The Very Stable Genius's definition of negotiation: Okay, here's how it's going to be

Okay, he has a valid point about the blatant violating of journalistic ethics by the betrayal of the understanding that his remarks were going to be off the record.

But you know what they say about character: it shows in how you behave when no one's looking.

I mean, why say this stuff to the reporter if you meant it to be some kind of secret that would die with you?

But leave it to the VSG to take as boneheaded an approach to a close ally as could be imagined:

High-stakes trade negotiations between Canada and the U.S. were dramatically upended on Friday morning by inflammatory secret remarks from President Donald Trump, after the remarks were obtained by the Toronto Star.

In remarks Trump wanted to be “off the record,” Trump told Bloomberg News reporters on Thursday, according to a source, that he is not making any compromises at all in the talks with Canada — but that he cannot say this publicly because “it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal.”

“Here’s the problem. If I say no — the answer’s no. If I say no, then you’re going to put that, and it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal ... I can’t kill these people,” he said of the Canadian government.

In another remark he did not want published, Trump said, according to the source, that the possible deal with Canada would be “totally on our terms.” He suggested he was scaring the Canadians into submission by repeatedly threatening to impose tariffs.

“Off the record, Canada’s working their ass off. And every time we have a problem with a point, I just put up a picture of a Chevrolet Impala,” Trump said, according to the source. The Impala is produced at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ontario. 

Whatever other characterization applies to the VSG, "jerk" has to be one.

Beto, I can understand you not wanting these incidents to define you, but voters ought to know about 'em

More than we first knew about Beto O'Rourke's 1998 DUI:

It has long been a matter of public record that Beto O’Rourke was arrested for driving while intoxicated in 1998, but a police report recently obtained by the Houston Chronicle reveals that the Democratic Senate candidate crashed and tried to flee the scene before his arrest.

O’Rourke, then 26, was driving at “a high rate of speed” on a Texas highway roughly ten miles from the New Mexico border when he crashed into a truck and spun across the median into oncoming traffic. A witness whom O’Rourke passed shortly before crashing later told police he personally prevented O’Rourke from fleeing the scene. The unnamed witness “turned on his overhead lights to warn oncoming traffic and to try to get the defendant [O’Rourke] to stop,” according to the report.

The rising progressive star, who blew a 0.136 and a 0.134 on police breathalyzers, did not address the witness report that he tried to flee the scene in a statement released on Thursday.

“I drove drunk and was arrested for a DWI in 1998,” O’Rourke said. “As I’ve publicly discussed over the last 20 years, I made a serious mistake for which there is no excuse.”
Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is engaged in a tight race with O’Rourke, has not commented on the newly revealed details of his opponent’s arrest.

O’Rourke, the son of an El Paso County judge, was charged with driving while intoxicated following the incident but completed a court-ordered diversion program to ensure that the charges would be dismissed.

The DWI arrest was not O’Rourke’s only youthful run-in with law enforcement: He was also arrested for trespassing after hopping a fence at a University of Texas at El Paso facility.

The Texas congressman and Senate hopeful has cited his past wrongdoings in justifying his support for criminal-justice reform.

“Those mistakes did not ultimately define me or stop me from what I wanted to do in my life or how I wanted to contribute to the success of my family and my community,” O’Rourke wrote in an op-ed for the Chronicle published on Monday. 

I want LITD posts about O'Rourke between now and his defeat in November to mainly be about the contrast in ideas and principles between him and Ted, but this is important for everybody to know.

Leftists hate America - today's edition

Get ready to need a shower and a change of clothes, because the following is sure to induce a good puke:

The upcoming Neil Armstrong biopic "First Man," from "Whiplash" and "La La Land" director Damien Chazelle, premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday to rave reviews and early Oscar buzz. But the movie doesn't include a key scene in Armstrong's mission to the moon and an integral moment in American history. 

The movie omits the American flag being planted on the moon, and the movie's star Ryan Gosling, who plays Armstrong, defended the decision when asked about it at Venice (via The Telegraph). 

Gosling, who is Canadian, argued that the first voyage to the moon was a "human achievement" that didn't just represent an American accomplishment, and that's how Armstrong viewed it. 

"I think this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement [and] that's how we chose to view it," Gosling. "I also think Neil was extremely humble, as were many of these astronauts, and time and time again he deferred the focus from himself to the 400,000 people who made the mission possible."

Gosling added, "He was reminding everyone that he was just the tip of the iceberg — and that's not just to be humble, that's also true. So I don't think that Neil viewed himself as an American hero. From my interviews with his family and people that knew him, it was quite the opposite. And we wanted the film to reflect Neil." 

Gosling also joked that he's Canadian, so he "might have cognitive bias." 

"First Man" arrives in theaters October 12 and also stars "The Crown" star Claire Foy as Armstrong's wife, Janet. It currently has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

"I don't think that Neil viewed himself as an American hero. " Are you getting this dog vomit from something he said that would leave no other possible conclusion to be drawn? Some quote from an interview, or memoirs? If not, you're being damn presumptive, you vomit-inducing little punk.

The historical fact is that Armstrong planted the flag of the United States of America.

