Presidential Election of 2012

Paul Ryan Declares Republicans Have Made Their Choice To Stand With Donald Trump: Confirmation Of What This Blogger Said About Ryan Five Years Ago!

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Five years ago, on this blog, I condemned Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, the Vice Presidential nominee for the Republican Party, chosen by Presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

I said he was “arrogant, reckless,cocky, overly ideological, uncompromising, inflexible”, as stated at the time, and also say he was and is unprincipled, hypocritical, corrupt and mean spirited. I received harsh criticism from the Right on various websites for my assertions, and they still will attack me, but that does not make me deny what I said and still contend today.

Five years later, Paul Ryan is Speaker of the House, and has proved that he is willing to sell the party he leads to a man he privately despises, as the only way to accomplish his goal of destroying the middle class, and ending Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. An Ayn Rand follower, Ryan also has claimed he is a “good Catholic”, which many Catholic groups would deny, with his hard hearted attitude towards the poor.

Ryan knows his tax proposal is only going to worsen the class division in America, and make the rich wealthier, the poor in even worse shape, and much of the middle class in free fall economically.

Saying after the defeats in the elections last week that the Republicans have made their choice to stand with Donald Trump, despite his reckless and dangerous behavior, is a sign that Ryan is living in a fantasy world of his own making, and it is hoped that his opponent in his Wisconsin district for the 2018 midterm elections, iron worker and US Army veteran Randy Bryce, who has gained a lot of support, ends up retiring Paul Ryan from Congress next November.

Since Tom Foley was defeated for his seat in Washington State and as Speaker in 1994, with a major Republican wave, it is hoped the same will occur in 2018 with a Democratic sweep, to Paul Ryan.

Nikki Haley A Rare Gem Working For Donald Trump

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United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, former South Carolina Governor, is one of a very few members of the Trump Administration, who in a time of great turmoil, could be said to have made a positive impression in her position.

Haley showed courage after the Charleston Massacre in her state in June 2015, in promoting the removal of the Confederate Flag from the State Capitol Grounds in Columbia, South Carolina.

She has come across as very effective in dealing with other nations at the United Nations, despite her earlier lack of foreign policy experience.

She speaks in a measured and intelligent tone, and works to calm tension regarding Donald Trump’s loose rhetoric, particularly about North Korea, and its leader Kim Jong Un.

She was considered for Vice President by Mitt Romney in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016, and has managed to overcome the rudeness of Trump toward her, due to the fact that she did not support him in the South Carolina Presidential Primary.

Rumor has it that she might be elevated to Secretary of State by either Trump or if Vice President Mike Pence succeeds to the Presidency during this term, as many observers believe Rex Tillerson is unhappy, and will leave early in 2018.

She is already perceived as being the most likely woman who might run for President on the Republican party line in the future.

While this blogger and author has not agreed with everything she has said and done in her public life, she stands out as a bright shining star in the midst of one Trump disaster after another.

Trump Appointment Of Jon Huntsman As Ambassador To Russia A Mixed Message, Not Necessarily Good For Huntsman

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Former Utah Governor and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman has finally been formally appointed by Donald Trump to be Ambassador to Russia, although news of the appointment emerged in March. Why it took this long to make it formal is a mystery.

Certainly, we can say that this is, by far, the best appointment Trump has made, without question.

Huntsman is a true statesman, a brilliant figure in politics and diplomacy, and this blogger has said in the past that Huntsman was easily the most qualified and competent GOP Presidential candidate in 2012, and only Ohio Governor John Kasich of the 2016 Republican field came close in competence to Huntsman, although not being equal to him.

But why Huntsman would agree to this appointment in the midst of the Russian collusion scandal is beyond understanding, as it gives cover to Trump, and complicates the whole investigation.

It will be important for Huntsman NOT to allow himself to be manipulated by Trump, as it would undermine Huntsman’s credibility.

One could still wish that Huntsman had become President, rather than Trump, and it is still an open question how he will be involved in the whole Trump–Putin “bromance”, which endangers our government and our national security.

So this blogger feels that Huntsman is making a mistake in legitimizing Donald Trump, particularly now after the revelations about the Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner meeting with Russians in June 2016, and the newly discovered hour discussion at the G-20 Summit between Trump and Putin without any other American involved, not even an interpreter!

The Plot Thickens As Mike Pence Hires An Attorney, And Jared Kushner Faces Business Dealings Investigation

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So now the plot thickens, as Vice President Mike Pence has hired an attorney, and Trump son in law Jared Kushner is being investigated on his business dealings.

This makes the Trump scandal investigation even more complex, but occurring at a pace unmatched in the Watergate era of Richard Nixon.

The fact that Mike Pence feels a need to “lawyer up” is a danger sign for him, as it may mean that he has been compromised by being the Vice President for Donald Trump, and may have damaged his own reputation and credibility, meaning once again Donald Trump has done harm and may have destroyed the reputation of yet another person who is in his orbit throughout his life.

