texas

When Did Ignorance Become a Point of View?

April 11, 2013 By mario piperni

When did ignorance become
a point of view? ~Dilbert

Is it time yet to make a double-digit IQ a prerequisite to running for public office?

Texas Rep. Joe Barton doesn’t believe in anthropogenic climate change. That’s partially because he is firmly in the pocket of Big Oil. The oil and gas industry is the largest contributor to Barton’s warchest.

…

However, Barton’s fervor to deny that humans have anything to do with climate change has taken a new direction. In a bizarre reference to the Great Flood of the Bible, Barton is using that as evidence that hydrocarbons don’t change the climate. How Barton draws that comparison is going to have to be left to the imagination. Barton doesn’t elaborate on what forty days of rain in antiquity has to do with the present-day earth warming.

Perhaps he is thinking that today’s rising sea levels are the same challenge that Noah had building an ark. If only the answer to climate change was so simple. Here is the great environmental insight from Barton:

“I would point out that people like me who support hydrocarbon development don’t deny that climate is changing. I think you can have an honest difference of opinion of what’s causing that change without automatically being either all in that’s all because of mankind or it’s all just natural. I think there’s a divergence of evidence.”

“I would point out that if you’re a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change and that certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”

It’s probably impossible to pack more stupid into a single statement but that won’t stop Barton and his fellow Texas Republicans (Rick Perry, Louie Gohmert, Ted Cruz, Steve Stockman – to name a few) from attempting to do that very thing the next time they find themselves in front of a microphone. You can count on it.

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Filed Under: Climate Change Tagged With: texas

Crazy and Armed in Texas

February 27, 2013 By mario piperni

It takes a special kind of stupid.

A Republican state representative in Texas is calling to cut the number of hours of training required to obtain a concealed-carry permit by more than half, but shooting instructors say that the proposal would create a public safety hazard.

State Rep. Dan Flynn (R) recently introduced House Bill 47, which would reduce class hours from 10 hours to four, and remove the requirement for instruction on handgun “proficiency.”

The lawmaker told WFAA on Tuesday that the proposal would eliminate some of the hassle for the record number of Texans now trying to acquire permission to conceal a weapon.

Why? I doubt that even the NRA would advocate for a reduction of the number of hours of training required to obtain a gun permit. But who the hell knows. Crazy doesn’t play by any rules of logic known to man.

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Filed Under: Dumb and Dumber, Guns 'n Stuff Tagged With: texas

Texas Says Yes To Guns but No To Health Care

January 22, 2013 By mario piperni

This…

At least three people were shot in a shooting at Lone Star College in north Houston, Texas some time before 12:30 PM. Witnesses on the scene say the shooting may have escalated after a heated argument, possibly over a bad grade. At least two victims were caught in the crossfire and suffered “multiple gun shot wounds,” KTRK reports, and are in serious condition. They were brought into surgery at Ben Taub General Hospital. One of the victims — who was shot in the leg — is a school employee. The other, a younger student, was found on the ground unconscious, with his eyes closed.

…reminded me of an email a friend sent me with a poster attached containing the words you see in the illustration above. I’d give credit to the author of those words but there was none mentioned.

Texas has some of the most lax gun laws around and they’ve been making a lot of noise bitching about President Obama’s suggestion that gun control laws be tightened in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings. Texas’ pea-brained governor, Rick Perry, believes that the fix to gun violence lies not in tighter gun laws but instead in more prayer.

“As a free people, let us choose what kind of people we will be. Laws, the only redoubt of secularism, will not suffice. Let us all return to our places of worship and pray for help. Above all, let us pray for our children.”

Yeah, that’s it. Pray for the nation’s children while you make it easier for any kook to obtain semi-automatic weapons without as much as a background check. And while you’re at it, let bullshit politicians like Marco Rubio parade about uttering their NRA-endorsed crap.

“President Obama is targeting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens instead of seriously addressing the real underlying causes of such violence.”

When you have nothing else, lies and fear will have to suffice. Blaming gun violence on video games and movies is not going to make a dent in the number of people killed each year by gunfire. Only 52 people in Canada were killed by gunfire in 2011; Japan had 48 and Great Britain had 8. In the same year, there were just under 11,000 people killed in the United States by gunshots and yet Canada, Japan and Great Britain have the exact same violent video games and movies available to their population as does the U.S. Might not the reason for the high death rate by guns in the U.S. be that it has the laxest gun laws in the industrialized world while Canada, Japan and the U.K. have some of the strictest?

