I swear to God, Buddha, Zeus, the philosophes of the Enlightenment, you name it: I am not making this up. Joe Klein on David Frum:
Frum is well situated because he is a former neoconservative, a longtime pillar of the Republican Party’s intellectual elite who was shocked to learn in 2016, with the rest of us, that the Republican Party no longer had an intellectual elite.
No, Joe. “The rest of us” figured out a long time ago that the Republican Party hasn’t had an intellectual elite since a white supremacist delivered a bullet to the brain of Abraham Lincoln.
I don’t have strong feelings about troops stationed in Germany oneway or the other. It probably is an outdated arrangement that is overue for reconsideration. However, I really don’t think withdrawing troops becauwe Donald Trump is mad at Angela merkel for efusing to attend his little G7 Party in the middle of a pandemic is a good reason to do it:
When Chancellor Angela Merkel told President Trump last week that she would not attend the Group of 7 meeting he wanted to host in Washington this month, the call between the two leaders, normally respectful in tone, turned testy.
Ms. Merkel cited the ongoing pandemic. Mr. Trump responded with a wide-ranging monologue about his frustrations with the Group of 7 and NATO and the World Health Organization. America was doing great, he said, even as citizens rioted in cities across the country. The pandemic was China’s fault.
They hung up after only 20 minutes.
“It was not a nice call,” said one official who was listening and recounted the exchange.
One week later, Germans learned that the United States planned to cut its troop presence in their country by more than a quarter. Some 9,500 soldiers who have helped keep peace on the continent are to leave within the next three months. There had been no warning, and even today there is not yet an official notification.
It is not clear whether the two episodes are related. But together they signal a breakdown in relations between the United States and Europe’s most influential country, not seen since World War II as communication collapses and interests diverge over nearly every important issue, including Russia, Iran, China, and trade and security.
Of course they are related. Trump is a spoiled, emotionally stunted, petty tyrant. There can be no other reason for this decision at this time.
However, it’s a sign of the rapid deterioration of America’s relationship with its allies in ways that are likely to keep us in a precarious international position for a long time to come. It would be one thing if we were doing any of this with a strategic vision to change our military presence in the world but that’s not what happening.
A giant ignoramus with an extreme personality disorder is capriciously destroying the existing world order without any sense of what will replace it even as he’s bragging to anyone who’ll listen that he’s expanded the US military to unheard-of levels.
What is the world to think of this?
Trust between Ms. Merkel and Mr. Trump was lost long ago. Now, officials and analysts say, something much more fundamental was slipping away — trust in the strategic foundation of the trans-Atlantic alliance itself.
The lack of consultation on the decision, and the uncertainty and unpredictability in dealing with Mr. Trump — his decision to leave the W.H.O. similarly surprised allies — have become hallmarks of his years in office.
In the view of European officials, the United States has gone from being the indispensable ally to the undependable one. It is a frustrating turn of events that they have neither sought nor desired.
“It’s yet another wake-up call for us Europeans to take our fate into our own hands,” said Johann David Wadephul, a senior German lawmaker from Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
By unilaterally withdrawing troops from the United States’ most important European ally, Mr. Trump is hurting NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and directly playing into the hands of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has long resented America’s military footprint on the continent, said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, the Berlin-based vice president of the research group, the German Marshall Fund.
This is the state of America’s relationship with the world:
[B]efore the presidential elections in November, some say “America First” seems to have morphed into “Trump First.”
“It’s all about him, it’s not about a vision of the world, not about politics, it’s about him, about his need for validation — and sometimes his need for revenge,” said Norbert Röttgen, chairman of Germany’s foreign affairs committee and one of several candidates hoping to succeed Ms. Merkel as chancellor next year.
German officials are already bracing for more disruptive announcements from Washington in the months before the American election — and possibly after.
Many worry that Mr. Trump will unilaterally speed up the time table for troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, giving the Taliban the upper hand in peace talks. Some even expect him to bring troops back from South Korea.
“He is nervous and under pressure and the tighter it gets for him, the more critical the situation is for him, the more he will lash out,” Mr. Mr. Röttgen said.
