CANADA'S TOP COURT 'OBLITERATED' RELIGIOUS RIGHTS OF CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY!

CANADA'S TOP COURT 'OBLITERATED' RELIGIOUS RIGHTS OF CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY!

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPSOT.COM - THURS., JULY 19/18

Ottawa, June 15, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) - The Supreme Court decision favoring LGBTQ "rights" over a Christian college's freedom to uphold Christian moral standards is an outright attack on religious freedom, said a number of critics.

    In a pair of 7-2 decisions (here and there), the top court ruled it was "proportionate and reasonable" for the law societies of British Columbia and Ontario to refuse accreditation to graduates of Trinity Western university (TWU) proposed law school because the Christian college's Community Covenant discriminates against and reportedly harms LGBTQ people.

    TWU, a Langley, British Columbia-based private Christian college associated with the Evangelical Free Church, requires students sign a commitment to refrain from, among other things, any sexual activity "that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman."

    It is unclear if TWU will go ahead with its planned law school in light of the ruling since future graduates would not be able to practice law in Ontario and B.C.

    "This decision is an obliteration of religious rights," said Jim Hughes, President of Campaign Life Coalition, Canada's national pro-life, pro-family political lobbying group.

    "Trinity Western, like any other private institution, is entitled to hold its religious views including those on the Biblical understanding of sex and marriage. Tragically this decision states that there is no room for religious diversity in the public sphere," he said in a Friday press release.

    "This is anti-Christian bigotry, there is no other way to put it," Campaign Life V.P. Jeff Gunnarson added. "The court's decision top deny Trinity Western the right to exercise its religious rights, sets dangerous precedent for other faith-based schools, organizations, charities," he said.

    That was echoed by Phil Horgan, president of the Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL), one of over thirty interveners in the landmark case the Supreme Court heard Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 last year.

    Today's decision is a distressing example of same-sex and gender viewpoints 'trumping' enumerated Charter Rights," he wrote in CCRL's Friday press.

    The decision "will provide a launching pad for future attacks on the continued access of religious organizations to public benefits," warned Hogan. "In brief, we are seeing the continued diminished acceptance of religious viewpoints in the public square."

    Religious institutions, including the Catholic Church, "are entitled to maintain their respective religious views, including positions on marriage and gender, and should not be subject of prejudice, or exclusion of state benefits, for maintaining such views," he said.

    "The further implications of this ruling need to be opposed," Horgan stressed. "We must not be compelled to have our teachings suppressed as a requirement for participation in the public square."

    The Catholic Archbishop of Vancouver... also issued a statement warning the ruling has "potential to undermine freedom of religion, conscience, and association in Canada."....

    "Not only is freedom of conscience and religion a fundamental principle recognized in international human rights law, it is the first freedom guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms" he said....

    "The Court is allowing government-mandated regulators to decide which beliefs and values are favoured in society, narrowing pluralism & freedom of conscience, beliefs, & thought in a serious way."

      Five justices - Rosalie Abella, Michael Moldaver, Andromache Karakatsanis, Richard Wagner and Clement Gascon - ruled the law societies' decisions not to accredit TWU's proposed law school were reasonable. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, who has since retired, and Justice Malcone Roe agreed but for different reasons, set out in separate opinions. ....Rowe Justices Russell Brown and Suzan Cote dissented, writing that the majority "betrays the promise of our Constitution that rights limitations must be demonstrably justified." 

George H. Kubeck

#14 OF 25 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO

# 14 OF 25 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT CARD ON PADRE PIO!

IN SUPPORT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - TUES. JULY 16/18

Padre Pio, The True Story by C. Bernard Ruffin

Chapter 4 - Heavenly Secrets - 65 -70

    "Padre Agostino was barely five feet tall, but as great in girth as he was in height, prompting some friars to call him, behind his back, "Big Daddy." His enormous forked beard was then brown, and he had rosy cheeks and a booming bass voice. He seems to have been, with Pio, more intimate and approachable than Benedetto. In fact, since Agostino was only sligthtly older than Pio, the "Dear Professor" became the best friend and lifelong confidante of the friar from Pietrelcina. Fra Pio poured out his heart on paper to Padre Agostino, instructing him to forward the letter to Padre Benedetto, who would, upon receiving it, proffers his advice. In this sense Benedetto and Agostino formed a team in their direction of Pio.

