Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Supreme Victory by Trump at High Court

THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly

“Very grateful for the 9-0 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. We must keep America SAFE!” Trump tweeted in celebration of the biggest victory by a president in the Supreme Court in a generation.

Every Supreme Court Justice, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, voted to uphold the essence of President Trump’s executive order keeping dangerous foreigners from entering our country.  Not one Justice endorsed the allegation that Trump somehow violated the First Amendment by discriminating against Muslim visitors from Syria, Somalia, and other dangerous countries.

This is a stunning reversal of fortune for the Left not seen since Election night.  The American Civil Liberties Union, which had publicly threatened President Trump to “see you in court,” saw its dreams of judicial activism go up in smoke as the activist rulings by lower federal courts were effectively nullified.

All nine Justices on the High Court joined a “per curiam” opinion striking down the essence of the rulings against Trump by the Fourth and Ninth Circuits.  Trump’s prediction that he would win before the Supreme Court came true, just as many of his other predictions have been fulfilled despite media insistence otherwise.

“The interest in preserving national security is an urgent objective of the highest order.”  So declared the Court, using tweet-like wording that President Trump himself might have sent out over Twitter to his 32 million-strong audience.

Shortly after Trump became president he issued Executive Order No. 13780, entitled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” but judicial activism has prevented it from ever going into effect.  This long-awaited ruling by the High Court on Monday was a welcome comeuppance to the activist judges who had blocked the so-called “travel ban” against immigration by potential terrorists.

The Supreme Court ruling never used the phrase “travel ban,” because Trump merely suspended for 90 days the entry of foreigners from six countries associated with terrorism.  As Trump explained while campaigning, a suspension makes sense “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on” with the radical Muslims who commit terrorist attacks against innocent citizens.

By ruling for Trump, the Court may have really been averting a constitutional crisis for itself.  President Trump reminds many of President Andrew Jackson, who reportedly responded to a ruling against him on an Indian issue by saying that the Chief Justice “has made his decision, now let him enforce it!”

The Constitution does not give the federal judiciary the power to enforce any of its rulings.  Instead, federal courts depend entirely on the good will of the Executive Branch, which is under the control of President Trump, to implement court decisions.

This inherent check-and-balance on overreaching by federal courts may help explain why the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts and gave Trump a much-deserved win.  Even liberal justices on the Supreme Court agreed to issue a ruling for President Trump, which he is willing to enforce.

This unanimous Court decision authorizes President Trump to suspend travel from the six countries associated with terrorism by any “foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

The “bona fide relationship” must be significant, the Court explained.  “For individuals, a close familial relationship is required,” the Court emphasized. 

“A foreign national who wishes to enter the United States to live with or visit a family member,” like someone’s wife or mother-in-law, would qualify.  But weaker connections should not.

Three of the Supreme Court Justices wrote separately to say that Trump should have been given even more leeway to exclude dangerous aliens.  This group included recently-confirmed Justice Neil Gorsuch, who joined a strong opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas in favor of Trump.

Headlines failed to give Trump credit for his landslide victory, and instead spoke in terms of the Supreme Court scheduling these cases for fuller consideration during its next term, which begins in October.  But the Court ruling requires that the essence of the Executive Order by Trump go into effect almost immediately.

The very same day that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trump, a district court in San Antonio considered a challenge to a good new law in Texas banning sanctuary cities.  In refreshing contrast with the Obama Administration, Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions has Justice Department attorneys in that case to support the State of Texas and its stance against sanctuary cities.

Opponents of laws against immigration often cite a phony discrimination argument, as though keeping terrorists and illegal aliens out of our country would somehow constitute improper discrimination.  The Supreme Court decision in favor of Trump notably omitted giving any credence to the anti-Trump psychobabble about Trump’s supposed “animus” towards Muslims. 

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6, 2016.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Monday, June 26, 2017

Hilarious new feminist web site

Sometimes it is hard to tell if feminists are serious or not. There is new feminist web site, Medusa Magazine, that is explicit about taking feminist ideas to their logical conclusions. I don't know if they are serious or not, but the site is hilarious regardless.

One article is titled: Beyond Pro-Choice: The Solution to White Supremacy is White Abortion. Okay, maybe not everyone will find this funny.

