Red State Update

Jackie Broyle and Dunlap strategerize about Bloomberg style party switching. (Bloomberg is otherwise known as celebrity abortionist, Dr. atheist Von Gay, of France)

Ann Coulter On John Edwards

On Monday's Good Morning America Ann Coulter said of Presidential candidate John Edwards:

“I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.”

So, she’d been planning to force him to have sex with her. My God she’s a monster!

a fractured faith

(Amarillo) More and more of late, I've been wondering how "Christianity" can continue to be considered by anyone who is honest with herself to be a single, cohesive philosophy. Does any basic theology remain that is shared by everyone who calls himself a Christian, from the Pope in Rome, to the evangelical megachurch compounds, to the Jabez-ites, to the old-school Methodist church I attend? They all seem so very different, and so at odds with one another.

And then there is this nightmare, from a Christian group with whom we are not unfamiliar in the Panhandle of Texas:




spacedark

the definition of "tokenism": open thread

(Amarillo) It's not the first rodeo for this cowboy.

It certainly ain't the first time I've driven through the "security" checkpoint at The Airport Whose Only Claim to Fame is That It Was Once Featured on an Album Cover by the Seventies Rock Group Known As "Bread."

But, tonight, as I dropped the S.O. off to catch a plane for one of those ubiquitous two-day conferences in Dallas, it occurred to me that I could have Osama Freaking Bin Laden hidden in my trunk underneath an Indian blanket stolen from Clines Corners, and the orange-vested security "guard" would open my trunk, glance at the blanket, see nothing untoward, grunt hmph!, and send me on my way.

So today's question o' the day: What could you sneak, unremarked upon, past the "security" "checkpoint" at The Airport That Should Be Sued Under Truth In Advertising Laws For Calling Itself "International" When You Could Only Truly Consider It International If You Close Your Eyes And Pretend That Dallas Is A Foreign City?

spacedark

Quick Quiz

Which of these two men is more powerful?



Much like the legions of unfunny, politically-correct leftists who exist mainly in right-wing imaginations, it seems there is a huge environmental movement that just won't give the poor little oil companies a break.

Red State Update

Jackie and Dunlap discuss a certain Texan libertarian candidate for President and . . . Nessie?



-Prodigal Son

well, at least Austin now knows we're up here

To no one's surprise, that's the Panhandle's very own Warren Chisum listed in the current issue of Texas Monthly, right up next to Tom "Otto" Craddick, as one of the very worst legislators of the year.

spacedark

Four Step Process

1.Pick up a copy of Sunday's Amarillo Globe-Republican or look at page 1A here.

2. Glance at the first headline in the first column underneath the lovely pics of Sen. Kaybailey and Sen. Johncornyn.

3. Reflect on how many, many, many, many times down through the long and twisted years this headline could have applied...and on how many, many, many crucial issues wingnut Texans would have been horribly, abominably, appallingly wrong.

4. Thank Whoever Almighty that you are a progressive Texan who is not represented by this headline.

spacedark

Breach of Faith

With Northwest Texas Hospital’s indigent care program “facing a possible financial crisis” due to shortfalls in its investment portfolio the Amarillo Globe-News has sounded the alarm ("Hospital district needs remedy" AGN June 8, 2007).

Only 11 years into a 25 year program to keep the tax burden off the citizens of Amarillo, the Amarillo Hospital District board is discussing a cut in programs, reinvestment, or a possible tax to keep the indigent care program on life support.

What is interesting about this looming debacle is that the AGN has not given credit where credit is due. The sale of Northwest Texas Hospital was decided, without consultation or discussion, by none other than Mr. Jim Simms, now City Commissioner, whom the AGN has, naturally, always endorsed.

Mr. Simms has taken a father’s beaming pride in the sale of Northwest. It was always first on his campaign list of personal triumphs. When the sale was imminent many back then saw this day coming but were, for some reason, ignored in the glorious stampede to fulfill Mr. Simms’ dream. Now that dream has turned to folly it may be quietly dropped off at an orphanage.

More interesting still is the AGN editorship’s reaction to the hospital board’s discussions. Let us remember that the most important part of the sale of Northwest was a promise to take care of the indigent. But what is more important to the AGN, the indigent or possible taxes?

Before answering remember that this is the same editorship that thinks the separation of church and state is nonsense, that our laws are based on the Ten Commandments, that our nation was founded on Christian principles. We must assume that for the editorship this is a Christian nation and our government is guided by the moral authority set forth by Jesus.

