The US Military: Defending your Right to Tell Bad Jokes

Well it looks like the Palin/Letterman feud mentioned here awhile ago is finally over, and as I predicted, Letterman had some more apologies to make. So he made the apology with a very classy observation that it wasn’t the Palins’ fault that they had misinterpreted his remarks, it was his.

Now I was wondering what the Palin response would be, thinking that something along the lines of “apology accepted” would be likely.

And as I thought, that is pretty much what she did.

But you know, Sarah Palin is running for President in 2012, so you have to wonder how she was going to milk this for all it is worth – and look presidential to boot. So, no, she didn’t leave it at that she went to the GOP playbook and pulled out #18: say something good about the military.

Because you know, Democrats don’t like the military, or so Republicans will tell you. As a matter of fact, Republicans have a real love for the military to the extent that they recently sent them to two simultaneous wars. So every once in awhile they pull out #18, even when it seems somewhat disconnected.

As it did in this case.

From Politico:

“‘Letterman certainly has the right to 'joke' about whatever he wants to, and thankfully we have the right to express our reaction,’ Palin continued in the statement. ‘And this is all thanks to our U.S. military women and men putting their lives on the line for us to secure America's right to free speech — in this case, may that right be used to promote equality and respect.’”

But you have to give her credit. Who but Sarah Palin can think of how to relate an apology from David Letterman, something you don’t hear very often, to praise of the service of “women and men putting their lives on the line.” You do have to give her a little applause for that.

Because no one else has ever thought of that.

So next time you see a soldier in uniform, walk up to him or her and offer your expression of gratitude for securing David Letterman’s right to tell bad jokes dealing with sexual congress between teenaged girls and mature men.

I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.

The Obamadomino Effect

Who Says The Obama Effect Failed in Iran?

Now because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won in last Friday’s election, people in the media are saying that this is evidence that The Obama Effect, given credit for the election of pro-Western moderates in Lebanon after his Cairo speech, had no effect on Persians.

I beg to differ.

It was an Obama Effect in reverse that actually affected the outcome in Iran.

What about this? What about the Supreme Leader in Iran, upon seeing what happened in Lebanon, and hearing in the news about hopes that the Obama speech to the Muslim world will have similar effect in the Iranian elections simply chose to be the spoiler here.

Chose to be the spoiler by commanding the vote count to be rigged so that Obama would be denied another victory - in his country now.

And chose to do it in such a way that a rigged election was obvious to anyone.

After all, Iran and the United States have one thing in common. The voters who support the hard liners live in the rural districts of Iran. They are also less well educated. Contrast that to the urban voters -70% of all voters in Iran live in cities - who are more pro-Western and better educated.

Polls external to Iran were showing that Ahmadinejad would be turned out of office by a significant margin.

And finally, how does it happen that millions of paper ballots are all counted within hours of the closing of the polls? We Americans are used to seeing national elections results by 10 PM (as in last November). But we have machines to count these votes. They don’t.

No, the election was rigged, and it was rigged because the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wanted to ensure that the Obama Effect didn’t have the same effect in Iran as it did in Lebanon. And now I see it that former congressman Joe Scarborough has the same idea.

And now we are seeing a continuation of The Effect in the 2 days of riots taking place in Tehran. And Ayatollah Ali Khamenei caving to the Mousavi request for an investigation of the election.

This Effect seems to be evolving before our very eyes. It might even have to be renamed.

I nominate “The Obamadomino Effect.”

FEC is Gutless: Makes Incredibly Bad Call

Boy, Tom DeLay sure could have used a Federal Ethics Commission like the one we have right now. Heck, he might still be in office.

Incredibly, the FEC issued a ruling on a request by Pete Visclosky (D – IND 1) to be able to tap into his $909,000 campaign fund in order to pay his legal bills, allowing him to do just that.

What legal bills, you might ask.

Well it seems that the Justice Department investigated some fundraising habits by and for Visclosky by a now-defunct group called PMA.

From Politico:

“The Justice Department is investigating PMA over allegations that the firm and its founder, former House Appropriations Committee aide Paul Maggliocchetti, used ‘straw man’ donors to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to lawmakers, including Visclosky.”

“PMA’s offices were raided by FBI agents in November, and the once highly successful firm has now gone out of business.”

Shades of TRMPAC and ARMPAC, huh?

And now, thanks to the FEC ruling, Visclosky can make use of that filthy lucre to pay his lawyers that are defending him against the Justice Department.

