It seems that we voters need to hold or obtain doctorate degrees in psychology or medical degrees in psychiatry to understand the twisted and dysfunctional behavior emanating from our fearless Republican leaders in Washington and Austin.
Both Senators Cornyn and Hutchison have trashed the stimulus bill (The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act,) railing against its waste and its abysmal failure to deliver cash infusions to our state while they extol the bill's virtues at the very same time. Maybe a little bird told the Senators that the recovery act they've been attacking for all kinds of reasons is actually a success.
To further complicate the Senators' stand on the stimulus package that both hate but love, John Cornyn has begged the EPA to deliver bucks for clean diesel projects in San Antonio and Houston.
Kay Bailey Hutchison praised the Port of Houston for its clean air strategy. Residents of the area may have a different definition of "clean air."
The Wall St. Journal obtained letters written by stimulus bashing Republicans who solicited federal recovery money for their states. When the funding is awarded the Republicans that hate the stimulus bill in Washington take credit for it in their home districts.
The Wall St. Journal included letters submitted by Senators Cornyn and Hutchison.
The Environmental Protection Agency received two letters from Sen. John Cornyn of Texas asking for consideration of grants for clean diesel projects in San Antonio and Houston. Mr. Cornyn is the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
One of the letters was signed jointly with Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, also of Texas. The letter said that the Port of Houston Authority "has informed me of the positive impact this grant will have in the region by serving as a foundation for PHA's Clean Air Strategy Plan, creating jobs, and significantly reducing diesel emissions." Houston received millions of dollars in diesel funding.
Meanwhile, outside the Washington D.C. beltway bubble, our revered Texas Governor Rick Perry issued a fatwa against the EPA.
Gov. Rick Perry announced today Texas would legally challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming endanger the public's health and welfare.
The federal agency issued the finding in December in an attempt to regulate the heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act.
Texas is the nation's leading emitter of carbon dioxide, releasing enough each year that the state would rank seventh worldwide if it were a country.
The Senators and Rick Perry's behavior would be downright comical and would make great material for a new series of Homer Simpson cartoons or a Three Stooges redux except that the consequences of their hypocritical stupidity is downright dangerous to our financial security.
With this kind of leadership in power, I think we can safely assume
Texas we have a huge problem. If we don't fix it we are screwed.
Now is the time to throw at least one of the bums out. By 2014 we may have a modicum of responsible and sane leadership in both Austin and Washington.
It won't happen unless we Vote, Baby, Vote.
The polls opened yesterday.
So said President Barack Hussein Obama at the State of the Union Address on Wednesday night. And, as one can see from the poll cited below, most Americans agree with the President.
You were sent to Washington to serve the people, not your personal ambitions.
Most unfortunately for Texans, Texas Republicans did not get the message. Senator John Cornyn, in a typical act of cowardice, attempted to wash his hands of the economic and financial carnage he and the Bush Administration visited upon us. According to Cornyn, in an appalling act of sheer cowardice, President Obama owns the entire financial debacle b/c, after all, Mr. Obama has been office for one year.
Earth to the spineless, irresponsible John Cornyn: It took you and W. 8 years to drive our economy into the ditch.
You and W. own this depression, aka "recession." Stand up, be a man, if you can, and take responsibility for the horribly poor choices and decisions you made.
John Cornyn and Texas Republicans are obviously confined within a very narrow mid 20th century mind lock that is completely out of synch with 21st century realities.
Fast forward to January 27, 2010. The American people have spoken. Texas Republicans seemed to have forgotten that the American people have elected President Obama by an overwhelming majority.
Texas Republicans may also like to know that a poll reveals 83% of Americans approve the President's State of the Union Address. 70% believe the President shares the same priorities for the country that they do.
If the GOP does not share the same priorities as 70% of the American people, I'd say the Party has a serious problem with everyday people and their realities.
