Sam Fossum at The New Republic writes—Trump hasn’t “modernized” the nuclear arsenal. He has made it less accountable:
In a series of tweets earlier this morning, the president congratulated himself for updating America’s nuclear weapons system:
The sheer number of lies packed into these two tweets is almost impressive. Trump’s first order as president was, in fact, about health care, not nuclear weapons. Furthermore it was Barack Obama—not Trump—who instituted a huge overhaul of the nation’s nuclear weapons. And then there’s the fact that renovating America’s nuclear stockpile is a process far from complete. [...]
Previously, the government released to the public a compilation of broad results, like a “pass-fail” grade, regarding the safety and security of the military’s nuclear sites. In making those results off-limits, the Defense Department has cited national security concerns, but the government could be hiding “negligence or misconduct in handling nuclear weapons,” according to an expert interviewed by the AP. Add to this Trump’s free-wheeling approach toward the nuclear arsenal, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Suzanne Moore at The Guardian writes—Trump's 'fire and fury' has revived my nuclear nightmares:
I can’t remember exactly when I stopped dreaming of nuclear annihilation. It must have been the 90s, when my fear of nuclear war was subsumed by other fears, maybe even some optimism. This fear was huge during the 80s. When the great storm of 1987 hit, I remember all the trees crashing and electricity going off and thinking: “Well I suppose this is it. Something to do with Iran,” and going back to sleep. Slow environmental collapse took over from the imagining of a nuclear winter. Now I fear terror and robots more. Both on the same day sometimes.
It is remarkably easy, though, to resuscitate that old fear because it was all-engulfing at the time. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction was its highest goal. Those were the days, my friend. We thought we would all end.
And here we are back again with Trump, who is forever warning us that the world is hell but threatening to make it more so. Does he really have the little plastic card known as “the biscuit” that has to be snapped in two to reveal the nuclear codes? Strange times indeed when half the world is wishing it could be taken away from him. Presumably in a military coup.
“Fire and fury” is an attempt at biblical language to describe mass murder. This is being said while people remember Nagasaki and recount the details of the aftermath. A place, we are told, where the living envied the dead, where skin hung off children like cloth, where victims lay in darkness, their wounds full of maggots.
Jonathan Freedlund at The Guardian writes—Trump has taken us to the brink of nuclear war. Can he be stopped?
This was the moment many Americans, along with the rest of the world, feared. This – precisely this – was what alarmed us most about the prospect of Donald Trump becoming president of the United States. Not that he would hire useless people or that he would tweet all day or use high office to enrich himself and his family or that he’d be cruel, bigoted and divisive – though those were all concerns. No, the chief anxiety provoked by the notion of Trump in the White House was this: that he was sufficiently reckless, impulsive and stupid to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war.
Of course, cooler heads might soon prevail.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Once again, Trump has done all he can to divide us:
[N]obody doubts our country’s military power. It’s wisdom the world is looking for.
In the meantime, our nation’s diplomats scramble to control the damage. Thus did Secretary of State Rex Tillerson explain to reporters on Wednesday: “What the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong Un would understand, because he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language.”
But do we really want a U.S. president stooping to Kim’s rhetorical level?
Perhaps, following Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” of foreign relations, Trump hopes to use the menace of irrational action to scare Kim into backing down and to scare China into pushing him to do so. But it’s a high-risk game.
And at a moment when Americans would prefer to stand together and support Trump in the face of this grave peril, the president has, once again, done all he could to divide us — and to remind his critics why they find his approach so appalling.
The Editorial Board of The New York Times writes—Fears of Missiles, and Words:
On some emotional level, one might be able to see why Donald Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangered the United States. The North’s nuclear program is a growing menace, its warmongering tirades are unquestionably unnerving, and peaceful solutions to the threat it poses have been maddeningly elusive over many years and many American administrations.
But Mr. Trump is president of the United States, and if prudent, disciplined leadership was ever required, it is now. Rhetorically stomping his feet, as he did on Tuesday, is not just irresponsible; it is dangerous. He is no longer a businessman trying to browbeat someone into a deal. He commands the most powerful nuclear and conventional arsenal in the world, and any miscalculation could be catastrophic. [...]
