Right-wing Senator becomes medical tourist

Rand Paul Paying A Socialist Canadian Hospital For Hernia Repair

By Matt Osborne 

Libertarian ophthalmologist and Kentucky  Senator Rand Paul has decried the health care hellscape of Canada’s single-payer system throughout his career.

In fact, he calls it “slavery.” So it is ironic and totally in line with his everyday hypocrisy that we learn Sen. Paul has scheduled major surgery in Canada.

According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, the procedure will repair a lingering injury from the brutal 2017 attack by his neighbor, Rene Boucher, over a long-running dispute about Sen. Paul’s landscaping habits. 

As you might expect, the senator is spinning his Canadian health care as totally different from regular Canadian health care.

Filippi comes out of the closet

Surprises no one

By Will Collette

What passes for big local political news after the November 8 train wreck of a national election was the revelation by state Rep. Blake “Flip” Filippi (who represents District 36 where he may or may not live) that he is a Republican.

For the past two years, Flip has been masquerading as an “independent” and sometimes as a “libertarian” even though he affiliated with the miniscule House Republican caucus from the very beginning. 

His legislative agenda was in lockstep with the House GOP. Consequently, his actual achievements were as sparse as theirs as well.

The best Flip could do was to take credit for other people's work. Examples: he claimed credit for Democratic Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy’s bill to curb granite dust at the Copar Quarry and Democratic Rep. Bob Craven’s bill to cut state income tax on Social Security.

Filippi did, however, regularly come out with whacky, non-starter ideas, including a string of proposed amendments to the State Constitution, that got him lots of attention from a gullible news media. 

Example: his plan to have Rhode Island “secede” from the Eastern Time Zone and switch to Canadian Atlantic Time so we could do away with Daylight Savings Time.

Filippi adopted the charade of being an “independent” to curry favor with the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party). The CCA Party publicly disdains partisan politics and loudly claims that it too is proudly “independent.” But woe onto any CCA Party member who strays from the orthodox CCA positions hatched in secret at their private monthly Steering Committee meetings.

That “independent” mask got Filippi elected since Charlestown is, by far, the largest voting bloc in the 36^th District. Filippi’s new switch to becoming a Republican also had nothing to do with principles and everything to do with self-advancement.

By officially becoming a Republican when he did, Filippi was then able to give his friend and mentor Rep. Patricia Morgan (R-West Warwick) the crucial vote she needed to score an upset win in the contest for House Minority Leader. That position had been promised to Rep. Michael Chippendale (R-Foster) by outgoing Minority Leader Rep. Brian Newberry.

Flip was rewarded for his party switch by being named the House Republican Whip. This was the prize and it came with what he covets most – media attention. That included a top-of-the-fold banner headline in the Friday Westerly Sun for a non-news story.

While Filippi blathered on to the Sun about the policies and principles of the Republican Party that convinced him to flip, Flip in fact sold his vote.  He traded his cherished “independence” for a smidgeon of added power within the 11-member GOP Caucus. However and perhaps more important to him, his announcement got him media attention.

But in truth, based on public records, Filippi was a Republican all along.

Libertarians: Trump “would not be able to stand up to this pressure and this criticism without becoming unhinged”

Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson STUNS America with Statement On Presidential Election

By Rika Christensen  

·

For months, various third parties have been making all sorts of noises about how we need third-party candidates in the presidential elections if we ever want to break the tyranny of the two-party system.

This has resonated especially well with people who think Hillary Clinton is about as bad as Donald Trump.

However, Libertarian Gary Johnson, and his running mate, Bill Weld, have issued a surprising announcement about this election that doesn’t include begging for votes for Johnson.

The Johnson-Weld campaign believes that Trump is a monumentally bad choice for President of the United States, saying, in their statement on the matter:

Since when did Republicans become the interstate trucking industry’s lobby?

GOP puts trucking interests ahead of the public interest

By Will Collette

Source: Rhode Island DOT

For most of this election, Rhode Island Republicans have been beating the drum on one issue: unless voters elect Republicans, motorists driving on I-95 MAY at some unspecified future date have to pay tolls.

