Proof that allah hates goat rapists too.

Wild boars overrun Islamic State position, kill 3 militants - MSN.com

This story may be the new definition of irony.

BTW, have you noticed even the left-fascists have dropped "ISIL" from their lexicon? What a legacy The Community Organizer From The High Yellow Lagoon left the world!

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Here's good advice if you are perfect, don't have any disordered passions, don't care what anyone thinks, have your life planned out down to the second, and KNOW you can do no wrong.

Strong Women Should Never Do These Things For a Man - MSN.com


When you're head over heels for someone, or maybe when you're feeling insecure, it's sometimes easy to put someone else's wants and needs before your own. But if you don't catch yourself in time, you may lose a part of who you are. Ladies, don't ever do the following five things for a man - or for anyone. 

1. Change your appearance.

If your SO is a decent human being, they won't ever force you to alter the way you look for their benefit. They should love you for you, and all of you. If your weight, hair, or style really bothers him, he's clearly not with you for the right reasons. Any physical changes you make should be made because you want them, not for attention or for someone else.


2. Compromise your passions.

Absolutely no one should get in the way of your goals. It is your life, after all, and nobody else will regret leaving any dreams behind more than you. The decision to pass on a job opportunity or put an idea on hold might seem best at the moment, but the future is never guaranteed. Your partner should support your endeavors, and if he's willing to come along for the ride, that's just a bonus.


3. Wait for his approval.

A strong woman plays by her rules and doesn't sit around for instructions. You should be assertive and go forward with your own decisions rather than seek validation from someone else. You're grown enough to know what's best for you.


4. Cancel already-set plans.

It's different to reschedule when something important comes up, but it's problematic when you drop what you're doing just to be with him. Your friends and family should not be on the sideline and only brought in when he's unavailable. You should never be on standby, and if he's respectful, he won't mind catching you another time.


5. Let him change who you are.

Don't change who you are for anyone but yourself. And if you do decide to make any self-adjustments, they should be improvements that will better you. It's possible that he'd be more interested if you do x, y, and z, but he wouldn't genuinely like you for you. Never lose sight of who you are.

With all due respect, ladies, exactly who are you?


TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

What exactly will Clumpy The Clown give the Slave Chinese regime in order to secure a "win" for itself on the North Korean front?

From Business Insider:

Trump's plan to stop North Korea — and what's wrong with his approach ...



President Donald Trump has a plan to stop North Korea, and it doesn't sound much different from past efforts.

According to a statement from his top officials on Monday, here's the plan:

"The President’s approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our Allies and regional partners."

Hmmm...tastes like Chickenhawk...


     
President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks to Navy and shipyard personnel aboard nuclear aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford at Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va., Thursday, March 2, 2017. The ship which is still under construction is due to be delivered to the Navy later this year. AP Photo / Steve Helber



While the statement acknowledges that "past efforts have failed" to curb North Korea's nuclear program, it essentially promises to continue the same efforts that have failed.

In fact, this statement from Trump is almost indistinguishable from the Obama-era "strategic patience" that both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Vice President Mike Pence declared dead on separate trips to Asia.

Senators who attended Wednesday's classified briefing on North Korea at the White House described it as reviewing old, non-specific information, and in one case, as a "dog-and-pony show."

Nowhere in Trump's official statement does he return to the hawkish rhetoric that Secretary of Defense Mattis, Tillerson, and Pence have all espoused about North Korea on separate trips to Asia. The new plan focuses more on sanctions, which have been in place for decades — and just don't work.

But the threat from North Korea has grown, and the past approaches of presidents might not cut it anymore.

On April 15, North Korea rolled out a wide array of new missile types that stunned nonproliferation experts. Some estimate that within two to three years, North Korea will begin testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that could strike Washington, and no current missile defenses could stop such an attack.

Simply put, Trump's strategic patience by another name worked for other presidents, but unfortunately the critical moment that demands action on North Korea may fall during Trump's term.
Omar Lamrani, a senior military analyst at the geopolitical analysis firm Stratfor, previously told Business Insider that if North Korea achieved an ICBM, it would represent a "point of no return" in multilateral relations with the Kim regime.

Essentially, the US would be forced to continue sanctions and hope for a major breakthrough in missile defense, launch an all-out war with an adversary that can level Washington, or cave to North Korea, perhaps the world's worst abuser of human rights, and accept them as a legitimate state and a player in Northeast Asia.

All of the options listed above are terrible, and while presidents before Trump could afford to kick the can down the road, Trump may have to be the one to make a terrible choice.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

If this headline doesn't make you howl with laughter, you're probably a fascist...and a dumbass.

Neanderthals in California? - Detroit News


But seriously, kiddies, the point I want you to get is this: The term "settled science" is a totalitarian construct intended to control people by limiting their thinking within certain parameters.

In other words, 2+2=4 is only necessarily true for people without imaginations...and their  jackbooted moral and intellectual superiors.

Al Gorehound, call your exquisitely plush office.





New York — A startling new report asserts that the first known Americans arrived much, much earlier than scientists thought — more than 100,000 years ago —— and maybe they were Neanderthals.

If true, the finding would far surpass the widely accepted date of about 15,000 years ago.

Researchers say a site in Southern California shows evidence of humanlike behavior from about 130,000 years ago, when bones and teeth of an elephantlike mastodon were evidently smashed with rocks.

The earlier date means the bone-smashers were not necessarily members of our own species, Homo sapiens. The researchers speculate that these early Californians could have instead been species known only from fossils in Europe, Africa and Asia: Neanderthals, a little-known group called Denisovans, or another human forerunner named Homo erectus.

“The very honest answer is, we don’t know,” said Steven Holen, lead author of the paper and director of the nonprofit Center for American Paleolithic Research in Hot Springs, South Dakota. No remains of any individuals were found.

Whoever they were, they could have arrived by land or sea. They might have come from Asia via the Beringea land bridge that used to connect Siberia to Alaska, or maybe come across by watercraft along the Beringea coast or across open water to North America, before turning southward to California, Holen said in a telephone interview.

Holen and others present their evidence in a paper released Wednesday by the journal Nature . Not surprisingly, the report was met by skepticism from other experts who don’t think there is enough proof.

The research dates back to the winter of 1992-3. The site was unearthed during a routine dig by researchers during a freeway expansion project in San Diego. Analysis of the find was delayed to assemble the right expertise, said Tom Demere, curator of paleontology at the San Diego Natural History Museum, another author of the paper.

