Cross posted on Texas Kaos and The Burnt Orange Report.
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 we could call it a Teabagger Attack Fest.
Apparently neither Perry nor Palin have a plan to bring new jobs to Texas. Nor is either 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.
According to an article in the New York Times Rick Perry, when introducing Sarah Palin on Sunday, taunted:
"I doubt there is another public figure in our country who gives liberals a bigger case of the hives than our special guest today," said Mr. Perry, who is facing a March 2 primary challenge from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. "At the very mention of her name, the liberals, the progressives, the media elites — they literally foam at the mouth."
I am sorry Governor, but neither you nor Sarah Palin hold either the stature or credibility to bring about hives and mouth foaming among we libruls.
Indeed, we absolutely adore Sarah Palin! We say bring her on. We look forward with great pleasure for ongoing debates between President Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.
Balloon Heads.
No Sir, we don't flee under our beds or lock ourselves into closets when phony politicians like Sarah Palin enter the scene. What we do actually, is put political phonies who are all talk but no action and/or terrible for the people action under a laser focused nano microscope. After what eight years of Bush Co. did to us, we are not taking chances with any possible reruns of phony, simple minded, gimmicky, jingly, catch phrasey candidates. We will look for the beef.
Honestly, governor, it is you and Sarah Palin who should be breaking out in hives and foaming at the mouth. You two have gone so far over the cliff with your reckless rhetoric that even the mainstream media is keeping an eye on you. Heck, Palin's advice for the President to play the war card on Iran had an incredulous Chris Matthews of Hardball ask his guests if Palin is a balloon head.
You should be afraid Governor, especially now that Bill White has entered the race. You can't pin an evil doing Washington DC on the most popular and respected former mayor of Houston. Did you catch his debate last night? Mr. White is going to give you more than a little trouble, Governor.
Perry's pay to play politics.
Meanwhile we libruls are examining your records of service, your decisions and we match your words vs. your actual deeds. We separate reality from campaign rhetoric. Most importantly, we see who your biggest campaign contributors are so we can learn who you really will work for when and if you are elected. In your case, Mr. Perry, Mica Mosbacher is your biggest donor, having given you $225,000. You repaid her handsomely by appointing Ms. Mosbacher to the University of Houston Board of Regents. Under your stewardship, Governor, one has to pay in order to play. I don't think voters are going to like this very much. If one has to pay to have a voice in government, one can hardly say that we have a representative form of government in Texas.
Lobbyists own a piece of you too, Governor. It looks like you have and will continue to take care of the interests of a beer distributor, insurance agents, the medical association and an electric company. Insurance and electric companies can continue to gouge the people of Texas under Rick Perry.
Other lobby-oriented groups and their Perry donations include: the Wholesale Beer Distributors ($25,000); TEXPAC, the political arm of the Texas Medical Association ($25,000); the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas ($20,000); and the American Electric Power Texas Committee ($10,000).
A pac for AT&T gave you a cool $50,000 as did one of your appointees to the University of Texas Board of Regents. I guess he felt he needed to pay you to keep his job on the Board. Yes indeedy, pay to play politics is a booming and thriving practice under Rick Perry.
The Governor also loves to trash Washington D.C. every chance he gets and yet the federal government has brought jobs, contracts, grants and loans to Texas.
1148 contracts: $1,178,584,964=1,398,97 jobs.
8852 grants:
$11,229,522,199=27,057,60 jobs.
Loan: (partially because the governor refused to accept extended federal unemployment benefits)
$25,517,309. What were you thinking, Governor?
Where would Texas be today were it not for federal funding? Surely the Govenor's fat cat donors would not give that kind of money or bring so many jobs to Texas.
You've been around too long Governor and it is time to ride off into the sunset, for you are beginning to think you possess powers that are suitable only in dictatorships. You, Sir, seriously overreached when you
replaced members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission to delay a review of the state's criminal justice system. You then placed one of your partisan hacks and cronies,
John Bradley to stonewall and block any findings that might compromise your re-election campaign. This latest gimmick is not likely to be forgotten or forgiven by voters. None of us are very forgiving of deliberate cover ups for the sole intention of protecting one's political chances.