Here is the gist of their ruling (also from Politico):

“The allegations concern Representative Visclosky's campaign and duties as a Federal officeholder because Representative Visclosky allegedly received the contributions in question as part of his campaign, and his alleged actions regarding the congressional appropriations process are directly related to his duties as a Federal officeholder,” FEC lawyers wrote in a draft “advisory opinion” released today.”

“Therefore, based on the representations made in the advisory opinion request and accompanying news articles, the Commission concludes that the legal fees and expenses associated with the Federal investigation would not exist irrespective of Representative Visclosky's campaign or duties as a Federal officeholder.”

Get it? Now if Visclosky was hauled into court for, say, beating his wife, those funds would be off limits to him. However, because the allegations have to do with his ethical compass as a federal legislator, and he got the funds because he campaigned to be a federal legislator, then it’s OK to use them.

Last November we were all looking for Change, but I don’t think anyone had this kind of change in mind.

Governor Rick Perry: Egg Meet Face

How is it, I must ask, that Rick Perry is going to come out of this whole unemployment stimulus rejection thing, coupled, obviously with his recent assault on voters’ rights, smelling like anything else but a stink bug?

In his statement last March when he refused to accept $550 million in federal stimulus money, funds specifically set aside to enable Texas to help its growing list of unemployed workers, Perry was his typical Texas chauvinist self. From KTVT in a story posted last March 13th:

“If Texas were to accept these funds from Obama, my view is that it would make Texas less competitive than the other states, and it would hurt the prosperity and employment prospects for the citizens of the state of Texas”

Well the State Senate voted to accept the funds, but the bill was stalled in the House because, you know, the Republican love affair with the Voter ID bill that sought to disenfranchise the poor and the elderly.

So any hopes that Perry had that he ultimately would gain these funds anyway, without looking like he was giving in to a proffered Democratic handout were dashed.

And now, because Texas’ “prosperity and employment prospects” failed to materialize in the ensuing months, with Texas jobless ranks swelling from 139,592 to 353,881 within a single year – that’s nearly 600 jobless claims filed per day – Perry now finds that the state’s unemployment coffers are nearly empty.

So yesterday Perry announced that Texas was going to borrow $160 million in a federal - that is, Yankee -interest free loan so the state could continue to provide unemployment checks. And the word is that this borrow and spend behavior is likely to persist for awhile, and Perry could end up asking for as much as $493 million between now and October.

Nice job, Perry.

And how, pray tell, are we to pay the feds back? Well, according to The Chron They are going to issue $2 billion in state bonds. From the Chron:

“The state ultimately is expected to have to take out up to $2 billion in bonds to repay the federal loans and spread the burden of higher taxes on businesses out for four or five years.”

And how much will these bonds cost Texas in interest payments it will make on these bonds? State Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin claims it is going to cost Texas an additional $100 million in interest.

That’s $100 million tacked on to $493 million. $593 million total cost to Texas. In short, it is going to cost Texas nearly $600 million to take care of its unemployed this year.

So instead of getting $550 million in a federal bailout, the state will instead spend $600 million in money it doesn’t have.

In short, Rick Perry and his Texas chauvinism cost Texas over a billion dollars.

I wonder what his teabagging base will have to say about that?

Sale of Kretek Banned in America

To anyone who has lived in or visited Indonesia, the country that was once called home by President Barack Obama, the smell of a burning kretek or clove cigarette is a poignant reminder of the exotic smells that permeate that country.

Well, clove cigarette smoke, mixed with the smell of burning kerosene lamps, barbecueing satay . . . and sweat.

So it became somewhat of a novelty to me today when I read in the news that among the things that HR 1256, the tobacco bill that just passed both houses of Congress and is en route to Barack Obama’s desk for his signature, is the ban on the sale of clove cigarettes.

Because clove cigarettes, a rarity here, are among the classification of sweetened cigarettes that appeal to children.

The whole gamut of provisions within HR 1256 are listed at MSNBC’s website. Among them, they write this:

“Smokers, particularly the younger crowd, will find they can no longer buy cigarettes sweetened by candy flavors or any herb or spices such as strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon or vanilla.”

Indonesians love their clove cigarettes. Everyone who smokes there smoke clove cigarettes. It is a huge industry. As a matter of fact the maker of the most popular brand of kretek, Djarum, employs over 75,000 people at its factories. They have over 250,000 hectares of arable land planted in tobacco and the nicotine levels in the tobacco varies depending on where the tobacco grows. One Djarum brand is known to have the highest concentration of nicotine in the world.