The Nature analysis focuses on remains from a single mastodon, and five stones found nearby. The mastodon’s bones and teeth were evidently placed on two stones used as anvils and smashed with three stone hammers, to get at nutritious marrow and create raw material for tools.

Patterns of damage on the limb bones looked like what happened in experiments when elephant bones were smashed with rocks. And the bones and stones were found in two areas, each roughly centered on what’s thought to be an anvil.

The stones measured about 8 inches to 12 inches long and weighed up to 32 pounds. They weren’t hand-crafted tools, Demere said.
The users evidently found them and brought them to the site.

The excavation also found a mastodon tusk in a vertical position, extending down into older layers, which may indicate it had been jammed into the ground as a marker or to create a platform, Demere said.

The fate of the visitors is not clear. Maybe they died out without leaving any descendants, he said.

Experts not connected with the study provided a range of reactions.

“If the results stand up to further scrutiny, this does indeed change everything we thought we knew,” said Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. Neanderthals and Denisovans are the most likely identities of the visitors, he said.

But “many of us will want to see supporting evidence of this ancient occupation from other sites, before we abandon the conventional model of a first arrival by modern humans within the last 15,000 years,” he wrote in an email.

Erella Hovers of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University in Tempe, who wrote a commentary accompanying the work, said in an email that the archaeological interpretation seemed convincing. Some other experts said the age estimate appears sound.

But some were skeptical that the rocks were really used as tools. Vance Holliday of the University of Arizona in Tucson said the paper shows the bones could have been broken the way the authors assert, but they haven’t demonstrated that’s the only way.

Richard Potts of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, said he doesn’t reject the paper’s claims outright, but he finds the evidence “not yet solid.” For one thing, the dig turned up no basic stone cutting tools or evidence of butchery or the use of fire, as one might expect from Homo sapiens or our close evolutionary relatives.

The lead author, Holen, told reporters Tuesday that he and co-authors were ready for such criticism.

“We expected skepticism because of the extremely old age of this site,” he said. “I think we made a very good case.”


TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

The Slants come to Amishland.

From the newspaper with no name:

The Slants, at Zenkaikon this weekend, await Supreme Court ruling on trademark battle ...

Simon Tam alternates tour dates with Supreme Court appearances.

The bassist and founder of the Slants has battled to trademark the band’s name for six years. The court denied the Slants’ application, stating that the band — whose members are all Asian-Americans — couldn’t register the name since it was a racial slur.

“I thought it was a practical joke when we applied and my attorney told me they denied it on the grounds of us being racist toward Asians,” Tam says. “I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ ”

Tam argues that the name is reclaiming the phrase, as other minority groups have used slurs targeted toward them as a form of empowerment.

The band made its oral argument in January and is awaiting a ruling that’s expected, but not guaranteed, to come in June.

Before then, Tam and the Slants will speak and perform at Zenkaikon at the Lancaster County Convention Center this weekend. 

From erasure to epiphany

As a child, Tam jumped up on the family coffee table and started strumming his dad’s guitar. He came of age in the ’80s and was influenced by acts like N.W.A., but also grew to appreciate classic rock like that of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

Two months before graduating from college on a full scholarship with a double major, Tam dropped out to move to Portland, Oregon, and tour with the punk rock band the Stivs.

As a young adult, Tam purposefully disconnected himself from his Chinese culture and heritage. After enduring severe bullying in middle school and high school for his ethnicity, Tam wanted to erase his culture from his identity.

“I was just like, ‘I’m really ashamed of being Chinese. I’m just getting ridiculed and tormented everywhere I go,’ ” Tam says.

When he moved to Portland, he longed to reconnect with his culture. “I just was starting to really kind of miss my heritage and aspects of my culture, from the food to the language,” Tam says.

To cope, he bought VHS tapes on eBay of old Jackie Chan and Asian mafia movies. A friend recommended Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” which was just about to come out on DVD. Tam says watching the movie was like having an epiphany.

“That was the first time I had seen an American-produced film showing any element of my culture or its people like that,” Tam says. “To kind of have this almost awakening that, wow, maybe in America we can be perceived as something different than the stereotypical nerd or the desexualized male or the exoticized female. … To see that we could be something more was quite powerful.”


Shit. I thought Mr. Tam was starting to sound like something other than a dumbass. Oh well, that doesn't mean the government gets to take away his band's name. If it did, 90% of rock bands would have to be known by numbers...

"Please welcome the 85988's!"

Proud, not ashamed

Watching the movie got Tam thinking about how he could make a difference with his own art. He had seen a handful of Asian-Americans in popular bands, but he wanted to make a more powerful impact on the American entertainment industry.

It took him two years of pasting flyers around town and posting on Craigslist to find enough people to form a lineup and start playing.

The band’s name came to Tam pretty quickly, though. He asked his friends what all Asian people had in common. They’d often answer “slanted eyes.”

“I thought, that’s really interesting, because it’s not true,” Tm says. “Not all Asians have slanted eyes, and Asians aren’t the only people with slanted eyes.”

The name grew on Tam with time.

“It sounds like an ’80s new wave band,” Tam says. “I can imagine Debbie Harry being in a band called the Slants, which is right up the alley for the type of music we are doing.

“Then I thought, ‘You know, we can use this to kind of turn that stereotype about us upside down.’

The very thing that was the object of ridicule for me growing up now could be a symbol of something I could be proud about instead of ashamed of.”

The opposition to the Slants’ quest for trademark argues that the ruling could set precedence for other types of hate speech to be trademarked.

“We’re not some kind of floodgate for hate speech,” Tam says. “The lack of a trademark registration doesn’t actually stop people from using hateful terms anyway.”

Tam says all the struggle has been worth it, though, especially when he interacts with young fans.

“The fact that it’s inspiring young people to kind of get into the arts themselves or find their kind of political voice — I think that’s more than I could ever ask for and certainly more than I ever dreamed of when I first had this idea in my mind,” Tam says.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Every once in a while, something nice happens...

Thanks to a failed senior project, a violinist is born | NewsCut ...

Let’s end the week with one more item from the “Ain’t Science Great?” folder:

Steve Helber | AP

Isabella Nicola Cabrera wants to play the violin. That’s difficult when you’re born with no left hand and a severely deformed forearm.

A music teacher at her school had tried to build her a jury-rigged prosthetic, but it was never going to allow her to do what a violinist really needs to do.

So it’s a good thing that the first project idea that a group of students at George Mason University needed in order to graduate failed.

Isabella’s arm became their Plan B.

