It's Pure Theater

Rough duty - I hope they're all getting hazard pay.

National Guard troops deployed in D.C. add sanitation, landscaping duties

Service members say they’re glad to help the National Park Service. But some question if trash removal and groundskeeping are an appropriate use of the military.

The August air was crisp Tuesday as members of D.C’s National Guard, a key component of President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the District, scooped, spread and smoothed mounds of mulch around the city’s treasured Tidal Basin cherry trees.

As they raked, specks of dirt and mulch floated upward into early morning sunbeams, an idyllic image starkly at odds with the president’s portrayal of Washington as a violent, lawless dystopia. The assignment was atypical for these troops, who more often are called on to respond to emergencies or deploy overseas, and it left some questioning if landscaping should be a military mission at all.

“I think it’s nice, as a D.C. resident,” said one Guard member. “But there are different things we could be doing.”

More than 2,200 troops, some from as far away as Mississippi and Louisiana, have been deployed in D.C. since Trump’s declaration of a “crime emergency” here. Ostensibly, they were mobilized to support federal law enforcement and local police, but in recent days those orders have expanded to encompass “beautification” tasks such as trash removal and groundskeeping around the National Mall and other federal property. Service members may work on removing graffiti, too.

Typically, custodial work like this falls to the National Park Service, which was already facing staffing shortfalls when the Trump administration this spring directed additional cuts as it gutted the federal workforce. The service used to have 200 people assigned to maintain thousands of acres of trees and gardens in D.C., and now there are 20, a Park Service official told The Post.

“It’s everybody — the masons, the maintenance workers, the groundskeepers, the plumbers. Every shop is short,” said the official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing a fear of reprisal.

So the National Guard is picking up the slack. But that is raising concerns among some troops and critics of the Trump administration’s moves in D.C. who worry that employing them this way will come at a cost.

The Guard’s new duties in D.C. appear at odds with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s laser-focus on preparing the military to fight and win wars. Late last year, as he sought to win the Senate’s support for his nomination, Hegseth, a former National Guard officer and Fox News personality, spoke forcefully about his desire to recenter the Pentagon’s attention on “lethality, lethality, lethality.”

“Everything else is gone,” he told reporters in December. “Everything else that distracts from that shouldn’t be happening.”

Representatives for Hegseth did not address questions about the new beautification assignment, or whether it was in line with the secretary’s lethality push. In a brief statement, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said the Defense Department “is incredibly proud of our D.C. National Guardsmen and their work to make DC Safe and Beautiful Again.”

Joint Task Force-D.C., which has overseen the Guard’s activities in Washington since Trump declared the crime emergency Aug. 11, said that service members will be working on more than 40 “beautification projects” throughout the city that were identified with input from local and federal agencies. Though the Pentagon has authorized those participating in the deployment to carry weapons, for now troops on cleanup duty will not be armed, an official with the task force said.

A service member discards a plastic soda bottle during a cleanup assignment at the Tidal Basin in Washington on Tuesday. (Tom Brenner/For the Washington Post )
National Guard troops frequently get called in to support communities after major disasters and, on occasion, they do perform sanitation work. For example, during the coronavirus pandemic, Guard troops supported waste collection efforts to help slow the deadly virus’s spread.

It’s also not unusual for troops to be assigned cleanup duties on their bases, said Army veteran Kris Goldsmith. A video posted to Instagram by the D.C. National Guard, which shows troops rounding up trash, “is the most accurate recruiting video I’ve ever seen,” he said.

New 18-year-old soldiers spend a lot of time walking across fields and parking lots, ordered to pick up butts of cigarettes they did not smoke because it builds discipline, Goldsmith said. But for older, career Guard members, such assignments are “not worth taxpayer dollars,” he said.

In the last two decades, the National Guard has fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, braved wildfires and plucked civilians from raging floodwaters. The repeat use of the force both domestically and abroad has raised concerns that it has been deployed too frequently as the easy option when it should be the option of last resort.

“For years this country has not invested in its infrastructure or its social safety net,” but it has invested in the military, said Chris Purdy, an Iraq War veteran who served for eight years in the National Guard. “It becomes very easy for policymakers on both sides to say ‘Oh, the Guard will fix it.’”

As the Trump administration considers expanding these domestic deployments to other major cities, Purdy, who now runs the Chamberlain Network, a pro-democracy veterans organization, said officials should be mindful of the implications for unit readiness.

