’s the state-capitalist and crony-capitalist approach of the WEDC, and the use of the Whitewater Community Development Authority as a tiny WEDC. Local notables and their out-of-touch appointee playing venture capitalist with public money isn’t venture capitalism, or any kind of productive free-market approach. It’s a vanity project that short-changes the community. Pride makes for poor policy.
For all these that one can see, there will be other issues that emerge over the year.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see cloudy skies and a high of twenty-nine. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:32 PM, for 9h 07m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 11% of its visible disk illuminated.
the Wisconsin 127th and 128th Infantries departed for France from their training facility at Camp Arthur in Waco, Texas. Initially, these divisions were assigned to construct depots and facilities for troops that would follow. On May 18, they were assigned to the frontline at Belmont in the Alsace where they faced three German divisions. In the following months, 368 troops were killed, wounded or missing. Ironically, their enemy, native Alsatians, spoke German and the Wisconsin troops were better able to communicate with them than their French allies.
Departing Gov. Scott Walker told supporters Tuesday he would be giving speeches, emphasizing tax cuts and working to re-elect President Donald Trump after Walker leaves office next week.
(Putting that charisma and dynamic speaking style to good use already…)
“Both of the rate hikes were unnecessary and were a cause for deflation in the economy,” he [Moore] said.
“Wait, wait, wait!” interjected Rampell. “There is no deflation!”
“Yeah there is,” Moore replied.
“No there is not,” she shot back. “Look at the Consumer Price Index!”
Moore tried to counter by noting that some prices on the Commodities Price Index had dropped — but Rampell hit back by saying that much of that was due to President Donald Trump’s trade wars.
“Soy bean prices are falling because of the trade war,” she said.
Rampell then nailed Moore for his false warnings during the Obama presidency that it was unwise for the Fed to keep interest rates low because it would lead to hyperinflation — despite the fact that the economy at the time was deeply depressed and much more in need of easy money.
Statistically speaking, given how long the economy has been growing, a recession is overdue — and the eventual collapse may bear Trump’s fingerprints. After all, his new trade barriers have lifted manufacturing costs, closed off markets and clouded the future for American firms with global supply chains. Economists say Trump’s trade war is the biggest threat to the U.S. economy in 2019. In loonier moments, the president has also threatened to default on our debt, ramp up the money-printing press, reinstate the gold standard or deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants. Some of those policies would ignite not just a recession but an immediate, global financial crisis.