The biomedical students — Abdul Gouda, Mona Elkholy, Ella Novoselsky, Racha Salha and Yasser Alhindi — worked with George Mason music professor Elizabeth Admass, who gave them guidance on what Isabella would need to play the violin with some finesse, the Associated Press reported. They tried several designs before settling on one, which they made with a 3D printer.

On Thursday, it was time for their final exam.

The students gave her one bonus gift: A plug-in adaptor that will allow her to hold the handlebars on a bike.

“I feel very blessed that I have this amazing group of people,” Isabella said.

Here's more:

Undergrads build prosthetic arm for 10-year-old violinist - NY Daily News

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Will Totalitarian Pennsylvania boldly dare to enter the second half of the 20th Century?????????

I'm not holding my breath...


House Approves Bill To Sell State's Liquor Wholesale System - CBS Pittsburgh ...


HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – The state House is giving its approval to a plan to lease and eventually sell off the state’s wholesale system for wine and spirits, a change that opponents say could spell the end of state-owned liquor stores.

Pennsylvania lawmakers on Tuesday voted 105 to 84 in favor of the bill, part of a package of booze-related legislation pushed ahead by the Republican majority.

The House also voted to allow more grocery stores to seek permits to sell wine, no longer restricting them to stores with seating capacity.

And it voted to let restaurant and hotel licensees sell up to three liters of takeout liquor per customer.

The proposals were sent to the Senate for its consideration.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

"Artificial womb"? Not quite yet. Let's pray this only leads to good and never evil.*

From The Toronto Sun:

Researchers Create Artificial Womb...
http://www.torontosun.com/2017/04/25/researchers-create-artificial-womb-to-help-premature-babies


WASHINGTON — Researchers are creating an artificial womb to improve care for extremely premature babies — and remarkable animal testing suggests the first-of-its-kind watery incubation so closely mimics mom that it just might work.

Today, premature infants weighing as little as a pound are hooked to ventilators and other machines inside incubators. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is aiming for a gentler solution, to give the tiniest preemies a few more weeks cocooned in a womb-like environment — treating them more like fetuses than newborns in hopes of giving them a better chance of healthy survival.

The researchers created a fluid-filled transparent container to simulate how fetuses float in amniotic fluid inside mom’s uterus, and attached it to a mechanical placenta that keeps blood oxygenated.

In early-stage animal testing, extremely premature lambs appeared to grown normally inside the system for three to four weeks, the team reported Tuesday.

“We start with a tiny fetus that is pretty inert and spends most of its time sleeping. Over four weeks we see that fetus open its eyes, grow wool, breathe, swim,” said Dr. Emily Partridge, a CHOP research fellow and first author of the study published in Nature Communications.

“It’s hard to describe actually how uniquely awe-inspiring it is to see,” she added in an interview.

Human testing still is three to five years away, although the team already is in discussions with the Food and Drug Administration.

“We’re trying to extend normal gestation,” said Dr. Alan Flake, a fetal surgeon at CHOP who is leading the project and considers it a temporary bridge between the mother’s womb and the outside world.

Increasingly hospitals attempt to save the most critically premature infants, those born before 26 weeks gestation and even those right at the limits of viability — 22 to 23 weeks. Extreme prematurity is a leading cause of infant mortality, and those who do survive frequently have serious disabilities such as cerebral palsy.

The idea of treating preemies in fluid-filled incubators may sound strange, but physiologically it makes sense, said Dr. Catherine Spong, a fetal medicine specialist at the National Institutes of Health.

“This is really an innovative, promising first step,” said Spong, who wasn’t involved with the research.

One of the biggest risks for very young preemies is that their lungs aren’t ready to breathe air, she explained. Before birth, amniotic fluid flows into their lungs, bringing growth factors crucial for proper lung development. When they’re born too soon, doctors hook preemies to ventilators to keep them alive but risking lifelong lung damage.

Flake’s goal is for the womb-like system to support the very youngest preemies just for a few weeks, until their organs are mature enough to better handle regular hospital care like older preemies who have less risk of death or disability.

The device is simpler than previous attempts at creating an artificial womb, which haven’t yet panned out.

How the “Biobag” system works:

—The premature lambs were delivered by C-section and immediately placed into a temperature-controlled bag filled with a substitute for amniotic fluid that they swallow and take into their lungs.

“We make gallons of this stuff a day,” said fetal physiologist Marcus Davey. It’s currently an electrolyte solution; he’s working to add other factors to make it more like real amniotic fluid.

—Then the researchers attached the umbilical cord to a machine that exchanges carbon dioxide in blood with oxygen, like a placenta normally does.

—The lamb’s heart circulates the blood, without the need for any other pump.

The researchers tested five lambs whose biological age was equivalent to 23-week human preemies, and three more a bit older. All appeared to grow normally, with blood pressure and other key health measures stable and few complications during the weeks they were inside the womb-like device.

The study didn’t address long-term development. Most of the lambs were euthanized for further study that found normal organ development for their gestational age. One was bottle-weaned and is now more than a year old, apparently healthy and living on a farm in Pennsylvania.

Flake stressed that the womb-like system isn’t intended to support preemies any younger than today’s limits of viability — not what he calls the more “sensationalistic” idea of artificially growing embryos.

He acknowledged that parents might question the approach, but notes that the preemies always could be whisked into standard care if they fared poorly in the new system. And while he said further adaptation of the device is needed before it can begin human testing, he envisioned parents being able to see the baby and even piping in the sound of mom’s heartbeat.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why am I worried? Read this from my post of May 26, 2006 entitled SEX IS DEATH. (Gimme some of that sweet zombie lovin') :

“Gay and lesbian families are here; all our families are queer; let’s get used to it!” That’s how NYU sociologist, Judith Stacey, (formerly the Barbra Streisand Professor in Contemporary Gender Studies at USC) (WTF??? Are you certain that isn't the Rock Hudson Memorial Chair in Non-Euclidean Sex? You couldn't make up anything funnier! - F.G.) begins the chapter on same-sex unions in her 1996 book, In the Name of the Family. Stacey’s slogan neatly encapsulates her idea that gays are pioneering ways of living that will transform the family for everyone. Consciously echoing Giddens, Stacey draws out the implications of European family sociology in an American context.

