• James Mattis Denounces Trump as Threat to Constitution
    Jeffrey Goldberg - June 3, 2020 - The Atlantic
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640

    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.

    “I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” Mattis writes. “The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.” He goes on, “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”

    In his j’accuse, Mattis excoriates the president for setting Americans against one another.

    “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.” (...)

    via @CorentinSellin
    https://twitter.com/CorentinSellin/status/1268304712027090944

    Alors, là... c’est du jamais vu.
    Le général #Mattis, le plus prestigieux des conservateurs US, général des Marines vénéré dans les troupes, qui fut secrétaire à la Défense de #Trump durant 2 ans, le dénonce comme 1 menace à la nation et à la Constitution.

    Cet homme est un soldat d’élite, conservateur pur jus- tout sauf de gauche- et il traite #Trump qu’il a servi au Pentagone comme LE destructeur de la nation US

  • I Just Flew. It Was Worse Than I Thought It Would Be.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/is-flying-safe-coronavirus/611335


    Voici pourquoi je déteste prendre les avions des grandes compagnies. C"est toujours un peu comme dans cet article.

    ...flying during a pandemic turned out to be more stressful—and surreal—than I’d planned for. The scenes played out like a postapocalyptic movie: Paranoid travelers roamed the empty terminals in masks, eyeing one another warily as they misted themselves with disinfectant. Dystopian public-service announcements echoed through the airport—“This is a message from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ...” Even the smallest, most routine tasks—such as dealing with the touch-screen ticketing kiosk—felt infused with danger.

    My trip took place in two legs, and the first was weird mostly in the ways that I’d expected. All but a few of the shops and restaurants at Washington National Airport were closed. Beverage service in the main cabin was suspended (though apparently serving ginger ale to first-class passengers was ruled epidemiologically acceptable). My first flight was so empty that the pilot warned we would experience “a very rapid acceleration for takeoff.” The plane leapt into the sky and my stomach dropped. I spent much of the flight using my baggie of Lysol wipes to scrub and re-scrub every surface within reach.

    The layover at O’Hare was where my fellow travelers’ fraying nerves came more fully into view. In the restroom, men hovered over sinks like warriors returning from battle, fervently washing their hands and shooting menacing looks at anyone who got too close. At the food court, a shouting match broke out among several stressed-out strangers, and police had to intervene.

    Outside the gate, passengers sat five or six seats apart, barely acknowledging one another, let alone attempting conversation. The eerie silence wore on me after a while. When my wife texted to ask how it was going, the best description I could muster was a grimacing emoji.

    Flying has always been unpleasant, and rife with small indignities. It’s likely that I was more alert than usual to the agitation of those around me. But as America lurches awkwardly toward an economic “reopening” in the weeks ahead, my fraught travel experience highlighted an unwelcome truth: The glittering allure of “normalcy” that waits on the other end of these stay-at-home orders is a mirage.

    Illustration : Affiche du film Airplane ! de 1980 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane !

    #aviation #voyage #USA #covid-19 #tourisme

  • Coronavirus in San Francisco : How City Flattened the Curve - The Atlantic
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-san-francisco-london-breed/609808

    London breed wasn’t going to wait around for COVID-19.

    San Francisco had yet to confirm a single case of the coronavirus when Breed, the city’s 45-year-old first-term mayor, declared a state of emergency in late February.

    (...)

    Breed ordered businesses closed and issued a citywide shelter-in-place policy effective on March 17, at a point when San Francisco had fewer than 50 confirmed coronavirus cases.

    (...) The economic hardship a shutdown would cause was not lost on Breed. She was raised in a public-housing project by her grandmother, from whom, Harris said, Breed inherited a practical streak. Breed’s sister died of a drug overdose, while her brother is currently incarcerated on a 44-year sentence for manslaughter. “Her grandmother was a tough lady,” recalled Harris, who has known Breed for years. “She was practical, practical to her core.”

    “Hindsight these days is not years later; it’s weeks later,” the senator said. “So hindsight tells us London Breed was really smart. She did the right thing at the right time, even though it’s not what people wanted to hear.”

    (...) “This virus has been ahead of us from day one,” Cuomo lamented on Thursday, as he announced that, once again, New York had seen a daily record—799—in coronavirus deaths. That may be true for Cuomo and de Blasio, who dragged their feet, not to mention Donald Trump. But it is not true for Breed.

    (...) Public-health officials in san francisco began monitoring the coronavirus outbreak around the holidays in *December*, Mary Ellen Carroll, who runs the city’s Department of Emergency Management, told me. *By late January, Breed had activated San Francisco’s emergency-operations center* in preparation for an outbreak—the first such move in any major city in the country. (...) Everyone, including Breed, wears a mask when they meet, Carroll said.

    #in_retrospect #San_Francisco

    Politiquement pas très à gauche au sein du parti démocrate :

    Breed, a Democrat aligned with the party’s establishment wing, won the mayoralty in a close special election a few months later, defeating two more progressive candidates with the help of tabulations from San Francisco’s system of ranked-choice voting. She won election to a full term in 2019, but spent much of the year battling progressives on the city’s pervasive homelessness problem and in local elections where candidates she endorsed were defeated.

  • Bloomberg needs to take down Sanders — immediately (opinion) - CNN
    https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/22/opinions/bloomberg-needs-to-take-down-sanders-lockhart/index.html

    If Bloomberg wants to make it past the Democratic National Convention in July, his strategy needs to change —quickly. His first objective is to nab the nomination, and to do that, he needs to direct his resources to take down Sanders before he even has a chance at Trump.

    As it stands, Sanders has a chance to run the table as the rest of the field fights each other for the honor of coming in second. Sanders has emerged as the Democratic front-runner, and his support stands at 25% among Democrats and independents who lean Democratic, according to the most recent Quinnipiac poll.

    But that’s not enough to win the general election. I don’t believe the country is prepared to support a Democratic socialist, and I agree with the theory that Sanders would lose in a matchup against Trump. In a general election battle between two divisive figures who both preach the politics of grievance, I believe Trump will win the battle to the bottom and remain the last man standing.

    Given that the primary calendar dictates that 60% of delegates will be determined by St. Patrick’s Day, the primary race could be effectively over in less than a month. Of all the other Democratic candidates, Bloomberg may be the only one who can stop the Sanders freight train and still have a shot at winning the White House.

    But let’s not forget — Bloomberg is already skipping the first four voting states in favor of concentrating on Super Tuesday. With his disastrous performance in the Las Vegas debate, it appears he won’t be building any organic momentum in this race. He has to buy it.
    If Bloomberg has any chance of winning the nomination, he has to redirect his resources during the primary and run ads against Sanders — not Trump.

    Bloomberg needs to use the next $400 million in ad spending to attack Sanders on his potential weaknesses in a general election and highlight how far left his campaign is. Hitting him on his past record on guns is a must.