The Republican Texas Taliban are hard at work doing what they do best. They continue to ignore the interests and needs of their constituents while they kowtow to the 1% of billionaires, millionaires, lobbyists and their crony donors. In the case of Ted Cruz, he sucks up to the NRA and the gun lobby but he is also is driven by his anti-government right wing extremism.
The junior Senator from the once great of Texas, Ted Cruz is apparently at war with his own Party. He called his colleagues squishes for having the nerve stand by their constituents' desires for more gun control in this country.
You didn't win Mr. Cruz. The NRA and the gun lobby did because of sock puppets like you.
Ted Cruz is proud to have undermined the will of 86% of the American people. But then most of us know by now that the Republican Party, especially the Tea Party wing doesn't have much regard for the meaning of democracy and the democratic process.
Cruz, a typical clone of W. in that it is his way or the highway, trashed his own colleagues for choosing the opinion of their constituents over that of the NRA and gun lobbies.
“We’ve had probably five or six lunches with a bunch of Republican senators standing up and looking at Rand [Paul] and Mike [Lee] and me and yelling at us at the top of their lungs, I mean really upset, and they said, ‘Look, why did you do this? As a result of this my constituents are yelling at me that I have to stand on principle,’” Cruz said to a room of laughter.
Cruz added that Republicans felt the trio had tore down Republican efforts to come out on top of gun legislation.
“‘Now we all look like a bunch of squishes,’” Cruz recounted, which received more bouts of laughter.
Chuckling along, Cruz added a final retort to the alleged Republican comment.
“There is an alternative. You could just not be a bunch of squishes,” he said.
Ted Cruz did not go to Washington D.C. to represent the people in his district. He went there to obstruct, block and tear down the very government institutions that have been established to guarantee and protect our freedom and rights. His McCarthy like leanings make a mockery of democracy.
No one should expect Ted McCarthy Cruz to bring home much bacon to Texas, either. For he is fast tracking our state to a level of contempt that we've never know before. The rest of the U.S. will beg us to secede.
Meanwhile, another far right Texas Republican lawmaker is having some kind of nervous breakdown in Washington, D.C. This guy is helping Ted Cruz fast track us to even more contempt, if that is possible.
Cross posted on Texas Kaos.
Apparently Rep. Louie Gohmert sees a Muslim terrorist behind every tree. He actually believes U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is in cahoots with the Boston bombers. The man is clearly certifiable but hey, this is standard procedure for some members of the Texas Taliban.
When they're not freaking out over a group that is not like them, the Texas Taliban are seeing to it that their financial futures are secured for themselves. Texas U.S. House Rep. Hensarling took his constitutents on a ski trip.
Are these constituents from his district 5?
You betcha not. Hensarling's real constituent is Wall St.
In January, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, ascended to the powerful chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. Six weeks later, campaign finance filings and interviews show, Hensarling was joined by representatives of the banking industry for a ski vacation fundraiser at a posh Park City, Utah, resort.
The congressman’s political action committee held the fundraiser at the St. Regis Deer Valley, the “Ritz-Carlton of ski resorts” known for its “white-glove service” and for its restaurant by superstar chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
Well, at least we know why these anti-government types cling to their jobs in government. Once they do the bidding of their donors they can move on to lucrative jobs in the lobbying and banking industry. They won't have to pretend to care about the people in their district anymore.
Meanwhile, the Republican Taliban in Austin hides behind the law to impose their right wing ideology and religious beliefs on others.
Under the direction of Ayatollah Senator Dan Patrick, Attorney General Greg Abbott looked into the constitutionality of insurance benefits for same sex couples and domestic partnerships.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Attorney General decided to block civil liberties for same sex couples. The rationale? Texas Constitution defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
Abbott's letter first argues that Section 32 - the section in question - applies to Texas cities, counties, and school districts (no word yet on municipal utility districts or MUDs). It then asks whether these political subdivisions have created or recognized a legal status, and, if so, whether that legal status is identical or similar to marriage.
Abbott's letter answers "yes" to both questions, at the end stating that Section 32 "prohibits political subdivisions from creating a legal status of domestic partnership and recognizing that status by offering public benefits based upon it," but not before cautioning that the U.S. Supreme Court's upcoming rulings on DOMA and Prop 8 might make this very letter unenforceable.
Let's hope the SCOTUS rules on the side of civil liberties and against right wing ideologues who seem to enjoy making life miserable for anyone who is not a clone of them.
As far as flipping Texas purple, and then blue is concerned, Rick Perry and Ted Cruz should not be so arrogantly smug and self-assured about this ruby red state. Battleground Texas is here and more than a few of us are highly motivated. BGTX was in Houston in early April. I was there with many other friends, including Kuff, the guy who wrote the piece below.
If one of their goals was to get people excited about their mission, they succeeded in spades – you could feel the energy in the room. Battleground Texas has done an excellent job spreading the word about themselves, aided in part by a national media that’s fascinated by the idea of former Obama campaign people coming to Texas (“of all places”, they don’t quite say but which you can detect anyway) to work the same magic here as they did in Ohio and Florida. Last week there were stories in the Wall Street Journal and the Economist; BGTX Executive Director Jenn Brown, who led the meeting, said that a reporter from Bloomberg News was also in the state. That doesn’t necessarily mean that local media will follow – I see nothing in the Chronicle, and a search of Google news says that only KTRK, which also had a preview/analysis story by Dr. Richard Murray, provided any reports. Well, we did identify scarcity of media coverage as an obstacle in the breakout session I was in.
The scarcity of media coverage came up in my breakout session, too. Those of us who are activists know what we have to do. This effort will come down to thousands of boots on the ground in order to engage the public, register them to vote and get folks to the polls. A huge voter turnout will overwhelm the GOP that works 24/7 to keep certain folks as far away from the polls as possible.
The people in the union hall in Houston were both fired up and fed up. We've had it up to our eyeballs with Rick Perry and the Texas Republican Taliban. We're sick and tired of the gerrymandering schemes. We are also sick and tired of the Party's relentless efforts to suppress votes.
One has to wonder about a Party that believes it cannot win based on its own merits alone.
We are so over the Party's knee jerk reaction to gut school budgets and fire state workers when money is tight. We loath the way Rick Perry and the GOP seem to enjoy punishing the poor, the elderly and the sick. The right wing religious fanatics apparently believe Jesus Christ was a ruthless free market capitalist ideologue who hated the poor and sick.
We are also tired of its sick and twisted wars against Planned Parenthood and women's rights.
We are more than fed up with the state's lax regulation of the chemical industry and its appalling lack of oversight.
Fortunately, unlike the situation for workers in Bangladesh, we have federal institutions that will
investigate what happened in West, Texas. This is in spite of efforts on the part of Rick Perry and the Texas Taliban to obstruct, hide and block a thorough investigation.
It is not a stretch to suggest that the non regulated Tazreen Garment factory tragedy in Bangladesh, where collective bargaining is illegal and where there are no workers rights whatsoever, is a business model that the Texas Taliban and their corporate masters would support.
These are the hard and cold facts about the state of Rick Perry's Texas. 51 is last. 1 is first.
#51 average monthly (WIC) benefits per person-- $29.30 to be exact
#51 women's voter turn out
#51 percentage of voting age population that votes
#50 number of citizens who graduated from high school
#50 per capita spending on mental health care
#2 percentage of uninsured children
#2 number of births
#2 elementary and secondary public school enrollment
#1 number of uninsured residents
#1 number of executions
#1 amount of carborn dioxide emissions and hazardous waste generated
Welcome to Rick Perry's first world banana republic. Please join the
fight to get rid of Governor Perry and the Texas Taliban.