Crazy floods hit the Midwest when hardly anyone was looking
See more here:
Author Archives: Fredrick Wise
How a Town in Maine Is Blocking an Exxon Tar-Sands Pipeline
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
This story originally appeared on Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Citizens trying to stop the piping of tar-sands oil through their community wore blue “Clear Skies” shirts at a city council meeting in South Portland, Maine, this week. But they might as well have been wearing boxing gloves. The small city struck a mighty blow against Canadian tar-sands extraction.
“It’s been a long fight,” said resident Andy Jones after a 6-1 city council vote on Monday to approve the Clear Skies Ordinance, which will block the loading of heavy tar-sands bitumen onto tankers at the city’s port.
The measure is intended to stop ExxonMobil and partner companies from bringing Albertan tar-sands oil east through an aging pipeline network to the city’s waterfront. Currently, the pipeline transports conventional oil west from Portland to Canada; the companies want to reverse its flow.
After an intensely debated, year-and-a-half battle, the South Portland City Council on Monday sided with residents like Jones who don’t want their city to end up as a new “international hub” for the export of tar-sands oil.
Proponents of the Clear Skies ordinance, wearing blue, packed a South Portland city council meeting on July 9. Dan Wood
“The message to the tar sands industry is: ‘Don’t be counting your chickens yet,'” said Dylan Voorhees, clean energy director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine. “There is a pattern of communities saying ‘no’ to the threat of tar-sands oil.”
A clear signal
The ordinance could have global implications. The Canadian government expects the nation’s oil industry to be producing 4 million to 6 million barrels of tar-sands bitumen a day within a few years, and it’s pinning its hopes on somehow getting all that oil to coastal ports, said Richard Kuprewicz, president of Washington-based pipeline safety consulting firm Accufacts Inc. Indeed, a recent report from the International Energy Agency found that the industry needs export pipelines in order for its boom to continue.
South Portland’s move is just the latest setback for plans to pipe the bitumen out to international markets. Another big hurdle is the long delay over the Keystone XL pipeline. And in Canada, pipeline plans have met with opposition from indigenous peoples (known as First Nations), who are taking the lead to stop projects like the Enbridge Northern Gateway tar-sands pipeline through British Columbia.
Now, there is a clear signal that communities along the U.S. East Coast will fight tar-sands expansion too.
“Do not underestimate the power of a local government,” said Kuprewicz.
“A lot of perseverance”
In early 2013, residents formed Protect South Portland to try to stop the Portland-Montreal Pipeline reversal. They put an initiative on the November 2013 ballot to block the project, but it lost narrowly at the polls.
So the city council took up the cause. In December of last year, the council voted to impose a six-month moratorium on shipping tar-sands oil out through its port. Then a council-appointed committee crafted the Clear Skies Ordinance to permanently block tar-sands shipments, which is what the council officially approved this week. The law also changes zoning rules to block the construction of twin smokestacks that would be needed to burn off bitumen-thinning chemicals before the oil could be shipped out.
Over the past few months, concerned residents met in homes and Protect South Portland grew. Meanwhile, the group Energy Citizens, backed by the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s largest trade group, ran ads that said “It’s just oil. From Canada.” The oil companies hired a number of lawyers and brought public relations firms on board.
Protect South Portland spokeswoman MJ Ferrier estimates that the grassroots group was outspent by at least 6 to 1.
So how did residents win over Big Oil? “A lot of perseverance and a lot of community engagement,” Voorhees said.
After the vote, supporters of the ordinance went to a local bar, and “we raised our glasses,” Jones told Grist.
Cautious celebration
But while local activists are celebrating this week’s win, they know “this is not the end,” said Jones.
South Portland Councilor Tom Blake, who’s been a champion of the effort to protect the city from tar sands, said a legal challenge seems imminent, by either Portland Pipe Line Corp., a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, or by the Canadian government. Blake had this message for the oil company and Canadian officials Monday evening: “This ordinance is the will of the people,” he said. “Do not spend millions of dollars and force the city of South Portland to do the same.”
