Barack Obama: Warrior

I didn’t vote for my President, Barack Obama, because I thought he would be a great “War President.” I actually voted for him because I thought he would make a spectacular “Peace President.”

A Peace President to bring two wars to an end.

A Peace President to bring our troops home alive and safe.

A Peace President who will bring an end to all the death and maiming.

Not so. Not so at all. It turns out that my President, Barack Obama, has demonstrated his skills in conducting war that is far superior, in terms of results, than the guy he succeeded.

After all, he brought an end to the life of America’s biggest enemy, Osama bin Laden. His skills in statesmanship helped to bring about the end of two oppressive dictatorships in the Middle East.

Which is ironic considering Republicans have always tagged Democrats as peaceniks.

True in my case.

But not true with Barack Obama. Obama makes George W. Bush look like a liberal sob sister. Obama has overseen a record number of bomb runs by remote control drones in Pakistan (which we are not at war with).

So, yeah, if I sound disillusioned at my President, you have it right. I though he was made of softer stuff. But what I absolutely disdain is the Republican take on my President’s warrior status.

Even when he acts like them, Republicans simply will not give him his due.

Yes, Virginia, There Is an Earthquake

Funny, on the day Moammar Gaddafi took a powder and left his compound as rebels breached the compound’s walls, an earthquake registering a 5.8 on the Richter Scale hit the east coast of the United States Richmond, Virginia, to be exact. A temblor that reached right across the state line and shook Washington D.C.

What have those two events to do with each other? Nothing really. Nothing except for the fact that it is reported that people in the Pentagon thought another jet plane had been crashed into the building.

That was their first thought, I am told.

Now in California, where I hail from, when you heard a low rumble and then the ground shakes, you say to yourself “that’s an earthquake.” But on the east coast, now after 9/11, when that happens the first thing you think is that there is a terrorist attack.

In other words, the terrorists have won.

OK, you say, they don’t get that many earthquakes in Virginia, on the east coast.

Beg to differ. Here is a seismicity map of Virginia showing the epicenters of recent earthquakes.

Poll: Obama and Rick Perry are All Tied Up

I just had to read this ABC News article that reports on a poll conducted by Gallup this past week shows that if the election were held today, Barack Obama and Rick Perry would be in a tie at 47% each.

Obviously then, the Presidency would be thrown to the House of Representatives where insanity prevails.

Unless, of course, there is a question on the legality of some of the votes in some of the swing states. Then, of course, the Presidency would be thrown to the Supreme Court which these days makes the House look like a paragon of judicial sobriety.

These are two scenarios, but the chances of them coming to pass are highly unlikely.

As the article further explains, a poll taken this far away from the General Election is about as likely to be a predictive tool of who will actually win the election as a wet thumb being able to predict the path of a hurricane.

A year away from the 1980 election, polls had Jimmy Carter handily beating Ronald Reagan.

Bill Clinton was in real trouble running against Bob Dole a year out, another dead heat, until he pulled out an 8 point difference.

And George W. handily beat Al Gore a year before the elections, and that is just a little different than the actual result: Legalized Coronation in the Supreme Court.

No, polls this far out in front of the General Election are pretty pointless. Don’t believe me? The same poll has Barack Obama beating Ron Paul by a paltry 2 points.

Ron Paul? Are you kidding me?

What is completely obvious to me is that the American people still have no idea who Rick Perry is. So let me edumacate you: Rick Perry is the guy who wants to turn Medicare into a private business. He is the guy who says that Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme. Rick Perry is the guy who believes that Earth is 6000 years old and global climate change is a hoax. Rick Perry is the guy who questions some aspects of the Voting Rights Act and also forgot that The South actually lost that little argument about being able to secede from the Union whenever they want to.

 A hundred and forty six years ago.

And that’s just the tip of the (melting) iceberg.

Believe me, I am the first to doubt the competence of the average American voter, but a 47-47 tie?

No way.

No More Moammar?

It was becoming increasingly clear as the weekend progressed that the rebels in Libya were finally making significant progress. Now, as I write this, CNN is reporting that two of Moammar Gaddaff’s sons have been captured by the rebels. It seems to signal the beginning of the end for the 42 year reign of the Libyan dictator.

While no final battle is forming up yet - the rebels are reported to be waiting for reinforcements - people are already asking themselves what is to come next. And that’s a pretty good question.

