Random Politics & Religion #19

A comic made a silly strawman argument for entertainment purposes?
And you're defending your position anyway?

The reference was to my short article from last night about the 9th Circuit's denial of a stay of the district court's freezing of Trump's noxious executive order on visas and refugees. No, I had not said or implied that the decision was disgraceful (with or without an exclamation point). And while I had indeed noted the omission in the ruling that Trump was trumpeting and criticized some of the virtue signaling in the opinion, I had noted some other things as well. For example, I had written that "The Ninth Circuit is correct to leave the TRO in place, in my view." I had argued that the key question in the case was whether "the repeated and overt invocations of the most invidious motivations on the part of the President himself, his campaign, his adviser, and his Twitter feed will render an otherwise valid exercise of this power invalid." And I had concluded the post by describing "the incompetent malevolence with which this order was promulgated."

You read that correctly: The President of the United States was tweeting approvingly an article describing his motivations as "invidious" and describing his actions using the phrase "incompetent malevolence."

...

This is not how the White House is supposed to work. Whole aparatuses are supposed to be there to protect the President from sending out unvetted executive orders, tweeting attacks on federal judges that hurt the government's chances of prevailing in court, and yes, even from tweeting articles he hasn't read and that don't say what he thinks they say.

Think about it this way: If the Trump White House is so incompetent that it is citing my work by accident, how on earth can we trust it to handle North Korea?

Sad!

Trump should realize by now that he's the only person we're allowed to cherry-pick statements from.

if the leader of your country handles his problems like a child, it becomes everyone's problem.

And twice now I've conveyed that I wasn't; I am talking about his consistent behavior.

The fact that Trump didn't read the article isn't surprising at all, with his thin skin there is no way he would have tweeted anything from that blog had he actually read it. Why would he bring attention to a blog that supported the ruling against him? All he accomplished was taking a quote out of context and making himself look even worse. I'm sure Lawfare appreciates the additional hits.

There doesn't appear to be a limit to his stupidity.

But how is this tweet in particular that bad? So he borrowed a quote from an article. Who the frick cares?

I do understand all the talk of Trump having a thin-skin. It just seems awfully odd to think it's only Trump. People are freaking out about every little thing he does, blowing up the top news over insignificant crap, and taking to the streets in aggressive and even violent protests simply because they don't like the guy... and Trump's supposedly the worst example of thin skin? Nah, I don't buy it.

The article doesn't support his position and called his own actions incompetent?

It demonstrates a lack of critical thinking and basic reading comprehension on his part.

does that extremely unhealthy behavior not mean anything to you?

Don't you expect more from the office of the President? Random people freaking out on both sides is nothing new. If anyone is going to rise above, shouldn't it be the President? If he shows no inclination to do so, why would anyone else? Are people not just following the example he sets?

Yeah, that comic's missing the point. Nobody's against a better environment, we're against getting taxed into oblivion.

I've seen incredibly easy to trigger Trump supporters. So this thing that only one side does it should just be dropped.

I guess the biggest difference then is that the GOP doesn't have George Soros to fund protests designed to make people look more upset than they actually are?

Josiah is just jealous.

canada sucks!

The fact remains that the judges didn't even challenge the statute, which speaks volumes about what the basis of their decision in the first place.