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Zorro's Journal25th anniversary of destructive tank rampage
25 years ago, a jaw-dropping sight rolled through San Diego streets: a tank crushing everything in its path.
Stunned residents in a Kearny Mesa neigborhood described a 'rumbling, grinding noise' as the M60 tank carved a path of destruction.
10news photojournalist Rett Lawrence was at dinner with co-workers when he got the page.
"You've never seen so many guys run out to the door so fast," said Lawrence.
As a police helicopter flew overhead, the 60-ton tank ripped through cars, signs, traffic lights, hydrants and whatever was in its path. In one sequence, the tank destroyed a trailer and a van, before sheering through a mobile home like scissors.
https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/25th-anniversary-of-destructive-tank-rampage
U.S.-China Feud Over Coronavirus Erupts at World Health Assembly
Source: New York Times
China’s president pledged $2 billion to fight the virus, a move the U.S. criticized as an effort to head off scrutiny of its handling of the pandemic.
A meeting of the World Health Organization that was supposed to chart a path for the world to combat the coronavirus pandemic instead on Monday turned into a showcase for the escalating tensions between China and the United States over the virus.
President Xi Jinping of China announced at the start of the forum that Beijing would donate $2 billion toward fighting the coronavirus and dispatch doctors and medical supplies to Africa and other countries in the developing world.
The contribution, to be spent over two years, amounts to more than twice what the United States had been giving the global health agency before President Trump cut off American funding last month, and it could catapult China to the forefront of international efforts to contain a disease that has claimed at least 315,000 lives.
But it was also seen — particularly by American officials — as an attempt by China to forestall closer scrutiny of whether it hid information about the outbreak to the world.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/health/coronavirus-who-china-trump.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Pompeo's moves against inspector general leave a trail of questions and a department divided
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his top aides blasted the State Department’s ousted internal watchdog on Monday, accusing him of mishandling leaks to the media and failing to promote Pompeo’s mission statement to employees.
The remarks attempted to fill in the gaps in the mysterious firing of Steve Linick by President Trump late Friday night, but they also raised new questions about the dismissal and exposed a sharp divide among State Department employees.
Many career officials viewed Linick as a dogged investigator of malfeasance who cultivated a reputation for diligence and relentlessness. But for the secretary’s handpicked advisers who found themselves on the wrong end of his investigations, the former prosecutor could be a source of frustration and embarrassment, said four U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
Pompeo told The Washington Post that he advised Trump to fire Linick because he was not “performing a function” that was “additive for the State Department.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/pompeos-moves-against-inspector-general-leave-a-trail-of-questions-and-a-department-divided/2020/05/18/ec34524e-9945-11ea-b60c-3be060a4f8e1_story.html
McConnell taps Rubio as acting Intelligence Committee chair after Burr stepped aside amid FBI probe
Source: Washington Post
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will serve as the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, replacing Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who stepped aside last week after FBI agents seized his cellphone, seeking evidence related to stock sales he made before the coronavirus pandemic crashed global markets.
“The senior senator for Florida is a talented and experienced Senate leader with expertise in foreign affairs and national security matters,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. “Senator Rubio was the natural choice for this temporary assignment on the basis of accumulated committee service. His proven leadership on pertinent issues only made the decision easier.”
McConnell said Rubio accepted his invitation to head the panel.
Among the first tasks for Rubio will be a committee vote Tuesday on President Trump’s nominee to be director of national intelligence, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.). The vote is widely expected to be along party lines.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/mcconnell-taps-rubio-to-serve-as-acting-chairman-of-senate-intelligence-committee/2020/05/18/86ec1224-9944-11ea-ac72-3841fcc9b35f_story.html
Trump's purge just got much more corrupt. Here's what's coming next.
President Trump’s abrupt decision to remove the inspector general of the State Department constitutes the latest in a string of corrupt efforts to remove public servants who prioritize real oversight and accountability over protecting Trump at all costs.
But in the case of Trump’s termination of Steve Linick, the State Department IG, this could end up looking far worse than we know. There’s a backstory here that has not yet gotten scrutiny — one that could make the firing appear even more corrupt.
House Democrats have discovered that the fired IG had mostly completed an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s widely criticized decision to skirt Congress with an emergency declaration to approve billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia last year, aides on the Foreign Affairs Committee tell me.
“I have learned that there may be another reason for Mr. Linick’s firing,” Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement sent to me. “His office was investigating — at my request — Trump’s phony declaration of an emergency so he could send weapons to Saudi Arabia.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/18/trumps-purge-just-got-much-more-corrupt-heres-whats-coming-next/
Trump's latest firing is a blatant attempt to shield Pompeo from accountability
STATE DEPARTMENT Inspector General Steve Linick was asked by House Democrats last year to investigate whether Secretary of State Mike Pompeo abused his authority in declaring an emergency to ram through arms sales to Saudi Arabia in spite of congressional opposition. Mr. Linick was also reportedly probing Mr. Pompeo’s use of an aide to perform personal errands for himself and his wife. Mr.?Pompeo asked President Trump to fire Mr. Linick — and late on Friday, the president did just that, in a blatant attempt to shield the secretary of state from accountability.
The blunt dismissal of a nonpartisan official whose job it is to provide an independent evaluation of just the sort of allegations Mr. Pompeo was facing would be shocking — if it were not just the latest step in a campaign by Mr. Trump to eliminate accountability across the federal government. Mr. Linick is one of four inspectors general fired or replaced by Mr. Trump since April 3, when he ousted the intelligence community IG who forwarded a whistleblower’s account of his wrongdoing on Ukraine to Congress.
