Ben Sasse ® Nebraska is Jimmy Stewart. He is the best future for the Republican Party mainly because he gets it. He has a sense of what this country should be and where he would like it to go which is more what we want in a President, and more than anybody from either party right now. He is one of the very few politicians that I have heard speak to what is right for America without worrying about what is right for their party. This is refreshing and hopeful. Don’t mistake the fact of what he is. He is one of the top five most conservative voters in the Senate. He is against Obamacare On that I deeply disagree with him but he isn’t just for getting rid of Obamacare so the rich can get a tax break. He is against it because, for the moment, he doesn’t think its the best we can do for our citizens, which is the way he should be thinking, the way all our legislators should be thinking. We need to see a lot more of this guy. We have to find out if he’s for real, but if he really turns out to be the guy he appears to be, he could be the best hope to run this country the GOP has had in 50 years.
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George Stephanopoulos had a GOP apologist for Donald Trump named Christopher Ruddy on last Sunday and he was so inept, so lacking in information and facts that he only made Trump’s case look worse. His sole purpose for being on the show seemed to be to blame the press for all of Trump’s woes but when it came to facts, he was completely bereft of any that were necessary to make his vague points. When your argument for the fact that the president and his aids have repeatedly lied about why Comey was fired, is that the media has attacked this President more than on any other, you are leaving yourself open to the reply that this is because this president has lied and acted un-Presidential more than any other. This is something that Ruddy just doesn’t seem to get.
When Ruddy claims that the President’s plans are being frustrated by a hostile media it is quickly pointed out that the President’s plans are being frustrated by the President himself when he creates news stories just because he can’t keep from lying and that his domestic programs are floundering because no one can get out from under the mountain of lies and stupid decisions that have been cascading out of the White House ever since he entered it.
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Watched Marco Rubio being interviewed by John Dickerson and it was hard to equate this logical intelligent straight thinker with the nut job that ran for the Presidency last fall. Rubio’s answers were thoughtful and cogent. He was careful and logical. If he had projected that face last summer he might be sitting in the White House now. Of course he still has to attend his seeming “no show” job in the Senate once in a while, something that he has an unfortunate history of ignoring.
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Mike Flynn is the loose cannon that very well may go off and blow Donald Trump’s head out from under that bizarre mop. There are verified reports that Trump called Flynn the other night and told him to hold fast and stay the course. As soon as this news was revealed it set the hair of defense lawyers all over the country on fire. Doesn’t Trump have any intelligent legal advice? Here is a guy he hired despite all sensible warnings, finally realized he was a liability and then fired him. Flynn is now on the hot seat for all kinds of felonious acts. In his position as National Security Advisor he advised this nation against an attack on ISIS because he was also on the payroll of Turkey and the Turks didn’t want us to arm Kurds to fight for us because they are afraid that the Kurds will eventually turn those weapons on them. It was a move that may have already cost American lives. This guy is getting calls from Trump telling him to hardline it with those who are about to jail him. Those calls are coming from a President who doesn’t seem to realize that he is the most realistic target of the investigation and as such should avoid contact with Flynn like the plague. Who opened the doors of the asylum?
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The greed and the stupidity of the world’s energy suppliers are sometimes beyond comprehension. The need for energy and the business of supplying it started before man could speak and progressed from wood to coal to oil and finally to natural gas before man realized that these sources of energy would eventually poison the air of the planet and even change the chemistry of the atmosphere in such a way that it would ultimately destroy the entire planet. These very lucrative but extremely dangerous fuels were followed by nuclear power, which promised crystal clean energy but at the risk of blowing up entire sections of the countries in which they existed.
Then came the revelations of wind and power, clean energy with a renewable base that could take over the problem of energy if the greedy pigs that had already established themselves in the previous fields would put aside their greed and allow the new technologies to develop. But now there is a newer threat to mankind, a massive source of fossil fuel that dwarfs the resource size of all previous fuels. Some 2800 trillion cubic feet of it are currently trapped in permafrost or under the sea floors around the world. It’s called methane hydrate and the fact of its availability has greedy nations all over the world scrambling to take the lead in its development. Japan and China are already extracting it from permafrost while the U.S. Canada, India and South Korea are scrambling to get in the race for what appears to be a supply that could meet current gas demands for up to 800 years. Sounds great doesn’t it?