    Padre Agostino was not a mystic, however, and there were certain things he could not understand as clearly as Benedetto did. In 1946, Padre Pio told one of his cohorts who asked him if everyone should have a spiritual director, "It is usually sufficient to have a confessor. If the confessor is incapable of understanding certain spiritual matters, you should simply trust in the goodness of God. "Don't you have a spiritual director?" Giovanni asked Pio. "I had one," Pio answered, "and he was Padre Bendetto, but since they took him away from me, I have been without one."When asked, "You have Padre Agostino for your confesssor, don't you?" Pio allowed, "Yes, but he doesn't understand me and I have to carry on confiding in God." ....

    The year was 1905. Fra Pio was then studying at Sant'Ella a Pianisi. He had the presence of mind to write down his experience  within three weeks of its occurrence and consign it to his superiors. ....

    "Several days ago, I had an extraordinary experience.Around 11 P.M. on January 8, 1905, Fra Anastasio were in the choir when suddenly I found myself far away in a wealthy home where the father was dying while a child was being born. Then there appeared to me the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, who said to me: "I am entrusting this child to you. Now she is a diamond in the rough, but I want to work with her, polish her, and make her as shining as possible, because one day I wish to adorn myself with her." I answered, "How is this possible, since I am still mere divinity student and do not yet know whether I will one day have the fortune and joy of being a priest? And even when I become a priest, how can I take care of this child, since I am so far away?"

    The Madonna said, "Do not doubt. She will come to you, but first you will meet her at St. Peter's in Rome." After that, I found myself again in the choir." ....

       Later, when she heard Giovanna's story, Leonildre Rizzin came to see Padre Pio, who told her: "Madame, that little monk whom you saw walking towards the gallery of your mansion in Udine when your husband was dying was I. I can assure you that your husband is saved. The Madonna, who appeared to me in the mansion and who bade me pray for your dying husband, told me that Jesus had pardoned all his sins and that he was saved through her maternal intercession. Both Giovanna and her mother were utterly convinced. One will notice that the words both women remember Padre Pio speaking to them in 1923 wre almost identical with the account that Fra Pio had written a few days after the occurrence in 1905.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

CHAPTER 5 - ' A HOLY PRIEST, A PERFECT VICTIM'    71

    Despite Fra Pio's plump, rosy-cheeked appearance, he was plagued by a variety of ill-defined physical problems from the very beginning of his novitiate. He suffered from intestinal irritability, as well as attacks of vomiting so intense that he was sometimes unable to retain solid food for weeks on end. Once, for a space of six months, he was forced to subsist largely on milk. He suffered from spasms of violent coughing, was tormented by headaches, and frequently ran high temperatures. Without warning, Fra Pio would seem to be reduced almost to the point of death, only to recover as suddenly. His superiors, through medical consultation, tried unsuccessfully to pinpoint the cause of his physical troubles....  they declared that he was suffering from an active case of tuberculosis...  Pio's parents, however, were not satisfied with the diagnosis.... George H. Kubeck

   

P.J. BUCHANAN: IS TRUMP COURT IN THE MAKING?

P.J. BUCHANAN: IS TRUMP COURT IN THE MAKING?

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH: HTTP://WWW.CONOPSBEGONE.BLOGSPOT.COM - SAT.. JULY 14/2018

 

    "If Mich McConnell's Senate can confirm his new nominee by the Supreme Court. President Donald Trump may have completed the capture of all branches of the U.S. government for the Republican Party...

