Tag Archives: Texas

2012/01/21

Ron Paul, Red Dawn and Chinese Armed Forces in Texas

There is a very interesting new Ron Paul RevolutionPAC advertisement that focuses on foreign policy.

One premise of the Ron Paul campaign has been that many of our woes around the world are self-inflicted. I would agree, although I am not in complete harmony on this.

Below is Ron Paul’s new RevolutionPAC foreign policy ad. (The ad is not by the Ron Paul campaign itself, but by his supporting PAC. I know: hamburger, cheeseburger. Not much difference.)

The theme from Ron Paul’s ad is not new. It is a thread of thought that has been with us a long time now.

In 1984 there was a Patrick Swayze movie called Red Dawn. The movie didn’t explain what happened to cause foreign troops to be stationed on U.S. soil but the rest of the movie makes for a feature length story of Ron Paul’s new foreign policy ad.

Movie - Red Dawn - 1984

Movie - Red Dawn - 1984

Thanks to Al Alborn for bringing the Ron Paul ad to my attention.

DISCLAIMER: I support the core thesis of this advertisement. On the other hand I consider America to be an empire. Empires have a choice: stay involved or become one of the players that have to play by the rules rather than make up the rules. It isn’t a perfect world.

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Filed under Afghanistan, Election 2012, Libertarianism, Philosophy, Texas, War

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2011/09/28

Dear President Eisenhower — Some of us miss you … or never really knew you but in hindsight wish you were among us today

I was born the year that Eisenhower was elected to his second term. I have no personal memories of him.

Yet we live in a time where there are those that want to take our country back … back to what I’m not exactly sure. Neither are they so sure, although they sound loud and furious about taking us back to America before the 1960s. That would be Eisenhower’s era.

Eisenhower today would undoubtedly be pilloried as a soft, mushy RINO today … probably declared to be both a socialist and a leftist. He may even be blamed for ruining Richard Nixon’s mind — it was Nixon, Eisenhower’s vice president, that proposed universal national health coverage for all.

Almost everyone has read or heard Eisenhower’s warning about the emerging military-industrial complex but here are some Eisenhower thoughts that you may not have heard:

“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.”

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. … Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

“Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels—men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. ”

“Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides.”

The quote in the photo is a shortened version of what he really said in a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. … Is there no other way the world may live?”

Why I miss Eisenhower, and why we should all miss Eisenhower, is his plain-spoken common sense. His lack of hate and anger and desire to demonize his fellow Americans is much needed today.

Thank you Mr. President for warning us. I guess that there was just no profit in heeding your warnings.

BTW — thank you also for running for president back in 1952. Most folks don’t know it but you didn’t want to be president. You had to be cajoled into it. The reason you gave for finally running is that the argument over communism was tearing our country apart. The McCarthyites were roaming the land in search of scapegoats. Thank you for stepping forward and bringing some sanity with you.

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2011/09/04

The Big Lie of the Texas Miracle – Some Clarification / You Can Do The Math

Texans – I dearly love you, just not your big fish story governor.

Texas: 8.4% unemployed. It doesn’t matter how many jobs you’ve created when the fact is you are still at the back of the pack in your region.

Your neighbors Oklahoma 5.5%, New Mexico 6.7%, Louisiana 7.6%, Arkansas 8.2% — ok, so Arkansas has not a lot to brag about other than it is doing better than Texas at higher wages.

More on the ‘Texas Miracle’

Texas is #1 in agricultural subsidies nationwide since 1995 and continuing until the present date.

– Texas’ economy has run on $24.4 billion just in agricultural subsidies since it took the #1 spot:
– $14.9 billion in commodity subsidies.
– $3.64 billion in crop insurance subsidies.
– $2.77 billion in conservation subsidies.
– $3.13 billion in disaster subsidies.

Source: 2011 Farm Subsidy Database

Texas is also #1 in highway and infrastructure maintenance subsidies.