The possibility of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan being the beneficiary of the possible downfall of Mike Pence is chilling, as this author and blogger warned five years ago how horrible and disgraceful a person Ryan was, to put in line for the Presidency, when he ran for Vice President in the Presidential campaign of Mitt Romney. For that, I was bitterly criticized and attacked by right wing sources, including the BLAZE of Glenn Beck, and had nasty emails sent to me for expressing my right to freedom of speech.

One could argue that Ryan too has been compromised by working along with a man that he clearly has little personal regard for, all in his obsessive desire to take away the social safety net from the poor, and yet claiming to be a “good Catholic”, a true mockery of the teachings of the faith, as brilliantly expressed by Pope Francis in the Vatican.

Obama Care Survives: Massive Defeat For Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, And Republican Party, And Public Opinion Is Turning Negative!

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Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and the Republican Party have suffered a massive defeat, in their failure, after 60 votes over the past six years to destroy Obama Care, and now being unable to control their own caucus and accomplish its demise yesterday in the House of Representatives.

The Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price, Can still undermine the enforcement of the law, and cause it to fail, but it will put the blame on Donald Trump for failure to enforce the law as it is, until and when it is repealed and replaced.

The irony of it all is that Obama Care is really the Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich Heritage Foundation program of 1993, offered as an alternative to Hillary Care, and is also based on Romney Care in Massachusetts, but once Obama was elected, the GOP decision was to refuse to accept any health care plan, and Mitt Romney ran against his own program in Massachusetts, when he opposed Obama in the 2012 Presidential election.

So both the Republican Party and Mitt Romney were engaged in total hypocrisy, when Obama settled for what has become law, due to the difficulties in gaining “a public option”, or promoting “Medicare For All”, a single payer system, when both would have taken control away from the health insurance companies.

The proposed bill that never came to a vote yesterday would have caused 24 million to lose all health care coverage, and would have given massive tax cuts to the wealthy yet a third time, after Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and George W. Bush in the 2000s, taking the needs of the wealthy who do not need a tax cut over the needs of millions of Americans.

Donald Trump has failed, and has discovered that his business methods do not work in politics, with him having believed like Ross Perot in the 1990s, that all you had to do was take the politicians into a room, and you could force them to do what you want, and both Perot in theory then, and now Trump in practice, is learning otherwise.

So we saw yesterday a rare moment of humility by Trump, who had claimed Obama Care would be gone on the first day of his Presidency.

We also saw yesterday the gleeful Paul Ryan, so anxious since college to destroy the social safety net while drinking kegs of beer and failing in love with lunatic Ayn Rand, finally getting his comeuppance.

The GOP is doomed as long as they allow the 30 or so members of the House Freedom Caucus to hold them hostage, a group which forced John Boehner out of the Speakership in 2015.

It is time for Ryan to start working for bipartisan government, and ask Democrats for help, as otherwise the GOP will fail to get anything done, since the anarchistic Freedom Caucus is out to destroy government itself, and must be repudiated totally, and told where they can go.

The Republican Party may be the majority right now, but public opinion has turned against them on health care, with only 17 percent supporting the failed Ryan health care plan.

So Ryan Care or Trump Care lies in ruins at this time, and it is well deserved.

Paul Ryan, A Phony Christian (Catholic), With His Views On The Poor, Disabled, And Needy–Shame On Him And His Ilk In The GOP!

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Speaker of the House Paul Ryan ran for Vice President as the running mate of Mitt Romney in 2012, and at that time, this blogger made clear just how despicable a person he was, and I received a lot of hate emails because of that.

But what I said was true, and it is showing through ever more now on the Health Care legislation, where Ryan seems gleeful and excited about knocking millions of people off health care, and tells us that Obama Care is a nightmare, when it is anything but that.

Obama Care is not perfect, but it has saved many lives and brought health care to more than 20 million people, with the majority being white Christians, who now will be knocked off, and this will cause the death of thousands of people who will be unable to gain necessary medical intervention.

Ryan and others in the Congress have town halls, and hear the desperate entreaties of poor, sick, elderly, and disabled of all races and ethnic backgrounds, who are begging for a health care plan that does not ignore them.

Instead, the plan is to destroy Medicaid, and eventually Medicare as well, with Ryan laughing at one point about how he had been dreaming about this, when he was in college, drinking kegs of beer.

Watching that scene made this blogger want to vomit, as Ryan claims to be a “good Catholic”, a “good Christian”, as all of these reprehensible Republicans, including Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, claim they are.

But with Ryan’s views on the poor and needy, it is clear he is a phony Catholic, a phony Christian.

He believes all fetuses should be protected until born, but then a poor child and its mother are on their own, and if disabled, well,that is no responsibility of government.

Shame on him and his ilk in the Republican Party, who if there is true justice, should be kicked out of office by the voters, and should pay in the next world for their horrific sins, as they are NOT following the teachings of Jesus Christ, who would be shocked at their lack of concern for those less fortunate.

The Perplexity Over Jon Huntsman Accepting Russian Ambassadorship From Donald Trump

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Former Utah Governor and Ambassador to Singapore and China Jon Huntsman surprised many when he accepted the Ambassadorship to Russia offered yesterday by President Donald Trump.

