Now Trump is trying to nominate people to head international institutions who are fundamentally opposed to that institution. Seriously. And he expects the rest of the world to just roll over and do whatever he likes?
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/4286 ... world-bank
President Trump’s pick to lead the World Bank could spark an unprecedented battle over the future of the multinational lender.
Trump is set to nominate Treasury Under Secretary David Malpass — a fierce critic of the World Bank — to serve as its next president, spurring concern within the development finance world.
...The United States holds the largest stake in the World Bank, and the American president has chosen each of its previous leaders. But the nomination of Malpass could face resistance from within the bank, risking a blow up between Trump and another major international institution.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4286 ... p-coverage
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apologized Tuesday after an immigration agent questioned a reporter from BuzzFeed about the outlet's coverage of President Trump.
..."The officer’s comments do not reflect CBP’s commitment to integrity and professionalism of its workforce. In response to this incident, CBP immediately reviewed the event and has initiated the appropriate personnel inquiry and action."
Mack was questioned by an officer when he landed at JFK Airport on Sunday about BuzzFeed's story that Trump had instructed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. .."The immigration agent at JFK just saw that i work for buzzfeed and just grilled me for 10 minutes about the cohen story which was fun given he gets to decide whether to let me back into the country," Mack wrote on Twitter at the time.
In case anyone cares what Trump's speechwriter said, the transcript of Trump's State of the Union address:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... xt/582025/
Embarrassingly, the GOP seems to have acted like rowdy fans at a ball game:
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4286 ... st-country
President Trump pledged during his State of the Union address Tuesday that "America will never be a socialist country," sparking chants of "USA" from GOP lawmakers.
Trump, transitioning from talking about the escalating political crisis in Venezuela, said that he was "alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country." "We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country," Trump said.
Pretty-sounding utter crap. From the president who just sent a bunch of taxpayer money to farmers suffering from his tariffs. That isn't socialist? Not to mention Medicare for seniors, unemployment insurance, etc.
Meh. I suppose this was a message to Americans from the health insurance lobby. They're feeling threatened by talk of a public health care system and have put their advertising into high gear to protect their industry. Needless to say, they also have tons of lobbying money to influence Congress.
Never thought I'd agree with Ann Coulter - even if it's just in shared cynicism:
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4286 ... union-ever
So Trump is AGAINST childhood cancer, AIDS and the Holocaust,” Coulter tweeted. “Glad I tuned in to hear that.”
And Trump is going to find a way to eradicate AIDS in 10 years?. Baloney. How long did it take to eradicate smallpox? Or almost eradicate polio? (and there are still a few pockets that are proving very hard to eliminate). And at least those viruses only infect you for a short while. HIV persists even when it's being controlled by drugs and can bounce right back if those drugs are stopped.
Not to mention that there are hotspots in Africa where HIV infection rates are through the roof. And guess what the Trump administration has done? Reduced foreign aid. And decided that if you provide any information about abortions, you can't get US aid at all. Which means that they've cut off funding from many of the organizations trying to combat AIDS worldwide. So yeah, let's eradicate HIV by ensuring that it spreads more easily.
So, what is Trump going to do? Throw more money at research that already gets at least its fair share of disease-related funding, if not more?
Apparently, he also jumped on the anti-abortion bandwagon big time last night.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ss/582127/
Trump Sees an Opening With Voters on Late-Term Abortion
The president lamented bills that would allow “a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments from birth” in his State of the Union address.
The GOP's anti-abortion wing has been in high gear lately, spreading misinformation about New York's new law that permits late term abortions if the fetus is nonviable or the health/life of the mother is in danger.
https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fac ... hat%20law.
No, New York abortion law doesn't let mothers abort babies a minute before they would be born
Online, abortion opponents have crafted many Facebook messages about the New York law. One post from Jan. 23 attacked it by suggesting it allowed murdering babies a minute before they would otherwise be born.
...Jen Villavicencio, an ob-gyn in the Midwest who provides abortions, said in a statement to PolitiFact that the post is "inaccurate."
"Abortions are not performed at 40 weeks on healthy, viable pregnancies," she said. "Overwhelmingly, abortions that occur at this point in pregnancy are pregnancies where lethal fetal anomalies have been diagnosed."