There’s no evidence to support that prediction. However, there are present day FACTS. RI has some of the country’s worst bridges and roadways. These already cost us in car crashes, damage to vehicles, blown tires and damaged wheels, plus time lost in traffic jams.

Democrats pushed the RhodeWorks plan to repair all those roads and bridges without delay. Already, there are RhodeWorks projects all over the state fixing some of our worst bridges and, incidentally, putting a lot of unemployed construction workers back on the jobs.

Check out the work that’s being down on the rotten underbelly of the Route One bridges going through Wakefield to see not only how bad the problem really is, but how quickly the state RhodeWorks program can get to work on the solution.

Meanwhile, Republicans have become lobbyists for the interstate trucking industry.

Republicans seem to think road repairs can fund themselves, or that they can find enough loose change by searching the chair cushions in state office buildings.

They expected to fund it from waste and fraud, kicking off a big “Waste-O-Meter” media gimmick last winter. They found a few million in projects that in their opinion might be unwarranted, but hardly enough to fix even one bridge, so we don’t hear about the “Waste-O-Meter” any more.

Elaine Morgan thinks the Russians
are coming

Some Republicans are looking to sell off our state roads to private companies who would toll each and every single driver. And they tell you they want to protect you from car tolls? Yeah, right.

For decades, we have been under-funding and neglecting highway and bridge repair and maintenance. Only an idiot (or a Republican) can fail to see that we need to raise and spend some serious money to deal with this public safety menace.

Democrats enacted legislation to finance RhodeWorks through tolls on interstate trucking. Studies showed those big rigs are the major cause of damage to our roads and bridges. The state truck toll plan was just recently approved by the federal Transportation Department.

Normally, Republicans LOVE “user fees” like this, but this time, I guess the interstate trucking industry made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

Instead of embracing truck tolls, the state GOP wants voters to believe they are a threat. Hopkinton state Senator Elaine Morgan even likened truck tolls to “Soviet Russia.”

VIDEO: Are 3rd party candidates a good alternative?

 To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3O01EfM5fU

Who's ready for that 3 AM call?

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson provides ANOTHER reason why no one should vote for him

Amid Latest Johnson Gaffe, Critics Destroy Argument for Voting Libertarian

Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson—who's drawing support from former Bernie Sanders supporters—"has an exceptionally low bar to clear. And yet again, he has shown that he's unable to clear it"

By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer for Common Dreams

Raising further questions about his presidential bona fides, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson failed to name a single foreign leader he admired, in what he called an "Aleppo moment" during a town hall-style interview on MSNBC Wednesday night.

When asked by host Chris Matthews to name his "favorite foreign leader," Johnson drew a blank. "Prodded to come up with something, he finally settled on a former president of Mexico—but couldn't recall his name," the Associated Press reported.

Observers said the gaffe was evidence that Johnson is unprepared to serve in the White House. "Gary Johnson can't name a single foreign leader. Can we stop pretending he's a real alternative now?" was the headline at Salon, while others piled on via social media:

Weld doesn’t want to be another Nader

One of Hillary’s opponents could drop out and endorse her

By Wendy Gittleson 

Every four years, we’re told that the upcoming presidential election is the most important in our lifetimes. While it does seem that every election cycle the consequences become much more serious, this one is particularly notable because, regardless of politics, it’s a clear choice between sane and insane.

Donald Trump is insane. Obviously, we’re not saying that in a clinical way because fortunately, we’ve never met him, but he’s thin-skinned, narcissistic, a pathological liar and doesn’t give a crap about anyone other than himself. Politics aside, those qualities should keep him out of office.

While there are a number of third party candidates running this time around, only one third party ticket is on the ballot in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and that’s the Libertarian ticket of Gary Johnson and his vice presidential candidate Bill Weld.

Famed Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein believes the Johnson/Weld ticket might not hold up for long, and that Weld could be dropping out of the race to support Hillary Clinton.