Black and White beach rocks wallpaper
Black and White forest light wallpaper
Texas Governor Rick Perry wants secession from the United States of America,
The 10th Amendment was enacted by folks who remembered what it was like to have a very oppressive government, to be under the thumb of tyrants in an all-powerful government.
Working Americans might assume that Perry woke from a coma yesterday after eight years and went straight to the tea smokers rally, but no he has been in some marginal state of consciousness since he has contacted the federal government several times asking for help (details at link). If Perry is joking or pandering or just taken one two hits off the tea bong doesn’t matter. Unless there is a monumental sea change in the average Americans voting propensities and being a secessionist ( some would say traitor) becomes cool, Perry has sabotaged his presidential ambitions. Of course unless he becomes president of Texas. Joking aside, 43% of Texans voted for Obama and Texas has 12 Democratic Congressional representatives. So speaking of tyranny, Perry does not seem concerned about trashing the genuine populist ideology of almost half the state. Texas businesses are in fact reaping some nice benefits, directly and indirectly from the Obama plan to make the U.S. more energy independent. Before I get the particulars, I’m not sure how seriously to take Perry or anyone that supports him, but this gentleman is a little upset, Rick Perry Should Stop Embarrassing Texas
Partisanship and political philosophy aside, I can think of few things more irresponsible in this economy than the governor of Texas speaking freely about secession. What business is going to relocate to Texas with him talking like that? Who wants to come to a state to do research at its large land grant universities with a governor who sounds like George Wallace or Lester Maddox naming the regents.
Texas is one of, if not the leader in developing wind energy, Schnurman: Subsidies are blowing in the wind
The renewable energy source is all the rage in Texas, growing by 60 percent last year alone. It’s a fave of the federal government, too, with President Barack Obama approving the continuation of hefty tax credits and adding an option for cash grants from the treasury.
[ ]…That’s a good bet, as long as the federal subsidy remains in place. Wind companies that invest $100 million will recoup more than $74 million in tax credits and accelerated depreciation alone, the UNT study says. The state subsidies are a bonus.
Obama’s support for renewable energy makes the federal tax credit a priority, and that should reduce the need for states and local governments to give more help.
Which raises the question, did Perry accept what the Right has been calling pork funds, otherwise known as the Recovery Act. Yes, of course he did. He whined, waved his arms about and took the cash. American tax payers will not be getting a thank you from little Ricky, they’ll be getting some pandering rants about secession instead. Here we are a not sixty days into the Obama presidency and conservatives have already been bouncing off the wall crazy. So much so that the rantings of Redstate barely register on my outrage meter,
Right now – Governor Perry has to calculate what is best for his 23 million constituents. He has to ask himself the following questions, among many:
– Will America’s national defense be adequate enough to protect Texans after the numerous budget cuts and re-prioritizations of the Obama administration?;
* Will America, and thus Texas, be safe with massive cuts in missile defense even as North Korea and other rogue states seek nuclear weapons and missile capability?;
* Will Social Security and Medicare – currently barreling toward total collapse and massive unfunded liabilities – be solvent and viable for the millions of Texas baby-boomers heading toward retirement?;
Redstate has quite a list of concerns that certain tea provocateurs might want to seriously consider. Setting aside the paranoia about missile defense and Obama’s massive defence spending, if Texas secedes that means we’re not obligated to provide for their defense from foreign or domestic enemies. They’ll have to rise their own army, navy and deploy their own missiles. All Texas military bases will be closed. As a tax payer from another state that receives less federal funds then Texas, this secession stuff is sounding better. Medicare and Social Security? Medicare needs some help, but that is part of Obama’s health-care reform agenda and as usual all the scare stories about Social Security are just that. Texas will have to start its own safety net or go the social-Darwinism route. Once Perry leads Texas into this right-wing utopia we’ll need to erect a fence around it to keep the elderly from escaping into more civilized territory. No throwing your sick, disabled and newly poor over into Arkansas or New Mexico. Silly, but saner then Red’s proposition and I only went through the first two.
Another day with the tea smokers
Mike Madden’s man in the street style expose on the tea smokers, “On 9/11, I think they hit the wrong building”. I’ve read news stories and watched some video and the they should have bombed Congress guy takes the prize for looney,
Smith said. “Government — to be honest with you, and this will probably be misquoted, but on 9/11, I think they hit the wrong building. They should have gone into the Capitol building, hit out, knocked out both sides of the aisle, we’d start from scratch, we’d be better off today.” I pointed out that “they” did try to hit the Capitol. “Yeah, I know, they missed,” he said. “The wrong sequence. If someone had to go, it should have been the Capitol building. On that day I felt differently, but today that’s the way I feel.”
You cannot judge a political party or movements by a few people much less one guy, but in interview after interview there is a level of anger and lunacy that is going to haunt the Right’s attempts to make tea smoking anything other then a call to America’s Most Radical. CNN Reporter at Chicago Tea Party: It’s “Anti-CNN Since This is Highly Promoted By the Right-Wing, Conservative Network Fox”. The Right is all over this reporter, but watch the hostility toward her in the video and I think one guy has a Rick Santelli for president sign. Someone’s tea leaves are a little over dried. CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen made an obvious observation, much like calling out a gathering of flat earthers. In their eyes, of course flat earthers and rightwingers think they’re perfectly rational.
Just a few months ago the Right, who has suddenly rediscovered the 4th amendment, not only supported these abuses of federal power, but flatly stated that anyone that objected was nothing less then a terrorist sympathizer. One right-wing blogger called Confederate Yankee wrote,
If the FISA court was being dangerously obstructionist in the Administration’s view, then the President would appear to not just have a right, but a Constitutional responsibility to go around the court if he felt American lives were at risk. To act otherwise would be criminal negligence, would it not?
Nothing like making up Constitutional responsibilities out of thin air. N.S.A.’s Intercepts Exceed Limits Set by Congress
The overcollection problems appear to have been uncovered as part of a twice-annual certification that the Justice Department and the director of national intelligence are required to give to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on the protocols that the N.S.A. is using in wiretapping. That review, officials said, began in the waning days of the Bush administration and was continued by the Obama administration. It led intelligence officials to realize that the N.S.A. was improperly capturing information involving significant amounts of American traffic.
[ ]…And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact — as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 — with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman’s conversations, the official said.
The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.
Not likely, but maybe now that Congress itself has been bitten by a program they did not fight hard enough to stop, they’ll reexamine the whole concept of finding a needle in a world wide drag net. A drag net that should require FISA oversight in the U.S.
The Long Goodbye 