Some fear that if Mr. Trump is re-elected, his first announcement will be that the United States is leaving NATO. Ultimately, Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said, the question is: “How much can Trump destroy?”
That is the question for all of us, isn’t it? From the looks of it, his final (hopefully) year in office may end up being the worst on record. And he seems intent on making it as bad as he possibly can.
These next six months are going to be a very dangerous time.
Joe Biden leads President Trump in Michigan 53% to 41%, doubling his lead over the incumbent since January, according to a poll of 600 likely Michigan voters conducted by EPIC-MRA for the Detroit Free Press.
Michigan, which Trump won by more than 10,000 votes in 2016, is considered an important battleground state in the upcoming election.
In an earlier EPIC-MRA survey conducted in January, Michigan voters favored Biden over Trump 50% to 44%.
Since that poll, the state has been hit hard by the coronavirus and the subsequent economic disruption.
Of those surveyed, 43% identified as Democrats and 38% as Republicans.
Independent voters in the state are backing Biden over Trump, 63% to 23%.
63% said the country is heading in the wrong direction, up from 50% in January.
41% of voters approved of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, while 58% disapproved.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), a potential Biden VP pick who has repeatedly been attacked by Trump during the coronavirus crisis, has an approval rating of 55% positive and 43% negative, up from 43%-50% in January.
60% commended her handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Here is an incident from last Sunday that had escaped my attention:
An unknown vehicle allegedly driving at high speeds toward Minnesota National Guard personnel and their police counterparts was shot at three times in Minneapolis on Sunday night, the state adjutant general said during a Monday press conference with the governor.
“Our soldier fired three rounds from his rifle in response to a perceived and legitimate threat to him and the Minnesota police officers he was in direct support of,” said Minnesota National Guard commander Maj. Gen. Jon Jensen. “The vehicle changed course and fled the scene. At this time no injuries have been reported.”
Jensen said the vehicle’s driver refused to slow down after both “verbal and non-verbal” signals were given and “non-lethal methods” were employed. He did not elaborate on what those signals and methods were, but added that an investigation is underway.
Multiple civilian drivers died in Iraq for being surprised by or unfamiliar with “verbal and non-verbal” and “non-lethal methods” when they turned a corner onto a street full of soldiers or private security teams with automatic weapons.
Baghdad has come to Minneapolis.
The driver “fled the scene”? Well, damned right she/he fled. Proving, of course, the driver was a hostile. Why else flee? We’ve graduated from warrior cops killing civilians to actual warriors firing on them.
Not to mention that Attorney General Bill Barr has deployed squads of men in tactical gear to the streets of Washington, D.C. to put down protests. They bear no insignia and refuse to identify their units, commanding officers, or governing authority. One might reasonably assume they have none, and are simply “open-carrying, white militia members cosplaying as survivalists,” “boogaloo bois,” or brigands. Gun clubs with uniforms.
Bill Barr responds with his signature fuck-you grin.
“He thus took a page from the dictator’s handbook, threatening force without any accountability,” the Washington Post Editorial Board wrote.
Police murdering a black suspect in Minneapolis sparked the nationwide waves of protest that have become about much more than the death of one man. They are now about addressing centuries of systemic racism as well as decades of violent policing that leads year after year to the deaths of civilians.
As protests of police violence against black Americans roll across the country, we are witnessing the convergence of three trends in response: new urban-warfare theories developed by military strategists; the recent practice of outfitting police with the most intimidating and sophisticated warfighting gear possible; and an even longer trend among police of treating demonstrations and protests as tantamount to revolution. This militarization of the police has contributed to the very conditions that have led to the protests — which then create a feedback loop, as they feed a desire among figures like Cotton and Trump for the actual military to step in.
In other words, counterinsurgency breeds insurgency.
This shit’s gotta stop.
We’ve discussed this here before, but it’s time again. This prescient article is from Oct. 2019:
It’s not a major political campaign issue, but it ought to be: Domestic policing in the United States needs to be reinvented from the ground up.
