For All

Really, things have gotten so ridiculous that it’s a little hard to keep blogging.  After the eternity that has been Obama’s first term, continually explaining why 2 + 2 = 4 becomes a tiresome chore indeed, especially when one suspects that she is only preaching to the choir and making little headway otherwise.  I know, I know, speaking out is still important . . . but the little things get me down.

Like when I ran into a friend from three duty stations ago, and the upcoming presidential election came up.  I was treated to a casual remark that, while the current President’s record is unsatisfactory, she was afraid that an elected Romney wouldn’t let people have the freedom to marry who they want, and also he would require all women to wear skirts. (!?!eleventy!?!)

National security is more important than homosexual “rights,” I said, bringing up the hot mic incident, during which Obama demonstrated that he is willing to say one thing to the electorate, but another thing entirely to Russian leadership.  She had never heard about it.

Sigh.  Since I ran into this person at the commissary, at least I was able to soothe my nerves by buying some extra nonperishables.

Now, don’t you worry or nothin.  I haven’t given up hope.  I’m just running low on steam.  There’s not much for me to add to the conversation right now . . . at least, not anything that you and I haven’t said a hundred times apiece.

Only thing new to me is a little tidbit from Older Son’s curriculum.  I’ll share it, and see if it’s new to you as well.  You see, I’ve heard comparisons aplenty of the Democrat hold on black voters to the slavery of old.  C.L. Bryant made a whole movie on this very idea.  Click here to see if Runaway Slave is playing at a theater near you.

What I’ve never heard before is a positive comparison of slavery with the protective nanny-state progressives are always striving to achieve.  Apparently, though, pre-civil war Southerners made this very argument.  All defensive about their “peculiar institution,” many Southern apologists sought to explain why slavery was not a necessary evil, but actually for the best.  One of those apologists was George Fitzhugh.

Fitzhugh asserted in Cannibals All! or Slaves without Masters that Southern slaves were luckier than free Northern workers.  The Landmark History of the American People by Daniel Boorstin explains Fitzhugh’s argument:

“They were slaves with masters.  They had the best kind of social security.  Whatever happened, it was not their worry.  They did not have to pay any bills.  They had no problem of unemployment.  Slavery, as Fitzhugh described it, was a kind of socialism, where all property was put in the hands of the people (the white people) best qualified to use it, for the benefit of everybody, whites and Negroes.  Three cheers for slavery!”

Hmm.  Property put in the hands best qualified to use it for the benefit of everybody?  For the benefit of all?  Oh, yeah, I get it.  #ForAll.

Cross posted at NoOneOfAnyImport.

 

Trial Lawyer Steve Mostyn: Money Man for the Texas Democrats

The Steady Conservative has a great, must-read post up about who is behind all the money that’s being poured into Texas politics this year.  It’s the Houston trial lawyer, Steve Mostyn, that Saddleburr wrote about a week or so ago.   It’s truly eye-opening to see how one man is using his money pile to make a serious run at controlling Texas’ state government.

Exit question: Why aren’t the mainstream media in Texas lamenting the influence of money on our political system?

Exit answer: Because the influence of money is serving Democrats.

 

Even in Texas, Democrat state Rep. Kristi Thibaut’s ACORN doesn’t fall far from the tree

Well looky there, ACORN has its own little nut in the Texas House.  The Texas Republicans peeled her bark in a press release today.

Thibaut’s past is not unlike that of President Barack Obama; she too started out as a community organizer. And both did work for ACORN. Kristi even appeared at the State Capitol as a paid lobbyist for ACORN during the 2007 Legislative Session.

ACORN activities have attracted the attention of law enforcement and prosecutors around the country, after they were exposed in a series of stings by a couple posing as a prostitute and a pimp, soliciting ACORN’s advice on how to operate their illegal enterprise without getting caught. Even the United States Congress condemned ACORN’s actions and cut off federal funding. The group has since seen many of its state and local branches disband, only to reconstitute under new names.

And there’s a web site in which Thibaut confesses the whole, sordid connection.  Evidently, Kristi really does work for ACORN.

 

Massive voter fraud reported in Houston

Texas Watchdog is all over the story, and it’s a big one.

Voter registration group Houston Votes has inundated the county voter registrar’s office with faulty registrations, including multiple applications for the same voters and for noncitizens, registrar Leo Vasquez said. He likens it to ACORN.

