Ever since the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran’s women are required to wear at least a headscarf when out in public and this rule apparently applies even to visitors to that country. Now an Indian woman chess grandmaster has withdrawn from the Asian chess championship to be held in that country because she refuses to follow the rule.
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In 2016, Maine voters in a referendum chose to institute preferential (also called ranked choice) voting in their state for all elections, something that I have long advocated as the most democratic way of voting. Naturally the two main party establishments dislike the idea because it lessens their control over who should be the party nominee for general elections and also because it enables third party candidates to show their true strength since their supporters need no longer fear that their vote will be ‘wasted’ by going to a candidate who was unlikely to win.
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Readers may recall my post from back in February about the mysterious sounds that were causing headaches (literally) to US embassy personnel in Cuba. It led to all manner of speculations about the Cubans themselves unleashing, or allowing some other nation to unleash, some high tech Cold War-type sonar devices on them. The fact that the evidence produced was highly vague and that the Cubans had no motive for doing such things did not stop the wild speculations.
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Seth Meyers gave his take on the recent summit in Canada. In it he shows a puppy named Baxter.
But that Baxter is an imposter. Here is the real Baxter the Wonder Dog, taken in my backyard a few days ago.
I have been reading the reactions to the Singapore summit meetings and have been bemused by the hostile reactions to it almost across the board. What struck me was that many of them were extremely irate about one particular aspect, that Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un were shown as equals, in that they had equal numbers of flags of the two nations, stood and sat side by side, and in every other way the two leaders were treated as if they were of equal standing.
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John Oliver does a nice job of summarizing the state of the investigation by Robert Mueller and the efforts by Donald Trump’s supporters at Fox News to preemptively discredit it.
The full text of the agreement signed by Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump in Singapore. It is not long.
Joint Statement of President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the Singapore Summit.
President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a first, historic summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018.
President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un conducted a comprehensive, in-depth, and sincere exchange of opinions on the issues related to the establishment of new U.S.-DPRK relations and the building of a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
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A segment on the radio recently discussed Donald Trump’s decision to invite people this year to celebrate iftar, the name given to the breaking of the daily fast by Muslims during Ramadan. This was an annual practice started some years ago but Trump did not have one last year when he was at the height of his anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions. During an interview on the program The World, the question was asked as to who might be invited and what Muslims would agree to go. The person being interviewed, who worked for president George W. Bush on Muslim outreach, repeatedly kept referring to Trump as the “commander in chief for all Americans”, as if this means that we were obliged to accept an invitation from him to come to the White House.
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Much attention is being paid to the summit meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. The one-on-one meeting with just translators present begins at 9:00am Tuesday morning Singapore time which is 9:00pm ET Monday night. Aides and national security advisors will join them later. We know for certain that whatever the outcome, the summit will be a great success. Why? Because Trump will tell everyone that it was. He will tell us that it was the biggest and greatest summit meeting ever, even if the final deal is that the US agrees to give Alaska and Manhattan to North Korea and the meeting ends with Kim mooning Trump.
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The case of Cynthia Nixon, who is challenging Democratic incumbent Andrew Cuomo for the governorship of the state of New York, provides a good window on two different ways of viewing primary elections in the US. The party establishment would prefer to have uncontested primaries so that their chosen candidates can focus on the general election, even if the candidates are like Cuomo who are Wall Street friendly and ideologically center-right. In fact, that is precisely the type of candidate that the Democratic party wants. They also worry that a tightly fought primary race will damage their chances of winning in the general election and so they throw their weight against the challengers, even if the challengers are more representative of the constituencies that party claims to represent.
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