US national policy issues looming after healthcare?

Rep. Rohrabacher says 'rendezvous' being set up with Trump to relay info from WikiLeaks' Assange on DNC hack

Once the immediate crisis ends, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, should resign with an apology to his state and his country. Then the Texas delegation in Congress should make a public confession. They have lied to their constituents for too long, expecting the rest of America to keep bailing them out.

The reason is this. Texas politics aims to bring profits to the oil and gas industry, but it does this at high cost and dire threat to Texas residents and the American people.

Hurricane Harvey was a foreseeable disaster. Indeed, a massive hurricane strike on Houston, followed by massive flooding, was widely anticipated.

But Houston is an oil town, and the American oil industry has been enemy No. 1 of climate truth and climate preparedness. Most oil companies and Texas politicians see nothing, say nothing, do nothing. Even worse, they hide the truth, and then beg for help as needed. Gov. Abbott has played this game one disaster too many.

The Texas Tribune and ProPublica published a 2016 award-winning report on "Hell or High Water," explaining why Houston is a "sitting duck for the next big hurricane." In 2015, Inside Climate News wrote that "as weather extremes like flooding batter Texas, its refusal to prepare for an even more volatile climate leaves residents at risk, experts say."

On June 16 of this year, citing the city's widening concrete sprawl and deaths from flooding in recent years, the UK Guardian wrote that "Houston fears climate change will cause catastrophic flooding: It's not if, it's when."

[img]https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fdennisaday.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2Fmonkey-football.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fdennisaday.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2F29%2Ffootball-and-monkeys%2F&docid=6vR7JwYUQebXIM&tbnid=-_AyI9HYxbzctM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwj15_DUiP7VAhUW42MKHaEYAPwQMwg3KAEwAQ..i&w=600&h=450&bih=904&biw=768&q=monkeys%20football&ved=0ahUKEwj15_DUiP7VAhUW42MKHaEYAPwQMwg3KAEwAQ&iact=mrc&uact=8[\img]

Houston’s low-lying flatlands keep booming, as sprawling subdivisions and parking lots pave over the wetlands and pastures that used to soak up the area’s excess rainfall, which is how Houston managed to host three “500-year floods” in the past three years.

Since Katrina I've wondered why cities like Houston and New Orleans keep building in flood prone areas.

zBrown posted
wasn't WWII conducted (and won) by a gaggle of dedicated anti-fascists?

This week, sweet Ann Coulter released her latest in a series of pre-rehab books, entitled "Godless." Naturally, the title led me to believe that it was an unexpectedly candid autobiography. Alas, she may be saving that book until after she's been strapped to a bed at Hazelden for a month. Instead of using this book to dabble in the bracing novelty of introspection, Miss Coulter turns her two-setting mind ("off" and "off her rocker") to hector us about religion.

Let's be honest: Reading a book about religion from Ann Coulter is tantamount to reading a book about dieting from Michael Moore. After all, who wants to be lectured about not being Christian enough by an almost-50 year-old boozehound in a black leather miniskirt who has never been married? Count me as having a healthy skepticism over whether Miss Coulter has saved herself for marriage. Or anything, for that matter.

. . .

Indeed, to hear Miss Coulter speak (in that wound up Martha Stewart-on-helium Connecticut lockjaw voice of hers), you'd think she is someone who actually embraces heartland, Christian, American values. In reality, however, she is less like June Cleaver baking pot-roast than she is like Samantha Jones baked on pot. Indeed, this is no piously serene Christian wife, but a braying loud mouth who wears super-slutty clothes, powders her bony nose more often than Lindsay Lohan (if you know what I mean), knocks back scotch with an alacrity that eludes Ted Kennedy since the advent of rheumatoid arthritis, lives only in cities filled with homos and screws anything willing to bang an anorexic skeleton.