People Will Die

I wonder if anyone has pointed out to our conservative state legislature members that the budget decisions they are making will result in human fatalities. That people will die as a direct result of their aversion to raise the revenue needed to provide basic services.

I have been going on and on about what the state budget is going to do to public education in the state, and it should be to no one’s surprise that at the bottom of it is an agenda to ruin public education so that school vouchers are the wave of the future along with the privatization of education. All of that, however, is long-range and therefore reversible at some point.

What they are doing to public healthcare, however, is more immediate. People. Will. Die.

This article in the Austin American-Statesman lays it all out. The plan is to cut state support of private attendant care services. These are the one on one services that enables the elderly to remain in their homes, but with a daily visit from a healthcare provider being paid the minimum wage to assist these people with doing the things that they now find difficult to accomplish on their own. Like bathing. Like dressing. Like cooking.

At the present time, 125,000 Texans are being provided these services. But if they are withdrawn, what do these people do? By definition, if you cannot take care of yourself in your home, a nursing home is the answer. But the cost to the state if this is the only alternative is four times what it would be with attendant care services. And funding to nursing homes is being cut as well. These people are essentially trapped.

I find that just a little cold. I don’t know how these people can live with themselves knowing that they are about to make life-altering decisions for the weakest among us.

Life-altering as in death-making.

Most people, I think, aren’t this cold-hearted. Even in the most conservative parts of the state people are asking themselves whether we can come up with the funding necessary to avoid these draconian cuts.

From the Austin American-Statesman:

“Still, Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville , said recently that ‘even in my very Republican, conservative district,’ he's heard support for tapping the state's rainy day fund and raising the gas tax and state fees to cushion the impact of health care cuts.”

So conservatives do have a heart. They’re not quite there yet, it seems, as raising state fees isn’t going to cut it but at least they see the light. At least they now acknowledge the fact that yes, we are our brother’s keeper. And our parents and grandparents keeper, too.

Who Are These Demented Fools?

Well last night the Texas State House passed by a huge majority (98-49) a job-killing budget bill.

Job-killing.

Republicans referred to the Healthcare For All Act as the job-killing healthcare act and got away with it even though it has been the law of the land for one year now and there is not one solid piece of evidence that one job was lost because of it.

Not so this job-killing budget bill. Heck, this bill is such a job-killing budget bill that jobs have already been lost in anticipation of its passage. Ask the 91 employees of the Texas Education Agency who were riffed last month. Ask the hundred and some teachers at my local school district who were riffed on April Fool’s Day.

All around the state, educators are being told that they have no position in the next school year, all due to the fact that it was expected that the state house would pass this job-killing budget bill.

What can be on the minds of these demented fools? Are they purposely trying to drive Texas economy into a ditch? So Texans will blame Obama? Is that the reasoning?

If that is so, what a price we must pay. CNN, in this article published just after the LBB published its report on the job effects of passage of the House bill in its present form, reminded me that not only will 335,000 public sector jobs evaporate as a direct result of a 12% cut in spending, but this will drive the loss of yet another 263,000 private sector jobs because some businesses depend on the business school districts and nursing homes give them. A domino effect if ever there was one.

That’s just shy of 600,000 jobs lost in Texas.

Oddly enough, Rick Perry’s justification for pushing all of these cuts is, wait for it, job creation. I kid you not. Here is a quote from a Perry spokesperson:

“Gov. Perry firmly believes that government doesn't create jobs: entrepreneurs in the private sector do," said Katherine Cesinger, his press secretary. "We must remain committed to the fiscal principles that have helped us add more jobs than any other state in 2010, as well as lead the nation in job creation over the last decade.”

I’ll have to admit, Perry is correct in one very oblique way. With passage of this job-killing budget bill, state government no longer creates jobs if it ever did.

It destroys them.

The GOP’s War Against Women

You’d think that they would just do the numbers and realize that by singling out women for punishment, the Republicans in congress would discover that women vote, too. Since Women’s Suffrage passed, anyway.

Statistically, you know, women account for 51% of the electorate.

But no, according to the Congressional Record, Republicans appear to be in all out war with “the fairer sex.”

Witness H.R. 3, a Republican-sponsored bill (with a whopping 211 co-sponsors) that promises to raise taxes on millions of women and families that pay for health insurance which includes, as part of the health benefits, an abortion.