The purge makes a mockery of Congress’s attempt to protect the independence of inspectors general, including a legal requirement that they not be removed without written justfication. In the case of Mr. Linick, Mr. Trump dispatched a vague letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saying he “no longer” had “the fullest confidence” in the IG. But Mr. Pompeo did not hesitate to blurt out the real reason Monday: Mr. Linick was not doing his bidding. He “wasn’t performing a function in a way that we had tried to get him to,” Mr. Pompeo said in an interview. But it is not the inspector general’s job to do what the secretary of state demands — especially when it comes to investigating his own behavior.
Mr. Linick, who had held his post since 2013, had a record of holding secretaries of state of both parties to account. In 2016, he issued a critical report on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, fueling a controversy that helped get Mr. Trump elected. But he also reported last year on the harassment of career staff in the State Department accused of disloyalty to Trump, and he cooperated with the House’s impeachment inquiry.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trumps-latest-firing-is-a-blatant-attempt-to-shield-pompeo-from-accountability/2020/05/18/506d0424-991c-11ea-89fd-28fb313d1886_story.html
By order of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp: The day after Thursday is now Sunday
Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp needed a way to show that he hadn’t been rash to reopen restaurants, theaters, nail salons and the like in late April.
His administration came up with a creative solution. They doctored the statistics.
Last week, Georgia’s Department of Public Health released a graph showing a dramatic, steady decline in cases, deaths and hospitalizations in the state’s five most affected counties, from a peak on April 28, just before the state’s restrictions were eased, to near zero two weeks later.
Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic
But on closer inspection, the dates on the chart showed a curious ordering: April 30 was followed by May 4; May 5 was followed by May 2, which was followed by May 7 — which in turn was followed by April 26. The dates had been re-sorted to create the illusion of a decline. The five counties were likewise re-sorted on each day to enhance the illusion.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/18/only-america-is-sunday-day-after-thursday/
Georgia's coronavirus data made reopening look safe. The numbers were a lie.
Nothing about the spread of the coronavirus or the nature of the disease suggests that it’s safe to get back to business as usual. And yet “reopen” is the word on almost every American’s lips, despite apocalyptic warnings from public heath experts suggesting that, without an aggressive national public health strategy, the country could face its “darkest winter.”
In the absence of a coherent federal public health response, millions of Americans are trying to will the coronavirus away through the sheer force of their God-given exceptionalism.
Mass delusion seems a dubious strategy for ending the coronavirus crisis. And yet if you look at the data coming out of Georgia over the past month — which had one of the earliest and most aggressive efforts to reopen its economy — you might be convinced that there is little danger in a broad economic reopening.
According to state data models, which Gov. Brian Kemp used to justify Georgia’s aggressive reopening, the state’s infection curve has been rapidly heading in a direction that would be the envy of states like California, with its aggressive lockdown rules. The Wall Street Journal hailed the “Georgia Model” as evidence that aggressive lockdowns were needlessly harming the economy.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-05-18/georgia-coronavirus-numbers-reopening-manipulated-data-brian-kemp
The only culprit in the Flynn 'unmasking' scandal is the Trump administration
There was no wrongdoing on the part of Obama administration officials who, during the presidential transition in 2016 and 2017, “unmasked” the identity of Michael Flynn, who was set to become national security adviser. Indeed, the only wrongdoing is by the Trump administration, which, in releasing last week a list of officials who made the unmasking requests, has yet again politicized the intelligence community.
The Trump administration released the list to promote its claim that officials in the outgoing administration attempted to discredit Flynn and others associated with the incoming administration. But this claim makes absolutely no sense.
To understand why, we need some background on the unmasking procedure. In the course of doing its job to gather information critical to our national security, the intelligence community might discover that a foreign intelligence target has talked about or even to an American. The intelligence community is only interested in the foreign side of the information collected and, in reporting it, will only make reference to the American if it is important to understanding the intelligence. Even then, to protect the privacy of that American, they would refer to him or her simply as “a U.S. person.” This isn’t required by the Constitution, but it has been a long-established protection.
Most recipients of the reports don’t care about the identities of U.S. persons. There are, however, cases in which, to do his or her duty, the official receiving the report does need to know the identity. For example, if a report says that foreign intelligence officers were considering recruiting a U.S. person, it would be irresponsible for the FBI not to ask for the identity of that American, if only to warn them about the recruiting attempt.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/17/only-culprit-unmasking-scandal-is-trump-administration/
The future belongs to the pandemic pragmatists
In Washington and the media, the pandemic is, alas, being taken over by extremists. They demand that we choose A or B, the virus or the economy, locking down or setting free. But while they rage and clash, the future will probably be won by Pandemic Pragmatists, who blend and balance both priorities to keep going in the shadow of covid-19.
The Pandemic Pragmatists understand certain realities. First, the novel coronavirus is, for all intents and purposes, here to stay. Treatments will be found to ameliorate it. A vaccine may be developed to protect against it. But like the various strains of influenza and the human immunodeficiency virus — and measles and chickenpox, for heaven’s sake — it might be tamed eventually, but not soon eradicated.
And since we can’t hide from it indefinitely, Pandemic Pragmatists understand that we have to find ways to live with it. Lockdowns and quarantines are severe and temporary responses. We might need them in certain places in the months — even years — to come. But they can’t last forever and ideally shouldn’t even last long, given the tremendous shock they send through the economy and the culture.
I found a resolute example of the Pandemic Pragmatist attitude when I spoke with my friend Greg Gunderson the other day. He is president of Park University in Parkville, Mo. Overlooking the Missouri River near Kansas City, its picturesque campus appears at first glance to be a typical example of the many small colleges and universities founded across America after the Civil War.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-future-belongs-to-the-pandemic-pragmatists/2020/05/15/5f79abc4-96de-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5_story.html
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