And one more fun fact about clove cigarettes. Indonesia, known to Europeans in a bygone era as “The Spice Islands,” uses so many cloves to produce their cigarettes that it is a net importer of that spice.

But like I said, you don’t smell it very often around here And I guess websites like this one will have to stop selling and shipping Djarum to America

And it’s about time.

Had Enough of the Palins Yet?

Is it just me or has anyone else simply gotten fed up with the Palins of Alaska? Sure David Letterman did not serve his own self interest or those of teenaged girls for that matter with his off-color remark that implicitly sanctioned sexual intercourse between teenaged girls and mature men. He probably has more apologizing to do on that.

But I am getting fed up at the hypocritical path that the Palins have ventured down, where on the one hand they decry the attention directed at their children in the media, and on the other they foster and feed that attention at every turn.

Because using your minor-aged children for your own political gain or as a lure for the limelight is just wrong. Todd and Sarah Palin are surely the parents from H-E-Double Hockey Sticks.

So how have the Palins capitalized on their own children’s innocence? Three ways that I can count now.

Like using your newborn son, born with Down Syndrome as a poster child for why choosing abortion is the wrong choice.

Like using your 17 year old eldest daughter in a morality campaign promoting abstinence over contraception.

And now using the middle child, a 14 year old, as an object to imply that David Letterman is a pederast and should not be in the same room, city or state as her daughter.

From MSNBC:

“Letterman did give an apology of sorts later in the week when it became clear that it was Palin’s younger daughter, Willow, 14, who had come to town — not Willow’s older sister, Bristol, who has broken up with the father of her infant son. But Palin declined Letterman’s offer to appear on his show, saying ‘it would be wise to keep Willow away from’ him.”

“On TODAY Friday, Lauer asked the governor if she had been implying that Willow would not be safe around the late-night comedian. ‘Take it however you want to take it,’ Palin replied. ‘It was a comment that came from the heart.’”

That one was as over the top as Letterman’s comment, but as far as I could see, Letterman didn’t use his 5-year old son to make his point. Not like Palin made her point with the use of her 14-year old daughter

A point that is tantamount to an accusation.

Karl Rove On Being Dour

Last weekend we saw the president take his wife out to dinner in Greenwich Village, then they took in a Broadway play.

Now my first thought upon hearing of this was “now isn’t that refreshing.” The president knows how to relax. And he and his wife appear to creatures of a cultured background. Really, I don’t remember having seen this in a president and a first lady since I was a child when Jack and Jackie Kennedy brought culture and grace to the White House.

We Americans were proud to have such a young and vibrant couple in the White House. And now we seem to have that once again.

But there is one difference between then and now. Back in the early ‘60’s I don’t recall such a vitriolic spew of bile from Republicans over how Kennedy was using American taxpayer dollars every time he went out for the evening. But they certainly came out of the woodwork with their criticism of Obama's outing even before the Broadway play ended.

The Republican National Committee issued this statement:

“As President Obama prepares to wing into Manhattan’s theater district on Air Force One to take in a Broadway show, GM is preparing to file bankruptcy and families across America continue to struggle to pay their bills. ... Have a great Saturday evening – even if you’re not jetting off somewhere at taxpayer expense.”

All of this bile inspired Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to defend the right of the president to treat himself and his wife with a night out on the town every once in awhile.

From the New York Times:

“As a taxpayer, I am most happy to contribute to domestic and international date nights. As Arthur Schlesinger noted in his diaries, the White House tends to drive its occupants nuts. So some respite from the pressure is clearly a healthy thing. Not as much respite as W. took, bicycling and vacationing through all the disasters that President Obama is now stuck fixing — spending a total of 490 days in the tumbleweed isolation of Crawford and rarely deigning to sightsee as he traveled the world.”

And something Maureen Dowd said, maybe something in the above paragraph, really must have teed off Karl Rove because the day after her column appeared, Karl Rove went on Fox News and complained to the news entertainers there that Dowd was “twisted” and “deranged.”

From Politico:

“I think Maureen Dowd is a bitter, twisted, deranged columnist for The New York Times who misses no opportunity to show her disdain for the conservative side of the aisle. I actually went to an editorial board meeting at The New York Times and wasted a couple bucks on some flowers to give Maureen Dowd ... give her a smile on her face. And that didn't even work. This is a dour, downbeat liberal.”

And don’t forget Pulitzer Prize winning downbeat liberal.