I swear, it’s true. Here is the text:

“(1) no credit shall be allowed under the internal revenue laws with respect to amounts paid or incurred for an abortion or with respect to amounts paid or incurred for a health benefits plan (including premium assistance) that includes coverage of abortion.”

See? It’s pretty clear that this legislation punishes women even for purchasing health insurance if it covers an abortion, even if the insured women never take advantage of that health benefit. The punishment then would preclude a woman from buying insurance that covers abortion, and, I might add, preclude a health insurance company from offering coverage.

It is, in short, a tax on women based on other people’s religious beliefs over when human life begins.

But wait, there’s more.

Women’s health is under attack on the budget front as well.

H.R. 1, the so-called budget bill, as it is developing, is steadily evolving to a second front on the Republican War Against Women.

Budget cuts that affect women, and women only, include the following:

Defunding Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is a national program to promote women’s health and well-being as well as providing contraception, family planning advice, and, yes, abortions. Millions of women benefit from Planned Parenthood’s services. Many would not be alive right now if it weren’t for them.

And yes, they also provide abortion services.

But not only that, Republican budget cuts in have completely defunded Title X health care benefits for low-income women. Gone will be their access to cancer screening, HIV tests and access to family planning.

Republicans are at War With Women, and it’s clear to me that this is yet another issue that didn’t come up during the mid-term election, which they tell me was a “referendum on Obamacare.” But it is clear to me now that misogyny is on their hidden agenda.

Now, I know that Republicans hate poor people, and some poor people vote for Republicans whenever they can for some unfathomable reason. Too, it now seems that Republicans hate women, and some women also vote for Republicans whenever they can, again for reasons that seem baseless to me.

And you definitely get what you vote for. They say it isn’t personal, it’s just budget cutting, but I’d say that losing your health care doesn’t get any more personal.

If you want to lodge your complaint, or maybe cast a ballot that you missed casting in November, you can do that at California Senator Barbara Boxer's petition which can be found right here.

I did.

The Chron Says Let’s Use the Rainy Day Fund

The Houston Chronicle has, it seems, put into words what is on the minds of many of us: if there is such a shortfall in the state budget that the state’s health and education expenditures for the next two years are destined for a chopping block – a chopping block with an attitude – isn’t it now time to state the obvious?

It’s raining.

Since the '80's Texas has maintained a "Rainy Day Fund," now estimated at $9 billion, to be used in the event that there is some sort of economic crisis - a rainy day.

When you put money away for a rainy day, someone at some point someone has to take a look outside and see if it’s raining.

By all accounting what is needed is a $12 billion increase in funding to take care of all the expected increases in needs across the state. More children will enroll in public schools than ever before over the next two years. More people will get sick as the baby boomer generation gets older and older. But instead of increase, state budget projections are for a $15 billion (optimistically) to a $25 billion deficit.

And with health and human services and education taking up more than half of all state expenditures it seems to many that we are about to do great harm to the youngest of us and the oldest.

And with a 2/3s majority in the State House, it seems that budget cutting will be the watchword of the day, and not raising revenue.

Ironic then, that in a new poll by the Austin American-Statesman a majority of Texans want the legislature to spare the axe in the areas of health and education.

From the AA-S:

“Some 70 percent of respondents said lawmakers should not cut school spending, and 61 percent said they want no spending cuts on health care programs for children and low- to moderate-income families.”

Elections have consequences. Voters turned out in droves last November to de-select an agenda that would have been more attuned to follow just those sentiments and find areas other than the future of the state to make budget cuts.

So really, it makes no sense to maintain a rainy day fund when the state legislature is poised to dismantle its future and weaken the state to the point of bankrupting our future.

It’s raining.

I Say Potato, You Say Obamacare

Did you ever expect that the Party of No would change their tune after a virtual sweep in the House elections last year? I sure didn’t, and man was I barking up the wrong tree.

The Party of No, the G No P, has changed its tune.

In late 2009 all we were about was the passage of some form of Healthcare Reform bill. It got done over the loud objections of a party that is so intertwined with the health insurance industry that you can’t tell whose appendage is whose. And all they wanted to do, they said at the time, was to concentrate on getting more Americans back to work.

Democrats, they said, were out of touch with Americans who were increasingly alarmed at their preoccupation with not-so-radical changes in healthcare in the face of what mattered most to them: getting their jobs back.