Rick Perry has turned down the federal government's Race to the Top program in which Texas could have entered into a competition to bring up to $700 million home to improve our schools.
The Race to the Top Program is part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. The purpose of this initiative is not only to improve our state's K-12 schools but it also promises to save thousands of jobs.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provides approximately $100 billion for education, creating a historic opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of jobs, support states and school districts, and advance reforms and improvements that will create long-lasting results for our students and our nation including early learning, K-12, and post-secondary education.
Rick Perry, however, has decided Texas is better off by continuing its race to the bottom.
Gov. Rick Perry must be worried that the citizens of Texas are going to lose their minds and turn state government over to the Democrats.
This week on the campaign stump, he proposed two state constitutional amendments based on the notion that we can't afford democracy.
One is that any state tax increase would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.
Functionally this is already the case in the Senate, where everything but voter ID bills needs a two-thirds majority, but apparently Perry is concerned because Texas two years ago elected an uncomfortable number of Democrats and tossed autocratic Speaker Tom Craddick in favor of a speaker who will actually work with said Democrats.
Maybe Perry has become a great admirer of California, where a two-thirds requirement for passing a budget led to the state paying its bills with IOUs while the Legislature bickered and showboated.
Casey is spot on where California's woes are concerned. The state requires a two-thirds majority in order to pass tax increases. Of course since Republicans have an unholy aversion to taxes it is all but impossible to implement tax increases. Consequently schools go without funding and teachers lose their jobs. Class sizes increase and the quality of education thereby decreases. College professors in the University of California system had to take 8% cuts in salaries. Tuition and fees have increased to the point that it is very difficult for working and middle class students to afford a four year college education. There is no money to fix roads and bridges. The state's infrastructure will take a serious nose dive.
Well, folks, it looks like we have another one of those typical Bush heckofjobs still in office. A holdover from the Bush Administration had skiing plans the day after the attempted underwear bomber attack. The official, Michael Leiter, did not find it necessary to cancel or shorten his vacation.
Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Michael Leiter didn't cut short a ski trip until several days after alleged Nigerian attempted bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to destroy a commercial jetliner en route to Detroit Christmas day, veteran New York Daily News intelligence correspondent James Meek reports Thursday.
Citing two intelligence officials grousing about Leiter's continued vacation, Meek says the top counterterror boss declined to cut short his snow-struck holiday.
With heckofjobs like this, why not put a terrorist in charge of our national security?
What other horrors are we go learn about when President Obama releases the Christmas Day Bomber Report, I wonder?
Update: some folks over at Daily Kos have problems with Raw Story.com and the New York Daily News as entirely credible sources. I am therefore including a link to ABC News that also covered the story.
In a political turnabout that may indicate what lies ahead, Cornyn abandoned his long-standing support of federal spending for NASA and for the Johnson Space Center.
In the pre-Christmas legislative rush, he joined Senate Republicans, with fellow Texan and NASA champion Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison among them, in opposing a government-wide, $448 billion spending package that included $18.7 billion for the space agency.
Toughest part to come
"Clearly because you end up voting against a bill because it has excessive spending doesn't mean you don't support a lot of the underlying components of it," Cornyn explained. "But there needs to be a little restraint - particularly during the time of high deficits and runaway debt."
Where were the Senators fiscal restraint when they voted to fight a completely unnecessary war? Where was their fiscal restraint when they voted for huge tax cuts for the wealthy during a time in which our nation waged war on two fronts? Where was their so-called fiscal constraint in 2003 when Republicans voted for an expansion of Medicare, putting all of the above on the nation's credit card?
Democrats are troubled by the inconsistency of Republican lawmakers who approved a major Medicare expansion six years ago that has added tens of billions of dollars to federal deficits, but oppose current health overhaul plans.
All current GOP senators, including the 24 who voted for the 2003 Medicare expansion, oppose the health care bill that's backed by President Barack Obama and most congressional Democrats.