Two Texas activist groups, Houston Votes and Texans Together Education Fund, were accused Tuesday of an organized voter fraud campaign by Harris County Voter Registrar Leo Vasquez, who likened the groups to the now-discredited ACORN.

Read the rest – this is very much in ACORN’s wheelhouse, as it is in the Democrat left’s wheelhouse generally.  And Houston being Texas’ largest city, this is a very big deal to the entire state.

And when I mention the Democrats, I’m not just blowing smoke.

While Lewis maintains his group is nonpartisan, its board is decidedly liberal-leaning, according to research by blogHouston, which noted earlier this month that the Texans Together board included a Bill Clinton appointee, Democratic consultants and an aide to former Gov. Ann Richards.

Yeah.  They’re non-partisan like all the other “non-partisan” groups that, on the one hand attack the Republicans, and on the other hand, attack Republicans.  When they’re not overloading the system with fake voter registrations.

You know who all this was intended to help, don’t ya –

It’s in his city, and just when he’s running for Gov.  Coincidence, I’m sure.

BlogHouston has more on this story, including a note about the obvious silence of the state’s largest outlet solely focused on political reporting.

More: Let’s pick up a shovel and turn a few rocks over.  Texans overwhelmingly want voter photo ID for our elections, as do Americans generally.  But the Democrats have repeatedly crashed the legislature in order to stop any kind of voter photo ID bill from becoming law.  In the 2009 session, they even filibustered the bill until the session ended.  It had passed the state Senate, but the filibuster killed the House version, so it died.  Lots of other worthwhile legislation died in that filibuster, too.

Now, who led that filibuster?  Why, none other than state Rep. Jim Dunnam.  Heard of him? He’s the fellow who does not deign to live in the district that sends him to the state House.

Guess who Dunnam is in cahoots with.  Why, he’s pals and lawsuit allies with Steve Mostyn, the mold and hurricane lawyer from Houston who is bankrolling the crazy attacks on Republicans all over Texas.

There’s more to this story, and why the Democrats have fought so hard to kill voter ID in Texas.  It looks to me like they were setting up to use voter fraud in Houston to steal November for Bill White – who just happens to have reportedly taken massive political donations from Mr. Mostyn.

UPDATE from Saddleburr

An early morning fire in Harris County seems to have destroyed a large portion of the counties Voting Machines and other equipment. 

Houston Fire Department spokesman Patrick Trahan said arson investigators have not yet determined the cause of the blaze.

I hate to use the old cliche’, but I question the timing.

 

 

Dem State Rep Jim Dunnam: Weasel Who Doesn’t Live in the District He “Represents”

The Texas Republicans exposed a big fraudster this week: Democrat State Rep. Jim Dunnam, of District 57 in central Texas.  I say “of” but that’s not really accurate.  That’s because he doesn’t live in the district, and hasn’t lived there for quite a while now.  The Republicans dropped the hammer on him in a press conference in Waco, and it’s had Dunnam flustered and on the run ever since.  He’s basically admitted, both back in 2002 and again today, that he doesn’t live in District 57, but over in neighboring 56 – and then simultaneously blamed it all on the Republicans, and then said “It’s for the children.”  No, really.  That’s what he said to a local subscriber-only outfit called the Quorum Report (the quote’s behind a subscriber firewall but it’s already zinging around the email chains in Texas):

“Why do I still have my house they cut out of the district? After Republicans intentionally redrew my district cutting out my new home, my wife and I made the decision to leave our children in the school district where they have always attended school,” Dunnam said.

And there ya have it – an admission that he has chosen of his own free will to live outside the district that he runs in.  So Waco TV station KWTX caught up with him, and here’s what he had to say when they asked him how often he sleeps at the out-of-district house versus how often he sleeps at the abandoned house that’s in the district.

When asked how much time he spends at the house that’s in his district, he responded, “Where I am and when I’m somewhere is not something I think is relevant.”

Well, Texas law thinks it’s relevant.  The state’s constitution says you have to live in the district for a year before you’re eligible for office.  Dunnam hasn’t lived in HD57 for at least 8 years, and maybe a dozen.  This gentleman is both the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, and one of the most powerful trial lawyers in the state.  He knows the law.  He just doesn’t care to abide by it.

It’s long past time to turn this arrogant hack out of office.

State Rep. Jim Dunnam, resident of Texas House District 56.

Update: Heh.  Jim Dunnam is certainly no Lando Calrissian, no matter how much he whines.

