Always on the ball, Rachel Bade and Sarah Ferris wrote in yesterday’s Politico how Paul Ryan & Company are trying to figure out the most politically expedient way to shut down the government tomorrow, as Donald Trump is blaming Democrats for what’s about to happen — even though the coming shutdown is entirely the fault of hyper-conservative Tea Party Congressional Republicans such as Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (TP-North Carolina, the Bathroom State)(https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/06/freedom-caucus-paul-ryan-shutdown-truce-282072).
All Ryan’s hard work should be seen from the perspective of a recent report, via The Atlantic, that scientists have just been able to receive stunning evidence of a black hole — it took a mere thirteen billion years for the evidence to reach the scientists here on Terra Firma, after Trump walked away from the one agreement — reached in Paris under President Obama’s strong leadership — which might have helped, if only slightly, to reduce global warming.
Associate solitary reporter and Chief Science Reporter Jim Packer has been in frequent communication with National Academy of Sciences President Marcia Kemper McNutt on the evidence from the black hole.
McNutt was the Director of the US Geological Survey, in the Department of the Interior, from 2009 to 2013 under Interior Secretary and former Colorado US Senator Ken Salazar. McNutt is a well-regarded and world-famous geophysicist who has published over one hundred peer-reviewed papers. She has also been the Editor-in-Chief of Science, from 2013 to 2016, and, since July 1, 2016 (when we still had a decent president), she has been the president of the National Academy of Sciences, a private, non-profit, nongovernmental organization. When President Obama was elected in 2008, he tapped Salazar, a moderate Democrat from Los Rincones, in Conejos County in the remote San Luis Valley of southern Colorado (which used to be part of New Spain) to head the Department of the Interior. McNutt was confirmed as head of the USGS by a unanimous vote of the Senate on October 21, 2009.
Associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith, our Chief Congressional Correspondent, asked Ryan why he is so intent on shutting down the government. Ryan took Smith aside to explain that Freedom Caucus Chairman Meadows, a deficit hawk, doesn’t like the idea of a continuing resolution (“CR”) for two weeks, because Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has diddled and daddled on the appropriations bill which the House passed eight weeks ago. ASR Smith is well aware that McConnell is totally obsessed these days in passing a so-called “tax reform” bill which will only benefit the wealthiest Americans while fulfilling a few of Trump’s bogus campaign promises, namely building a super-costly border wall to be paid for by American, not Mexican, taxpayers; repealing the sensible individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act; messing up big-time with the ability of grad students to get by; and increasing military spending.
“The Republican Party does not believe in government,” McNutt said, “and I have a great idea where Trump, McConnell, Ryan, and Meadows can put their government shutdown: in that newly discovered black hole."