Source: Texas State 2011 Legislature Handbook

Texas is also #1 in:

– Childcare subsidies.
– Medicare subsidies.
– Recipient of bailout funds.
– Energy subsidies.

Other than that, Texas is also #1 in minimum wage jobs.

And on top of that it is now $27 billion in the red over its two year budget cycle.

About many of those jobs brought to your state, would that have happened if you didn’t bankroll companies to move to Texas, spending hundreds of millions ($400M +) to make it all happen plus other incentives?

So I guess that government does have a roll in creating jobs, eh?!

It must be nice to be #1 in so many things.

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Filed under Economics, Election 2012, Employment, State Budget, Taxes & Taxation

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2010/04/02

‘Texas schoolbook massacre’ rewrites American history

Thomas Jefferson is always one of my favorite reads. A mind constantly at work considering human possibilities, he did more than spout philosophy, he acted upon it.

Philosophers give us thoughts that transcend generations, and sometimes millenia.

Jefferson is an odd bird. He is at once a darling of both Left and the Right; and to read most of the literature being cranked out by the Right you would think he is ‘the man’.

There is an uneasy relationship however between Jefferson and the Right. Jefferson was strongly opinionated but enjoyed open debate. He accepted that democracy could be messy.

Jefferson was also a deist (as were 3 of the first 4 U.S. presidents) and a Unitarian Christian that spent his winters as president cutting and glueing parts of the Bible together to give us what we now call the Jefferson Bible — all the supernatural stuff was thrown out.

The difference between a deist Christian and a non-deist is that deists put more trust in logic and argument than in faith. They have faith in the tangible, not the ‘Trust me. My interpretation is correct. Just have faith.’

Thomas Jefferson had faith only in the ‘self evident’.

Faith makes the Right tick because it essentially means ‘if you have to ask why then you are not one of us’.

Why? Explain to me? Why not? These are important questions in making republican democracy work.

Texas schoolbook massacre

As some of you may know, the ultraconservative politically correct school curriculum commission in Texas (yes, it happens on the Right, too)  threw Thomas Jefferson out of the state’s school books. And because Texas is such a huge market then that means that Thomas Jefferson is being thrown out of the school books of more than half of the United States.

We can argue about what it all means here in the USA, but here is how the Brits see it — and they have no reason to love Thomas Jefferson after that little Declaration of Independence note that he penned: “‘Texas schoolbook massacre’ rewrites American history“.

The ultraconservative self-proclaimed Christian members of the commission voted 15-5 to toss Jefferson completely from American schoolbooks. He will no longer exist.

It is 1984 … brought to you courtesy of those who would really rather you did not ask ‘why not?’

Learn more about this by Googling: http://www.google.com/search?q=texas+schoolbook+thomas+jefferson

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Filed under American History, Political Correctness

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2010/03/08

Tea Party Effect On Texas Republican Primary Elections: “More flash than bang” and “A weak brew.”

Eleven Republican incumbents had Tea Party challengers in the recent elections in Texas.

Ten of the eleven Tea Party challengers went down to defeat. Incumbent Republican State Rep. Tommy Merritt lost to Tea Party challenger David Simpson, running as a Republican.

James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, commented after analyzing Tea Party candidates and voting results: “there was a lot more flash than bang.”

Most Tea Party candidates were soundly defeated with incumbents garnering 80% of the votes in most cases.

The highest level of votes received was 19% by Debra Medina in her bid as the Republican candidate for governor.

Rep. Kay Granger, a Fort Worth Republican and seven-term incumbent, received 70 percent even though Tea Partyers specifically targeted her as being a probable win for them. Granger got 70 percent of the vote despite having two opponents.

Texas 2010 primary elections had a record turnout with 1.4 million Republicans casting votes, almost double that of 2008.

Bill4DogCatcher sez: There were some local races where Tea Partyers won. Ultimately local candidates have to discuss local issues. How you fill potholes and pay for it requires some level of specificity. Tea Partyers either have answers or they don’t. Some did.