I don’t think Karl Rove gets it. Sure she’s a little reserved in her mien, but “dour?” Is he kidding? This big, fat, bald, pasty-faced, fluffy old white guy is calling Maureen Dowd “dour?” If Karl Rove wants to see the epitome of the meaning of “dour” he need only gaze into a mirror.

And I really don’t think Karl Rove got the message when he gave Maureen Dowd those flowers. This Texan with the social skills of a Neanderthal actually thought that he would elicit a smile from Dowd when all he was really doing was offending her.

Really Rove? Flowers?

I would have offered her a cigar.

The Obama Effect

It is called “The Obama Effect” and it is defined as how society has changed with the election of our 44^th president. Changes that are definite improvements like how Obama’s “Muslim Speech” in Cairo, Egypt may just have influenced national elections in Lebanon, held just days later, that resulted in a repudiation of Hezbollah in favor of western-leaning moderate candidates. Or how black test takers in New York are closing the performance gap in a 20 minute test – a gap between the scores of white students compared to black students that no longer exists. The research shows that the gap was closed by Obama’s example of higher academic achievement.

The Obama Effect also has its negative side. Like how white supremacists are becoming more shrill and more active. Like the actions of an 89 year old man who today shot a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. An act that is such a one off deal that it simply must be associated with the fact that we have a black family living in the White House now.

And The Obama Effect is also affecting news programs in some very surprising ways. It is no secret that right wing radio show hosts are getting more shrill in their rhetoric, but this very contentious exchange between MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer and rightwingnut radio show host John Ziegler is just the stuff of The Obama Effect.

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Throughout the exchange Brewer was cordial and professional to a fault. Ziegler, on the other hand had bile to spew from his first sentence to his last. Brewer even had to ask him, twice, whether he wanted to continue with the interview, and you could see the consternation build as she tried to keep it cordial and professional while Ziegler did everything in his power to make himself look like a snarky clown.

My favorite part? Right at the end when Contessa Brewer spoke to her producer on the microphone as Ziegler refused to shut up: “Cut the mike, please.”

In Harris County Voter Fraud Takes On a New Meaning

Perhaps it is appropriate that the assistant director of voter registration for Harris County, one Ed Johnson, testified twice this past legislative session at hearings on the infamous and now dead Voter ID bill. The bill that its Republican touts claimed would eliminate rampant voter fraud in Texas.

Appropriate in that as it has been revealed b y The Lone Star Project and aired at KHOU, Ed Johnson is something of an expert in voter fraud.

You could say that Ed Johnson is the King of Fraud, vis-à-vis things that have to do with voting.

Because in his role as assistant director of voter registration, Johnson is responsible for purging voters from voter rolls, and is the guy who not only opens sealed provisional ballots but is principally responsible for counting them. Or not counting them.

But Johnson has another job. A job that he does not openly advertise. As it turns out, Johnson is a paid political hack of the right wing of the Republican Party. You know, the people who pushed the Voter ID bill in the last legislative session, to the detriment of several other bills that would have had a more meaningful positive impact on the lives of Texans.

In addition to his day job at the Harris County offices, Johnson works for a company called Campaign Data Systems or CDS. The company is owned by State Rep Dwayne Bohac, but its website lists Ed Johnson as the principal technical contact person [but don't bother clicking on the hyperlink - since the original posting of this piece State Rep. Dwayne Bohac has taken down his company's website].

Now it’s OK, in my opinion, to have two jobs. It may even be OK to have a job that is inter-related with your other job, although in this case, the ethics of it is a little questionable. But what is not OK is to have that situation and not disclose it to anyone.

Not disclose it to say, the voting public. Not disclose it to say, the Senate committee on Elections, the body that invited Johnson to testify before it on the Voter ID bill. Twice.

And that is not just “not OK,” it’s odious. It is yet another confirmation of my suspicion that Republicans will preferentially lie, cheat and steal their way into office rather than run an honest campaign.

And of this I am certain. As long as Ed Johnson continues to be employed by Harris County, voters should doubt that their votes are being honestly counted.

Fort Bend CAD Lacks a Sense of Timing

Acting in its own self-interest, the Fort Bend Central Appraisal District has voted to build itself some new fancy digs on 12 acres of land it hopes to acquire, then spend $6.4 million in taxpayer money to build the new building.

Coming on the heels of a looming deadline for taxpayers to file protests for the district’s recent property appraisals, this move coming at this time is not the smartest thing I have seen operating in county government.

See, the Republican-dominated county government plays a little game here in Fort Bend. They run for office on promises of lowering the property tax rates, and then they get elected.