“From their earliest days in the (police) academy, would-be officers are told that their prime objective, the proverbial ‘first rule of law enforcement,’ is to go home at the end of every shift,” Seth Stoughton notes in the Harvard Law Review. Policing experts call this me-first approach the warrior mentality. “Officers learn to treat every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making.”
In the real world, America’s streets are not a war zone. Ninety-five percent of police officers go through their entire career without ever having to fire their weapon. But many cops are military veterans, and vets are 23% more likely than non-vets to draw and shoot.
Increasingly concerned about police shootings and the eroding of trust between cops and the people, some leaders are trying to promote a guardian mentality instead. “The guardian mindset prioritizes service over crime-fighting, and it values the dynamics of short-term encounters as a way to create long-term relationships,” writes Stoughton. “As a result, it instructs officers that their interactions with community members must be more than legally justified, they must also be empowering, fair, respectful, and considerate. The guardian mindset emphasizes communication over commands, cooperation over compliance, and legitimacy over authority.”
The priority for cops shouldn’t be that they get to go home at the end of every shift.
Their priority should be to make sure civilians do. But that’s not what they’re trained for and it shows, doesn’t it?
Because police suit up for war and train to treat civilians as enemy combatants, every encounter becomes a potentially deadly one. Plus, for a host of historical reasons, if you are black that possibility is even higher.
Imagine you are a black man or woman stopped for a traffic violation as trivial as a missing front license plate and, based on recent events, consider the possibility these might be your last moments on Earth. What does raw instinct demand? Fight or flight?
Choose either (as if instinct is a choice) and the warrior cop may take it as proof you represent something much more threatening than an expired tag. Fleeing imminent death becomes proof of malice, the way floating in a river once proved an accused woman guilty of witchcraft.
This is what’s now considered modern policing.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like. Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.
Who ordered those choppers to buzz the protesters?
Top Pentagon officials ordered National Guard helicopters to use what they called “persistent presence” to disperse protests in the capital this week, according to military officials. The loosely worded order prompted a series of low-altitude maneuvers that human rights organizations quickly criticized as a show of force usually reserved for combat zones.
Ryan D. McCarthy, the Army secretary and one of the officials who authorized part of the planning for the helicopters’ mission Monday night, said on Friday that the Army had opened an investigation into the episode.
Two Army National Guard helicopters flew low over the protesters, with the downward blast from their rotor blades sending protesters scurrying for cover and ripping signs from the sides of buildings. The pilots of one of the helicopters have been grounded pending the outcome of the inquiry.
The high-profile episode, after days of protests in Washington — some of which turned violent — was a turning point in the military’s response to unrest in the city. After days of operating on the periphery of the crowds, National Guard forces suddenly became a focus of the controversy over the military’s role in urban law enforcement.
Military officials said that the National Guard’s aggressive approach to crowd control was prompted by a pointed threat from the Pentagon: If the Guard was unable to handle the situation, then active-duty military units, such as a rapid-reaction unit of the 82nd Airborne Division, would be sent into the city.
[…]
The episode, which occurred about three hours after a 7 p.m. curfew in the capital went into effect on Monday, began when a Black Hawk helicopter, assigned to the District of Columbia National Guard, began a low and slow pass over a group of roughly 200 peaceful protesters in the Chinatown neighborhood.
The downward force of the helicopter’s rotor blades snapped a small tree, with debris almost hitting several people. The second helicopter tried a similar maneuver. Roaring overhead, the Lakota, adorned with a red-and-white cross denoting its medical affiliation, hovered over the crowd, staying at rooftop level, blowing debris and sending protesters scattering.
The red cross with white background is a “universally recognized symbol of medical aid and is protected under the Geneva Conventions,” Human Rights Watch said in a report Friday. “Its misuse is prohibited under the conventions and it has no place in a ‘show of force’ or to forcibly disperse protesters.”
“The wind speeds created by a low-hovering helicopter can lift objects and cause serious damage, potentially leading to injury or death,” the report said. “These risks are amplified in congested urban environments, where the consequences would be exceptionally dangerous if something were to go wrong.”