 

    For liberalism's great strategic ally and asset of 60 years, the judicial  dictatorship erected by Earl Warren and associates, may be about to fall. ... Among the challenges Warren's court succeeded in imposing. The DE-CHRISTIANIZATION of all public institutions in America. (Recall the Supreme's court decision on Prayer in the schools.) The social war of the 1970s over forced busing for racial balance by the public schools.

 

    The creation, ex nihilo, of new constitutional rights, first to an abortion, and then to homosexuality and same-sex marriage. ... There will not likely be any sudden and radical rollback of changes wrought in six decades. For some of those changes have become embedded in the public consciousness as new normal and will endure.

    Roe v. Wade may be challenged. But even if overturned, states like New York and California, which had liberalized abortion laws before Roe, are not likely to re-criminalize it. Affirmative action, however, racial discrimination against white males to promote diversity, may be on the chopping block.

    Why did it take until Trump to restore constitutionalism to the Supreme Court, when the Warren Court had been a blazing issue since the 1950s and Republicans held the presidency for 28 years from 1968 to 2016, and managed to elevate 12 justice? ...

 

    Every GOP president save Bush II, has appointed Justices who grew to believe had a right to remake America to conform to their image of the ideal democracy. And they so acted. Said Ike ruefully on his retirement: Two of my worst mistakes are sitting up there on the Supreme Court. The two were Warren, who, as California's governor, had pushed to put Japanese-Americans in concentration camps in World War II, and William Brennan, the most radical justice to sit in over half century. ....

 

    Three of four Nixon's justices would vote to Roe v. Wade in 1973. Harry Blackmun became the author of Roe. Nixon's fourth nominee, William Rehnquist, was his best, a brilliant jurist whom Reagan himself would elevate to chief justice. Gerald Ford's sole nominee, John Paul Stevens, confirmed 97-0 in the Senate, turned left soon after his confirmation to join Blackmum.

 

    Reagan named Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman, and Scalia. But when his effort to elevate Judge Robert Bork failed, he turned to Anthony Kennedy of California, whose seat Trump is filling today.  Over thirty years, Kennedy's vote proved decisive in 5-4 decisions to uphold Roe, to discover homosexuality as a constitutional right, and to raise same-sex unions to the legal level of traditional marriage. (He is a Catholic-in-name-only person.)

 

    George H.W. Bush's first choice was David Souter, who also turned left join the liberal block. Bush I got it right on his second try in 1991, naming the constitutional Clarence Thomas. As for George W. Bush, he chose John Roberts as Chief Justice to succeed Rehnquist and then Sam Alito as associate.

Thus, of 15 justices Republican Presidents have names since World War II, five - Warren, Brennan, Blackmun, Stevens and Souter - became liberal activists. Kennedy and Sandra O'Connor, both Reagan choices, became swing justices and voted with the court's liberals on critical social issues.  ....

 

    Of seven justices named by LBJ, Clinton and Obama, every one - Thurgood Marshall,Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor -turned out to be predictable and consistently liberal. ...

 

    It was Trump's 2016 pledge to draw his nominees to the high court from a list o 20 judges and scholars supplied by the Federalist Society that reassured conservatives and helped him unite the party and get him elected. On the issue of judicial nominees and justices to the Supreme Court, Trump has kept his word. The next Supreme Court appointment may one day be called the Trump Court."

George H. Kubeck

IDEAS THAT MAY SHAPE A SUPREME COURT CANDIDATE!

IDEAS THAT MAY SHAPE A SUPREME COURT CANDIDATE!

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM  SUN- JULY 8/18

 

Preface:

    The person on the Left will praise the following article; the person on the right will question it.

'Little House Has Been Condemned'

By Michael Taube in the "Wall Street Journal" July 5, 2018

    "Laura Ingalls Wilder is persona non grata at the American Library Association. The board of the Association for Library Service to Children, an ALA division, voted 12-0 last month to remain it Laura Ingalls Wilder Award as Children's Literature Legacy Award. (12 elites for transforming of America)

 

    "Wilder's legacy, as represented by her body of work, includes expressions of stereotypical of attitudes inconsistent with ALSC's core values of inclusiveness , integrity and respect, and responsiveness," the association announced in a press release.