And then they lower the tax rates.

But in Fort Bend, property tax revenue is up. How is that possible?

Well for one thing, the county’s open spaces are rapidly disappearing as more and more arable land gets built on. Farmland is taxed at one rate, but a personal residence is taxed at a whole new, and higher rate.

But that’s just the half of it. The other half is property value appraisal. Property is taxed at so much per $100 of assessed value. Increase the appraisal and you increase the taxes owed (while the tax rate stays low, as promised).

Now I wrote here not too long ago that the county was going to have to tighten its belt because property values are going down in Fort Bend. Down because sellers can’t sell because buyers can’t get loans.

Well the Fort Bend CAD begs to differ.

Here in Fort Bend County, they say, property values have gone up and up and up. This year a record number of taxpayers have filed protests over their appraisals.

Bringing us back to the Fort Bend CAD’s sparkly new building. What is wrong with the one that they are in? Why do they need to build a new larger facility? Well it all comes down to those darn whiney taxpayers.

From FortBendNow:

“The number of property tax protests has increased from about 9,800 per year 10 years ago to more than 54,000 per year, CAD Board Chairman Lee Duggan III said in a statement accompanying the resolution.”

“‘To accommodate the added workload, staff has increased 66%,” Duggan said. ‘Although the appraisal district has been able to effectively control costs, their ability to currently operate efficiently is negatively impacted by the lack of adequate office space. In addition, taxpayers are experiencing reduced levels of customer service due to inadequate meeting space and parking.’”

Get it? The Fort Bend CAD needs a new bigger facility because their appraisals are bringing them too much business.

Well this exemplary sense of timing is going to earn the CAD some stiff rebukes. There is already a resolution drafted in the commissioners court, courtesy of Precinct 1 commissioner Richard Morrison, a resolution that will be voted on tomorrow. Here is the business end of it:

“Whereas many businesses and landowners are suffering because of the economy in Fort Bend County and the nation, and whereas some appraisals have risen by as much as 2,300%, and whereas there exists overwhelming public opposition to the proposed New Facility, now therefore be it resolved that this court joins with the community in its strong opposition to the currently proposed New Facility and pledges to seek and pursue more reasonable alternatives.”

I can think of one reasonable alternative. Scale back on some of the more ridiculous appraisals that the CAD makes. Scale back on that and what results are fewer appraisal protests. When you raise the appraised value of property that can’t possibly sell, it speaks volumes for the nonsense that goes on in that office. Taxpayers know that simply living in Texas allows them to get away from having to pay state income taxes. They know that government needs capital to run itself. They know that death and taxes are both inevitable.

But I think they want their deaths postponed for awhile, and they want their taxes to be fair.

Republican Government = Poor Management Skills

It has been in and out of the news for weeks and months now. The party of Reagan is slowly but solidly on a march to the right, leaving behind them moderates and independents who now have no official home.

Or one that they want to call home, anyway.

But what is slowly coming out now is that Republicans, when in power, aren’t just extravagant with taxpayer money, they are absolutely incompetent in managing it. This is a far cry from the traditional view of conservatives, who were, in a bygone era, remarkably stingy with taxpayer’s money.

The Chron today posted this AP article by Richard Lardner that reports on some of the findings of the Wartime Contracting Commission, which issued its first findings to congress this week in a 111-page document.

“In its first report to Congress, the Wartime Contracting Commission presents a bleak assessment of how tens of billions of dollars have been spent since 2001. The 111-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, documents poor management, weak oversight, and a failure to learn from past mistakes as recurring themes in wartime contracting.”

One favorite pastime of Republicans is the whole idea of “outsourcing.” Outsourcing is when you have a job that needs doing, and rather than have a government employee actually do the job, you hire a contractor to do it.

Because that saves money and is a good business practice that has worked in the private sector.

Fine and dandy, but what works in the private sector may be problematic in the public sector. Government doesn’t do this very well because there is no accountability in the public sector as there is in the private sector.

In the private sector, if you make a bad business decision you get fired or demoted. In the public sector if you make a bad business decision you get promoted, transferred to a more cushy job, or both.

But that’s not even the half of it. Business decisions were made and executed, but no one was there to write it down.

“U.S. reliance on contractors has grown to ‘unprecedented proportions,’ says the bipartisan commission, established by Congress last year. More than 240,000 private sector employees are supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands more work for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development."

"But the government has no central data base of who all these contractors are, what services they provide, and how much they’re paid. The Pentagon has failed to provide enough trained staff to watch over them, creating conditions for waste and corruption, the commission says.”

