If you were one of the people who started thinking about the grim potential for nuclear winter about this time a year ago thanks to the threats being tossed about by the supreme leader of North Korea and the guy who would like to be supreme leader of the United States, please be aware that all is now well. Pr*sident Trump himself reassured us when he arrived back in the States Wednesday morning after his whirlwindy romance with Kim Jong-un: “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea,” he wrote. We can “sleep well.”
For all the blather about his deal-making skills, the agreement he and Kim signed this week was not as strong as a much-criticized agreement signed by President George W. Bush and Kim’s father in 2005. That one included international inspections of a dismantling of the North Korean nuclear infrastructure. The latest agreement does not.
But was there really a reason not to sleep well previously?
I’ve long been of the opinion that Kim, despite the bluster, never intended to use his nukes for anything other than deterrence against an attack. Just what every other nuclear nation from Pakistan to Great Britain to the U.S. of A. says about their own atomic arsenals. The insomnia comes not from worry about exceedingly unlikely eventuality of an unprovoked attack but from the knowledge that accidents happen, and miscommunication can lead to confrontations that unintentionally expand past the point of no return.
Verifiable, enforceable denuclearization agreements are a good idea for every nation, and the sooner the better. Thus, if the follow-up negotiations to the summit leads to such an agreement on the Korean peninsula, if the summit was not a mirage and really did break new ground—and there’s no going back to the status quo ante—that would be no bad thing. Proof, as every successful politician and salesperson knows, that theatricality can be useful. But, at this point, the Korean Kabuki in Singapore measures up as Trump’s most farcical performance yet.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—There’s no defending Trump’s North Korea performance:
Trump did not simply overlook the astonishing brutality of North Korea’s regime. He heaped praise on Kim as someone “very open,” “very honorable,” “very smart,” “very worthy” and “very talented” who “wants to do the right thing.”
Most appallingly, Trump, fresh off nasty rebukes of the leader of friendly and democratic Canada, told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos of Kim: “His country does love him. His people, you see the fervor.” Yes, fear of a gulag can produce a lot of “fervor.”
Sorry, Trump defenders, but this is obscene.
The second canard is that those who once expressed alarm over Trump’s loose talk about nuclear war have no right to critique his diplomacy. Never mind that he made real concessions to North Korea — beginning with the legitimacy that the Singapore extravaganza conferred on Kim and Trump’s decision to call off joint military exercises with South Korea — without winning anything concrete in return. [...]
Christine Emba at The Washington Post writes—The problem with Robert De Niro’s F-bomb wasn’t the vulgarity:
“F--- Trump.” Well, sure, if you must. Then what? It’s not clear that De Niro spurred the Tony Awards crowd (which, considering the estimated wealth and influence of its near-6,000 in-person attendees, might well be in a position to make some sort of change) to do anything but stand and cheer, and then proceed to the after-party.
Some would say the vulgarity, cruelty and systematic harm created by the Trump administration demand a cutting response in turn. For instance, writer Rebecca Traister argued in New York magazine that “Bee is acting on behalf of less powerful people (the immigrants whose children, including babies, are being taken away from them) and speaking out against the grotesquely powerful and abusive (the administration that is creating and enforcing this barbaric policy).” She concluded, “Words matter, and sometimes only the strongest ones will do the job.”
But there are words, and then there is the actual “job” — that of improving the administration, seeking to change it or attending directly to the needs of those affected by its policies. The one can influence the other. Language changes how we think. When we use increasingly divisive and polarized language in the public square, we change how we are able to interact, discuss and exist together. The F-bombs and c-words are a distraction from the actual work that could be done and cut off possibilities for cooperation in the future. And, as professional entertainers should have figured out by now, they’re boring.
Jill Abramson at The Guardian writes—Now we know the outrageous scale of the Trumps’ White House dividend:
I’m feeling nostalgic for Hillary’s Goldman Sachs speaking fees. Remember when we got our ethical knickers in a twist over Clinton’s $225,000 (£170,000) Wall Street speeches? Those worries seem positively quaint when compared with what’s happening now. At least Bill and Hillary put off their offensive buckraking until after they had left public office. The Trump family shows no such restraint. Why wait? Donald, Ivanka and Jared are getting theirs while serving in the White House. And, as with much scandalous behaviour in Washington these days, they insist their behaviour is perfectly acceptable.
All three are still connected to the highly profitable companies they operated in New York before Trump’s election in 2016. Since their arrival in Washington, the president and Javanka have been reaping profits from the various family businesses in tandem with their public service, while cynically pretending they have suspended their wheeling and dealing. But the president still monitors who stays at the Trump International Hotel down the street from the White House; Ivanka is still winning trademarks for her clothing line in the notoriously difficult to penetrate Chinese market; and Jared Kushner took in more money from his family real estate empire in 2017, the first year of the Trump administration, than he did the previous year.