So when it comes to breaking a promise the editorship actually invokes a “breach of faith” with its spiritual overtones. Here is our little quiz:

For the Amarillo Globe-News it is a “breach of faith” to:

A) cut programs for the care of the indigent
B) impose taxes

If you picked “B” you are correct. Even though it is our Christian -- our moral -- obligation to take care of the sick and poor, for the avowed Christians at the AGN there is no problem breaking our promise to the indigent. The breach of faith occurs when we dare think of burdening the taxpayer once again.

Maybe we can, however, divine some Christian charity in the editorship’s first impulse to cut programs. At least they didn’t say we should send all the indigent packing with a bus ticket to Tucumcari.

one, two, and then me

The S.O. and my engagement ran in this morning's Republican.

Shockingly, although we paid for the extended entry, our education and job information was left off.

The chickens got their apology. The hospitals got theirs.

We demand ours. Start writing, Less.¹

spacedark

¹ Double entendre, much?

Aborting Immigration Reform

It is another classic case of . . .

In her guest column "Immigration bill is about the heart and soul of America" (AGN June 3, 2007) Claudia Stravato writes at length about the many reasons for supporting the immigration reform bill before congress. Many undocumented immigrants speak English, pay taxes, work hard and contribute to the economy. “Only the simple among us” think we can deport 12 million people (why does Virgil Van Camp come to mind?).

But Claudia lets fly this little barb: “It is only the hate-filled, racist and xenophobic rhetoric of social conservatives, some of the religious right wing and the uninformed who are drowning out the voices of reason.”

Well this jab cannot go unanswered, so . . . the guilty dog barks first!

David L. Smith says his friends are against amnesty because it rewards these criminals, who place a financial burden on our communities and drive down wages. He takes a swipe at Stravato, CEO of Planned Parenthood, by saying that if we reduced abortion we’d have a “larger labor pool [pun not intended] of American citizens who might work for South American wages.” (Curiously this means 50 million people placing a financial burden on our communities and driving down wages instead of 12 million. Didn’t think that through, did you Mr. Smith?)

Mr. Smith also discovered his friends aren’t part of the “hate-filled, racist and xenophobic, and part of the vast religious right-wing conspiracy.” It’s true Mr. Smith, not everyone is “hate-filled, racist and xenophobic, and part of the vast religious right-wing conspiracy,” but if you asked your friends and it’s not them, then it must be you.

Next up is Eddie McMurray, who just knows leftists have no clue about reality and thinks it’s real suspicious if they agree with the President. So he’s going to talk turkey on this amnesty thing, and does proceed to gobble-gobble the rest of the way with factoids, non sequiturs, the fanciful and what can only be called the semi-deranged.

While he does bring up Planned Parenthood, he doesn’t pop the “hate-filled” line. All he wants to do is “cut the lifeline of jobs, entitlement, schools and housing, and they will go back the same way they came.” Damn wetbacks.

Rick Corbyn is outraged at Stravato’s claim there is strong support for immigration reform (damn evidence). The current bill is “iniquitous,” and there is broad support to seal the border and deport “all illegals back to Mexico.” “The time has come to . . . stop Mexican women from slipping across the border to have babies.”

Let us imagine that horde of 8-months pregnant Mexican women with their swollen bellies, waddling across fifty miles of desert, through cactus and past rattlesnakes, in 120 degree heat, without water or food, tearing their flesh as they pry through the barbed wire or scale the 15 foot high fence in the dark of night, running and hiding from patrols, hiking for more miles searching for their contact, packed into a sweltering van and driven jostled and bounced for hours on washed-out dirt roads. Yes, just slipping across.

Corbyn doesn’t think Stravato should be calling people bad names:

“She also denigrates all who oppose amnesty for illegals with the usual leftist clique propaganda that bill opponents are hate-filled, racist, uninformed, religious right-wingers.

"In my view, Karl Marx would make a similar claim if he were living.”

Oh that naughty guilt by association. Rick, you sure you weren’t thinking of Groucho?

Last and least we have Robert E. Barfield who lets Stravato have it with PP’s “abortuaries” and illegal invasion and “evil” employers and lawbreakers. He ends on this note:

“Her explanation that they are only trying to use these other lawbreakers to operate their businesses appears to be a distinction without a difference, or a difference without a distinction.”

Either this is one of those Zen-metaphysical profundities that conservatives accidentally fumble across or it is their usual attempt at being profound and ending up a gnat breaking wind sort of thing. (Think of two brains without a single thought and you have a Republican conversation.)