So this commission did a good job, as do most of them. Commissions however, while being very good at navel self-examination, don’t do such a good job at laying blame at anyone’s feet. And that is what needs doing here. Finding the culprits and getting them off the payroll.

Because if you have poor management skills in the private sector, you will soon find yourself another unemployment statistic.

It’s a Tie

It’s June 6. D-Day Plus 23,742. 65 years ago the largest single invasion during war took place on a 50 mile wide strip of beach on the coast of Normandy. Many lost their lives on that day.

The day is commemorated at Pointe du Hoc on what was then called Omaha Beach and this year veterans who are getting up there in age are going to make the trip back perhaps for the last time.

So it’s a little poignant.

Also in the news is that our master orator, Barack Obama will give a speech there during the memorial ceremony. A speech that will be compared to arguably the most eloquent speech Ronald Reagan ever delivered, a speech that took place on the 40^th anniversary, back in 1984.

So we have playing out today a battle of the communicators, so to speak.

But I believe that the playing field isn’t exactly level. Back in 1984 America had a degree of respect in the world. We were the good guys. We proved we were by opting out of a war in the Middle East after being severely stung by the group Islamic Jihad which planted two truck bombs in front of a marine barracks in Beirut on October 23, 1983.

Had George W. Bush been president then, I truly believe we would still be fighting a war there even now.

No, Obama goes into this competition with a disadvantage. America shamed itself by becoming the world’s bully and by throwing the world into a global recession because of naked greed. Reagan had the high moral ground. Obama is still on the slope of it.

So he actually has to deliver a speech that is better than Reagan’s (or really, Peggy Noonan’s) in order to even come to a tie with Reagan’s delivery.

And I think he did and I think they did.

Tie, that is.

Don’t take my word for it, though. See for yourself. I have two embedded videos below. One is of Obama’s speech as shown on MSNBC, and the other I found of Reagan’s entire speech at You Tube courtesy of the Reagan Library.

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"Open Carry" Your Handgun to Church

It was over a year ago, early April 2008, when then candidate Barack Obama was secretly recorded at a northern California fundraiser and he made some candid off the cuff remarks on small town America to his well heeled audience. To wit:

“Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not.”

“And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

And everyone piled on top. Obama was not only skewered by his principal opponent, Hillary Clinton, but also by the McCain campaign (which, as we found out later, was simply defending their base).

And guess what? Just downriver from small town in Pennsylvania we find a small town in Kentucky, with a small church and a small congregation whose pastor is celebrating the 4^th of July (on June 21st) and the 2^nd Amendment to the US Constitution by inviting his flock to bring their handguns to church with them. To “open carry” them, meaning to strap on their gun belts and carry their beloved guns openly in holsters.

From US News:

“A Louisville church is encouraging people to wear unloaded guns in their holsters to an "Open Carry Church Service" later this month, our sister paper, The Courier-Journal, reports. Participants will be able to enter a raffle to win a free handgun, hear patriotic music and listen to talks by operators of gun stores and firing ranges.”

Did I just hear a huge verification of Barack Obama’s often vilified statement on small town America clinging to their guns and their religion?

To their credit, some local religious leaders are openly criticizing this plan, causing the pastor, Pastor Ken Pagano of New Bethel Church, to backpedal slightly and ask that the guns that the congregation brings not be loaded.

Because as we all know, guns don’t kill people, bullets kill people.

I have always wondered which kind of handgun the Lord and Savior of the World, Jesus Christ would have preferred. Would He have been a fan of the old style Roscoe? Or would He have packed a Nine? I just can’t fathom it. Mainly because when I think of handguns, and the sole purpose of handguns, to kill people, I just don’t see Jesus “open carrying” anything but a Remington deer rifle.

Birds of a Feather: State Rep Wayne Christian

Question: why would anyone voluntarily spend 140 days every two years in Austin getting laws passed for a measly $7200 per year? That, and a per diem for every day they are in session is what they get.

Oh, and maybe some benefits and percs.

Still, that isn’t a lot of money, and with a family of 4, a state representative and his or her family would surely be living below the poverty line and qualify for food stamps and free federal cheese.

So what is the draw?

Well, this week we learned what keeps State Rep. Wayne Christian attracted to the job. Sometimes you get to feather your own nest.

Take a bill that passed on the last day of the 81^st Legislature, a bill that had to do with beaches. Wayne Christian inserted an amendment to the bill that would allow owners of destroyed beach houses to rebuild their houses, even though the property the house once stood on is now within the boundaries of a public beach.