Saturday, June 24, 2017

The Passing of the Pelosi Era

Pat Buchanan wrote a column criticizing Nancy Pelosi Democrats, and with a shout-out to Phyllis Schlafly:
Prediction: Democrats will not go into the 2018 Congressional elections with San Fran Nan as the party’s face and future. No way. As President Kennedy said, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”

Post-Trump, it is hard to see Republicans returning to NAFTA-GATT free-trade globalism, open borders, mass immigration or Bushite crusades for democracy. A cold realism about America’s limited power and potential to change the world has settled in. ...

After narrow presidential defeats, major parties have often taken a hard turn back toward their base.

After Richard Nixon lost narrowly to JFK in 1960, the Republican right blamed his “me-too” campaign, rose up and nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. A choice, not an echo.
Nominating Trump was, in part, a response to the weakness of the Romney 2012 campaign.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Trump: Even Better at 150 Days

THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump’s accomplishments in his first 150 days have been drowned out in the media by their obsession with Russia and the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.  When combined with the lack of significant action by Congress, it’s easy to mistakenly think the Trump agenda is stalled. 

In fact, the Trump Administration has continued to carry out the policies Trump campaigned on. Here are a few examples of progress on Trump’s signature issues of immigration, jobs, and trade.

On June 15, DHS secretary John F. Kelly rescinded the Obama amnesty known as DAPA that had been ruled illegal by the federal courts.  DAPA would have legalized about 4 million people solely because they were parents of anchor babies. 

Some wondered why the earlier Obam-nesty called DACA wasn’t rescinded at the same time, but Kelly’s statement included a veiled warning about that, too.  In a little-noticed footnote, Kelly warned that “deferred action, as an act of prosecutorial discretion, may only be granted on a case-by-case basis” — not the wholesale legalization of 700,000 so-called Dreamers. 

On June 19, DHS announced that the government is finally ready to deploy a method of tracking whether visitors leave the United States.  That’s been the missing piece to determine if people who arrive on temporary visas actually leave when they’re supposed to.

It’s been more than 20 years since Congress ordered the government to install an entry-exit tracking system, but the last three administrations (Clinton, Bush and Obama) failed to get it done.  As a result, millions of people checked into our country under the pretense of a temporary visit and never checked out.

Last month, the DHS inspector general reported on a massive backlog of 1.2 million expired visa cases. Some 416,500 people overstayed their visas in 2015, but only 2,456 were deported that year.

Donald Trump promised to remove the “bad hombres” from our country, and he is carrying out that promise.  Arrests and deportations of criminal aliens, including members of the MS-13 gang based in Central America, were up 38 percent in the first 100 days, compared with the last year of the Obama administration.

Part of the reason is simply the new tone set from the top.  When Attorney General Jeff Sessions visited the border at Nogales, Arizona in April, he forthrightly declared:  “This is a new era.  This is the Trump era.”

Federal law enforcement, however, is meeting resistance from Democratic state and local officials.  Their commitment to a policy of sanctuary for illegal aliens is illustrated by two recent crimes in the Washington, D.C. area: the rape of a 14-year-old girl in a public school bathroom in Rockville, Maryland, and the brutal murder of a 17-year-old Muslim girl in Reston, Virginia.

The sex attack in the school bathroom caused an uproar until it was revealed that the two attackers came from Guatemala and El Salvador as part of the wave of 100,000 unaccompanied minors who illegally crossed our southern border in 2014.  Then the local prosecutor found an excuse to drop charges against the young men.

The murder of the Virginia girl as she was leaving a mosque during Ramadan was initially described as an Islamophobic hate crime.  After it was revealed that the accused is an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, who killed the girl by beating her with a metal baseball bat, police demoted the crime to road rage.

Some critics gloated that Trump was blocked from building the wall he promised on our southern border when Congress refused to appropriate the money.  The media found a few private landowners near the border who say they don’t want their property used for a wall.

In fact, advance work on the wall is under way, and the government already owns or controls the most vulnerable 700 miles of the 1,954-mile border.  Only 36 of those miles have the barrier required by the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which then-Senator Barack Obama voted for.

On jobs and trade, since cancelling the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in his first week in office, President Trump has taken a number of steps to use his presidential trade powers to put America first.

Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are not afraid of being accused of “starting a trade war.”  As Secretary Ross recently told the Wall Street Journal, the United States has been in a trade war since the end of World War Two, and it’s time we started fighting to win.

