Give Trump a chance

I have always been a huge fan of Robert Fulford. Rare is the occasion where I disagree with what he writes. So it is especially sad to see him board the anti-Trump bandwagon, criticizing Mr. Trump’s inaugural address as if it veered off the map of political reality.

Fulford writes that Trump turned “a dinner for his donors into a full-bore festival of bragging” without mentioning his predecessor’s ‘farewell tour’ in which Obama never shied away from re-writing history about his so-called ‘legacy’ (Obama’s legacy, if truth be told, is Trump).

Fulford writes that Trump bragged about his cabinet, “The likes of which has never been appointed,” without even noting that Obama, in awarding Joe Biden the Presidential Medal of Honour, bragged that Biden is “the best vice president America has ever had.” He mocks Trump for saying that he has outworked anybody who ran for office — though the 70-year-old Trump has yet to take a holiday. Obama, on the other hand, took his most recent vacation mere weeks before he permanently vacated the Oval Office.

Fulford talks about Trump’s “ludicrously overconfident speech,” but neglected to say that it was megalomaniac Obama who said during his nomination victory speech that “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” No over-confidence there. One could forgive Trump for believing he has been maligned by the press. He may be a boor and a blowhard, but he was elected by Americans in the same way and under the same constitutional laws as his 44 predecessors. At the minimum, he deserves a fair shake from the media. While I am no fan of America, and certainly not of its chauvinism, I laud Conrad Black for his intelligent analysis of President Trump’s inaugural address. The hysterical left have vilified Trump from the get-go as the second coming of Mussolini. What was wrong with Trump describing ravaged cities (compare the hellhole of Detroit with gleaming Toronto), deploring wasted crime-ridden lives (the south side of Chicago), promising to eradicate radical Islamic terrorism and invoking God? issues including NAFTA, my suggestion is that the Canadian government make common cause with the U.S.A. in renegotiating NAFTA.

The Canada/U.S. free trade arrangement was certainly beneficial to both sides, but bringing the Mexican low-cost economy into the equation changed everything and resulted in the serious transfer of manufacturing jobs to Mexico, particularly from Ontario and from our American partners.

Auto parts and vehicle assembly are major cases in point.

Do we really need that partnership with Mexico? Two different responses by two different people, to John Robson’s Jan. 20 article “Anti-scientific climate model,” demonstrate the proof of the pudding.

Gordon Watson claims “there is a trend in the universe to greater disorder” and that “this disorder is also known as entropy.”

This is not entirely correct. For example, planets form from clusters of swirling debris. This is more order, not less, but still results in an overall increase in the entropy of a system.

Mr. Watson also goes on to say that “life on Earth is the result of fine-tuning and organization.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Earth is chaotic and disorganized, with systems that result in mountain building, flooding, glaciation, drought, earthquakes, volcanoes and mass extinctions (of which there have been five).

In fact, for 90 per cent of the Earth’s history humans would be unable to survive due to an unbreathable atmosphere — we are the aberration, not the carbon dioxide.

What created an environment that ultimately led to the development of humans was the aptly named Oxygen Catastrophe.

Reiner Jaakson writes that carbon dioxide has increased from 280 ppm to 404 ppm since the Industrial Revolution, while failing to mention that millions of years earlier carbon dioxide was 7,000 ppm, and that the biggest greenhouse gas is water vapour.

No matter what we do, the Earth will be fine, because the Earth’s history is change. And contrary to popular misguided opinion, the worst thing we could do for the Earth is to try to stop the very change that will continue with or without us.