Hurricane Ike, you see, moved sand around a lot, and eroded much of the Bolivar Peninsula so that property boundaries overlapped with the public beach zone, as defined by the Open Beaches Act, which defines a public beach as the area extending between the line of mean low tide to the line of vegetation bordering on the Gulf of Mexico.

Later, State Rep Hamilton inserted language that “bracketed” the area of Texas that the bill applied to. Bracketed it to Bolivar Peninsula in general, but to 12 properties specifically.

12 properties which now extended onto the public beach.

And the reason State Rep Christian inserted that amendment and Hamilton narrowly defined?

One of those twelve properties is owned by Wayne Christian.

Yes, that’s right, in a rarely seen event right out in the open, we observe a state representative feathering his own nest by pushing legislation through that will directly benefit himself.

Well, himself and his 11 neighbors.

But wait it gets better. Wayne Christian doesn’t represent the Bolivar Peninsula. He just has (well . . . had) a beach house there.

Christian denies any conflict of interest.

From the Chron:

“This is not an unethical, deceptive method of doing anything,” Christian said. “This is the way it’s been ever since government was invented.”

Well he got the first sentence in his statement wrong and the second one right. Proving that State Rep. Christian has been in Austin so long that his sense of right and wrong, of corruption and honesty, is hopelessly muddled.

The bill has yet to be signed and that takes us to the Texas Land Commissioner, Jerry Patterson, who is hopping mad about this.

Again, from the Chron:

“Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson has asked Gov. Rick Perry to veto the bill containing the amendment. The bill has not yet crossed the governor’s desk, and he will not make a decision until he sees it, said Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger.”

“I don’t think building houses on the beach, with the waters of the Gulf beneath them, is a good idea or good public policy,” Patterson said. “

If the governor signs the bill, Patterson vowed that he would not enforce the amendment. “My option is just to say, ‘Screw you, Wayne Christian,’ because the Legislature didn’t pass this, one guy passed this,” he said.”

“Patterson said the Legislature would have to impeach him if lawmakers wanted the provision enforced.”

So while thousands are out of a job here in Texas, and will not get to benefit from the $555 million in federal unemployment stimulus dollars because of Republican shenanigans in the late legislative session, Wayne Christian found the time and the votes to get himself an exemption on his beach house so he can rebuild it on public land.

Unfortunately if this was a beach in, say, California, this would make national news. But because it is Texas we are talking about here, it’s a yawner of a news item.

New Hampshire Governor Signs Gay Marriage Bill

Just a few minutes ago it went up on the wire services that New Hampshire will become the 6^th state to allow gays to marry within the state’s borders.

The bill, first passing in the senate, then narrowly in the state house, was signed into law by New Hampshire Governor John Lynch this afternoon. He previously threatened to veto the bill unless it was amended so that churches could not be forced to officiate at a gay marriage because of their opposition to it.

A moot point, really. Who on Earth would want to get married in a church that viewed you as an abomination before God?

This follows on from the lead of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont and Iowa who have all become safe zones for gay marriage in the United States.

I think the quote of the day goes to State Rep. Anthony DiFruscia, R-Windham, who in the hour-long debate very beautifully explained why this bill must pass.

As found in the Washington Post:

“If you have no choice as to your sex, male or female; if you have no choice as to your color; if you have no choice as to your sexual orientation; then you have to be protected and given the same opportunity for life, liberty and happiness.”

People, gay people are not gay by choice. They are gay at birth. If you don’t believe that then you are going to have to accept the fact that there are people out there who choose a sexual orientation that is immediately disadvantageous to them in almost every aspect of their lives as they interact with society.

People are killed, fired, not hired, snubbed, beaten, and ostracized all because of their un-Christian “sexual preference.”

Yeah, that happens every day.

Sine Die and How Texas Education Fared

Well the state legislature adjourned and I was looking at the damage today. Mainly because I’ve not been following the legislature as closely as in the past, and also because as a public school educator, I have a real interest in how Texas treats education.

And educators.

Here are the education-related bills that passed.

HB 1, the budget bill ended with appropriation of $182.3 billion. Public education got a large slice of that and even netted a $1.9 billion increase for education over the 2007 session..

Among other things HB 3646 raises the minimum pay of a Texas public school teacher by $800, or about 55 cents per hour.

Yet another bill will mandate a decrease in the number of students that University of Texas at Austin must admit under the 10% rule. 8% is the new 10%.

