We’re about to suffer more international embarassment as the Great Orange Moron lumbers off to Europe to visit the UK, attend a NATO summit and meet with his master, Vladimir Putin, for further instructions.

Regarding Putin, see Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler?

He leaves for the NATO summit tomorrow, and already today he is badmouthing U.S. allies.

“The United States is spending far more on NATO than any other Country. This is not fair, nor is it acceptable,” Trump tweeted a day before departing on a seven-day European trip to Belgium, the United Kingdom and Finland. “While these countries have been increasing their contributions since I took office, they must do much more.”

Trump singled out Germany, which spent an estimated 1.24 percent of its 2017 economic output on defense, according to the latest figures from NATO. Comparably, the United States spent an estimated 3.57 percent.

And he connected the issue to his protectionist trade policies, noting that the European Union has a trade surplus with the United States.

Josh Marshall:

Most people have a general sense that Trump doesn’t seem to grasp how an alliance works, that it’s not meant to function as a protection racket. But the actual details are both sillier and more significant than it may seem on the surface.

Let’s discuss first how NATO’s funding works.

The actual NATO budget is quite small – a $1.4 billion military budget and a $250 million civilian budget. The US pays a relatively modest part of that total, about 22%. The percentage is based on a formula which includes the size of each member state’s economy. This mainly goes to pay for the NATO headquarters in Belgium and the quite thin military infrastructure which coordinates and integrates the various member country militaries which make up the alliance. That’s it. The whole thing is budgeted at less than $2 billion. The percentage the US pays is reasonable, relative to the size of the US economy and no one is in arrears.

What seems to have stuck in The Moron’s tiny brain is that the U.S. spends a much bigger percentage of its GDP than any other country on military stuff. But that was our choice. Nobody forced us to do it. Josh Marshall points out that The Moron’s complaints might make sense if he were calling for a reduction of the U.S. military budget, and he wanted other NATO countries to step up and take over functions the U.S. military is doing now. But Trump isn’t doing that. In fact, he has bragged about increasing military spending. So what’s his issue?

All of this leads to a couple possible conclusions. One is that President Trump, at a very basic level, doesn’t understand how the US military or the US military budget works. The changes Trump is demanding in European military spending are ones that cannot have any impact on US military spending because he wants to spend well over the current rates that interlock with current NATO member state spending levels. They can make NATO work better, create militaries that are more useful for the dominant force, the US military, to work with. (Again, Bush and Obama both pressed for this.) But they can’t save money. The more obvious conclusion is that, for whatever reasons, President Trump is hostile to the very concept of our primary alliances in Europe and Northeast Asia, in which we do pay substantial sums to be the guarantor of security in those regions. He simply hasn’t reconciled that with his braggadocious clamoring for higher military spending which, whether he knows it or not, assume those continuing commitments.

Trump has made noises about withdrawing U.S. troops from Europe and Asia. There are reasonable arguments for doing that, but Trump isn’t making those arguments. His rhetoric suggests that he thinks these overseas deployments are purely for the benefit of other nations and have nothing to do with U.S. interests.

Meanwhile, the trade war heats up. Greg Sargent doesn’t think Trump is going to back down.

Given how often he preens about his “toughness” toward China before roaring, worshipful rally crowds, it’s hard to see how he’ll back down, no matter what the consequences. …

…This morning, Politico reports on the backstory leading up to Trump’s trade war. Trump has been ranting for decades about other countries “ripping off” the United States on trade. Now that hostilities are escalating, Politico notes that Trump has “no clear exit strategy and no explicit plans to negotiate new rules of the road with China, leaving the global trade community and financial markets wracked with uncertainty.” But Trump loyalists say he’s playing a long game and won’t buckle. As Stephen K. Bannon puts it, Trump “has preached a confrontation with China for 30 years,” making this a “huge moment” that pits “Trump against all of Wall Street.”

Greg Sargent reiterates that the Hurt is mostly going to fall on his voters, not on Wall Street. The Brookings Institution evaluated China’s tariffs and figured out how they would affect counties that voted for Trump versus counties that voted for Clinton.

