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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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The case of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was charged with multiple war crimes before being convicted of a single lesser charge earlier this year, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/a-look-at-the-case-of-navy-seal-edward-gallagher/2019/11/25/48883134-0fce-11ea-924c-b34d09bbc948_story.html?tid=lk_inline_manual_2 (was troubling enough) before things became even more troubling over the past few weeks. The trail of events that led to me being fired as secretary of the Navy is marked with lessons for me and for the nation.
It is highly irregular for a secretary to become deeply involved in most personnel matters. Normally, military justice works best when senior leadership stays far away. A system that prevents command influence is what separates our armed forces from others. Our system of military justice has helped build the world’s most powerful navy; good leaders get promoted, bad ones get moved out, and criminals are punished.
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The rest is history. We must now move on and learn from what has transpired. The public should know that we have extensive screening procedures in place to assess the health and well-being of our forces. But we must keep fine-tuning those procedures to prevent a case such as this one from happening again.
More importantly, Americans need to know that 99.9 percent of our uniformed members always have, always are and always will make the right decision. Our allies need to know that we remain a force for good, and to please bear with us as we move through this moment in time.
SEOUL, South Korea — The clock is ticking.
Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, has said that the United States has until the end of the year to make a new proposal to create a breakthrough in stalled negotiations on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.
The looming deadline — which North Korea has issued repeated warnings about — carries the implicit threat that the country could return to its alarming behavior of the past by ending its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear tests and launching long-range missiles capable of hitting American cities. On Thursday, it launched two short-range rockets, its 13th rocket or missile test since May.
“Today, we sit on top of a live volcano,” said Robert L. Carlin, a former nuclear negotiator at the State Department and longtime North Korea observer, describing a rapidly deteriorating situation on the peninsula during a lecture this month at Yonsei University in Seoul, the South Korean capital. “We don’t have a lot of time to back away.”
In the past month, North Korea has warned that the Trump administration should not even “dream of” discussing denuclearization without first ending its “hostile” policies, including smothering economic sanctions. It swore “shocking punishment” if Washington were to ignore the year-end deadline.
“Art of the Deal” coauthor Tony Schwartz goes deep on the spiritual holes of modern life -- and ways to transcend the current societal pressure to constantly focus on yourself, brand yourself and seek fame, power and fortune at the expense of others, a process that he argues ultimately leaves people feeling inadequate and empty. In this interview on the roof of NBC's iconic 30 Rockefeller building, a special Thanksgiving segment on "The Beat with Ari Melber," Schwartz explores how people try to fill their “inner deficit,” a theme he has often discussed as applying to his prior writing collaborator Donald Trump, and how to pursue a more spiritual focus.
Stop rolling your eyes: Fox News continues to be the most watched cable news channel in America. It is extremely influential, even if – or perhaps, because – its viewers are so much less informed than those who watch other channels or watch no news at all. Fox News misinform as it entertains, so much so that it has garnered its own Wikipedia page of controversies and errors.
You smug, Ivy League-educated, coastal elites can stop laughing. That arrogance is preventing you from using the latest advances in influence and persuasion. Your rejection of academic research makes you no better than the anti-vaxxers and global warming denialists, who also have ignore Science.
You read that right: I just compared America’s liberal elite to the mouth-breathing flat-Earthers. Why? Some 30 percent of the electorate deeply believes things at odds with reality. You so-called Elites continue to snidely wag your fingers as you condescendingly lecture them, having precisely zero influence over their beliefs.
Behavioral Economics has taught us the ways cognitive psychology can help.1 Our task of bringing reality to our family members is made easier by this scholarly work. Start out by recognizing the immense difficulty of changing a person’s mind. Improve your odds by understanding how people, regardless of ideologies, create their own subjective model of the universe.
Follow this advice, and all will have a more pleasant holiday – no matter what news channel they watch.
After winning the cold war, the US sought to export the rule of law to other countries. That flow has gone into reverse. Today it is importing some of the worst corruption from abroad. America’s largest law firms, real estate companies and lobbying outfits thrive on dirty money. In the process they are leaving stains on US democracy that will not easily come out in the wash.
Donald Trump is the public face of a problem that extends into the heart of America’s system. It spans Democrats and Republicans, New York and Washington, the public and private sectors. It is a curse that dare not speak its name in the 2020 election.