Huntsman was the best Republican Presidential candidate in the 2012 cycle, and even John Kasich, who this blogger thinks was the best Republican Presidential candidate in the 2016 cycle, does not match up to him in background, experience, and solid quality.

Huntsman has solid credentials for diplomacy, including knowledge of several foreign languages, including Mandarin Chinese, and did an excellent job for Barack Obama in that nation as our ambassador from 2009-2011.

While of course we need an excellent ambassador to Russia, why oh why, would Huntsman allow himself to be associated with our despicable President, particularly in the midst of the controversy over his Russian connections, which might force Trump out of office at some point?

Huntsman is 57 this month, and was rumored to be planning to challenge Senator Orrin Hatch, President Pro Tempore, and third in line for the Presidency, for his seat in 2018, when Hatch would be running for his 8th term at age 84. That would have made sense for Huntsman long term.

This blogger’s head is shaking in disbelief!

Trump Appointments That Declare “War”: Health And Human Services, Education, Labor, Environmental Protection Agency, Interior, Justice, Energy

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Donald Trump has made a horrific list of cabinet and other appointments that have declared “war” on domestic concerns that extend from the time of Theodore Roosevelt through to Barack Obama, with particularly great threat to the heritage of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society.

The appointment of Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services endangers Social Security. Medicare, Medicaid, and Food Stamps–affecting the poor, elderly and sick.

The appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education endangers public education at all level, and concerns about college debt burdens for millions of college and university students, and promotes the “Christianization” and charter school movement against American traditions of two hundred years.

The appointment of Tom Puzder as Secretary of Labor endangers the whole labor movement advancements of the past century, including unionization, minimum wage, sick leave, overtime, and safety conditions.

The appointment of Scott Pruitt as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and of Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior endangers the environment, and our national park and national forest system in massive ways that are incalculable.

The appointment of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General of the United States endangers the enforcement of civil liberties and civil rights, and will be particularly dangerous to the rights of racial minorities, women, and gays and lesbians.

The appointment of Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy endangers the nation, as Perry is totally ignorant of science and nuclear energy, and wanted to destroy the department, based on his statements during Presidential debates in 2011 and since.

We are faced with a nightmare scenario, as probably the most that might be expected is the blocking of potentially one or two of these nominees at the most, but the clear cut possibility that all of them will be confirmed by the Republican majority in the US Senate, and the Democrats will not be able to stop any of them from destroying our domestic future!

Totally Unqualified For Cabinet: Ben Carson, Rick Perry, Rex Tillerson, And They Should All Be Rejected By US Senate!

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Donald Trump has selected three cabinet members who have absolutely no background for the positions they have been chosen for.

Ben Carson was a pediatric surgeon, who was conveniently given a “golden parachute” to leave Johns Hopkins Hospital since his behavior was becoming strange and weird, as people watching the Presidential campaign certainly noticed. He has NO qualifications to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, other than that he grew up in a poor family and lived in public housing in Detroit.

Rick Perry was 14 year Governor of Texas, and is not the brightest bulb in American politics, and when he sought the Presidency in 2011, he could not recall the Energy Department was one of the cabinet agencies he thought should be closed down. Now he is nominated to head that agency, although he has no knowledge of nuclear weapons or energy, and received Cs, Ds, and Fs in Science courses at Texas A & M University.

Rex Tillerson has been CEO of Exxon Mobil, and has never served in government, and is a chum of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who gave him the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner, and they have done oil deals together and get along splendidly. But that is alarming to John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and other Republicans, as well as Democrats, and would make Ronald Reagan turn over in his grave, as Barack Obama said today in a news conference, that such a pro Russian oil executive with ZERO knowledge of foreign policy, should be the nominee for Secretary of State.

All three should be stopped in committee by the Republicans or by filibuster by the Democrats in the Senate, as all three are a disgrace to the positions they have been nominated for by Donald Trump!

Would Mitt Romney Work For Donald Trump As Secretary Of State?

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The mere suggestion that Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican Presidential nominee, who vehemently opposed Donald Trump throughout the 2016 campaign, will be visiting with Trump, and might agree to be his Secretary of State, is mind blowing.

Romney is the most credible nominee for any post yet to be rumored to be a possible cabinet member for Trump, but it is hard to imagine that Romney would actually be offered such a position, or would agree to such appointment.

The two men are temperamentally exact opposites, and Romney ran his campaign in 2012 warning us how dangerous Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, were, while Donald Trump has praised Putin, and suggested a bromance with the Russian leader.

How would Romney reconcile that difference, and how would Trump do the same?

Romney would add some badly needed stature to the Trump cabinet, but what would he get out of it, other than being mistreated by a boss who would be looking forward to firing him, or forcing him to resign over policy differences?

How would Romney overcome National Security Adviser nominee Michael Flynn’s close association and impact on President Trump?

And why would Romney want to give up his close family activities, and spend, if he survived in office, the next four years doing the toughest job in the world, in regards to stress and constant travel, such as a million miles in four years, as occurred with Hillary Clinton, and close to that mileage, if not more, for John Kerry?