Things didn’t work out all that well in Egypt. From what I see, it looks like they have just traded out a civilian dictatorship with a military dictatorship. But circumstances are no where near the same in Libya, are they? Egypt’s civilians practically invited their military to take over. In Libya, they are inviting their military into the fires of perdition.

Indeed, with the exception of the fact that the US military was there, this situation seems to be shaping up to look like the fall of Baghdad in 2003, with lawlessness, looting, and killing being the order of the day. And to make matters worse, the rebels are armed to the teeth now, having emptied armory after armory in their advance on Tripoli.

So from where I sit, this isn’t looking all that good. My suggestion is that NATO shift gears and become policemen.

And then there are UN peacekeepers.

All I know is, time is of the essence. This thing could end tonight. That means people need to be in place tomorrow.

How We Take it Back

Face it, 2010 was a horrible year for the Democratic Party. Not just in Texas. Everywhere. A whole bunch of those people who came out to vote in 2008, giving Democrats a near majority in the Texas State House, and majorities in both houses of Congress in DC as well as the Presidency, stayed home last year.

But not the TEA Party. The TEA Party came out in droves in the Republican Primary and then in the General Election. The TEA Party then set the rules of discussion and frightened center right Republicans into making a right turn in their voting.

The TEA Party then went one step further in Texas. They led the charge against public education and refused to fund it fully as they are directed to do in the Texas Constitution.

TEA Partiers like to talk about the trickle-down effect when they vote to slash spending but not one single vote to increase revenue. Well there is a new type of trickle-down effect that we can consider now, one that does not bode well for Republicans getting a repeat performance in the 2012 elections.

When the TEA Party embarked on its mission to ruin public education they may just have set out on a path for their own demise. A demise that started when the legislature voted to under fund public education, but will come true when the shocks and aftershocks radiate out away from the capitol building and reach every school district, every school within them and every classroom in every school.

And from there to individual homes in Texas. To families. To children and their parents. Parents who vote.

Parents are not going to appreciate being nickel and dimed for every extra service that their children participate in. They’re not going to like it when they see their children printing out their homework assignments at home because there is no money for copying services on campuses anymore. They’re going to go absolutely crazy when  their children are asked to bring in  a ream of printer paper or throw a few bucks into the kitty so a printer cartridge can be purchased.

And they are going to hate it when they see their children have to sit in overcrowded classrooms, or rather, stand up along the walls.

And they are going to know who is to blame for all of this, all of this that started in Austin but came home to roost in their own homes and affected their own families.

How do we take it back? We take it back by relying on a sure thing: people here in Texas love public education. They love it. And they will rise with righteous wrath next year and make their displeasure known at the polls.

It has to happen, it just has to.

Because if it doesn’t, if it doesn’t, then we are in for it.

On Teaching Creationism in Texas

Take a look at this AP video shot in Portsmouth, New Hampshire of Rick Perry speaking to a boy and at the same time answering his mother’s questions.

You get that? Rick Perry actually told the boy that both Creationism and Evolution were taught in public schools.

Politifact rates this claim as false, but I take exception to that.

Now it is true that the state’s school board just went through that exercise as its young Earth Creationist members struggled to add Creationist notions to the state curriculum. As close as they could come to doing that is the recommendation that students look at all theories “from all sides.”

Assuming that one such side is the Intelligent Design side, this opens the door, at least, to teaching Creationism in Texas public schools.

So that seems to justify what Perry claimed, in a small way at least.

But here is the thing. I know for a fact that, here in Texas, if a high school biology teacher is deeply religious, and believes in the Biblical story in Genesis, that teacher will devote instructional time to the Creationist point of view.

Even if it isn’t in the curriculum.

So getting back to Perry’s claim that both Creationism and Evolution are taught in Texas public schools, I’d have to agree. Perry made a simple affirmative statement, not qualifying as to whether this was sanctioned by state standards.

The trouble is, and Perry is extremely good at doing this, the way he said it makes it sound like Texas’s curriculum standards call for doing just this.

A Chicken in Every Pot…

Former Governor Huey Long got himself elected to high office by making unsupported promises like "A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. Most people these days wouldn't swallow that kind of rhetoric any more. But according to what we see in the video below, if we send Michele Bachmann to the White House we will pay less than $2 for a gallon of gas once again.

