Rick Perry promises war on homosexuals and religious freedom

December 7, 2011

Is there any other way to read this?

Perry imagines a “war on religion,” based on his bigoted, anti-liberty views and some gross disinformation about what the rules are for kids praying in school.

What are the odds that, if elected, Perry would say, “Oops, I was wrong; I won’t do what that ad suggests?”

Perry’s offensive and erroneous text:

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.
As President, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion. And I’ll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage.
Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.
I’m Rick Perry and I approve this message.

I’ll take Barney Frank over Rick Perry any day.  Barney Frank is twice the man Rick Perry is, especially in standing up for the Constitution and freedom for all Americans.

I’ll take Barbara Jordan over Rick Perry.  She was twice the person Rick Perry is.  It seems to me that Perry plays with fire when he makes an ad that targets genuine Texas heroes like Jordan.

Perry professes to be a Methodist; does he have the guts to leave the church if he disagrees with its positions so much?

Is Perry going negative just because he’s losing, or is it really going to be that dirty a campaign?  This man shouldn’t be governor of Texas, and he has no business running for president.

More:

Hey, Slacktivist, thanks for the link.

14 Comments | 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Campaigns, First Amendment, Politics, Religious Freedom | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Starvation crisis in North Korea (Reuters report via Al Jazeera)

October 9, 2011

Some images may be shocking to young children.  This is information you need to have.

Al Jazeera carried this report, an edited version of a report from Reuters, who somehow got video and interviews from inside North Korea, if we are to grant credence to the report.

In a hospital in Pyongyang, doctors monitor a group of weak infants, some of whom are already showing signs of malnutrition and sickness. They are the most vulnerable members of a population suffering from extreme food shortages.

According to the United Nations, one third of all children under the age of five in North Korea are malnourished, and other countries have become less interested in donating food as the “hermit kingdom” battles efforts to constrain its nuclear program.

The UN World Food Programme says public distributions are running extremely low, and they are only able to help half the people who need aid. Meanwhile, the countries rulers stage outsized military parades, and some wonder whether food donations are being siphoned off to them.

North Korea recently granted a Reuters news crew access to the country, and Al Jazeera’a Khadija Magardie reports on the plight they found.

The longer Reuters report can be viewed here (but I can’t figure out how to embed it at the Bathtub).

Climate-change aggravated severe weather adds to the serious nutrition shortages in North Korea, according to Reuters written reports.

Famine in North Korea is one more vital topic ignored by the presidential and Congressional campaigns, and conservatives in their rush to get Obama out of office.

More:

3 Comments | 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Asia, Communism, Famine, Food history, foreign affairs, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“A government small enough to fit in your bedroom”

September 19, 2011

I thought I’d posted this when I first saw it in July.  Can’t find it.  It deserves a wider audience, I think:  “The Michelle Bachmann Song” by Hockey Mama for Obama.

Leave a Comment » | 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Humor, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Avoid death panels; let them all die

September 17, 2011

It’s horrifyingly ironic if you think about it:  Republicans opposed expanding access to the health care system with a false claim that the Democratic plan included rationing of health care in a “death panels” clause.  Completely untrue.  The bill barely passed.

But did you see what happened last week at the Republican Party’s event featuring their candidates for president?  Here a citizen responds to the Republicans:

In their silence, Republicans appear to support rolling back current health care, foregoing “death panels” as not harsh enough, and moving on to “let ’em all die.”

Tip of the old scrub brush to MoveOn.org.

5 Comments | 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Campaigns, Health care, Politics, Republican Party | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Cracks appear in Rick Santorum’s personal constitution

August 6, 2011

Rick Santorum in Iowa, Huffington Post image

Rick Santorum in Iowa, Huffington Post image

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s reluctant grip on reality appeared to be vanishing fast in a stop in Iowa, Thursday.  He said America’s schools are for indoctrination of students, and he doesn’t like the current round of indoctrination.

Geeze, this ought to be in The Onion.  Is Santorum really this disconnected from America and life?  Are there actually people out there who don’t look around for the guys in the white clothes with straight jackets and nets when they hear him say this stuff?

I don’t generally cite to The Huffington Post, but when the warning claxons go off, you ought to see if there’s danger before dismissing them as error:

Rick Santorum woose voters in Orange City, Iowa - Des Moines Register photo

Rick Santorum woos voters in Orange City, Iowa - Des Moines Register photo

During a stop in Iowa on Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said that “schools indoctrinate our children,” the Des Moines Register reports.

“You wonder why young people can vote and flock for a guy like Barack Obama and say, if you look at the surveys, that socialism is better than capitalism — well, that’s because they don’t understand America,” he explained, according to the Register. “I said ‘indoctrination’ and I meant it,” he said.

What survey does he have that claims any group in America, other than the Tea Party or the American Communist Party, say socialism is better than capitalism?  Since curricula in every state teach the opposite, the existence of such a poll would be powerful evidence of critical thinking powers in students that most teachers would not attest to.

Maybe more important, perhaps we should  worry about just what all those thousands of nice Baptist ladies are teaching our kids in Texas, eh?  Not to mention the Lutheran ladies in Iowa.  Santorum is sniping at teachers, but if you look at the demographics, it makes little sense.  Teachers are, like the rest of America, about 90% Christian, God-fearing, flag-waving American patriots.

Well, nothing Santorum says makes much sense, does it?  Santorum lent support to the War on Education.

Santorum argued that the country’s education system is leaving students with an insufficient grasp of history. His remarks come with the widely-anticipated Ames Straw poll — a table-setter event for next year’s Iowa caucuses — less than two weeks away.

What in the hell do the schools in Ames, Iowa, look like, that Santorum can say that stuff about them?

