#^d 2019-07-14 #^h Weekend Roundup
Fairly large (7.3) earthquake in Halmahera, Indonesia today. It's in a fairly isolated corner of the nation, an island with about 450,000 people, north of Ceram and midway between the outstretched peninsulas of New Guinea and Sulawesi. Probably not much news on this, unlike last week's similar-sized earthquakes near Ridgecrest, California.
On the other hand, quite a bit of news attention to Hurricane Barry, slowly moving today through north Louisiana and into Arkansas, dumping a lot of rain over already flooded terrain. Two things worth noting here. One is that this is still very early in the season (nominally June 1 to November 30). For a record fifth year in a row, the first named storm (Andrea) appeared before the season officially started. June was quiet, but it's still very rare to have hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico in July. Odder still, where most hurricanes start as low pressure zones over West Africa, then pick up strength crossing the width of the subtropical Atlantic Ocean, this one started in Tennessee, then curved in a clockwise motion through Georgia and Florida before intensifying over the Gulf. I've never seen a storm follow that trajectory, or for that matter one that spent so little time over water developing to hurricane level. Granted, it only briefly achieved level 1 strength, but that doesn't bode well for later storms that traverse much more of the still warming Gulf (currently 86°F). [PS: The Wikipedia page suggests several similar hurricanes, but the only one that comes close is 1940 Louisiana hurricane, which formed in early August off the coast of Georgia, crossed Florida and covered a much longer stretch of the Gulf before making landfall in southwest Louisiana. It is regarded as "the wettest tropical cyclone in state history," with a peak rainfall of 37.5 inches. Barry is forecast to produce up to 25 inches of rain. Actual rain so far appears to be much less -- see Barry downgraded to a depression but still brings risk of flooding from Louisiana to Arkansas. This article also notes that the average date for first hurricane of season is August 10, and that this is the first July hurricane in continental US since Arthur in 2014, and only the 4th in Louisiana history according to records going back to 1851.]
Some scattered links this week:
William Astore: The riptide of American militarism.
Aaron Blake: Donald Trump's origin story suffers another severe blow:
The new report by Kranish also recalls perhaps the biggest revelation undercutting Trump's self-published origin story: how he became wealthy in the first place. While Trump has claimed he got only a $1 million loan to start out with, the Times detailed how the younger Trump "received at least $413 million in today's dollars from his father's real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s." The paper said these tax dodges included "instances of outright fraud."
And when it comes to Trump's education, he has apparently gone to great lengths to obscure the record and seems to have tapped powerful connections in the process, as The Post's Marc Fisher detailed in March. The New York Military Academy, which Trump attended before college, moved its Trump files to a more secure location amid pressure from wealthy Trump allies. Around the same time that was revealed, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who flipped on Trump and pleaded guilty to several crimes, released a 2015 letter he wrote threatening Fordham University with legal action if Trump's records were released.
The combined picture is one of a president who may not have been able to attend Penn or assemble anywhere close to such a fortune without familial connections.
Jonathan Blitzer: Trump is poised to sign a radical agreement to send future asylum seekers to Guatemala.
Frank Bruni: Joe Biden, Closet Republican: "He's the liberal Bob Dole, the looser Mitt Romney, the supposedly safe bet who's owed a shot." I'm not a Biden fan, but this is pretty unfair. For starters, it vastly understates how despicable the vast majority of Republican politicians have become -- ironically, a trait that Biden and Bruni seem to share. Biden has been a reasonably successful politician during the 40-year Reagan-Bush-Trump era, at least in part because he's often been willing to bend with the wind. That bending may have helped lend credence to the Republicans, and that's reason enough to doubt him as a candidate. Still, there's a big gap between Democrats like Biden and supposedly respectable Republicans like Dole and Romney. Bruni's not doing us any favors by papering over that chasm.
Cristina Cabrera: Trump launches racist attack against 'progressive Democrat congresswomen'. Related: Peter Wade: Of course, Fox News delighted in Trump's racist tweet. The question Fox raised on the screen was "DEMOCRATS DIVIDED?" Actually, the reaction there was pretty united: it speaks volumes that the one thing every Democratic politician in America agrees on is that Trump is a racist, and that it's fair game to put it that explicitly.