But the oil interests are unlikely to heed his warning.
Tom Hardison, vice president of Portland Pipe Line, told reporters that the city had made a rush decision and bowed to environmental “off-oil extremists.” He added that the zoning changes amounted to a “job-killing ordinance” that prevents the city’s port from adapting to meet the energy needs of North America.
Matthew Manahan, attorney for Portland Pipe Line, told the city council before the vote that its ordinance is “illegal” and “would clearly be preempted by federal and state law.”
“The council is ignoring the law” and “ignoring science,” the lawyer added.
Air and water worries
Like the process of extracting tar-sands oil, the process of transporting it takes a huge toll on the environment. Before the heavy, almost-solid bitumen can be sent through pipelines, it has to be thinned with a concoction of liquid natural gas and other hydrocarbons. And then before it can be loaded onto ships, that concoction has to be burned off. ExxonMobil currently holds permits to build two smokestacks on South Portland’s waterfront that would do the burning.
Ferrier, a retired psychologist and a nun, joined Protect South Portland largely out of concern for what the oil companies’ plans would do to air quality in an area that has already received a “C” for ozone pollution from the American Lung Association. The proposed smokestacks would emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs). “We know there is benzene in it, a known carcinogen,” said Ferrier.
Resident Andrew Parker had similar concerns. “Tonight is about children,” he said at Monday’s city council meeting. “The oil company will put poison in the air, that is a fact.”
For Mayor Gerard Jalbert, who also sits on the city council and voted in support of the ordinance, it came down to concerns about water quality. The risk of water contamination in the case of a spill far outweighed the nebulous claims about job creation.
“When I look at the economic benefit, which no seems to be able to detail, the risk seems to outweigh the benefit,” Jalbert told Grist.
The easternmost 236-mile stretch of pipeline crosses some of the most sensitive ecosystems in Maine, including the Androscoggin River, the pristine Crooked River, and Sebago Lake, which supplies drinking water for 15 percent of the state’s population.
Blake, the council member, is worried that using old pipes to transport heavy bitumen could lead to a spill like the one that happened in Mayflower, Ark., in March 2013, when an ExxonMobil pipeline built in the 1940s ruptured and spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of tar-sands oil.
Saying “no” to tar sands is part of a bigger shift to a greener future in South Portland, Blake added. “Being a community that has been heavily dependent on petroleum, this turns a tide,” the councilor said.
He pointed to a new electric-car charging station at the city’s community center and potential plans to build a solar farm on an old landfill as steps toward a sustainable future. “I think we are starting to walk the talk,” Blake said.
Link –
Will Massachusetts become the second state to ban fracking?
Will Massachusetts become the second state to ban fracking?
Legislation that would impose a 10-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing is making its way through the Massachusetts state legislature. On Wednesday, the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture passed the bill, which would also prohibit the dumping of fracking wastewater in the state.
“Although the state isn’t seen as a rich source of shale gas, there could be limited deposits in western Massachusetts,” the Associated Press reports. As EcoWatch explains, “Local concern about fracking has grown since the U.S. Geological Survey identified shale gas deposits in the Pioneer Valley last December. Moreover, as New York mulls large-scale fracking next door, drilling operators could soon view Western Massachusetts as a convenient dumping ground for toxic fracking wastewater.”
If the full state legislature passes the bill and Gov. Deval Patrick (D) signs it, Massachusetts would become the second state in the nation to ban fracking. Vermont banned it last year, despite having negligible fracking potential.
Meanwhile, in states that actually have sizable shale deposits and active hydraulic fracturing operations, fracking bans are not faring well. Five Colorado cities have prohibited fracking, but all face legal challenges not just from industry but from the administration of Gov. John Hickenlooper (D). And in California, where scientists, celebs, activists, and policy wonks are all calling for a moratorium, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) still backs the growing fracking industry, despite his long legacy as a climate hawk and environmental champion.