Man, I hope this gets a lot of discussion, at opinion sites, on social media, on radio and television.

Don't see this movie, people. It was made by morally crippled weirdos.

UPDATE: Gotta include Ben Shapiro's spot-on take on this:

 it’s telling that the Left seems to attribute every universal sin to America, and every specific victory to humanity as a whole. Slavery: uniquely American. Racism: uniquely American. Sexism: uniquely American. Homophobia: uniquely American. Putting a man on the moon: an achievement of humanity.

All of this is in keeping with a general perspective that sees America as a nefarious force in the world. This is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States view: that America’s birth represented the creation of a terrible totalitarian regime, but that Maoist China is the “closest thing, in the long history of that ancient country, to a people’s government, independent of outside control”; that Castro’s Cuba had “no bloody record of suppression,” but that the US responded to the “horrors perpetrated by the terrorists against innocent people in New York by killing other innocent people in Afghanistan.”

In reality, however, America remains the single greatest force for human freedom and progress in the history of the world. And landing a man on the moon was part of that uniquely American legacy.  

Don't go see this movie, and get your kids out of government schools, where they use Zinn's book as a history textbook.

This is what we mean by the Left wing war on Western civilization.

Thursday roundup

Everything Robert Reich says or writes is, without exception, completely idiotic, but he has outdone himself with his latest proposal:

Robert Reich isn’t merely a former cabinet secretary, he’s a Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law grad . . . You need some mighty elite education to produce something this embarrassing.

The only response to an unconstitutional presidency is to annul it. Annulment would repeal all of an unconstitutional president’s appointments and executive actions, and would eliminate the official record of the presidency.

Annulment would recognize that all such appointments, actions and records were made without constitutional authority…

After all, the Supreme Court declares legislation that doesn’t comport with the Constitution null and void, as if it had never been passed.

It would logically follow that the Court could declare all legislation and executive actions of a presidency unauthorized by the Constitution to be null and void, as if Trump had never been elected.

What does “eliminate the official record of the presidency” mean? In the presidential portrait gallery, there’ll just be a big question mark in a frame where number 45 should be?

Thinking about the chaos that would result if the courts suddenly nullified 18 months’ worth of executive branch action across all arms of the government makes me crave sedatives. The immigration tangle alone would be a mess of historic proportions. If only to avoid the bureaucratic red-tape apocalypse, SCOTUS would never go along with Reich’s suggestion. Plus, how could one hope to show that collusion was a but-for cause of Trump’s victory? Absent the Kremlin fiddling with vote totals, which no one has claimed, the counterargument will always be offered that collusion was essentially harmless error — an impeachable offense, sure, but by no means evidence in itself that Trump wouldn’t have won anyway without Putin’s help.

My recent posts about McCain have generated some spirited back-and-forth, and in the days since his passing, I've thought a great deal about just how much weight his basic and undeniable patriotism should be given vis-a-vis the hard-to-forgive moves - voting against "A"CA skinny repeal comes to mind - which is one way his pettiness and vindictiveness (granted, not uncommon traits in the world of politics) manifested itself. But this business of deciding before he passed who would and would not be welcome at his funeral, and putting his 2008 running mate Sarah Palin in the latter group stains his legacy not a week out from his death.  Especially juxtaposed against the fact that the Most Equal Comrade is going to deliver a eulogy.

LITD likes this: A trend is afoot whereby restaurants are starting to ban diners' use of cell phones at their tables.

What is the best way to proceed on this? Victor Davis Hanson at NRO says the VSG administration should declassify any and all documents pertaining to the Mueller probe.  On the other hand, Lee Smith at Real Clear Investigations sees reasons why the VSG continues to opt to not do so.

LITD and other outlets have had some titters over this year's Burning Man and how it's become stratified, ranging from the scroungy hippies to high-livin' types who have lobster flown in, and how rules of conduct for the Orgy Dome have become a point of focus. A piece in the SF Gate today looks over the gathering's entire history and makes clear that, from the outset, it's been a prime example of how bored and worn-out the counterculture - which some time ago really became the culture - is, and how full of themselves those who've been perpetuating it for the last 50-plus years are.

Michael R. Strain of the American Enterprise Institute gives a big thumbs down to Marco Rubio's idea of funding paid family leave by letting people take some of their Social Security build-up early.

Identity-politics jackboots never let an opportunity to baselessly accuse someone of racism, and they got right to work when Florida Pub gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis said this:

Florida elections are always competitive, and this is a guy who, although he’s much too liberal for Florida, I think he’s got huge problems with how he’s governed Tallahassee, he is an articulate spokesman for those far-left views, and he’s a charismatic candidate. I watched those Democrat debates, and none of that is my cup of tea, but he performed better than those other people there. So we’ve got to work hard to make sure that we continue Florida going in a good direction, let’s build off the success we’ve had on Governor Scott, the last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state. That’s not going to work.

You know exactly what word they pounced on, don't you? Of course, all normal people are going to roll their eyes at the ridiculousness of the attempt to impart a sinister motive, and so you'd think that the Dem candidate, Andrew Gillum - he of the proposal to raise the corporate tax rate to 40 percent - would have just quietly moved on to something substantive, but, no, he got in on the grandstanding.

