Repealing the ACA would have cost the nation $137 billion in the next decade and it would have end healthcare for 19 million Americans. Suck that up GOP.
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Something interesting came up recently, something that may eventually be the answer to the grip the failing two party system has on the government of this country. A bipartisan group lead by former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber; called Change the Rule, appeared. It wants to create a way to get a third party candidate on stage at the debates the way Ross Perrot did a number of years ago.
Of course the debate commission won’t even talk to them but we all know that’s because these small time pols that run the debates don’t want to share or lose even the smallest of power they now have. It’s pathetic that the country can’t even consider moving ahead on what appears to be a good idea because a couple of small time clowns are more worried about losing part of nothing, than they are about helping the country get a better election process.
What’s most important about this idea is that it could actually lead to broader scoped elections. All it needs is a third party candidate who has some great ideas or a basket full of charisma to catch the fancy of the electorate and make a serious run at the established parties. This is a good idea, the country needs this and it’s a way to slip a change into the process without having to take it to a congressional vote where, because all the voters are members of the two major parties it wouldn’t stand a chance.
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The media, hungry for real news and bankrupt of ideas on how to handle news, finally entered the assumption stage of the big train crash in Philadelphia. Stations like MSNBC that do not have programming other than news and Caught on Camera, had been on this crash to the exclusion of all other news in the world and finally came up with the possibility that something hit the train. They were trumpeting this assumption to the skies without any real facts. Yes, the train crash was important and real news, but it wasn’t the only news and that’s the way it was being treated.
The sick proclivity of the media to extol the details of small, unproven pieces of information in these situations is not helpful, especially if the situation is not one of disaster but of the kind, where a resolution between two points of view is necessary. The media’s job is to report news, not engage in conjecture or opinion. This isn’t some phony reality TV show, it’s actual events, and when said events are distorted by the sensationalized reporting of our current media, they are trivialized to the point of entertainment.
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I have been speaking about how stupid John Boehner is for years. It seems impossible that a man with so infirm a grasp of the problems of the country could, unbelievably, retain his seat as the majority leader of the House. He has proven my point once again by stating that the problem that caused the crash of the Amtrak train was not that our infrastructure was underfunded, but that the train was going too fast. Duuuuh!
Yes john, the train was going too fast but that probably wouldn’t have happened if Amtrak had the funding to install the proper safety devices, which would have controlled the train’s speed. Boehner’s stupidity was pointed out by Senator Chuck Schumer, who commented, “Speaker Boehner speaks with massive ignorance.” And what else is new?
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Dennis Hastert appears to have finally put the last nail in the congressional prosecution or should I say persecution of Bill Clinton over his sexual conduct while in office. Of the five hypocritical clowns who led the attack on Clinton through the whole ridiculous process, four have now been revealed to have been involved in their own sexual peccadilloes. Sins that, at least, equaled those of Clinton and the fifth is Tom DeLay and the less said about him the better. Talk about GOP chickens coming home to roost.
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The big celebrity social issue of the last month or so has been the emergence of Bruce Jenner, former Olympic champion as Caitlyn Jenner, cover girl for Vanity Fair. This, of course, has put all the Rush Limbaugh style radio jockeys in a tizzy. Where is America going? What has happened to our social mores? How can we stop this?
The truth be known, there is nothing new about any of this. It has gone on since ancient Greece and before. But so what? How does this affect the average person? Of course it doesn’t, which is precisely the point. Caitlyn Jenner’s picture on the cover of Vanity Fair has exactly no effect on my life, or yours, or Rush Limbaugh’s or any of his giddy closet queen associates. I find it bizarre that the party that has spent so much time attacking the rights and lifestyle of the LGBT community, is the party that is always having its members caught in airport men’s rooms, with their junk waving in the wind.
Caitlyn Jenner and Chelsea Manning are two people whose celebrity, coming from vastly different places. They have
brought their sexual orientation or lack of it to a vast audience, most of whom have no association with it. So why should anyone care? That, in fact, is the same question that should be asked about all such situations in our lives. Harry and Joe want to get married. So what? Who will it affect except Harry and Joe?
If your or your family’s lives or morals have been compromised by the actions or decisions of some celebrity that you don’t even really know, that only points to a lack of strength in your own moral structure or your own inability to lead your family to logically supportable moral positions. Look to yourself for the failure of your family, not some outsider who they barely know.
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Lt General James L. Terry; head of the US forces in Iraq was interviewed this weekend by Martha Raddatz and he sure looked like the wrong guy to be in that job. He presented himself as the epitome of jarhead mentality, a guy who has completely bought into a program that was invented by Pentagon advertising agencies.
“We’re beating them, we’re killing their people, we’re gonna win.” The Guy is saying don’t look at the facts just listen to what I have to say. Yeah right! This is the way we lose wars, by having guys like Terry running the show.