Since Truman, presidents have largely avoided the kind of militaristic threats issued by Mr. Trump because they feared such language could escalate a crisis. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings chastened the world about the consequences of nuclear war to such an extent that firing another nuclear weapon has become, for most people, unthinkable. The Trump administration is now reviewing American nuclear policy and it’s anyone’s guess whether it will change.
John Dean, former White House counsel under Richard Nixon, at TruthDig writes—Mr. Trump, Have You Heard About Democratic Values?
I have been talking with political professionals who, like me, are concerned about the potential threat the Trump presidency poses to our country. These discussions have been with people of all political persuasions—right, center and left. And there has been a recurring theme, for no one can avoid noticing President Trump’s persistent distorting, destroying or abandoning democratic norms and values, the unwritten traditions and expectations that provide guardrails for our system. Remove these protections and democracy is in peril.
American presidents had never persistently lied about everything, from the crowd size at their inauguration to the reason they fired the director of the FBI; they had never hired in the highest staff post at the White House, as national security adviser, a committed liar with known ties with foreign governments; they had never attacked the national security intelligence community because it uniformly concluded Russia helped elect them by hacking their opponent and leaking private information; presidents had never held press conferences without being prepared to answer conspicuous and predictable questions; they had never labeled leading American news organizations “enemies of the people” and accused them of reporting “fake news” whenever that news did not flatter; they had not used their high office for personal financial gain, ignored obvious financial conflicts of interest or assigned to their immediate family complex foreign and domestic problems for which those relatives had absolutely no background, experience or qualifications to address; they had not televised their first Cabinet meeting so their appointees could heap public praise on them; no Oval Office occupant had falsely claimed the leader of the Boy Scouts had glowingly approved of a speech when, in fact, that leader instead felt it necessary to apologize for the president’s embarrassing remarks; not even Richard Nixon during or after the Watergate investigation called that inquiry a “witch hunt,” as Trump has done with the special counsel’s investigation of his presidential campaign’s relationship to the Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential race; no president had so blatantly blamed others for his own mistakes and failings. And this is only a sampling of norms obliterated by Trump.
Keith A. Spencer at Salon writes—The ugly, pseudoscientific history behind that sexist Google manifesto:
If you haven’t read the full text of this leaked memo that now-fired Google software engineer James Damore sent around to his co-workers, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version: A pervasive “left” bias at Google has “created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence,” Damore claims. He states his belief that the reason that the company doesn’t have “50% representation of women in tech and leadership” may be because of “biological differences.” [...]
Way back in 1984, three scientists — biologist and zoologist R.C. Lewontin, biologist Steven Rose, and psychologist Leon J. Kamin — published a book called “Not In Our Genes” that debunked the myth that biological sex determined interests and behavior, a belief sometimes called “biological determinism.” There is a long history of screeds akin to Damore’s being penned and taken seriously; in fact, so common are these types of manifesti, that Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin described their common rhetorical through-line:
The biological determinist argument follows a by now familiar structure: It begins with the citation of “evidence,” the “facts” of differences between men and women … These “facts,” which are taken as unquestioned, are seen as depending on prior psychological tendencies which in turn are accounted for by underlying biological differences between males and females at the level of brain structure or hormones. Biological determinism then shows that male-female differences in behavior among humans are paralleled by those found in nonhuman societies — among primates or rodents or birds . . . giving them an apparent universality that cannot be gainsaid by merely wishing things were different or fairer. . . And finally, the determinist argument endeavors to weld all currently observed differences together on the basis of the now familiar and Panglossian sociobiological arguments: that sexual divisions have emerged adaptively by natural selection, as a result of the different biological roles in reproduction of the two sexes . . . the inequalities are not merely inevitable but functional too.
Sound familiar? Damore’s arguments are nothing new. And because they follow such a well-trod pattern, these three biologists were debunking his argument — in 1984. Let’s go through and pick apart Damore’s fallacies, shall we?
