The Sarah Palin of South Texas

If you go to this web site you will find a professionally produced video touting Debra Medina’s campaign for governor.
Medina is a small businesswoman from Beeville who is gearing up to challenge Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican gubernatorial primary from the hard right.
It is not evident at first just how far right Medina is. In the video you will hear lots of the same rhetoric you would hear from almost any candidate. You get testimonials from people using words like “sincerity,” “honesty,” “dedication,” “passion for freedom” and “preserving values.”
Medina accuses current elected officials (Perry) of not representing their constituents. They have “forgotten about serving Texans,” she says.
Furthermore, these elected officials (Bush?) have “brought economic ruin to our nation” and have “imposed government into all aspects of our lives.”
The first hint you will get about where Medina is coming from within the political spectrum is when she says that she “entered politics because local leaders were not honoring the pro-life principles I feel so strongly about.”
She also acknowledges in the video that she homeschooled her children. But beyond that, the video avoids giving out too many details on policies or proposals.
Medina throws out the standard “government is taking too much of our hard-earned money” line, and she promises to “stand for the people” and the “values that make our state great” and lots more pablum such as that.
Her three principles that are repeated throughout the video are:
* Promoting a sound economy (without saying how)
* Halting government interference in our lives (except for reproductive health issues, one would assume)
* Defend family, community and faith (because everyone knows the other candidates are against those things)
Medina wraps up by saying that Texans need a governor who “loves freedom and fights to protect us from big government.”

After listening to her whole feel-good spiel, I’m left wondering about the profound ignorance and blind dogmatism that would lead someone like Medina to launch a campaign for governor against a 15-year incumbent and a sitting U.S. Senator. Because Medina is clearly a far-right wingnut from the Tea Bagging wing of the GOP. If the video doesn’t convince you, then all you need to do is look at her issues page and see where this homeschooler is promising to eliminate the property tax, which is the main source of financial support for the public school system.
The website also stresses state sovereignty, property rights, gun rights, illegal immigration and, of course, abortion. She does not seem to have the foggiest clue about what all is involved with running a state the size of Texas, much less a country the size of the U.S. She naively seems to say that most federal government functions should be halted and left up to “communities and families” to deal with.
Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison are viewed suspiciously in the video because, even as right-wing as they try to be, they cannot, in their current positions, escape the cold-hard grip of reality which appears to have completely eluded poor Medina.
That is one of the reasons I think that Sarah Palin quit being governor of Alaska. Being governor was constantly reminding her about how right-wing ideology and cold-hard reality don’t mesh. So she decided to give up government responsibility so she could go back to the right-wing fantasy world where most of her supporters reside.
So Palin is gone, but now here comes Medina. Is she South Texas’ answer to Sarah Palin? Could she possibly pull off an upset in the Republican primary the way Palin did in Alaska? Or will she remain largely unknown and just another name on the ballot that people will wonder about after they voted (“I didn’t know all those other people were running!”)
Personally, I hope that Medina will run as an independent after losing the GOP primary and that she takes all of the Tea Baggers with her.

See ya later....

While we were touring a private wildlife preserve on Avery Island in Louisiana we stopped at a small pond where some alligators were swimming. Before long we had five medium-sized gators all checking us out and then this guy came out of the water about three yards from where I took this picture.

Back from vacation

I’m back from our vacation trip to Louisiana to see my sister and her family in Crowley. It was our kids’ first trip to Crowley and their cousins had a great time showing them around the farm, taking them fishing and much more. Nathan got to play Wii with his cousin Zach. Isabel played dress-up with her cousins Samantha and Sarah. Ashley showed us a story she wrote for school. We all went out to dinner at several nice restaurants.
On Saturday we took a swamp boat tour and saw lots of birds - Snow Egrets, Blue Herons - and alligators. Lots of alligators.
Then we went out to Avery Island to tour the Tobasco sauce factory and afterwards saw more alligators. On the drive home we went through Brenham and toured the Blue Bell Ice Cream factory. I haven’t had a chance to download all the pictures from my camera and will post more about the trip when I get a chance.

Crazy Birthers

President Barack Obama has a birthday coming up soon. I know because I have his birth certificate right here showing that he was born on Aug. 4, 1961 at 7:24 p.m. on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. That’s part of the United States of America, in case you didn’t know.
Apparently some people don’t know and they are still questioning whether Obama is a natural born citizen and thus eligible to be president, like the crazy lady in this Youtube video who screeches at poor Congressman Michael Castle, a moderate Republican from Delaware, while he is trying to conduct a town meeting on health care issues.



