Taking a Poke at Poker in Texas

I have never been able to fathom the rules of the famous variant of the game of poker, Texas Hold ‘Em and will never play the game, but I find it comforting that, should the proposed Texas Poker Gaming Act of 2013 pass in the 83^rd legislative session of the Texas Legislature, scheduled to launch at noon on Tuesday, poker will be legal, and taxed in the state of Texas.

 

Taxed to the tune of 18% of the profits.

Texas is one of just a few places on Earth that actually has a poker game named after it, so it is appropriate that it be legal to play in its namesake state. But I fear that the proposed bill, sponsored by State Rep Eddie Rodriguez (D-Austin), is probably doomed to failure.

The bible pounders and Louisiana gaming interests will probably hire Ralph Reed again to lobby against the bill. Reed and his good friend Jack Abramoff did such a fantastic job in the past.

And then there’s the fact that the state’s18% take on the profits are earmarked, in the bill to benefit homeless and low-income residents of the state.

I mean…really…what Republican would be in favor of that when it could go toward such a worthy cause as Governor Perry’s  Texas Enterprise Fund? Or better yet, to fund a border wall with machine gun turrets every 100 yards?

Or even better, the funds could be used to train and arm every teacher in the state with a semi-automatic handgun equipped with a 30 round magazine.

So this evening I am truly disheartened that it will continue to be illegal to play Texas Hold ‘Em anywhere in the state but the Kickapoo Indian casino at Eagle Pass.

American Tradition

Saw this one on Zuckerman's website and I had to share it with my 6 readers.

Texans Voted Themselves 6 Years of Irrelevance

By voting in a TEA Party US senator who would vote with the likes of Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, Texans have given themselves a six-year sentence of irrelevancy. This became crystal clear when Ted Cruz was interviewed on CNN recently by Wolf Blitzer.

 

Blitzer sought to tutor the freshman senator on the art of the deal when he announced that he would have voted with his TEA Party associates in the Senate – voting against the Biden-McConnell compromise that raised taxes on the rich but spared the middle class.

““But, remember,” said Blitzer. “Tthe president was reelected. Harry Reid is the majority leader -- you're in minority in the United States Senate. You got to deal with reality. You can't just be -- you can't just be overly idealistic.”

Cruz’s response was essentially “oh yes I can.”

So in sending TEA Party Ted to the US Senate, Texans have sent an intractable follower to the seat vacated by a moderate deal maker in Kay Bailey. No one will go to Cruz for a vote exchange. No one will try to compromise with him. No deals are possible with him.

But that’s the typical Texas conservative voter in a nutshell these days. So Texas gets exactly what it deserves, a 6-year sentence of irrelevance.

TEA Sells Sea Shells Down By the TEAshore

Well, hello. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner is now the current Speaker of the House of the 113th legislature of Congress. No one thought he would lack the votes, but the media painted the picture nevertheless.

I never thought he would be ousted.

As it turned out, Boehner got a sum total of 10 votes against him from the TEA Party right. Now I know that the TEA Party right numbers somewhere between 50 and 60, and all they needed was another 6 votes for the House speakership to be a non-starter (really?) but Boehner survived that very low bar.

Telling me that the TEA Party Republicans are not yet ready to muck up the works to the extent of fouling up the process in the House. They could have, if the wanted to. The 10 votes are, I think, a message to the new Speaker.

Republicans are licked, they just don't know it. We are now living in an era of a 3 party system. The sooner the Republicans realize that, the better it will be for them. More importantly, the sooner the Democrats realize that their loyal opposition is hopelessly split, the better it will be for our country.

Thank you TEA Party. You don't know what you do.

Republicans Say No to Sandy Victims

Chaffing under what is being touted as a full scale surrender in the fiscal cliff vote, where 150 Republicans voted No but the bill passed courtesy of House Democrats, Republicans then took it out on the superstorm Sandy victims -  residents of Norteastern states (aka Blue States) and indicated to Speaker Boehner that they would vote against a $60.4 billion federal relief bill.

It was, in essence, a temper tantrum on the part of House Republicans.

Republican congressman Phil King of New York, who I usually hate, was heard to say that anyone who lives in the affected states who would even consider donating to the campaign of House Republican “should have their head examined.”

Going further King labeled this inaction “Indefensible and immoral” and a “dereliction of duty.”

Today, temper tantrums were definitely the thing to do within the Republican caucus, apparently.