The Democrats claim that their plan moving through Congress now will pay for itself with higher taxes and spending cuts and they cite the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for support.
By contrast, when Republicans controlled the House, Senate and White House in 2003, they overcame Democratic opposition to add a deficit-financed prescription drug benefit to Medicare. The program will cost a half-trillion dollars over 10 years, or more by some estimates.
With no new taxes or spending offsets accompanying the Medicare drug program, the cost has been added to the federal debt.
Some Republicans say they don't believe the CBO's projections that the health care overhaul will pay for itself. As for their newfound worries about big government health expansions, they essentially say: That was then, this is now.
Six years ago, "it was standard practice not to pay for things," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "We were concerned about it, because it certainly added to the deficit, no question." His 2003 vote has been vindicated, Hatch said, because the prescription drug benefit "has done a lot of good."
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said those who see hypocrisy "can legitimately raise that issue."
You betcha we can and you betcha we are.
Senators Hutchison and Cornyn have been standing on hypocrisy and bringing home lumps of coal to Texas for far too long.
Once again, let's raise our glasses to a new decade of change, more change, hope and recovery.
Today I received an electronic newsletter from John Cornyn that rather surprised me. In his letter to his so-called constituents, Senator Cornyn informed us that he agrees with the uber liberal/progressive former chair of the DNC and governor of Vermont on the health care reform bill.
Wow. This is a new and interesting twist in right/left politics.
In what way, Senator? Please do explain.
My colleagues and I picked up an unlikely ally in our quest to stop the Reid health care bill. Gov. Howard Dean pleaded for his fellow Democrats to "kill this bill" in a Washington Post op-ed on Thursday morning, saying that it "will do more harm than good to the future of America." Despite the vocal protests from Liberals, Conservatives, and Independents, Democrats remain determined to force the bill through by Christmas. I assure you that my fellow Republicans and I remain resolute in stopping the Reid bill dead in its tracks.
As usual, Cornyn is full hot air. The Republicans are screaming about expanded government, as usual, and a health care program that will be affordable and will include millions of uninsured Americans. Republicans are obviously perfectly pleased with the status quo of nearly 50 million uninsured folks who use emergency rooms for their primary care needs. When this happens, the expense is passed along to taxpayers. As W. said during his Administration, everyone has access to health care. Everyone can go to the emergency rooms. Taxpayers shoulder this burden as we do W.'s war in Iraq and his tax cuts to the wealthy. Republicans hate taxation except when it comes to sticking the middle class with taxes.
Progressive Democrats are very unhappy about the lack of a government run public option that would introduce competition into the health insurance market. Many are also worried about the mandates if there is no real competition in the insurance market. Folks have every right to fear that the insurance sharks will take advantage of them if there are no checks and balances. They would do it in a New York nanosecond. Cornyn and the Republicans, by the way, have been enabling these sharks for decades.
If Cornyn had paid attention to the news today he would have known that Dr. Dean now believes the bill should pass. Are you still on board with Dr. Dean, Sir?
I didn't think so.
If John Cornyn and his Republican Party were so concerned about their constituents they would have engaged in this debate a long time ago. They failed to. And now the spineless cowards are trying to align themselves with Dr. Dean and other Progressives who are rightfully upset about the absence of a public option.
Cornyn also writes:
As Texans are well aware by now, the Senate is coming to the end of its third straight week in the debate over health care reform. I think many of you have seen that as this debate progresses, we've learned two important things. First, with each passing day we have more questions than answers about the Reid bill, and secondly, the more the American public learns about it, the more they don't like it. The most recent Washington Post / ABC News Poll says that a solid majority of Americans are opposed to the Reid bill, with a CNN estimate pegging opposition as high as 61% among Americans. I met recently with a group of San Antonio firefighters in my Washington office who echoed this sentiment to me, telling me they could not afford the new taxes they would be saddled with should the bill pass. The President's own chief cost analyst recently became the latest expert to sound alarms over the Reid bill. The Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Rick Foster, issued a report last week concluding that the Reid bill would increase health care costs, threaten access to care for seniors, and force people off of their current coverage. In other words, the Administration's own expert conclusively demonstrated that the Democrats' rhetoric does not match the reality of their bill and that passing the legislation would be worse than doing nothing. You can read the CMS report for yourself here.