 

In Which “left-wing think tanks are nonpartisan watchdogs, but the free-market ones are part of some covert stealth nefarious plot”

That up there is the title to a great post by Matt Welch over at Reason, which you ought to read and absorb.  It’s truly a look under the rock of how the so-called mainstream media treats advocacy groups on the left versus how it characterizes groups on the right.  Lefty groups get the neutral, non-partisan designation nine times out of ten, even if they’re led by open socialists and funded by the likes of Soros (which regardless of whatever state you happen to live in, most lefty groups do catch and carry Soros bucks).  Righty groups are routinely treated as if they carry leprosy with intent to propagate the disease.

And the irony is, it’s the lefty Soros groups that actually are or tend to be part of some covert stealth nefarious plot.  There’s even a newish one that does the non-profit journalism thing that’s gone nationwide calling itself “American Independent News.”  They’re setting up posts in each state under the “Independent”moniker and training up local writers, so in Virginia it’ll be the Virginia Independent, in Texas it’ll be the Texas Independent, and so forth.  By the name and the look of the site, it all sounds very non-partisan and even Tea Partyish.  But it ain’t.   Go have a look at their Donate page and you’ll see the Open Society Institute on the list.

That’s Soros.  Thus, American Independent, and its little offshoot here in Texas, is not independent at all.

(Welch article via InstaPundit)

 

Bill White: Let’s block the military vote

Let’s just tally up some of the ways that Bill White is an awful candidate, particularly in Texas.

He lies.  A lot.

He auditioned for a slot in the Obama administration in late 2008, and supports cap and tax.

He may have used the EPA to launch a political attack on the Texas economy.

He says he’s pro-gun, but was a member in a huge anti-gun mayors group.

He put Planned Parenthood in a massively powerful post in his administration as Houston mayor.

And as chairman of the Texas Democrat party, Bill White actually tried to make it harder for military to vote.  Does the man realize that Texas and military are practically synonymous? 

In 1997, Texas Democrats filed an election contest seeking to overturn the results of two local elections in Val Verde County (Del Rio), claiming that soldiers stationed at Laughlin Air Force Base weren’t eligible voters. In two races, Val Verde County voters narrowly elected a Republican sheriff and county commissioner. Democrats argued that military voters could vote in federal elections but not local elections unless they had prior ties to the community.

* * *Eventually, Texas courts ruled that the military votes were valid.* * *Democrats responded by trying to disenfranchise military voters in local elections in the 1997 legislative session.

I don’t want to steal their post, so read the rest.  White still stands by those actions and reiterates that military should only be allowed to vote where their kids are enrolled in schools – which would disenfranchise thousands who call Texas home but may be deployed overseas, and earning him a pop from Bosnia war hero Capt Scott O’Grady, among others.  Nice move, Gollum.

 

Bill White: Liar, Liar (part 2)

I think it’s fair to wonder at this point if Bill White, the Dem who wants to govern Texas, is a congenital liar.  A week or so back, he got caught in a years-long whopper about whether he made money on an oil company called Frontera Research.  He’d insisted for years that he hadn’t, but it turns out that he’d made over a million buckeroos on that one.

I don’t know about you, but I misremember making a million bucks here and there all the time. 

So White lied about that.  He’s also insisted that he wasn’t anti-Second Amendment rights, even though he was a member in a huge anti-gun group.  And now, the man is lying about how many Texas border sheriffs support his bid for the governorship.  Unfortunately for him, two of those sheriffs saw the White campaign’s press release on the subject and one is calling White out.

In an attempt to one-up Perry, White claimed endorsements from “10 of the 15 sheriffs whose county lines touch the border” with Mexico.

The problem was, two of the sheriffs White said are backing him signed statements of support for the Republican incumbent: Zavala County Sheriff Eusebio Salinas and Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr.

“I’d like to know who put me on that Bill White list. It isn’t right,” Salinas said. “I’m only on Rick Perry’s.”

Well, Bill White’s people put you on that list, sir.  Like their candidate, they’re not exactly BFFs with the truth.

 

Obama on the Sherrod affair: YouTube made me do it!

My friends, behold 21st Century leadership!

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack rushed to judgment when he dismissed a former government official over racism allegations, U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview on Thursday.

“He jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles,” Obama said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that will be broadcast on Friday.

Are. You. Kidding. Me.