In Stacey’s view, lesbian motherhood via artificial insemination helps pave the way for intentional single motherhood among heterosexuals. (Then artificial wombs and then cloning and then the extinction of the female. You've heard it here before, kiddies. All "men" will be homosexuals and will "reproduce" themselves in this monstrous fashion. For what? I can imagine, but only the Devil knows for sure. - F.G.) Sexually open relationships among gay men can increase the acceptance of non-monogamy by heterosexuals, and the triple and quadruple unions between lesbians and gays created by donor insemination suggest the possibility of group marriage for society as a whole. True, Stacey is ambivalent about formal same-sex marriage. She worries that the effect will be too conservative, and so would prefer to abolish marriage outright. Failing that, however, Stacey is enthusiastic about using gay marriage as a device with which to undermine marriage from within.

Like Beck and Beck Gernsheim, Stacey sees the traditional family as something like the living dead. We are haunted by the ghost of the family, says Stacey. She suggests “a proper memorial service” to help us get over its death. But wouldn’t burying the traditional family mean greater instability, especially for children? Absolutely. Stacey frankly acknowledges her willingness to pay a steep price in family instability if it means promoting feminist values and unleashing a raft of experimental family forms. Stacey’s ideal is Scandinavia, where same-sex unions and unwed parenting are accepted, and where the welfare state steps in to mitigate the effects of family instability.

Pity the children. I can only hope they will arm themselves and exact terrible vengeance upon their liberators.

So there’s hardly a point about the power of same-sex unions to disrupt traditional marriage that Stacey herself hasn’t already made. The key difference between Stacey and conservative critics of same-sex marriage is that Stacey actually wants to undermine marriage. In short, the most influential European family sociologists, America’s radical academics, and American conservatives are surprisingly united in recognizing the potential of same-sex marriage to undermine marriage itself.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Don't laugh, kiddies. Your grandparents and great-grandparents laughed at what the fascist babyeaters and women haters said in their day, too. Now look at the piles of corpses that engulfs the "civilized" world.

You should also consider this from 2012:

Things really would be better if we did ban artificial contraception...

But that is even more sacrosanct than babyeating.

*Remember, kiddies, we must all be like Spider-Man instead of Doctor Octopus...


TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! SUCKERS! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

HOLY FREAKIN' CRAP! IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE TO PRETEND ANY MORE!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump Apr 23

                   

Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall.

• Retweets 14,874
• Likes 62,380

 

8:44 AM - 23 Apr 2017

It can't even keep its lies straight any more.
We are SO going to pay for this, kiddies. Start praying and stocking up on ammunition.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHA!!!!!!!

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

"Shhh. You'll scare it." "What the heck is it?" "It's the rarest of birds, The Pure-Hearted Democrass Babysaver!"

I'll believe it when I see it, kiddies. If this is true, Mr. Mello must have balls as big as church bells.

I doubt he does. He wouldn't be able to fly with all the babyeating Democrass vultures if he did.

From the Washington Times:

Democrats soften Abortion tone on Heath Mello Omaha mayor race ...


Some higher-ups in the Democratic Party are taking a softer tone on abortion in a bid to win back the blue-collar voters who spurned Hillary Clinton at the ballot box, revealing a schism between the economic populists and cultural liberals over the future direction of the party.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, said there is an “enormous disconnect” between rank and file Democrats — one-quarter to one-third of whom identify as pro-life — and party leadership, to whom abortion is sacrosanct.

“As they push their party more and more to the extreme on abortion, the GOP benefits at the polls,” Ms. Dannenfelser said in a statement.

The pro-choice wing of the party made considerable gains during the Obama years, amending the party platform to endorse taxpayer funding for abortion and dropping the last term in the “safe, legal and rare” triumvirate that became the Democratic line on abortion during the Bill Clinton presidency.
But that leftward tilt began to show signs of reversing last week.

Asked Sunday whether there’s room in the party for people who are pro-life, the staunchly pro-choice House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi responded, “Of course.”

“I have served many years in Congress with members who have not shared my very positive — my family would say ‘aggressive’ — position on promoting a woman’s right to choose,” Mrs. Pelosi said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The catalyst for rethinking the party line on abortion came in an unlikely place — the Omaha mayoral race — and, ironically, during a “Come Together and Fight Back” tour spearheaded someone who isn’t even a Democrat.

Democrats nominated Heath Mello, a pro-life Catholic, to try to unseat incumbent Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert, a Republican. Mr. Mello, a former Nebraska lawmaker, co-sponsored the state’s 20-week abortion ban and other pro-life legislation and has come under fire from abortion advocates who say he doesn’t represent the party’s values.

“If Democrats think the path forward following the 2016 election is to support candidates who substitute their own judgment and ideology for that of their female constituents, they have learned all the wrong lessons and are bound to lose,” Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said in a statement.

Mr. Mello later clarified his stance on the question of abortion, telling the Huffington Post that he is personally pro-life but “would never do anything to restrict access to reproductive health care” as mayor.

There's the mortal sin!

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont Independent, went to Omaha to campaign for Mr. Mello last week as a part of the unity tour, and defended his decision to do so.

“We have a Republican president who ran as a candidate as the most unpopular candidate in modern history in this country,” Mr. Sanders said Sunday on CBS’s “This Week.” “Republicans control the House, Senate, two-thirds of governor’s chairs, and in the last eight years, they have picked up 900 legislative seats. Clearly, the Democratic Party has got to change.”

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday supports Mr. Sanders’ conjecture that the party’s message is falling flat.

In the survey, 67 percent of respondents said the Democratic Party is “out of touch with the concerns of most people,” though 62 percent said the same of the Republican Party and 58 percent of President Trump.

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said it’s the “cultural issues that have disconnected Democrats from a lot of Middle America.”

“I have been asking all Democratic leaders that come on here, ‘Would you be OK with a pro-life person if they were from Alabama or from Kentucky? And if they’re from Alabama and they agree with you on economics, is it OK if they’re pro-life?’” Mr. Scarborough said last week on “Morning Joe.”

“And I keep hearing, ‘No. No it’s not. No it’s not. No it’s not,” he said.

Mr. Trump rode a wave of Catholic support on his way to the White House, carrying the demographic by 52 percent to 45 percent.

Talk about mortal sin! It is Adam and Eve all over again, this time with a lying orange snake.

Jay Richards, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, said the question of abortion is a nonstarter for many Catholics, who might otherwise support Democrats because of their stances on economics, immigration and the environment.

“Abortion for Catholics is not just one of a bunch of issues — it’s considered an intrinsic moral evil,” Mr. Richards said. “It’s not something on which faithful Catholics can legitimately disagree, and that makes it different from every other issue that we have debates between Republicans and Democrats on.”

