So unidentified unidentifiable heavily armed soldiers are in the streets in Washington DC, the seat of the US government. Nothing to worry about there, for sure.

On Trump’s order, about 4,500 national guard troops from around the country were flown to Washington early this week, and a wide assortment of special units from the Bureau of Prisons, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI and the US Marshal’s Service. 

In total, 7,600 soldiers and officers were deployed in Washington, including 1,700 active duty troops in reserve in bases around the capital, according to Bloomberg News.

7,600. That’s rather a lot.

Several of those units – including military police, United States park police and Secret Service – were involved in

Fascist president issues official fascist threats via his official presidential fascist Twitter.

…over the last number of nights. If she doesn’t treat these men and women well, then we’ll bring in a different group of men and women!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2020

… Read the rest

Kelly says Trump is telling whoppers about Mattis.

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly said Thursday that President Donald Trump “has clearly forgotten” the circumstances of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s departure from the administration, breaking with his former boss to side with a fellow retired Marine Corps general.

Aka is telling whoppers.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Kelly contradicted Trump’s claim that he had fired Mattis. Kelly called Mattis “an honorable man” and described Trump’s Twitter attack on the former Defense secretary as “nasty.”

…

“The president did not fire him. He did not ask for his resignation,” Kelly, who was Trump’s chief of staff when Mattis departed the administration, told the Washington

Another portent:

The US has been downgraded from a “medium risk” to a “high risk” country in a civil unrest index by the global risk analysis company Verik Maplecroft.

As nationwide protests continue over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the firm finds that the “marginalisation of racial and religious minorities” is the single biggest driver of the unrest “because of the profound impact on the living standards of entire communities.” The conditions mean that direct acts of violence to express discontent “appeal to a broad range of community members.”

This is what I was just saying (or ranting) – George Floyd is not a one-off, George Floyd is part of the whole big picture of this … Read the rest

The Guardian reports on Trump’s “press conference,” at which Trump took no questions, which makes it not a press conference but an announcement.

Trump has started his White House press conference, and the president opened the event by quickly veering from the jobs numbers to the George Floyd protests then back to the jobs numbers…However, the president unexpectedly shifted from the jobs numbers to the protests, bragging about the progress seen in Minneapolis this week after demonstrations last week turned violent.

Veering unexpectedly is what he does. He doesn’t do joined-up thinking, he does blurts.

He said we are “largely through” the coronavirus, which of course is not even slightly true.

Then the Guardian kind of threw up its hands … Read the rest

Trump is more than 15 minutes deep into one of his most incoherent rants. Get a load of how many different topics he touches upon in this one clip. He had no remarks prepared and so we're just getting a stream of consciousness. pic.twitter.com/OFGV1UVvTN

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 5, 2020

Golly.… Read the rest

It’s all much too familiar, and not in a good way.

The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad — the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority.

In interviews and posts on social media in recent days, current and former U.S. intelligence officials have expressed dismay at the similarity between events at home and the signs of decline or democratic regression they were trained to detect in other nations.

“I’ve seen this kind of violence,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst responsible for tracking developments in China and Southeast Asia. “This is what autocrats do.

That scamp Bari Weiss has been mixing it up again.

The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same. (Thread.)

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) June 4, 2020

The New Guard has a different worldview, one articulated best by @JonHaidt and @glukianoff. They call it "safetyism," in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech.

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) June 4, 2020

Hmmmyes that’s not at all oversimplified or crude.

But her colleagues say that’s not how it is.… Read the rest

The New York Times – in the wake of an almighty outcry – has thought again about that bright idea of giving a US Senator space to say let’s have the military go to war on the citizenry.

The New York Times has stopped defending its Tom Cotton op-ed. Here's a statement from a company spox: pic.twitter.com/Dxdo82X9nP

— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) June 4, 2020

Fewer but better op-eds; sounds like a plan. Now if only they would send David Brooks on his way.

In his statements on the topic, NYT editorial page editor James Bennet hasn't mentioned that he actually read the piece prior to publication. It would be hard for the top editor of such a section to read *everything*

Trump has decided wellllllllllll maybe he won’t fire Esper after all because hey who needs the tsuris this close to an election am I right.

Trump had been [gone] ballistic, said people familiar with the situation, about a news conference Esper held where the defense secretary tried to distance himself from the president’s church photo op on Monday and said he didn’t support sending the military into U.S. cities at this time — a move Trump had said he was considering. The president was so angry he had told aides he was considering dismissing Esper, one of the people said.

But a day later, the view inside the White House was that the president was now unlikely to do

Christing fuck.

Play the second clip.

Different angle on 1️⃣1️⃣1️⃣ out of Indianapolis

From this view you can see the cop grope the woman he's restraining, that's why she breaks away

Then of course a half dozen cops beat her for not wanting to be groped

Lawlessness pic.twitter.com/6XXU7qiULj

— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 4, 2020

Adding: Doucette has a whole long thread of these.