Notice those D’s in the preceding paragraph? This isn’t a Democrat-vs.-Republican issue. In much of the country, it’s a Democrat-vs.-Democrat issue — or more specifically, Democratic-establishment-vs.-Democratic-base. As fractivism spreads, more Democratic politicians might decide they don’t want to piss off the green vote, particularly in states like Massachusetts where the industry isn’t knocking down the door anyway.
Massachusetts could be a bellwether. We’ll be watching to see which way it goes.
Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy
,
Continued:
The Economy Is Pretty Hard to Understand These Days
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
Tyler Cowen is perplexed by the size of the market reaction to the Fed’s announcement that QE3 will continue along its present path for the foreseeable future instead of being tapered down. After all, the difference between taper and non-taper is only a few tens of billions of dollars of bond purchases. That’s peanuts, Cowen says, and it doesn’t make sense:
I’ll say it again: none of you understand what is going on here, and neither do I. I am not seeing enough admission of this basic fact.
I’ll cop to that. I do think we have a pretty good idea in a general sense of what caused the Great Recession and what kind of government response would have been best: extremely loose monetary policy combined with massive fiscal stimulus. There’s a lot of evidence that this would have improved the economy fairly quickly, and we might very well be back to trend growth today if we’d done it. Unfortunately, the initial stimulus was too constrained and the austerity zealots made sure that not only did we have no further stimulus, but we slashed spending massively at the very time we should have been spending more.
But what’s done is done. The question now is what kind of impact nonconventional monetary policy has on a slowly recovering economy that still has lots of slack. And there, I’m with Cowen: it’s really hard to make sense out of the evidence. Scott Sumner, for example, says the market reacted strongly to the Fed’s announcement because it was unexpected and signaled not just a change, but a change to a completely different policy regime. I have to say that I find that strained. It’s become almost faddish to believe that all a central bank has to do is set expectations properly and everything else will magically fall into place, but it’s not clear that the evidence backs this up. The expectations channel, after all, depends on the market believing that the Fed has an actual operational channel that can produce whatever results it wants. If that’s true, there’s no point in fighting, and the market will bring about the results the Fed wants with no actual Fed action necessary. That would be pretty cool if it were true. But what if the market becomes skeptical of the Fed’s power? It doesn’t matter why. It might be skeptical for fundamental economic reasons; or because it thinks the Fed is politically constrained; or because it thinks overseas leakage is important; or because it simply disagrees with the Fed’s likely strategy. If that happens, then the expectations channel isn’t that powerful after all—and I don’t think any of us know to a certainty just how the market judges either the Fed’s commitment in the face of pressure or the effectiveness of its nonconventional open market operations if it’s forced to show its hand. The financial channels the Fed manipulates are just too murky.
This stuff is all way over my pay grade. I’ve seen bits and pieces of evidence that make me think the expectations channel is significant, but far from omnipotent. I’ve also seen bits and pieces of evidence that just seem damn strange. Maybe someone will come along soon and present us with a comprehensive new theory of monetary policy in the context of 21st century financial markets, but I don’t think we’ve seen it yet.
View article:
Watch: How Climate Change Is Melting the Ski Industry
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
In certain industries, global warming is causing a lot of hurt. One business that will really, really be hit hard? Skiing.
To put it simply, the ski industry’s business model is melting. A number of resorts have already closed due, in part, to lack of snow—and in the future, a much smaller total area of the northeastern US will be good for skiing.
In this talk, University of New Hampshire Ph.D. candidate Elizabeth Burakowski outlines her research on global warming and how it is changing the face of skiing. In the process, she also tells her personal story of becoming fascinated with the study of “albedo,” the reflectivity of surfaces (for instance, snow)—which ultimately helps us to understand the ski industry’s struggles.
Plus: This video features a must-see interpretive dance of the jet stream.
Burakowski’s talk is from a live August 15 event held by Climate Desk—in collaboration with thirstDC and the Science Online Climate conference—to showcase new and innovative communication about climate change.