Despite stumping for a pro-life mayoral candidate, Mr. Sanders endorsed but declined to campaign for Georgia congressional candidate Jon Ossoff, who is pro-choice, and publicly questioned the candidate’s progressive bona fides on economic issues.

While Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez initially threw his support behind Mr. Mello, he issued a stern statement after the politician’s pro-life views came to light, even saying that “pro-choice” is now an official party litmus test.

“I fundamentally disagree with Heath Mello’s personal beliefs about women’s reproductive health,” Mr. Perez said in the statement. “It is a promising step that Mello now shares the Democratic Party’s position on women’s fundamental rights.

“Every candidate who runs as a Democrat should do the same because every woman should be able to make her own health choices. Period,” he concluded.

Other Democrats have also come out against the idea that the party has room for people with pro-life views.

Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said the party is open to people who are personally pro-life, but not those who are willing to impose that view on others.

“We need to be understanding of those who take a different position because of personal conscience,” Mr. Durbin said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But as long as they are prepared to back the law, Roe v. Wade, prepared to back women’s rights as we define them under the law, then I think they can be part of the party.”

As a result, Mr. Richards said he doesn’t foresee “a genuine reconsideration of the actual Democratic Party policy” when it comes to abortion.

“This is a rhetorical game,” he said. “It’s not any kind of intellectual shift. I really don’t think that’s going on.”
 
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

George Will knows the emperor has no brains. Do you?

Just another day in post-rule of law AmeriKKKa.


The 'Oh, never mind' president by George Will- helenair.com



WASHINGTON -- In his first annual message to Congress, John Quincy Adams, among the most experienced and intellectually formidable presidents, warned leaders against giving the impression that "we are palsied by the will of our constituents." In this regard, if in no other, the 45th president resembles the sixth.

Donald Trump's "Oh, never mind" presidency was produced by voters stung by the contempt they detected directed toward them by the upper crust. Their insurrection has been rewarded by Trump's swift shedding of campaign commitments, a repudiation so comprehensive and cavalier that he disdains disguising his disdain for his gulled supporters.

The notion that NATO is obsolete? That China is a currency manipulator? That he would eschew humanitarian interventions featuring high explosives? That the Export-Import Bank is mischievous? That Obamacare would be gone "on Day One"? That 11.5 million illegal immigrants would be gone in two years (almost 480,000 a month)? That the national debt would be gone in eight years (reducing about $2.4 trillion a year)? About these and other vows from the man whose supporters said "he tells it like it is," he now tells them: Never mind.

The president, whose almost Sicilian sense of clan imparts new meaning to the familiar phrase "family values," embraces daughter Ivanka's belief that America suffers from an insufficiency of entitlements, a defect she (and he, judging from his address to a joint session of Congress) would rectify with paid family leave. Her brother Eric has said (to Britain's Daily Telegraph) that he is "sure" that 59 cruise missiles flew because Ivanka said to her father about Syria using chemical weapons, "Listen, this is horrible stuff."

Ladies and germs, I present to you The Dumb Bitch Doctrine. James Monroe is not impressed.

Although a senior Trump adviser, Stephen Miller, has stipulated that presidential powers to protect the nation "will not be questioned," still they persist, those impertinent questioners. They do because when candidate Trump's open-mic -night-at-the-improv rhetoric of quarter-baked promises and vows is carried over into the presidency and foreign policy, there are consequences, especially when his imprecision infects his subordinates.

One cannot erase with an "Oh, never mind" shrug Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's statement that the "message" foreign leaders should take from the Syrian attack is "if you violate international norms, if you violate international agreements, if you fail to live up to commitments, if you become a threat to others, at some point a response is likely to be undertaken." It is not true that the United States will respond, other than rhetorically, to all crossings of those four red lines. If, as Tillerson says, America is committed to "holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world," America is going to need a much bigger military than even the president's proposed $54 billion increase in defense spending would purchase.

If the attack on Syria was intended to buttress an international norm and enforce an international agreement concerning chemical weapons, it was not clarifying for press secretary Sean Spicer to say that you will see a presidential "response" if someone uses chemical weapons or "a barrel bomb." This is a nasty but conventional munition that turns scrap metal into shrapnel.

In foreign policy, the nature of an action is a function of what the actor says about it. So, the attack on Syria was either cathartic -- a one-off spasm of (understandable) indignation -- or it was a "message" of unclear content to unspecified addressees.

Perhaps the message was that America is not (in Richard Nixon's words explaining the 1970 invasion of Cambodia) "a pitiful, helpless giant," or that (in Ronald Reagan's 1984 words) "America is back, standing tall." Eliot Cohen, former counselor of the State Department (2007-2009) and currently a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, says that the strike "was the right thing to do" and "a firm response to a loathsome crime." But he also says:

"Having tipped off the Russians, and targeting things rather than people, it did not do much damage to anything the Bashar Assad regime cares about. ... An effective, destructive attack -- that is, one that would worry the Assad regime -- would have killed skilled personnel, military and political leaders, and elite fighters. ... Blowing up some installations is not, in fact, 'proportionate' to the massacre of children."

Messages are important, whether delivered by words or missiles or words about missiles. Trump's retreat from positions that enchanted his supporters is a matter mostly between him and them. How he addresses the world, however, will reveal whether he has gone from candidate to commander in chief without becoming presidential.

George F. Will is a columnist for The Washington Post. 

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Not only Vaginal-Americans think Conservative From the Waist Up Bill "Suck it, bitch, or I'll have you fired" O'Reilly is a cretinous douche.

In case you were wondering, the title of this post is all me. Mr. Ambrose seems nice and sober.



Ambrose: Suggestions for a post-O'Reilly Fox News | Online Athens


Bill O’Reilly, the recently ejected Fox News TV host, conducted interviews by talking over people, argued by repeating his conclusions and could not resist saying over and over again how tall he was, how generous he was or that he once went to Harvard. It took more than all of that to shatter my tolerance, however.

The biggie for me was when he called a journalist whose intellect dwarfs his “a hack” and a liar, all by way of defending a controversial book that skipped requisite research.

The occasion was a visit to O’Reilly’s Fox News TV show by Washington Post columnist and then-Fox employee George Will. This masterful commentator, who happens to be one of the best newspaper columnists in America, had written a sharply critical piece on O’Reilly’s book “Killing Reagan.”