HB 55, a ban on the use of wireless communication devices while driving cars in a school zone was passed in the House 138 to 4. Apparently it is a ticketable offense but no set fine was specified.

And then there is HB 772, a new requirement that all of the 4 public meetings of the Texas state school board meetings be broadcast over the internet. That’s right, there will be live audio and video of your school board arguing about whether it says anything in the US Constitution about the separation of church and state.

And oh, yes, $22 million was appropriated to renovate the governor’s mansion. I know, this is not education related but I just thought you’d like to know, if you haven’t heard already, how Texas is using its federal stimulus money.

And that’s it.

I know.

Your state legislature inaction.

UPDATE: Someone who left a comment on this post pointed out that TRS is not the same as ERS. You could have knocked me over with a feather, I didn't know that. So that part of the post was deleted. Now, would someone please tell me why state employees have one retirement system, and teachers have their own separate one?

Anti-Abortionist Kills Dr. Tiller

No wonder we had a religious fanatic kill a medical doctor as he was handing out leaflets at his church yesterday.Sunday.

Christians are as conflicted about killing their fellow man as much as anyone else. They can rationalize the taking of human life just like the pros.

You would think not. Not when you have a Commandment written in stone by the hand of God that “You shall not kill.” He didn’t even qualify it.

Like “You shall not kill people.” I think He must have thought it would be a little pedantic to qualify just what organism He was referring to.

People just knew.

But that wasn’t the end of it. In the ensuing chapters of the Old Testament we find that God “smote Israel” because King David ordered a census (1 Chronicles 21:7). Smote is past tense for smite which is Bible-talk for kill.

Or like when God delivered the people of Bashan into the hands of the Israelites and they smote them “until none was left to him remaining.” (Deuteronomy 3:3)

Or like when God coached the Israelites into how they could subdue the city of Jericho and they followed His advice “and they utterly destroyed all that was in he city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.” (Joshua 6: 21).

Or, and this is the most telling instance, where God ordered the slaying of the worshippers of Baal as they attended services in their place of worship (II Kings 10: 18-25).

So you see? Despite the fact that Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior of the World requested in his ethic of reciprocity: “whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,” we have all sorts of biblical precedence to go through when you decide whether or not to waste an abortionist.

Because ultimately if you are looking for rationalization for offing one of your fellow human beings, I can think of no better way to do that than to consult the Christian Bible.

Republicans Soft-pedal Sotomayor Comments Without Criticizing Racist Remarks

A classic way to politically attack an opponent is to be, yourself, a quiet calm force for reason and truth, while at the same time withholding commentary on the remarks of more poorly behaving unprincipled individuals. Individuals who have no scruples about applying wildly untrue and inappropriate vitriol to the opponent in question.

And as this AP story illustrates, this line of attack appears to be shaping up as the main stratagem of the GOP.

From AP:

“Leading GOP senators on Sunday passed up the chance to stifle racially charged criticism of Sonia Sotomayor by fellow Republicans as the party out of power in Washington struggled to develop a unified political strategy to oppose the first Hispanic nominated to the Supreme Court.”

“Sotomayor, an appeals court judge, already faces scrutiny from conservatives over a 2001 remark that her experiences as a Latina would lead her to better decisions than a white man. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has called her a "racist" while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, saying a "Latina woman racist" is unsuitable for the court, has called for withdrawing the nomination.”

“The Senate's top Republicans didn't disavow those assessments, although they urged different language to oppose President Barack Obama's first nominee to the high court.”

And if you look at the individual statements of Republicans who have been talking up these points, you have to agree.

All except for John Cornyn, who, as described here, criticized the tone being set by Limbaugh and Gingrich.

“I just don't think it's appropriate. I certainly don't endorse it. I think it's wrong.”

So maybe not all of them are eschewing total honesty, and are risking the Wrath of Rush in criticizing him. Or maybe Cornyn didn’t get the memo.

I look at this stratagem like I look at Republicans who defend waterboarding by pointing out that doing it saved hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of lives.

That waterboarding is torture they do seem to be coming around in accepting. They seem to have acquired voices of reason. Only they nullify the whole reasonableness thing by failing to condemn those who ordered waterboarding as criminals because they were protecting our country.

Speaking with voices of reason and rationality on the Sotomayor nomination without condemning others who revel in calling a middle aged Latina a racist is two-faced.

Hypocrisy on a high order.

Sheer duplicity.

Textbook definitions of the party that continues to dig the hole that they are standing in deeper and deeper.