Democrats were out of touch.

So, as my congressman, Pete Olson is fond of saying, the people voted and gave his party the car keys back.

So now, as Barack Obama’s administration sets itself back aright, back on the tracks, so to speak, to get Americans back to work, did the GOP change it’s tune? You bet they did.

Their first order of business is to repeal healthcare reform. Getting Americans back to work can go to H-E-double-hockey-sticks as far as they are concerned. It’s all about Obamacare.

Funny how that works. Funnier still is that while the Republicans are looking like the two-faced spinmeisters that they are, the American people have yet to catch them on it.

Dare I say it? Has America become so distracted that they can’t remember beyond a couple of months what the Republicans claim is the important burning issue of the day?

Has America become collectively a victim of Attention Deficit Disorder?

Texas to Opt Out of Medicaid?

The very notion of opting out of one of the largest government health services program seems crazy on the face of it. No way, I would have said before November 2nd. But now that we know the count, and what the numbers are in state house and senate, it seems this, too, is possible.

Texas could opt out of Medicaid.

In so-doing, Texas would be turning up its nose at $16.6 billion in federal dollars.

Rick Perry thinks it’s a fabulous idea.

So does State Rep Warren Chisum (R - Wackoville) who has said this:

“Too much of taking money with strings attached is just not good for the people.”

This has precedence. Last year Rick Perry passed on collecting $555 million in federal dollars to help pay unemployment to thousands of out of work Texans because the funds came with strings attached. So turning down sixteen billion dollars in federal money with strings attached seems not so big a reach.

Chisum said that his good ol’ buddy John Zerwas agrees with him and actually got some legislation passed last year to study the idea. Zerwas, who is a gas passer (an anesthesiologist) is probably the last one in the capitol building who wants to see Medicaid go bye-bye. My guess is that he wanted the study to get done so that these yayhoos could see what a truly bad idea the whole notion is.

That’s my guess, anyway. This is what he actually said:

“Zerwas said that looking seriously at opting out would be ‘a good exercise for us to go through’ but that it wasn't his study that put the idea on the table. ‘Opting out really comes from national and statewide think tanks’ such as the Heritage Foundation and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he said.”

And Zerwas knows that opting out would be a disaster for the medical services industry in Texas, and not just for those who receive Medicaid benefits.

Because if you think the medical industry will just shrug its shoulders at the loss $16 billion and bring their collective belts in another notch or two, you have truly been drinking the kool-aid.

Pete Olson Continues to “Be Factually Inaccurate”

Pete Olson, my congressman, continues to be factually challenged.

June 17th, it seems was a kind of double witching for Olson, first being quoted from the House floor as denouncing Iranian President Khatami for trying to get a nuclear weapon, then in his own words in a local newspaper on “Obamacare”.

From the House floor:

“I mean, the—Mr. Khatami and Iran is scary. I mean, he‘s trying to get a nuclear weapon. He was here at our country a couple of weeks ago, at the United States, at the U.N., at the United Nations, sat down with George Stephanopoulos and literally—this is the leader of Iran, told him that the Osama bin Laden is here in Washington, D.C.”

Like, ya know? Khatami is scary, dude.

But in truth, Mohammad Khatami, a FORMER Iranian president who stepped down in 2005, was going to oppose the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but stepped aside in favor of his friend Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Rule Number One: Get name right.

Oh, but then why let a few facts get in the way of a good narrative, right? Iran is scary and so is Khatami.

 Then on the same day, Olson’s blast at “Obamacare” appears in a local paper that often prints his diatribes unanswered. It is here.

Olson took up Medicare Advantage, a Republican poster child for all that is bad about healthcare reform it seems.

Medicare Advantage is a plan that funnels Medicare funds to private insurers, something that Republican lawmakers can get behind, especially those who want to privatize the whole Medicare program. Over the years, more and more medicare funds have been absorbed by private insurance providers. Olson, and all Republican supporters of the health insurance industry argue that “…to pay for the health care reform law, the law’s sponsors cut $575 billion in cuts to Medicare. The President’s own analysis indicates that up to 50 percent of seniors will lose their Medicare Advantage plans because of these cuts. Seniors will lose benefits and services starting as soon as next year…”

Factually inaccurate, again.

Medicare Advantage has been identified as a huge waste of taxpayer money. Republicans argue for elimination of waste in Medicare need look no further than Medicare Advantage.