He said O’Reilly’s co-author and primary researcher on the work, Martin Dugard, had not even bothered to talk to prime White House players about the book’s charge that President Reagan was an incapacitated mental mess during much of his presidency. Agreeing about this refusal to listen to people who were firsthand witnesses, O’Reilly nevertheless said he and Dugard had the truth nailed down and that those disagreeing with them were biased and trying to hide the facts.

This was journalistically disgraceful, intellectually fraudulent excuse-mongering that was then accompanied by the name-calling, and here is what I said to myself. First, on the good side, O’Reilly is an outstanding showman. He had been a primary force in helping Fox News grow and balance leftist media bias. He shied away from no issue and regularly had superb, enlightening guests on his show. He had moments of graciousness accompanied by common sense.

But then, on the bad side, he has an unruly, bullying ego allied with shallow understandings that exhibited themselves, as one example, when he shrugged his shoulders about President Donald Trump’s campaign call for killing relatives of Islamic terrorists. He said it was just everyday politics.
Now O’Reilly is gone from Fox because this constant critic of The New York Times was subjected to a Times investigation disclosing millions of dollars worth of legal settlements in five cases of sexual harassment allegations. Viewers over the following days did nothing to impair his standing as the all-time ratings giant of cable news shows, but the show’s advertisers mostly skedaddled, no doubt worried about a furious reaction in some quarters.

The remaining question is what happens to Fox News.

Dismissed by liberal critics as a propagandistic joke, the network boasts news anchors and reporters as fair and capable as what you find elsewhere on TV. Watch out especially for Chris Wallace. He was the single best moderator of all the journalists in the general-election presidential debates.

The commentators range from Sean Hannity, obsessively in love with all things Trumpian, to the brilliant Charles Krauthammer, as knowledgeable, lucid, straightforward and insightful as they come. Megyn Kelly, an alert and shining news star, has gone to NBC, but Tucker Carlson, whose finely honed specialty is exposing ideological vacuity, is set to take O’Reilly’s place.

Roger Ailes, the canny boss behind the scenes, has departed because he, too, stood accused of sexual harassment. No one really knows what is planned by the network’s replacement honchos, two sons of the billionaire owner, Rupert Murdoch.

The hope in this corner is that they will reach for more depth, emphasize objectivity in aggressive reporting and stick to commentary that includes liberal views but remains focused on conservative views, especially those of Krauthammer quality. Mute this rare TV voice against inane socialistic ambition and our society will have been terribly cheated.

In fairness to O’Reilly, it would also be good to have commentators with his sense of what attracts large audiences and the personality to make it happen, if they can keep that personality in tow.

Jay Ambrose is a Tribune News Service columnist. Send email to speaktojay@aol.com.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Walter Williams whacks the Heat Nazis on Erf Day.

Seriously, kiddies, we need to start thinking for ourselves and stop allowing self-proclaimed experts to rule us.

If you really want to be free, that is. You might be surprised to realize you enjoy being an ignorant slave.



Environmentalists Are Dead Wrong, by Walter E Williams - Creators Syndicate


Each year, Earth Day is accompanied by predictions of doom. Let's take a look at past predictions to determine just how much confidence we can have in today's environmentalists' predictions.

In 1970, when Earth Day was conceived, the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University, predicted, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." Also in 1970, Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and best-selling author of "The Population Bomb," declared that the world's population would soon outstrip food supplies. In an article for The Progressive, he predicted, "The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." He gave this warning in 1969 to Britain's Institute of Biology: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." On the first Earth Day, Ehrlich warned, "In 10 years, all important animal life in the sea will be extinct." Despite such predictions, Ehrlich has won no fewer than 16 awards, including the 1990 Crafoord Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' highest award.

In International Wildlife (July 1975), Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." In Science News (1975), C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization is reported as saying, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

In 2000, climate researcher David Viner told The Independent, a British newspaper, that within "a few years," snowfall would become "a very rare and exciting event" in Britain. "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said. "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past." In the following years, the U.K. saw some of its largest snowfalls and lowest temperatures since records started being kept in 1914.

In 1970, ecologist Kenneth Watt told a Swarthmore College audience: "The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be about 4 degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990 but 11 degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."

Also in 1970, Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look magazine: "Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian (Institution), believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

Scientist Harrison Brown published a chart in Scientific American that year estimating that mankind would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver were to disappear before 1990.

Erroneous predictions didn't start with Earth Day. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last for only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey said that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is that as of 2014, we had 2.47 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, which should last about a century.

Hoodwinking Americans is part of the environmentalist agenda. Environmental activist Stephen Schneider told Discover magazine in 1989: "We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. ... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest." In 1988, then-Sen. Timothy Wirth, D-Colo., said: "We've got to ... try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong ... we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

Americans have paid a steep price for buying into environmental deception and lies.


Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Surprise! The Mexicans aren't paying for it either.

The Dealer-In-Chief keeps peddling the same dope to the same dopes who keep mainlining his right-fascist poison. [Unless his daughter the cow happens to be in the room with him, then it is left-fascist poison.]

From the Standard-Times, which appears to be a USA Today front:


Trump backs away from demand for border wall money

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump stepped back Monday from demanding a down payment for his border wall in must-past spending legislation, potentially removing a major obstacle to a bipartisan deal just days ahead of a government shutdown deadline.

Trump told a gathering of around 20 conservative media reporters Monday evening that he would be willing to return to the wall funding issue in September, according to two people who were in the room. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the get-together, which was not originally intended to be on the record.

The border wall money is fiercely opposed by Democrats, whose votes are needed to pass the government-wide spending legislation that comes due Friday at midnight. The wall is also unpopular with many Republicans, and GOP negotiators on Capitol Hill were uneasy about the clash over the wall potentially sparking a government shutdown.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who has a key role providing Democratic votes to pass the legislation, welcomed Trump's reported shift on the wall.

"It's good for the country that President Trump is taking the wall off the table in these negotiations," Schumer said late Monday. "Now the bipartisan and bicameral negotiators can continue working on the outstanding issues."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said, "The president's comments this evening are welcome news given the bipartisan opposition to the wall, and the obstacle it has been to the continuing bipartisan negotiations in the appropriations committees."

The wall was the most pressing issue confronting lawmakers as they returned from a two-week spring recess to face a critical deadline. Congress must pass a $1 trillion catch-all spending bill to pay for all agencies of government or trigger a partial shutdown Saturday, which happens to coincide with the 100th day of Trump's presidency.

"I'm optimistic. I don't think anybody wants a shutdown," Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said as he exited a meeting of GOP leadership. "The White House and basically the minority leaders of the House and Senate have to have some level of agreement on the things that you're adding."