It is easy to guess why Joe Biden, the Democratic frontrunner, goes light on it. Mr Biden helped to turn Delaware, his home state, into the most popular domicile for anonymously-owned companies. Without those, The Trump Organization would have garnered far fewer of the investors that bought its condominiums. In one of Mr Trump’s towers in Florida, more than 80 per cent of its units are owned by shell companies. The US has 10 times more shell companies than the next 41 jurisdictions combined, according to the World Bank.
To be sure, unlike Mr Trump’s alleged transgressions, Mr Biden’s are legal. But it is “legal graft” that has seeped into all corners of US politics — and society beyond. Mr Biden has done as much as any US public figure to put such practices on the statute books.
More surprising is Elizabeth Warren’s relative silence on the links between US politics and global corruption. Early in her campaign for the Democratic nomination, she rolled out numerous plans. These included blueprints to tackle foreign lobbying and corporate malfeasance. Since then, the US senator from Massachusetts has been consumed in a battle to justify her $20tn Medicare-for-All programme. That she is still threatening to die on a cross of M4A raises questions about her political skills. Here is what a better Warren campaign would argue — or indeed any White House contender who is serious about reviving US democracy and fighting global authoritarianism.
America is the largest dirty money haven in the world. Its illicit money flows dwarf that of any other territory, unless you treat Britain and its offshore tax havens as one. The US Treasury estimates that $300bn is laundered annually in America. This is probably a fraction of the true number. Worse, the US government has no idea who controls the companies that channel the money because America lacks a corporate central registry.
There is no law in America requiring disclosure of “beneficial ownership”. US banks must report suspicious activity. But law firms, real estate companies, art sellers, incorporated enterprises and non-bank financial institutions are exempt.
Those hoping to clamp down on money laundering are thus heavily outgunned by lobbyists for the status quo. Mrs Warren should point out that the US system offers a red carpet for dirty money. Furthermore, autocrats in Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere could not thrive without the connivance of America’s suite of service providers.
The US voter is exhausted with the “forever wars” that Mr Trump and Mrs Warren agree should be brought to an end. A better US foreign policy would be to close down weapons of mass incorporation in states such as Delaware and Nevada and hold their enablers in New York and Washington to account.
America’s military firepower poses no realistic danger to the likes of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. His visceral reaction to the 2010 Panama papers showed how deeply he fears the financial glare. Shining a light on dirty money flows would pose a greater risk to autocracies than five new US aircraft carriers.
The danger, if polls are a guide, is that next year’s election will be a contest between Mr Trump and Mr Biden. Each will accuse the other of being corrupt. In Mr Trump’s case, the evidence appears overwhelming. But Mr Biden’s family has done enough to monetise his name to make that distinction a test of the voter’s research skills. The risk is that many will see little difference between the two.
There used to be a bright red line between America and the world’s kleptocracies. Now they are symbiotically linked. America needs a candidate who can point out that the kleptocrats are winning. If not Mrs Warren, then who?
Editor’s note: Back by popular demand, we offer updated advice on a tricky part of any family gathering during the holiday season—how to cope with a virulent climate change-denier, or Uncle Pete.
We also ask readers to send in stories of encounters with their own Uncle Petes, as well as any plans for dealing with them this Thanksgiving; the best ones will be published here in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Please mail them to submissions@thebulletin.org and put the phrase “Uncle Pete” in the subject line.
“Birds of a feather flock together,” so I am sure that nearly all of those reading this article accept the main findings of climate science. Yet many people don’t. Instead, they believe a variety of climate myths.
These include claims that the world isn’t warming; or if warming is occurring, it is natural and not human-caused; or volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than we humans do. I know none of you believes these myths, but it seems that almost everybody has an unpleasant relative–call him Uncle Pete–who comes to dinner.
Pete spoils the family mood by making these false claims, which he found on talk radio or the Internet. I’ll tell you in a moment why some of the most frequently repeated claims are just plain wrong. I won’t have time to cover all of them, and I recommend the website skepticalscience.com for the whole story.
It’s a collection of the most commonly heard climate myths, and why they are all dead wrong. Skepticalscience.com is your key to refuting your own Uncle Pete.