 

    Wilder, best known for her 1935 novel, "Little House on the Prairie," published nine books in all about her pioneer family's settlement  in the Midwest and West. Her endearing stories were based on the importance of faith, family and farming. There were moments of great triumph, as well as periods of hardship, tragedy and illness where she and her family relied on their wits and skills to survive.

 

    The ALSC had fretted about Wilder's "complex" legacy and the "anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments" in her work - a claim not without an underpinning if fact.  Characters in "Little House on the Prairie" say "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" three times . The book's original first chapter also included this description of a place: "There were no people. Only Indians lived there." In later versions, the first sentence was changed to "no settlers."

 

    In later versions, the first sentence was changed to "no settlers." Wilder references to her white settler family's manifest destiny has also troubled the black community. Hardly anyone would defend these sentiments today, but people are products of their times. The Wilder Award was established in 1954, and it first recipient was Laura Ingalls Wilder herself. If we judge past luminaries by today's standards, who next to go.  (I don't like today's standards.)

 

    Each year the World Cultural Council bestows the Albert Einstein World Award of Science. Recently released personal diaries revealed that in 1920s Einstein described Chinese people as "industrious, filthy, obtuse" and resembling a "peculiar herd-like nation ... often more like automations than people.

    As for the American Library Association, since 1982 it has teemed with Annesty International to promote the annual Banned Books Week. An ALSC blog posted about it last September called the week a time to "celebrate intellectual freedom."  How does the ALSC square the spirit of Banned Books Week  with it scrubbing of Wilder's name. I tried to reach them but did not receive a response. 

 

George H. Kubeck

Preface: (cont'd)

2. The person on the right pursues the truth and common sense more often than a person on the left. 

 

3. Political correctness & Relativism are not part of the Constitution, but they are part of persons on left.

 

4. It is most likely that the 12 elites in the American Library Decision did not vote for Trump in 2016.

 

5. A person on the right is strongly influenced by Common Law and Natural Law. The person on the left is not persuaded  by these two laws.

 

6. A person on the right is a stickler to the original words of the Constitution; the person on the left wants to transform America via the Constitution into a pure secular contemporary America without God.

# 7 OF 12 - THIS UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE"

# 7 OF 12 - THIS UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE"

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW/CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - Sun. July 6/18

    This is the seventh of excerpts from the book by George Neumayer titled, "The Political Pope" 33-40

    "Conservative Catholic commentators in Latin America, whose voices were drowned out in the din of praise following Bergoglio's election, had warned that his pontificate would prove disastrous. To these observers familiar with his tenure in Buenos Aires, the maddening incoherence and people-pleasing relativism of his pontificate were all too predictable. "Off all the unthinkable candidates, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is perhaps the worst," wrote Marcelo Gonzalez. "This election is incomprehensible: he is not a polyglot, he has no curial experience, he does not shine for his sanctity. he is loose in doctrine and liturgy, he has not fought against abortion and only very weekly against homosexual 'marriage' [approved with practically no opposition from the episcopate], he has no manners to honor the Pontifical Throne. He has never fought for anything else than to remain in positions of power....

    As even his sympathetic biographer Paul Vallely acknowledged Pope Francis has a weakness for contrived acts of humility. On his first first papal trip, for example, he rebuked an aide for putting his brief-case on the plane, thus depriving him of the opportunity to look modest. He instructed the aide to retrieve the briefcase so that he could be seen carrying it, wrote Vallely....

Obama's Pope:

    But it was the politically correct third-worldism of the first Latin American pope that Obama found most exciting. When Obama learned that Pope Francis planned to canonize the slain left-wing archbishop Oscar Romero, a movement had stalled under Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, he immediately issued a statement: "I am grateful to Pope Francis for his leadership in reminding us of our obligation to help those most in need, and for his decision to beatify Blessed Oscar Arnulf Romero.

