Politics

Submitted by Michael Klare via TomDispatch.com,

Tensions continue to escalate between the US and Russia. As a reminder, Russia conducted several close encounter fly-bys when first a Russian Su-24 "buzzed" the US missile destroyer USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea, and just days later flew within 50 feet of a US recon plane also flying over the Baltic Sea. The U.S. quickly responded and complained vocally to Russia, followed quickly by the first deployment of US F-22 stealth fighter to Romania, in close proximity to both the Black Sea and 400 km from the Russian military stronghold of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula.

Last week a Russian Air Force MiG-31 jet intercepted a US surveillance plane near Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, flying within 15 meters of the aircraft. Kamchatka is Russia’s main military hub in the Pacific with several military bases located there, along with a major naval base. Washington downplayed the incident and said the maneuver was carried out in a “safe and professional” manner. Russia Today reports: The MiG-31 (NATO code name Foxhound) is a Soviet-design supersonic interceptor, the world’s fastest aircraft in service today.

Fred Kaplan picked up on another line from Trump’s foreign policy speech that I noticed when I was listening to it yesterday:

And there were the bombastic pronouncements with no basis whatsoever. “The world is more dangerous than it has ever been.” (Think about that claim for one minute, and you’ll see how absurd it is.)

This was my response yesterday:

"More dangerous now than it has ever been" This is a flat-out lie. It's delusional, but also a standard line in D.C.

Not only is Donald Trump likely to gather the most votes of any GOP Presidential nominee ever, having swept the East Coast and crushed the anti-Trump alliance between Kasich and Cruz even before it made the news cycle; but now, as Reuters reports, the GOP establishment faces an ever bigger problem. Wealthy, well-educated voters helped carry the Republican front-runner to victory this week - a demographic the famously blunt-spoken billionaire had struggled to attract in the past.