Josephine Livingstone at The New Republic writes—Why the Conservative Response to the Google Memo Is Hypocritical:
Arguments that cite innate biological differences between the minds of men and women are incorrect, and they’re not an acceptable part of a public discourse about gender. Misogynists feed each other this stuff online because it makes them feel like righteous victims of feminism instead of privileged people who have to make concessions if we are to make progress towards equality. Taking Damore’s claims seriously would have done nothing more than make Brown look stupid. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s note to employees succinctly put it, “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”
Whether or not Damore’s views should have led to his firing is a different matter. He violated Google’s code of conduct pretty explicitly. But then again, people believe all kinds of poisonously crazy stuff, like vaccines causing autism, without being fired.
The conversation around Damore’s firing elegantly articulates a paradox around labor protections in America, and the way that our political conversation is not up to the task of addressing it. Conservatives who support Damore’s beliefs are outraged by his dismissal. However, the natural recourse for allegedly unfair dismissals would be to contact a union or draw upon another form of labor protection, and to insist that practices like at-will employment contracts, which allow employers to dismiss a worker for any reason, come to an end. It is very tempting for those of us on the left to say to Damore’s lamenting allies: Oh, now you want a union?
It is very tempting for those of us on the left to say to Damore’s lamenting allies: Oh, now you want a union?
American conservatives have worked tirelessly to provide companies like Google with the freedom to do whatever they like to their workers. In 28 American states, a worker can be fired for being gay or transgender. The notion that management’s political whims can allow them to discriminate against workers freely is at the core of the contemporary American conservative ideology.
Marie Hicks at The Washington Post writes—Memo to the Google memo writer: Women were foundational to the field of computing:
British women played instrumental roles in early computer programming, operation and systems analysis. During World War II, it was primarily women who assembled, trouble-shot and ran the British Colossus computers, which decrypted coded messages intercepted from the German army. Using these computers, British women helped turn the tide of World War II at a time when the best electronic computers in the United States were still essentially in the testing phase.
After the war, Britain led or matched U.S. advancements in computing, deploying the first dedicated business computer (known as the LEO) and building up an industry that seemed poised to dominate much of the rest of the world. Major computer companies employed women and sent them to customer sites across the globe to train managers and their staffs how to program and use the expensive machines. These were the very first computer experts: the technically minded people who trained others how make opaque and intimidating machines usable. [...]
By the late 1950s, things began to change. Computers, now recognized as tools for wielding power, seemed too important to leave to women, and as a result, women were tasked with training men to replace them. Inexperienced men with no technical skills quickly became managers and computer “professionals” — paid at higher levels than the women who had done the same jobs.
In fact, female programmers in the British government were explicitly barred from taking the entrance exams to ascend to these higher posts, despite meeting all the qualifications.
David Dayen at The New Republic writes—The Left’s Misguided Debate Over Kamala Harris:
Back in January, after Donald Trump had nominated Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary, I uncovered a leaked document from the California attorney general’s office that showed OneWest Bank repeatedly broke foreclosure laws under Mnuchin’s six-year reign as CEO and then chairman. Prosecutors in the state’s Justice Department wanted to file a civil enforcement action against the company for “widespread misconduct,” but the attorney general at the time, Kamala Harris, overrode the recommendation and declined to prosecute. She never gave a reason.
Months later, this revelation has been granted new life, wielded as a political weapon by those who oppose Harris’s possible presidential run—most prominently in Ryan Cooper’s column in The Week about why “leftists don’t trust Kamala Harris.” My report either confirms impressions of Harris as an ambitious sellout, or is breezily dismissed by her defenders as “propaganda” or even subtle racism. Though my story was published before Harris was seated as a senator, and was mostly about how OneWest Bank skirted the law in a rush to kick people out of their homes, it has become a flashpoint in the civil war over the Democrats’ future.
Missing in all of this are the victims of OneWest’s policies. [...]
Let’s recognize that no public official in this country, from Barack Obama on down, covered themselves in glory during the foreclosure crisis; to say that Harris failed to prosecute bankers is simply to say that she was a public official with authority over financial services fraud in the Obama era. [...]