Obama also appreciated that Pope Francis was giving greater attention to left-wing politics than to theology, thereby making it easier for the left to shape politics and culture without religious resistance.

    The "healing mission of the church" was Time's euphemism for Pope Francis identification with global socialism.... The media insisted on portraying Pope Francis as the "people's pontiff." But to conservative Catholics, these laurels from the media only proved his status as the elite's pontiff....

Timothy Egan, a New York Times columnist who describes himself as "lapsed but listening," also summed up Francis appeal for his secular readers concisely: "He is - gasp - a liberal." At long last, a progressive occupies the chair of St. Peter, exulted Egan: "Pope Francis has shown himself to be a free spirit and a free thinker .... He talks to atheists ... He calls for the faithful to 'mess up the church'....Francis has befuddled the guardians of dogma and medieval sexual doctrines who have long kept sunlight out of the Vatican.' ....

    Even in his homeland of Argentina, support for Pope Francis is beginning to wane. In 2016, reported the New York Post, "a recent poll revealed that Francis - the former Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop

of Buenos Aires - has tumbled from first to the ninth most 'trustworthy Argentine' in two years.... Pope Francis call the Church on his watch a "field hospital." But if it is one, many of the patients appear to be dying. Pews in many dioceses remain as empty as ever. As one wan headline put it in 2013, "Pope Francis' Appeal Not Measurable Yet in Church Attendance."

    Pope Benedict XVI said the crisis in the Church deepened after it followed the liberal zeitgeist. But Pope Francis rejects that view, pushing "reforms" rooted in following the liberal zeitgeist even more slavishly. "We are not living an era of changed but a change of era," Pope Francis has said, aligning  himself with the Church's critics. "Before the problem of the church it is not useful to search for solutions in conservatism or fundamentalism, in the restoration of obsolete conduct and forms that no longer have the capacity of being significant culturally .... Christian doctrine is not a closed system incapable of generating questions, doubts, interrogatives - but is alive, knows being unsettled, enlivened." .... To liberals, this signifies a "springtime in the Church. To conservative Catholics, reeling from four years of chaos and confusion, it feels more like the dead of winter....  George H. Kubeck

# 2 OF 2 MEXICO- WHAT WENT WRONG?

MEXICO - WHAT WENT WRONG? 2 OF 2 

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - JULY 5/18

    This is the second classic letter in the pursuit of the truth. Victor Davis Hanson, "Mexico - What Went Wrong?" June 26, 2018 - (Reference the writer on the Drudge Report)

    "Why the U.S. government does not tax remittances and why it does not prohibit foreign nationals on public assistance from sending cash out of the country are some of the stranger phenomena of the entire strange illegal-immigration matrix.

    There may now be anywhere from 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S. America open border is the keystone of Mexican foreign and domestic policy. For all practical purposes, Mexico City alone modulates the flow of both Mexican and Central American citizens into the United States - depending on its current attitude toward the U.S.

    Mexico plays the same role with the United States that North African countries play with Europe, except in the former's case. it has a deliberate rather than chaotic emigration policy - and uses it as direct leverage over the U.S. Mexico's sense of immigration entitlement is predicated on the assumption that corporate America wants cheap labor, that liberal America wants voters, that identity-politics activists need constituents, that a liberal elite expresses its abstract virtue by its patronization of the Other - and that until recently most Americans were indifferent.

    Conservatives, who object to waves of illegal aliens swarming the border, earn boilerplate slurs that they are cruel, racist, nativist, xenophobic, selfish, and anti-humanitarian. Open-borders liberals, who once expressed opposition to illegal immigration, take their cues from the concrete recent record showing that almost all impoverished immigrants fuel progressive agendas of big government, redistribution, and entitlements that otherwise have run out of gas.