Greg Sargent continues,

Nearly two-thirds of the jobs in industries targeted by China’s tariffs — a total of more than 1 million jobs — are in more than 2,100 counties that voted for Trump. By contrast, barely more than one-third of the jobs in China-targeted industries — just over half a million — are in the counties that voted for Clinton. (This is based on 2017 county/employment data.) This doesn’t mean those jobs will definitely be lost; it means that they are in industries that are getting caught up in Trump’s trade war, making them vulnerable, depending on what happens.

This is even more remarkable when you consider that Trump voters tend to live in places with lower population density and reduced economic opportunity to begin with, while Clinton voters are concentrated in cities. As the headline to Sargent’s post says, Trump’s delusions about about to blow up in his voters’ faces.

Meanwhile, as Trump prepares to visit the UK on Thursday, there are real questions whether Theresa May’s government will last that long. And last week it appeared North Korea already was backpedaling on its non-agreement and prepared to throw Trump and Mike Pompeo under the bus. This was expected, but not quite this soon.

I am determined to not watch Trump’s Supreme Court Pick Reveal show tonight. I’ll deal with whatever atrocity he has chosen tomorrow.

See also Paul Waldman, “The Liberal Backlash Is Coming.”

Did you know the U.S. is now officially, on the record, opposed to encouraging breast feeding?

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

The basic scam is that formula corporations give new mothers bottles and samples of formula and sell them on the “superiority” of formula over breast milk. Often the sales reps pose as nurses and other medical professionals. In third world countries this has tragic consequences, as parents don’t always have access to clean water often dilute the formula to reduce cost. Here’s an 2012 expose from Business Insider on the baby formula scam, which says that millions of babies around the globe have died or suffered malnutrition so that formula corporations can make money. See also How formula milk firms target mothers who can least afford it.

Back to what went on in the UN:

When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the United States.

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

It’s not like American companies have a lock on the baby formula market. The worst offenders in the baby formula scam are Nestle (Swiss), Danone (French), and two U.S. companies, Mead Johnson and Abbott. This is just demented.

But that’s just one atrocity. See also:

Health Insurers Warn of Market Turmoil as Trump Suspends Billions in Payments

The Trump administration said Saturday that it was suspending a program that pays billions of dollars to insurers to stabilize health insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act, a freeze that could increase uncertainty in the markets and drive up premiums this fall.

Trump is bent on wrecking NATO. Prepare for catastrophe.

The fear is not only that Mr. Trump will spoil the “unity” of the summit with harangues before flying to Helsinki for a far friendlier meeting with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin. It is that, having shrugged off the strong support for NATO among his national security team, he is bent on wrecking a multilateral organization he regards as obsolete and a means for European nations to freeload at the expense of the United States.

Trump administration says it CAN’T meet July 26 deadline to reunite families separated at the border

Obviously, they never had a plan for reuniting families. See also Kids as young as 1 in US court, awaiting reunion with family.

Tighten those belts, folks. The trade war officially began yesterday.Martin Longman calls July 6, 2018 “a day that will live in infamy.” Catchy. Martin Longman continues,

Of course, the retaliatory tariffs are designed to do the most damage to Trump’s base thereby dividing the Republicans and eroding Trump’s position. Europe went after Kentucky bourbon and Harley-Davidson in a clear message to Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. China is going after pork and soybeans as well as the automotive industry that is as important these days in Alabama, Tennessee and Indiana as it is in Michigan. In any case, those are all state that voted for Trump.

It’s hard to say how people will react. Will they really treat a trade war like a shooting war and rally around the president and the flag? That might happen. On the other hand, maybe a lot of people will turn on the president and his party when they feel a very direct sting from his policies.

Today, many eyes are on Iowa. Ed Kilgore writes,

Now maybe something will soon happen to mitigate the damage. But it’s also entirely possible that [Iowa Gov.] Terry Branstad has about as much control over collateral damage to Iowa from Trump’s trade policies as you or I have, and that all those confident assurances Iowans were receiving from Washington were just Trumpian hype associated with the belief that Beijing would fold its hand, leaving POTUS as the undisputed master of global commerce. The grim reality is otherwise. China buys at least 60 percent of the Iowa soybean crop. The pain will only get worse if harvest time comes along with the trade war still raging, and there’s no particular reason to think it will be quickly resolved.