[…]
During the operation Monday night, the helicopters followed the crowd through several well-lit intersections and repeatedly hovered over protesters for close to an hour.
People at the scene expressed their disbelief and fear. One protester, asked by a friend if he wanted to stay out later, responded curtly that he was just “trying not to die.”
There is no formal training for the type of maneuvers conducted Monday night, said one military official with direct knowledge of the episode, so any guidance about “persistent presence” is left to the interpretation of the pilots.
The piece de resistance is that one of the helicopters had Red Cross markings. You can’t make that stuff up.
I’m gathering from watching TV today that they plan to blame the pilots. But even if they took it upon themelves to do it, they were operating in an environment in which their president was screaming “dominate!dominate!dominate!” at the top of his lungs and threatening to wage war in the streets. Is it surprising that they would have thought that battlefield tactics were on the menu?
By coincidence, as Chris Hayes was reporting this story I had a very loud, low military helicopter flying over my house in Santa Monica. My neighbors and I all came out in the street to see what was going on. We hear police and media helicopters overhead all the time, of course. This is the city. But this was different and it was very unnerving.
There was no march. There was no looting. The curfew was in place. And this copter didn’t buzz us as those did in DC. But is was menacing nonetheless. I assume that was the point.
President Donald Trump traveled to Maine Friday to tour a facility that makes medical swabs used for coronavirus testing, but the swabs manufactured in the background during his visit will ultimately be thrown in the trash, the company said.
Puritan Medical Products said it will have to discard the swabs, a company spokeswoman told USA TODAY in response to questions about the visit.
It is not clear why the swabs will be scrapped, or how many.The company described its manufacturing plans for Friday as “limited” – but the disruption comes as public health officials in Maine and other states have complained that a shortage of swabs has hampered their ability to massively scale up coronavirus testing.
Workers in white lab coats, hairnets and plastic booties worked at machines making swabs while the president walked through the room. Trump, who did not wear a mask for the visit, stopped at one point to talk with some of the workers.
It’s pretty obvious that they have to throw it away because COVID Creepy and members of his entourage refused to suit up for the visit and they can’t take a chance that he contaminated the production.
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) June 6, 2020
Here’s a little taste of the taxpayer funded “non-campaign” trip he took yesterday to inspect a swab factory:
So we absolutely shattered expectations. And this is the largest monthly jobs increase in American history. American — think of that: That’s a long time, right? By far. I think it’s more than double or about double of what our highest was before.
So this is the largest monthly job increase in American history. How about that? And we’re going to have a phenomenal next year. We’re going to have a tremendous couple of months prior to the election, on November 3rd. A very, very important day. It’s going to be a very important election because the only thing that can screw it up is if you get the wrong President and they raise your taxes, and they open up your border so that everybody pours into our country.
COVID or non-COVID — you used to never hear of COVID, but now we have COVID to add to the list of other things. So, we have a wall that’s over 210 miles long already going up. We’ll have 400 miles — (applause) — 400 miles by the end of the year, maybe more than that. And we’ll be finishing it off very early next year with 500 miles of wall in the most treacherous places. And it’s been an amazing thing. We have — we’re setting records on our border right now for — for holding people out. We don’t want people coming in. We want people coming in through a legal process and through merit — and that’s what we’re doing — where they can help our country.
But economists forecast that the unemployment rate, as I said, would be about 19 percent, and they were hoping for 20 percent, the opponents of ours. They’d rather have things be bad so they can try and win an election. So they were hoping it would be 20 percent. Instead, it’s 13 percent. That was good. That — we made up a lot of time, a lot of distance. It’s really great. (Applause.) Even I was surprised by this one. This was better than I thought. I thought it would be okay, but I didn’t know this. It means you were much ahead of schedule. And don’t forget, that doesn’t include New York, New Jersey, and many other states — and, by the way, your state. When are you going to open the state up?
No, seriously, you’re going to miss your whole — you know, you do 40 million people in tourism, and you have a governor that won’t let you open up. What’s she doing? What’s she doing? I don’t know that much; I just know you’re great people.
