MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON
Well the eyes of many are on Texas. The repubs are mixing it up. Kay Bailey
Hutchison has decided to run away from the Senate and attempt to move into the
Texas Governor's Mansion. One would have thought this rather smart on her
part. I mean, Governor Rick Perry is a
right wing nutjob.
And Kay could just kind of show up, offer an alternative in
a repub state and all would go well.
How big a nut job is Perry?
AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up an anti-tax "tea party" Wednesday with his stance against the federal government and for states' rights as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, "Secede!"
"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that."
He said when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out. However, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas negotiated the power to divide into four additional states at some point if it wanted to but not the right to secede.
(I already have pointed out that this is impossible since Texas had to reenter the U.S.A. in 1865 after they lost the Civil War, thereby nullifying any 'understandings' it might have had in 1845.)
Oh and Perry spouts all this crap about Washington, and all that tax and spending and....you would think he is running for the Senate. But something is happening in Dixie that Kay and even Rick really did not see coming.
The funniest twist of all? The long-anticipated two-person race has--almost overnight--turned into a three-person free-for-all, with a first-time candidate, a Ron Paul apostle named Debra Medina, riding a grassroots tea party movement from obscurity into contention. Medina, whose two campaign planks are "state sovereignty" and abolishing property taxes (in a state that already has no income tax), has managed the considerable feat of staking out a place to the right of Perry. From 4 percent in November's polls, Medina had surged by early February to within striking distance of Hutchison and a spot in a likely runoff with Perry. Perry's cry for "states' rights" has proven no match, on the vast far right of the Texas GOP, for Medina's call, at a now infamous "Sovereignty or Secession" rally, for the "tree of freedom" to once again be "watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots."
So Texas Republicans' choice on March 2 is now between right, righter and rightest. Thanks to Medina's growing support, a runoff in mid-April is almost guaranteed, since you can't win the nomination without more than 50 percent of the vote.. And then Medina tripped over her momentum the second week of February, telling Glenn Beck that she wasn't convinced the 9/11 conspiracy theory of involvement by the US government had been disproven. The novice candidate quickly began damage control, saying that of course Muslim terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center. But to many, her comments to Beck and the right-wing guru's quick dismissal of her were sure signs that Medina was nuts--and that her ability to build beyond the hard-core right of the base might be limited.
Molly Ivins once famously called the state the "national laboratory for bad government?
Debra Medina now makes Perry look the moderate. You see everything is relative. And I do not get along with many of my relatives; but I digress.
No income tax, no property tax. Okay then. I mean Texas has to work out its own problems. But it looks like Texans can look forward to using the guns they have in their pick-ups, take part time jobs so they can home school their chillin, remember to haul their garbage to local dumps for a fee, pay a 15% sales tax (I mean how else are they going to pay for their crooked politicians), volunteer on road crews....
Ah, screw em.
Thank God we have more sanity in the good ole Midwest;
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told a crowd at CPAC on Saturday that he could "empathize" with the suicide bomber who last week attacked an IRS office in Austin, and encouraged his listeners to "implode" other IRS offices, according to a witness.
King's comments weren't recorded, but a staffer for Media Matters, who heard the comments, provided TPMmuckraker with an account.
The staffer, who requested anonymity because she's not a communications specialist, said that King, an extreme right-winger with a reputation for eyebrow-raising rhetoric, appeared as a surprise guest speaker on an immigration panel at the conservative conference. During his closing remarks, King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could "empathize" with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week.
During the question and answer session, the Media Matters staffer asked King to clarify his comment, reminding him of his sworn duty to protect the American people from all sworn enemies, foreign and domestic. In response, said the staffer, King gave a long and convoluted answer about having been personally audited by the IRS, and ended
by saying he intended to hold a fundraiser to help people "implode" their local IRS office
The video shows the King advocating the abolishment of the IRS The guy not only sanctions the tragedy in Austin, he wants the rich to be tax free. You know I knew it would come to this. I mean, the Federal Government brought in more money after Kennedy knocked the top tax rate from 90% to 70%. Then Reagan all but halved that rate. I mean if we could knock the top tax rate to 0, well, think how much more money we could bring in to pay all our bills. Putting aside the fact that most of our bills are tendered by independent fascist contractors.
This tea party thing is getting out of control. Here is a taste of how sane this group really is;
Tea Party" leader Mark Williams appeared on a CNN panel on "Anderson Cooper 360" last night and promptly set to work discrediting himself and his movement. Williams denounced those carrying blatantly racist signs against President Obama during the tea parties as "no more part of the mainstream of America than the hippies who wear nipple clips and feather boas in San Francisco streets during so-called peace demonstrations."
Cooper had done his homework, however, and caught Williams blatantly misrepresenting himself: "What you're saying makes sense to me here when I'm hearing what you say but then I read on your blog, you say, you call the President an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief."
Williams shrugs and responds, "Yeah, that's the way he's behaving." An incredulous Cooper asks Williams if he really believes Obama is an Indonesian Muslim and a welfare thug. The tea party leader digs the hole a little deeper: "He's certainly acting like it. Until he embraces the whole country what else can I conclude."
I am telling you, this group is even more racist when they attempt to
clarify their statements.But Glenn Beck...I mean the fellow spouts absolute epiphanies sometimes. He had so much fun at C-PAC:
The crowd was enthralled, even as Beck took them down winding tales of Calvin Coolidge, the Statute of Liberty and the supposed great middle class explosion of the 1920s. All we've heard, the Fox News host complained, is "we need a big tent. We need a big tent. Can we get a bigger tent? How can we get a big tent? What is this the circus? America is not a clown show. America is not a circus. America is an idea. America is an idea that sets people free." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/20/glenn-beck-cpac-2010-spee_n_470356.html
Look at the rich
How do they dare?
Put all the poor in the ground
They just don't care
So they send in some clowns
What of the serfs?
You disapprove?
Truths that keep coming around
Truths you can't disprove
So you give us the clowns
Just look at these clowns
We try to cope
You send in the boors
There is no ring
Of truth from you or yours
Bachmann or palin come in
With the usual flair
Reading your lines
None of us care.
You must love farce
Bad farce, I feel.
I thought that you loved your country
Now it's so clear
You give nothing but frowns
From all these ill read clowns
Fuck you and your clowns
We can't survive
You should foresee
We are nothing to you
You care not for me
The American Dream
Has drifted away
You're no surprise
You're a cliché
You are the rich
Isn't it clear?
Expressing nothing but lies
Can't dry all these tears.
So you send us the clowns.
Yes nothing but clowns
While we all rot here