See more here:
Posted in FF, GE, LG, Northeastern, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta
Tagged blue marble, climate desk, climate-change, northeastern, Ona, science, venta, video
Comments Off on Watch: How Climate Change Is Melting the Ski Industry
By 2050, flooding could cost the world’s coastal cities over $60 billion a year
By 2050, flooding could cost the world’s coastal cities over $60 billion a year
Hurricane Sandy was a wake-up call for New York City, one of the 20 cities expected to see the most damages from flooding.
In 2005, flooding caused $6 billion worth of damage globally. By 2050, we could be hit with 10 times that much in losses — and that’s only if the world’s biggest coastal cities make significant investments to mitigate risk. If we do nothing, costs could soar to $1 trillion.
These sobering statistics come from a new study in Nature Climate Change which identifies the 20 coastal metropolises that stand to lose the most when (not if) major flooding occurs in the future. Sea-level rise, subsidence (the land sinking), and increasingly strong storms — all related to climate change — increase the risk of flooding. But much of the growing price tag of future flood losses is thanks to the growing numbers of people crowding along the world’s coasts.
[T]he most immediate threat is the sheer increase in people—and their property—put in harm’s way in coastal cities. In the U.S. 87 million people now live along the coast, up from 47 million people in 1960, and globally six of the world’s 10 largest cities are on the coast. Of the $60 to $63 billion in flood risk the Nature Climate Change study estimates the world’s cities will face by 2050, $52 billion is due to economic and population growth—the rest is due to sea level rise and land use change.
The study looks not only at which cities will face the highest absolute costs as a result of increased flooding, but also at which will see the largest relative increase in average annual damages, and which had the highest losses as a percentage of GDP in 2005. In terms of absolute losses, Miami and New York — places with large populations and high concentrations of wealth — face the most risk among cities in developed nations. In fact, in 2005, New York, Miami, and New Orleans accounted for 31 percent of total damage costs across all 136 cities studied (perhaps Katrina had something to do with that).
This chart of relative increases in average annual losses (AAL) includes some places that may not be accustomed to thinking of themselves as particularly flood-prone, but are going to have to adapt fast: Houston and Tel Aviv, for instance, are facing at least a 50 percent increase in AAL, while Alexandria, Egypt, and Barranquilla, Colombia, could see 100 percent increases or more.
Nature Climate ChangeClick to embiggen.
When it comes to cities whose 2005 losses made up the highest percentage of their GDP, New York and Miami don’t appear in the top 10, but New Orleans is No. 2, joined by places like Guayaquil, Ecuador, and Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. While making aggressive adaptation moves — improving infrastructure, developing evacuation plans, establishing (literal) rainy day funds to prepare for economic rebuilding — will substantially lower future flooding losses, such measures won’t come cheap: The report estimates they’ll cost cities around $50 billion a year from now until 2050.
The extreme solution would be to start relocating everyone inland, reducing potential loss of life and property in flood zones. But what are the chances of getting all those coastal elites to move into flyover country? We’ll just keep pouring money into our pleasure boats as they sink.
Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.
Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Cities
,
Originally from:
By 2050, flooding could cost the world’s coastal cities over $60 billion a year
NRA to Supreme Court: Give Handguns to 18-Year-Olds
Mother Jones
Last week, the National Rifle Association filed a petition with the Supreme Court (PDF) asking it to strike down a ban on the sale of handguns to people who are at least 18 and younger than 21. The NRA, which sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2010 over the age restriction, argues that it denies young adults their Second Amendment right to self-defense by suggesting without sufficient evidence that they are too irresponsible to own handguns.
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled last year that the restriction was “consistent with a longstanding tradition of targeting select groups’ ability to access and to use arms for the sake of public safety.” It also acknowledged that Congress found people below the age of 21 to be “relatively immature and that denying them easy access to handguns would deter violent crime” (PDF). The Supreme Court has never considered the restriction since it became law as part of the Gun Control Act on 1968.