By the way, if people learned history accurately in high school, Rick Santorum wouldn’t stand a chance in any election today.  But I digress.

The Des Moines Register article adds the details that Santorum made note of recent testing that shows American kids don’t know enough about American history — always the case, by the way — and that a college prof from Kansas said he gives his students the test required of immigrants applying for citizenship, and most can’t pass the test.

I’m game:  Let’s give the test to Santorum.  If he doesn’t pass, though, we can’t deport him.  We have no vehicles capable of getting to Mars.

HP offers information that may explain Santorum’s insanity:  The same article notes he’s touring Iowa in two vans with his seven children.  In this heat?

Does the Iowa division of child protective services know about this?  How about the division that worries about children torturing their parents?

14 Comments | 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Campaigns, Capitalism, Education, Education quality, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“It Takes Balls To Execute An Innocent Man”

August 4, 2011

Occasionally I stumble into a discussion of whether anywhere in the U.S. a government may have executed an innocent person.  Generally I note the horrible Texas case in which Texas fought for years for the point that a convicted murderer whose three allowed appeals had been exhausted should not be allowed to reopen his case simply because new evidence of his innocence had emerged.  In Herrera v. Collins (506 US 390, 1993), Texas won the right to not allow evidence of innocence to get a review of the case, and the man was executed.

Ladies and gentlemen I ask you:  Why would a state fight for the right to execute an innocent man, to the Supreme Court, if it did not intend to use that right?

The question rises more frequently these days as Texas Gov. Rick Perry steams toward announcing he will run for the presidency.

I point out that Herrera came down nearly eight years before Perry stumbled into the governor’s chair, his having been standing outside the door as Lieutenant Governor when George W. Bush persuaded the Supreme Court — most of the same justices — to stop both the popular vote and change the electoral vote to give him the presidency.  So we can’t blame that one on Perry.

But we can blame the execution of Todd Willingham on Rick Perry, even understanding that he was relying on what he assumed to be good evidence in his naturally uncurious waltz of destruction across Texas.   Perry could claim he got bad advice.  Though Texas’s governer really has little more than ceremonial power and some appointments, for someone like Perry it is a big job he can barely handle.  People would cut him slack on letting an innocent man die, convicted of a capital crime that as the evidence showed at the time probably did not occur, if he’d just confess it.

Instead, Perry engaged in a four-year campaign to cover up the affair — a cover up that is so far successful.

Jonathan Chait blogging at New Republic cites Politico and The New Yorker on the way to painting all Texans as morally bankrupt for allowing the coverup to go on — justifiably, I think.  While the newspapers cover the story, outrage does not rise from the drought-stricken populace.  New Republic’s blog explained the cover-up, and Texas’s blase attitude:

Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman have a story for Politico about Rick Perry’s limitations as a general election candidate. It’s a really excellent piece on its own terms, but at the same time, it’s a bit of a parody of a Politico story in that it takes a vital moral question, drains it of all its moral significance, and presents it in purely electoral terms. The thesis of the piece is that Perry appeals to very conservative white southerners, but not to anybody else, making him a questionable choice to head the Republican ticket. The piece bears out that thesis pretty well. In the middle it includes a glancing reference to one episode of Perry’s gubernatorial tenure:

Perry would also have to answer for parts of his record that have either never been fully scrutinized in Texas, or that might be far more problematic before a national audience.

Veterans of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s unsuccessful 2010 primary challenge to Perry recalled being stunned at the way attacks bounced off the governor in a strongly conservative state gripped by tea party fever. Multiple former Hutchison advisers recalled asking a focus group about the charge that Perry may have presided over the execution of an innocent man – Cameron Todd Willingham – and got this response from a primary voter: “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”

The Willingham case is just one episode in Perry’s gubernatorial tenure that could be revived against him in the very different context of a national race, potentially compromising him in a general election.

If you’re not familiar with this episode, David Grann wrote about in for the New Yorker in 2009 in what may be the single greatest piece of journalism I have ever read in my life. (I am biased, as David is a friend and former colleague.) The upshot is that Perry is essentially an accessory to murder. He executed an innocent man, displaying zero interest in the man’s innocence. When a commission subsequently investigated the episode, Perry fired its members.

I’m a Texan, and I’m appalled.  Dear Reader, what can a Texan do?  Please advise.

Surely the rest of America would be concerned and shocked, no?  We can excuse goofs in the histories of our presidential candidates.  Especially since Nixon, we should be doubly wary of those who work hard to cover up their errors, rather than learn from them.

By the way, in the latest action, the office of the Texas Attorney General issued a report on the duties of the commission established to investigate Texas justice to make it more fair — the commission whose members Perry fired when they got close to the Willingham case.  The report says that that Willingham case is water under the bridge, that the commission may not investigatet cases that predate the commission’s creation.

It’s a gross miscarriage of justice, and an attack on the democratic form of government which relies very much on continuous improvement of governmental processes, especially the due processes of criminal justice.

8 Comments | 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Crime, History, Justice, Law, Politics, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

GOP congressmen get heat from Americans over vote to kill Medicare & cut taxes for the rich

May 1, 2011

Are the Republicans listening to America?  Don’t bet your Medicare on it.

Did you see how arrogant those congressmen were, telling Americans — their constituents —  to stuff it?

2 Comments | 2012 Campaigns, Health care, medicine, Popular Sovereignty, Taxes, U.S. Congress, U.S. House of Representatives | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Goldie Taylor at TheGrio.com: Why Obama shouldn’t have to “show his papers”

May 1, 2011

More, Resources: 

15 Comments | 2012 Campaigns, Barack Obama, Birth Certificate, Political Smear, Politics, President Obama, Presidential Eligibility, Racism, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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