This week, Kushner’s new financial disclosure records were released, showing the considerable rise in his assets. Their value ranged between $179m and $735m, up from a range of $137m to $609m the previous year. (White House officials are required to report their assets in broad ranges). For Jared, it was a very good year, indeed.
David Dayen at The New Republic writes—Give Everyone Government Bank Accounts:
...a new report co-authored by two Treasury Department veterans, “Central Banking for All: A Public Option for Bank Accounts,” argues that Americans should have an account at the Federal Reserve, just as banks do. They believe this would solve a vast array of problems at once, ensuring that everyone is included in the financial system, driving down retail costs for businesses and consumers, and even making recessions less likely.
Morgan Ricks and Lev Menand, who worked in the Obama administration, and John Crawford, a law professor at UC-Hastings, call their idea FedAccount. These personal accounts would operate like the accounts that commercial banks already have with the Fed—with all the attendant privileges. Whereas the average checking account draws 0.05 percent, federal reserve accounts earn interest equivalent to the federal funds rate—currently 1.75 percent. Americans wait up to two days for a check to clear, but thanks to the Fed, banks can instantly transfer money to each other. And while personal bank accounts are only guaranteed through the FDIC up to $250,000, Fed accounts can never default, no matter how large the account balance, because it’s the central bank that prints America’s money.
“The time has come to end this special privilege of banks,” the authors write.
Arwa Mawdawi at The Guardian writes—Donald Trump Jr is hawking a book. The Art of the Plea Deal, anyone?
Donald Trump Jr, the one who looks like a semi-sentient sneer, wants to make literature great again. The president’s eldest child has been spotted shopping a book proposal to publishers. However, nobody seems interested in Donald Jr’s tome. Fox Business reported recently that his book has received “a chilly reception” and been declined by at least two publishing houses. If any other outlet had published this report, surely Trump would have taken to Twitter to cry FAKE NEWS and WITCH HUNT. So far, however, the younger Donald has been uncharacteristically quiet about his less than glowing write-up by the family’s favourite media network.
Despite his silence on the matter, it seems unlikely that the president’s firstborn is taking his alleged rejections well. After all, the man hails from a famously literary family. His father has “written” almost 20 books. [...]
Inquiring minds may be wondering what Trump Jr’s book proposal contains. Despite my best efforts at committing journalistic skullduggery, I could not find a way to hack Donald Jr’s brain; the walls were just too thick. So, I have had to resort to the educated guess (complemented with “truthful hyperbole”, a term coined by Trump Sr in The Art of the Deal) in order to figure out the contents of his book.
Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—On North Korea, Trump’s Lies Come Back to Haunt Him:
This is from an article at Reuters, not The Onion:
Iran warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday against trusting U.S. President Donald Trump, saying he could cancel their denuclearization agreement within hours.
Tehran cited its own experience in offering the advice to Kim a month after Washington withdrew from a similar deal with Iran.
Apparently it’s true, Iran warned North Korea about entering into an agreement with Trump. Of course, Iran has an agenda in doing so, but the Iranians also have a point. And the same thing could be said in reverse, North Korea has a long history of making commitments that they don’t follow through on. That is precisely why so many people are taking these latest overtures with a grain of salt.
Now that the so-called “historic meeting” between Trump and Kim has taken place, confusion abounds about what was discussed and what the two sides agreed to. First came the questions of whether or not Trump had agreed to halt military exercises with South Korea, something that wasn’t publicly mentioned when he was with Kim and came as a surprise to both our allies in South Korea and military professionals here at home. This morning the president affirmed that it was part of the agreement, although it didn’t show up in the document they signed.
As usual each week, New York magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich and contributor Alex Carp exchange views on various subjects via a Q&A, this one headlined Trump’s Summit Spectacle Was Just a Momentary Distraction From His Bigger Problems:
Donald Trump says he developed a “special bond” with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and declared the summit a success despite few tangible results. Did Trump get what he wanted?
Yes. But the shelf life of this “win” is likely to expire in about a week. Let’s be precise here about what Trump wanted. His goal was not to enhance American security by achieving complete and verifiable denuclearization of North Korea — a cause that his Potemkin summit arguably set back rather than advanced. The goal instead was entirely personal. He thought that by staging a big television show hyped by cliff-hanger developments along the way he would achieve a miracle of prime-time counterprogramming: The summit in Singapore would drown out the rising drama of the Mueller probe in Washington. And he was correct — it did. For the moment.
Gareth Porter at TruthDig writes—How Corporate Media Got the Trump-Kim Summit All Wrong:
For weeks, the corporate media have been saying that the Trump-Kim summit could have only two possible results: Either Trump will walk away angrily or Kim Jong Un will trick him into a deal in which he extracts concessions from Trump but never commits to complete denuclearization.