And the kicking-around of the idea that perhaps DeSantis should have paused and searched for a term less susceptible to controversy makes me want to puke. That's rank capitulation to the jackboots.

I'd rather see more of the attitude of this guy at Facebook:

"We are a political monoculture that's intolerant of different views," Brian Amerige, a senior Facebook engineer, wrote in a post entitled "We Have a Problem with Political Diversity." The New York Times first obtained and reported on the post.

"We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology," Amerige charged. "We throw labels that end in *obe and *ist at each other, attacking each other's character rather than their ideas."

"We do this so consistently that employees are afraid to say anything when they disagree with what's around them politically," the engineer explained. "HR has told me that this is not a rare concern, and I've personally gotten over a hundred messages to that effect." On political issues like "'social justice,' immigration, 'diversity', and 'equality,'" Amerige warned, employees "can either keep quiet or sacrifice your reputation and career."

The engineer also noted events that demonstrated these fears are justified. "We tear down posters welcoming Trump supporters," he admitted. "We regularly propose removing [Peter] Thiel from our board because he supported Trump. We're quick to suggest firing people who turn out to be misunderstood, and even quicker to conclude our colleagues are bigots."

Amerige warned that Facebook has "made 'All Lives Matter' a fireable offense." He noted the "witch hunt" against Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, who was pressured to leave Facebook when news spread he had donated to an organization that spread memes against Hillary Clinton online. "We ask HR to investigate those who dare to criticize Islam's human rights record for creating a 'non inclusive environment.' And they called me a transphobe when I called out our corporate art for being politically radical," Amerige noted.

A former A&R person for Atlantic Records has written a memoir that gives a sordid account of Ahmet Ertegun's behavior that is, shall we say, unflattering.

Watching porn in the office, using dildos as decor, and executives bragging about the size of their manhood: This was the record industry before the age of MeToo. 

Dorothy Carvello, the first female A&R executive for Atlantic Records - the label responsible for bringing us musical legends such as Ray Charles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Aretha Franklin - was 24 years old when she landed a job as a secretary for founder Ahmet Ertegun.

The music mogul had a nightly routine which consisted of downing 14 vodka tonics, four lines of cocaine, two joints, and plenty of women.

And every morning, it was Carvello's job to clean the drugs and vomit off his clothes and track down at which clubs he had left his credit cards.  

Once again, we see that a singularly visionary shaper of American culture had flaws commensurate with his greatness. Another post about human sexuality and human nobility may be brewing.

The older I get - and I mean with each passing day - and the more I witness the exposure of great artists' dark sides (and Ertegun while certainly a businessman, was also an artist), cultures of animal-level hedonism within heretofore respected institutions of entertainment, journalism and even Christianity, and the pettiness and turf protection that so thoroughly permeates our government, the more I see that there is no substitute for turning ourselves toward - and turning ourselves over to - Lord Jesus:

. . . genuine Christianity thrives under hardship. This does not mean that we should welcome persecution and the erosion of religious liberty but rather that if they do come, we’ll be alright. 

Don’t be afraid. Don’t allow the politics of fear to control and consume you. 

Do you remember in the last presidential election when President Trump kept claiming that the system is rigged? He was right but in a completely different way than he was intending. 

If you are a Christian, the entire system of the universe if rigged in your favor. No matter who gets elected or what rights are recognized or taken away, everything ultimately works together for your good and God’s glory (Romans 8:18-39). 

So the next time you step into the booth, don’t vote scared. 

Vote like the citizen of another, better, eternally good kingdom. 

You have a living hope. 

No one can take it away.

A Brown University professor of behavioral and social sciences published an article in a respected journal presenting the findings of her study of rapid-onset gender dysphoria - in other words, the phenomenon of momentum gathering in the number of kids wanting to claim they resent the DNA they were born with, because it's this decade's cool thing to do - and, once the school realized what she quite objectively presented, it removed the article from news distribution.

Comrade Ocasio-Cortez can't stand the free market, but she'll sure avail herself of its fruits

Her innovation-hatred doesn't run so deep as to prevent her from hailing an Uber:

The Democratic Party’s socialist wunderkind has some explaining to do. 

On March 21, Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seized upon a yellow cab driver’s suicide in order to make a broader point about the economy. She blamed the death on ride-sharing companies like Uber, whose low prices and convenience have drawn many New Yorkers away from the yellow cabs they used to ride. 

“Yellow cab drivers are in financial ruin due to the unregulated expansion of Uber,” she tweeted. “What was a living wage job now pays under minimum. We need: To call Uber drivers what they are: employees, not contractors, fed jobs guarantee, prep for automation.”

But wait: The Ocasio-Cortez campaign has since spent an estimated $4,000 on 160 Uber ridesand $2,500 on more than 90 rides with a service called Juno, according to FEC data reviewed by Fox News. So, when it comes to political grandstanding, there's one standard; when it comes to getting places quickly and affordably, there's another. 