You know what I know about Maine? I know you’re great people. But you have — this is like — you know, they say December, for Tiffany’s, that’s their big month, right? This is your time. This is your big month. This is your Christmas, in terms of tourism, your dollars, when you — how can you be closed? I mean — and I see it all the time. Everybody wants to have Maine open, so I figured I might as well say it while I’m up here. You ought to get the state open, Governor. (Applause.) Open the state.
Got a lot of — you have a lot of angry people in Maine about that. I mean, they think — I say, “What are you doing? That’s a strange one.” Some, I understand a little bit more, but this one is not one that should be closed. You’re missing a lot of money and a lot of everything and a lot of people and a lot of spirit. Get it open.
We added 1.2 million leisure and hospitality jobs; 464,000 construction jobs; 424,000 education and healthcare jobs; 368,000 retail jobs. And listen to this one: Remember, the previous administration said, “Oh, there’ll not be any more manufacturing jobs in our country.” I say, “Excuse me?” Two hundred and twenty-five thousand manufacturing jobs, and that’s during a pandemic. (Applause.)
And we had the greatest economy in the history of our country. You know, we had a — an economy, the likes of which we’ve never had. We had almost 160 million, which was the highest number we’ve ever had, by far. African American, Hispanic American, Asian American — the greatest employment and unemployment numbers we’ve ever had.
Greatest stock market numbers. And we’re very close to those numbers, which is pretty amazing. That means that these geniuses on Wall Street, and also a lot of people with 401(k)s — you have 401(k)s?
When the U.S. government’s official jobs report for May came out on Friday, it included a note at the bottom saying there had been a major “error” indicating that the unemployment rate likely should be higher than the widely reported 13.3 percent rate.
The special note said that if this “misclassification error” had not occurred, the “overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,” meaning the unemployment rate would be about 16.3 percent for May. But that would still be an improvement from an unemployment rate of about 19.7 percent for April, applying the same standards.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that puts out the monthly jobs reports, said it was working to fix the problem.
“BLS and the Census Bureau are investigating why this misclassification error continues to occur and are taking additional steps to address the issue,” said a note at the bottom of the Bureau of Labor Statistics report.
The truth is that even with the adjustment the jobs report is better than expected. And I honestly can’t figure out why anyone thought that unemployment would continue to spike in May when parts of the country were already opening up. The reports shows that a big chunk of jobs gained was in places like dentistry which was obviously going to open at the earliest opportunity because it’s essential! Health care in general gained a lot of jobs in May for the same reason.
Also the PPP program allowed a lot of businesses to rehire even if they weren’t fully open, which was the whole point of the program. And, as we saw, there were a bunch of states allowing businesses to re-open prematurely.
So why was there the expectation that there would be another month of huge job losses? I don’t get it.
Trump was happy, and he’s out there urging all states to ignore the pandemic as he takes credit for greatest economic “comeback” in world history and acts as though he’s going to coast to re-election, having no responsibility for the wretched pandemic response and all the credit for any recovery.
Meanwhile, we’re still losing about a thousand people to COVID every day and the streets are roiling with social unrest and demands for systemic change in our racist criminal justice system.
I’m not one to valorize the military and I believe strongly in civilian control. But that belief has never been so tested as it is today with a deranged moron in the White House. It’s a terrible position to be in.
But I have to confess that I have often lain awake at night worrying about what would happen if we had a major foreign threat or crisis that put millions at risk. I think we know the answer to that, don’t we?
Trump has made it quite clear that he’s willing to allow hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths because he thinks it will help him get re-elected. His response to the pandemic was magical thinking, then anger at the fact that it was making him look bad and now simply ignoring it and demanding that everyone pretend it’s all over. Indeed, he seems to think he can convince people it really never happened at all:
TRUMP: "We built a tremendous thing, a tremendous power platform. So when it got ill, when we had a problem, we were able to cut it off, stop it, just like this, stop it. Keep everyone inside. Keep em away. Keep em together, away, uninfected. And we saved millions of lives." #wutpic.twitter.com/kLfaG3Oz3z
