Rick Perry Supports Your Right to Text-While-Driving

Perry vetoes texting while driving ban, 22 other bills

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.

______________________________

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. 

Gov Goodhair is SUCH a Tease!

Texas Governor Rick Perry is teasing the media and the public again with signs that he’s gonna think about running for the GOP Presidential nomination. Maybe. He’s got other stuff to do, so he's just too busy to really think about it right now, but he's thinking about thinking about throwing his hat in the ring. 

Off-His-Rocker Gun Lover Ted Nugent with the Guv

He’s sure playing hard-to-get...although in Texas, it's more of a case of "hard-to-want". 

Personally, I just don't think he's gonna get the nomination, despite the hype and hoopla. Once folks learn that Perry wouldn’t even carry Texas Republicans, even the GOP should think twice. (Or at least once, which for them would be 100% improvement.

So what's the problem with Perry? Well, maybe it's partly because he's done his best to stack the Texas State Board of Education with Flat-Earthers who don't believe in evolution, much less separation of church and state.  

Is this shit really gonna fly with the rest of the country? 

Perry's serious about getting Darwin out of public schools and Jesus back in.

No way, no believer in science is Gov Goodhair.

Do you know about Perry's Abortion Sonogram Bill, now official State law in the Reich-that-was-Texas?

Perry proudly signed his bill on May 24th, 2011, requiring doctors to tell a woman the size of her fetus' limbs and organs, even if she does not want to know. The law also forces physicians to make an image of the fetus and the sound of its heartbeat (if audible) available to a woman before she is allowed to undergo the abortion procedure. More specifically, any woman planning to terminate her pregnancy must first undergo a State of Texas mandated, totally gratuitous internal ultrasound exam at least 24 hrs before the abortion can be performed. 

Relax! It's just Gov. Goodhair & the Lege probing your insides...it's the LAW!

What's involved in an internal ultrasound? A long wand is inserted into the vagina to scan inside the pelvis using ultrasound waves. There is ZERO medical reason to do this before a routine abortion; it's meant as both an obstacle and as punishment,  but twisted by the Right-to-Lifers into  so-called "informed consent".

This wildly un-American, brutally anti-female bill, supported by one of Perry's favorite special interest groups, the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, flies in the face of standard medical ethics. A pregnant woman seeking to terminate her pregnancy obviously understands there's a fertilized embryo, which is a potential fetus, which is in turn a potential baby, inside her uterus. That's precisely why she's seeking to abort, to prevent having to carry a pregnancy to term. 

A blastocyst, obviously NOT a "baby".

....THIS is a baby.

But Perry and his base, religious extremists and Right-to-Lifers, lack the clarity to discern any difference between a blastocyst and a baby. If you study the science on a basic level, the distinction between an embryo and a baby isn't really all that nuanced...

Blastocyst......

Baby! (see the difference?)

Is an acorn literally a mighty oak tree?  Obviously NOT.

Acorns.....

...oak tree. [See the difference?]

The Human Embryophiles seem to lose interest quickly if it grows into an actual  baby and gets born; once it's out and breathing, Mom and the kid are on their own, as far as Rick Perry and company are concerned.   

Starting on September 1st [until this bill is inevitably repealed by the Supreme Court!], doctors must show and orally describe in detail everything seen on the state-ordered sonogram to any woman considering an abortion, describing all external and internal fetal body parts and organs visible, while showing them on a monitor and making the heartbeat audible (assuming they can find it). 
Only after all that is done is the patient then sent home "to think about what she's planning to do" for at least 24 hours before she's allowed to terminate her pregnancy. I wouldn't be surprised if they toss in an amendment to require that she sit in the corner while she thinks about her sin and then go to bed without any supper. 

(Patronizing much?)

 

That's the kind of world Rick Perry says God wants him to create. How on Earth would we ever get along without these self-appointed proxies for God? How would God?

Nostalgic for Bush Era, Yee-Ha-as-Foreign-Policy?

Maybe that's why, in a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll done this month, only 4% of Texas Republicans say they'd vote for Gov. Goodhair for President. Note that we're not talking about ALL Texans, just GOP voters.

Texas Republicans' picks from the sparkling field of potential candidates

[He doesn't believe in evolution either...much less reproductive freedom!]

Ron Paul is the top Texan GOP candidate, polling at 10% among registered voters planning to vote in the Republican primary. 