Now I have to admit, $60.4 billion is an unprecedented amount for a disaster relief from a single storm, but you also have to admit that the damages that occur when a hurricane hits a major metropolitan area are going to be slightly higher than when a hurricane rips up a swamp, as usually happens in the Gulf.

But the main thing, the main thing is that Republicans were unwilling to render aid to a region of the United States based on its voting demographics, which I believe is also unprecedented. This isn’t a corporate bailout or TARP or even a military contract, this is disaster relief. Disasters don’t take political sides.

Lucky 13

Happy 2013.

 

Not only do we get to fall off of a cliff this next week, but next week the Texas state legislature gets gaveled back into session.

 

Hold onto your butts. Here comes the end of public education as we know it.

 

Free Fall Anyone?

As we are poised to jump off a cliff this weekend, President Obama went on Meet the Press and in a one-on-one interview had this to say, something that I hope rings true to those who echoed the TEA Party values in the months to come:

 

“They say that their biggest priority is making sure that we deal with the deficit in a serious way, but the way they're behaving is that their only priority is making sure that tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are protected. That seems to be their only overriding, unifying theme.”

This is and has been the TEA Party agenda – address the economy by dealing with the deficit, and not raise their taxes because, by God, they are Taxed Enough Already.

[This, by the way is a clever way of saying that government should not take in revenue to promote the common good, because they want their money for themselves and not their children or grandchildren.]

So it should come to no one’s surprise that all this talk about fixing the deficit is nothing more than talk, and what they really want is to keep their money, but more importantly, allow the ones who are bankrolling the TEA Party movement, the Koch Brothers et al. to keep their money in their foreign bank accounts.

So we are going to fall over a cliff and it’s all based on politics and not about reason or the correct thing to do. It is institutional lunacy in other words.

On Earth, free fall acceleration is around 9.8 meters per second squared, or if you are still a prisoner of the “conventional system of units,” thirty-two feet per second per second.

Either way you measure it, people are going to lose millions upon millions of dollars in a couple of days. Thank you Grand Opportunistic Party.

Another Reason to Hate Gays: The Antichrist (is One)

If anything is true beyond all doubt it’s that a person can read the signs of the coming of the Antichrist in ANYthing. I think this ultimate truth is evident in this YouTube video by self-described “Third Eagle of the Apocalypse” William Tapley – a nutcase extra-ordinaire.

If you clicked on the video and watched any portion of it then I’ll give you a minute to gather your senses.

This video, which at this date, 2 days after its original posting, has almost five thousand views. This in contrast to PSY’s Gangnam Style video, posted 5 months ago with now over a billion views.

A billion views can only be explained by the fact that Almighty God Himself, through His prophet Enoch, who landed in South Korea 2 years ago, is trying to tell us to watch out for the Antichrist – who happens to be a gay, transvestite pedophile.

It makes you wonder whether we need to issue conceal-carry permits to those who wish to wield the Holy Bible in public.

Milk to Skyrocket, Oil Not So Much

Is it not a symbol of how twisted our priorities have become that the wildly successful Oil and Gas industry had no problem getting its usual energy subsidies continued in a bill that passed the House and Senate last March, so the price of gasoline at the pump can remain below 4 or 5 dollars per gallon, but tonight we are not so certain that the vastly less costly federal subsidy on milk prices is now in jeopardy and are slated to expire, along with everything else, on January 1^st.

 

Amazing to some, par for the course for others.

Subsidies to the oil industry an industry that needs anything but federal subsidies in an era where they get over 100 dollars per barrel of crude, to the tune of billions, keeps gasoline cheap in this country.

But subsidies to the dairy industry, one that counts its pennies and gets affected by drought and disease are not going to survive into the new year. This is going to bring the price of a gallon of milk to the range of 8 dollars per gallon. Twice that of a gallon of gasoline.

And that, like gasoline, is only one end of a long line of dominoes, including but not restricted to, the price of butter, cheese, bread, cereal – just about every baked good.

The oil industry is swimming in cash and so Barack Obama has called for an end to the oil and gas subsidies. The dairy industry not so much but any effort by the Obama Administration to move a dairy subsidy along falls on deaf ears.

Oil gets billions and dairy gets the shaft.

And that is how your congress, courtesy of the TEA Party, rolls.

No "Coming Together" in Red Texas

When Starbucks launched their latest marketing scheme, to get a cup of java enscribed with the words "come together" on December 27th and 28th, I looked upon it with a bit of cynicism as is my habit. A total marketing ploy for those who are consumed with the notion of losing tens of thousands of dollars on January 1st when taxes go up on everyone and the military budget gets slashed.