Ocasio-Cortez followed up her tweet about the cabbie's suicide with another on March 22, in which she argued that the city government must change "Uber laws" and address "the [cab] medallion crisis. Part of me wonders if the city should compensate medallion owners in some way, since their Uber rollout essentially penalized yellow cabs who followed licensing rules.” 

Asked whether there was any way to “apply pressure” so that “someone pays attention” to the tumbling value of cab medallions, Ocasio-Cortez responded by saying: “Yes. Drivers must organize to apply pressure on the city…. Sadly, some of these suicides have been committed in a way to shed light on the issue (one happened in his cab, with a note, in front of City Hall).” 

That was in March. Then came Ocasio's primary victory. 

The FEC documents detailing the Ocasio-Cortez campaign’s $6,500 worth of ride-sharing expenditures date between April and June. Spending reports from July and August won't become available until the end of September. 

As I've said before, I don't normally set a great deal of store by hypocrisy. It may be a human failing, but that's between the person doing the failing and his or her Lord. It tells us nothing about whether the principle in question is true or not.

But this one has huge public-policy implications. Society and the economy have moved on from the previous business model, the one based on outrageously expensive taxi medallions. Capital flows to where it's going to be most efficiently used. Uber and Lyft drivers freely choose to drive under the arrangement offered by those companies, and are for the most part happy - as are the riders, witness one New York Congressional campaign. Government needs to leave them alone.

And someone needs to inform Ms. Ocasio-Cortez that no one has a right to a particular kind of livelihood. It's one of those things, like health care or "clean" air and water, that it is impossible by definition to have a right to.

And I'm also not interested in revisiting Uber's history and recent remaking of its corporate culture. This stuff happens in a world where organizations reflect the fallen nature of those comprising them. The fact is that there is a market for what it's offering.

I will touch upon, however, the vulgarity of bringing a particular taxi driver's suicide into it.

Charming.

Pope Francis must clearly and forthrightly address this

In a piece at First Things entitled "Why Francis Must Speak," Gerald E. Murray lays out what's at stake:

How is it possible for Catholics to trust the supreme authority of the Church when that authority refuses to answer a fellow bishop's serious charges that the pope himself has done the very thing he previously condemned? How can journalists or anyone else make fully informed conclusions about the truthfulness of what Viganò says when the one man who can affirm or deny those charges refuses to say a word, at least for now? 

Recall what Francis said at Dublin Castle: “The failure of ecclesiastical authorities—bishops, religious superiors, priests and others—adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage, and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I myself share those sentiments (emphasis added).” 

The stunned outrage occasioned by Viganò’s allegations of papal malfeasance regarding the moral turpitude of ex-Cardinal McCarrick is unprecedented in my lifetime. McCarrick’s gross immorality and abuse of authority is a monumental “source of pain and shame for the Catholic community.” Even more stunning is Viganò’s account that Francis removed the penitential restrictions Benedict placed on McCarrick. Only Francis can explain the truth or falsehood of Viganò’s account. Not to do so is to leave the entire Church, and especially McCarrick's victims, with the impression that it does not matter that he was a predatory sex offender; he’s the pope’s friend, he is unaccountable, nothing and no one else matters.    

One great lesson of this scandal is that inflicting private and unpublicized penalties for grave offenses against chastity on “important” clerics is a huge mistake. When Benedict found McCarrick to be guilty as charged, the rest of the Church should have been told. McCarrick would not then have been able to pretend he was under no censure. Any violation of the terms of his punishment would have been noted by everyone and thus not allowed to happen. Then Cardinal McCarrick would not have been at the 2013 conclave, just as the Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien was not present due to his sexual abuse of adult males under his authority. 

Will the Viganò memo meet the same fate as the five Dubia on AmorisLaetitia submitted by Cardinal Burke et al.? For the good of the Church, the faithful must not let that happen. Francis should not be shown the misplaced charity of silence in response to his silence. Recall that Juan Barros would still be the bishop of Osorno, Chile, if the laity in particular had not kept insisting on the need to answer the question, “Why is this underserving man who failed to protect victims of sexual abuse by an important cleric (Fr. Fernando Karadima) still the bishop of a diocese?” This time the question is: “Did Pope Francis ignore and cover up McCarrick’s sexual abuse of seminarians, abuse made possible by McCarrick’s immoral use of his episcopal authority?” If the pope did this, by his own words he indicts himself. That question, prompted by Viganò’s eminently coherent account of his personal interactions with Francis, must be answered. Our pontiff must confirm the brethren in the truth by telling the Church what he knew and did regarding McCarrick. 

John O'Sullivan at National Review looks into what could have motivated Vigano:

Archbishop Viganò is a distinguished churchman. He is at the end of his career. He can have no this-wordly ambition. So what is he doing and why? Others more knowledgeable may offer better explanations, but I can suggest only four: Viganò is lying; he is sincere but mentally ill; he is an innocent manipulated by others; he is telling the truth in whole or in part.