The one thing that really flames conservatives in these parts is illegal immigration. They aren’t going to think about it; they aren’t going to debate it; they’re just going to go ballistic with every slur and epithet and run them felon scum out, period.

The problem with Claudia’s charge that “It is only the hate-filled, racist and xenophobic rhetoric of social conservatives,” is it is too gentle. More inflammatory words are allowed in the AGN, only they are permitted to conservatives, not liberals. Also, for all the bigotry displayed in the AGN, the subject of immigration is the one to which Mr. John Q. Kanelis, editor, is not insensitive, and thus imposes some restraint.

We here are PTS are therefore in a position to provide additional, colorful, and more precise descriptions for these conservative knotheads than is usually allowed in the AGN. Remember, these scum sucking, bottom feeding, jack-booted buggering fascist morans have asked to have their bigoted pea-sized cracker brains knocked about with a few choice words.

Your turn -- and no swearing.

Red State Update

I know I take myself too seriously sometimes. We gotta laugh at ourselves.

Every week or so Jackie Broyle and Dunlap explain things to them slack jawed librul dirty hippies. I swear a guy that looks/acts/talks like Dunlap lives down the street from me. No sheeeet.

Today it's Bush meeting the Pope. Enjoy.

-Prodigal Son

A Note on Editorial Schizophrenia

For years now the Amarillo Globe-News has gone to great lengths to condemn any anti-smoking ordinance as government infringement of private property rights, championing the right of business owners to run their establishments as they see fit.

On the other hand, the Amarillo Globe-News has been quick to champion the intervention of government against private property owners when their property is an unsightly overgrown pile of junk.

This is a curious double-standard. The editorship acknowledges health hazards are involved in both, but in the first case business owners are treated as sovereign, without an admission that local, state and federal regulations apply to business practices. In the second case the private citizen is not only held accountable to every conceivable law, but even subject to aesthetic values.

Just recently it has dawned on the editorship that forcing the clean up of someone’s yard involves private property rights. With the long dispute about to conclude in imminent government intrusion only now does the editorship hesitate, discovering some discord between its opposing principles. This dissonance cannot be left unresolved.

If private property rights are as sovereign as the Amarillo Globe-News editorship posits, then the editorship must defend the junkyard as hallowed ground whatever its risks to public health. Just as patrons to smoke-filled restaurants and bars make the choice to expose themselves to hazard, so must junkyard neighbors choose to remain exposed to risk and eyesore by not moving away.

Or the Amarillo Globe-News editorship must recognize there is a place for government intervention; that citizens may expect their government to insure their safety; that the government will protect the public health by law, and that citizens have a right to insist that businesses they patronize do not put them in unnecessary jeopardy.

Nah . . .

Post script June 13, 2007

Dag nab it, them big city folk jest got no right, I tell ya, jest got no right movin’ out to dah country, tellin’ country folk what dah do wit der land. Mr. McKillip kin do what he wants on his land, and iffin that means a nuculure waste dump then he’s got a right to. He’s old and feeble, but iffin he has to beat you big city folk wit his cane then it’s all yur fault. It’s in the Bible you gall durn nosy busybodies.

Steve Gilliard: 1966-2007

Anyone who reads Steve Gilliard's blog, The News Blog, knows he's been seriously ill for some time. He has passed away and will be sorely missed.

Bloggity Goodness

UPDATE: I goofed. GFB is in Austin. - PS

Terrific San Antonio blogger Grits For Breakfast has a great catch about AG Greg Abbott: "Good news: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is standing down, for now, on the demand that Google turn over information that could help Bexar County probation director Bill Fitzgerald identify anonymous dissidents on his staff who want to start a labor union."

I am sure that director Bill Fitzgerald was just seeking the identities of anonymous employee blog commenters to ask them how he can work hard to improve their work experience.

Uh, huh. Can you say, retaliation?

As the decidererererererer says, "Freedom isn't free". Free speech under totalitarian rethugs waving the bill of rights around for gun ownership, and religious freedom, then throwing it in the trash for everything else isn't free either.

Republicans are somehow energized by retaliation and punishment against any slight, real or imagined.

This is another example of precisely why being anonymous is important, just ask Mrs. Silence Dogood.

(BTW, the name Dogood was invented to pick on the venerable Cotton Mather, Robertson and Falwells predecessor, and rigid Puritan priest, who wrote the "Essays to do Good", and then aided the prosecution in the hanging of 19 innocents as witches in Salem, MA. Gallows Hill was about 5 blocks from my old apartment in Salem. A COOL place to visit midnight on Halloween!)

-Prodigal Son