Last week in Austin, an untreated mentally ill man with serious federal tax problems flew his plane into an IRS building. The suicide bomber, Joe Stack was a software engineer who owned a home and a pricey private plane. Instead of making reasonable efforts to work with the IRS to pay his tax burden, Mr. Stack chose the irrational and pathological path to violence. He killed a federal employee, Mr. Vernon Hunter and himself. Thirteen other federal employees were injured.
The long, rambling rant posted on a website eerily reflected the angry populist sentiments that have swept the country in the past year. In it, a Joe Stack inveighed against intrusive Big Brother government, corrupt corporate giants, irrational taxes, as well as the "puppet" George Bush. "I choose not to pretend that business as usual won't continue," he wrote. "I have just had enough. I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt." And then Stack apparently got in a Piper Cherokee PA-28 at about 9:40 a.m. at an airport in suburban Austin, Texas, and flew the plane into a commercial building housing an IRS office, killing himself, seriously injuring two people on the ground and starting a conflagration that lasted several hours.
Governor, lately you've been pitching, twitching and puffing a lot of hot air about secession.
Texas is a real unique place all right and the Governor is a major contributor to its uniqueness.
Come on Governor, put your money where your mouth is. Just do it. Leave already. You can take all of your worshipers, i.e. secessionists, teabaggers, Birchers, birthers, racists and xenophobes with you.
Hit the road dude.
Leave, dude. Voters are the meanest old women you will have ever seen. You won't be packing any of our money with you when you leave, either.
But you can, Sir, help yourself to all of the creationism, witchcraft and voodoo science text books that you and your supporters put in our schools in yet another endless crusade of right wing conservative efforts to dumb down the children of Texas.
I'm sure you all will find a cozy place to establish a new Republic, Governor. Hell, Sir, you could name your new territory the New Republic of Teabagistan, Secessistan or Birchistan in honor of your strongest supporters. Below is a little reminder to help you sort out the guiding principles of your new Republic.
This would be a perfect time for you to leave Governor. After all, Bill White, Houston's former and very popular mayor raised $2.2 million last month. So far he has over $9 mil in his war chest.
On Sunday Texas had the honor to be graced by the frequent flashing of pearly whites, volumes of hair, razzle, dazzle, sizzle and sazzle at a Perry campaign pep rally near Houston. Aside from memorized talking point attacks, a boatload of flash and glittering glamor, lots of hair all around and awesome wardrobes, Rick and Sarah had little of substance to offer their crowd.
All hats, all hair, no cattle.
Rick Perry and Sarah Palin fired up their base with the usual right wing rhetoric and campaign jingles. Approximately 1100 hard right conservatives comprised mostly of teabaggers, (including the group's neo-Nazis and white supremists)secessionists, racists, bigots and xenophobes cheered Mr. Good Hair and the Quitter on Twitter's pep rally.
Rick and Sarah spent much of their time attacking, attacking and well, more attacking. I guess neither have a plan to bring new jobs to Texas, nor are they interested in investing in alternative green sources of energy. The Quitter on Twitter remains locked in a 20th century energy framework, reciting her old drill baby drill campaign pledge. Perry offered no plan to bring down the drop out rate in Texas schools. Nor did he talk about the fatal flaws of the Texas criminal justice system. He failed to mention the transportation challenges that plague our state given the broken roads, the lack of viable public transportation and our state's crumbling infrastructure.
Out of touch do nothing government believers, like Rick and Sarah, who rely on fat cats to deliver the goods, don't get what happens when their sugar daddy fat cats fail to, thanks to greed, deliver the goods to the people.
Both Perry and Palin ignored state wide issues and both targeted their guns away from their own failures as governors while pointing at a convenient and predictable target.
Blame Washington DC for everything.
Meanwhile, back at the Perry farm in Texas and in the snow laden outpost called Wasilla, Alaska, federal funding has been greeted with both great sighs of relief and cheers.