The part where the crazy lady interrupts the meeting a second time and forces everyone to stand up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance is downright creepy.
But these “Birthers,” as they are becoming known, are becoming more and more predominant in the Republican Party. So much so that we now have Republican members of Congressman trying to appease them with legislation that would supposedly require future presidential candidates to “prove” their eligibility.
Chris Matthews on Hardball chews up and spits out this idiot Congressman from California who is sponsoring this bill:



But the crazy people aren’t going to go away that easily and they have prominent media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Liz Cheney and Lou Dobbs embracing their cause.

Why I’m a Liberal

I understand why so many people consider themselves to be “conservative” having been there once myself. The term “conserative,” unlike its political counterpart “liberal,” has appeal to both sides of the political spectrum. People on the left side of the political spectrum will readily embrace the term ‘conservative’ in many respects, while the reverse is rarely true. No one wants to be called a “fiscal liberal.” That’s like being called a spendthrift, or someone who is wasteful with the people’s money. And conservatism is often equated with good moral values. Someone who lives a “liberal” lifestyle is usually viewed as being immoral. Conservatism even has good connotations in the context of environmentalism such as conserving land, conserving resources and conserving species.
The term “liberal,” on the other hand, has been so denigrated over time that even many people on the left have opted to abandon it in favor of terms like “progressive” or “moderate” to distinguish themselves from the dominant rightwing ideology. Gross caricatures of liberalism abound throughout our culture and are constantly reinforced by the vast web of rightwing media which includes nearly all of talk radio, most of cable news and the majority of newspaper op-ed pages. Even the funny pages are rife with demeaning liberal caricatures propigated by rightwing strips like Mallard Fillmore, Prickly City and B.C.
Liberals are typically viewed as being uppity, arrogant elitists who reject traditional social mores and want to force their own moral absolutism onto everyone else. Liberals are supposed to be anti-religious, or at least anti-Christian, and enemies of traditional “family values.” Liberals are usually unreformed Hippies with long hair pulled back in a pony tail. The mean wear earrings, the women avoid bras. They are anti-military, anti-patriotic and hold protests where flags are burned and soldiers are spat upon.
Liberals are anti-business and want to take the country in the direction of “socialism.” If they get into the government, they immediately try to raise taxes and give all the money away to undeserving constituent groups - thus punishing the successful and the hard-working people to benefit the lazy degenerates of society. And it goes on and on.
People who regularly listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, watch Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck, and read Ann Coulter and Mark Levin are filled with these kinds of negative stereotypes of liberals. It is no wonder that they would react negatively to someone who openly identifies themself as a liberal. What is WRONG with that person? It makes them wonder.

And yet here I am doing just that. What IS wrong with me? Well first, by way of explanation, let me clarify that based on common usage today I would probably be considered very conservative, at least with respect to my personal habits. I am a white, middle-aged male, married with two kids living in Texas. I dress conservatively, wear my hair short and drive a pickup truck. I don’t drink, smoke or gamble. I don’t have any tattoos, body piercings or dyed hair. I go to church regularly (Methodist) and tend to stay home most evenings with my family.
But when it comes to my politics, I generally come down squarely on the left side of the spectrum. The reasons are two-fold, a combination of idealism and pragmatism. I’m not sure if that makes me an idealistic pragmatist or a pragmatic idealist, but I believe in doing whatever works best toward achieving my goals. And those goals are based largely on my Christian faith, and I do mean MY Christian faith, not the warped and twisted perversion of Christianity that is espoused by rightwing preachers and groups known collectively as the “Religious Right.”
The Religious Right would have you believe that Jesus spent all his time on Earth bashing gays, denouncing abortion and condemning “sinners,” when in fact those all-consuming, hot-button issues that define the Religious Right today never came up in any of Jesus’ sermons. Instead Jesus spent most of his time telling people to love one another while preaching forgiveness and redemption. Jesus told us to “turn the other cheek” regardless of how many times we had been wronged and not to cast stones of condemnation unless we ourselves are sinless. We are supposed to care for the poor, feed the hungry, heal the sick, and visit people in jail (as opposed to torturing them, I suppose). If someone asks you for your coat, you give them your shirt too. If someone is lying injured on the side of the road, you stop and help them. Jesus was, in my opinion, the biggest bleeding-heart liberal to ever walk the face of the Earth.
OK, some are thinking, granted he was a bleeding heart, but liberal? That still sticks in some people’s craw. Why not a bleeding heart conservative like George W. Bush claimed to be?
That is where my pragmatism kicks in. If “bleeding heart conservatism” can accomplish all those things better than bleeding heart liberalism, then I’m sold. I’ll become a conservative tomorrow. But look where eight years of Bush’s policies got us -- an economy that was in total meltdown by the time President Obama took charge. Bleeding heart conservatism might sound good, but as a practical matter it failed miserably, assuming it was even tried at all and wasn’t just a meaningless phrase thrown out to cover up the real plan which was the usual Republican policy of giving big business whatever it wants and hoping for the best.
George W. Bush and the Republicans had their chance to put their ideas in place and they failed miserably in nearly every aspect of government policy - foreign and domestic. How could anybody want to go back to that so soon, if ever? The economy performed spectacularly well under President Bill Clinton and then floundered pathetically under President Bush. If things pick up under President Obama by next year, as it is likely to do, I will be hard-pressed to see how anyone could continue to vote Republican in future elections. But I’m sure many still will and there isn’t anything wrong with that. I would just hope that they might start to see through some of those offensive and ridiculous sterotypes that get paraded around out there everyday.

