monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Our Trouble with Sex: A Christian Story?
Annette Gordon-Reed

Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century
by Geoffrey R. Stone

Augustine’s story is well known. After a youth of debauchery, he experienced a conversion and used his scholarly influence to preach the gospel of sex’s inherent evil. Fixating on Adam and Eve, he turned aside the Hebrew notion that the story of the pair’s fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden was about disobedience. It was instead a cautionary tale about sex. Stone explains Augustine’s view as follows:

Quote:

Every sexual act is born out of evil, and every child born out of evil is born into sin. It is through sex that man passes on sin from one generation to the next.

Even marriage was not enough to cure the evil. Under the influence of Augustine’s teachings, couples were cautioned that marital relations were for procreation only, not for pleasure. Augustine’s view triumphed over other competing, less baleful views of human nature and sexuality.

Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference “weather extremes” instead.
[...]
The primary cause of human-driven climate change is also targeted, with the term “reduce greenhouse gases” blacklisted in favor of “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency”. Meanwhile, “sequester carbon” is ruled out and replaced by “build soil organic matter”.

USDA has begun censoring use of the term 'climate change', emails reveal

Quote:

Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference “weather extremes” instead.
[...]
The primary cause of human-driven climate change is also targeted, with the term “reduce greenhouse gases” blacklisted in favor of “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency”. Meanwhile, “sequester carbon” is ruled out and replaced by “build soil organic matter”.

The US secretary of state has warned Russia's foreign minister of "serious mistrust" between the two nations due to Moscow's US election interference.
Rex Tillerson said Russia's actions had damaged the relationship, but added it's not "useful to just cut everything off over one single issue".
The US will respond by 1 September to Russia's expulsion of 755 staff from the US embassy in Moscow, he said.
US intelligence agencies believe the Kremlin tried to help Donald Trump.
Moscow vehemently denies any efforts to influence the US election, and retaliatory sanctions passed by Congress last month - against President Trump's wishes - have sparked a tit-for-tat.
Mr Tillerson told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov there was now "serious mistrust between our two countries and that we simply have to find some way to deal with that".
After speaking to Mr Lavrov on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting in the Philippines, he said: "We have our differences, we're going to have to continue to find a way to address those."
He said he met Mr Lavrov to "help them understand how serious this incident had been and how seriously it damaged the relationship."
Mr Tillerson also indicated that the two countries may be able to come together to begin discussions on violence in Eastern Ukraine.
The comments by the former CEO of Exxon Mobil come less than a week after US President Donald Trump signed into law the new legislation that imposes sanctions on Russia for both election meddling and military actions in Crimea and Ukraine.

His birth was immaculate (no nasty semen involved).

America’s Democrats were not so angry when Russia rolled into Crimea, when Russian-backed rebels shot down a passenger airliner, or when Russian spy planes and bombers fly near Alaska and other parts of American airspace. No, their anger at Russia begins and, I suspect, ends over their belief that Russia helped beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. The only proper “fix” in their minds is to make Clinton president; they’re not that concerned about Russia’s other hostile activities.

My fear in escalating our hostility towards Russia is that the Democrats will pull an Iraq War: support the conflict fully until the first setbacks, then suddenly reverse themselves and demonize the opposition as warmongers for agreeing with them.

This is starting to turn into a repeating pattern, at least in the south and most right-to-work states. When a business gets up and running, creating a significant number of manufacturing jobs, the unions begin moving in and attempting to force votes to convert the plants into union shops even if the workers seem to be quite content with the working conditions and compensation they’ve negotiated with management. That happened once again at the Nissan plant in Mississippi, where a bitterly fought campaign led to a unionization vote this past week. And once again the workers said “no thank you” to the union label by a better than two to one margin.

But, but, but...how can you fight the problem if you can't even say the name?

No, their anger at Russia begins and, I suspect, ends over their belief that Russia helped beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Quote:

America’s Democrats were not so angry when Russia rolled into Crimea, when Russian-backed rebels shot down a passenger airliner, or when Russian spy planes and bombers fly near Alaska and other parts of American airspace. No, their anger at Russia begins and, I suspect, ends over their belief that Russia helped beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. The only proper “fix” in their minds is to make Clinton president; they’re not that concerned about Russia’s other hostile activities.

My fear in escalating our hostility towards Russia is that the Democrats will pull an Iraq War: support the conflict fully until the first setbacks, then suddenly reverse themselves and demonize the opposition as warmongers for agreeing with them.

http://www.nationalreview.com/jolt

When President Trump ordered federal agencies to form teams to dismantle government regulations, the Transportation Department turned to people with deep industry ties.

One appointee had previously lobbied the department on behalf of American Airlines. Another held executive roles for several electric and hybrid car companies regulated by the department. A third was a lawyer who represented United Airlines in regulatory matters.

The three appointees have been identified by The New York Times and ProPublica in a continuing effort to track members of the deregulation teams. The appointments, previously unreported, follow a pattern identified by the two news organizations: By and large, the Trump administration has stacked the teams with political appointees, some of whom may be reviewing rules their former employers sought to weaken or kill.

A full vetting of industry connections has been difficult because some agencies have declined to provide information about the appointees — not even their names.
[... ... ...]

Trump can go to the bathroom and the NYT and WaPo will find it suspicious that he wants the door closed.

Can you name all of them who were against it from the very beginning?