Wasn’t Obama the candidate who was the be-all end-all genius of social media ‘n stuff?  Yet here he is on the one hand acknowledging that Shirley Sherrod got chucked because the Obama administration fears the YouTube, and then on the other hand chucking his subordinate – the Secretary of Whatever Vilsack is – over the whole thing.  Obama the formerly hip has managed to look simultaneously curmudgeonly and cowardly in one sound bite.  That’s a heckuva accomplishment (Texas Sen. Kirk Watson – here’s one to note next time you’re asked what Obama has achieved!)

You know who looks worst in all this?

Obama.

The man still hasn’t figured out the first thing when it comes to leadership.  He’s jumping like a chihuahua on speed at the first sign of trouble from the mighty Breitbart’s YouTube hits, scattering his administration like bowling pins when things go a little sour, and in the end trying to find a way to – again – lament how awful the new media world we live in is turning out to be.  He’s turning into a crusty old goat right before our eyes.

Obama is finding out that it’s fun when you’re the outsider lobbing YouTube grenades at The Man, not so fun when someone else is lobbing the YouTube bombs back at ya after you’ve become The Man.  He’s obviously not finding out that, sometimes, you as the leader have to be prepared to defend the folks who work for you, even when it’s expedient to throw them under the overused bus.

We’ll end with a little irony.

“I’ve told my team and I told my agencies that we have to make sure that we’re focusing on doing the right thing instead of what looks to be politically necessary at that very moment,” Obama said.

“…doing the right thing instead of what looks to be politically necessary at the moment.”  Riiight.  Obama has told his team to do the exact opposite of what he has just done, and consistently does whenever there’s political trouble that threatens him personally.  That’ll work, champ.

 

San Antonio blogger wants Ciro and Quico to “get serious”

I wouldn’t care, except this blogger blogs at the San Antonio Express-News, that’s the big newspaper reporting in the district in question, and her post offers no evidence that she has a clue what’s at the heart of that Ciro Rodriguez video from last week.  You know the one I’m talking about – Ciro Gone WILD.

Now, to blogger Maria Anglin’s objections:

Let’s talk about this video of Ciro blowing his top with some woman at a town hall meeting last week. Ciro doesn’t look too cool and collected while he’s losing his temper, does he? No sir, he doesn’t. Now a video of Ciro’s angry words is the first thing that pops up on cansecoforcongress.com under the header “Ciro Rodriguez: Out-Of-Control.” Does that look good? No sir, that doesn’t either.

Ciro, thanks for apologizing. Being called a liar is a punch in the gut, but it’s part of being a politician and you ought to know how to react to that kind of stuff by now. You’re no rookie; you know that. And it appears that you now realize that there is no way to take back the moral high ground once you start pounding on the tables with a newspaper to show everyone how upset you are. It’s a safe bet that everyone in the room knew you were madder than a wet hen, and that’s not your best side. You probably shouldn’t point fingers at other adults to make your point, either — it doesn’t go over well.

And Francisco “Quico” Canseco. Do you really want to lead your Web site with this? Wouldn’t it be better to lead with your take on the issues you believe are the most critical for the 23rd Congressional District, as your note posted right under the Ciro video says? If you’re leading with a fistful of “look how badthis clown looks,” what does that say about your position?

What we have here is a blogger’s failure to understand what she’s seeing.  The Ciro Gone WILD video is serious, on its own, for two reasons, and the Canseco campaign is more than justified in making a big deal out of it.  First, the video demonstrates clearly that Ciro Rodriguez doesn’t understand the bill that he voted for.  He tries citing the government’s numbers on that bill, and his own constituent calls him out for using dated figures – figures that are no longer in operation, according to the very government Rodriguez is relying on for authority here.  Rodriguez’s reaction shows that he’s operating from talking points that his party or maybe someone on his staff wrote for him (just a guess, but the talking points’ author is probably somewhere within Obama’s personal political army, Organizing for America) and he doesn’t know what to do when those talking points get blown up in front of a room full of people whose votes he’s trying to get.  So he lashes out, and looks like a menacing jerk in the process.

All of that is serious.  You want bullet points, here are a few.

1. Dem Rep Ciro Rodriguez doesn’t know what the hell he voted for or what it will cost, so

2. He relied on talking points rather than having any real understanding of the bill (which is his job, by the way), and

3. When those talking points are proven to be useless,

4. Ciro Rodriguez chooses to lash out rather than admit his shortcomings and his error in voting for that bill.

All that seems pretty clear to me.  Let’s hope it sinks in on Ciro’s defender over at the Express-News.