History books next target of culture warriors

If you thought the Texas Board of Education’s battle over science curriculums in public schools wasn’t entertaining enough, take a look at this story in the Wall Street Journal the other day.

The fight over school curriculum in Texas, recently focused on biology, has entered a new arena, with a brewing debate over how much faith belongs in American history classrooms.
The Texas Board of Education, which recently approved new science standards that made room for creationist critiques of evolution, is revising the state’s social studies curriculum. In early recommendations from outside experts appointed by the board, a divide has opened over how central religious theology should be to the teaching of history.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? But wait! It gets better. Lots better! The board has brought in several “experts” to review and critique history textbooks being considered by the board for adoption by Texas schools.

Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives, have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history. Two of them want to remove or de-emphasize references to several historical figures who have become liberal icons, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.

Say what?!?! Remove Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall??? What does that have to do with the Bible and Christian faith??

“We’re in an all-out moral and spiritual civil war for the soul of America, and the record of American history is right at the heart of it,” said Rev. Peter Marshall, a Christian minister and one of the reviewers appointed by the conservative camp.

This coming from a minister who “preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War and Hurricane Katrina were God’s judgments on the nation’s sexual immorality.” In other words, the man is certifiably insane.
But this is who the majority conservatives on the State Board of Education picked to review history textbooks, along with David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a group that promotes America’s Christian heritage.
So who do the Democrats and the few “moderate” Republicans on the board pick? Why people with actual expertise in history and social studies. What a concept!
People like Jesús F. de la Teja, chairman of the history department at Texas State University, and Lybeth Hodges, a professor of history at Texas Woman’s University. Not surprisingly, they would like to see more diversity in the history textbooks.
“We have tended to exclude or marginalize the role of Hispanic and Native American participants in the state’s history,” de la Teja said.

But the conservatives on the board are dead set against that. “Reaching for examples of achievement by different racial and ethnic groups is divisive, Mr. Barton said, and distorts history.”
They and their handpicked reviewers believe that children must learn that America’s founding principles are “biblical.”

For instance, they say the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man’s fall and inherent sinfulness, or “radical depravity,” which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balances.
The curriculum, they say, should clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good -- and a key reason for American exceptionalism, the notion that the country stands above and apart.
“America is a special place and we need to be sure we communicate that to our children,” said Don McLeroy, a leading conservative on the board. “The foundational principles of our country are very biblical.... That needs to come out in the textbooks.”

So, the conservatives aren’t so much interested in actual “history” being presented in the history books as they are about making sure that their political and theocratic agenda comes across lound and strong. They don’t see the history textbooks as teaching instruments so much as propaganda instruments through which to spread their political and evangelical message to the unwashed masses.

It is high time that the Texas Board of Education was put out to pasture so that the job of guiding curriculums for our school children can be left to academic professionals and not political hacks and partisan zealots.

To Censure or Impeach

I noticed in South Carolina that Republicans have voted to “censure” Gov. Mark Sanford, rather than demand his resignation.
This, of course, is precisely what Democrats proposed to do with Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair was exposed by the salacious, crusader Ken Starr. But back then, Republicans did not think that was good enough and they pushed forward with a bid to impeach the president (which was successful in the House and fell short in the Senate). One of those Republican House members who cast aside the censure option and voted to impeach was then-Congressman Mark Sanford of S.C.
Oh, the irony.
Well, I don’t ever want to hear anymore blather from Republicans about how they are the guardians of all that is moral and uprighteous in this country. Because it is clear that political expediency takes precedense on both sides of the poltical spectrum.