    Exporting human capital - most illegal Mexican immigrants are now from southern Mexican and indigenous people - has long acted as a political safety valve for the Mexican and indigenous  people - has long acted as a political safety valve for the Mexican government..... Certainly, there appears to be little real self-reflection in Mexico about how and why such a naturally rich country - blessed with good soil, climate, natural resources, ports, and a strategic geography - remains so dismally poor.

    Illegal immigration provides a useful and nearly perpetual demographic for Mexico inside the U.S.A. About 12 percent of the Mexican population now lives inside  the U.S.A., the great majority illegally.... Of all U.S. immigrants, legal and not, it is estimated that more than 30 percent come from Mexico, and another quarter arrived from Central America through Mexico....

    The careers of identity-politics activists often hinge on having a permanent pool of poor, unskilled, and minimum-wage-earning constituents who need collective representation by self-appointed advocates. Without illegal immigration, Chicano or La Raza studies would in a few years resonate about as much as a Polish-or Italian-studies department....

     The existential worry of both identity-politics activists and the new Democratic party is an immigration that is diverse, legal, meritorious, and measured. The second-greatest fear is return of the melting pot and the end of the salad bowl, given that assimilation, integration, and intermarriage might turn a useful bloc of Hispanics immigrants into something like 20th -century Italian immigrants, who eventually assimilated and whose politics were no longer predicable.... In one of the strangest paradoxes of the present age, Mexico seems to love its people more, the farther they are from Mexico and the longer they stay away...

Restoring Symmetry:

What might the U.S. do to restore symmetry and save Mexico from its own delusions? - 1) Control our border as carefully as Mexican policies controls its southern border. 2) Stiffen employer sanctions on hiring illegal aliens. 3) Finishing the Wall, 4) U.S. trade and commercial sanctions for Mexico for allowing transit for illegal aliens from Central America.4) A tax on remittances for the funding of the border wall. 5) It is an immoral act, not a moral one, to deliberately break the laws of a host country as one's first act on entering it. 6) A million cases a year of tax fraud through the use of fake names and identification is not just an artifact of illegal immigration, but a moral crime that callously harms U.S. citizens and their institutions.... etc. - George H. Kubeck

MEXICO - WHAT WENT WRONG? # 1 OF 2

MEXICO - WHAT WENT WRONG? # 1 OF 2

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - JULY 3/18

    This is a classic in the pursuit of truth. Victor Davis Hanson, "Mexico - What Went Wrong?" - June 26/18 - (Reference the writers on the Drudge Report)

    "MEXICO GETS A MASSIVE CASH INFLUX IN REMITTANCES, AMERICAN CORPORATIONS GET CHEAP LABOR, DEMOCRATS GET VOTERS ....

    MEXICO IN JUST A FEW DAYS COULD ELECT ONE OF ITS MORE ANTI-AMERICAN FIGURES IN RECENT MEMORY, ANDRES MANUEL LOPEZ OBRADOR. OBRADOR HAS OFTEN ADVANCED THE IDEA THAT A STRANGELY AGGRIEVED MEXICO HAS THE RIGHT TO MONITOR THE STATUS OF ITS CITIZENS LIVING ILLEGALLY IN THE UNITED STATES.

    LATELY, HE TRUMPED THE NOTION OF ENTITLEMENT BUY ASSURING FELLOW MEXICANS THAT THEY HAVE A "HUMAN RIGHT" TO ENTER THE UNITED STATES AS THEY PLEASE. FOR OBRADOR, THIS IS AN INNATE PRIVILEGE THAT HE PROMISED "WE WILL DEFEND." - WITHOUT OFFERING ANY CLARIFICATION ON THE MEANING OF "DEFEND' OTHER THAN TO RENDER MEANINGLESS THE HISTORIC NOTION OF BORDERS AND SOVEREIGNTY.

