Tag Archives: Unesco

Trump continues his rampage

Donald J. Trump is having a busy week, indeed.

The president has taken direct aim at (a) the Affordable Care Act, (b) the Iran nuclear deal and (c) the United Nations. To what end? To show the world he’s putting “America first” and that he doesn’t care what the rest of the nation that didn’t vote for him thinks about the policies he is dismantling.

* Trump this week declared his intention to discontinue the subsidies the government pays to reduce health insurance premiums for Americans who need them to purchase insurance under the ACA. He’s seeking to destroy former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, no matter how many millions of Americans he hurts along the way.

* The president has decided against recertifying the Iran nuclear pact that Obama’s foreign policy team negotiated with five other nations. It seeks to demand that Iran quit developing nuclear weapons. International analysts say Iran is complying with the deal; Trump says the Iranians aren’t complying. Hmm. Who do you believe, the experts or a pathological liar?

* Trump has decided to pull the United States out of UNESCO, a UN-affiliated organization dedicated to developing world peace through collaborative educational, scientific and cultural reforms. That sound pretty nefarious, right? He cites an alleged “anti-Israel bias” in the UN. So, he’ll just pull us out of UNESCO. That’ll teach ’em.

The president just cannot stop doing things that make many of us angry. Sure, he pleases a lot of folks around the country with this so-called “no-nonsense” approach to domestic and international policy.

In my own view, though, he is forsaking policies only because they were crafted by his predecessor, the fellow Trump defamed by suggesting for years he wasn’t qualified constitutionally to serve as president; it’s that “birther” thing.

As for the UNESCO pullout, Trump is managing to anger allied nations who do not view the world through the same distorted prism the president uses.

But, by golly, he’s telling it like it is.

No takeover is imminent

Jade Helm 15 is about to commence in Texas.

Despite what some nut jobs have put out there, the U.S. military is not about to take over the state and hand it over to international spies.

Do not listen to the goofballs who actually persuaded Gov. Greg Abbott to order the Texas State Guard to “monitor” the activities of the Army, Navy and Air Force special forces who’ll be conducting the exercises.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2015/07/jade-helm-15-no-that-helicopter-is-not-coming-for-you.html/

It’s going to be all right.

The exercise was announced some months back and the Internet then jumped to life with conspiracy theories about what it all meant to some individuals and groups. As the Dallas Morning News blogger Jim Mitchell notes, one of the nuttier notions involves the Alamo: the United Nations declared the old mission a Unesco World Heritage Site, which apparently sealed it for some. Anything that involves the U.N. has got to be bad news for Texas, they feared.

The founding fathers didn’t get it perfect when they drafted and then ratified the U.S. Constitution. One thing they got right, though, was to build in a checks-and-balances system that’s designed to prevent one branch of government from getting too powerful.

President Obama knows all of this. So does the Pentagon brass. Even the federal judiciary, which has come under fire lately because of some controversial Supreme Court rulings, understands it. Congress knows its place, too.

Let the troops come to Texas to conduct their exercises.

It’s going to be OK. Honest.