Obama’s Decisions Doomed The Paris Climate Accord To Failure In The US, Experts Say

"Clinton’s 2016 victory would have ensured the U.S. remained in the Paris Agreement, but any setback in the courts would have made keeping Obama’s plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions even more difficult to achieve."

Daily Caller  "Blame former President Barack Obama for the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, according to policy experts, as Obama’s decision to forgo Senate approval and bank on a Democratic win in 2016 made the agreement politically vulnerable. 

“The Paris climate agreement was pushed through against the declared will of America’s elected representatives,” Dr. Benny Peiser, director of the UK-based Global Warming Policy Forum, said in a statement.

"President Donald Trump announced Thursday he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris accord. Trump’s Paris withdrawal was made easier by decisions made by Obama to unilaterally impose global warming policies.

"Obama joined the Paris accord in 2016, after years of working behind the scenes to craft the non-binding global warming deal, but he did so without submitting it to the Senate. 

"His signature achievement on global warming, therefore, depended on Hillary Clinton winning the 2016 presidential election and the courts.

Guess how liberals reacted to the Islamic attack in London?

Ed Straker  "When Muslims kill people "in the name of Allah," how do liberals react? We know they don't equate the terrorist act with the Islamic religion. So what do they say? Because it is important to know how liberals think, I have donned a hazmat suit and dived deeply into the comments section of the HuffPo and the WaPo to enlighten you.

Pat Dayton Neff • Knightdale, North Carolina

Another sad chapter in our current world history. What will it take for all of us to realize all life is important

"All of us? We can see the creeping moral equivalence here. Are there also Christians and Buddhists going around running people down in cars and stabbing them?

Stephen Haydel • Senior Software Engineer at Self Employed - Independent Contractor

Hate breads Violence.

"Is it hate that really "breads" violence?

. . . No, it's neanderthal men!

Zanna T Laws • City of London Polytechnic

I suspect it is not even terrorism anymore - simply unevolved males leaping at the chance to be randomly violent.

"It's not Islam, it's men's fault! Do you think Zanna is an "evolved" female? If so, does that mean she pays for her own abortions?"

Oh, but there is much more:

MSNBC wonders if there has been an “overreaction by authorities” to the latest Muslim terrorist attack in London   Video

President Trump blasts London’s Muslim Mayor after latest Muslim terrorist attack  "During Sunday’s tweetstorm, Trump stressed an end to political correctness — possibly because Khan declined to mention the term “radical Islam” in a statement to residents.
“ 'We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people,” Trump wrote. “If we don’t get smart it will only get worse.' ”

Killing In The Name Of: Stop Using Other Religions To Excuse Islamic Terrorism . . .

Peter Daou 

✔@peterdaou

Can someone please explain why religion is never mentioned when an evil coward guns down children in an American school? #LondonBridge

Twitter Ads info and privacy

"Implicit in this ridiculous statement is, of course, that either A) there was a religious motivating factor behind the Newtown massacre (to use one example of a school shooting), or B) that we’re all really biased and racist and Islamophobic for bringing up the London Bridge killers’ devotion to that religion. So, taken in turn: A) the killers in school shootings in America, to the best of my knowledge, do not claim the innocent victims’ lives in the name of their God, and B) the killers in London did." . . .

On 75th anniversary of battle, Chicago mulls renaming Midway airport after Obama

But parts of three bomber squadrons managed to penetrate the Japanese defenses and, with Yamamoto's planes in the process of changing their armament from bombs to torpedoes leaving ordnance all over the flight deck, the American planes struck, blowing 3 Japanese carriers completely out of the water and crippling a fourth (it was later scuttled). It was a titanic blow from which  Yamamoto and the Japanese navy never recovered.Now, let's weigh those magnificent accomplishments against the deeds of President Obama.

Rick Moran  "Chicago's Midway Airport, once the busiest airport in the world, got its name in 1949 when the city fathers decided to rename the Chicago Municipal Airport to memorialize one of the most important military engagements in American military history, the Battle of Midway.

" 'Now the city is considering renaming the facility again - this time, after its favorite son, Barack Obama.