Dude, the public is against a health care reform bill that lacks a public option.
Reform with public option or medicare expansion won 59% to 31% support.
Now tell me Sir, are you going to embrace a public option if it is present in the final bill?
I didn't think so.
Folks might be interested to know that John Cornyn has accepted millions of dollars in donations from the insurance, health professionals and pharma sectors. He has received:
$576,878 from insurance, $1,371,928 from health professionals and $288,165 from pharma.
Cornyn has also taken $362,390 from lobbyists. Banking and oil & gas are his biggest contributors.
What is it with Republican Party? Does it utterly despise hard working and desperate Americans?
Is the GOP too stubborn, lazy or too dumb to wrap its head around a very complex bill? Or maybe reading is a very tedious and beyond boring act that takes time that could be otherwise spent playing golf or sipping martinis with health insurance lobbyists.
Hundreds of Americans die every month because they lack health care insurance. Do Republicans, including the self-serving,vindictive and tool for the health insurance companies, Joe Lieberman care?
Can obese pigs fly?
I did not think so.
Everyone is entitled to one's opinion but not to making up the facts.
Whether it is health care reform or the economic meltdown, Republicans refuse to realistically acknowledge the domestic disasters that confront us whether it has to do with thousands upon thousands of Americans who die because of lack of access to health insurance. Republicans are also unmoved by the thousands upon thousands of Americans who have lost their jobs, homes and everything they have worked so hard to achieve.
Check out how the Republican tools for health insurance lobbyists operate.
Witness a work in narcissism.
Oh, so, Republicans want to improve the bill? For whom? The insurance health care industry?
You betcha.
Oh, Joe, come on, be brave and come out of your Republican closet. Admit that you are a tool for the fat cat health insurance lobbyist. And so is your wife. Come on Joe, admit this is all about you and you don't give a rat's derriere about your constituents who will die sooner than they should because you care about your ego more than you do about the people who elected you.
Last Sunday, on Meet the Press, Kay Bailey Hutchison spewed one whopper after another about the recently passed Senate health care reform bill. KBH spouted the same fear mongering myths as had John Cornyn in his recent newsletter to his so-called constituents. Kay and John's grotesquely misleading talking points are also a clone of what John Culberson (TX7-TeabaggerR) stated in his pricey and slick brochure.
This week alone I have been bombarded by snail mail and electronic mail from my Texas lawmakers mentioned above. Sadly and outrageously, all of the letters and brochures are filled with nothing but fear mongering tactics and blatant lies.
From Hutchison:
After hearing from constituents over the last several months, some members of Congress have now learned that using the term "government plan" elicits a strong negative from voters (because you have been scaring voters about government for years.) so they have now latched onto a new way to describe the same thing: a co-op. Texans should not be confused by this new packaging of the same idea. The co-op is a back door to a government takeover of our health care. (Really? According to whom? You?) The co-op would be started with federal funds, and it remains unclear whether or not taxpayer dollars would be used if the co-ops begin to fail. The Administration has tried to bail out the banking, housing and auto-industry. Would the co-ops be next?
Wow. Let's talk about an exercise in deceitful fear mongering. This is the first time I have heard about a co-op that would replace the public option and would ultimately become single payer health care. This would be a true dream come true for the American people.
But it ain't going to happen.
Because if a single payer, universal health care reform bill had been introduced there is no way in hell that Republican enabling Lieberman and the three sell-out Democrats known as Blue Dogs would have ever in their dreams voted for the Senate HCR Bill. Like Cornyn and Hutchison, Lieberman and the Blue Dogs serve as major pimps and go to bitches for the insurance industry.
