Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska: yea he is a R but how is he ?

[steve2470]

He seems like a bright guy. I sure don't agree with him, firstly, because he's a Republican but he seems....better than the typical Repug.

What am I missing ? Or not missing ?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. He wrote a ridiculous book about the "Vanishing American Adult" despite never having raised children

to adulthood.

From the NYT:

* * * * *
He says that the idea for “The Vanishing American Adult” first came to him several years ago, when a group of Midland students were asked to decorate a 20-foot Christmas tree on campus, and they dressed only “the bottom seven or eight feet … the branches the kids could easily reach.” Sasse was “startled” — “shattered,” even. Seeing this Christmas tree “worried me for the kids.” So began his growing awareness of “a collective coming-of-age crisis without parallel in our history.”

His daughters once complained of being unable to sleep because the air-conditioning was broken. Sasse was aghast. “When I was a kid, we had airconditioning in the house … but we never used it.” The fact that his daughters claimed a “need” for air-conditioning left him and his wife with “a heavy sense of failure.”

It should also be said that Sasse’s children are home schooled, and that he unequivocally praised Betsy DeVos — who sponsored unregulated charter school expansion in Michigan, with poor results — as an “excellent pick” for secretary of education.

* * * * *

Some of it sounds like the worst aspirational mommy-blogger garbage from 2005:

"Studded throughout are listicles of tips that can get highly specific, like forgoing flotation devices in the water for children ('Let go and re-grab them … and then celebrate their survival'); sending 'your 2-year-old to get your socks every morning'; and enlisting your offspring to 'build a pet cemetery.' "

* * * * *


The whole review is worth reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/books/review/vanishing-american-adult-ben-sasse.html

[rickford66]

6. Sent his daughter to work on a cattle ranch.

To most inner city kids, that would be a vacation of a life time. More white privilege advice. Don't buy that cell phone to look for a job. Pay for one week of health insurance instead. What a moran.

[Drahthaardogs]

7. I grew up on a ranch and your comment is insulting

Spend your day on a horse so sweaty you and it are covered in mud. Go pound sixty t-shirt post in a day eith a slide hammer or spend all night in a spring blizzard pulling a calf.

Get up at 4amm every day in the dead of winter ( including Christmas morning to feed hay and cake and break ice. Then come and tell me it's a vacation

Honestly don't make assumptions about stuff you know nothing about. If that young women went to a real ranch and actually worked, she worked her ass off.

[rickford66]

8. And it would be a great escape from an inner city is what I implied. Hard work included.

What poor kid in a slum has the connections to get that cattle ranch summer job? Re-read my post. I never said it was easy work.

[Drahthaardogs]

10. You said it was a vacation...

Seriously, you can come and pay my dad to work this summer if you like. The floods took out half a mile of fence that had to be redone. Just let me know what dates and how much you are willing to pay for this vacation.

[rickford66]

11. Inner city slum vs cattle ranch.

Bye

[Drahthaardogs]

12. Person who talks crap about stuff with which they have no experience

Then has the hubris to call it white privilege.

Ridiculous

[NightWatcher]

2. He's clueless. There's no way they can repeal and replace w/in a year

He admits that he's a brand spanking new Senator and not a politician but then he criticizes the CBO with ready made rw talking points.

The rw has had years to plan a healthcare bill and they haven't come up with anything other than a tax cut that kills the poor. If we gave them a year to write a new plan, that year would go by without a new bill and 30 million would be without healthcare on year plus Day One.

He is well spoken, so he's a threat to us. We need a few new representatives who can speak well that we can get on tv to get our message out and that maybe will run in 2020.

[hatrack]

3. He's glib, but fundamentally nasty

He's the guy who just wanted to flat-out repeal ACA, and then just throw something together at some undetermined date in the future.

He's an articulate asshole, but mostly just an asshole.

[Salviati]

4. Yeah, it doesn't matter if it's articulate or not. The only thing that comes out of an asshole...

... is shit.

[Bleacher Creature]

5. I believe the some GOPers are genuine morons, while others pretend to be morons to play to the base.

I put Sasse in the latter category.

[BzaDem]

9. Just the other day, he said Trumpcare left too much of Obamacare in place, and that they should

repeal the whole thing first and replace it later.