SnakeRiverLib

Short one tonight, but very concerning. As we go into 2018, there is discussion as to the legislative agenda.  The GOP is feeling pretty confident, with their tax bill (NOT REFORM), and feel like they need to strike now. Speaker Ryan wants to tackle entitlement reform.  I will remind him the last time that the GOP did that, was leading up to the 2006 elections, with Speaker Pelosi as a result.  Don't misunderstand, it is desperately needed.  But it is political suicide.  No way that there is the courage in the Senate to fix those problems.  Majority Leader McConnell wants to do infrastructure.  No doubt, he thinks that this is something that everyone can get behind.  I mean, who DOESN'T want to fix highways, and bridges?  Of course, we all remember the shovel ready jobs of the 09 infrastructure bill, and how, after spending about a year documenting on a website how the money was spent, decided that the optics of saving state and local g...

As we sit on the eve of a tax bill becoming law, with obvious benefits for corporations, (why not 0, since they don't pay taxes anyway? but I digress), I am saddened by the fact that it is NOT real shred-the-code-start-on-a-new-sheet-of-paper tax code.  It could have been. Senators and media shrieking about how bad it is going to be for the GOP next year.  I almost have to believe that it is better than what I think it is, because they are losing their minds. Too much swamp, but you know what is almost as bad?  Everyone thinks that Congress is horrible, except their own representative, and that everything is pork, except the "legitimate" projects their Congressman/woman brings to the district.  Everyone complains about the tax code, and filing taxes, but try simplifying it.  Of course, Congress was stuck, with no Democrats helping at all.  But to be clear, they CHOSE not to.  They were not iced out, like the GOP was during the first two years of t...

If you watch History Channel, they have a show called "Swamp People".  A reality show that tracks several different gator hunters during gator season.  My favorite is Troy.  A Cajun, he seems to consistently bring in the most of any of the assembled group. Why do I bring this up?  If not obvious, it will be in a moment. We have seen that the FBI has been thoroughly discredited.  To be honest, it started way before Trump, or Comey, or Mueller, or even Obama, or Bush.  Of course, Holder, and Lynch, the AGs during the Obama administration set the stage for this disrespect.  The media has a hand in this, because while Democrats controlled the administration, the Department of Justice could do no wrong. Wiretap a reporter?   "Who cares, it was FOX?" Weaponize the IRS?   "It was just those Tea Party people anyway." Put people on a watch list by key words, such as "Constitution", "Patriot", "Liberty"?  "It is just tho...

As a review. In 2013, the Supreme Court let stand the 9th Circus ruling that Prop 8 in California was unconstitutional, by default since the state chose not to defend its law against to leviathan government.  King Kennedy essentially said that if states want to have a neanderthal view of marriage that was their business, (skipping his description, he is right, by the Constitution), but that since the state wouldn't defend its law, it was tossed.  In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell that no, even though the Constitution leaves marriage, and any number of other things to the states, states can't decide what marriage means as a legal term.  Again it turned to His Majesty, Justice Kennedy, to completely reverse what he wrote just two years prior.  So here we are, in 2017, and a case regarding gay marriage is before the Supreme Court.  A baker refused to create a cake for a gay wedding, and the couple complained and the state of Colorado went after t...