But narcissists like Rick and Sarah don't care much about the people of Texas or Alaska, for it is all about them. For both, their main concern is:
What works best for me?
Kay Bailey Hutchison is no better. She said it is time to leave the Senate and yet she is still there. Her husband and children live in Texas and she is here every Thursday through Tuesday. Senator Hutchison is earning a tax payer funded six figure salary with health insurance benefits, while working two and a half days on behalf of Texas.
It seems that the teabaggers, racists and right wing extremists have taken over the Republican Party. Of those polled as self-identified Republicans, 39% believe President Obama should be impeached. 63% think he is a socialist. 42% do not believe the President was born in the United States. 31% believe President Obama hates white people. 23% want their state to secede from the U.S..
To all of you who have written emails and comments, I really wish I could respond to every one of you. I truly appreciate your taking the time to write, even if we may be on different sides of the political fence. If there is one thing that my politically mixed San Francisco/Idaho background has taught me, it is benefit of continuing a discussion even if you don't agree. Too often these days, the Left and the Right immediately shut down if you are deemed to be from the opposing camp. Here's to good discussion even if we don't agree.
Of course there is not a civil war brewing in the Republican Party. Someone just made it up. But a leading conservative has recently called the non-civil non-war an impending bloodbath.
After the havoc the Republican Party and its newly formed teabagger faction have wreaked on this country from Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush and culminating with the horror of George W. Bush and his neocon policies, a bloodbath sounds just fine by me. Indeed, one is long overdue.
According to yesterday's Houston Chronicle, the teabaggers in Texas are fed up and want to throw all of the bums out. In Texas, the bums happen to be Republicans.
Even Rick Perry is a target of this group because he apparently is not conservative enough.
While it's too early to determine if the Tea Party movement will prove to be a durable political force, its candidates could prove a costly and unwanted distraction for establishment Republicans who would rather be aiming their fire at Democrats. Case in point: the GOP race for governor, where Tea Party ally Debra Medina of Wharton has announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination against incumbent Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, whom she dismisses derisively as "get-along-style politicians."
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.
Honestly, I have to stop drinking coffee when reading political pieces in the Houston Chronicle in the morning. I've unintentionally spewed coffee from my mouth and nostrils more than once when I've read something by or about Texas Republican politicians.
But before I venture into a story about Texas Republican shills for corporate lobbyists in big business and insurance, let me share some breaking news about how 73% of U.S. physicians are totally on board with a public option in health care reform.
From the New England Journal of Medicine, and, according to NPR:
When polled, "nearly three-quarters of physicians supported some form of a public option, either alone or in combination with private insurance options," says Dr. Salomeh Keyhani. She and Dr. Alex Federman, both internists and researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, conducted a random survey, by mail and by phone, of 2,130 doctors. They surveyed them from June right up to early September.
Most doctors - 63 percent - say they favor giving patients a choice that would include both public and private insurance. That's the position of President Obama and of many congressional Democrats. In addition, another 10 percent of doctors say they favor a public option only; they'd like to see a single-payer health care system. Together, the two groups add up to 73 percent.
Predictable GOP response from the psycho wacko right: The doctors are a bunch of witch doctors from Africa. All are undocumented workers who were not born here. All are nazis, communists, fascists, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, socialists and blah, blah, blah.
Moving along as to why I could not hold my morning coffee. Hint: it has something to do with plastering lipstick on rather large and really dirty pigs.
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.
The wacko world of circus clowns and screeching monkeys is at it again. According to right wing irrational, unreasonable and illogical thought, President Obama apparentely embraces the principles of Michael Moore's film that supposedly bashes capitalism.
Neither of the crazed jackasses and tools above had actually seen the movie they "reviewed," by the way.
Hats off to Bill Moyers for his wise words and refreshing honesty. And hats off to another wise Texan, James Moore, who shows us how Texans can so badly mess up Texas.
More relevant video clips and transcripts can be found here.
Michelle Bachmann's comments bring discussions on HCR to a new level of extremism and lunacy.