Symbolic Patriotism

So much good news during the past few days I don’t know if I can stand it. First Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., reveal themselves to be enormous, massive hypocrites and disqualify themselves from ever running for president in the future. Then former Sen. and Sore Loser Norm Coleman finally runs out of money and gives up his neverending legal battle to deny the people of Minnesota a second U.S. Senator, clearing the way for Sen. Al Franken to be sworn in and giving the Democrats a filibuster-proof 60 seats.
Now we learn that Sarah Palin is throwing in the towel on her political career in Alaska. Not only is she not going to run for a second term as governor next year, she isn’t even going to bother finishing out her first term and will resign from office later this month.
Why would she do such a thing? The most likely explanation is that her political troubles in Alaska (i.e. abusing her powers by firing the state’s top law officer over a personal family matter) were about to boil over leaving her no other option than to bail out before everything caved in around her. Or perhaps she just decided that it was time to get out on the right-wing lecture circuit and strike while the iron is still hot. I mean if Joe (Joe the Plumber) Wurzelbacher can make money going around the country denouncing the government on Independence Day (like he did here in San Antonio), then Palin should really be able to rake in the big bucks.
But any notion that Palin is stepping down before completing even a single term as governor to prepare for a future presidential bid is absolute nonsense. Dan Quayle had a better chance in 1996 than Palin does in 2012. Her future career lies in being a Fox News commentator and a wingnut celebrity at future “Tea Parties.”
Speaking of “Tea Parties”, the little shindig they held in San Antonio on July 4th really rubbed me the wrong way. I mean, where do they get off trying to co-opt a national holiday celebrating the founding of our government as a day to denounce and trash that very same government?
Oh sure, they have the perfect right to hold their anti-government rallies whenever they choose. But they should not be allowed to get away with this pretense of patriotism that they all pretend to have. There is nothing patriotic about this mindless, knee-jerk hatred for the government that inspires people like Timothy McVeigh to go out and blow up federal buildings.
How can these people claim to be patriotic Americans when the only thing they love about their country is the empty symbolism? Oh sure, they LOVE the flag and they LOVE all the Red, White and Blue imagery - the bald eagle, the patriotic music, hot dogs and apple pie. Oh, and the Troops! They LOVE the Troops!!
But paying the taxes that support the troops, pays their salaries and provides them with the armor, equipment, medical care, etc. that they need? They do everything they can to avoid that. They hate the government and everything that goes along with it. They LOVE our country, but they can’t stand most of the people who live here.
That just doesn’t make sense to me becayse we ARE the government. We have a government OF the people, BY the people and FOR the people. But they act like the government is some monolithic foreign entity that must be opposed at every turn. It is fine to be critical of the government, but even when it was being run roughshod by Republicans for the past eight years, I never harbored the degree of disdain and venom that these people have for the government all the time.
Last week, on the popular Glenn Beck show on the No. 1 rated Fox News Channel, Beck had a guest on who enthused about how what this country most needs is to be hit by another terrorist attack like on 9/11.

“The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama Bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States....”

Glenn Beck, of course, was the featured speaker at the last little “Tea Party” that they held in San Antonio. And there he was a few months later nodding approvingly while his guest advocated for a nuclear terrorist attack on our nation. This is outrageous to the extreme! I don’t know what pearls of wisdom “Joe the Plumber” had to say at the most recent tea party, but if his past history is any indication, I can only imagine it wasn’t too far off from what Glenn Beck was saying. For example, back in October, Wurzelbacher claimed we are being “taxed without representation” and suggested another revolution to overthrow the government would be necessary.

“You know a lot of the stuff that our government is doing right now is all about taxation without representation and you know the last time that happened a couple guys got together and threw the Brits out.”

Nice patriotic stuff, ain’t it? Maybe for the next “Tea Party” they can feature Sarah Palin and her secessionist husband Todd.

Hypocricy on full display

Via Political Wire here is one of the campaign ads from 2002 for Republican Mark Sanford when he ran for governor of South Carolina.

So it's not just that he cheated on his wife with multiple women and used taxpayer money to finance his flings in South America. What really grates with Sanford is that he portrayed himself during the campaign as this upstanding pillar of Christian values - honesty, integrity, etc.