Kay Bailey Hutchison should also remind herself that banking, housing and the auto-industry collapsed under her and her Party's watch. Like most Republicans Kay Bailey has always been in favor of dismantling every living regulatory legislation and she has never supported government oversight, transparency nor checks and balances of any sort.
Based on the mail I have read from Senators Hutchison, Cornyn and my U.S. House Rep. John Culberson, it is obvious that the Republicans are repeating the same lies over and over. The cover of Culberson's brochure reads:
HEALTH CARE TAKEOVER
.
The brochure shows a stethoscope lying on a flag draped on top of a building called:
INSURANCE
A couple of Culberson's bullet pointed lies:
2.5% tax on all individuals who do not purchase government run health care.
8% tax on businesses who cannot afford to purchase government run health care.
Notice how the Republicans frequently use the term government run. They do this to attach a negative and fearful meaning of government. The intended message? The evil government will take over one's life and control one's destiny. The Republican Party has spent years demonizing government run anything b/c they'd rather have the sharks, i.e. their cash cow donors, on Wall St.,in corporate America and the insurance industry to remain permanently in the driver seats.
Let's take a peek at Republican and other pimped out lawmakers willingness to enable corporate greed and corruption.
First up, Culberson's lies. His are only the tip of the iceberg.
Hey dude, I am one of your constituents and quite frankly you are full of stupid nonsense. It is stunning to me that you would include me and other progressives in your district among your special interest groups and deluded teabaggers. I'd venture to suggest that you will have an election challenge in the very near future.
According to Culberson's brochure.
The uninsured should 1. don't get sick or 2. if you do, die quickly.
The Democratic leadership bill, H.R. 3962 costs over $1.2 trillion; contains $729.5 billion in new taxes, adds 111 new offices to the government (jobs anyone?); and creates, expands and extends 43 entitlement programs. (There they go again with their entitlement obsession. Apparently the only ones who are entitled to be entitled are Republicans.) Now here is a really huge whopper: The bill also prohibits the sale of private insurance after 2013; cuts more than $150 billion from Medicare; and exempts members of Congress from the public options but no one else.
If Culberson had really read the bill instead of dancing with teabaggers he would have known that his claim about prohibiting private insurance is a bald faced lie. It is outrageous for Culberson to think he can willfully insult the intelligence of so many of his constituents with such stupid nonsense.
What Republicans are not telling us is the fact that HCR will cut the deficit by $127 billion, coverage will be extended to 94% Americans, 31 million more than have coverage today.
What the heck is wrong with that?
Remember those evil doing non-existent WMDs in Iraq? And Iraq's non-existent ties to Al-Qaeda?
The GOP is promoting health care reform as if it is a WMD. It is one that exists only in their heads.
This morning when I unfolded the front page of the Houston Chronicle the headline
GOP begins to show signs of resurgence
hit me in the face.
Really? A Republican resurgence?
I guess the fact that much of his N.J. constituency viewed Corzine as arrogant, corrupt and the dude who saddled his constituents with high property taxes while at the same time has strong ties to the thieves of all thieves, Goldman Sachs, had nothing to do with his loss.
And let's ignore the fact that Wall. St. and the financial sector is among the largest employer in the NYC and northern NJ area. Many mid to lower level employees in the financial sector received pink slips when Wall St. crashed. I guess these folks are not in the least bit angry at those who are or were part of the Wall St. establishment.
Earth to GOP obstructionists: incumbents even remotely tied to the Wall St. melt down and the thieving banks are going to get the boot unless Congress does something to regulate and demand transparency from the financial industry.
The once popular New York's former Democrat and now Republican billionaire mayor Bloomberg had to spend millions upon millions of his own money, outspending his opponents 10 to 1 to barely squeak by a win.
