Bits & Pieces #60

The Trump debate goes on and on, proving that the media are just another bunch of whores working their individual street corners. It’s not going to stop anytime soon mainly because there isn’t any reason for it to stop. The media loves it and Trump adores it. There is nothing to stop it now except…an election.

The primaries don’t start until February. This will go on until at least that winter doldrum. The biggest lie that Trump has going for him is that Trump says what he believes. Yeah, but only at that particular second because Trump changes his mind at least as often an infant changes diapers.

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Guantanamo is still there. Obama swore to close it when he was elected. So far he hasn’t been able to do that, mostly because for some reason we need an act of congress to do so and our GOP controlled congress, isn’t about to give Obama another victory this late in his game. But let’s look at the reality of Guantanamo, outside of the humane concepts about it.

There are 116 inmates currently in prison there. About 54 of them have been cleared to leave for more than six months but Ash Carter the Secretary of Defense, isn’t about to let them go. There are over 2000 people employed to keep these 116 inmates in place. They don’t do it for love of the game. Figuring salaries, benefits and the cost of non-salary maintenance the place costs roughly $250 million a year to keep running. I bet that even the Republicans could find something constructive to do with that money, even if it’s only to buy more planes that don’t fly.

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Of course there is more talk about who else will get into the Democratic race for president. Joe Biden is being considered even before he decides whether or not he wants to run. The other candidate who has been mentioned, probably with clenched teeth is Al Gore.

Biden is real. Gore is a quitter who had his shot at winning the Presidency in 2000 but quit in his battle with George Bush over fraud at the polls of the state in which Bush’s brother Jeb was governor. Gore, who won the popular vote, should have hung in there, but he didn’t, he quit. Who wants a quitter running for President?

And speaking of that fiasco, can you imagine if the parties had been reversed? We’d still be having investigations into the Democratic governor of Florida and how he had promoted voter fraud at the polls. And if Hillary had been George Bush, they would still be having congressional investigations into her complicity with the governor of Florida in order to steal the presidency. That’s why sane people only laugh at email bullshit.

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Watched an interview with Sylvia Longmire, a security consultant to a number of government agencies dealing specifically with drug and border security. She states unequivocally that a fence is the answer to nothing. The fence is too expensive to build at one million to twenty two million per mile. It doesn’t stop anyone from getting into the country and the Mexican government is getting stitches in its side laughing over the Trump fantasy that they will pay for it. The reality is that more people come in through airports and get lost in the crowd than come in over the border. The other reality, the one that no one mentions, is that we have the safest borders in the world. Most anyplace on the planet you can just find a forest and walk across any border with no problem. That’s because most people don’t want to go into other countries unless they are political refugees and then they just migrate with almost nothing to stop them.

Donald Trump says that we have to make America great again, that it is falling apart. But he also says that we are being over run by immigrants. So how come if this country is so shitty everyone in the world wants to come here. America hasn’t been so bad for Trump. Maybe other people want the same shot as he had. Of course they have to come with an old man who gives them a couple of million to start with and hooks them up with all his many cronies in the building business.

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It seems that Joe Biden is closer to a run than ever before. Everyone who doesn’t want Hillary and that includes all the Republicans who know she will whip their asses, are telling us all about Joe’s assets and good points. Just wait until he decides to run, if he does. Then all of a sudden all the old doubts and problems will leap to the fore. Like many others out there, I like Joe but he, despite all his good points, has already shown us all the reasons why he wouldn’t make a good president. He has been a great vice-president but that doesn’t mean he would be a good president.

One of our biggest problems in this world is that we are always taking guys from jobs they have done wonderfully and pushed them up above their functionality grade into jobs that they just can’t do as well. . I would love to see Biden run as Hillary or Bernie’s vice president. I would vote for either ticket in a minute, but Joe as the top spot has just too many negatives. When the VP makes a gaff we all smile and try to ignore it but the same isn’t true when a President screws up. Think about that and Joe Biden.