 

The fiscal cliff approaches, and Starbucks fell across a scheme to make some more dough off of their joe, and give its customers a place to vent.

 

I was cynical that their motives were pure, and also cynical about where I live, here in Red Texas, and how the last thing that most of the Texas delegation to the House want nothing more than to jump off that cliff.

 

So it came to no surprise to me that upon using my Starbucks gift card to buy a  couple of cups of very expensive coffee there was no such enscription on either paper cup.

 

None. And the message was clear - here in Red Texas coming together is the last thing on anyones' mind. This graphic should help those of you who have not seen it on Zuckerberg's website.

 

 

Of Cliffs and Café Mochas

Starbucks has a new marketing strategy based on the latest in the news.

 

If you buy a cup of Starbucks coffee tomorrow or Friday you will not only get your name inscribed on the side of the cup, but you will also get the words “Come Together” scribbled on it. And I guess we’re not talking about the old Beatles tune, either. Or maybe we are.

It’s a great marketing strategy, don’t you think?

See? You can have a six dollar cup of coffee, participate in a happening, and send a message to congress to get off their fiscal butts and pass something to prevent another recession so we all don’t lose thousands and thousands of dollars to the banks again.

And no matter what happens, Starbucks gets to sell more coffee.

So let’s all take our Starbucks gift cards down to our local Starbucks coffee shops and redeem them for some coffee tomorrow and Friday.

You can do all of the above but Starbucks already has that money in the gift card, don’t they.

 

Ave Sol Invictus

Hail the Invincible Sun.

Today, is the anniversary of the birth of Sir Isaac Newton, Conrad Hilton, Robert Ripley, Carlos Casteneda, and Dido.

Oh, and also Jesus and Mithra

A couple of days ago, the sun stopped its long trip to the south on the Winter Solstice ending a journey it began on June 21^st. It then set in the exact same spot for the next two days, and then on this day it has turned around and is now heading back north, bringing on the promise of the return of spring.

The Winter Solstice is celebrated by cultures around the world, and it has been like this for millennia. Ever since man watched the sun, stars and planets, we knew this about the sun.

In ancient Rome, Winter Solstice was celebrated in a three-day festival called Saturnalia. This was a pagan celebration of the invincible sun, which was called Mithra by the Persians who instigated the religion. Mithra’s birthday was naturally celebrated at resumption of its journey back to the north, then celebrated on December 25^th.

It was a great holiday full of holiday cheer, frivolity, and mass consumption of food and drink. It became an embarrassment to the 4^th century Bishop Liberius of Rome because this pagan holiday was celebrated in high style, but the celebration of the resurrection of Christ was a somber one. So it was announced that Jesus was actually born on the last day of the Saturnalia. And the birthday of the Sun became the birthday of the Son.

And it has been with us ever since.

So when you hear people complain about how we need to “put the Christ back in Christmas,” or that “Jesus is the reason for the season” just smile and nod in agreement. Then put another ornament on the fir tree, sing a song about snow and chestnuts, have another pull at the Wassail bowl, put on Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” DVD and read “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” to your kids one more time.

Ho, ho, ho.

Why Obama Won

Well the truth is finally out. Barack Obama won last November by a landslide of electoral votes, much to the horror and chagrin of vast throngs of true and patriotic Americans who had “Nobama” and “Obama Must Go”(OMG) stickers attached to their pickup trucks. And now we know why.

 

Obama won the election because his opponent, Mitt Romney, really didn’t want to be president. He’s a very private person, you see, and being so much in the public eye was not something he wanted to do. So in effect, Romney threw the fight. Romney, and his advisors, all from the Bush political machine, knew how to win an election. They invented winning in the 21^st century in 2004. But no, Romney really didn’t want to be president and so Obama is an accidental president because his opponent was not very enamored of the prize because the price of his loss of privacy was too high.

And no, I’m not talking trash, this is what Tagg Romney recently said of his father’s recent loss.

From the Boston Globe:

“’He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to . . . run,’ said Tagg, who worked with his mother, Ann, to persuade his father to seek the presidency. ‘If he could have found someone else to take his place . . . he would have been ecstatic to step aside. He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his country, but he doesn’t love the attention.’”

So there you have it. Obama is not a Christian, not an American (not white), and not really the President of the United States. And now we know that he was not actually re-elected either. Obama will be president for another 4 years because Mitt Romney didn’t really want to be president.