But there’s always a catch. Methane is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Anyone who has ever had any identification with any kind of extraction process from digging coal, to drilling oil, to fracking gas; or to the transportation of any of these or other substances knows infallibly that spills, leaks, and cracks expel any and all substances into the atmosphere on a regular basis. The guys who are pushing Trump to allow the final steps to the Keystone pipeline are battling a massive spill even as they testify about how safe the process is. You just can’t contain any of this stuff and now that we have a developed wind and sun technology, fossil fuels must be put to death. Logic and the history of fossil fuels should tell any sentient human being that the only place for methane hydrate is under the permafrost or the sea bed but greedy pigs and stupid people will continue to go after it until they are forcibly prohibited by sane minds and strong character. Unfortunately these qualities seem to be in very short supply in our modern world.
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Is there anyone in the world less qualified to be head of the FBI than Joe Lieberman? This is the turkey that praised the nomination of Mike Flynn. He is a member of the law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres, which just happens to represent Trump on litigation matters. And let’s look a Lieberman’s background in law enforcement when contrasted with the last three FBI chiefs; James Comey was a former Deputy Attorney General and a former US attorney. Robert Muller was a former Deputy Attorney General and a former US Attorney. Louis Freeh was a former Federal Judge and a former FBI agent. Lieberman is a former politician who couldn’t make up his minds what side of any issue he stood on until someone told him which side would give him a political advantage. He’s a former Democrat who became a Republican and a former failure that became a bigger failure.
The reality is that Lieberman won’t get appointed to the FBI but just the fact that Trump is trying to shove another of his worthless, non-functional cronies into a position of power, a job from which he just fired his accuser, points to what a sleazy crook The President really is. At some point he has to learn that he does have boundaries, even if they do not include grabbing women’s private parts.
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Those who know my history know that I have no love for the FBI but in the current situation I certainly support them and all our intelligence services in their beef with our blabbermouth egomaniac of a President. Trump spent plenty of time, still does, attacking Clinton for imagined security breeches and then the buffoon turns around and regurgitates classified material that could lead to the death of allied agents just to enhance his ego. We may not be able to send Trump to jail for this but he definitely needs to have someone shove a cork in his mouth.
Representative Al Green (D) Texas is bringing a bill of impeachment against Trump to the House floor based on Trump’s firing of James Comey and then admitting that the firing was prompted by Comey’s
investigation into his possible connection to the Russian involvement in our elections. It may be premature but it’s a start. Minority Leader Pelosi has said that she is not ready for such a move and she may be right but it never hurts to stir the pot.
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Just watched Elizabeth Warren beat Steve Mnuchin’s brains out in a discussion about the meaning of 21St Century Glass /Steagel. Like any dishonest slime, Mnuchin was trying to play with the meaning of something, for which everyone already has a definition. His goal, the goal of most of the Trump cabinet liars, is to avoid the truth so as not to convict themselves before the jury of whatever’s left of a thinking public.
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Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. was asked why Israel seemed to be much more accommodating to the Trump Administration than it was to the Obama administration. He answered that when Obama came to the Middle East he went to Egypt before he went to Israel. The Israelis considered that an affront. Really? That’s how Israel decides on it alliances? That’s mature.
Then Danon stated that he educates his kids for peace. He said that right after he defended the Israeli practice of building settlements on Palestinian land on the West Bank. Right now Israel seems about as smart as Trump.
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A week or so ago this blog ran an item about a thug in Montana named Greg Gianforte who led a mob in threatening a reporter; egging them on by yelling that there were more of them than there was of the reporter. At the time I called Gianforte a punk and stated that anyone who voted for this garbage was too stupid to be correctly represented. It appears that a lot of people in Montana fall into this category.
Well, he ran for the House now and won the race and last night he punched out a reporter who asked him a legitimate question about healthcare and the CBO. Yeah, I know. It’s Montana and the testosterone overload is running out of control because that’s one of those states where people think it’s fun to shoot harmless animals and where a guy breaking his neck doing something utterly stupid like trying to ride an angry 2000lb bull is a hero. So Gianforte beats this reporter up and then his campaign releases a statement about how it was all the reporter’s fault because he was being aggressive. How aggressive? Well, he was asking questions. But guess what? There were witnesses. A crew from, of all places, Fox News watched the whole thing and verified the real version; the one where Gianforte is a felon and attacked a newsman for asking a simple question.
The members of the House were already talking about not seating his punk if he won, but that’s not the answer. The answer is to let him serve so those who were stupid enough to for him will be penalized by having him as their congressman. But first he should go to trial for felony assault. That’s difficult because the Sheriff who has charged him with a misdemeanor rather than a felony has already gifted Gianforte’s campaign with $250. The Sheriff claims that this is not material to the charges. Yeah, and Trump’s not a liar.