Trump served notice that he’s willing to cite “national security” as a basis for better trade agreements, as current law allows.  Finally we have a president who recognizes that our national security is threatened by opening floodgates to unlimited imports of manufactured goods from countries that generally do not buy our exports.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.



Sunday, June 18, 2017

NY Times trashes dads on Fathers Day

Philip Greenspun writes:
In a recent NYT piece, “Why Fathers Leave Their Children,” I think that he [David Brooks] has outdone himself. He looks at a phenomenon that is roughly 3 percent of GDP and never considers that cash incentives might influence behavior.

My comment on the piece:

Touching sentiments, but hard to see how they can be squared with statistics. Compared to other developed countries with no-fault divorce, the United States has roughly twice the percentage of children living without both parents. In winner-take-all jurisdictions within the U.S., such as New York, Massachusetts, California, roughly 75 percent of divorce/custody lawsuits are filed by women (and, in more than 90 percent of the cases, the court declares that the mother will be the primary or “winner” parent). “fathers abandon their own children”? That’s a touching story, but if you look at what actually happens a better summary is “fathers discarded by courts as secondary parents”.

A shorter summary would be “If you set up a family law system in which the only thing that you want from fathers is cash, probably cash is the main thing that you’re going to get from fathers.”
Yes, of course, financial incentives make a difference in this, as in everything else.

Every year, Father's Day brings us messages blaming fathers for all sorts of things, many of which are created by bad social policies.

Friday, June 16, 2017

Trump-hater attorney cannot handle phone calls

I pointed out how major newspapers were treating James Comey like an insecure woman whining about trivialities, and now the Wash Post reports:
Preet Bharara, a prominent former U.S. attorney ousted by President Trump, said Sunday that he reported to the Justice Department efforts by the president to “cultivate some kind of relationship” with him, describing phone calls from Trump that made him increasingly uncomfortable.

In a television interview, Bharara said he reported one of the phone calls to the chief of staff for Attorney General Jeff Sessions because it made him uneasy. He said he was dismissed from the important prosecutor’s job in Manhattan only 22 hours after he finally refused to take a call from the president.
Bharara was born in India. I am pretty sure that in India, the USA, and everywhere else, refusing to take a phone call from the boss gets you fired. The guy seems to have a guilty conscience about being a Trump-hater with a plan to undermine the administration.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Hyde Amendment Showdown on Obamacare

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The Hyde Amendment has long been the single most important pro-life legislation at the federal level, originally enacted in 1976 and upheld on a 5-4 vote by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980. The amendment, which is an annual rider to the federal budget, prohibits the use of federal taxpayer dollars to fund abortion.

The late Congressman Henry Hyde, an ally of Phyllis Schlafly from Illinois, championed this ban against forcing taxpayers to subsidize abortion at the federal level. This prohibition has been a mainstay of the Republican National Platform for decades, where Phyllis and Henry worked together tirelessly to preserve this pro-life plank of the GOP.

But it is in jeopardy now, as opponents of the unborn want Republican Senators to accept federal funding of abortion and thereby ostracize the pro-life issue from the halls of the Capitol. The Senate is secretly plotting, behind closed doors, to “repeal and replace” Obamacare without including a ban on taxpayer-funded abortion, and pro-life organizations are being told to accept it.

The pro-life issue is a thorn in the side of the Senate leadership, as it interferes with their desire to pass what they want without regard for the interests of the unborn. The pro-life issue hampers the cronyism preferred by senators who want to pick their friends, rather than pro-life nominees, to fill the more than 100 vacancies on the federal judiciary.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a career politician who has been in the Senate for more than three decades, just gave his buddy Amul Thapar a lifetime appointment on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, despite the lack of any pro-life record by Judge Thapar. Meanwhile, McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, became one of the first confirmed Cabinet members back in January, without the resistance by senators which nearly every other nominee of President Trump received.

While McConnell held prompt votes for his family and friends, he does everything he can to duck and avoid the pro-life issue, while pretending to be for the unborn at election time. Other senators also brag about having a so-called “100% pro-life voting record,” but that is only because they doggedly prevent any real votes from occurring on the issue.

Despite the pro-life mandate by the electorate last November, federal taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood has continued with no end in sight, even after the shocking revelations of atrocities committed against the unborn by that organization. McConnell rushed through a continuing resolution in April that gave the pro-abortion side everything they wanted on the issue.

