Posted on 01/09/2020 5:09:15 AM PST by EyesOfTX
Tired of all this WINNING yet? – Gosh, it’s been like four trading days since we were able to celebrate the setting of new record highs on the various stock market indexes. Oh, hey, that’s because it has been all of four trading days since that happened. But on Wednesday that happened yet again, with both the NASDAQ and S&P 500 closing at record high levels. The Dow closed slightly below its all-time record due only to weakness at Boeing after one of its planes flown by Ukrainian Airlines was shot down shortly after taking off from Tehran. Dow’s futures, however, are pointing to a record-high opening later this morning.
WINNING, bigly.
Speaking of WINNING, when did Rand Paul and Mike Lee, Republican senators from Kentucky and Utah respectively, become such LOSERS? This question arose late Tuesday after these two emerged from a congressional briefing conducted by the Trump Administration’s military and national security team on the situation with Iran, whining about what they characterized as the “amateurish” nature of the briefing.
Watch as Senator Lee goes absurdly ballistic upon leaving the breifing:
Yashar Ali 🐘 ✔ @yashar This is a stunning statement from GOP Senator Mike Lee (Utah) who just left a classified intelligence briefing on the situation in Iran.
Embedded video 5,816 4:00 PM - Jan 8, 2020 Twitter Ads info and privacy 1,588 people are talking about this This seems to be Lee’s main complaint: “They [the briefers] were asked repeatedly, what, if anything, would trigger the need for the Administration to come back to congress for a declaration of war or the authorization of the use of military force? At one point I think one of the briefers said something along the lines of ‘I’m sure we could think of something.’ But they struggled to identify anything….They were asked a number of hypotheticals about situations in which they might have to appropriately have to come to ask for authorization from congress. Not once did they say yes.”
Oh, ok. Senator James Lankford (R-OK) and several other Republicans present for the same briefing completely debunked Lee’s statement, but let’s deal with that in more detail in a bit.
Before we do that, listen to Sen. Paul’s complaint as aired with the despicable Wolf Blitzer at CNN:
Aaron Rupar ✔ @atrupar Here’s Rand Paul telling Wolf Blitzer that the intel the Trump admin cited to justify the Soleimani killing during today’s briefing didn’t go beyond “generalities” and “stuff you’d read in the newspaper”
Embedded video 6,501 5:53 PM - Jan 8, 2020 Twitter Ads info and privacy 2,443 people are talking about this “No specific information given to us of a specific attack, uh, generalities, stuff you read in a newspaper was given to us. I didn’t learn anything in the hearing that I hadn’t seen in a newspaper already, and none of it was overwhelming that ‘x’ was going to happen. I’m not saying that, uh – the world being rid of Soleimani is probably a good thing. But in the end, how we go about it and the ramifications of it are very important. I think it’s made it much more difficult to have engagement or any kind of diplomacy with Iran. I doubt they’ll be coming to the negotiating table anytime soon.”
This is what happens when you get libertarian ideologues pretending to be Republicans. It is frankly stunning that someone as normally savvy as Rand Paul could witness the cowardly standing down by the Iranian Mullahs that has taken place since the completely justified killing of one of the worlds most deadly Islamic terrorist leaders and be so naive as to think it makes them LESS likely to want to negotiate. He is his father’s son at the end of the day.
It is also truly despicable for Paul and Lee to complain about the Administration briefers dealing in generalities and refusing to speculate about what Lee refers to as “hypotheticals.” Oh, golly, why might that be their behavior in a room filled with seditious Democrats?
Obviously, any classified details the Administration officials might have revealed during this briefing would have ended up being air by Blitzer or someone else at CNN before the briefing had ended. Both Senators Paul and Lee know this reality full well.
And Lee also well knows that any concession by anyone in the Administration about any single hypothetical tossed at them would require President Trump to seek congressional approval would immediately become just another Democrat/media narrative that would attempt to tie the Administration’s hands against taking any further unilateral action whatsoever as it relates to Iran.
This was despicable, shameful behavior by two ostensible Republican senators who know better.
Watch as James Lankford – who no one can claim to be some flunky for President Trump – completely debunks Lee’s claims starting at the 1:22 mark:
“Yeah, it has been very interesting. I’ve seen some of my colleagues come out and make comments like that. In fact, one of my colleagues stepped out and said the whole group was doing a briefing with us and when the questions got hard that they left and they ran off. That was absolutely, positively false. That did not occur. They weren’t running away. We started at 2:30 and we finished at 4:00 because they had meetings in the White House.”
Enough. Have a good day.
That is all.
Close - he's the senator who wants to pass (by unanimous consent = no votes recorded) to end per-country caps on green cards, so the Cheap Labor Express can sweeten the H-1B deal with the promise of a green card. (And he cut a deal with Durbin to add a new visa status of waiting-for-my-green-card so we can have more Third Worlders dragging down our standard of living.)
Shorties Rand Paul and Mike Lee....possible Napoleon complexes figuring into their lunacy?
Leni
I don’t mean tiny in size, I mean tiny as in they are not significant, but they think they are.
Just like Nancy.
None of these people are going to be remembered by history.
President Donald Trump will be.
Sure, but as you say later in your post there have been attacks over the last months, and in reality, years.
The President can act to respond to unexpected threats, but in the case of a chronic, ongoing situation like Soleimani the President is supposed to get authorization from Congress if he wants to take offensive action.
“if he wants to take offensive action”
I see it much differently; it would be defensive action, not offensive.
As President of this country and Commander in Chief, he has a moral obligation and responsibility to defend the U.S. from attacks.
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