The idea that North Korea could not possibly agree to give up its nuclear weapons or its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) has become an article of faith among the journalists covering the issue for big media. Two themes that have appeared again and again in their coverage are that the wily North Koreans are “playing” Trump and that previous administrations had also been taken by North Korea after signing agreements in good faith.
But the media have gotten it all wrong. They have assumed that North Korea cannot live without nuclear weapons—without making any effort to understand North Korea’s strategy in regard to nuclear weapons. They have invariably quoted “experts” who haven’t followed North Korean thinking closely but who express the requisite hostility toward the summit and negotiating an agreement with the Kim regime.
One of the few Americans who can speak with authority on North Korea’s calculus regarding nuclear weapons is Joel S. Wit, who was senior adviser to the U.S. negotiator with North Korea, Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci, from 1993 to 1995, and who from 1995 to 1999 was coordinator for the 1994 “Agreed Framework” with North Korea. More importantly, Wit also participated in a series of informal meetings with North Korean officials in 2013 about North Korea’s thinking on its nuclear weapons.
Tim Shorrock at The Nation writes—Trump Meets Kim, Averting Threat of Nuclear War—and US Pundits Are Furious:
It was an electrifying sight that captured the imagination of millions of people living on the crisis-weary Korean Peninsula but sent many Americans spinning into paroxysms of anger and cynicism, depending on their politics and knowledge of the rocky history of US relations with North and South Korea.
On Tuesday, President Trump and Kim Jong-un met and shook hands on Singapore’s resort island of Sentosa, curbing decades of deep and bitter hostility between the two countries and possibly opening a new chapter for the United States in East Asia. Afterward, Trump even boasted that he had created a “special bond” with the North Korean dictator.
The unprecedented meeting was the climax of months of intensive negotiations that began in earnest in March, when Kim, through the mediation of South Korean President Moon Jae-in, unexpectedly invited Trump to meet and settle their vast differences. As their initial encounter began, Trump declared that times had changed—irrevocably.
Less than a year ago, Kim was busy building a mighty nuclear and missile deterrent and threatening to use it if North Korea’s sovereignty was compromised, while Trump was coldly informing the world that he was ready to unleash “fire and fury” to “totally destroy North Korea” if its threats continued. But by June 12, all that was forgotten.
John Nichols at The Nation writes—Now We Know Why Scott Walker Was So Afraid of Special Elections:
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker did everything he could to prevent an election to fill the vacant State Senate seat representing northeast Wisconsin’s historically Republican District 1. Now we know why.
In a district that President Trump took in 2016 by a 56-38 margin in 2016, and that Walker took in 2014 by a 61-38 margin, Democrat Caleb Frostman won Tuesday’s special election that the governor tried to block. Frostman’s victory continued a national trend of Democrats “flipping” Republican seats. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee celebrated the win as “the 44th legislative district to flip from red to blue since the 2016 election.”
The Wisconsin flip was particularly sweet for Democrats, as it represented a huge setback for Walker and his Republican allies in a State Senate that has rubber-stamped the governor’s assaults on unions, voting rights, the environment, and public education. Carolyn Fiddler, who tracks legislative races for Daily Kos, described the result as “Walker’s worst nightmare,” and that’s a fair assessment.
Sarah Vowel at The New York Times writes—Shouting ‘Fire!’ in the Burning West:
Turns out, controlling a Western wildfire when winds exceed an Interstate highway’s speed limit and it hasn’t rained for weeks is not the same as extinguishing a blazing apartment building on the Upper East Side. Humans can’t always put out a wildfire, no matter how loudly the senators from Wyoming scream at them to please try harder. Or, fun fact, certain lodgepole pine cones can release their seeds only when heated to temperatures starting at 113 degrees, so for a lodgepole pine forest to live it has to occasionally die. Which is to say, the most valuable, hopeful lesson for we nonscientists in 1988 was that wildfire is inevitable, even healthy.
That said, what’s good for lodgepole pines is not necessarily good for asthmatic first graders living downwind from what Wyatt Earp never called a “wildland-urban interface.” According to a persuasive paper published by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year, Tania Schoennagel of the University of Colorado and her co-authors warn, “Although many plants, animals and ecosystem services benefit from fire, it is unknown how ecosystems will respond to increased burning and warming.”
Noting the uptick in wildfires over the last three hotter, dryer decades, she posits that by the middle of this century, “82 million people in the Western United States are likely to experience more and longer ‘smokewaves,’ defined as consecutive days of high, unhealthy particulate levels from wildfires.”
In order to deal with the upsurge in ecological, economic, educational, legal and health issues associated with more and bigger wildfires in the West, Dr. Schoennagel proclaims, “We need to develop a new fire culture.”