However, raging against Washington when you really don’t have a plan of your own obviously doesn’t sell well. Rage may get lots of attention in front of cameras at town hall meetings but we don’t want to elect angry people. If ultraconservative Texas is any indication, Americans continue to prefer the devil it already has rather than vote for rage and a set of fuzzy political beliefs that do not seem to point to any definable sense of what it all means as public policy.

Sources:

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2009/08/18

Civil War v2.0 – Talking Our Way Into A Fight

It was San Angelo, Texas and I was stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base. A favorite hangout was the New Dixie Club — a great place to drink, to dance and to just be a people watcher.

One evening I stepped into the restroom. Immediately upon entering someone grabbed me and threw me against the wall and started pounding, all the while screaming “I hate f**king Air Force people!”

“But I’m Army” say I, and with that I heard “Then you are OK” and out they walked.

That person didn’t know me. They didn’t care whether I was good, bad or even lying. I was just a target of opportunity.

TALKING OUR WAY INTO A NEW CIVIL WAR

Within the Republican party there are new targets of opportunity: each other.

Thomas Sowell (TownHall): “As if it is not enough that they have been decimated by the Democrats in the past couple of elections, the Republican survivors are now turning their guns on each other.”

Sowell was quick to identify the perps of this new war, “At the heart of these internal battles have been attacks on Rush Limbaugh by Republicans who imagine themselves to be so much more sophisticated because they are so much more in step with the political fashions of the time.”

Moderates are the attackers? Non-conservatives are inflamming the base by first selling out the party and now defaming its few remaining defenders?

Hello?! I didn’t start anything that night in San Angelo, and I don’t remember being part of any mob now in 2009 launching attacks on rightwingers. And since I’m conservative in both mind and spirit then I surely am not part of any attack there either.

On August 17th there was this headline on the ‘DownWithTyranny’ blog: Texas Republican Civil War Officially Kicks Off. Obviously favoring Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s run for governor against Texas’ incumbent, Gov. Rick Perry is described as a “… far right extremist and secessionist …”

Bailey is described as a Reagan big tent conservative, but she let loose with a full volley. The target has been engaged. Perhaps the war has begun. Perhaps it will be a real war.

Texas Republicans have many issues facing them, but words like civil war and secession seem to be what has them all fired up — with 48% both supporting and opposing Texas becoming its own independent nation (Salon).

In Georgia, back in April, state Senate Resolution 632 passed by a 43-1 vote; the resolution threatened to to secede from and even disband the United States citing Jeffersonian principles.

The strange thing is that most of the ‘states right, Jeffersonian principles, and civil war’ debate seems to be between Republicans, either for or against.

Now talk is cheap, but resolutions and continuous use of “brother against brother” language (GOP12) is dangerous; worthy of great thought and consideration as being more than a passing fad.

As Americans we need to think before we speak. The next attack on Fort Sumter, whether political or actual physical act, will not be so easy to end as Civil War v1.0.

Be careful of what you wish for. I’ve walked the battlefields of Fredericksburg, Manassas and Gettysburg. There are monuments everywhere to the valiant, the sometimes vain, and mostly to those that died for plans and strategies that someone else devised.

Best regards,
Bill4DogCatcher.com

Sources:

TownHall, Thomas Sowell, ‘The Republican Civil War’, http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/03/17/the_republican_civil_war

Down With Tyranny Blog, ‘Texas Republican Civil War Officially Kicks Off’, http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/08/texas-republican-civil-war-officially.html

Salon, ‘Half of Texas Republicans favor secession’, http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/04/23/texas_secession/

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ‘Georgia Senate endorses radical idea’, http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2009/04/16/bookmaned_0416.html and you can read the original “ADOPTED” version here: http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2009_10/pdf/sr632.pdf

GOP12.com, “This is a civil war, brother against brother”, http://www.gop12.com/2009/08/this-is-civil-war-brother-against.html

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