Here is President Obama’s answer to Republican objections to ending Medicare Advantage found in this interview:

“These (Medicare Advantage providers) are essentially private HMOs who are getting, on average -- and this is not my estimate, this is Democrats and Republicans, experts have said -- they're getting, on average, about 14 percent more over payments, basically subsidies from taxpayers for a program that ordinary Medicare does just as good, if not better, at keeping people healthy.”

“Now, they package these things in ways that, in some cases, may make it more convenient for some consumers, but they're overcharging massively for it. There's no competitive bidding under the process.”

“And so what we've said is instead of spending $17 billion, $18 billion a year, $177 billion over 10 years on that, why wouldn’t we use that to close the donut hole so the people are actually getting better prescription drugs…”

So the choice for seniors who fear loss of Medicare Advantage is this: you choose, close the ‘doughnut hole’ or pay more for services that Medicare already provides.


Pete Olson is not responsible for the ‘doughnut hole.’ That was a brainchild of a CD-22 predecessor, former congressman and tango dancer Tom DeLay. But Olson chooses to invoke his party’s impossibly inaccurate shtick.
 
And why is that? Why promote such an impossible scenario? Does it have to do with the time-honored tradition of Republican politics that Facts Flee in the Face of Fear?

Is Ahmadinejad an Iranian President?

Noisemakers

This is what passes for democracy in America today. Disgusting, isn’t it?

Time to Show the Senate You Care About Health Care

What is the holdup to getting health insurance legislation passed, and passed very soon? There are enough votes in the House to pass the House version. It’s the Senate where we are having problems. And at the bottom of it all is Senator Max Baucus of Montana.

Max Baucus is a Democrat who votes with Republicans a whole lot of the time. He is after all from a red state and does like to get re-elected. Something he has been successful in doing since taking office 31 years ago.

Because of his seniority, he is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, a fairly powerful position, and has just about single-handedly thwarted the efforts of his more liberal party members to pass meaningful health care legislation with a public option.

Now, I don’t know whether or not he actually cares that a majority of Americans want health care reform and that he is the fly in the ointment. He may not care. But we now have a chance to make our voices heard through Democracy for America.

Russ Feingold has an electronic letter you can sign. A letter thanking the 12 Democratic members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP Committee for “for crafting the Affordable Health Choice Act with the choice of a public health insurance option available to everyone in America.”

So if you are of a mind to, click here and sign the letter. You can add your own comments, too.

It is an obvious dig at Baucus. I mentioned him by name in my comments.

Mixed Health Measure Signals From The Legislature Today

Not a week goes by that I don’t find myself shaking my head in wonderment when I see inconsistencies in how Texans regulate themselves.

Case in point: today I see two items in the Austin American-Statesman, where I get most of my “Unique to Texas” stories. In one, we find that the State Senate has just passed SB 204, authored by Eliot Shapleigh, (D-El Paso). This bill bans the serving of trans-fats in restaurants in Texas (including doughnut shops). Trans-fats, as we all should know, are the culprits behind heart disease, diabetes and stroke.

So that’s good, right? Texas strikes a blow for public health.

Right next to it, however, we find a story explaining that a bill authored by Myra Crownover, R-Denton, HB 5, “relating to the elimination of smoking in all workplaces and public places” has been defanged in the House Committee on State Affairs by excluding from the list of public places “certain bars” anywhere in Texas as well as any public place in any Texas county with a population under 115,000.

Apparently, it’s OK to have emphysema from secondary smoke in Texas, especially if you live out in the boonies, but it’s not OK to have a stroke . . . anywhere.

These little inconsistencies do get at you sometimes, but all is resolved when you look at what is behind it: the liquor lobby and the tobacco lobby obviously have more money and more pull in the Texas Legislature than say, the Elaidic acid lobby.

If it even exists.

But, in the vicinity of food and sin, vis-à-vis Texas, I am still waiting for a ban on Dijon mustard because everybody knows that once you put Dijon mustard on your hamburger, surely communism can’t be far behind.

Susan Collins: I Was For It Before I Was Against It

In a press release issued yesterday, and is posted on Senator Collins’ senate website, Senator Susan Collins adamantly denies that she opposed getting funding for pandemic flu research.