Now first, I am having trouble with her statistic. On January 20^th, 2009, according to Bachmann, I paid $1.79 for a gallon of gas.  Actually, having checked, I paid less than that but then I live in Texas where the sales tax for gasoline is scandalously low, as is the pavement quality of our roads, something that gasoline tax is supposed to pay for maintenance.

The statistic I really wanted to look up was how much I paid for gasoline the summer of 2008, as we were heading into the finishing stretch of George W. Bush’s presidency, and I found that statistic in the same spreadsheet. I just had to scroll down a little more. On July 21, 2008 I paid $3.92 for a gallon of gas. That number dropped to under $2 after Barack Obama became president.

It’s back up now, largely due to the unrest and rioting in the Middle East. And obscene profits enjoyed by oil speculators.

So I guess my next question is precisely how Michele Bachmann proposes to come through on her pledge, one that her audience seemed to swallow hook, line, and sinker.

Will she privatize the oil industry? Oh, wait, they are already privatized. Will she send the Marines to the Middle East and reinstall all the dictatorships that have toppled or are toppling? Or maybe she’ll invade Venezuela and get rid of that Hugo Chavez. Then take over their oil production.

It has to be something like that. God knows she won’t want to put the oil speculators in prison. Bachmann calls these people "donors."

Rig Count is Up

I have several hobby shops on this blog. One is Education for my present  money-making endeavor, another is Progressivism for my resurgent political activism in response to George W. Bush and Tom DeLay, and yet another is for Geology and Oil and Gas Exploration, for my previous career.

Today it’s Oil and Gas.

Why? Why not?

And besides, today I note a piece in the Houston Chronicle that exposes the lie that the Obama Administration has put the skids on Oil and Gas exploration in the United States.

Big Lie.

It’s here, at Fuel-Fix.

Since April, it appears that the Baker Hughes rig count, a kind of pulse of the vitality of the Oil and Gas industry, has been showing that oil wells drilled in the United States have actually exceeded gas wells.

Natural gas wells have been very de rigueur for about 10 years now, ever since some bright boy took horizontal drilling technology and married it to formation fracturing technology, launching a rebirth in natural gas exploration in very gaseous shale formations. Gaseous, but as we said once, tight as a tick and uneconomic.

But now, since oil prices and refined product prices have steadily climbed, especially since the Arab Spring, the Baker Hughes rig count reflects resurgence in oil exploration.

During the Obama Administration.

Republicans, and John McCain and Sarah Palin may have coined the term “Drill, baby drill,” in a thinly disguised knock against African-Americans who originated the motto in the late ‘60’s with “Burn, baby, burn,” but the Obama Administration has enabled oil exploration resurgence that rivals anything except the unbelievable spike of the 70’s to early 80’s.

The Baker Hughes graphic tells it all.

A Threat to America

The governor of my state, Rick Perry, has just put my President, Barack Obama, on the same footing as the great enemy of my country, Osama bin Laden.

From The Telegraph:

“Rick Perry has denounced President Barack Obama as ‘the greatest threat to our country’ and called for him to be replaced by a new commander-in-chief ‘who is passionate about America.’”

Excuse me?

Is it because President Obama ordered the execution of “the greatest threat to America,” Osama bin Laden, and it happened, so that leaves. . . The President as the second-greatest, and now because bin Laden is dead, “the greatest?”

Is that what is on the governor’s mind?

The governor then went on to say that veterans and servicemen would rather have their commander-in-chief be someone who once wore a military uniform. You know, like George W. Bush did when he served in the Texas Air National Guard. You know, that guy who had a swiftboating group defame a Vietnam War veteran. You know, John Kerry?

Perry stopped short of calling himself a war hero, I guess, so that counts for something. From what I recall, being an Air Force C-130 transport pilot was about as dangerous, and life-threatening as knitting. Being a C-130 transport pilot was not as exciting, perhaps, as getting your F-4 Phantom shot out from under you over Hanoi, as the previous GOP candidate got to do, but it does get you on the road to being a Southwest Airlines pilot, something Perry nearly found himself doing but abandoned through a trick of fate and a rain storm.

And now, because that never happened, we have Rick Perry shooting coyotes inside Austin city limits, and shooting his mouth off to please mindless bat guano crazy ultra-conservatives.