"OMG, I am SO popular!!! "

The poll has Sarah Palin sort of* leading the field with a lukewarm 12%,
.......followed by Newt Gingrich in 2nd place with 11%,

(Yeah, baby, I'm running!)

........then non-candidate Mike Huckabee, 
Ron Paul, and unspecified "other" tied for 3rd. 

                    Michele Bachmann & Mitt Romney tie for 4th with 7% each,

                                  and Donald Trump follows with 6%. 

Trailing the pack are Pawlenty....

......and Rick Perry, with 4% each

and finally Rick Santorum with 3%, Mitch Daniels 

and former Jon Huntsman with 1% each.

Do I want even more attention? You betcha!

*I said Sarah Palin only "sort of" leads the field with her 12%, because 14% "don't know", aka "none of the above"!
If the Republicans in the state that Rick Perry's been governing since Dec. of 2000 DON'T think he'd make a good President, why would anyone else?

Anything Else?

from Under the Mountain Bunker*

Many thanks to *Under the Mountain Bunker (UTMB), for permission to use the image above. UTMB is a very cool website I happened across yesterday; the slogan is "Come for the Apocalypse, stay for the coffee!". Check it out! 

[Evidently the proprietor of the site also appreciates the following image, because a version of it is her headliner...]

“The Spiritual Pilgrim Discovering Another World”

a very old woodcut (supposedly from either the 17th or 19th Century, artist unknown), reproduced as Plate VII  in C.G. Jung's “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth”in Civilization in Transition, 

Bollingen Series XX, Princeton University Press, 1964.

Osama Bin Laden Killed by USA - Mission FINALLY Accomplished

Now here's a coincidence for you: it was EXACTLY 8 years ago today that then President George W. Bush, in a weird burst of telepathy, announced "Mission Accomplished".....in Iraq. 

Iraq had NOTHING to do with the September 11th attacks, but we didn't know anything yet that day.

Iraq was supposed to somehow relate to the Sept.11th bombings and Osama bin Laden, but it didn't, at all.

President Bush on 03/19/03, announcing the beginning of "Operation Iraqi" Freedom, to"liberate" Iraq.

 Nor did they have any "weapons of mass destruction", or yellow cake uranium, or anything that could have posed an immediate  threat to the United States. 

Shock and Awe "liberated" this child...

Well, other than a bad attitude, made much worse by our Shock and Awe invasion (above) , and now they have much less. (Oops, sorry, wrong country- our bad.) 

May 1st, 2003: "Mission Accomplished" sez Prez. (Not quite, dude, but nice banner)

Obviously the "mission" wasn't accomplished in 2003, but a frightened populace supposedly  re-elected Bush for a 2nd term so he could "get the job done", thinking it a bad idea to "change horses in midstream".  But even with another 4 years in office, Bush wasn't able to bring bin Laden to justice, or to bring a stable democratic government to Iraq, so there were years of utterly pointless military and civilian deaths in Iraq before President Barack Obama actually got our ground troops out.

President Obama announced the killing of bin Laden by US forces on Sunday, May 1st, 2011

President Bush (for whom "Yee-ha!" took the place of foreign policy), had also invaded Afghanistan , sending troops to look in "caves and spider holes" for the Mastermind of 9-11.  But as it turns out, Osama bin Laden wasn't there, either. (Oops, so sorry, wrong country again). Were our faces red!


As it turns out, Osama was, for the last 5 years evidently,  living in relative luxury in Pakistan, and was killed by Navy Seals in a fire fight outside a mansion (not a cave, as Bush said), near Islamabad today, May 1st, 2011. FINALLY!


Hopefully this will be some comfort to 9-11 survivors and the nation in general, and although it's a very complicated issue, hopefully it means that we can get out of Afghanistan sooner, too, since we're kinda involved in other issues now....

....like absolutely terrifying levels of debt for starters; disaster-movie-style scary weather (record tornado outbreaks in the deep south, enormous wildfires on the drought-parched range of West Texas, spectacular flooding in the Midwest, etc).... 

....and there's Arab Spring, the unrest as the rest of the Middle East undergoes a prolonged political revolutionary  earthquake, the end result of which is still unknown.....

....not to mention that our infrastructure desperately needs expensive maintenance and upgrading, before things like nuclear power plants and bridges fall  apart...

Like the President said last week, "we've got other stuff to do", so let's get our troops out of harm's way in Afghanistan and bring them home ASAP.