The NRA’s petition, filed with two 19-year-olds, questions whether “a nationwide, class-based, categorical ban on meaningful access to the quintessential means to exercise the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense can be reconciled with the Second Amendment, the equal protection guarantee, and this Court’s precedents.” The petition argues that the appeals court’s ruling contradicts the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in DC v. Heller that affirms the right to own a handgun for self-defense, and the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in McDonald v. Chicago that applies the Heller decision to every state.
Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who studies Second Amendment cases, predicts that the Supreme Court—if it even decides to hear the case—will uphold the restriction because of its tendency to be deferential to state and federal lawmakers on gun control. The court hasn’t reviewed a gun control case since 2010 and has turned down at least six since 2008. But if the court decides to review the case, the decision may be close because the NRA has a relatively strong argument, Winkler says.
“There’s something compelling about the argument that 18- to 21-year-olds who are able to bear arms in defense of the nation should be able to bear arms in defense of themselves,” Winkler says. “I think, symbolically, there’s a strong case to be made.”
On the other hand, the defense would have a variety of arguments for the law’s public safety merits. Risky behavior, which teenagers engage in more than older people, leads to increased gun accidents and violence. Greater access to guns would likely increase suicide rates among at-risk youth, and people between the ages of 18 and 24 commit the majority of gun homicides.
One complicating factor that may improve the NRA’s case is that the so-called gun-show loophole that Congress failed to close earlier this year already allows people between the ages of 18 and 21 to buy handguns. Federal law prohibits them from buying guns from federally licensed dealers but not from private sellers at gun shows or on the internet. “That strongly undermines the value of the law, and I think helps the NRA,” Winkler says. “Their argument’s made stronger by the fact that you can’t buy a gun from a federally licensed dealer, but you can buy a gun from anyone else.”
Still, Winkler says, “In general I think the idea of keeping people who are too young to use firearms responsibly from getting their hands on guns is a perfectly legitimate government objective.”
View the original here:
How Fracking Affects Your Farmer’s Market
Original link –
Posted in FF, GE, ONA, organic, Uncategorized
Tagged environment, food, fracking and food, fracking our food supply, green, natural gas fracking, Ona, organic
Comments Off on How Fracking Affects Your Farmer’s Market
New Poll Says American Public is Fine With NSA Surveillance
Mother Jones
Pew is out with the first poll asking the public what it thinks of the NSA phone record surveillance program. Unsurprisingly, the public thinks it’s just peachy, by a margin of 56-41. What is surprising, though, is the epic size of the change in partisan attitudes since 2006. Back then, Republicans approved of the (recently revealed) NSA program by 38 points more than Democrats. Now, Republicans disapprove by 12 points more than Democrats.
This isn’t the last word on the subject. The wording of the question is different this year compared to 2006, and that might account for a bit of the difference. But probably not much. Basically, when Bush was president, Republicans thought that monitoring telephone traffic was a great idea. Now, when Obama is president, they’re not so sure—but Democrats think it’s fine and dandy. This is about as remarkable a turnaround as I’ve seen on any subject in recent years.
Unfortunately, it’s going to be harder than I thought to eventually get a firm read on this. I had figured that early polls would be tentative because so few people would understand what the NSA program entails (i.e., legal vs. warrantless, every call vs. some calls, metadata vs. listening in). Later polls would get progressively more accurate as this stuff became better known. But now that the PRISM program has also been revealed, it’s likely that future polls will be forced to use mushy wording and public opinion will be a bit more confused. Oh well.
More here:
Posted in FF, GE, Uncategorized, Venta
Tagged kevin drum, venta
Comments Off on New Poll Says American Public is Fine With NSA Surveillance
After Bachmann, Who’s America’s Next Top Wacky Right-Winger?
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
Facing a mounting investigation into her presidential campaign’s alleged campaign finance improprieties, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) announced Wednesday morning that she won’t seek reelection in 2014. Here’s a quick guide to the people jockeying for Bachmann’s place as the far right’s biggest star in Congress.