Rick Perry Makes Mistakes?

Have I just seen Rick Perry make his first mistake of his very new Presidential campaign? Here is a brief news item that appeared today in the Austin American-Statesman (in its entirety):

“Gov. Rick Perry today said he made a mistake when he ordered that school girls get vaccinated against the human papillomavirus.”

“In a radio interview at the Iowa State Fair, a caller asked Perry about his 2007 executive order, which infuriated Republican legislators. It never took effect.”

“Perry said he was trying to combat cancer but should have gone through the Legislature. ‘I readily stand up and say I made a mistake on that,’ Perry said.”

Yeah, I’ll say he made a mistake, and now he made another. He admitted to making a mistake.

Making mistakes, through errors in judgment that are meant to enrich your cronies is not very presidential, this is true. Admitting that you made a mistake on a radio show is really not very presidential.

Perry painted himself into a corner on this, and that, as well, is not very presidential.

Everyone in Texas knows that Rick Perry, through his executive order was trying to funnel millions of taxpayer dollars to Merck, the producer of the HPV vaccine, actually a course of 3 shots, a company represented by his former Chief of Staff.

He wasn’t trying to combat cancer. This vaccine was effective against only 4 of the several strains of HPV known to exist. This was totally transparent to us.

And it went against the sensibilities of conservatives as well as Democrats, but the conservatives opposed it because it was government intrusion, Democrats because it was that (as are sonograms for women seeking an abortion) and blatant, unabashed corruption.

So now Perry has to walk this one back. And I hope that he has to do this over and over again, especially in nationally broadcast debates.

But I know what the result will be. Because when a Democrat admits to a mistake you get skewered. Do the same thing as a Republican and the press ignores you. Besides, this tale of corruption and corporate charity is so blatant in its scope and intention that it will be seen as unbelievable. People will simply not believe what they hear with their own ears. It is too fantastic a story to be true.

The trouble is, it is, all of it, true. And this is the guy who is currently most likely to garner the Republican nomination.

The DeChristification of Mitt Romney

I personally don’t have a dog in the hunt, but I have officially become curious to know why the heck people don’t think that Mitt Romney, because he is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints – a Mormon if you will - is not really a Christian.

It came to a head this afternoon when I saw this LA Times piece that reported that one of the Fox and Friends anchors, Ainsley Earhardt, just threw it out there as established fact that because Rick Perry was an evangelical Christian, and Mitt Romney was not a Christian, that Rick Perry stood to garner more funds from The Christian Coalition

I mean the point wasn’t even argued, and the belief that Romney is an unbeliever was merely used in an argument over how much money Rick Perry could gather over Mitt Romney.

So, OK, as I said I finally got curious and as I do every day, I Googled it.

I was amazed at the information that is out there.

And I was amazed at the lengths these Christians will go to nitpick another one’s religion.

Here is what I found out. To be a Christian you have to believe that there is only one god. You know, God. This, by the way, would qualify any Muslim or Jew to be a Christian. But actually, Christians believe that God has 3 different aspects all with their own names, you know, the Holy Trinity. Three aspects, but only one God.

But not Mormons. Mormons, they say, believe that there are multiple gods, hundreds of them. Jesus, they say, was conceived by God and some other goddess.

Now I don’t know if any of that is true, and again, I don’t really care one way or the other, but it does seem to be a little nitpicky considering all of the other things that you have to swallow to qualify you as a true believer. But I guess if you want Rick Perry to become the nominee, you have to be a little nitpicky, and to start by saying that Mitt Romney is “obviously not a Christian.”

Rick Perry Will Have to Debate (At Last)

Now in thinking about the ramifications associated with Rick Perry’s belated entry into the race for the Republican nomination for President of the United States (yes, you are correct, that is my verbal way of pinching myself), I suddenly realized that because of this, and finally, and at last, we get to see Rick Perry in a debate.

Matthew Dowd wrote last week in an Op/Ed piece that the Rick Perry he knows, and he knows Rick Perry better than most, “will go in one of two opposing directions: He will march consistently and strongly and become the nominee, or he will crash in a spectacular manner.”

I can’t think of a better venue than a presidential debate where Rick Perry will fulfill Dowd’s latter prediction. The man gives a great stump speech, there is no doubt of that, he just doesn’t have what it takes to punch and parry in a debate.