Pulling Guard members — civilians often with full-time jobs who report for duty once a month and then for two weeks a year — for such missions comes with a trade-off. The time they would have spent focusing on training in their military specialty or participating in battle drills may be spent on groundskeeping or urban foot patrols instead.

Master Sgt. David Bowden has been part of both efforts. When he and other members of the D.C. National Guard were first activated about two weeks ago, Bowden was on a foot patrol along Constitution Avenue when he and other soldiers saw a D.C. police officer be assaulted by a driver she had stopped.

“It looked like a routine traffic stop,” Bowden said. Then the suspect “got out of the vehicle and took her down in front of us,” throwing her to the ground.

Bowden and three other Guard members chased the suspect on foot until they caught him, and one of the members, a military police officer, handcuffed him. The deployment has been quiet since then, he said.

Bowden said he and the other Guard members who participated in Tuesday’s mulching assignment were glad to help with the Tidal Basin cleanup. But still, it’s raising concerns about how to maintain the units’ readiness.

“It’s a question,” Bowden said, that “I and a lot of other higher enlisted are asking.”

Today's Trump Theater

Our tax dollars "at work".

The fact that these guys are touring the monuments and prowling Georgetown is all the proof anybody should need that this is all just more of Trump's theatrical photo op bullshit.

And:

Trump says he will go on patrol in Washington with police, military

WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he would patrol the streets of Washington, D.C. on Thursday night with the police and military, after deploying National Guard troops in the nation's capital last week.

"I'm going to be going out tonight, I think, with the police, and with the military, of course," Trump said in an interview with Newsmax reporter Todd Starnes on his radio show.

Remember this one from 2020?

Today's Beau

It's such a terribly serious, potentially world-ending threat, MAGA Mike called recess and sent everybody home.

Reminder:

Mike Johnson is not "Speaker Of The House". He's a clerk. He might not even be in charge of his own bathroom schedule. He's just another one of Trump's butt boys.

More:

House Intel Chair Warns Biden of Mysterious ‘Serious National Security Threat’

Rep. Mike Turner has cited unspecified “information” about a threat and called on the president to declassify it so that “our allies” can help.

The chair of the House Intelligence Committee issued on Wednesday a cryptic warning of a “serious national security threat” that might require help from “our allies” to deal with it.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) cited unspecified “information” about the mysterious threat that he said “all members of Congress” had already been briefed on. He called on President Biden to declassify the information.

“I am requesting that President Biden declassify all information relating to this threat so that Congress, the Administration, and our allies can openly discuss the actions necessary to respond to this threat,” he told House members Wednesday.

Capitol Hill sources told ABC News the threat was regarding Russia wanting to put nuclear weapons in space to use against satellites.

An unnamed Democratic source was quoted telling NBC News: “This is a serious issue that could lead to a destabilizing situation and a national security threat.” Apart from describing it as a “potential foreign threat,” however, the source provided no further details. CNN, meanwhile, cited unnamed sources who said the threat is related to Russia and is “highly concerning and destabilizing.”

In a statement, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said there is “no need for public alarm,” adding that he will press Biden’s administration to take “appropriate action.”

“Steady hands are at the wheel, we’re working on it, there’s no need for alarm,” he cautioned.

In a White House press briefing, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan acknowledged the threat, but said he can’t reveal anything about it. He said he was surprised Turner went public with the information just a day before he was slated to meet with the congressman in a classified briefing, which is still scheduled.

“That’s his choice to do that,” Sullivan said of Turner. “All I can tell you is that I’m focused on going to see him sit with him as well as the other House members of the Gang of Eight tomorrow. And I’m not in a position to say anything further from this podium at this time.”

Sullivan was later asked if he could tell Americans there’s nothing they have to worry about regarding the threat. He responded, “That question is impossible to answer with a straight yes.”

Democratic Rep. Jim Himes (CT) was quoted telling reporters “people should not panic” about the threat, suggesting it might not be as urgent as it was made out to be. He said, “It’s something that the Congress and the administration does need to address in the medium to long run,” The Hill’s Mychael Schnell reported on X.

On The Wall

For the 1,255 miles of the US-Mexico border that's made up of the Rio Grande, where exactly will Mr Trump's wall stand?

The border more or less runs right down the middle of the river - and you literally can't build the thing in the water.

So do you build it on the Mexico side?  Since Mexico doesn't want anything to do with our silly wall, it seems kinda doubtful they'll allow that.

But if we build it on the US side, then don't we kinda lose access to the river itself?