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas)
Is he crazy? Once caught with 30 mg of Valium in his underwear. Lived in a Fort Worth park for a year with a homeless man he compared to Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Warned that sex ed classes were teaching kids the virtues of bestiality. Started an AR-15 sweepstakes for his constituents. Actual campaign bumper sticker: “If babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted.”
Put it in granite: “The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out.”
Do people care? Stockman has had no discernible impact on public policy and Democrats have written off his seat—he won his last race by 44 points.
Joe Miller, Alaska Senate candidate
Is he crazy? Hired private security guards who handcuffed a reporter during failed 2010 Senate run. Argued that unemployment benefits, Social Security, and Medicare are unconstitutional. Wrote a column for birther site WorldNetDaily alleging that President Obama should be impeached for secretly giving away American islands to Russia.
Put it in granite: “Obama’s State Department is giving away seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands to the Russians. Yes, to the Putin regime in the Kremlin.”
Do people care? Only if he wins.
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.)
Is he crazy? Compared the Affordable Care Act to the “war of Yankee aggression.” Pointed out alarming similarities between Obama and Hitler. Worries that the federal government will force people to eat fruits and vegetables. Believes Southerners will die of hyperthermia if clean energy laws are passed.
Put it in granite: “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell.”
Do people care? An outspoken critic of science, Broun’s position on the House Science Committee has alarmed such high-profile scientists as Bill Nye.
Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah)
Is he crazy? World-record holder for fastest flight around the world. Described as a “certified nutcase” by a former Utah Republican politician and “Glenn Beck on steroids” by a former Utah Democratic politician. Wrote end-times novels that have been endorsed by Glenn Beck. Expressed concern that protecting species from extinction, while noble, “harms people” too much.
Put it in granite: “My true worldview is just the opposite of the apocalyptic. Look, I know we’re going to have challenges and, who knows, maybe there will be a zombie apocalypse or something like that.”
Do people care? Stewart hails from a safely Republican district, but Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed concerns about his fringe views. He’s also skeptical about climate change and chairs a House subcommittee on the issue.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)
Is he crazy? Opposed gun control by comparing gay marriage to bestiality. Supported Alaska oil drilling so that caribou would have more sex. Cosponsored a birther bill. Wanted Congress to investigate the threat of Shariah law in America. Sounded alarm about terrorists who “are now being trained to come in and act like Hispanics.” Sounded alarm about terrorists who are babies.
Put it in granite: “The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus.”
Do people care? Gohmert represents an overwhelmingly conservative district and is better known for his outrageous statements than his impact on public policy.
Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.)
Is she crazy? Compared Obama to “Louis XIV, the Sun King.” Said Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act “simply to control our lives.” Supported defunding the Justice Department to stop Attorney General Eric Holder’s lawsuit against an Arizona immigration bill that allows racial profiling. Insinuated that terrorists were behind the proposal to build an Islamic community center in Manhattan a few blocks from ground zero.
Put it in granite: “The terrorists haven’t won, and we should tell them in plain English, ‘No, there will never be a mosque at ground zero.'”
Do people care? After Republicans won control of North Carolina’s state Legislature in 2010 and redrew congressional district lines in the state, Ellmers moved from a competitive district to a safe seat. She’s only serving her second term in the House but is already considering a Senate bid against Democrat Kay Hagan.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
Is he crazy? Believes George Soros masterminded a plot to ban golf and force Americans into “hobbit homes.” Said that “Shariah law is an enormous problem” in the United States. Thinks states have the constitutional right to disregard federal law. Bragged that he helped nullify a gay divorce. Thinks Harvard Law School has been overrun by communists.
Put it in granite: “I think President Obama is the most radical president we’ve ever seen.”
Do people care? Called the “next great conservative hope” by the National Review, Cruz may have presidential aspirations. But his Senate obstructionism has annoyed more compromise-minded Republican colleagues, including John McCain, whom Cruz said he doesn’t trust.
See more here:
After Bachmann, Who’s America’s Next Top Wacky Right-Winger?