Tom Philpott writes at Mother Jones that prices for the two biggest crops in the U.S., corn and soybeans, began falling in May.

After putting its trade beef with China on hold for a few weeks, the administration suddenly reiterated its tariff threats, and added Mexico, Canada, and the European Union to the mix. China is by far the biggest buyer of exported US soybeans; Mexico holds that position for corn.

The current slide comes at a precipitous time for US farmers. They have about 179 million acres of the two crops growing in their fields–a combined land mass equal to nearly two Californias, and just 1 percent less than last year’s plantings. To make a profit on these crops, farmers will have to make at least $4 per bushel on corn and $10.05 on soybeans for the 2018 harvest, a University of Illinois analysis found. Currently, the two commodities fetch $3.43 and $8.40, respectively.

Lots of stories note that farmers in South America are planting lots of soybeans in hopes of selling them to China. North American farmers could permanently lose major markets.

There is talk of a big bailout for agriculture if the damage is as bad as it looks.

However, politicians on both sides of the aisle express unhappiness at a bailout. And they doubt even $50 billion would be enough.

Salt Lake Tribune

Done traveling. Scott Prutt being replaced by an oil industry lobbyist. Not exactly progress.

This time last year, Andrew Wheeler was a registered lobbyist working for the interests of one of the country’s largest coal-mining companies and a major uranium mining company. Starting Monday, he’s expected to become the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, where he’s been deputy administrator since April. …

…But while Pruitt’s ethics problems compounded during his time in office, Wheeler’s potential conflicts of interest are embedded in his résumé. And he’s emblematic of a sort of political dynamic that has come under increased scrutiny in the last decade — a reverse revolving door, through which lobbyists and consultants join the government and regulate the people who used to be their co-workers. …

…Pruitt’s philosophy of narrow EPA powers and state-led environmental regulation was certainly friendly to the oil and gas industry, but he was not formerly employed by it. His lapses have largely come in the form of ethical pratfalls, banana peels that he put on the floor and slipped on in the course of duty. Wheeler’s potential to favor former clients, in contrast, is a part of him. …

…Meanwhile, according to an investigation published in March 2018, the Associated Press tracked 59 EPA administration staffers that had been hired under Trump and found that about a third had been lobbyists or lawyers for fossil fuel producers, chemical companies or other corporate clients. In June 2017, Public Citizen analyzed the backgrounds of 115 Trump nominees to sub-Cabinet roles; 25 were current or former lobbyists or corporate consultants, 26 were corporate lawyers, and 29 were current or former corporate executives. Not all of those people were being hired to regulate the industries they’d recently left, but some were.

Pruitt is profoundly screwy. No halfway intelligent person would have behaved as he did at the EPA who was not pschologically miswired, through and through. Just a couple of days ago reports came out that Pruitt had gone directly to Trump and asked for Jeff Sessions’s attorney general job. That’s more than plain chutzpah.

And then there’s this:

The Trump administration is suppressing an Environmental Protection Agency report that warns that most Americans inhale enough formaldehyde vapor in the course of daily life to put them at risk of developing leukemia and other ailments, a current and a former agency official told POLITICO.

The warnings are contained in a draft health assessment EPA scientists completed just before Donald Trump became president, according to theofficials. They saidtop advisers to departing Administrator Scott Pruittare delaying its release as part of acampaign to undermine the agency’s independent research into the health risks of toxic chemicals.

Andrew Wheeler, the No. 2 official at EPA who will be the agency’s new acting chief as of Monday, also has a history with the chemical. He was staff director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2004, when his boss, then-Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), sought to delay an earlier iteration of the formaldehyde assessment.

Kinda warms your heart, huh? Or maybe that burn you feel is something else.

