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.
Markos Moulitsas ("Kos") founder of Daily Kos recently observed that his two year old daughter had reached a Republican stage in her development because the majority her vocabulary consisted of two words: "NO!" and "MINE!"
Indeed. At least Markos understands that his two year old will grow out of her stubborn and selfish phase.
But those of us who live in Republican run states do not have the luxury of believing in or hoping for the evolution of maturity where our childlike NO! and MINE! lawmakers are concerned.
According to a source cited over at Daily Kos Kay Bailey Hutchison will not give up her U.S. Senate seat while running for governor.
For the past few days I have been reading about Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick's fall in the Houston Chronicle and here at BOR. The Burnt Orange Report, by the way, has provided excellent moment-by-moment coverage of this fascinating drama. Huge kudos to the outstanding diarists here. The Craddick/Straus issue including BOR's coverage was front page news on Daily Kos on Monday.
Yesterday morning the Houston Chronicle's Lisa Falkenberg wrote an excellent and very revealing commentary on how Houston would benefit from a House Speaker who is from a large urban area.
After reading the article this life-long urban dweller and native of NYC who has lived in Houston for over 20 years, finally understands why I have been so frustrated by how our Austin lawmakers operate. Falkenberg's article nailed it for me. Texas has been run by a bunch of country boys who are more concerned about boll weevil eradication and transporting hogs to markets than they are a big city's crammed prisons, crumbling inner city schools, over-extended hospitals, torn up roads and gridlocked freeways.
Texans need a new deal and Rick Noriega is the man to deliver it. I very recently posted a diary here about John Cornyn and the raw and rotten deals he has dealt to the people of Texas. Meanwhile, back in Washington the Senator has bent over backwards to bail out his fat cat buddies on Wall St.
We need a breath of fresh air, a new face and someone with a proven track record of integrity. One who will stand up for the people of Texas for a change. Rick Noriega is the man who has the character and moral fiber to work for everyday Texans. He has walked the walk in Austin as a lawmaker and in Houston while working with Mayor Bill White in planning and executing the Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts. Noriega went the extra mile, too, when serving in Afghanistan.
Enough of John Cornyn and all the Republicans who mislead us with their talking points and mendacious spin. What these boys and girls say in Texas has very little in common with how they will vote in Washington.
(This is a synthesis of comments I posted previously on the Burnt Orange Report. It is also cross posted on Texas Kaos. )
We Democrats are going to have to work very hard to win in 2008, despite the promising opinion poll results for our party and the Republican's abysmal record of failure on each and every level the party has touched. Remember how W. has turned to shit everything he touched when he was in the private sector? Well, now W. and his did the same thing to our very way of life.
To briefly summarize, for those who may have forgotten a fact or two about W.'s terrible legacy, let me provide a crash refresher.
Everyone on the planet on knows that W., enabled by rubber stamps such as our Texas Republicans John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, managed to get us into the worst foreign policy debacle, (Iraq, of course), in recent history. We recently learned that it is Pakistan, not Iraq or Iran, that is the most dangerous place in the world and yet we remain mired down in a war that didn't have to be fought in the first place.
77% of Americans believe our country is headed in the wrong direction now and 64% of us believe we should not have gone to war with Iraq. W. Is at 34% approval - worse than Tricky Dick Nixon.