Here is part of her statement, the part that gets a bit testy:

“Claims that she is opposed to increased funding for pandemic flu research are blatantly false and politically motivated. In fact, in December 2008, Senator Collins joined in a letter to Senate leaders requesting a $905 million increase for the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund at the Department of Health and Human Services.”

So why did Collins move to slice the same $900 million from the Stimulus Bill?

“…pandemic flu research funding should go through the regular appropriations process since it did not meet the test of stimulus spending.”

A technicality?

Susan Collins opposed pandemic flu research funds, and by default, supported a possible swine flu epidemic, because of a technicality?

You know it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that $900 million spends just as well whether it is put in a “stimulus bill” or an appropriations bill (which, really, when you come right down to it, is what the stimulus bill actually was).

But more to the point is the fact that pandemic flu research is actually part and parcel of economic recovery. The point is not that flu research brings in more jobs, that is patently absurd. The reason Democrats put this funding in the stimulus bill was because of the massive “What If.”

What if in the middle of a slow climb out of the cellar America, or worse, the entire world is hit with a pandemic killer flu on the order of the one that killed millions after World War 1? Not only do people lose their lives and treasure, but in proactively preventing spread of the flu, schools, businesses, banks, stock exchanges, retail outlets all close. Society and the economy all grind to a halt.

Nope, sorry Senator, that was just a bad call on your part. One that sounded good to you at the time, but one that now has all of the hallmarks of being for it before being against it. No press release is going to undo your blunder.

Especially with an explanation like that.

Nineteen is Enough Says State Senator Uresti

This past week SB 1049 was voted out of the Texas Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee with a vote of 9 Ayes and 0 Nos. The bill, authored by State Senator Carlos Uresti, and co-authored by John Carona, Chuy Hinojosa, Joan Huffman and Jane Nelson, changes Section 161.081 of the states Health and Safety Code by crossing out the number 18, and replacing it with the number 19.

The bill would raise the legal age to buy tobacco products in the state of Texas by one year.

Senator Uresti, in filing the bill last February, had this to say:

“SB 1049 will remove the opportunity for underage tobacco consumption by raising the tobacco purchasing age to 19. Studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that sixty percent of teen smokers get their cigarettes from older friends and siblings. There are many high school students who are legally able to purchase tobacco products, and these students are in a position to provide tobacco products to their underage peers in school.”

“Ninety percent of all adult smokers begin smoking while they are in their teens. Studies indicate that the longer we keep teens from smoking, the fewer adult smokers we will have in the future. This bill is good public health policy, and it is an excellent health promotion tool for our youth”

Senator Uresti noted that tobacco-related illnesses contribute to $5.83 billion dollars in Texas health care costs per year, and $1.6 billion of those costs are borne by the State's Medicaid system.

One argument against this legislation has surfaced. That an 18-year old who is old enough to fight and die in war, should be old enough to poison him- or herself by intentionally inhaling carcinogens.

Phillip Morris, which has a stake in getting American teens hooked on their product, has kept mum about this, probably because they are too busy getting millions of others addicted to their product in Asia.

Uresti et al. have taken a good first step toward ending the disease of tobacco addiction in our time, but unfortunately this bill does not go far enough.

I have a modest suggestion. To this number, 19, add another number. Add another “1.” Let’s call a spade a spade, huh? This is an addictive material that is ultimately lethal. There is no sane reason to take up the habit.

Uresti’s reasoning runs that if the state can prevent an 18 year old from buying tobacco for yet another year, their brains will mature enough so that fewer of them will ultimately make the wrong health and lifestyle choice.

I say add a “1.” Make it legal for 119 year-old people to buy tobacco products.

Heck, if they lived that long, they deserve to treat themselves to a little suicidal behavior now and then, don’t they?

John Cornyn: To Whine or Not To Whine, That’s The Obfuscation

Texas’ Junior Senator John Cornyn has been getting quite a pass from the press these past few days. I’ve been watching it but it is best summarized over here. My main beef with this is that it is an example of pure lopsided treatment in this senatorial race.

Texas Democratic Senate candidate Rick Noriega has trouble getting 2 inches of print in a regional rag, and Cornyn has press from one end of the state to the other fawning on him.

And it’s not like he is strapped for cash getting his name out. The guy’s got over $9 million.

So why in the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks does this guy’s campaign start whining when The Houston Chronicle puts out a single Op/Ed piece on Cornyn’s statement that praised the healthcare system of Texas and wanting to make it the national standard?