The faithful need to know which explanation is correct. Given what we already know from the McCarrick case and the Pennsylvania grand-jury report, the fourth must be granted a real possibility. If so, it may still be that Viganò’s motives are corrupt — i.e., he wants to topple a liberal Pope. But if his charges are true, they are such a serious matter that his motives are of interest mainly to God. His statement must therefore lead to serious investigations, which, since the allegations involve crimes as well as sins, will inevitably be conducted by secular authorities as well as church ones. 

The Catholic Church serves, to a significant degree, as the lens through which the secularized West views Christianity in general. Dismissing this situation as less important than "climate change" or "protecting migrants" is tantamount to the Church, broadly speaking, saying to the world, "Even we don't take our own doctrine seriously, so don't worry about it. Whatever tattered remnants of what we've always called the Bride of Christ still exist are yours for the picking. You may find among them some useful tools in your social-justice machinations."

That's where the Devil finds his entry point.

The shameful media abetting of the secularizing of the Catholic Church

Ben Shapiro at Daily Wire looks at how ostensibly objective news outlets are handling the alleged papal coverup of the current scandal. They're treating the Catholic Church like it's some kind of public-policy organization with various factions, all having consideration-worthy claims on official position:

 . . . instead of tracking down Francis and his acolytes for answers on whether the church looked the other way regarding both homosexual activity within the church and abuse of minors, the media have rushed to Francis’ defense. Why? Because Francis is widely perceived to share Leftist sensibilities regarding issues like climate change, illegal immigration, and homosexuality.

Specific examples:

Take, for example, this headline from The New York Times: “Vatican Power Struggle Bursts Into Open as Conservatives Pounce.”

The scandal, you see, isn’t the head of the most powerful religious organization on the planet knowing about and covering for sexual abuses – it’s conservatives within the church calling him on it. Francis’ priorities must be maintained at all costs. The “news” piece opens this way:

Since the start of his papacy, Francis has infuriated Catholic traditionalists as he tries to nurture a more welcoming church and shift it away from culture war issues, whether abortion or homosexuality. “Who am I to judge?” the pope famously said, when asked about gay priests. Just how angry his political and doctrinal enemies are became clear this weekend, when a caustic letter published by the Vatican’s former top diplomat in the United States blamed a “homosexual current” in the Vatican hierarchy for sexual abuse. It called for Francis’ resignation, accusing him of covering up for a disgraced cardinal, Theodore E. McCarrick. With the letter — released in the middle of the pope’s visit to Ireland — an ideologically motivated opposition has weaponized the church’s sex abuse crisis to threaten not only Francis’ agenda but his entire papacy. 

Yes, the anger is clearly at Francis’ political positions, not the allegations that he covered for a child molester. Only the leftist press could come up with such a morally obtuse position. But the Left sees Francis as an actual weapon against doctrine within the Church, and so they’ll prop him up no matter the moral consequences. Better to have a Pope who says soft things about homosexual practices than a Pope who stands up to doctrinal abuses, including the abuse of minors, after all. Priorities are priorities.

It’s not just the Times pushing the “conservatives pounce” narrative. It’s Reuters as well. Here was their tweet: 

Defenders rally around pope, fear conservatives escalating war https://reut.rs/2Mzph5a 

Yes, it’s conservatives escalating the war, not the Pope allegedly covering for sexual abuse. If you ever thought the media’s agenda was the protection of kids rather than the promotion of a specific political agenda, you thought wrong.

 Our "mainstream" media outlets haven't the slightest use for Hebrews 4:12.

 

 

 

 

Pope Francis and his shills are doing serious damage to the Catholic Church

Skewed priorities much?

What you want from the moral leader of a billion Catholics when asked if he knew of abuse by a top cardinal is a “neither confirm nor deny” statement.

And what you want from one of his highest-ranking American prelates when asked if the Pope should be a bit more forthcoming is a pitiful attempt to change the subject. The Woke Pope is woke about every subject except one, it seems:

Tommy Tighe‏Verified account @theghissilent

"The Pope has a bigger agenda. He's got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church. We're not going to go down a rabbit hole on this." - Cardinal Cupich YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME  

CUPICH

The quote is accurate — see for yourself — but incomplete. Cupich went on to add when asked why he thought the Pope was taking such intense fire that his critics don’t like him … “because he’s a Latino.” If only he were a white European plausibly accused of turning a blind eye to molestation, this wouldn’t be happening.

Wait, the Pope is a white European by ancestry, born of two Italian immigrants in Argentina. Even the demagogic identity-politics defenses of him by his deputies are based on lies.

Something's terribly wrong when not only is a high-ranking clergyman attempting to deflect examination of the Pope's role, but doing so with environmental hooey and identity politics.

The big question, of course, concerns what God is up to here. How does spiritual warfare on an institutional level serve His end?

What is his plan for the continuing safeguarding of the indestructible truth?

 

 

The new trade deal with Mexico (and Canada?): less than meets the eye

Color Claude Barfield of the American Enterprise Institute less than impressed:

Here’s a quick and dirty reaction to the White House announcement that it has reached a preliminary North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) deal with Mexico, replete with President Trump’s usual hype: “A big day for trade, a big day for our country.” Five points (one positive, four negative):

(1) The best thing about the agreement — if it holds — is that it will remove the extreme uncertainty for businesses in all three NAFTA economies.