    OBRADOR WENT ON TO URGE HIS FELLOW MEXICANS TO "LEAVE THEIR TOWN AND FINED A LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES." HE HAS NATURALLY DEVELOPED SUCH A MINDSET BECAUSE HE ASSUMES AS NORMAL WHAT HAS BECOME, BY ANY STANDARD, A HISTORICALLY ABNORMAL RELATIONSHIP.

    OBRADOR  IS DETERMINED TO PERPETUATE, IF NOT ENHANCE, THE ASYMMETRY. IN THE AGE OF TRUMP, OBRADOR ALSO REASONS THAT THE FUROR AND HYSTERIA OF THE AMERICAN MEDIA TOWARD THE PRESIDENT REPRESENTS A MAJORITY AND A DOMESTIC GRASSROOTS PUSHBACK AGAINST THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION - APPARENTLY BECAUSE OF TRUMP'S "RESTRICTIONIST" VIEW OF ENFORCING EXISTING IMMIGRATION LAW. POLLS, HOWEVER, SUGGEST OTHERWISE, DESPITE THEIR NOTORIOUS EMBEDDED ANTI-TRUMP BIAS.

MEXICO, THE AGGRESSOR:

    FACTS ARE STUBBORN, AND REVEAL MEXICO, NOT THE UNITED STATES, AS A DE-FACTO AGGRESSOR AND BELLIGERENT ON MANY FRONTS. MEXICO RUNS A NAFTA-PROTECTED $70 BILLION TRADE SURPLUS WITH THE U.S. LARGER THAN THAT OF ANY OTHER SINGLE AMERICAN TRADE PARTNER (INCLUDING JAPAN AND GERMANY) EXCEPT CHINA. 

    THE ARCHITECTS OF NAFTA LONG AGO ASSURED AMERICANS THAT SUCH A TRADE WAR WOULD NOT BREAK OUT, OR THAT WE SHOULD NOT WORRY OVER TRADE IMBALANCES, GIVEN THE DESIRABILITY OF OUTSOURCING TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MEXICO'S CHEAPER LABOR COSTS.

    A SUPPOSEDLY AFFLUENT MEXICO AS SUPPOSED TO ACHIEVE NEAR PARITY WITH THE U.S., AS IMMIGRATION AND TRADE SOON NEUTRALIZED. DESPITE MEXICO'S ECONOMIC GROWTH, NO SUCH SYMMETRY HAS FOLLOWED NAFTA. WHAT DID, HOWEVER, 34 YEARS LATER; WAS THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A DYSFUNCTIONAL MEXICAN STATE, WHOSE DRUG CARTELS ALL BUT RUN THE COUNTRY ON THE BASIS OF THEIR ENORMOUS PROFITS FROM UNFETTERED DOPE-RUNNING AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING INTO THE UNITED STATES.  NAFTA CERTAINLY DID NOT MAKE MEXICO A SAFER, KINDER, AND GENTLER NATION.

    IN ADDITION, MEXICAN CITIZENS WHO ENTER AND RESIDE AS ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN THE U.S. ARE MOSTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR SENDING AN APPROXIMATE $30 BILLION IN REMITTANCE HOME TO MEXICO.  THAT SUM HAS NOW SURPASSED OIL AND TOURISM AS THE LARGEST SOURCE OF MEXICAN FOREIGN EXCHANGE. THAT HUGE CASH INFLUX IS THE CONCRETE REALITY BEHIND OBRADOR'S OTHERWISE UNHINGED RHETORIC ABOUT EXERCISING VETO POWER OVER U.S. IMMIGRATION LAW.

    What is also unsaid is that many of the millions of Mexican expatriates in the United States who send remittances home to Mexico are themselves beneficiaries of some sort of U.S. federal, state, or local support that allows them to free up cash to send back to Mexico. When Obrador urges his fellow citizens to abandon their country and head illegally into the U.S., his primary concern is not their general welfare and futures. He seems quite unconcerned that those who send home remittances live in poverty in the United States and seek offsetting subsidies from the U.S. government to find disposable income to save the MEXICAN government from its mostly corrupt self."  George H. Kubeck