Chicago Tribune:

"We have to, in some way, whether it’s President Obama or in the other case, Dr. Brazier, acknowledge people who have done significant things. We have an airport, two of them, named after, you know, Midway Airport, O’Hare Airport,” Emanuel said. “These are people who have been transformative in the city of Chicago. But we have airports named after battleships.”

Actually, O’Hare is named after World War II Navy pilot Edward “Butch” O’Hare, and Midway was given its name by city officials in 1949 in remembrance of the 1942 Battle of Midway, a crucial battle in the Pacific during World War II.

Emanuel did not take questions from reporters following the forum. Update: Later, Emanuel spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said the mayor has no plans to rename either airport.

Typos corrected, TD

Kathy Griffin continues to entertain

"It appears that Kathy Griffin may be creating a new love interest in the ISIS camp with he recent fake Trump head disaster. Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco"

Tony Branco

Ian Macfarlane‎ Guardian Eagles

Why Cities Shouldn’t Take Down Confederate Statues

Severing our roots to this country’s history—warts and all—will turn the United States into little more than a listless, economic behemoth, with no past and no future.

Heritage

"Social justice warriors seem to have hit a wall in American politics.
Perhaps sensing that their attempts to fundamentally transform America through top-down control have reached their limit, they are doubling down on reshaping America from the ground up.
"Their new favorite target is American history, and they are starting with low-hanging fruit: Confederate monuments.
"Activists are stridently taking their crusades from the college campus to a town near you, systematically pushing cities to change street names, tear down statues, and even dig up bodies to cleanse America of its Confederate vestiges.
"Last Friday, the mayor of Baltimore announced that the city will follow in the footsteps of New Orleans, and consider the removal of numerous Confederate monuments throughout the city.
"New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said of the removal of his city’s monuments:
"To literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our more prominent places—in honor—is an inaccurate recitation of our full past, is an affront to our present and it is a bad prescription for our future.
"It may perhaps be enough to denounce the bulldozing of statues as an absurd erasure of history, but this is not the primary problem with this drive to wipe out uncomfortable elements of our past from the public sphere.
"The more critical issue at stake is the loss of a common purpose and the binding heritage that Americans of previous generations forged and shared.
"Dehumanizing the Past, Robbing the Present"While many on the political right have been fine, and in some cases glad, that Confederate heroes are being wiped from public places, they are deeply mistaken if they think this crusade will stop with secessionists.
"Most recently, “Antifa” protestors in Texas have demanded the removal of a 100-year-old statue and “any other landmark that bears the name of Sam Houston,” according to Conservative Review." . . .

Kathy Griffin learned a hard lesson in weaponized outrage

"Total elapsed time from severed head to “he broke me”: Three. Whole. Days."

Do you see tears?

John Podhoretz  "What a time we’ve had with Kathy Griffin. Let’s take a nostalgic look back — first to the image of Griffin holding up the president’s severed head. Then to her panicked apology. Then to CNN and Squatty Potty (don’t ask) severing its ties with her amid complaints from Trump family members. And finally to that gloriously deranged press conference in which a sobbing Griffin claimed she was being “censored” and that Donald Trump “broke me.”

"Ah, memories, like the corners of my mind. Misty, water-colored memories . . . of the Way We Are.  

The face of Hollywood

Total elapsed time from severed head to “he broke me”: Three. Whole. Days.

"Griffin wanted the image of the severed head to go viral, and it did — along with Griffin’s perpetration of the image. If Griffin’s career is over, it will have ended due to her own suicidal act and not due to pressure from the Trumps. You live by the meme, you die by the meme." . . .

And in three months, half the people who carried virtual pitchforks in the social-media lynch mob won’t even be able to remember what had so angered them in the first place. After all, there are new outrages every day, and new scalps to claim.

 

How can Ginsburg participate in Travel Order case after her *campaign* statements about Trump?

Legal Insurrection

July 2016: “He is a faker”

. . . "The 4th Circuit decision has been widely criticized for its reliance on campaign statements, as well as for substituting judicial security evaluations for those of the executive branch.

"This case, unlike other more mundane cases involving Trump policies that may come before the court, clearly places Donald Trump’s words, personality and credibility in issue.

"One of the Justices already has expressed a view on Trump’s credibility. In July 2016, Justice Ruth Bader Ginbsburg was quoted in a CNN interview deriding Trump as “a faker”:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s well-known candor was on display in her chambers late Monday, when she declined to retreat from her earlier criticism of Donald Trump and even elaborated on it.

