Charlie Gard, who turns 11 months old on Tuesday, was born with an extremely rare genetic disease. He is blind and deaf, and he cannot breathe or move on his own. He suffers from persistent epileptic seizures.
.. The London hospital that is treating Charlie has asked permission to remove him from life support. His parents want to take him to the United States, where they believe an experimental treatment has a chance — however remote — of prolonging his life, even though the disease has no cure.
.. Judges in the case have acknowledged that the case highlights differences in law and medicine — and an American willingness to try anything, however unlikely the possibility of success — but have held that prolonging the infant’s life would be inhumane and unreasonable. The case echoes the one of Terri Schiavo
.. If we can help little
#CharlieGard, as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so... Charlie was born on Aug. 4 with encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. He is thought to be one of only 16 children globally with the condition, the result of a genetic mutation.
.. They have raised more than 1.3 million pounds, or about $1.7 million, to help finance experimental treatment in the United States.
.. The High Court ruled that Charlie would face significant harm if his suffering were to be prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement. Moreover, it said the experimental treatment, known as nucleoside therapy, would not be effective.
.. In light of what the president of the United States proposes to do to his fellow citizens, both very young and very old, by taking away their health insurance coverage and dramatically reducing the coverage of Medicaid, his tweet of concern and “offer” can only be seen as a self-serving and hollow stunt... Now, if President Trump and the Republican Party would act as concerned about those here needing health care, I would really be impressed... Experimental treatment is research that may help this child or others... If Mr. Trump is looking for a way to help cases such as that of Charlie Gard, he can begin by reversing his plans to cut $5.8 billion from the budget of the National Institutes of Health. Experimental treatments and the promise they hold come into being in the United States with broad support from NIH funding. To the extent that such support is diminished, as per the president’s plan, the promise of life saving advances in American health care is denied.. Trump is offering support for a child, with no hope living. Yet where is the support for the millions of currently healthy children and their families in the US who will face, illness and death because of TrumpCare... He is trying to make political points by injecting himself into a singular case of a very cute white baby. I give him no kudos because I am pretty sure he would not be doing the same for a cute black baby, and I know, because he has made it clear how little he cares, that he wouldn’t do the same for a cute baby (black, brown or white) born in this country.
‘Patriotism’ has always divided us. National memory can unite us.
Americans use patriotism as a political cudgel. Lincoln had an answer to that problem.
There has long been an argument, roughly along the axis of conservatism and progressivism, about whether to love America for what it has been or what it should be. The right inclines to American exceptionalism, and the sense that our nation’s roots in self-evident moral truths render it a unique force for good in the world and make its politics distinctly elevated. The left inclines to a more redemptive hope in America — the idea that our country has been working from its birth to overcome its unique sins, and that it has made some progress but has much more to make... Liberals argue that the conservative form of patriotism sanitizes history and descends into jingoism. Conservatives say the left’s form of patriotism isn’t so much a regard for America as for liberal political ideals, which progressives hope our country might increasingly come to resemble... What stands out about America, Trump argues, is not its ideals or its gradual self-improvement but the simple fact that it is our country. So America’s leaders should do what the leaders of all other nations do and put their own nation first... Each camp understands its adversaries as speaking somehow from outside that tradition and perhaps against it. So patriotism itself becomes a source of disunity... One man’s life and thought were a testament to all three forms of patriotism. Abraham Lincoln .. his thinking on that subject offers a model of genuine statesmanship, because it tended to build bridges where others, in his time and ours, could see only chasms... Our idealistic exceptionalism is, if anything, a restraint on self-congratulation because it always compels us to confront the fact that we fall short of our ideals. The American creed, Lincoln argued in one speech, should form “a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all and revered by all.. progress toward justice involves vindicating rather than repudiating our founding principles... Memory is both conceptual and visceral. It lets us take pride in our ideals and our experience — our origins and our progress — and the fact that both are ours... America is not itself an ideal but a real nation, full of real people who deserve leaders who put them first.
Judas, Tax Cuts and the Great Betrayal
the two leading Republicans in Congress are apparently O.K. with that cover-up, because the Trump ascendancy is giving them the chance to do what they always wanted, namely, take health insurance away from millions of Americans while slashing taxes on the wealthy.
.. For generations, Republicans have impugned their opponents’ patriotism.
.. circumstantial evidence that a hostile foreign power may have colluded with a U.S. presidential campaign, and may retain undue influence at the highest levels of our government. And all those self-proclaimed patriots have gone silent, or worse.
.. revival of the term “America First,” the name of a movement opposed to U.S. intervention in World War II. What isn’t often mentioned is that many of the most prominent America-firsters weren’t just isolationists, they were actively sympathetic to foreign dictators; there’s a more or less straight line from Charles Lindbergh proudly wearing the medal he received from Hermann Göring to Trump’s cordial relations with Rodrigo Duterte
59 Missiles Don’t Equal a Foreign Policy
the public performance of President Trump and his team throughout this tragic episode hardly inspires confidence. On the contrary, the administration demonstrated a dangerous degree of incoherence and inconsistency.
.. Despite a brutal six-year civil war in which Mr. Assad’s forces have been responsible for the deaths of about 200,000 civilians, and despite near universal opposition to his rule by leaders of the civilized world
.. Ms. Haley thought it was the right time to send a signal to Mr. Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran, that the new American president’s priority “is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed this new view, which Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, described as a simple recognition of “political reality.”
.. For months they have suggested that “America First” meant that the country should not become mired in the region’s civil wars and violent upheavals.
.. public reversal
- .. Mr. Trump raised doubts about the longstanding “one China” policy, only to endorse it weeks later.
- .. contradictory statements about NATO
- .. There had been talk of scrapping the Iran nuclear accord
.. Where the administration stands on any number of major issues can depend on the day of the week.
.. inability or refusal to articulate — or even formulate — an overarching foreign policy beyond Mr. Trump’s nationalistic slogan “America First”
.. disconnect between Nikki Haley .. and the White House
.. give heart to dictators who view inconsistency as weakness.
.. Mr. Trump has allowed, or perhaps encouraged, the creation of confusing lines of authority and alternative centers of power within the White House
.. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, has emerged as the president’s foreign policy troubleshooter, playing a prominent role in the administration’s talks with China, visiting Iraq
.. These are jobs traditionally given to seasoned diplomats, something Mr. Kushner is not.
.. Fixing this problem is a straightforward matter of political power, will and discipline.
.. he has put down America’s moral leadership in the world while talking up dictators and strongmen