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Mike McCaul was on Face the Nation, as chairman of the House Security Committee, trying to explain why four million government employees accounts were hacked and why the NTSA had shown a 95% failure rating in airport security. This clown has a lot to say about what everyone else is doing. Maybe he should look to the failures of his own house, which are monumental.
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Also involving the Clinton’s is the big noise over George Stephanopoulos’ failure to disclose that he gave money to the Clinton foundation and didn’t disclose it when he interviewed Peter Schweizer, who wrote the book, Clinton’s Cash. Full disclosure was something he should have done before the interview as part of full disclosure. He didn’t and he apologized for it on air, which was the right thing to do. It is especially relevant that he should have done the full disclosure statement because of the way he gutted Schweizer over all the of false statements and accusations in the book but especially at Schweizer’s idiotic contention that an author who makes accusations doesn’t then have to provide proof.
Poor pathetic George, however, can never seem to get it all together, because in the middle of his apology, for some inane reason, he stated that he now believed that directing personal donations to that foundation was a mistake. Why? Why would he say that? And when he did say that, why didn’t he explain himself? His mistake wasn’t giving to a reputable foundation, it was not disclosing it before he ripped a new asshole for Schweizer, who wrote a book filled with unproven accusations and had the gall to say that it was not an authors job to prove those accusations, only to make them. This dullard doesn’t understand that unproven accusations are only gossip and unworthy of publication. Of course this guy is such a whore he doesn’t care, as long as the royalties are good.
But back to George and why he made his statement about giving to the Clinton Initiative. He prefaced the whole statement by listing all the good things that the Global Initiative was doing for children and sick people around the world. It has been suggested that, because he is a supposedly neutral network host, that he should not have been making donations to Clinton’s charity no matter how good the work they do. But that is so narrow a view that it should, real or not, be discarded as anti-humanitarian.
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Richard Clark, the man who is probably more informed on all the aspects of American security than anyone extant, practically dismissed the Middle East as a security issue but then stepped deeply into, what he considers, the real problem, by identifying cyber security as the biggest threat we face in the years to come. More important to him, is the fact that our own government isn’t doing enough about it, mainly because they don’t understand it, They think it’s a tech problem and since no one in the government understands tech, so they shove it aside. He claims that this alone, makes it the most important problem we have.
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Everyone is worried about the possible lone wolf threat, inspired by ISIS in this country. The obvious attacks in Europe and the Middle East have increased vigilance here, but the question that comes to mind is, aren’t we attacking the Islamic threat the wrong way?
We are currently trying to catch cockroaches on the ground in America. It’s foolish, like whack-a-mole. Shouldn’t we be attacking the source? I’m not talking militarily; I’m talking fight fire with fire. Is it possible that this country with all its technical superiority can’t come up with a weapon that can knock out ISIS Internet capabilities? Can’t we stop the signal from getting to the unaffiliated potential terrorists in this country?
The world is full of twenty-year-old kids who can hack intro the most sophisticated computer security. Is it possible that our billion dollar Internet security forces can’t come up with something that just kills their signal so they can’t reach potential lone wolves around the world? Is it even possible that we haven’t explored this area?
What I am suggesting here is a weapon that fries, or whatever the technical term is, the ISIS signal as it emerges from its source or maybe even fries the source itself..
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Paul Ryan speaking on Obamacare still maintains that the GOP has a bill to replace it. Yeah, and I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn. The reality is that the law isn’t perfect. It would be great if the GOP under Ryan would work with a Democratic president, for a change, to help the nation. It’s unlikely to happen under Obama simply because the GOP hates him so much they don’t want anything he has done to succeed.
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The international moron, Trey Gowdy, head of the latest, most farcical Benghazi investigation, spoke out this weekend about Hillary Clinton’s e-mail. In Typical Gowdy confusion he first admitted that Mrs. Clinton said she had turned over all her e-mails to the committee and then emphatically stated that, she had not turned over the e-mails. Then later in his interview he said that the committee had no way to tell if she had turned over all her e-mail. Look, Trey, we know you’re dumb as a post but even you must realize that when you make three statements that correct each other in one speech, a couple of them have to be false. So instead of lying to the American people, why don’t you shut your face, close down this expensive and useless investigation and do something constructive like walk your dog?
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Watched John Kasich, Governor of Ohio on the tube. There are a lot of things, on which, I don’t agree with him, but all and all he seems like the best bet for the Republicans if they want to elect an intelligent and functional president. This guy gets it, which is probably why he is so far down on the Republican list right now. Considering the list of losers that are vying for the GOP nomination, idiots and crackpots like Jindal, Trump, Perry, Cruz, Huckabee, Santorum, et al, this guy looks like a genius superman. This probably means he hasn’t got a shot with the base. Maybe he should run as an Independent.