Hi. You're probably seeing this pinned tweet because cops are rioting nationwide and I'm trying to keep track

I'm currently on break. A few things:

➡️ Follow @fsckemall

➡️ Some policing solutions are here: https://t.co/wQikFLfFwj

➡️ The brutality thread currently ends here: https://t.co/EL2nO4JanF

— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 4, 2020

… Read the rest

What was Barr’s role?

Attorney General William Barr was part of the decision to expand the perimeter around the White House Monday, CBS News has confirmed, pushing protesters who were assembled there from the area before President Trump delivered remarks and walked across the street to survey a damaged historic church.

A Justice Department official told CBS News the decision was made late Sunday or early Monday morning to move the perimeter keeping protesters from getting close to the White House back one block. The official said it was a coordinated decision, and Barr advised it was the correct move.

…

The Justice Department official said the president’s movement’s did not have any bearing on the decision to extend the

Andrew Coyne at the Globe and Mail says Trump just wants to watch the world burn, which I think is a good way of putting it.

It is hard to assess how much Donald Trump is the cause of his country’s disintegration, and how much the consequence. Suffice it to say that the times brought forth the man: the perfect embodiment of all the fears and resentments – of foreigners, of minorities, of liberal elites – of the Republican base.

They found in Mr. Trump a vehicle for their nihilism and their rage, perhaps the least suitable candidate for high office in the entire United States – a petulant, insecure man-child, so wholly lacking in intelligence, competence, integrity or

Jennifer Rubin collects a number of distancings and rebukes from military boffins:

We do not yet know precisely why Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper publicly broke with President Trump on Wednesday, renouncing the use of the Insurrection Act as a means to deploy the military against civilian demonstrators. We can surmise, however, that Pentagon brass was finally fed up and prevailed upon Esper to speak out.

It’s unnerving when it’s the military having to remind the civilian government that we’re not supposed to have military government.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who had accompanied Trump on his march across Lafayette Square, put out a memo on June 2, which read like a not-very-subtle rebuke

Hot times. Bloomberg yesterday afternoon:

Ex-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis condemned his former boss, President Donald Trump, over his aggressive rhetoric and strategy to quell protests that erupted after the death of an unarmed black man in police custody.

…

The sharply worded and unprecedented rebuke from Trump’s first defense chief will raise pressure on the president, who this week threatened to dispatch active duty troops to quash protests and drew widespread condemnation when the square in front of the White House was forcibly cleared before he walked to a historic church to hold a Bible for photographers.

The president responded Wednesday evening saying that he “didn’t like his ‘leadership’ style or much else about” Mattis. “His primary strength was

Meanwhile The New York Times has seen fit to publish an op-ed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton saying send in the soldiers.

This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s.

New York City suffered the worst of the riots Monday night, as Mayor Bill de Blasio stood by while Midtown Manhattan descended into lawlessness. Bands of looters roved the streets, smashing and emptying hundreds of businesses. Some even drove exotic cars; the riots were carnivals for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements.

…

Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George

I retweeted this on Monday:

He shared them today. Jeffrey Goldberg introduces:

James Mattis, the esteemed Marine general who resigned as secretary of defense in December 2018 to protest Donald Trump’s Syria policy, has, ever since, kept studiously silent about Trump’s performance as president. But he has now broken his silence, writing an extraordinary broadside in which he denounces the president for dividing the nation, and accuses him of ordering the U.S. military to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens.

The full statement is at the end.

I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely

Oh come ON.

The White House press secretary just invoked Winston Churchill inspecting bombing damage during World War II when asked why President Trump went to St. John's Church.

— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 3, 2020

Excuse me excuse me. Slight problem with that. The bombing damage was caused by Nazi Germany. By an external enemy with large plans for global domination and genocide. Trump’s short walk was a short walk against fellow citizens who were demonstrating against violent policing. See the difference? Churchill: Nazis. Trump: fellow citizens demonstrating.

The White House is not just equating Trump with Churchill, it’s also equating US citizens (and residents) with Nazis.

Mind you, Churchill was perfectly capable of unleashing the police on … Read the rest

Carolyn Sale at the Centre for Free Expression on another shunning:

In late March, Kathleen Lowrey, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, was asked to resign from her role as the Department of Anthropology’s associate chair, undergraduate programs, on the basis that one or more students had gone to the University’s Office of Safe Disclosure and Human Rights and the Dean of Students, André Costopolous, to complain about her without filing formal complaints. All Professor Lowrey has been told is that she is somehow making the learning environment “unsafe” for these students because she is a feminist who holds “gender critical” views. 

Imagine, if you will, a black associate professor being asked to resign from a role … Read the rest

This is not good.

Back outside the White House. Today the perimeter has been pushed back another half block. Federal law enforcement of some kind, but they won’t identify themselves, and all insignias and name plates have been removed. pic.twitter.com/q5dmdMgkLV

— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) June 3, 2020

Word is they’re required to identify. Without insignia and names they could be anybody – Proud Boys, KKK, Stephen Miller’s private army, anybody.