And a lackluster candidate in purple Virginia who ran a lackluster campaign in which he fled from a progressive agenda in a state that traditionally votes for a Governor who is not in the same Party as the President, is a sign of a GOP insurgence?
Voters don't vote if candidates fail to excite them. And no matter the party, voters will vote against corrupted and/or lying incumbents. Nor will they vote for a candidate who calls him or herself a progressive or conservative but whose words and deeds show they are anything but. Some Republicans may be able to fool the teabagging crowd and old white Independents with double talk and spin, but this crowd is a mere tiny minority. Just wait until Independents in Va. realize the newly elected governor, who pretended to be a centrist, is really a hard core conservative. Welcome to teabagger land, Indies. Maybe next time you won't be fooled by self-serving liars.
John Cornyn, of course, is gloating all over the place about two the Democratic gubernatorial losses.
These Republican victories clearly demonstrate a strong wave for our candidates in the 2010 midterm elections," said Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
And predictably, good ol' Taliban Pete Sessions is also salivating over the Democratic gubernatorial losses. Check out Matt Glazer's piece over at The Burnt Orange Report.
Where are our Texas leaders who possess both the guts to stand up to the big moneyed and powerfully influential insurance industry and, at the very same time, possess a heartfelt and deep understanding of the pain and suffering of those who have died because they cannot afford health care insurance?
According to the DCCC there are 67 House Republicans who voted against the stimulus package. But when these no voters are back in their home states they like to brag and swagger about bringing home the bacon. On a different level, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison joins these ranks. She voted against the stimulus bill and yet she criticized Rick Perry for turning down federal funding for extended unemployment benefits.
Texas has its fair share of outstanding hypocrites. Check the list below to see if your U.S. House Rep. is included in the GOP Hall of Hypocrites. I am not shocked to admit that my Rep. is among them. I betcha your's are too.
According to today's Houston Chronicle Perry received an arson report from an expert in 2004 but he won't reveal if he read it before Todd Willingham was executed.
In a letter sent Feb. 14, three days before Willingham was scheduled to die, Perry had been asked to postpone the execution. The condemned man's attorney argued that the newly obtained expert evidence showed Willingham had not set the house fire that killed his daughters, 2-year-old Amber and 1-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron, two days before Christmas in 1991.
On Feb. 17, the day of the execution, Perry's office got the five-page faxed report at 4:52 p.m., according to documents the Houston Chronicle obtained in response to a public records request.
But it's unclear from the records whether he read it that day. Perry's office has declined to release any of his or his staff's comments or analysis of the reprieve request.
A statement from Perry spokesman Chris Cutrone, sent to the Chronicle late Friday, said that "given the brevity of (the) report and the general counsel's familiarity with all the other facts in the case, there was ample time for the general counsel to read and analyze the report and to brief the governor on its content."
A few minutes after 5 p.m., defense lawyer Walter M. Reaves Jr. said he received word that the governor would not intervene. At 6:20 p.m. Willingham was executed after declaring: "I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit."
In the past, as recently as during George W. Bush's term, gubernatorial reviews were made public. Rick Perry, however, does not believe any of his or his staff reviews should be.
A Forensic Science Commission was about to disclose a report that seriously questions the arson evidence in the Willingham case. But Perry had immediately fired three of the Commision's members, including the Chairman. The meeting at which the report would have been revealed was canceled.
As our fearless elected leaders work day in and day out to kill off meaningful healthcare reform, more and more of their constituents continue to lose jobs. When most folks lose jobs they also lose health insurance. Obtaining affordable independent health insurance is impossible because 1. it is too expensive for folks with jobs much less those without and 2. even if one could afford it, well hells bells, it seems that insurance companies do not take patients with pre-existing conditions. A pre-existing condition can include acne and pregnancy. Under present day insurance guidelines one can safely assume that not one human being on the planet is without a pre-existing condition.