Governor, you also demonstrated your appalling anti-patriotism at a time in which the U.S. is at war on at least two fronts. Texas should secede? Really? You, Sir, have made Texas the butt of jokes in the national media and on late night comedy.
Yep, Texas should be real proud.
You and Sarah Palin did not have the courage to open your pep rally to anyone outside of your narrow far right base. I find it interesting that you held it well outside Houston, about 25 miles northwest of here. Come to Houston, the state's largest and most diverse city, Governor, and open up your rallies to all of us. I can guarantee you, Sir, that it will be anything but a pep rally.
At Sunday's Perry/Palin rally the Dallas Morning News also reported Dallas Morning News Perry's speech was a complete berating of Washington. Apparently Perry believes he can make voters forget about his miserable, miserly and Scrooge, Marie Antoinette like policies and ignore his scorched earth politics by relentlessly attacking Washington.
Perry did try to warm up the crowd by yelling and gesturing with high-amp energy. His speech was almost a complete berating of Washington-style government.
"How long will the folks in Washington keep spending money that they don't have, for solutions they haven't thought through, for problems they really don't understand?" Perry asked.
Talk about a mixed mash of a word salad. Where the heck have you been for the last year and a half, Governor?
Dude, we are spending money to pull the economy back from the brink of hell after eight years of W. and your Party's unfettered free market idiocy and your voodoo economic ideologies. Even W.'s former Fed Chairman said we have to spend in order to claw our way back from the burning hole in hell and so did Bush's former Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson. What are you thinking, Governor? If we do not spend, we'd all be re-living another version of the Depression's era The Grapes of Wrath.
Some folks are already there.
Joe Lieberman is not the only coward. The entire right side of the aisle in the U.S. Congress joins Lieberman in that regard and that includes Senators Hutchison, Cornyn and in my case, U.S. House Representative John Culberson.
The Grapes of Wrath of the 21st century is being lived right here in Houston, Governor, in case you and your Texas Republican colleagues mentioned above did not notice.
As far as solutions are concerned, I'd say this past year in Washington has been one of the most productive in history despite the obstruction coming from the right. Speaking of which, the Governor's Party politicians in Washington who publicly attack the stimulus package day in and day out are all tripping over one another in attempts to grab a huge chunk of it for themselves.
It would have been even more productive and fruitful for the American people if you and your obstructionist and narrow minded Republicans could wrap your heads around something the vast majority desperately need and want, i.e. affordable and accessible health care. Worse, you Republicans are now are also gaming and fighting over a jobs bill that is also desperately needed by the millions of jobless Americans. I am beginning to think Republicans hate every day folks.
Washington is not the problem, Governor. Obstructionists and corrupted, stubborn mule Republicans are the culprits. You can't scream about a broken Washington, Mr. Perry, when your Party is the one that has and continues to break it.
In Palin's case, we know she grew sick of governing and so she took the path away from public service and switched to a more financially lucrative route by which she could line her personal pockets and get a lot of face time on TV. Her main means of communication are facebook and twitter, both from which she attacks those Palin does not agree with. Most, if not all, happen to be Democrats, of course. Ms. Quitter on Twitter is also said to be studying up on national security and foreign affairs issues.
Shadow Governor of Alaska
We libruls also learned that Palin's husband, Todd, acted as a shadow governor when his wife held office.
Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin exchanged with state officials, which were released to msnbc.com and NBC News by the state of Alaska under its public records law, draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor's husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial information marked "confidential" from his oil company employer to a state attorney.
Yes indeedy. You betcha we libruls prefer hopey changey stuff to snap crackle and pop and the stuff we learned about above. We favor substance over razzle and dazzle. We like cattle more than we do the hats and the hair. We also expect and demand intellect and substance over stupidity, meaningless campaign rhetoric and hot air balloon heads.
See y'all at the polls in November.