The House version to repeal and replace Obamacare, which passed on May 4, eliminated some of its worst parts and also prohibited the use of taxpayer funds to subsidize abortion under Obamacare. But senators are quietly attempting to remove that ban in the version they seek to pass by July 4.

As senators often do whenever the issue of abortion comes up, they try to deflect the issue to someone else to decide it for them. This time they outsourced the most important decision about the continuation of the Hyde Amendment to an unelected lawyer named Elizabeth MacDonough, who is the Senate parliamentarian.

The Senate can defer as much or as little as it likes to the parliamentarian. But the Senate leadership wants her to say that the Hyde Amendment cannot be part of a reconciliation bill and that it can be filibustered by the Democratic minority.

McConnell showed that he can override the filibuster when he wants to, as he did in obtaining confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. The spectacle of McConnell and other Senate leaders trying to hide behind the skirt of an obscure parliamentarian to avoid voting on abortion is silly.

Obamacare, formally called the Affordable Care Act, subsidizes the purchase of health plans that cover abortion. But Americans are overwhelmingly against compelling taxpayers to subsidize abortion, which is not health care.

If Senate leaders think they will be able to avoid the issue of abortion by deferring to a parliamentarian, they are sorely mistaken. In September the money runs out and another continuing resolution will be required to avoid a government shutdown.

It was widely perceived on both sides of the aisle that Democrats walked all over Republicans in the last continuing resolution, not merely on abortion but on other issues, too. President Trump has vowed to avoid a repeat of that fiasco again this fall.

Standing strong for the Hyde Amendment is essential to millions of pro-life Americans, so that they are not compelled to fund the taking of innocent life in the womb. Any “repeal and replace” of Obamacare that does not preserve the 40-year tradition of the Hyde Amendment in prohibiting federal taxpayer-funded abortion would constitute an abdication of the pro-life principles of the Republican Party.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6, 2016.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Monday, June 12, 2017

Feminists portray Comey as pathetic

Fox News reports:
It was pretty much inevitable. Once you propose the theme of James Comey as a sexual harassment victim as happened in the New York Times, it was almost certain that the next step would be a comparison of him to Anita Hill. And it sure didn't take long. The June 9 Washington Post, followed a day later by the Los Angeles Times, have already gone with that comparison.

The Washington Post article by Christine Emba takes a rather embarrassing stab at Comey's manhood in its title, Mr. Comey, what were you wearing that night?
Hill is famous, of course, for telling some embarrassing and implausible stories in congressional testimony as part of a Democrat plot to sabotage the nomination of her mentor. At first she appeared to be lying, and then she appeared to be suffering from some sort of mental illness as well.

Maybe we should just forget about Comey. It has become painfully obvious that he lacks the necessities to be an FBI Director. Trump tried to give him a chance, but he should have been fired a long time ago.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Bernie Sanders berates Christian nominee

The Atlantic magazine reports:
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” On Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders flirted with the boundaries of this rule during a confirmation hearing for Russell Vought, President Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. ...

During the hearing, Sanders repeatedly quoted one passage that he found particularly objectionable:
Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.
“In my view, the statement made by Mr. Vought is indefensible, it is hateful, it is Islamophobic, and it is an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world,” Sanders told the committee during his introductory remarks. “This country, since its inception, has struggled, sometimes with great pain, to overcome discrimination of all forms … we must not go backwards.” ...

It was a remarkable moment: a Democratic senator lecturing a nominee for public office on the correct interpretation of Christianity in a confirmation hearing putatively about the Office of Management and Budget.
The article does not mention it, but Sanders is Jewish.

Apparently this is what religious tolerance means to the Left today. It means we cannot tolerate a budget official who believes in salvation thru Jesus Christ, because the Muslims might be offended.

Friday, June 9, 2017

Comey compared to an insecure woman

A NY Times op-ed compares James Comey to a woman complaining about sexual harassment:
At a White House ceremony on Jan. 22, Mr. Comey reportedly tried to blend in with the curtains, so that he would not be noticed by the president. Mr. Trump called to him and pulled him, unwilling, into a hug. What woman has not tried to remain invisible from an unwelcome pursuer’s attentions?

To this series of bizarre interactions, in which he faced escalating pressure, Mr. Comey reacted with rising anxiety and distress. Time after time, Mr. Trump reverted to his questionable agenda, and Mr. Comey, at each pass, tried to parry the president’s unwanted advances. ...