(2) The tentative “rules of origin” provisions for autos are an abomination — so complex and anti-competitive that they invite endless litigation and corruption (rules of origin govern what percentage of a final product must come from the three NAFTA nations).

(3) The old NAFTA dispute settlement system for investors has been gutted, leaving US industry and Congress with a huge dilemma as to whether to support the new pact.

(4) The auto/labor provisions (forcing Mexico to pay workers $16/hour for a number of jobs in Mexican auto plants, or four times the average hourly pay in Mexico) is a terrible precedent for mandating changes in domestic policy through a trade agreement.

(5) Where does this leave Canada and the evolved North American economic bloc? Trump is already referring to the deal as a US-Mexican agreement, with the possibility that Canada may be left out if it balks at the current terms. Some in Congress are already balking at this wholesale flouting of Congressional prerogatives.

From that depiction, it sure looks like more heavy-handed protectionism to me. I'll be scouting around for more reactions.

For instance, this is going to separate the economically literate from those grandstanding about a "good deal for the American people" when it gets to Congress, which is going to happen soon. There's also the matter of where Canada stands:

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer says he will present the U.S.-Mexico deal to Congress on Friday, regardless of whether Canada is included. That official presentation starts a 90-day clock for Congress to review the deal and give a simple up-or-down vote. Because of that 90-day review period, any deal offered to Congress after Sept. 1 would not go into effect until after December 1, the date when Peña Nieto will step down as Mexico's president. Incoming Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador would likely want to renegotiate the deal if it is not completed before he takes office.

Clearly, Friday is an important deadline. Trump and Lighthizer seem ready to press forward even if Canada is not on board, Mexican officials seem to have a different perspective. In a tweet, Peña Nieto emphasized the importance of having Canada be a part of the deal, and Ildefonso Guajardo, Mexico's economic secretary, told Politico that details of the trade deal would not be disclosed until "we finish with the position of Canada."

Trump's rhetoric during Monday's conference call and Lighthizer's determination to bring the deal to Congress on Friday seem like attempts to put pressure on Canada. "The Trump administration is trying to squeeze Canada by saying 'the train is leaving the station with Mexico, get on board or don't," tweeted Daniel Dale, the Toronto Star's Washington corespondent. But, he adds, it is "not clear Mexico has agreed to have the train leave the station without Canada."

Exactly. It seems pretty unlikely that Canada will agree to join this trade deal by Friday. Even though Canadian officials surely have followed the U.S.-Mexico negotiations from a distance, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would seem to have little to gain by jumping on board after deliberately sitting out five weeks of negotiations. Doing so would appear to be giving into Trump's bullying and would be unlikely to play well in Canada, where Trump is deeply unpopular and Trudeau's willingness to push-back against the American president has won him plaudits.

That game of chicken gets more interesting because it's not clear whether Congress will sign-off on a two-way deal between the U.S. and Mexico. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the authority to negotiate trade agreements, but Congress can grant the president what's known as Trade Promotion Authority" to negotiate deals like NAFTA. Under TPA, the White House is authorized to fast-track trade deals with other countries by negotiating them without congressional interference. Congress pledges to hold a straight up-or-down vote on the final product, essentially promising that it won't try to alter or undermine whatever deal the president makes.

Congress granted TPA for Trump to renegotiate a three-party trade deal. Trump might bring them a two-party deal and ask that they accept it instead.

"The agreement needs to include Canada as well," says Clark Packard, trade policy counsel at the R Street Institute, a free market think tank in Washington, D.C. "It's obvious that the chairmen of the relevant committees, Senate Finance and House Ways and Means, agree."

Unless Canada suddenly jumps on-board, it's virtually impossible for this trade deal to be ratified by Congress before López Obrador becomes Mexico's president. There are also the upcoming mid-terms in the United States, where a Democratic takeover of Congress would likely change the political calculus for any trade deals.

Always squeezing somebody, that's the Very Stable Genius way. And it's usually an ally.

Some perspective is in order

The most recent LITD post is my first thoughts on hearing that John McCain had discontinued brain cancer treatments. My intention was to give a balanced assessment of the lasting effects the various periods of his life will have on our national life.

As you read, I included the profoundly disappointing aspects as well as the sublimely noble aspect, and those in between.

But Daren Jonescu invites us to size him up against the Very Stable Genius, and the Arizona Senator comes off looking pretty good by comparison:

McCain lost a presidential election against a young phenomenon adored by the media and the leftist elite.
Trump (barely) won a presidential election against a decrepit catastrophe despised by everyone who wasn’t getting paid to praise her.

McCain bent over backwards to be civil to a fault toward his election opponent.
Trump has never been civil, couldn’t define the word, and would spell it incorrectly at least seven times out of ten.

McCain was fairly accused by Republican voters of pandering to the media too much.
Trump has spent the last twenty years literally doing nothing but pandering to the media, to the delight of Republican voters.

McCain, by politician standards, could be quite eloquent when he cared about a topic.
Trump, by elementary school standards, is incoherent even when talking about the only topic he cares about, namely Donald Trump.