Just look at the actual charge the Consumer Law Section wanted Harris to file in the OneWest case: a civil enforcement action. Though he was OneWest’s chairman, Mnuchin was never at risk of indictment or conviction. At best, California would have extracted a decent-sized fine from the company—paid for by shareholders—and guarantees meant to deter further law-breaking; it’s possible that Mnuchin, his reputation sullied, would not have ended up in charge of federal banking policy. This watered-down version of public accountability was seen as the best possible outcome, and Harris didn’t even go for that.
This doesn’t make her particularly special. Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer took hiatuses from their careers as corporate lawyers to join Obama’s Justice Department and ensure light punishment for financial abuses. Tom Miller, the attorney general of Iowa, ran the 50-state investigation of foreclosure fraud, which investigated nothing and moved directly to a weak settlement that delivered 90 percent less relief for homeowners than promised. [...]
James Carden at The Nation writes—Have Neocons Hijacked Trump’s Foreign Policy?
The vice president’s remarks in Tallinn and Tbilisi are only the latest indications that Trump has become captive to the GOP’s neoconservative foreign-policy wing. They are indicative of which of the administration’s two foreign-policy camps is now ascendant. [...]
With the ascendance of retired Marine general and former Homeland Security chief John Kelly to the position of White House chief of staff, the Mattis/McMaster faction has been strengthened: The neocons now have a decisive upper hand over the nationalists.
Pence’s ersatz Iron Curtain speech, coupled with the solidification of McMaster’s control over the national-security apparatus, might spell the beginning of the end for Trump’s opposition to the regnant neocon foreign-policy orthodoxy, namely: endless, counterproductive, worldwide American intervention.
Mark Rahner at Yes! Magazine writes—Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Sequel” Could Have Gone Further:
A decade after the former vice president’s Oscar-winning documentary comes his follow-up, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. I went to a screening in Seattle where Gore stopped on his tour to promote it, and he might think I’m an asshole, too. Because as effectively sobering, terrifying, and infuriating as the documentary is, it doesn’t go far enough. [...]
I was in a theater full of Seattle liberals who didn’t need to be convinced of any of this.
The people who really need to see the movie—in red states or even red regions on the other side of my state—won’t go near it. They wouldn’t listen to Gore if their houses were on fire and he was standing there with a hose. And they’re no more likely to listen to any graduate of his climate leadership groups than they are to read David Wallace-Wells’ July 9 gut punch of a New York magazine article, “The Uninhabitable Earth.”
The Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times asserts that In leaking a federal climate change report, scientists send a message to Trump: Global warming is real:
In leaking the report (obtained by The New York Times), scientists within the government ensured that their work would reach the public, serving as a check on the administration in case it did indeed try to trump science with politics. In that sense, the leaked report helps isolate the president, his fellow doubters and his allies, such as Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose combined regulatory moves would reduce curbs on emissions and set the stage for accelerated drilling and mining on federal lands. Additionally, environmental groups and states are mounting legal challenges to regulatory rollbacks that, we hope, will at the least slow these bad policies, if not stymie them altogether.
One area where the leaked report, part of the congressionally required quadrennial National Climate Assessment, breaks new ground is in so-called attribution science. In the past, scientists have been reticent to tie specific severe weather events to overall climate change. But the report says scientists are now able to draw some direct connections with varying degrees of certainty between climate change and such events as heat waves in Europe in 2003 and Australia in 2013. It also links human-propelled climate change with a decrease in the number of cool nights across the United States since the 1960s and an increase in the number of warm days since the 1980s.
Aziz Huq at The New York Times writes—When Government Defames:
Imagine that a senior government official takes to Twitter, makes a call to a national news outlet or goes on national television to disparage you. Imagine that he tells lies about you to a national audience, lies harmful to your professional or personal future. What could you do to remedy the situation?
You might seek a retraction. Perhaps you would go to colleagues and friends to privately plead your side of the case. Or if you were lucky enough to have a national platform of your own, maybe you would try to correct the defamatory statement in public.
But one thing you couldn’t do is sue. No judicial remedy exists when a federal official defames someone. This gap in the law isn’t a result of a conscious decision by Congress or federal judges to protect the government’s ability to defame you. It was created inadvertently. In an age when the political lie is being weaponized to increasing effect, it’s an oversight Congress should redress.