Democrat anger over the US flag beside the North Korean flag and the Trump salute

About Trump's salute  . . . "When a military officer returns the salute of a subordinate, there is no suggestion of subservience in the returned salute. Quite the contrary. When someone bows before a king, subservience can be inferred in many cultures.

"I assume that Trump’s critics understand this. Their shrill attacks on the president for returning the salute are just another manifestation of their hatred of the man."

When you are the darling of celebrities, you can do no wrong. TD

The Unconfined Life of Charles Krauthammer

A.B. Stoddard  "Charles Krauthammer once told me, “The way I look at life is that it's all an accident. Everything.” We were in the lobby of the Hall of States, blocks from the Capitol, having finished the “Special Report” panel upstairs at Fox News Channel. I was somewhat taken aback, though I knew immediately it would stay with me forever. Charles, after all, was looking up at me from his motorized wheelchair, confined to it for life after a freak accident at age 22 paralyzed him from the neck down. None of this is meant to be and there is no design, he said. We are all along for the ride, no matter the turns.

"News that Charles now has weeks to live, that cancer will take him, was beyond my imagination. The rightful, peaceful ending was not in store. For Charles, whose life was forever altered by a knife-twist of fate, there would be yet another tragic accident. Speaking directly in a public letter, Charles was valiant as ever. He acknowledged a vicious and arbitrary cancer, which had been there but was gone a month ago, had returned for good, and said, “This is the final verdict. My fight is over.”

"Charles, like all heroes, leads us by his example. In Bret Baier’s extraordinary 2013 Fox News special on Krauthammer, “A Life That Matters,” Charles’ describes his diving accident, and his refusal to dwell on it. His staggering resolve led him to finish medical school on time, while recovering in the hospital, with his lessons projected on the ceiling above. Putting off his studies would have been “fatal,” Charles told Bret. Years later Charles would begin driving again while sitting in a wheelchair. He once explained this miraculous development to me, citing the man who engineered a customized car for him, in riveting detail. His retelling revealed just what this path back to freedom meant, and what it felt like. Charles was smiling and exuberant and I held back tears, hoping he wouldn’t notice me choke up." . . .

Reparations: Who Should Pay?

Tom Trinko

"In their never-ending effort to Balkanize America and buy black votes by stealing from all taxpayers, including black ones, the Democrats are reviving their call for reparations for slavery.  After all, with blacks waking up to the fact that Democrats are doing nothing for them, a new bribe appears to be necessary.

"The first question is, who should be paid?  Obviously not blacks like Obama, who have not a drop of slave blood.  The government would have to spend a fortune to find out what percentage of slave blood black Americans had to see how much each was owned.  But it's worse than that.  If someone is 50% white and 50% black slave ancestry, how much does white privilege offset the debt owed due to slavery?" . . .

. . . "An added advantage of making Democrats pay is that since their policies have persecuted blacks right up to the present time, we won't have to figure out what percentage of slave blood blacks have when we divvy up the money.

"Every Democratic politician should have to put 10% of his after-tax income each year into a reparations fund that will be distributed to all blacks.

"Every registered Democrat voter – except for blacks, of course – will have to pay $100 every time he votes – including in primaries – which will also be placed into the reparations fund.

"Clearly, this is the only way that the injustice perceived by leftists can be addressed." . . .

Editorial: What’s Next on Same-Sex Wedding Cakes?

Religious and individual liberty survived the Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop decision unscathed, but we’re likely to see a day when businesses and individuals are punished by the state for abiding by their moral and religious convictions. When that happens, lawsuits may be less effective than simply refusing to comply, accepting the punishment, and allowing the world to see just how coercive “liberalism” can be.

Weekly Standard Editors

"On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who in 2012 refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Phillips, an expert baker who has owned his business, the Masterpiece Cakeshop, for 24 years, concluded that his Christian faith wouldn’t allow him to create a custom-baked cake for two men wishing to celebrate their matrimonial union.

"In 2012 the Court’s Obergefell decision hadn’t yet happened, and indeed Colorado law didn’t yet recognize same-sex marriage. The two men, Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, were planning to marry in Massachusetts (where same-sex marriage was already legal) and celebrate their union back in Colorado. Rather than simply picking a different bakery and perhaps complaining about Masterpiece Cakeshop on Yelp, they took their complaint to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The commission investigated the case and found that Phillips had violated the couple’s rights—this despite the fact that the baker’s understanding of marriage was at that time perfectly in keeping with Colorado law.

"The commission’s insistence that Phillips had violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act was not prima facie unreasonable. That law forbids an individual or business to “refuse, withhold from, or deny to an individual or a group, because of disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, or ancestry, the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of a place of public accommodation.” The addition of “sexual orientation” was added only a decade ago, but there it is in black and white.

"We suspect most fair-minded people feel there’s something unjust about coercing a baker to create a cake that, for reasons of deeply held conviction, he doesn’t want to create—especially when the same-sex couple in question needed only try the next bakery in the phone book. But the law was clear: No discrimination based on sexual orientation." . . .

The Facts Of North Korea Nuclear And WMD Program

Noisy Room Text quoted below:
"Professionals at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge Laboratories estimate it would take up to ten years to dismantle all programs and operations in North Korea. Further, Tehran, Moscow and Beijing will work hard to delay what they can due to eliminating evidence of their respective involvement for decades in North Korea.

The Nine Steps Required to Really Disarm North Korea

By WILLIAM J. BROAD, DAVID E. SANGER and TROY GRIGGS JUNE 11, 2018

NYT’s: The vast scope of North Korea’s atomic program means ending it would be the most challenging case of nuclear disarmament in history. Here’s what has to be done to achieve — and verify — the removal of the nuclear arms, the dismantlement of the atomic complex and the elimination of the North’s other weapons of mass destruction.

Nuclear Capabilities

• Dismantle and remove nuclear weapons
  Take apart every nuclear weapon in the North’s arsenal and ship the parts out of the country.
• Halt uranium enrichment
  Dismantle the plants where centrifuges make fuel for nuclear reactors and atom bombs.
• Disable reactors
  Shutter the nuclear reactors that turn uranium into plutonium, a second bomb fuel.
• Close nuclear test sites
  Confirm that the North’s recent, staged explosions actually destroyed the complex.
• End H-bomb fuel production
  Close exotic fuel plants that can make atom bombs hundreds of times more destructive.
• Inspect anywhere, forever
  Give international inspectors the freedom to roam and inspect anywhere.

Non-Nuclear Capabilities

• Destroy germ weapons
  Eliminate anthrax and other deadly biological arms, under constant inspection.
• Destroy chemical weapons
  Eliminate sarin, VX and other lethal agents the North has used on enemies.
• Curb missile program
  Eliminate missile threats to the U.S., Japan and South Korea.

President Trump says he is meeting Kim Jong-un in Singapore because the North Korean leader has signaled a willingness to “denuclearize.’’

But that word means very different things in Pyongyang and Washington, and in recent weeks Mr. Trump has appeared to back away from his earlier insistence on a rapid dismantlement of all things nuclear — weapons and production facilities — before the North receives any sanctions relief.

Whether it happens quickly or slowly, the task of “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization’’ — the phrase that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo keeps repeating — will be enormous. Since 1992, the country has repeatedly vowed never to test, manufacture, produce, store or deploy nuclear arms. It has broken all those promises and built a sprawling nuclear complex.

Full article here.