“He is a faker,” she said of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, going point by point, as if presenting a legal brief. “He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. … How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.” ….

“At first I thought it was funny,” she said of Trump’s early candidacy. “To think that there’s a possibility that he could be president … ” Her voice trailed off gloomily.

“I think he has gotten so much free publicity,” she added, drawing a contrast between what she believes is tougher media treatment of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and returning to an overriding complaint: “Every other presidential candidate has turned over tax returns.”

"That July 2016 CNN lashing of Trump was not a one-off. Justice Ginsburg made two other negative public statements about Trump during the campaign" (via Politifact): . . .

To die for Estonia?

"And yet Trump deliberately, defiantly refused to simply say it: America will always honor its commitment under Article 5." Charles Krauthammer

The 1938 words of a British Prime Minister, reflecting the mood of a pacifistic nation, that opened the door to the most murderous war in the history of the world: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war."

Charles Krauthammer  "So what if, in his speech last week to NATO, President Trump didn’t explicitly reaffirm the provision that an attack on one is an attack on all?

"What’s the big deal? Didn’t he affirm a general commitment to NATO during his visit? Hadn’t he earlier sent his vice president and secretaries of state and defense to pledge allegiance to Article 5?

"And anyway, who believes that the United States would really go to war with Russia — and risk nuclear annihilation — over Estonia?

"Ah, but that’s precisely the point. It is because deterrence is so delicate, so problematic, so literally unbelievable that it is not to be trifled with. And why for an American president to gratuitously undermine what little credibility deterrence already has, by ostentatiously refusing to recommit to Article 5, is so shocking.

"Deterrence is inherently a barely believable bluff. Even at the height of the Cold War, when highly resolute presidents, such as Eisenhower and Kennedy, threatened Russia with “massive retaliation” (i.e., all-out nuclear war), would we really have sacrificed New York for Berlin?"  . . . 

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday (without mentioning his name) that after Trump’s visit it is clear that Europe can no longer rely on others. It’s not that yesterday Europe could fully rely — and today it cannot rely at all. It’s simply that the American deterrent has been weakened. And deterrence weakened is an invitation to instability, miscalculation, provocation and worse.

"And for what?" . . .

There is reason to doubt America's resolve:

In the 2013 phase of the Syrian crisis, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on 7 September 2013 "this is our Munich moment" in which the West should not remain "silent spectators to slaughter", an invocation to other countries to support a U.S. led strike against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Ironically, that strike never took place, despite Obama's invocation of the "red line", chemical attacks, which he asserted Assad had crossed.

Why Die for Tallinn?

Ethics Verdict: Hillary Clinton Is The Worst Loser In US Presidential History (PART II)

Ethics Alarms    You read PART I here.

. . . "Nonetheless, she is throwing around alternative facts like confetti. The news media was biased against her. “Voter suppression” cost her Wisconsin. My personal favorite was when she gave the cheering, indoctrinated Wellesley fems the alternative history that Richard Nixon was impeached. No, Hillary, your husband was impeached. Nixon had the requisite respect for the office to resign.

. . . 

"Being a bad loser isn’t just bad sportsmanship. It is disrespectful, unfair, irresponsible and constitutes a Golden Rule breach; it is ungracious, petty and mean. For a defeated Presidential candidate, however, it is far worse, Clinton’s brand of blame-casting and accusations undermines public trust, weakens our institutions and divides the public, society and the country, Clinton’s supporters look to her for guidance regarding how to act, and she is guiding them unethically, to behave unethically.

"It is true that President trump is also, by far, the worst winner our Presidential history has ever seen. He has gloated and preened and crowed, in part because he is wounded that the news media has not given him what he believes should be proper credit for his amazing upset. A poor winner, however only hurts himself. Clinton is harming the country to spare herself the pain of accepting accountability for her own defeat."

Boo Hoo, Kathy “ISIS” Griffin Plays Victim During Presser While Promising to Attack Trump

ronbosoldier.blogspot.