A little history: the current War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, in response to the September 11th attacks, when President Bush launched "Operation Enduring Freedom" along with British and Afghan Northern Alliance forces.

Afghanistan collage from Wikipedia

The mission was to dismantle al-Qaeda and to end the use of Afghanistan as a base for terrorist operations; we were trying to somehow remove the Taliban regime and specifically institute democracy, presuming that the people wanted it. (Evidently most just wanted a life with less misery, whatever the political context.) 


As I write this, it's 12:15am EDT, and a massive and still-growing crowd of noisy, positively joyous demonstrators has collected in front of the White House and at Times Square, waving US flags, chanting "USA, USA, USA, USA!", valiantly trying to sing the Star-Spangled Banner (hey, it's a hard song!) and God Bless America, and generally manifesting a skyrocketing level of morale. 

It's been awhile since I saw anything like this; Tuesday, January 20, 2009?

We sure as Hell DID!

I couldn't help but wonder what the Tea Party and other Obama haters are doing right now? so I Googled the subject and found that the Tea Party thinks this announcement was made solely to deflect attention from a lawsuit in the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena questioning Obama’s eligibility to hold the office of President, the oral arguments beginning tomorrow morning, May 2nd at 9am. Ass-hats.

Those Tea Partiers are SO smart; they can see things that normal people can't...

Speaking of the mentally ill, what about the "truthers"? Frantically trying to find a way to blame Obama for not doing it sooner?  No, not at all; they just don't believe it surprise surprise; they realized right away that it was another Wag-the-Dog-like hoax. Plus they don't think bin Laden had anything to do with September 11th anyway, so they're just laughing at the rest of us gullible sheep as we obsess about it and/or celebrate. Whatever. This century, so far, seems to be all about paranoia and delusion; not quite the Age of Aquarius yet, huh?

President Obama's Birth Certificate Released; Trump Takes Credit

This morning, in an almost certainly futile attempt to put an end to birther nonsense, President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, the one the lunatic fringe and  their new leader, Donald Trump, have been screaming lies about.

President Obama's Birth Certificate; birthers, read it and weep. Or, y'know, resume lying.

I actually have mixed feelings about the release.

First, he shouldn't have had to do this. Anybody with even half a brain has known all along that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, period. There has never been a shred of evidence or any reason whatsoever to doubt his American citizenship, but resentment, ignorance, and racism are powerful motives for lies and innuendo, so the birthers made up a lie and ran with it.  

A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll showed that "nearly 75% of Americans believe Obama was definitely or probably born in the United States". Seems like it'd be 90%, but the dumbening of America has been gaining momentum for the last couple of years...

The statistic I find REALLY hard to believe is that, supposedly, more than 4 out of 10 Republicans, believe he probably or definitely was not born in America."

I mean, really? I don't know...I'm thinking that Republicans actually holding office aren't quite that stupid. I suspect they only pretend to share some doubts about Obama's birthplace and citizenship, so as not to alienate the Very Very Silly Party, their core. 

Nonetheless, the President never should have had to release the long form just because some lunatic fringe morons dared him to do it.....the demand was obviously racially motivated (and eagerly politically exploited by others), and was insulting at the very least. 

But I am glad to see this nonsense addressed more definitively, because at least now Republicans will have to either drop it and move on, separating themselves from the hardcore birthers, or else pander to the loonies full time. 

Donald Trump is (as always) "very, very proud of" himself...

"I feel I've accomplished something really, really important and I'm honored for it," said Trump.

The thing is, watching World Class(less) Narcissist Donald Trump taking credit for the release of Obama's long-form birth certificate - instead of apologizing for all the outrageous lies he's been telling about it all month - is infuriating! 

I am so ready for Donald Trump to just effing disappear! That  face, that voice, that twisted little mind and spectacularly arrogant attitude, are like fingernails on the blackboard for me...

And hearing this pompous jerk crowing about how overwhelmingly proud he is of himself for being, apparently, the sole cause of the release,  (like he didn't come really late to the conspiracy club, and like isn't always overwhelmingly proud of himself), and then hearing him launch straight into his meat-handed, self-promoting, pseudo-campaigning, is absolutely nauseating. 

Trump Speaks.....flies gather

Seriously, with all the challenges we have to deal with, is America really in the mood to listen to another year-and-a-half of this guy and his wacko supporters?