There's an awful lot of that riverfront that's private land.  Do you plan to condemn 100 or 500 or 1000 miles of private property thru Eminent Domain and then forcibly take possession of the land if necessary?

Maybe that's why the Trumpkinites have restarted the talk about a "Virtual Wall" or "Technological Wall" or a "Digital Wall".  Except that every time surrogates try to ameliorate anything, Trump comes back and either re-doubles down or flipflops and denies he ever said anything like that you must be crazy or you're dishonest and disgusting and I'd really like one of my guys to punch you right in the head no not really but maybe yeah kinda.

And in the meantime, we all just get to wait for whatever Trump has to say so this rolling clusterfuck can keep its death-grip on the news cycle.

He's got us all trained to sit here panting and wagging our furry tails like good little Press Poodles.

PoliticusUSA:

To the surprise of no one outside of those who voted for Trump in the Republican primary, the border wall was a lie. In fact, Republican members of Congress have been suggesting since Trump announced his plan to “build the wall” that they didn’t support it, and would not pass the appropriations needed to construct a wall.

Like cousin Trae said - here's hoping he dies in a tragic hairspray accident. And soon.

Just One Question

On the near-total, and at least borderline dangerous silliness of our GOP-Branded (and ConservaDem) "leaders" who're constantly flogging the Fear-Bishop, may I just ask, "Please, can you let us be a little less stoopid on this whole immigration/terrorism thing?"

I really do understand that an awful lot of Federal Spending is going into the pockets of an awful lot of "Security" contractors, who then turn around and graciously donate big piles of  campaign dollars to your SuperPACs (purely out of the generosity of their souls and their deep abiding sense of patriotism and civic duty, of course) and completely unrelated to the fact that you're pimping the paranoia every fucking day - but c'mon, guys, maybe leadership is about not treating us like we're all stoopid so we can have a better chance to stop acting like were all stoopid. 

Best Guess Last Year

Americans dead because of "terrorism":         30

Americans dead because of "accident": 110,000+ (top 5 preventable causes)

If we actually have people in Congress who really are concerned with spending tax dollars appropriately, and wisely, and with the intention of doing the most with the least, we'd have somebody standing up to tell us to stop losing our shit every time some faithless chickenshit asshole (hiding behind a mask because his 'god' is so great, and his cause is so just, and he's so fucking courageous) - every time that asshole threatens to kill us all with his big scary knife - from 6200 miles away; with a fucking knife.

They preach this phony Gospel of National Security and then pass the collection plate, and it works every time. We all hafta stop doin' that.

Punishing Success

A short item at NYT:

Authorities are trying to determine how a 16-year-old New Jersey boy sneaked past security at 1 World Trade Center and spent two hours early Sunday making his way to the top of the 1,776-foot tower, which is still under construction.

The boy, identified as Justin Casquejo of Weehawken, entered the construction site surrounding the tower through a 12-by-12-inch hole in the exterior fence, said Joe Pentangelo, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the building.

The teenager crawled through the hole around 4 a.m. and was caught about two hours later, Mr. Pentangelo said. A law enforcement source said Mr. Casquejo was arrested in the lobby. He was charged with criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor.

Mr. Casquejo admitted breaking into the site, according to a criminal complaint.

“I found a way up through the scaffolding, climbed onto the sixth floor, and took the elevator up to the 88th floor,” he said, according to the complaint. “I then took the staircase up to the 104th floor. I went to the rooftop and climbed the ladder all the way to the antenna.”

At least one security guard, whom Mr. Pentangelo described as “inattentive,” was fired. It was unclear if any other security personnel were at the site.
Though Mr. Casquejo seemed to be nothing more than a young thrill seeker, the breach raised questions about the level of security at the site, which largely remains a construction zone more than 12 years after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 destroyed the original World Trade Center.

“We take security and these type of infractions extremely seriously and will prosecute violators,” Joseph Dunne, the Port Authority’s chief security officer, said in a statement. “We continue to reassess our security posture at the site and we are constantly working to make this site as secure as possible.”
Photos of Mr. Casquejo posted to his Twitter account show him and his friends scaling a crane overlooking the Manhattan skyline and posing on top of a bulldozer at a construction site. One photo shows someone doing a flip from a bridge into the water. He describes himself at one point as part of a parkour team, a reference to the gravity-defying urban sport that sometimes involves scaling buildings and other high structures.

Mr. Casquejo’s exploits were first reported by The New York Post.

