Bits & Pieces #70

 

Listened to Reince Priebus try to doubletalk his way through a discussion of the primary voting process now going on with the GOP. He just isn’t up to it. Maybe no one is. The problem is that none of the party establishments, and this goes for the Democrats as much as the Republicans, can deny that the blatant defiance of the “one man one vote,” concept is actually set up to keep the existing establishment in power and cheap the people of their voting rights. That’s what the rules everyone is quoting were instituted for. The idea of a political party actually giving the voters a clear path to choosing their preferred candidate over the party’s choice, is ridiculous. There is more time spent in keeping the voters from controlling the results than there is in anything else except raising money.

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More discussion on Meet the Press about the Lewendowski scandal; how it s been blown out of size and how it has no place in the presidential election.

There is no one around who would like to find something else with which to attack Trump than this writer, but the reality of the situation is that nothing happened.

Trump was forging ahead through a huge crowd with a security guy behind him and Lewendowski next to him when this female reporter reached out and grabbed Trump’s arm.   Lewendowski moved his arm between them, trying to separate them. He never grabbed her. She never staggered or fell. It was all phony hype. If there was any offender it was the reporter who should not have grabbed Trump. I have now watched the tape of the event a dozen times, including slow motion. There is no doubt the reporter instigated the confrontation and Trump’s campaign manager did nothing that any other employee of Trump wouldn’t have done.

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Trump cries for fairness from the GOP but; fairness in politics is like crying in baseball. There isn’t any.

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Meanwhile, a few months back, the federal Government was massing troops to take over the state of Texas and put it under marshal law. No, reasonable people don’t believe that ridiculous premise but so says Greg Abbott, the moron who sits in the Texas statehouse.

Abbotts nonsense was unfortunately grabbed up and run with by a clown named Alex Jones, a right wing radio talk show host who needed to get a little more attention before his ratings doomed him to the three AM time slot.

But being the kind of trailer park trash that most of his listeners are, the story got legs and even Ted Cruz tried to use it to enliven his failed shot at the presidency.

The solution to the problem was very simple. Obama should have accommodated the morons and pulled all our military bases and installations out of Texas, thereby alleviating the fears of the, too dumb to breathe, Texans who are worried about a government takeover and in the same move lightening the Texas state treasury by the billions of dollars in federal money that pours into it to sustain those military facilities. The loss of those bases, along with that of the millions of dollars run through the Texas economy by the men and women stationed there should enlighten Abbott and his nutcase followers on how much Texas needs the Federal government and how little his military takeover theories mean to the enlightened citizen.

What Abbott and his followers are too dumb to understand is that the Fed’s Marshall Law plan works more like the government’s financial rescue of Europe after WW II than like any kind of military invasion.

It goes without saying, that Arizona, New Mexico, Arkansas, Nevada and all the other states in the region would welcome the government’s, “Marshall law” threat with open arms

But why are the Texans so worried about Marshall law? Maybe it’s because down deep they know that they need and deserve the military version; that any accumulation of citizens that project an image as universally ignorant, pathologically paranoid and functionally pugilistic, as do Texans, definitely needs adult supervision.

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The FBI has issued warnings that hundreds of ISIS followers are loose in the land and are getting ready to commit horrendous atrocities all across the country. That may be, but they’ll never catch up to our own gun owners who kill up to 30,000 fellow citizens every year. Them pathetic A-rabs just ain’t got the firepower that our security minded gun nuts can muster.

Watching Homeland Security chief Johnson and FBI director Comey push the threat of danger through the roof, one begins to suspect that it may be more about congressional appropriations than it is about crazed Arabs. It also may be about the judicial decision to limit NSA in their invasion of the American people’s privacy. The reality is that it’s probably about a little of both and not really much about security. The 42 Americans killed by Arab terrorists since 2001 pales before what terrorists have done abroad and absolutely evaporates before our own gun carnage. More than 450,000 Americans died by American guns in that same period.

Sure we live in a smaller and therefore more dangerous world but, aside from 911 we have, compared with the rest of the world, experienced very few examples of terrorism, especially considering our propensity to get into everybody’s business, something that makes us the deserved target of every nut on the planet.

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Last week, Barak Obama appeared at the Washington Correspondents dinner and did 25 minutes of great comedy, much of it about what a bunch of bumbling losers the Republican candidates have shown themselves to be. Of course the GOP candidates do make it easy.

Unfortunately Obama missed the best piece of material on the docket when he failed to mention Donald Trump’s proud announcement that he now has the backing of Mike Tyson. Is Trump really bragging about having the backing of a brain damaged convicted rapist? Yeah, Don, that’ll really bring back the female vote. You go guy!

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Chuck Todd cornered Ted Cruz on Meet the Press with one single question. “If Trump wins the primary, will you support him?”   It was a very simple question but Cruz wouldn’t answer it. It was a really stupid move. He should have just said that he didn’t expect Trump to beat him but if it did happen, he would or would not support him. Now, less than a week later we will get to see just how sleazy Cruz really is. Does he have the guts to refuse to back the man he called a liar and many things worse or will he fold like a wet tent and give The Donald his backing?

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Speaking about Hillary Clinton, ….. Manafort accuses her of being part of the failed system of Barak Obama. Okay let’s look at a little reality. Manafort was part of the system that brought George Bush, Dick Cheney and Dennis Hastert to office. This group; the idiot, the warmonger and the pedophile almost destroyed the nation. Obama has successfully brought the nation back from the edge of the Bush Administration disaster. A wounded nation slowed down Obama’s plans but despite what that trio from hell left him, he will leave office with a strong nation ready to forge even further ahead. That’s far better than any Republican president since WW II can say.