I really want the government to be murdered and wrapped in a pig carcass and dumped in the middle of the ocean, just like we should do to all goat rapists...but I'll settle for a "shutdown", Roy, which everybody knows only slows less than half of the government.

The negotiations over the spending bill took center stage Monday despite a separate White House push for fast action to revive health care legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. After signaling last week that they hoped for a vote as soon as this week on a rewritten health bill, White House officials softened their stance Monday. Echoing the views of House GOP leaders, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said there would be a vote on health care legislation when House leaders count the 216 votes needed to pass it.

"I think we want to make sure that we've got the votes and we're headed in the right direction before putting some artificial deadline," Spicer said.

Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan were embarrassed last month when they had to pull their "Obamacare" replacement bill off the floor without a vote as it became clear it would fail. Since then leaders of conservative and moderate factions in the House have been negotiating on a compromise allowing states to opt out of certain "Obamacare" requirements, and they appear to be making progress, although legislative text had not been finalized as of Monday.

The original GOP bill eliminated many of the "Obamacare" mandates, offered skimpier subsidies for consumers to buy care and rolled back a Medicaid expansion. Conservatives balked, saying it didn't go far enough.

With Democrats unanimously opposed, it remains to be seen whether the health care deal will come together and attract the needed support. Trump talked it up on Twitter, writing Monday: "If our healthcare plan is approved, you will see real healthcare and premiums will start tumbling down. ObamaCare is in a death spiral!"

Trump also pushed for his border wall, a central campaign pledge that he still insists Mexico will pay for in the end, though Democrats and even most Republicans doubt that will ever come to pass. Cost estimates range past $20 billion and the White House had been seeking $1.4 billion as a down payment in the spending bill.

Trump turned again to Twitter: "The Wall is a very important tool in stopping drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth (and many others)! If the wall is not built, which it will be, the drug situation will NEVER be fixed the way it should be! #BuildTheWall."

But some of the conservative journalists who met Monday evening with Trump reported he said wall funding could wait until the fall. Prior to the White House demand late last week for border wall money, it had largely been assumed on Capitol Hill that the spending measure would include funding for additional security steps along the border, but that there wouldn't be any money explicitly dedicated for new wall construction. That approach now appears likely to prevail.

The other major stumbling block on the spending bill involves a demand by Democratic negotiators that the measure fund cost-sharing payments to insurance companies that help low-income people afford health policies under Obama's health law, or that Trump back off a threat to use the payments as a bargaining chip.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

How ya like the latest lyin'-ass bitch in the White House?

Just one word:

SUCKERS!

OK, here are a few more: Blame yourselves, you suckers, not the left-fascists or the AmeriKKKaLast media.

Trump's 100-days promises: A long way to go on most of them - Washington's Other Newspaper ...

WASHINGTON — Sure enough, the big trans-Pacific trade deal is toast, climate change action
is on the ropes and various regulations from the Obama era have been scrapped. It’s also a safe bet
President Donald Trump hasn’t raced a bicycle since Jan. 20, keeping that vow.
Add a Supreme Court justice — no small feat — and call these promises kept.

But where’s that wall? Or the promised trade punishment against China — will the Chinese get off
scot-free from “the greatest theft in the history of the world”? What about that “easy” replacement
for Obamacare? How about the trillion-dollar infrastructure plan and huge tax cut that were supposed
to be in motion by now?

Trump’s road to the White House, paved in big, sometimes impossible pledges, has detoured onto a
byway of promises deferred or left behind, an AP analysis found.

Of 38 specific promises Trump made in his 100-day “contract” with voters — “This is my pledge to you” —
he’s accomplished 10, mostly through executive orders that don’t require legislation, such as withdrawing the
U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

He’s abandoned several and failed to deliver quickly on others, stymied at times by a divided Republican Party
and resistant federal judges. Of 10 promises that require Congress to act, none has been achieved and most
have not been introduced.

“I’ve done more than any other president in the first 100 days,” the president bragged in a recent interview with
AP, even as he criticized the marker as an “artificial barrier.”

In truth, his 100-day plan remains mostly a to-do list that will spill over well beyond Saturday, his 100th day.

Some of Trump’s promises were obviously hyperbole to begin with. Don’t hold your breath waiting for alleged
Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl to be dropped out of an airplane without a parachute, as Trump vowed he’d do at many
of his campaign rallies. China’s leader got a fancy dinner, complete with “beautiful” chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago
this month, not the promised “McDonald’s hamburger” and humble pie.

But many promises were meant to be taken seriously. Trump clearly owes his supporters a Mexico border wall,
even if it doesn’t end up being a foot taller than the Great Wall of China.

One page of his 100-day manifesto is devoted to legislation he would fight to pass in 100 days.
None of it has been achieved.

The other page lists 18 executive actions and intentions he promised to pursue — many on Day One.
He has followed through on fewer than a dozen, largely through the use of executive orders, and
the White House is boasting that he will set a post-World War II record when he signs more this week.

That’s a change in tune.

“We need people in Washington that don’t go around signing executive orders because
they can’t get people into a room andget some kind of a deal that’s negotiated,” he declared in
New Hampshire in March 2015. “We need people that know how to lead, and we don’t have that.
We have amateurs.”

Efforts to provide affordable child care and paid maternity leave, to make college more
affordable and to invest in urban areas have been all but forgotten. That’s despite the advantage
of a Republican-controlled Congress, which the White House failed to pull together behind
Trump’s first attempt to repeal and replace “Obamacare.”

An AP reporter who followed Trump throughout the presidential campaign collected scores
of promises he made along the way, from the consequential to the fanciful. Here are some
of them, and his progress so far:

___
ENERGY and the ENVIRONMENT:

— Lift President Barack Obama’s roadblocks on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.
Done. Keystone XL is revived and construction of the Dakota Access is completed.

— Lift restrictions on mining coal and drilling for oil and natural gas.
Done. Trump has unraveled a number of Obama-era restrictions and initiated a review of the
Clean Power Plan, which aimed to restrict greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants.

— Cancel payments to U.N. climate change programs and pull out of the Paris climate accord
Nope. Trump has yet to make a decision on Paris. His aides are torn.