Also, too, just reported by the Los Angeles Times:

And we’ve got an oil lobbyist in charge of the environment. Grand.

A little over three years ago I formulated the Anger Theorem, which is: The degree to which one is allowed to be angry, and at what, depends on how much power you have. The powerful can be as angry as they like, without criticism. But when those with less power are angry, they are condemned for it.

In the first “Who Gets to Be Angry” post I pointed out that right-wing white men are the only demographic in the U.S. allowed to display anger without social or cultural penalty. Right-wing white women are allowed to display anger if they are standing next to a white man who is angry about the same thing — call it ladies’ auxiliary anger. Otherwise, women who display anger are labeled “hysterical” or “whacky,” whereas a white man doing the same thing is “strong.” Men who are not white must also take care to be gentle of temperament, because right-wing white men have a pathological fear of black men displaying so much as mild pique. Or wearing hoodies.

Even white men can be slammed for anger if they are also “liberal” or “lefties,” although younger white guys generally aren’t used to being sensitive to the privilege rules and don’t hold back expressing themselves in angry ways. If there’s a big leftie demonstration, if somebody acts up and behaves badly it’s nearly always a young white guy.

Watch out for people who are enforcers of the anger rule, especially if they are on “your” side, because They Do Not Get It. Nancy Pelosi’s recent rebuke of Maxine Waters is an example. Rep. Waters didn’t call for violence; she called for confrontations. But she got slammed by Democratic leadership, including by Chuck Schumer.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said Sunday she was surprised to see Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) criticize her for advocating publicly confronting Trump Cabinet officials, but noted that political leaders “will do anything that they think is necessary to protect their leadership.”

“You know, I was surprised that Chuck Schumer, you know, reached into the other house to do that,” Waters said when asked by MSNBC host Joy Reid if she was surprised to see leaders in her own party criticizing her. “I’ve not quite seen that done before. But one of the things I recognize, being an elected official, is in the final analysis, you know, leadership will do anything that they think is necessary to protect their leadership.”

Yeah, Chuck, let’s not have a black woman’s back or anything. Gotta maintain that ol’ privilege.

So, white men (plus members of the ladies auxiliary) get to walk around with big guns, and that’s fine; if nonwhite men did exactly the same thing the Authorities would be calling out the National Guard to put them down. Well, you know how it all works.

Rep. Water’s calls for confrontation have been blown up by the Right as calls for physical violence. The Right, known for lacking a gene that enables appreciation of irony or hypocrisy, responded with death threats to Waters. And Chuck and Nandy throw her under the bus. Grand.

And then this happened:

President Trump on Sunday blamed his opponents for the division in the country, warning that those who have spoken out against him should “take it easy.”

Trump appeared on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” where he was asked about recent incidents in which celebrities cursed him out and protesters demonstrated against members of his administration in restaurants and public spaces.

“I hope the other side realizes that they better just take it easy,” Trump said.

“Because some of the language used, some of the words used, even some of the radical ideas, I really think they’re very bad for the country. I think they’re actually dangerous for the country,” he added.

Translation, in the minds of wingnuts: It’s okay to shoot liberals (and racial minorities) on sight.

Charles Blow:

Trump is exhausting our mental capacity for indignation. This does not help Trump in the eyes of most Americans, to be sure. The Resistance remains strong and will likely have an impressive showing in the November elections.

But, along the margins, where both support for Trump and objections to him are soft, his tactics may have greater impact.

Not to mention the fact that those tactics keep his base riled and ready. Trump is like a drug dealer who has addicted his followers to fear and rage and keeps supplying it in constant doses. His supporters have become rage-junkies for whom he can do no wrong.

Anger doesn’t appease anger. Anger doesn’t do anything constructive, frankly. But we’re past the point that there’s anything to be gained by tip-toeing around right-wing anger to not set it off. They’re angry that we can breathe.

I’m at my daughter’s for most of this week. Just keep talking among yourselves for now, thanks.

LOS ANGELES, CA – JUNE 28: Rally signs at The Women’s March LA Rally for Families Belong Together – A Day of Action at Los Angeles City Hall on June 28, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)