It’s all in a memo that his campaign put out to Cornyn’s supporters, asking them to complain to the Chronicle about their criticism. This is an overt attempt to pressure the media to toe the line and stay on his side of the issues. I’ll not produce the entire diatribe, just the meat [emphasis is mine]:

“On Tuesday of this week, Senator Cornyn spoke to a Pachyderm Club meeting in Houston that was covered by the Houston Chronicle. The subsequent article focused on health care and led off with the sub-headline "Senator says state is a model for nation, despite having so many without insurance." Needless to say, the headline did not accurately reflect Senator Cornyn's views.”

“In his remarks, Senator Cornyn did not talk about health insurance at all. Instead, while relating several reasons why Texas's economy is in better shape than most other U.S. states, he mentioned the 2003 law reforming medical malpractice law in Texas. Since its passage, doctors and medical school graduates have been flocking to Texas, providing health care services in underserved areas and improving patient access in others. The development has made Texas the envy of the medical community nationwide, and several states are attempting to duplicate our accomplishment.”

“After his remarks, Senator Cornyn was approached by the Chronicle reporter, who raised the entirely separate subject of health insurance for the first time. Senator Cornyn did not disagree that there were too many uninsured in Texas, and added there were numerous steps that need to be taken to reduce that unacceptably high number. In fact, Senator Cornyn has pushed for a variety of solutions, including funding for community health clinics, enabling small businesses to pool their resources to offer group health insurance, increased outreach efforts to boost SCHIP enrollment, and more.”

The campaign takes issue with the fact that the article didn’t cover Cornyn’s prepared remarks to the "Elephantitis Club," but did report on Cornyn’s remarks to the Chronicle reporter after the speech. Actually, in this article, reporter Alan Bernstein did both.

I totally agree with the Chronicle that Cornyn’s prepared remarks were not newsworthy, but what he said afterward was. You can read something and sound brilliant, but what comes off the top of your head is more revealing.

So what Cornyn said afterward is completely fair game for comment.

What he said was this:

“So, you have to understand what I mean when I say I want to make Washington, D.C., and the rest of our country more like Texas (because), frankly, we know the policies that actually work.”

And this is where Senator Cornyn stuffed his foot down his throat.

And The Chronicle - and Rick Noriega – jumped all over him about it.

And rightly so.

Rightly so because making the way Texas treats its citizens with regard to healthcare the national norm is exactly equivalent to what Bush did to national education when he took the Texas model for education, No Child Left Behind, and made it the law of the land – a thoroughly discredited unfunded federal mandate that has been foisted on the 50 states.

John Cornyn wants to do to national healthcare what George Bush did to national education.

And when he is quoted on this, he complains that this was not what he said, it was off-topic and . . . it was unprofessional of the Chronicle to print this.

This is a complete obfuscation. John Cornyn says a lot, he has lots of staffers who put the words together for him, but he is liable for all the words he says. Moreso, he should be judged in particular for his off the cuff remarks, for they more accurately reveal how he thinks.

And whether he does.

Texas Again Leads the Way

Once again the state of Texas is leading the way, and has the dubious honor of having the largest number of food poisoning cases due to salmonella-laced tomatoes.

It’s either that or Texas has, by far, the greatest per capita occurrence of people who worry about their health to the nth degree.

And considering the high concentration of care-giving institutions in Texas, you have to wonder about that.

The facts and figures that leads me to this odd conclusion are these and found here in the Dallas Morning News:

“And Texas is clearly its center, with a doubling of known cases from 131 confirmed earlier in the week to 265 as of Friday.”

“‘These 552 may actually represent several thousand illnesses in the United States,’ cautioned Dr. Ian Williams of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

“Previous research shows that for every case of salmonella reported to the government, 30 or more people get sick but don’t see a doctor or undergo confirmatory testing, he noted.”

So there you have it. Texas is either in the eye of the hurricane which is the great tomato/Salmonella outbreak of 2008, or it just seems to contain more people disposed to visit his or her doctor whenever they get the squitters.

Quite frankly, which one is true doesn’t concern me very much. Not at all. I for one haven’t eaten a tomato that hasn’t been fried, boiled or broiled in some way for a month now and it is starting to annoy.