Jonathan Chait: President Trump says only Trump supporters deserve free speech.
Ryan Devereaux: Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost was a member of secret Facebook group.
Brian Feldman: FTC fines Facebook $5 billion over Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Ryan Gallagher: How US tech giants are helping to build China's surveillance state. Same deal here: Middle East dictators buy spy tech from company linked to IBM and Google.
Masha Gessen:
Tara Golshan:
David A Graham: The best way to get fired by Trump: "The president's new strategy for getting rid of scandal-tainted aides: Quickly accept their resignations, but heap praise on them as they leave."
Ryan Grim: Amy McGrath is challenging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. She's everything wrong with the Democratic Party. Yeah, but if I was misfortunate enough to be represented by McConnell, I'd cheerfully vote for her anyway. Note that she wound up correcting her faux pas on the Kavanaugh question.
Neil Irwin: The Fed's new message: The economy can get a lot better for workers: "A rejection of what had been a consensus view of the relationship between the jobless rate and inflation."
Ed Kilgore:
Jen Kirby:
The UK ambassador to the US has resigned. Here's why it's a big deal. Follow up to Trump tweets "we will no longer deal" with UK ambassador after leaked cables. Richard Wolffe notes: Trump's spat with the UK reveals the bottomless depths of his insecurities.
Prosecutors are investigating whether GOP donor Elliott Broidy used Trump ties to profit.
Michael Klare: It's always the oil: The missing three-letter word in the Iran crisis.
Ezra Klein: What Donald Trump got right, and Justin Amash got wrong, about conservatives: "Conservatism is an identity more than an ideology, and Trump knows it."
Carolyn Kormann: The case for declaring a national climate emergency.
While Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez's calls for a climate-emergency declaration are not solving any problems, they are providing the language that needs to dominate the national conversation. And that matters. The United Nations recently warned that climate disasters are happening at the rate of one per week. This past June was the hottest on record. At the end of the month, a freak storm buried Guadalajara, Mexico, in hail, and on Thursday morning news outlets reported that freak hailstorms in Greece killed seven people. A month's worth of rain fell on Washington, D.C., in an hour on Monday (while Trump completely ignored the climate crisis in his speech on the environment), then more flash floods drowned New Orleans, which is now preparing for a tropical storm that could dump another twenty inches of rain and test the city's levees. The warming that happens over the next few decades could kill all of the world's coral reefs, lead to even more severe storms and wildfires, and set off the sorts of tipping points that most concern scientists -- specifically, the irreversible dissolution of the Greenland ice sheet, where, in June, a heatwave set off melting across half of its surface.
Josh Kovensky: Rudy Giuliani, Joe Lieberman team up for Albania MEK conference.
Eric Levitz: Why the GOP might learn to love putting price controls on drugs.
German Lopez: How to dramatically reduce gun violence in American cities: Based on a new book by Thomas Abt: Bleeding Out.
Robert Mackey:
Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden condemn Israeli Occupation, as young American Jews urge Democrats to press Isarel. Seems like this is significant, but note that Buttigieg went on to cite Ariel Sharon as saying the occupation must end.
Give Elizabeth Warren a break -- even Ariel Sharon said the Israeli Occupation had to end.
Trump takes the bait, lashing out at UK Ambassador whose private notes were leaked.
Dylan Matthews: AOC's policy adviser makes the case for abolishing billionaires: Interview with Dan Riffle.
Joan McCarter: How Trump swallowed the GOP whole and exposed Paul Ryan's craven moral failings. Refers to a forthcoming book by Tim Alberta: American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump. For more, see:
Josh Dawsey: New book details how Republican leaders learned to stop worrying and love Trump.
John Nichols: The Republicans who made Trump possible cannot remove the badge of shame.
Jennifer Szalai: 'American Carnage' shows how war between Republicans led to their peace with Trump. Ryan looms large in the book, so Trump's already singled him out for opprobrium.
Christian Vasquez: Trump: Republicans like Paul Ryan are 'weak, ineffective & stupid.'
Jonathan Chait: Trump: Paul Ryan was bribed to call me stupid.