That makes so much sense. Someone who wants to be president wouldn’t staff his offices with one sixth of the staff of his opponent. Neither would he fail to have thousands of volunteers and a high-tech campaign strategy that made sure that every American got a personal contact.  Romney didn’t have any of that and now we know why. He didn’t want to win.

So Romney didn’t win because he didn’t really want to. Yeah…… That’s the ticket.

Too Pretty to Employ

The Iowa Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom has just told all attractive young Iowa women that their good looks is enough to get them fired from their jobs.

 

Melissa Nelson, a pretty young dental assistant working for James Knight DDS, of Fort Dodge, Iowa for ten years was told by her boss that because he was irresistibly attracted to her, and his wife knew it, she could no longer work for him.

The fact is, there was a harmless banter between them that neither objected to, but Knight’s wife apparently did. So Melissa had to go.

Think of it. The woman was not fired because she was a bad dental assistant, not fired because of any unwanted remarks, not fired because of some infraction, she was fired because the dentist’s wife had such low self-esteem that she badgered her husband into firing his employee.

And the Iowa Supreme Court has deemed it to be good and fitting.

Had the dental assistant been a man this would never have happened, would it?

 The point is, this is a new world we are living in. Women are fighting in air battles in the Middle East.  Women are finally ascending to equality in every way, and now we hear about a court’s decision that has all the attributes of one in 1952, not one in 2012.

Want to go back in time? Have I got a state for you.

 

NRA Head Thumbs His Nose at Dead Children

Whoever thought that the NRA was going to change its tune this time with 20 dead children must have been smoking rope. The NRA has been, is now, and always will be the premier lobbyist for the arms industry. And now, with blood on his hands, Wayne LaPierre went out of his way on the 1 week anniversary of the Newtown massacre to thumb his nose at 20 dead children, 6 dead educators, and all of their friends and family.

 

This is because, according to LaPierre, just about the only thing that is not responsible for the mass killing last week, or any time before or in the future, is the availability of guns specifically designed to kill people.

It has become clear to more people now that people die horrible deaths because of “modern weaponry.” That is, weapons that shoot bullets faster than one can think from a seemingly limitless supply of bullets from high-capacity magazines.

But no. According to LaPierre, it’s all about violence in movies and video games. It’s all about the media who report things like mass killings – inconvenient truths for LaPierre’s bunch – so as to inspire copycats.

And to go further, LaPierre wants an armed policeman stationed at every school, and he asked “with all the money in the federal budget can’t we afford to put a police officer in every single school?”

In Texas, in the larger school districts, this is exactly what we have. It is paid for by the district taxpayers, not the federal government. Hiring one policeman for each school campus in America would do wonders for the unemployment rate, but from what money tree do you go to harvest their pay?

This is why I call on Wayne LaPierre and the NRA to foot the entire bill for a national police force to put one armed police officer at every campus in the United States. They can get the money from their bosses, the gun manufacturers.

Put up or shut up, LaPierre.

Or better yet, put up AND shut up.

Senator Box Turtle Disrespects the Gun Victims

Texas Senator John Cornyn, who once voted Nay on a bill that requires all licensed importers, manufacturers and dealers who engage in the transfer of handguns to provide secure gun storage or safety devices has come out today with a statement (delivered by one of his spokesmen) on the Newtown massacre of 20 small children and their teachers. And just as one would think, Cornyn is following the script of putting off the discussion for another day when – as he hopes – people will fog over and become embroiled in the next flavor of the day.
 

This has been the modus operandi of the gun lobby, the NRA, since the beginning of the gun control movement. Here is the released statement:
 

"Sen. Cornyn like most Americans is grieving with the families of the children and innocent individuals killed in Newtown Friday," Sandlin stated in an email. "While there will be a time for policy discussion, out of respect to those families, now is not the time. He has listed various ways to support the community of Newtown on his web site and remains focused on supporting this community in mourning."

Cornyn shames all Texans with this completely transparent move to make those of us who are making strong arguments not to let this tragedy go unanswered look like disrespectful louts. His crocodile tears fool no one.

In his disingenuous statement it is Senator Box Turtle who is disrespecting the victims of Newtown.

Here It Comes: Subsidizing Religious Schools

State Senator Dan Patrick will chair the Texas Senate committee on Education in the next legislative session. And that, to many of us educators, was a signal that school vouchers will again become an issue next year. And this time, it is assumed that it will be steamrolled through the legislature like the redistricting maps and the school-starving budget were in the previous session.

 

So it came as somewhat of a surprise to me that Patrick is going about the subsidization of religious institutions in a whole new way – through tax credits.