No one here in Texas has any doubt that the main reason Rick Perry failed to show up at a single debate in the 2010 gubernatorial election was because he would give up all of the advantages that he enjoyed over his superior opponent, the bland and lackluster Bill White (sorry Bill, it’s just true) by showing that his recently revealed less than marvelous college grades were well-earned.

He’s just not all that intelligent.

And yes, this suits most Texans just fine. Texans pride themselves in electing the lessers of us to high office.

But nationally, Rick Perry will very probably crash and burn.

Or as he, as a former C-130 pilot would say, “auger in.”

I personally saw Rick Perry in a debate only once. It was in 2006 and he had 3 opponents in that election, an election that awarded the governorship to someone who failed to attract a majority vote. I particularly remember his response to the moderator’s question when he came up with a whole new word: “gollect.” Yes, he said that word on a state-wide television broadcast and he still won the election.

What was he trying to say? The context gave us our only clue that evening. He was trying to say “neglect.”

So Rick Perry will be a formidable opponent as long as he sticks to a script. But once he departs from a script he will be revealing an Achilles’ Tendon as big as the distance between El Paso and Beaumont.

Who Let the Doggett Out?

I think the Austin American-Statesman is making an attempt at wry humor in its headline “Doggett emerges as critic of Perry as president.” An emergent person, one could argue, is someone who might be unexpected. That’s the way I see it anyway.

For Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett to “emerge” as a critic of Rick Perry as president, one could also expect that Barack Obama might emerge as a critic of the Republican majority in congress.

But the article goes on to say that Congressman Doggett will go on Dylan Ratigan’s show today on MSNBC and call out the mythical madness of “The Texas Miracle,” and just as I read that, the TV, which is on and tuned to MSNBC in the other room, segued into that very appearance by Doggett.

And I was all ears.

Ratigan fed Congressman Doggett the lines he needed, and he scored big points with graphics that, quite frankly, upset me because I know the truth of them. The only downside to the interview was when one Ratigan panelist, the inaptly named Crystal Ball, cited the employment “facts” that Rick Perry puts out there like it is Gospel, and Doggett, perhaps not wanting to fling the poor vacuous woman to the wolves, went a little soft on his reply.

This is something we cannot do. Most of Americans don’t know Rick Perry at all. So really, he can make up any old fact he wants, repeat it over and over, and Americans will accept it simply because they don’t know this guy. They don’t know that truth and lies are all in the same category with this guy.

They. Don’t. Know.

So next time you hear someone quote something about The Texas Miracle be fierce in your reply. Don’t let this myth become Perry’s ticket to the White House.

Texans need to speak up.

And really, as an aside, there is no one I’d rather have running against Barack Obama next year than Rick Perry. The man is a disaster waiting to happen. The trouble is, and I’ve heard this from more than one source, people keep underestimating Rick Perry.

And Rick Perry keeps winning elections.

Perry is In – To No One’s Surprise

Someone in the Perry camp just spilled the beans that the Texas governor will announce on Saturday that he is a candidate for the Republican nomination for President.

Whatever happened to just announcing?

This brings the candidate field to 9, or is it 10? 16?

Here's what they are saying at CNN:

Now I’ve been traveling this summer and all I can say is that the rhetoric you hear about The Texas Miracle is out there and being repeated.

I had to debunk this over and over again with things like facts.

Like the fact that Texas is in 44^th place in terms of how much it spends on education.

Like the fact that Texas is in first place in terms of the number of people who have no health insurance at all.

Like the fact that most of the jobs created lately in Texas are minimum wage jobs.

Like the fact that Texas is expected to bring in $27 billion fewer dollars than it needs to operate for the next two years.

Like the fact that the unemployment rate in Texas stands at 8%, above 23 other states including New York.

But then we’re talking Republicans and Teabaggers here. Facts have nothing to do with conservative politics.

Still, it should be fun to see who is first to remind Republicans that Rick Perry was state chairman of Al Gore’s Texas campaign.

A Smelly Rat In Waukesha County

Waukesha County, Wisconsin sits astride their 8^th Senate District, the only district that failed to elect, as predicted in the polls, a Democrat, Sandy Pasch, over the Republican incumbent whose seat was challenged in yesterday’s recall election. Six senate seats were up for a vote, with three of them looking good for Democrats.