And while Rick Perry works on making guns easily available for all, he’s refusing to implement parts of ObamaCare that would make health care more affordable for all of his state’s citizens – 25 percent of which have no health insurance.

In a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Perry said he will not implement an health insurance exchange. Also, he will not expand Medicaid to cover families earning below 133% of the Federal poverty level. That leaves an estimated 1.5 million Texans eligible for expanded Medicaid coverage without healthcare and leaving an estimated $13 billion in Federal funds to be distributed to other states.)

Perry wrote, “I will not be party to socializing healthcare and bankrupting my state in direct contradiction to our Constitution and our founding principles of limited government.

Which state has the worst healthcare in the country? According to a study by the US Department of Health and Human Services, it’s…Texas. Surprise!

Guns, yes. Health care, no. And that, my friends, is how you take care of the citizens of your state.
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Filed Under: Guns 'n Stuff, Health Care Tagged With: new york, texas

Obama, Lexington and Concord – Take Up Arms!

August 23, 2012 By mario piperni

I have to ask again. Why are all the really reasonable, intelligent ones on the right side of the political divide?

A Lubbock County, Texas, judge, the panhandle county’s chief administrator, is asking for a tax increase to hire deputies for the inevitable civil war he believes would follow President Obama’s re-election.

Judge Tom Head and Commissioner Mark Heinrich told the station this week that a 1.7 cent tax increase for the next fiscal year was necessary to prepare for many contingencies, including Obama’s re-election.

“He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the (United Nations), and what is going to happen when that happens? I’m thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. And we’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations, we’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.”

“Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops. I don’t want ‘em in Lubbock County. OK. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say ‘you’re not coming in here’.”

“And the sheriff, I’ve already asked him, I said ‘you gonna back me’ he said, ‘yeah, I’ll back you’. Well, I don’t want a bunch of rookies back there. I want trained, equipped, seasoned veteran officers to back me.”

Yes, I know, zany stuff but cut the good people of Texas some slack. Their governor is some guy named Rick Perry.

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Filed Under: Madmen and Losers Tagged With: texas

Rick Perry’s “Finest Health Care In The World” Leaves Out 1 in 4 Texans

July 9, 2012 By mario piperni

How much more abuse from Republican politicians are Americans willing to put up with?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Monday he will not implement ‘Obamacare’ provisions such as the Medicaid expansion and the insurance exchanges. The decision could mean that Texas ultimately loses an opportunity to cover half of its uninsured residents and relinquishes to the federal government more control over its health care system.

After informing the Obama administration of his intentions in a letter, Perry went on Fox News to explain his position. “If anyone had any doubt, we wanted to put it clearly to bed that Texas wasn’t going to be a part of expanding socializing of our medicine,” he said. “So we’re not going to participate in any exchanges. We’re not going to expand Medicaid.”

One in four Texans are uninsured, the highest rate of any state. The Medicaid expansion would cover 49.4 percent of uninsured Texans by 2019, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The program is broadened to cover Americans within 133 percent of the poverty line — currently the eligibility for a working Texan parent cuts off at 27 percent. The federal government will cover the full cost of the first three years and pay 90 percent thereafter.

Sad. You’ve got to feel for the people of Texas that they’re stuck with this ignorant prick for a governor. When asked what his decision means for the one in four Texans who have no health insurance, Perry said:

We’ve got some of the finest health care in the world. So the idea that this federal government, which doesn’t like Texas to begin with, to pick and choose and come up with some data and say somehow Texas has the worst health care system in the world is just fake and false on its face.

Typical response from a conservative who doesn’t like hard data or evidence that does not support his own delusional beliefs. Claim the data false, attack those who produced the data and then deflect the discussion in some unrelated way. Debate over.

Let’s be clear – if you’re an American and part of the lower 95 percent of wager earners who are intending on voting for any Republican this November, then you are either a terribly misinformed citizen or a terribly ignorant individual…or both. And if you are in that top 5 percent and plan on voting Republican, then you are either a terribly misinformed citizen or a heartless bastard…or both.

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Filed Under: Republican Madness Tagged With: rick perry, texas