It seems Patrick’s plan is to offer up to 25% of the total tax liabilities of Texas businesses as a tax credit if they donate cash to private school scholarship programs.

These scholarship programs would benefit those in low-performing schools who could then enroll in private schools. And for private schools, read parochial schools.

To no one’s surprise the plan has the endorsement of about 90 percent of all private school organizations, many of which are religious in nature, and the rest of which are exclusive rich kid schools.

These tax credits, you know, either have to be made up by taxing someone else, or by cuts in state services – the majority of which is either health or education.

The agenda, it seems, is to support tax exempt for- profit schools at the expense of cuts to programs that Dan Patrick doesn’t like.

So the only thing that is different, here, is that the impact to schools is less direct, but there nonetheless, and religious institutions get a huge boost in donations because through state tax credits.

Taxpayers will end up paying for things that the business taxes don’t pay for, and in return they won’t get benefits from their own tax payments in terms of public education.

Isn’t it funny how these Texas Republicans are going to fix the problems in public education? It reminds me of how we saved Vietnam: in order to save Vietnam we had to destroy it.

 

Pistol Packin Perry Pimps for NRA

Well, the National Rifle Association has been conspicuously silent since last Friday when 20 first graders were massacred by a crazed gunman wielding the tools that they like to lobby for- semi-automatic weapons.

 

But here in Texas who needs the NRA when we have Pistol Packin’ Coyote Shootin’ Rick Perry to promote gun sales in his state?

Rick Perry is willing to let the local ISDs in his state decide whether or not their teachers and staff should carry concealed weapons to work every day. He even cited a district that allows this very thing, Harrold ISD the first such school district in the country.

The craziness just gets crazier, doesn’t it? These people simply double down on stupid.

I say Perry doesn’t go far enough.

Why limit gun toting to teachers and staff? What’s wrong with kids bringing their nines to school in their backpacks? They are, after all, the main targets, aren’t they?

And why limit it to just semi-automatic weapons? What’s wrong with bringing in pipe bombs? You can’t buy hand grenades at the local gun shop yet, well not legally anyway, but you can still make some good old black powder pipe bombs.

We can even create pipe bomb building in the science curriculum.

Safety goggles will be a must for that one, though.

Maybe This Time…

Maybe this time, now that we have massacred 1^st graders in the news, maybe this time we can get something done about guns that have no earthly reason to exist other than to massacre innocents.

 

It is tragic that it takes this kind of vile action to do something, but in reading the news today I think it’s actually going to happen.

And by what measure to I make this projection? This snippet that I have excised from a piece in the Huffington Post:

“After high-profile shootings, debate over gun control can cause consumer demand for guns to rise, government records have shown. Industry experts say fears that stricter laws will follow such incidents push people to stock up on firearms before regulators can clamp down. But last weekend’s spike in business was unprecedented, gun shop owners in California, Connecticut and North Carolina told HuffPost.”

See? It has happened before after news of a gun massacre. Americans go to gun shops and gun shows after some people get killed in case there is a restriction on guns as a result. This time, the turnout was, ”unprecedented.”

People must really believe that this time it’s going to happen. If that is the case then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, doesn’t it?

Let the Conversation Begin

I am getting tired of these “so-called” cooler heads asking us all to stop talking about gun control in these sad days following the tragedy in Connecticut. We need to pray for the families, they say. Do anything but solve the problem.

 

It happened after Columbine. In the wake of the Columbine tragedy, Littleton Colorado was in a state of shock and “cooler heads” cried out against making this a political event. It was a tragedy, they said, and should not be besmirched by gaining a political leg up.

So we were quiet.

And except for Michael Moore’s documentary, nothing was ever said again about what to do about the availability of weapons capable of killing scores of people very quickly and efficiently.

It happened again after Virginia Tech, when Cho’s brutal assault on his classmates with semi-automatic pistols. “Cooler heads” dominated the conversation, and again we were admonished to remember the fallen and not to disrespect their deaths with calls to limit gun ownership.

And it’s happening right now.

The only problem with the argument is that it never became time to talk about how we can end the violence. We all moved on to the new flavor of the month. And the arms industry remained profitable, and the NRA leadership kept their cushy jobs.

So this time we have to just say NO. Say NO to the cooler heads. Say NO to those who want to end the conversation before it starts.

The dead are crying out. Avenge us. Don’t let this happen to a single other soul. Not to start talking about how to put a stopper on gun violence in this country disrespects the tragic deaths of schoolchildren and educators.

Say no. Let the conversation begin.