Some Republicans have obviously lost it completely over health care reform. I guess they can't stand it that their sugar daddies in the health care industry might not have so many bucks to give them if HCR should, God forbid, pass. Besides, Michelle Bachmann and her Republican colleagues in Congress have the best health care coverage that taxpayer money can buy. Why would they ever want the same for their lowly and undeserving constituents?
For full transcripts diarist Ministry of Truth over at Daily Kos provides them.
Caught Red Handed. Sen. Grassley Voted for "Death Panels" in 2003
Oh those lying liars and the lies they tell.
According to Amy Sullivan at Time many of the very same death panel liars voted in favor of end-of-life counseling in 2003.
You would think that if Republicans wanted to totally mischaracterize a health care provision and demagogue it like nobody's business, they would at least pick something that the vast majority of them hadn't already voted for just a few years earlier. Because that's not just shameless, it's stupid.
Yes, that's right. Remember the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, the one that passed with the votes of 204 GOP House members and 42 GOP Senators? Anyone want to guess what it provided funding for? Did you say counseling for end-of-life issues and care? Ding ding ding!!
It was so very naive and silly of me to suggest that the GOP should step up and take responsibility, as any adult would do, by calling a halt to the brown shirt shout downs at town hall meetings on healthcare reform.
Silly, silly me. That won't happen. Never. Ever. Even if hell freezes over and the entire country is in the throes of death, the answer remains to be no, never, in your dreams, not even if hell freezes over.
Despite GOP cries for freedom, its flag waving, its prominence of lapel wearing flag pins, its highly orchestrated scenarios of patriotism and noble words about freedom, the GOP's behavior has nothing to do with any of the principles mentioned above.
Actions speak louder than words. Shouting down and shutting out the questions and opinions that fellow Americans want to ask and share with their elected representative is:
anti-democratic,
anti-patriotic and
anti-American.
When political rhetoric goes over the top, inaction by a party's leadership is the same as blind acquiescence.
According to former right wing Republican and evangelical Christian leader, Frank Schaeffer, the GOP, its conservative pundits and the self-serving corporate sharks in the healthcare industry know no bounds in pulling off what is best for them.
For right wing Republicans, conservative pundits, the corporate sharks and their now enabled fruit loop nut jobs, it is a fight to the death.
There are many ways in which the health care titans and their tools in the Republican Party manipulate and play upon the ignorance and fears of senior citizens and under-educated Americans. Most of its targeted base is the most vulnerable. It is older folks who are sadly, the easiest prey for utterly evil sharks and profiteers. Next up are under-educated and low information Americans. These groups provide a solid anchor in the crumbling GOP base and these supporters also happen to be Rush Limbaugh's frequent listeners.
But there is a third group and this is the one that is the most sinister and dangerous. They are not old folks who are fearful about losing their Medicare benefits. They are not the folks who are honestly confused about what health care reform will mean for them. As Paul Krugman wrote in his article The Town Hall Mob today.
Now, people who don't know that Medicare is a government program probably aren't reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing. They may believe some of the disinformation opponents of health care reform are spreading, like the claim that the Obama plan will lead to euthanasia for the elderly. (That particular claim is coming straight from House Republican leaders.) But they're probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they've heard about what he's doing, than to who he is.
That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that's behind the "birther" movement, which denies Mr. Obama's citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don't know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn't be surprising if it's a substantial fraction.
And cynical political operators are exploiting that anxiety to further the economic interests of their backers.
Does this sound familiar? It should: it's a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites.
Indeed, this is the group of folks who despise President Obama and everything he stands for. They are the ones who attended Palin's hate fests in droves. They are the ones who screamed "Kill Him!" and "Arab!" at Palin's potential lynch mob scenes. These very same sick and twisted cretins listen to every hateful word spewed from the mouths of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other hate mongers on the right.
The crazed racists made their forceful presence known at a town hall in Tampa yesterday.