Victims of sexual harassment often face skepticism, doubts and accusations when they tell their story. That’s part of the predator’s power. But I’m here to tell James Comey, and all the women and men who have suffered at the hands of predators, I believe you.
If this is a spoof, it is brilliant. I am not sure if it is making fun of Comey, or of those who read sexual messages into everything, or of the women who naively believe all other complaining women.

Update: In case you think all women have the same view, this one says:
Nowadays, I’d be positively overjoyed by the attention. ...

Trust me, there is only one thing worse than attracting unwanted attention, and that’s attracting no attention at all. ...

That is the awful irony. Young women have it all, but don’t know it; older women know it all, but no longer have it. Somewhere in between, there’s a golden moment when it all comes together. But blink and you’ll miss it.

Thursday, June 8, 2017

Comey deserved to get fired

James Comey's testimony shows that he deserved to be fired. He has little respect for the authority of the President. He was not willing to honestly report to his superiors on the activities of his department. He has no regrets about the Clinton email investigation, which most Republicans and Democrats agree was bungled. He subscribes to kooky Russian conspiracy theories. He appears to have joined forces with Trump-haters who leak documents and commit other illegal acts to undermine the Trump administration. He was going to spend 4 years causing unnecessary trouble for the President.

Trump thinks like a CEO, and a CEO would not put up with a department head with Comey's attitude.

Comey talked about how the Russians tried to influence the election, but most of that evidence, as documented by the intelligence agencies, consisted of broadcasts by the RT television network critical of the Obama administration. The Democrats and the deep state are apparently very unhappy that they cannot control 100% of the press.

It is not against the law for the President to say that someone is a good guy, or to hope that someone will be cleared. Flynn had already been fired, and Trump had no need to stop an investigation of him for failing to file some paperwork, or whatever he is accused of. Trump was just doing the honorable thing by vouching for Flynn.

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Trump Should Call His Opponents’ Bluff

THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly 

An important reason why Phyllis Schlafly enthusiastically supported Donald Trump for president was because, in her words, “He has fight in him.”  Nearly every day he proves that to be true, most recently with his tweets in support of his travel ban from terrorism-associated countries.

Not since Ronald Reagan have we had a conservative president like Trump who “has fight in him” to stand up for the security and prosperity of ordinary Americans.  So many other politicians cave into whatever the media want.

After the press criticized Trump all day Monday, June 5th, for some early-morning tweets by Trump in support of his travel ban, by evening Trump demonstrated that he was undeterred by comments from the peanut gallery.  He came out swinging with another tweet after hours:  “That’s right, we need a TRAVEL BAN for certain DANGEROUS countries, not some politically correct term that won’t help us protect our people!”

Oh, how refreshing it is to have a president who does not kowtow to the liberal media and the D.C. establishment who think they run our country.  Trump is fighting to win on his travel ban, and on many other issues near and dear to the hearts of average Americans.

The story line from the media is that President Trump’s most recent tweets will hurt his court case, which has reached the U.S. Supreme Court with an expedited briefing schedule.  Even his supporters think Trump’s out-of-court statements via Twitter will be considered by the Supreme Court Justices.

But Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Deputy White House Press Secretary who is also the daughter of the twice-presidential conservative candidate Mike Huckabee, was splendid in fielding hostile questions from the press about President Trump’s repeated use of Twitter.  She observed that Trump “has over 100-plus million contacts through social media, on all those platforms” including Twitter.

“I think it’s a very important tool for him to be able to utilize,” she added.  When asked if Trump’s tweets are vetted by an attorney, she candidly and unapologetically replied, “Not that I’m aware of.”

The President of the United States should not need to have his comments vetted by an attorney before speaking directly with the American people.  Alexander Hamilton promised that the judiciary would be the “weakest” of our three branches of government, and the President has as much authority as all nine Supreme Court Justices combined.

That is what our Constitution provides, and that is what our Founders intended.  The idea that President Trump shouldn’t speak directly to the American people without having his remarks vetted by an attorney shows how far the political power structure has strayed from its constitutional moorings.

Less than a year ago, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a series of off-the-cuff remarks critical of Trump, calling him a “faker” and even musing that she might “move to New Zealand” if he were elected.  No one suggested then that Ginsburg’s comments should have been vetted by the Chief Justice before she spoke.