Thanks to former Cigna executive, Wendall Potter, we know how the insurance companies pull off $13 billion, that would be billion in profits per year. The insurance industry also has $1.4 million a day to burn on killing health care reform efforts.
So, how does the industry realize such awesome profits?
Who would have thought?
Deny care. Hand out death sentences.
Senators Cornyn and Hutchison have to make a choice. Will they continue to support their sugar daddies in insurance or will they support those who elected them into office?
The Huffinton Post reveals that Senate GOP intends to send out misleading mailers from a so-called non-partisan and vague task force called:
U.S.Senate Health Care Task Force
The mailer is actually commissioned by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and it is by no means non-partisan. The letter is signed by yours truly John Cornyn.
All of these descriptions are either intentionally misleading or deeply contested interpretations of the health care provisions put forth by Democrats. And while the name and NRSC title -- "Chairman" -- of Senator John Cornyn, (R-Texas) is listed in the header, there is no mention of the fact that he's a Republican. Only in the sixth paragraph is it revealed that "Republican leadership of the United States Senate" commissioned the survey.
This is yet another pathetic attempt for pimped out Republicans to kill health care reform.
The mailer uses the usual GOP fear mongering tactics by insisting that a lottery system will be set up that will determine who does and does not get care. The system will be based on age, race and gender.
First of all, the really good news for Texas Democrats is, according to recent polling, the Texas GOP is shrinking. Woohoo! All of our hard work has not been in vain. Let's take a little break here for a moment of celebration.
Moving along, the Party of Abysmal Failure failed to bring President Obama down this summer. The Party of Do-Nothing, Status Quo loving and NO! NO! NO! could not make healthcare reform the President's Waterloo. Given the information above, one should not be surprised. As I mentioned earlier, all that is left in the GOP is mostly a bunch of cranky old wacko white folks (Rush, Glenn, et al.); delusional paranoids, i.e. Dick Cheney; crooks, a la Karl Rove, Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff; the ethically challenged, i.e. all Texas GOP lawmakers; and fringe elements i.e. birthers, deathers, teabaggers, assault weapon lovers, racists, xenophobes, general and variety haters of everything different, and under-educated and pliable scared people. The GOP also has more than its fair share of family values hypocrites like the dude below.
Today Republicans are running around the country like a bunch of chickens with their heads chopped off. They are screaming and raving about socialism and death panels. They are yelling about taking their country back. The GOP is distributing scary flyers to fearful seniors and it is holding ginned up fear fests at town hall meetings at which some are showing up with guns, including assault rifles, as readers will see below. Republican leader Rush Limbaugh and other propagandists for the RNC are frantically hurling barrels of gasoline on the orchestrated red hot fires of fear, mayhem and panic.
THE SOCIALISTS ARE COMING. THE SOCIALIST ARE COMING. THEY'RE GOING TO TAKE AWAY MEDICARE AND KILL YOUR GRANNY! THEY TOOK AWAY OUR COUNTRY!
As MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out to TX-7 U.S. Rep Culberson, Medicare is evil doing socialism to its very core. O'Donnell reminded Culberson that Medicare had been imported from Germany and was a creation of Bismark.
O'Donnell asked Culberson if he was against Medicare given the fact that it is socialism at its very finest. Culberson did not like the question, or simply did not know the facts and responded by throwing a hissy fit on national TV.
My U.S. House Rep (Houston) never fails to embarrass the living daylights out of many of his constituents. That would be those of us who are not invited to Culberson's orchestrated town hall meetings.
GOP Playbook, Chapter I: When you don't like the question posed by a journalist or if you simply can't handle it, change the subject.
Chapter 2: If the journalist won't let you change the subject, ties you into a pretzel and if you fall into his/her trap, attack the interviewer's network.
What happens when none of the above works?
Play dumb.
Or
Throw a tantrum. Look like a deer caught in the headlights because you really, really believe your own fabricated spin.