McCain appeased the grassroots by reluctantly promising to build a wall, though we’ll never know whether he would really have done it.
Trump built a massive grassroots cult by enthusiastically promising to build a wall, though we knew perfectly well he would never really do it.

McCain was a bit of a womanizer after returning from five and a half years in a Vietnamese POW camp.
Trump, who phoned in sick during the war, calls his life as a womanizer his “personal Vietnam.”

McCain crashed several planes.
Trump is a train wreck.

McCain wore a bad combover.
Trump is a bad combover.

McCain sometimes seemed too sympathetic to the Democrats.
Trump was a Democrat supporter for most of his adult life, donated massively to Democrats for years, and says Bill Clinton was the best President of his lifetime.

McCain was probably less of a “maverick” than he styled himself as.
Trump is a complete fake whose true mind cannot be defined because it does not exist, and who merely pretends to be whatever he thinks will gain him a personal advantage today, regardless of whether it contradicts anything or everything he said yesterday.

McCain moved like a man crippled by years of torture as a prisoner of war.
Trump moves like a man who has never opened a window by himself in his life.

McCain learned a secret code used to communicate through walls with fellow POWs.
Trump learned to use rhetorical dog whistles to become the only Republican president publicly praised and supported by America’s most prominent white nationalist leaders.

McCain frequently and openly called Vladimir Putin a thug and an evil man.
Donald Trump…well, do we have to say it?

McCain publicly admitted to having been a poor pilot and having made mistakes in his life.
Trump declares he has never asked for God’s forgiveness, and has nothing to apologize for.

McCain tended to dismiss much of the so-called conservative media, and especially talk radio, as a cynical, rabble-rousing, profit-seeking entertainment industry.
Trump proved that McCain was right.

---

I see nothing here to take issue with.

Initial thoughts on McCain discontinuing further brain-cancer treatment

Thought I'd get in my first round of solidified thoughts before the inevitable last-days-and-then-aftermath tsunami of takes, most of which will be replete with mind-numbing "great American" platitudes, gets going.

He was from a Navy family of considerable distinction, and he acquiesced to the pressure to be part of that lineage. I do, as someone with a lifelong rock & roll rebel attitude, admire the fact that he went into it with a notable degree of cockiness. Smashed up some planes during pilot training. The business about visiting strip clubs? I'm a little less inclined to pump my fist about that, for reasons that recent posts here touching on human sexuality should make clear. For one thing, that wasn't the end of it; his marital track record is really no more admirable than that of the Very Stable Genius or Billy Jeff the Zipper.

But it served him well during his stay at the Hanoi Hilton. A fellow prisoner recalls that he'd hear McCain's screams and wails during his daily torture sessions, but that, on McCain's walk back down the hall to his cell, he'd make eye contact with the other guy through a thin crack in the other guy's cell doorway that they'd both discovered, and give him a smile and a thumbs-up.

I love that.

I love that.

And he did indeed show a great deal of promise as a consistently principled Reaganite once elected to the Senate. But that dissipated quickly. He voted against tax cuts. He voted against "A"CA repeal. You don't do that if you're a conservative.

The behavior, though, that I'm going to have to deal with, in terms of the fact that it embitters me, is the way he conducted himself during his 2008 run for president. When the lady in the audience at a campaign event asked him about Obama being a Muslim and Arab - a wacky, boneheaded statement that lamentably distracted from what should have been the main point - that Obama was a hard-core, America-hating socialist - he accommodated the distraction by responding with some crud about Obama being a good, nice family man, which had nothing to do with the subject at hand. The main thing that rubbed me raw, though, was the statement to the effect that "while we sharply disagree with our friends across the aisle about how to achieve various goals, let us remember that they are not our enemies."

Wrong, Senator. They are our enemies. Like Iran and North Korea, they have said so in no uncertain terms. Democrats hate human freedom, Western civilization and God.

So, may God have mercy on his soul.

And, to reiterate, there are good reasons to call him an American hero.

But in overall political and historical  terms, he did significant harm to America.

The VSG to Pompeo: nix your NorKor trip

But his tweets about it indicate how, as with everything, he views this situationally as opposed to crafting a solid policy based on a consistent set of principles. That's evident from the way he tries to blame the lack of NorKor movement on what was "agreed upon" in Singapore on China being ticked off about trade issues, and also the business about "warmest regards." Excuse me while I hurl.

I have asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to go to North Korea, at this time, because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

...Additionally, because of our much tougher Trading stance with China, I do not believe they are helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were (despite the UN Sanctions which are in place)...

...Secretary Pompeo looks forward to going to North Korea in the near future, most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved. In the meantime I would like to send my warmest regards and respect to Chairman Kim. I look forward to seeing him soon!

As I say, he views everything situationally. He thinks the Chinese trade issues will be easily resolved and then all will be peaches and cream, never mind that China has long-range ambitions that include knocking the US down from its lone-superpower status. How much help was China prior to this trade war? 

And then there's that "warmest regards and respect" dog vomit. The VSG needs to have his cell phone stomped on before he sends out another tweet.