The same people who gave Ginsburg a pass for her intemperate remarks about Trump when he was a candidate are now saying that as President of the United States, Trump should be more careful how he says things, lest the supposedly supreme power of the judiciary punish him for it.

Contrary to the media, Trump should be free to share his views on litigation strategy with the American people whom he represents as our duly elected president.  There's no confidentiality protecting such communications, but courts are not supposed to be in the business of ruling against a newly elected president as he works overtime to protect national security and fulfill the campaign pledge upon which he was elected.

As statements out-of-court, Trump’s tweets to the American people would not be admissible on appeal under traditional rules of evidence.  The Supreme Court does not ordinarily hear testimony, and it should not allow the proceeding to be distorted by the introduction of numerous out-of-court statements through legal papers.

Opponents of the travel ban have bragged about using Trump’s statements against him in court.  Trump should call their bluff, and offer to testify before the Supreme Court to explain fully how necessary his travel ban is to protect the American people against a replay of what is happening in London.

The Supreme Court, of course, would decline Trump’s offer.  It should also decline to base its decision on snippets quoted without telling the full story.  

“At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” Trump said of the recent massacre in London.  Don’t expect the adversaries of Trump to emphasize that quotation in court.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6, 2016.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.


Monday, June 5, 2017

Iranian-American Trump hater

WND reports:
After Donald Trump posted a tweet Saturday urging “smart, vigilant and tough” actions in response to the London Bridge attack, CNN host Reza Aslan, best known for his multicultural human brain-eating stunt, labeled the president “a piece of sh–” in a retaliatory post. ...

Aslan posted and has since removed his uncensored tweet, which stated:

“This piece of sh– is not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He’s an embarrassment to humankind.”

Sunday afternoon, Aslan posted an apology for his obscene outburst.
Aslan is mainly known for a Fox News interview where he got caught lying repeatedly about his credentials and purposes, and for writing books with his own re-interpretations of Christianity and Islam. He is Islamic, and he argues that Islam is a the religion of peace and that Jesus Christ was the one who preached warfare.

He has not apologized for lying about his credentials, or for lying about Christianity.

Saturday, June 3, 2017

India wants differentiated responsibilities

A view from India of the Paris Accord:
The climate change debate, right from the start, has been based on ‘differentiated’ responsibilities of developed and developing countries in taking actions to deal with it. This is because the greenhouse gas emissions since the beginning of the industrial revolution till about the 1980s had come predominantly from the developed countries. They had a “historical responsibility” for polluting the atmosphere, and warming the planet, and, therefore, a greater responsibility to take steps to mitigate the impacts, the developing countries have argued.

This argument became the basis of the famous ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ (CBDR) principle that was enshrined in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of 1992.

The UNFCCC also divided the world into two very neat parts — the countries that had “historical responsibility” and those that did not. The first were put in an annexure, Annex-I of the UNFCCC document, while the others came to be known as non-Annex countries.

The Kyoto Protocol, the existing international arrangement on climate change which the agreement from Paris will replace in 2020, was based on these principles of CBDR and ‘historical responsibilities’ and had assigned specific emission reduction targets for Annex-I countries.

The agreement from Paris does not have a single mention of ‘historical responsibility’ or to Annex-I and non-Annex countries, though it does emphasise the principle of CBDR at several places.

“The agreement has deep links with the Convention (UNFCCC) and CBDR is imbibed in it. More importantly, differentiation of developed and developing countries is mentioned across all the elements of the agreement, in mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, capacity building and transparency. That is very important,” India’s Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said.
In other words, the agreement is going to let China and India have the biggest growth in CO2 emissions, while the USA has to cut back.

Friday, June 2, 2017

Yes, Trump is a Republican

Leftist writer Jonathan Rauch writes in a WashPost blog:
Why did the voters put Donald Trump, of all people, in the Oval Office? ...

Trump hijacked a party to which he did not, in any meaningful sense, belong. (And still doesn’t.)
If he does not see what Trump has to do with the Republican Party, then he will never understand why the voters elected him.

Trump ran as a Republican, and was nominated by Republicans. That is enuf to make him a Republican. Beyond that, he has taken Republican policy positions on judges, immigration, taxes, regulation, health care, and many other issues. These positions are well-known, and are precisely why the Democrats hate him so much.

When Trump started campaigning two years ago, a lot of pundits were not sure what to make of him. What is there excuse now?

At this point, Trump is as Republican as anyone. Those not supporting him might not be Republicans.