Sandy Pasch, however will not be going to Madison to replace Alberta Darling very probably because a big smelly rat exists in Waukesha county government. A rat in the person of the county elections clerk. An elections clerk that makes Florida’s former Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, look like a paragon of vote integrity.

It was in Waukesha County, it may be recalled, that suddenly “found” 14,000 votes for State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, a Republican, last April.

It was also Waukesha County that reported a 97% voter turnout in the 2004 presidential election.

It was also Waukesha County that has 99.5% of its eligible voters actually registered to vote.

It was also Waukesha County that ended, in that county anyway, a statewide effort to conduct exit polls last night.

But with all of that, Democrats in Waukesha County are not going to go to the mat over this. Here is what Waukesha County Democratic Chair Mike Tate is quoted as saying:

"On Tuesday night, Wisconsin spoke loud and clear with the recall of two entrenched Republicans. This is an accomplishment of historic proportions that I do not wish to be overshadowed by statements regarding results in the 8th Senate District.”

And that, friends and neighbors, is why Waukesha County has had these voting irregularities for what is now 7 years. And that is why they will into the future.

Total Recall: Wisconsin Votes

So I’m wearing my red T-shirt today in solidarity with the voters in Wisconsin who are, by all accounts, flocking to the polls in numbers on the order of how many show up in a presidential election. For a recall vote. For an odd-year recall vote.

I wore it when I journeyed to Austin last February when there was a fairly decent crowd arrayed on the capitol building south steps, were protesting not only the anti-labor overreach of Wisconsin’s newly elected Republican majority, but also the expected budget cuts to education.

Nothing much good came of the education budget, but now we have a real show going up in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a poster child, it seems, for all that is bad in American politics today.

Out of state TEA Party PACs are flooding the state with record funds. Democrats are being outspent by their Republican opponents who are responding by launching a massive grassroots effort. Hundreds of Democrats are calling into the state to get out the vote. Something that very much aided in getting voters to the polls in 2008.

Republicans even packed the Democratic Primary with non-Democrats in order to dilute the vote and throw some chaos into the process.

Then there’s the measures passed to make it harder for people to vote in Wisconsin.

It just goes on and on.

The only thing that keeps this country from resembling a banana republic is the fact that there isn’t rioting in the streets.

Not yet anyway.

The UK may have one up on us on that one.

Anyway, there are no indicators yet showing how this is going to go. A high turnout is always good for Democrats as evidenced by the 2010 elections in many states that went red that year. But I am not going to make any predictions. If it goes well for Democrats tonight it could bode very well for turning the tide going into next year. It could take the wind out of the sails of Republicans nationwide.

If it doesn’t though, we might as well pack it in and watch Rick Perry become the next president of the US.

The Higher Ground of Values

I had the privilege of being in the audience today to hear three Members of Congress speak today: Congressman Al Green, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (if Newt Gingrich can be Mr. Speaker Nancy Pelosi can be Madam Speaker, thank you very much).

Obviously, getting the leader of the Democratic Party to come to Houston on a hot August day during the summer recess is a big deal and the room was full to overflowing to the extent that I was starting to wonder when the fire department would show up.

The Speaker spoke. She spoke a lot. There was a lot to speak about. Obviously uppermost on the minds of lots of people in the room was the monstrosity of a budget bill that House Republicans recently passed, one that promises an end to Medicare and Social Security. One that undoes a bunch of good things that the Affordable Healthcare Act made possible. One that trades our future so that the rich can buy just one more trinket.

And Speaker Pelosi framed the argument just right I think. In the past, evangelical conservatives have placed a lot of stock in Values Voting. Their values being religious in origin. Speaker Pelosi frames the argument as Values Voting as well, but not the usual fare of Republican homophobic and misogynistic values. Putting it another way, a better way, that it isn’t about who is getting what tax break, it’s about what we Americans value most is just the ticket, I think.

And hopefully, in this short clip, I have captured the essence of Speaker Pelosi’s message.

Tea Party Downgrade

I have been relatively unimpressed with the Tea Party movement in terms of the actual brain power that it generates. The first time I attended a TEA Party rally to check out the phenomenon I was astounded at the near lack of factual accuracy the speakers could conjure up, and amazed at what can only be characterized as political naiveté.