Some allies

I ask you, which has more of an understanding of what the West is, and in defending it against threats. at this point, Israel or Europe?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not happy with millions of dollars of foreign aid the European Union is handing over to Iran, slamming the aid package as a “big mistake.”

On Thursday, the EU Commission announced it would give Iran €18 million ($20.8 million), the first payment in what will be a €50 million ($57.9 million) payment meant to offset sanctions imposed by the United States and save the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by former President Obama and his European counterparts.

Netanyahu believes Iran will use the aid for weapons development and the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“I think that the decision yesterday by the EU to give 18 million euros to Iran is a big mistake,” Netanyahu said at a press conference in Lithuania, i24 News reported.

“It’s like a poison pill to the Iranian people and the efforts to curb Iranian aggression in the region and terror beyond the region.”

“Where will the extra money go?” Netanyahu asked. “It’s not going to solve the water problem in Iran, it’s not going to go for Iranian truck drivers, it’s going to go to the missiles and Revolutionary Guard in Iran and Syria and everywhere else in the Middle East.”

Announcing the earmarks for Iran, EU high representative for foreign affairs Federica Mogherini said the aid “will widen economic and sectoral relations in areas that are of direct benefit to our citizens.”

But what are we to expect from a continent that doesn't care that it's going Islamic sooner rather than later? 

If the Very Stable Genius turns out to be a felon, we have certain obligations as a country

Your must-read for today is John Podhoretz's piece at Commentary entitled "10 Things I Hate About What Just Happened."

And I mean "your" as broadly as possible. It's a must-read for Trumpists, hard leftists, conservatives of the "we have to align behind Trump even though he's reprehensible" variety, and actual conservatives who refuse to bend their principles.

All the above need to read it because we all may be looking at a hard fact: the president of the United States may have committed a felony.

Okay, I feel so strongly about this, I'm going to reprint his entire ten-thing list:

1. He has pled guilty to a felony. He says Trump did it with him. If he is telling the truth, Trump committed a felonious act before he was president. So if Trump is guilty of a felony, why isn’t he being indicted?
2. Justice Department guidelines say an indictment of a sitting president would impair the executive functions of the presidency and the performance of his constitutionally assigned tasks. These guidelines were first issued under a Republican president (Nixon) and reaffirmed under a Democratic president (Clinton), so they have bipartisan street cred. That said, they are guidelines. They are not law. A complex Constitutional theory has it that, since the executive branch has a unique structure in that the exercise of its powers flow through the president personally as the sole official elected by all the people, it makes no sense that the president could in essence indict himself. Any person who would indict himself would presumably resign his office before doing so. Still, this entire discussion is predicated on the assumption that the president committed a felony.
3. The question then goes to whether a campaign-finance violation is sufficient grounds to remove someone from the presidency—either through a rejection of the Justice Department guidelines that sees him being indicted or through an impeachment proceeding followed by a Senate vote to kick him out. That’s a good question. But any way you look at the question, you’re still looking this fact in the face: The president committed a felony.
4. Those who defend him on the grounds that he shouldn’t be removed from office for this offense, as it does not rise to the level, must still acknowledge that the president committed a felony.
5. There will be those—Trump is already one of them—who will say that Barack Obama’s campaign was found guilty of campaign finance violations and only had to pay a significant fine. But that’s a different kind of case, because nobody says Obama himself ordered such violations. Once again, though, we stand face to face with the idea that the president committed a felony.
6. Trump is also fond of saying, in other contexts, that everybody does these kinds of things, we should all grow up and look reality in the face.”Everybody does it” is fine as a debating point, perhaps, but it doesn’t address how you handle an open discussion of wrongdoing. In truth, only three times in the modern era has the American polis had to face the possibility that the sitting president committed a felony.
7. Once the president resigned rather than face impeachment. Once the president beat the charge. Trump is the third president about whom we have to have a continuing conversation that seems to accept the contention he committed a felony.
8. It is very bad for people to commit felonies. Donald Trump does not seem to believe this, perhaps understandably. He is on Twitter today actively defending his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort—based largely on the fact that Manafort didn’t “break,” unlike Michael Cohen. Manafort has just been found guilty by a jury of his peers of committing eight felonies.
9. Unless it can be proved somehow that he did not tell Cohen to violate campaign-finance law, Trump is clearly going to force Republican politicians and Republican supporters to make a choice: Him personally or the rule of law and the principle that no president is above the law. He will threaten them with the anger of his base if they decide they cannot countenance a president who committed a felony.
10. It’s not going to be pretty.

If - and we must couch it thusly, since Constitutional principles must be adhered to more fervently than ever at this late date in post-America - he is found to be a felon, then we are looking at a set of circumstances that makes most of the current tribalistic digging in of heels irrelevant.

We can't have a felon sitting in the Oval Office.

I'd also refer you to Jonathan V. Last's argument at The Weekly Standard that, had the revelations about Daniels and McDougal come out in the weeks prior to the election, the outcome could have been different.

Which gets us back to the basic point: All this is sucking these vast quantities of political and journalistic oxygen because Donald Trump habitually makes poor moral choices.