Saving the Republic  "Well at last Kathy Griffin held a presser today with, Gloria Allred’s offspring, Lisa Bloom over how she is the victim after her ISIS beheading style Trump photo shoot. Yes America that’s right the wrongdoer, the person who crossed the line in all of this is apparently the victim. She is so distraught from this PREMEDITATED PR stunt (more on that in a second) she said, “I don’t think I will have a career after this. I’m going to be honest, he [Trump] broke me.”

"Griffin is even promising to attack Trump more, which means more hell coming her way. Also take note all the shots she takes at white people, what’s that all about?

"Boo hoo Kathy, ya know what? We’re GLAD you won’t have a career after this and have been broken. That said, please spare the crocodile tears seeing that you planned all of this out you lying fraud!" . . .

On the Paris Climate Accord

Trump Steps on the Paris Agreement, Stands for Sovereignty  . . . The economic facts would have been enough to justify our withdrawal from the Agreement.  Nevertheless, the defining moment was when Trump said (my italics):

There are serious legal and constitutional issues as well.  Foreign leaders in Europe, Asia, and across the world, should not have more to say with respect to the U.S. economy than our own citizens and their elected representatives, thus, our withdrawal from the agreement represents a reassertion of America's sovereignty. Our constitution is unique among all nations of the world. And it is my highest obligation and greatest honor to protect it. And I will[.] ... It would once have been unthinkable that an international agreement could prevent the United States from conducting its own domestic economic affairs, but this is the new reality we face if we do not leave the agreement or if we do not negotiate a far better deal."

An avalanche of pullouts from the Paris Climate Agreement?   "The screeching brouhaha over President Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement could, at first glance, be called a global episode of Trump Derangement Syndrome. But with the intensity of the rage, it seems to be more than that. Former United Nations has-been and ex-President of Ireland Mary Robinson called the U.S. a 'rogue state.' France's President Emmanuel Macron offered 'refuge' to America's climate scientists, as if these people were actually in danger of losing tenure or maybe a grant, not to mention an imaginary knock on the door at midnight. Former Obama 'mind meld' Ben Rhodes calls it 'moral wreckage' adding: 'The rest of the world will watch in horror.' Billionaire greenie Tom Steyer calls Trump's act 'a traitorous act of war.'

"We know they've gone off the deep end." . . .

New York lights up One World Trade Center, Kosciuszko Bridge, and City Hall in green to protest Trump's 'reckless decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord'

Paris: Trump Blocks First of Obama's 'Three Authoritarianisms' . . . "All three of these "authoritarianisms" were entirely ex-Constitutional.  The first two were in essence treaties on which Congress (and by extension the American people) never got to vote or, for that matter, discuss in any serious way.  The Paris accord probably would have failed. As for the Iran deal, we still don't know the full contents and therefore debating it is somewhat moot. We have, however, seen its consequences -- corpses littered all across Syria, not to mention untold millions of refugees.

"Admittedly, too, the third of "Three Authoritarianisms" is still, shall we say, occluded.  We don't know the extent of this surveillance and may never. But this too is typical authoritarian behavior."

A severed head is a sign of spreading Trump Derangement Syndrome

Hillary Clinton let it rip onstage at a tech conference in California Tuesday where she refused to take any blame for her election loss to Trump in November. She’s clearly still on the warpath. Hillary Clinton just posted a photo online of her holding up the severed head of her campaign pollster. Comedian Argus Hamilton

Washington Times  . . . "After nearly 24 hours of public outcry, CNN finally cut ties with Ms. Griffin, who co-hosts their painfully awkward annual New Year’s Eve telecast.

"Outrageous language has been escalating for weeks. What began with a sexually explicit and vulgar on-air “joke” by CBS late night host Stephen Colbert led to Ms. Griffin’s provocative outburst. Each unbelievable lashing out aims to outdo its predecessor.

"I would hope all sane Americans can agree that Kathy Griffin’s despicable act was indefensible.

"Mr. Trump revealed on social media that the image upset his young son Barron, as it must have also bothered the young children of the president’s older children. Ms. Griffin thought she was being funny, which her career has shown is never the case. But more than that, she intended to galvanize the angry Left, which has consistently targeted, delegitimized and attacked this president in ways this country has never seen.

"Conservatives were deeply troubled by President Obama’s march toward European-style socialism, with big-government policies, unconstitutional actions and stifling regulations. But I don’t recall images of his severed head being shared by celebrities." . . .