More News Along the Rialto

 

So Joe Biden pulled his first trigger as President this week carrying out an air strike against Iranian backed militant terrorists along the Syrian/Iraq border.  The Republicans, the Doves and any number of other quacks immediately came after him but it was a righteous hit. The guys he bombed had initiated a rocket attack on US forces in Iraq and it was imperative that we let Iran know that this kind of creeping violence would not be tolerated, especially at a time when we are trying to re-engage the Iranians in talks to reopen the nuclear treaty that Trump walked away from.

I love it when the Retrumplicans whine about this being an act of war and that Trump never did anything like this while he was in office. Shit! Trump never did anything at all while he was in office, unless it directly benefited him or his brats.

This was a good move by Biden. It says to the Iranians and the rest of the Middle East:  “We want peace, but don’t take that as a sign of weakness. We are not going to be the aggressor but if you mess with us we will bury you.” It’s a definitive statement that has been a long time in coming.

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Just watched Rob Portman make the definitive dumb GOP statement. When asked about the COVID AIDE package Portman attacked the Democrats because as he sees it they aren’t making it a bi-partisan package. Well Rob, all it needs to be bi-partisan is a couple of GOP votes, so why aren’t the Republicans voting for it and making it bi-partisan? The nation’s citizens favor the bill by an overwhelming 75%, meaning that it has the backing of Republicans, Democrats and Independents, so where the hell is the GOP bi-partisan congress? Are they too busy proving they are too dumb to read a poll of their own constituents?

Portman, who seems to feel obligated to prove his own personal stupidity, goes on to attack several projects in the bill that he claims have nothing to do with COVID. But they are all infrastructure projects that will create huge amounts of new employment and therefore help to drag the nation out of the COVID and Trump induced economic doldrums which most of the nation is facing.

It’s really time the Retrumplicans stopped with their party line bullshit and tried to do something to help the country in general. They had absolutely zero plans to do anything helpful while they were in office and now they seem to want to be the force that works to keep anything from getting accomplished when they’re out. Aren’t there any GOP congress people who have the nation’s well being as part of their plan? Are they all just in it for themselves?

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There’s been a lot of noise about the intelligence report    acknowledging that MBS ordered the death of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist working for the Washington Post.  The biggest noises are coming from Retrumplicans demanding that Biden do something about it. Do they mean like Trump did when it actually happened?

Look, no matter how you slice it Saudi Arabia is still an ally. We have to decide if it’s worth it to abandon them over this, or just cut off arms supplies to them. Despite all the riches that have accrued to the Saudis because they sat on top of a huge pool of oil, they have never advanced their civilization out of the 7th Century.  They remain warlike desert tribes crushed intellectually by the most regressive sect of a deeply regressive religion.

All we really have to do with the Saudis is be patient.  The oil boom is over. They have made no concessions to life after oil. Saudi citizens have no training in anything that could replace the employment sources oil provides. Without oil revenues they will not be able to support those Saudis who now live on the dole. The labor force, which is mostly foreign, will just move to a place they can earn a living, leaving the country in shambles. When what’s left of the oil market dries up the nation will simply return to the desert sands.

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One of the first things Joe Biden did when he took office was shut down the Keystone Pipeline. This act was met with jubilation by environmentalists and horror by the fossil fuel industry. Over the last number of years this writer has been a strong opponent of the Keystone and a number of other cousins of that murderous sub-surface snake. I took that stance because, although there are functional realities inherent in the pipeline’s existence, its overall negative reality dictated that it must be stopped.

There has always been one positive item on the long list of good and bad attributes of any pipeline. Transporting oil by pipeline is much safer than by surface. But that’s it! Every other argument is on the other side. Pipelines break and leak infecting the earth for generations because the greedy pipeline companies care more about the safety of their bottom line than they do about the safety of the communities through which they run their pipes. The history of irresponsible oil and chemical leakage across the globe is a tale of criminal atrocity unparalleled in human history and it’s all about greed.

But it’s not just fossil fuels. One of our environmentally safest sources of energy, nuclear, is just as much a victim of corporate greed as fossil fuel. We are now in the process of taking all our nuclear plants off line and we are not building any more. That’s because they are all becoming obsolete and corporate management refuses to pay for the maintenance necessary to keep them safe. Plants on both coasts are in eminent danger doing a Chernobyl and endangering millions who live in their vicinity. Corporate greed will never change, so it must be governmentally controlled. That is the only way to keep the citizenry safe. Just check out deregulated Texas. How well has it worked for them?

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  1. Kay Henderson the news director of Radio Iowa, drew a very incorrect parallel on Meet the Press this Sunday when she alluded to the fact that many Democrats were unable to utter the words “President Trump” after his election just as as Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds was unable to refer to Joe Biden as president when she described actions by the administration to fight the pandemic. These are not at all similar. Not uttering the words “President Trump” was the result of said words catching in the throats of Democrats who realized that a criminal sociopath had won the White House. Governor Reynold’s refusal to say the words “President Biden” were the result of her belief in the obvious lie perpetrated by that same criminal sociopath, Donald Trump, whose success had choked up all reasonable, intelligent, logical, human beings when they realized he had, in fact, been elected president of the United States

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Trump lied his ass off at CPAC this past weekend. But when all the shouting and accusations were over a strange taste was left in the mouths of many who watched.

Let’s start with this. Trump has already filed the papers to run an election campaign for 2024, but he still claims, that he won the election of 2020, which would make him ineligible to run again. There appears to be a dichotomy in play here unless you are a member of his cult.

As expected, he attacked every member of the GOP that isn’t willing to kiss his ass in public. That means anyone with any sense of honor or morals. Trump is trying to read the political weather before he makes a decision as to his next move. Although he’s filed, he hasn’t announced a presidential run for 2024.

It seems pretty clear that Trump recognizes that no real opponent has as yet emerged from the swamp that is the GOP. He picked up 55% as the favorite candidate from CPAC people to be the next president but that means that 45% of what is basically a cult following didn’t follow. That is not good news for the fat liar from Mar-a-Largo that should have polled at least 90% from the brain dead zombies that traveled to Orlando, ostensibly to worship at his shrine.