Forget the price of gas. Ignore the cost of milk and bread. I want my choice in a presidential candidate to promise to put the T back in my BLT.

So . . . Who Do We Vote For? The Woman or the Canadian?

In presidential politics, I had thought that this question would have been impossible given the stipulations found in Article II Section 1 of the United States Constitution:

“No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President”.

Last I looked, Canada was still a part of the British Commonwealth (not a real country), and as such, neither its citizens nor those born there and naturalized in the United States are eligible to be President of the United States.

Why then, is this question even asked?

Truth to tell, those that would consider either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as a presidential choice would not actually ask that question in those exact words, so this whole posting is somewhat moot.

Nevertheless, it underlines a very evil presence we still have here in The South, in Texas, and even in what has come to be regarded as a cosmopolitan Houston, Texas.

Neanderthalian mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers still abound down around these parts. And they still exist in government offices. Felony prosecutor Mike Trent has had his email read lately, email that reveals that Trent is a purveyor of a brand new neoracist codeword for a person of African-American descent. A black person. A n…, a ni…, well, you get the idea. In other words “a Canadian”.

In Trent’s own words, from The Chron:

“The note starts out innocently enough, with felony chief Mike Trent praising the work of prosecutor Rob Freyer for convincing a ‘weak jury’ to give a man a stiff sentence for intoxication manslaughter.”

“ ‘He overcame a subversively good defense by Matt Hennessey that had some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing.’”

Fellow Texans, this is a man who works every day bringing those accused of felony crimes to trial and conviction. His racial bias is not even in question. Nor is, by association, the entire Harris County District Attorney’s office.

If not, I ask this: why is this man still getting a paycheck from the county?

There may be those of you that need a re-education on what a Canadian is, granted a Canadian can be a Black person, God knows the South made a whole bunch of Black people Canadian citizens in the years before the War of the Northern Aggression.

Here is what a Canadian is:

They like beer, preferably Molson’s or Labatt’s, and instead of “beer” they say “beers”. They say “ay” a lot when they mean “right?” or “did you hear me?” They say “oot” when they want to go “out” and they live in a “hoose”. They work on PROH-jects, not PRAH-jects. Sometimes they speak French, but not according to someone from France. They have health care. They laugh at Americans who try to pass themselves off as Canadians when they travel overseas so they don’t get treated badly by the locals. They are also known to subvert our children. Their heads flap around and they have little beady eyes. They are for everything that mothers are against.

That’s right, that’s right, the dad-gummed Canadians!

BLAME CANADA!

Bush Vetoes Bipartisan Health, Education and Labor Bill

Simply amazing. George Bush does not know how low he can go. Each passing week brings more and more jaw-dropping vetoes from this lame duck president.

It’s just that he, in his own words, doesn’t want to become irrelevant.

It was HR 3043, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008. An appropriations bill that would have allocated $606 billion to an amazing array of good domestic projects. For an abbreviated list, take a look here where they have posted Nancy Pelosi’s statement on Bush’s veto.

But Bush said that it was too much money and that this congress, supposed to be fiscally conservative, was “spending money like a teenager with a new credit card”. He said it was full of pork barrel projects. Maybe, but not likely. And not at all like Bush’s favorite pork barrel project, no way nearly as costly as the War in Iraq that has made Bush’s cronies as rich as Croesus in war profiteering.

A completely disingenuous political move. Bush complained that this bill, to fund so many worthy domestic projects, put him $22 billion over his budget, got his veto stamp out, used it, then used a pen to sign a $471 billion Defense Dept. appropriations bill. This is the bill that buys the pencils, paper clips, and toilet seats for the Pentagon. The veto also comes on the heels of a recent report that looks into the hidden costs of conducting two wars in the Middle East. Bush’s 0.8 trillion dollar war is more like one and a half trillion dollars once you factor in things like higher cost of oil, lost productivity and interest payments on money borrowed to finance the wars.

Hundreds of billions for defense, but not a penny for a cure for cancer, not a dime for Project Head Start.

It’s S-CHIP all over again I’m afraid. In Congress, they are again about a baker’s dozen votes below an override, only 53 Republicans voted for the bill. In the Senate, there was a huge margin, 73-19. And in the Senate, again Texas’s senators cancelled out each others’ vote with Hutchison voting yea, and Rubber Stamp Cornyn voting Nay with his 18 Republican friends.