The national Republican Medicare Killing Party must be in dire straits if it seriously considers running an extremist right wing Governor who racked up a $27 billion budget deficit that he said was either imaginary or "speculative."
Except that a $27 billion hole that was made in hell is a $27 billion hole that was made in hell.
So much for the silliness of the Texas miracle. Meanwhile, back at the Guv's pricey ranch in Austin, Rick Perry passed the women rights killing abortion sonogram bill into law today. Has a fundamentalist Christian Sharia law come to Texas, thanks to our extremist right wing Governor?
Governor Perry might be good at fooling and tricking Texas voters but his winning streak ends right here and perhaps in Mississippi. After all, both states are in a neck to neck competition for low performing schools and for dismantling social programs for the middle class and economically challenged.
The Texas Republican Party is on a mean-spirited, heartless and cruel mission of SLASHeconomics that is unnecessary and uncalled for. It is blindly cutting the budgets for schools and social services with absolutely no regard for the devastating long term consequences of such cuts.
Rick Perry and his far right Republicans refuse to touch the Rainy Day money for next year's budget though this is precisely the time in which we should tap into such funds. Instead the Republicans have chosen to stockpile the money and rob children of their futures.
Outside of the box thinking, complex problem solving, the ability to explore creative and unique alternatives and a modicum of compassion are called for during dire and desperate economic times like these.
Are Texas Republican lawmakers made of the right stuff to lead? Is it capable of throwing away its memorized talking point campaign rhetoric, forget about its Obamacare and federal government bashing monologues, dismiss its highly paid message masters, unglue its lips from its sugar daddy donor's backsides and engage its collective brain to do what is right and work on behalf of all Texans?
Let's take a peek at the legislation proposed in Austin so far by the super majority Party.
Readers can decide whether or not Republican lawmakers are made of the right stuff.
The Texas Republican Party loves to hate any form of government to the point it would love to wash it out of our lives altogether. Except, of course, when it comes to peeking inside of our bedrooms and when imposing expensive medical procedures on women who have to make very difficult personal decisions.
Since it is incapable and unwilling to honestly address its decision to impose devastating budget cuts to schools and social programs, the Republican Texas Taliban Party has decided to hide behind the veil of emotional hot buttons known as social and cultural issues. That and divide and conquer politics. What else is a Party that has sold its soul to corporate power brokers and one that is morally bankrupted to the point it shows nothing but contempt for ordinary people to do? And this is precisely why the deficit denying cowards and ethically challenged Republicans in the state Senate passed an abortion sonogram bill.
AUSTIN - Doctors would have to perform a sonogram at least two hours before an abortion and describe the fetus for the woman - including cardiac activity, internal organs and limbs - under a bill that sailed through the Texas Senate on Thursday.
The debate - marked by references to God and the right of "hairy-legged" men to drive changes in the procedure - culminated in a mostly party-line 21-10 vote that sends the measure to the House for consideration.
Is Sharia law coming to Texas? Or do Texas Republican men suffer from an acute and chronic case of misogyny disorder? Or are the Republican Taliban inspired men simply hiding behind women's skirts in order to avoid manning up and admitting the obvious? Let's face it. Rick Perry and the Texas GOP fiscal policies of the past 10 years are one whopping and mind blowing disaster.
Sen. Leticia Van de Putte said that if a woman chooses to give birth, and the motivation of the bill is to protect children, then "it's our responsibility to protect that child once the child is born, too," and not drastically cut the budgets from areas like vaccines and pre-kindergarten education.
"We seem to worship what we cannot see, but as soon as that baby is born, oh no, government doesn't want to be intrusive," said Van de Putte, a San Antonio Democrat. In a reference to conservative Grover Norquist's comment that he wanted to cut government to the size where he could "drown it in the bathtub," Van de Putte said, "Texas is going to shrink government until it fits into a woman's uterus."
Meanwhile in Washington D.C. a female US House Representative from California has something to say about the appalling and insensitive talibanesque statements made by a male colleague from New Jersey.
Poor pathetic Governor Perry. He will stop at nothing to take the focus off of the $30 billion rotten egg that his self-serving and reckless libertarian leaning policies have dumped on Texas. He will pontificate about stupidity such as emergency sonograms, abortion and culture war insanity. He will run to California (a state that he loves to hate)in order to raise money for himself while telling everyone that his soon to be third world banana republic state is the envy of the world.
Avoid, baby, avoid.
In an article published in the Houston Chronicle Rick Perry is said to have demanded for the U.S. Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to balance its budget.
"It fits into his overall philosophy about government and fiscal responsibility," Perry spokesman Mark Miner said. "In Texas, at the end of the day, the budget will be balanced. It's the Texas way versus the federal way, which is to continue spending without being accountable."
Dewhurst, in an Austin American-Statesman article co-written with state Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, contended that Congress "lacks fiscal responsibility and is spending all of us into serious debt. ... It is time for Texas to lead the way and seek a convention so that the states may propose a national balanced budget amendment."