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The immigration situation in this country has been a cause of much angst and anger, but the real problem isn’t illegal immigration, it’s our almost completely non-functional legal immigration system. What am I talking about? Right now, there is an all but insurmountable wall blocking any kind of clear path to legal citizenship. If that wall were breached, there would be a hell of a lot less illegal immigration. It can take up to twenty years for an immigrant to clear all the hurdles to legal citizenship. That’s ridiculous.

So why can’t congress, on some kind of bi-partisan basis, get together and pass some functional immigration laws that will make all the energy spent on illegal immigration available for something more important.

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While agreeing almost 100% with Jorge Ramos positions on immigration, in all truth he went about confronting Trump in the wrong manner. He didn’t ask a question at a press conference. He didn’t wait to be called on which is the traditional way that things are done. He made a confrontational statement. That was wrong.

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One often wonders how Iowa got to make so much noise in the presidential elections. The candidate that wins Iowa rarely wins the general election. . No matter how many problems are debated in Iowa there is only one question that really matters. Do you want to return ethanol subsidies in a state that has only one big product, corn, from which ethanol is made. Iowans don’t care that their ethanol is an additive to gasoline, which pollutes the atmosphere. Iowans don’t seem to care the money they make is poisoning their children.

You can grow a lot of things in Iowa but that would take initiative and thoughtful planning. So would figuring out what all the candidates aren’t saying about a number of important issues that affect our entire country. Of course,t paying attention to them would also take some thought and Iowans aren’t very big on thought. After all, if you wanted to think about things, the first thing you’d think about would be why the hell you wanted to live in Iowa.

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Finally a voice of sanity! A federal Judge voided the suspension of Tom Brady for the capital offense of letting some air out of a football. In nullifying the suspension, the judge has rapped the idiotic NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on the knuckles with his ruler. Goodell is an egocentric buffoon who has allowed this ridiculous piece of non-business to reach cataclysmic proportions.

There are many dumb things that happen in sports but for this piece of nothing to have caused this much comment, wasted this much time and threatened to effect the results of the work of each and every team that Boston plays is simply a great reason to fire Goodell.

I want to see the Patriots lose more than any team in the sport but not this way. There wasn’t enough air in the ball? Who gives a rat’s ass? Brady actually did better with the ball with more air in the second half of the game in question than he did in the first half with the deflated ball. So here we are and, yes, I’ve added to the noise that is much ado about nothing, just like the rest of the ludicrous media, who have made into a full-blown shit storm what it’s barely the slightest passing of air.

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There is nothing more totalitarian than religious freedom when it’s interpreted to mean that you can take away others freedom to impose your beliefs.

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Michael McCaul the chairman of the Homeland Security committee is a coward. There is no other word to describe him. Right now, he is busily trying to exclude the refugees from Syria that are flooding out of the Middle East. He is the same kind of coward that after 911 was ready to abandon all our freedoms just to keep from risking another attack by terrorists. By taking that stance the cowards of that era made the terrorist attacks successful.

We cannot change the nature of our country because we are afraid of the possible negative consequences. Cowards do that. Mike McCauls do that. Yes, about three thousand Americans were killed on 911. That makes us the safest country in the world for the last century and beyond. No other country in the world can say that only three thousand of their people were lost to attack in the last century. What the hell are we afraid of?

We spend billions on security and still we are frightened about terrorists. The answer is not to reject people who are suffering the horror of being driven out of their land. The answer is to make our security more functional and less wasteful. We must help those who need our help. That’s what makes America greater than any other country. That’s why people flock to America from all over the world. That’s why Donald Trump and those like him are full of crap.

But just as important as helping those refugees is solving the problem of their own countries, through arriving at both political and military solutions. WE can’t do that alone. For that we need other nations of good will that see the problems and have a desire to solve them. This apparently does not include Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey.