Saturday, June 18, 2011

Rick Perry Supports Your Right to Text-While-Driving

A statewide ban on texting while driving was among 23 bills that Gov. Rick Perry killed with vetoes on Friday.....

Seriously. Rick Perry vetoed a bill that would have banned texting-while-driving in Texas. (And the Dumbening of America continues at a record pace...)

Naturally, he dropped this little bomb on a Friday evening, so as to avoid public reaction. Well, nice try, Gov, but I don't think it's gonna work this time. People are going to react to this. The looney-tunes wackjobs who'll be celebrating "the end of the 'Nanny State'" will be the only Texans stupid enough to support this veto. Strangely enough, most of us don't enjoy having to take our lives in our hands as we dodge texting drivers. It should be banned, obviously, and the penalties should be sufficient to discourage taking the risk. 

Of course, Perry's been chauffeured around for so many years that he probably has no idea what he's expecting us to put up with. Personally, I'm all for arresting drivers who deliberately endanger others by driving while drunk or while texting, but Perry's Principles involve a lot of personal freedom....for people who support him.

"After thoroughly reviewing all legislation that reached my desk, there were some bills that would have done more harm than good to Texans, and I have used my authority to veto them."
Among those was House Bill 242, which would have enacted a statewide ban on texting while driving. At least three cities, including Austin, have already banned such texting, and the state already bans texting in school zones.

Perry said that texting while driving "is reckless and irresponsible" but that he saw the bill as "a government effort to micromanage the behavior of adults."
Current law already prohibits drivers under age 18 from texting behind the wheel. Perry thinks older drivers won't be distracted by texting; Perry is a moron.
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I have NEVER trusted Governor Goodhair*, or his judgment about ANYTHING. But that being said, I still find it amazing that he wouldn't sign the texting-while-driving ban. You'd think that'd be a safe thing for the governor, or any politician, to support. Like a ban on child molesting...who could possibly be against banning that?! 

His "reasoning", that the ban was "a government effort to micromanage the behavior of adults", is a poor excuse for leadership and has certainly never stopped him before.

Where was that laissez-faire social philosophy when he signed that outrageous bill requiring any woman seeking to terminate an unwanted pregnancy to undergo a medically unnecessary Internal Ultrasound with narration?

Where was it when he championed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage?  Those issues involve adults; what about "micromanaging" THEIR behavior?
 

And what about his vow to veto "any legislation that would provide state dollars for embryonic stem cell research"? Can he REALLY not discern the difference between a blastocyst and a baby?  Speaking as an MS patient who very likely would benefit from embryonic stem cell research, I wonder whether Perry REALLY cares about ANY of this stuff, or if he's just pandering to his increasingly fundamentalist base....
And if Goodhair* is honestly unwilling to ban texting while driving, how does he rationalize having ANY laws against drunk driving, since texting while driving has been PROVEN to be MORE dangerous than drunk driving?

I can't believe he's going to run for President. Just like GW Bush; a lousy Texas governor and a disastrous US President; it'll be déjà vu all over again. Now anything the Tea Party nitwits want will be forthcoming on a silver platter courtesy of  Perry, a thoroughly unAmerican douche-bag.
*Actually, I'm not going to call him "Governor Goodhair" anymore, because his hair has looked like crap for quite awhile now. 

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