In some cases, she said, complications aren’t detected or haven’t developed until the third trimester. Doctors may ask patients if they want to continue the pregnancy and deliver a "nonviable fetus," she said, or have an abortion. There are situations where abortion is necessary to save the mother’s life, Villavicencio said. "However, if a mother’s life is at risk and she is pregnant with a viable fetus, most often delivery is pursued, not abortion. The care becomes about saving both the life of the mother and the fetus."
Third-trimester abortions account for "far less than 1 percent of abortions," she said. Data back that up.
Incidentally, this issue also seems to be why a right wing group went after Virginia governor Northam. They've really got some people worked up on social media, calling him "baby killer."
https://www.vox.com/2019/2/1/18205428/v ... ph-northam
A bill to remove abortion restrictions in Virginia was always going to be controversial. But a contentious committee hearing, and some confusing comments by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, have turned debate over the bill into a nationwide furor.
Virginia House Bill 2491 would roll back a number of requirements, including a 24-hour waiting period and a mandate that second-trimester abortions take place in a hospital. Always something of a long shot in the Republican-controlled state legislature, the bill may now be doomed by the national firestorm surrounding it....
Gov. Northam, a Democrat, was asked about the bill in a radio interview on Wednesday, and his response only added to the controversy. Appearing to discuss what would happen if a child was born after a failed attempt at abortion, he said, “the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Soon afterward a group called Big League Politics (highly conservative and pro-Trump) publicized an old yearbook photo of him and a friend in really tasteless party costumes from the 1980s (one person in blackface and the other in a KKK costume having a beer together. I suppose they thought the juxtaposition was funny but it's pretty tactless and clueless.) This photo was supposedly unearthed by a classmate outraged by Northam's remarks on the abortion bill. The same right wing group almost immediately also re-publicized old accusations of unwanted sex against the lieutenant governor, Fairfax, by a political science professor. I'm not sure who would be next in line if both Democrats had to step down but I would guess it's probably a Republican and someone saw an opportunity.
[Edit: Interestingly enough, the third person in line for governor seems to be the attorney general, who just came out and said that he had darkened his face for a party when he was young - he and some friends apparently dressed up as a famous rap (?) group and performed one of their songs. Many news sites are reporting this just as "he admitted to wearing blackface." It seems possible that either he assumed or heard that he was next and decided to admit it first. I heard that the next would-be governor after that is a Republican, though I'm not sure if that's accurate. ]
For what it's worth, I think that Northam, a physician, is absolutely right. I see no reason to force a family to prolong their agony and put a dying infant through life-prolonging procedures with little to no hope of success. Much like the people who refuse to give up when their loved one is almost certainly beyond help and prolong the misery for everyone, including the patient, in hopes of a miracle.
His mistake seems to have been in assuming that listeners knew
why that fetus was aborted in the first place, i.e., it's not expected to survive for long in any case, instead of explaining that as well.
Nor do I think it right that a woman should be forced to carry a nonviable fetus inside her for weeks, knowing that the baby will suffer and die when it's born. If it makes someone feel better not to abort their own fetus in that situation, that's fine. But to force someone else to go through that? No. Let them end the agony and start the healing, if that's what they want.
And anyone who wonders why even more Americans aren't completely outraged at Trump should note this:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... d-of-pence
Roughly 12 percent of Americans say they never heard of Vice President Mike Pence, according to a new poll.
The survey from CNN conducted by SSRS asked respondents if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Pence, among other prominent politicians. “Never heard of” was one selection for respondents to answer with, which 12 percent chose...Twenty-one percent of non-white respondents said they had never heard of him.
Many people pay very little attention to what's going on in the world around them.
Edited to add and correct some details in the very odd situation in Virginia. Which has nothing to do with Trump but just seems queer. Some of it is based on real* - if very old - events, but the orchestration of the outrage seems highly manipulated to me.
*Except for Fairfax, where there's no evidence for Tyson's claims of forced oral sex during an otherwise consensual sexual encounter. It's a he said/she said situation at the moment and likely to stay that way. The Washington Post investigated during the midterms last year when she went to them with her claims and didn't run the story because they couldn't corroborate it.
btw, another odd twist is that Tyson has a publicized interest in "political discourse surrounding sexual assault, corresponding policies, and the unique identities of sexual assault survivors."
https://casbs.stanford.edu/people/vanessa-tyson (I wouldn't necessarily assume this interest has anything to do with Fairfax or anyone else she met as an adult. I saw somewhere else that she has talked about her father sexually abusing her as a child. )