___
ECONOMY and TRADE:

— Pass a tax overhaul. “Just think about what can be accomplished in the first 100 days of a Trump
administration,” he told his supporters again and again in the final weeks of the campaign. “We are going
to have the biggest tax cut since Ronald Reagan.” He promised a plan that would reduce rates dramatically
both for corporations and the middle class.
Nowhere close. Trump has scrapped the tax plan he campaigned on, and his administration’s new
package is in its early stages, not only missing the first 100 days but likely to miss a new August
deadline set by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Some details may emerge this week.

—Designate China a currency manipulator, setting the stage for possible trade penalties
because “we’re like the piggy bank that’s being robbed. We can’t continue to allow China to
rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing.”
Abandoned. Trump says he doesn’t want to punish China when it is cooperating in a response
to North Korean provocations. He also says China has stopped manipulating its currency for unfair trade
advantage. But China was moving away from that behavior well before he took office. Also set aside:
repeated vows to slap high tariffs on Chinese imports.

—Announce his intention to renegotiate or withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Backtracked, in essence. A draft of his administration’s plan for NAFTA proposes
only a mild rewrite. But in his AP interview, he threatened anew to terminate the deal if
his goals are not met in a renegotiation.

— Direct his commerce secretary and trade representative to identify all
foreign trading abuses that unfairly hurt American workers.
Done. Trump has initiated plenty of studies over the past 100 days.

— Slap a 35 percent tariff on goods from companies that ship production abroad.
Force companies like Apple and Nabisco to make their products in the U.S.
Nope.

—Embark on a massive $1 trillion effort to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, including
airports, roads and bridges.
Not yet.

__
SECURITY, DEFENSE and IMMIGRATION:

— Immediately suspend the Syrian refugee program.
Trump tried, but the first version of his travel ban was blocked by the courts. A revised version dropped
references to Syrian refugees entirely. That was blocked, too. And he has yet to mention
another campaign pledge: to deport Syrian refugees already settled in the U.S.

— Inform his generals they have 30 days to submit a new plan for defeating the Islamic State group.
Trump did indeed order up a plan. It’s unclear what it is since it has yet to be made public.

— Suspend immigration from “terror-prone regions” where he says vetting is too difficult.
Trump’s effort to bar immigration temporarily from some Muslim-majority countries
has been stymied by courts.

— Implement “extreme” immigration vetting techniques.
In progress. The Homeland Security Department is considering a number of measures, like asking
for visitors’ phone contacts and social media passwords.

—Build an “impenetrable physical wall” along the length of the southern border, and make Mexico pay for it.
The government has been soliciting bids and test sections could be built as soon as this summer.
Mexico is not paying for this work.

—End federal funding to “sanctuary cities” — places where local officials are considered
by Washington to be insufficiently cooperative in arresting or detaining people in the country illegally.
The Justice Department has threatened to do so, but there are legal limits.

— Immediately deport the estimated 2 million “criminal aliens” living in the country, including
gang members, in joint operations with local, state, and federal law enforcement.
Deportations have not increased. Arrests of people in the U.S. illegally are up and
illegal border crossings are significantly down.

—Cancel visas for foreign countries that won’t take back criminals deported by the U.S.
There’s been no discussion of this yet.

—”Immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties,” one of which allows
young people brought into the country as children to stay and work.

Trump has made no effort to end the program, even though it would take a single phone call.
In fact, he told AP these young people can “rest easy” and not fear deportation.

Golly, the "Terror of the Illegals" has turned out to be a fucking pansy on immigration! Who knew?

I DID. AND SO DID EVERY REAL CONSERVATIVE, YOU SUCKERS!

__
GOVERNMENT and the SWAMP:

— Ask agency and department heads to identify job-killing regulations for elimination.
Done.

— Propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.
Nope.

— “Drain the swamp.”
On his pledge to curb the power of special interests, Trump has so far used
an executive order to prohibit political appointees from lobbying the government
for five years after serving in his administration and to ban outgoing officials
from representing foreign governments. But he’s discontinuing the Obama-era
practice of releasing White House visitor logs, restoring a shroud over what special
interests are getting in his gates. He’s also issued at least one waiver to his
lobbying ban, allowing a White House budget adviser to go advocate for a business trade group

— Impose a hiring freeze on federal employees, excluding military and
public safety staffers. This was one of Trump’s first actions. But the freeze has since been lifted.

—Require that two regulations be eliminated for each new one imposed.
Trump signed an order requiring agencies to identify two existing
regulations for every new one imposed — though there is nothing in the
order that requires the two to be eliminated.
___
FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

— End the strategy of nation-building and regime change.
Trump’s foreign policy posture is still in its early stages, though
he has already intervened in Syria and has escalated rhetoric against North Korea.

— Move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
The administration says it is studying the issue.

— Negotiate the release of all U.S. prisoners held in Iran,
even before taking office. Renegotiate or leave the Iran nuclear deal.
No prisoners have been released. The administration is studying
the nuclear deal and Trump told AP “it’s possible” the U.S. will withdraw.

— Create a safe zone in Syria for refugees, paid for by the Gulf states.
Not yet.
___
HEALTH CARE, COURTS and GUNS:

—”My first day in office, I’m going to ask Congress to put a bill on
my desk getting rid of this disastrous law and replacing it with reforms that
expand choice, freedom, affordability. You’re going to have such great health care
at a tiny fraction of the cost. It’s going to be so easy.”

The bill to replace “Obamacare” was pulled from Congress because it lacked
enough support. He will try again with a revised plan.

— Begin selecting a new Supreme Court judge to fill the court’s vacancy.
Done. Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch and the Senate approved him.

— Eliminate gun-free zones in schools and on military bases.
Nope.
___
REALLY?

— “I promise I will never be in a bicycle race.”
So far, so good. Trump’s vow came after John Kerry, then secretary of state,
broke his femur in May 2015 while riding a bicycle. He was not in a bicycle race.

—Bar his generals from being interviewed on television.
Never mind that. Army Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, as Trump’s national security adviser,
recently appeared on a Sunday news show. Several senior military officers have
done Pentagon news conferences in the past few months that are taped by the networks.
Gen. John Nicholson, the top general in Afghanistan, appeared at a news conference Monday.

—No time for play.
Most weekends as president, Trump has broken his pledge to avoid the golf course, after years
of criticizing his predecessor for playing the game. “Because I’m going to be working for you,
I’m not going to have time to go play golf,” he told a Virginia rally in August. “Believe me.”

Oh, in case you were wondering if Byron York is a Fake Conservative

and a closeted fascist, take a gander at him praising the Orange Dicktater's

"executive action" in the Washington Examiner...

Byron York: Trump's 100 days: An executive success

SUCKERS!

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.