Rani Molla: Conservatives pretending to be suppressed by social media dominated social media.
Suzanne Moore: Of course Boris Johnson wants a royal yacht. He's the king of fake-it-till-you-make-it.
Dina Nayeri: Why they fear Ilhan Omar: "Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson don't think she's dangerous. They hate that she's full of potential."
Anna North: Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta has no good answer for cushy Jeffrey Epstein plea deal. Acosta wound up resigning, after Trump swore, "I'm with him". For more, see:
Jane Coaston/Anna North: Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who is friends with Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, explained.
Annie Karni/Maggie Haberman: Jeffrey Epstein was a 'terrific guy,' Donald Trump once said. Now he's 'not a fan.'
Michelle Goldberg: Acosta resigned. The Caligula administration lives on.
Amanda Petrusich: Going home with Wendell Berry: Interview. Sample quote I should save and maybe use some time: "Every generation is a bridge between something that's past, and something that's coming."
Charles P Pierce: Nancy Pelosi's leadership now constitutes a constant dereliction of duty. Pierce is the kind of pundit I'd expect to go to the mat defending Party leadership like Pelosi, so I'm impressed first of all that he snapped, second that he snapped this direction. What this shows is that AOC and her "gang of four" have struck a chord that extends even to middling Democrats. Maybe that's because they're scoring points while Pelosi, Schumer, Hoyer, et al. look like mere bystanders. Another non-radical suddenly soured on Pelosi: Andrew Sullivan: Hey, Nancy Pelosi: Please stop coddling Donald Trump.
Gareth Porter: Lies about Iran killing US troops in Iraq are a ploy to justify war.
Andrew Prokop: Trump's census citizenship question fiasco, explained. Related: Michael Wines: The long history of the US government asking Americans whether they are citizens.
Gabriela Resto-Montero:
David Roberts: Coal left Appalachia devastated. Now it's doing the same to Wyoming.
Aaron Rupar:
Matt Shuham: House report shines light on multiple infants under one separated from parents.
Tierney Sneed: How Trump doubled down on the crazy claim he's immune from oversight.
Paul Sonne/Karoun Demirjian/Missy Ryan: Sexual assault allegations complicate confirmation of Trump's nominee for military's No. 2 officer: Air Force Gen. John E Hyten, commander of US Strategic Command, nominated to be vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Matt Taibbi: Ross Perot had the last laugh. The business mogul and third-party presidential candidates (1992/1996) died last week, at 89.
Alex Thompson: Elizabeth Warren shuns conventional wisdom for a new kind of campaign: Key sentence: "She's largely rejecting DC's consultant class."
Marc Tracy: As the world heats up, the climate for news is changing, too.
Alex Ward:
"Trump is quite easy to buy off": how Trump is putting American foreign policy up for sale: "Want to understand Trump's foreign policy? Just follow the money."
Biden releases video blasting "the Trump Doctrine" of foreign policy. Defines "five core elements of what Biden calls 'The Trump Doctrine'":
Lots of problems here, starting with the assertion that what Trump's doing is coherent and consistent enough to imply a "doctrine" (especially when no such thing has been stated). He's pretty selective about which dictators he "embraces," favoring those who align with his worldview, especially those who cater to his personal finances. And while he has no personal interest in democracy, international law, and/or concern for human rights, he's willing to slander his enemies (and only his enemies) for their shortcomings there. Similarly, his treatment of international treaties and trade agreements is unprincipled, riding almost exclusively on his personal (and partisan) economic interest. He's a committed bully, and feels that by virtue of its wealth and power America is entitled to threaten and cajole the little countries around, but he has yet to act as recklessly as his rhetoric suggests. Of course, he's a huge embarrassment. But aside from being somewhat less of an embarrassment, one wonders what Biden would do differently. US foreign policy has been remarkably consistent across parties, both in the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, as if presidents don't actually have many real options. In his long career, Biden has very dependably gone along with whatever the prevailing "wisdom" dictated, so there's little reason to think he won't continue to serve the same interests US foreign policy has long followed.
The US has a risky new plan to protect oil tankers from Iranian attacks.
New leak claims Trump scrapped Iran nuclear deal 'to spite Obama'.