I definitely have to stop sipping coffee when reading the Houston Chronicle in the morning. Too many times my freshly brewed favorite morning beverage is spat out because I am appalled and/or disgusted by something I read.
This morning happened to be one of those days when my morning joe ended up on the front page of the Houston Chronicle.
The headline that captured my attention:
A case of mistaken identity?
Environmentalists surprised that A&M scientist named to board has sided with industry
By MATTHEW TRESAUGUE
Apparently a Texas A&M educated scientist who holds two advanced degrees and a doctorate in agricultural engineering to boot, is skeptical of the proven science supporting the fact that human activity is largely responsible for pollution.
What do Rick Perry and Sarah Palin share in common other than the fact both are right wing extremists with an abundance of hair?
There are plenty of shared commonalities between them but the most important is obviously glaring. The governors of the states of Texas and Alaska speak from both sides of their mouths. And both think no one is paying attention.
In other words, Rick and Sarah are lying hypocrites who believe their constituents are stupid.
Please pour yourselves a little glass of your preferred beverage of relaxation, get out the popcorn, if you like, sit back and enjoy the show.
First, the ground rules: Jackass awards are not exclusive to the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh or propagandists for right wing and conservative thought. A jackass is viewed as one who is either arrogant or stupid enough to believe he/she can get away with fooling, lying to and/or willfully misleading others. In other words, any person who holds a position of influence whether one is a politician, elected official, community, or business leader, and this includes all media pundits, anchors and spokespersons for all of the above, who arrogantly or stupidly insults the intelligence of those they do, or hope to influence, is a jackass.
A jackass is also one who refuses to accept or lies about certain realities such as:
The simplest explanation for why America's reality got so distorted is the economic imbalance that Barack Obama now wants to remedy with policies that his critics deride as "socialist" ("fascist" can't be far behind): the obscene widening of income inequality between the very rich and everyone else since the 1970s. "There is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few," the president said in his budget message. He was calling for fundamental fairness, not class warfare. America hasn't seen such gaping inequality since the Gilded Age and 1920s boom that preceded the Great Depression.
This inequity was compounded by Bush tax policy and by lawmakers and regulators of both parties who enabled and protected the banking scam artists who fled with their bonuses and left us holding the toxic remains. The fantasy of easy money at the top of the economic pyramid trickled down to the masses, who piled up debt by leveraging their homes much as their '20s predecessors once floated stock purchases "on margin." Our culture, meanwhile, painted halos over celebrity C.E.O.'s, turning the fundamentalist gospel of the market into a national religion that further accelerated the country's wholesale flight from reality.
Finally, a jackass is one who wants to revert to the same old failed and stupid policies that got us into this economic meltdown in the first place.
For the past few days I have been reading about Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick's fall in the Houston Chronicle and The Burnt Orange Report. The Burnt Orange Report has provided excellent moment-by-moment coverage of this fascinating drama. The blogosphere is a great place to read about these kinds of developments because it affords lively discussion and debate among the bloggers and their readers.
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.