One speaker, one of the leaders, really, actually spoke emotionally about the dire news that there was going to be an election later that year where several amendments to the Texas Constitution were going to be voted on. “They are trying to amend OUR constitution,” the speaker emoted.

Something that happens like clockwork during any odd year.

So combined with their utter lack of knowledge about how government works and their inability to discern truth from bat guano crazy fiction, the remarks this morning by political consultant David Axelrod and former governor Howard Dean seem to be spot on correct. The S&P’s downgrading of American longterm debt from AAA to AA+ is entirely inspired by the TEA Party Movement, and the radical right.

Said Axelrod:

“‘For months, the president was saying, let's get together, let's compromise,’ Axelrod continued. ‘We thought we had such an arrangement with the Speaker of the House... then he went back to his caucus; he had to yield to the most strident voices in his party. They played brinksmanship with the full faith and credit of the United States. This was the result in that. The fact of the matter is that this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade,’ he declared. ‘That clearly is on the backs of those who were willing to see the country default.’”

Said Dean:

“‘This is a tea party problem,’ Dean said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation." ‘They are totally unreasonable and doctrinaire and not founded in reality. I think they've been smoking some of that tea, not just drinking it.’”

“‘This is ridiculous what's going on here,’ he said.”

And then some. When the children are in charge of Nursery School this is what we have to go through.

Time for the adults to get the hickory switches out.

A C in Gym?

Today as Governor Rick Perry took the stage at his much vaunted foray into government sponsored religion, an event that drew about 20,000 to Houston’s Reliant Stadium, we all got to view the governor’s academic record when he attended Texas A&M in the late sixties to early seventies.

You can see it online here courtesy of the Huffington Post.

So it appears that Rick Perry, the longest serving governor of Texas, squeaked by in his 4 years at A&M with something like a 2.6 GPA in his major- Animal Science.

Not a real brainiac, it looks like.

Now I’m not being overly judgmental – my own undergraduate record is nothing to crow about – but culturally speaking, Rick Perry’s academic record fits well in anti-intellectual Texas. So I can see how getting a C in College Physics might just qualify Perry as a bona fide Texas good ol’ boy, but how do you go about getting a C in Gym?

And yes, Barack Obama was the Editor of the Harvard Law Review so we have a peek at his academic record without actually seeing any transcripts except the one that was posted online in jest. But I am willing to bet that on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is a true genius and 1 is – well – Rick Perry, we have a President who makes rocket scientists look like 7s.

Yes We Have No Brains

OK, I have a small confession to make. I have been blogging on the fly with a laptop and some tenuous WiFi connections for the past month because I have been on the road visiting family in California.

I only just got back home yesterday.

But guess what greeted me just as I approached the Fort Bend County line as I barreled down the last few miles of my 5600 + mile sojurn?

This billboard.

It is apparently a singleton occurrence in Sealy, Texas along I-10 facing eastbound traffic.

Yes, it was like getting a cold splash of water in the face, back to Texas Triple K KKKrazy.

Back to reality.

Yes, in Texas we have no brains.

And yes, I did send my $50 check to Obama For America yesterday on the occasion of the man’s 50^th birthday.

Texas Prisons Close? What is Wrong With This Picture?

OK, this news article records the closing of one of the oldest prison facilities in the state of Texas. Never mind about the fact that the prison sits on the next most desired property in the southwest Houston suburbs. Don’t worry about that. Obviously the state closed the facility due to cost factors.

Yeah, right.

Sugar Land, what is left of it anyway, is up for sale and Texas has the best contiguous land holdings in the area. Lack space for prisoners? Don’t ask Jester to take up the slack. Jester is up for sale.

Texas is the single most state that is most likely to add to its prison population, and is also the single most likely state to sell off its prison property, and beds, to the highest bidder.

If you are surprised, you need a lesson in Texas.

This is what Texans have to thank themselves for voting in a Republican majority and a sell-out governor.  Oh, but Rick Perry no longer cares. He Has other fish to fry.

In DC.

Please, please, God, Buddha, Krishna, FSM, grant Rick Perry his wish to garner the Repub nomination for prez in 2012. Please, please, please.

It will be so much fun to watch, let alone participate in the barbecue.

Debt Ceiling Vote Passes. (Groan)

News Item: Debt Ceiling Vote Passes the House 269 to 161.

Now, just what went into their ruminations over this? Matson has it about right I think.