I wonder how many margaritas these boys consumed before speaking to reporters.
(A nice bit of snark & satire for your Friday... - promoted by Phillip Martin)
Rick Perry prevailed upon Republicans to withdraw their children from the state's elementary and secondary public schools while giving a keynote address to a group of Texas conservative business leaders at a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Houston.
While reluctantly admitting that Texas faces fiscal challenges the Governor refused to acknowledge a $30 billion deficit. It seems that Texas does not do shortfalls much less deficits. But Mr. Perry did concede that the budget was such that school funding would be deeply cut. The Governor assured those present that the solution to the school budget crunch is the creation of more affordable private Christian elementary and secondary schools.
Now I know most of you present here have already enrolled your children in some of our state's finest private schools. But I want to make private schools more accessible to Republican Christian families that cannot afford to pay high tuition and for those who cannot home school their children. In a city like Houston private school tuition can cost between $10,000 to $25,000 per year per child.
In a Q&A following the Governor's talk a member of the press corps asked how much funding would be cut from school budgets. Mr. Perry's response:
H/T to TX Sharon for her tireless efforts and determination to bring drilling reform to Texas and for giving those within and outside of her community a ray of hope in the daunting battle that confronts each and every one of us. The map at the end of TX Sharon's diary over at Daily Kos tells us the very ugly, sickly and heartbreaking stories imposed by hydraulic fracturing across the U.S.
Please head on over to Daily Kos to give TX Sharon a little support.
I betcha that except for GOP minority leaders and Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and FOX Fake News, most members of the Republican tea party wing has no clue that it has major billionaire exploiters, puppeteers and ventriloquists that pull its strings, yank its chains and grows "frogs" called GOP/tea party political candidates. The frogs, according to Koch/BP/FOX/GOP spokesmen are spawned in order to serve and rubber stamp the private agenda of Koch Industries, BP and other corporate power houses.
Many of us have expected as much from the extreme far right given former U.S. House Speaker and lobbyist Dick Armey and his involvement with the rage fests of last summer over health care reform. Richard Scott and his Conservatives for Patients' Rights movement joined forces with Armey, all in a effort to foment fear and uncertainty about health care reform. Fat cats and pimped out shills for the health care industry, Armey and Scott threw the health care needs of the majority of the American people into the pits of denial and poverty.
But Dick Armey and Richard Scott are nano size potato players when compared to the far reaching tentacles of the power, money and influence of the Koch brothers of Koch Industries.
While Rick Perry slashes social services for children and the elderly, our welfare loathing Governor appears to be incapable of cutting back on his own taxpayer funded living expenses.
While there is a $18 billion budget shortfall, the state's schools rank second to last in the U.S. and Texas has the highest number of uninsured residents, the Neiman Marcus loving millionaire Governor expects taxpayers to pony up for his Gourmet Magazine subscriptions, fine wines, pate de foie gras and thousand dollar drapes.
I betcha Louie Gohmert and Sarah Palin did not realize that their hysterical invocations of Hitler when bellyaching about President Obama's demands to BP have brought the Evil One back from the grave.
Hitler is back and he is foaming at the mouth with rage. It looks like Hitler's ghost is going to haunt Smokey Joe and his GOP for a very long time.
OILmageddon is what happens when two oil boys are in charge of our federal government. G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney appointed lobbyists to run our federal regulatory agencies.
The BP, Deepwater Horizon and Halliburton's unstoppable oil volcano, enabled by the W. Administration crusade to drill, baby, drill, continues to spew devastation into the Gulf regions of Louisiana and Alabama. Mississippi and Florida are next in line as recipients of the same ecological and economic carnage.
A Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen of Alabama and volunteer pilot Tom Hutchings of SouthWings flew over the Gulf of Mexico on Friday to get a look at the massive oil slick spreading from the site of the BP disaster.
It should come as no surprise to anyone (except for the Rush and Glenn teabagging Republicans) to learn that the Bush/Cheney Administration appointed lobbyists to serve as federal government "regulators."
For the Bush administration was, to a large degree, run by and for the extractive industries - and I'm not just talking about Dick Cheney's energy task force. Crucially, management of Interior was turned over to lobbyists, most notably J. Steven Griles, a coal-industry lobbyist who became deputy secretary and effectively ran the department. (In 2007 Mr. Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his ties to Jack Abramoff.)
Given this history, it's not surprising that the Minerals Management Service became subservient to the oil industry - although what actually happened is almost too lurid to believe. According to reports by Interior's inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond undue influence: there was "a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" - cocaine, sexual relationships with industry representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably the last thing on these government employees' minds.
Now, President Obama isn't completely innocent of blame in the current spill. As I said, BP received an environmental waiver for Deepwater Horizon after Mr. Obama took office. It's true that he'd only been in the White House for two and half months, and the Senate wouldn't confirm the new head of the Minerals Management Service until four months later. But the fact that the administration hadn't yet had time to put its stamp on the agency should have led to extra caution about giving the go-ahead to projects with possible environmental risks.