Security is an illusion - and the more effort any given government exerts to "keep us safe", the more it fails to provide anything other than profits for contractors, way too much power for a buncha dopes with badges and low SAT scores, and a relentless corrosion of civil liberties for everybody else.

Huge hat tip to The Rude Pundit, who put the NYT bit together with MH370 to give us this:

3/21/2014

Reminders of How Small We Are: MH370 and Justin Casquejo

You can bet that there will be a movie made about 16-year-old Justin Casquejo. When the kid from Weehawken, New Jersey (the town where Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton dueled to the death), got to the top of the unopened 1 World Trade Center in order to take photos to post to Twitter, he was following an impulse that in other times made people conquer mountains and rivers, doing the impossible for the first time. Imagine the view he had, alone, at the very end of night, at the very beginning of sunrise, on top of the tallest building in the country. He also demonstrated, probably unwittingly, just how tenuous, how permeable, how human our belief in security is.

If you've been to the 9/11 Memorial, you know that you have to pass through ridiculous levels of security. If you came in from New Jersey on the PATH train, you no doubt walked past soldiers armed with rifles. You had to get your ticket in advance in order for someone to check if your name is on any watch list. You had to go through a metal detector and a possible pat-down. While you were walking around the cascading pools, you couldn't help but see all the guards and police. This place, you are shown in absolutely certain terms, will not be attacked again, at least not by someone on foot. Apparently, though, not so much for the construction site that's still up around the nearly-complete skyscraper.

Often we must learn a simple lesson through violence - that schools aren't built to prevent shootings, that airplanes can be taken over with razor blades - and then we react and believe we have come up with a way to keep us safe. But, as further violence demonstrates, that safety, security in a larger sense, is a lie.

What Justin Casquejo did in the innocent, adolescent, brave, and stupid act of sneaking through a fence was to show us how meaningless our security apparatus is, how we've given over so much of our freedom to a fraud, to a thin veneer of protection that was punctured by a kid with a camera. It was, in its way, the gentlest act of terrorism one could commit. We are one sleeping guard away from anarchy. And it should be humbling not just to those who are supposed to keep us safe, but to all of us. By scaling the tower, Casquejo brought us to earth.

An even greater humbling is occurring in the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. It is, without a doubt, an unendurably awful vigil for the families of the 239 passengers and crew. Putting aside the ghoulish news network coverage of the search, let us instead see the inability to find a large jet plane as a moment for sublime wonder along with the very real suffering of very real people. The loss of a plane filled with electronics and devices that are supposed to make it near-impossible to lose is another kind of humbling, another demonstration of our limits.

We live, we are told, in a shrinking world, a world where data and technology are erasing old barriers to knowledge and to understanding, to the distance between people. But sometimes an event occurs that shows us just how huge and mysterious the planet actually is. In a time when Google Earth can let us see individual trees in an African jungle, when one can go thousands of miles in a few hours of flying, the fact that hundreds of people and a large object can disappear reinstills a long-gone sense of awe at the immensity of the world, especially of the oceans. Imagine this for a moment, too: We might not find Flight 370, perhaps not in our lifetimes, perhaps not ever, because the earth is just that big.

That's the takeaway from this: We still don't know what we're doing. It's the tragic and lovely thing about humans, that we often believe we have a grasp, that we have control, even when we have constant reminders that it's an illusion.

More TSA Follies

Tax Dollars Hard At Work

Nude Body Scans Made Worthless - Watch More Funny Videos

Way Smart

From Juan Cole.

Security Theater

By way of Andrew Sullivan's blog, Conor Friedersdorf referenced a piece from KTRK-TV in Houston.

Experts say every year since the September 11 attacks, federal agencies have conducted random, covert tests of airport security. A person briefed on the latest tests tells ABC News the failure rate approaches 70 percent at some major airports. Two weeks ago, TSA's new director said every test gun, bomb part or knife got past screeners at some airports.

TSA is a monument to the idea of throwing good money after bad.  Somebody please make them stop.

Security Theater

Previously, I posted a thought that I might do a little passive resistance to TSA bullying by insisting on having a woman do my pat-down.

Here's another suggestion.  When the agent gets to this position - fart.

Security Theater

I really hope this continues to get even more interesting. I want very much for this to be "the tipping point", but I'm afraid we'll bitch about it (while it's hip and popular to bitch about it) for the standard four or five days, and then just learn to live with it. And it'll pass into being just one more thing the historians will include in the many reasons the USA finally broke down and took its place among all the other failed empires.