Well…just a shorty on the data that is coming out of the developing pricing for the insurance exchanges…one estimate for a family of four making around 40K in Texas is that, after subsidies, they will pay around 50 bucks a month for a silver plan that covers more than any personal insurance that is even available in Texas right now. So, to the repubs I say “you guys are in deep, deep trouble” if you continue to try to make sure that no one can afford insurance…your time is just about up when people get the pleasant surprise of the rates under the ACA and it spreads like wildfire across this country…and, you are a bunch of immoral pricks…geez…
Tag Archives: Texas
Not sure what to do…
Well…as you can probably tell…I have been struggling with a case of writers block or whatever it is when the ideas just don’t come…but, with over 2500 of these done, that just doesn’t make sense. I did want to comment on Syria a little bit…I do like the idea that there are some deliberations going on instead of just the knee-jerk use force reaction that has passed for foreign policy lately…not sure where it is going, though, when the WH says that they are not bound by any decision of congress…weird…why do it then?
The true nature of the repubs in Texas was clarified over the weekend when they refused to sign their LGBT National Guard up for the benefits that the Pentagon has said they qualify for after the demise of DOMA….basically saying that the bigoted hatred of gays trumps the service that these soldiers have done…so, the next time anyone on the right says they support the troops, think “they support the troops if they are heterosexual” and tell them to go to hell…okay…not feeling it right now so I am going to go and then come back later for more…I am one down already for the month…
Even the stupid is bigger in Texas…
Well…after the supreme court gutted the voting rights act and about an hour later the Texas repubs passed a law that would disenfranchise many, many Texans (all democratic I might add), the fallout was a suit by the AG to try to stop the shenanigans. I am just laughing at the response from the Texas repub AG, that the suit alleging that the new restrictions are racially motivated just can’t be true since the intent of the redistricting was to make sure that Democrats can’t vote…yep, in the response to the suit the repubs admitted that they are trying to rig the votes there but shouldn’t be held responsible since there is no law against making sure your opposing party can’t vote…and they cite ole Scalia saying that there is no right to vote in the constitution….I am just stunned by the stupidity of these folks…can’t they see that by filing this brief, they have opened themselves up to so much legal action that the state AG will have no time for anything else…hmmmm…maybe that’s a good thing….and these are the folks that keep waving the constitution around like a flag….big, big, stupid…geez…
Texas is still the home of the war on women…
Well…as you know, the idiot repubs in Texas have been pandering to their rabid tea party supporters by pushing more and more illegal restrictions on womens rights culminating in the new, draconian restrictions on abortion that more that 65% of the people there (even repubs) do not want enacted. So, what is this about? It’s about control of women and their health…but this is not the first thing they have done…just this year, these same idiots slashed funding for family planning and other health services by almost 70%, making this necessary health care almost impossible to get if you are poor in Texas. But, this affected even more than the poor since Texas has the highest rate of uninsured people of any state…and you can see how much they just don’t give a damn about the people of Texas by the added rejection of the Medicaid expansion which will actually COST Texas billions of dollars in uncovered care that will happen in the emergency rooms across the state. All I can think of with this crap going on is these repubs are just not too bright, especially since an identical law has been thrown out in Wisconsin and is on the way to be deemed unconstitutional in at least three other states. I just can’t believe these guys are just standing around, waving the constitution and then spend all of their days passing laws that are unconstitutional that will cost their states millions in legal fees…I guess enriching your lawyer buddies is more important to them that spending those millions feeding people or providing healthcare….geez…
The pushback has begun…
Well…this is going to be a short one since the brain hasn’t been working that well the past few days…but I did want to comment on the signs of a progressive pushback to the nonsense that has come out of the tea party and even “normal” repubs lately…it used to be that progressives had no fight in them…they felt that they could reason with anyone if they would just sit down and talk with the opposition. But, it now appears that they have seen the truth that has been in front of their faces for years…that the right will not compromise, that the right will lie, cheat and steal to push their radical, women hating agenda…and we are doing something about it…like the thousands that have turned out every Monday in NC…the “Moral Monday” movement who are protesting the voter suppression, women suppression, and gay hating that is rife in the repub controlled legislature…and the many, many thousands who have turned out in Texas to protest the draconian intrusion into women’s lives there….we won’t win in Texas…not right now, anyway, but I think these two examples are the start of something big…the start of a movement that will take back the country from the money and the 15% of the crazies who are now attacking women across the country, who are still attacking gays and the poor…we can hope that this movement, along with the demographic changes that are coming, will finally put the nail in the coffins of the repub haters and get this country moving forward again…geez…
The irony in Texas…
Well….it is another bad day for women in the US with the Texas legislature following their illegal attempt to take away womens ability to control there own bodies from last week with another attempt to ram through the same SB-5 in another special session this week. And, these tea party idiots who wave the constitution around like it is the Bible are making sure that no one will be allowed into the legislative session by posting hundreds of armed police outside the state house in Austin…even bringing in mounted police to intimidate the protesters who are exercising their constitutionally protected rights to protest…and the idiot repubs there can’t see the irony that in this supposed utopia of democracy that they have built in Texas, they are using the same tactics that the Egyptian military used against the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tarhir square. Don’t they see that they are no better than the Taliban in their push to control women? They are just substituting their brand of radical crazy assed religion for the radical crazy assed Muslims…and that is just frickin wrong. I know they will win today…but, I really don’t think they understand that winning a tactical victory is going to lose them the war in 2014 when these assholes are thrown out and sanity is restored…I hope it happens here in Michigan and in Ohio, too…the tide is finally turning in our favor and all we have to do is use these new laws that treat women like second class citizens to beat these idiots across the head with them…geez…
Wendy Davis is my new hero…
Well..don’t know if you were following it or not, but a scene straight out of “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” played out in the Texas legislature yesterday where one senator, Wendy Davis, took on the republican establishment who were trying to take away womens rights to control their own bodies with a draconian set of new abortion restrictions that would have closed almost all of the abortion clinics in Texas. But, what this brave, wonderful woman did was and old-fashioned filibuster; standing up for the people of Texas who did not want this law to pass…and were incensed that the governor..ole Rick Perry…called a special session for the express purpose of taking away womens rights. What senator Davis did was no little feat, standing, talking, and taking on the crazy assed republican men who want nothing more than to control the women in the state…and with the rules of the filibuster in Texas, she was not able to sit, nor drink, nor eat, or even go to the bathroom during her epic speech…all the while staying on topic as the republican men tried and tried to use procedural nonsense to stop her. Here we have one person who took on the establishment and won, giving those of us who believe that women should make their own health decisions hope that this is a new wave, that people in this country are tired of the repubs only focus being taking away rights…not the expansion of them as has happened throughout the history of this country. So, to Wendy Davis and the people of Texas that supported her I say thank you….keep up the good fight….
The republicans really are crazy….
Well…came across this amazing little fact when I was watching Colbert the other day and it popped up in an article in the papers today to remind me of how crazy the repubs have gotten over the past couple of years…and I really need to put a long quote from the platform of the repub party from Texas in to get started…”We oppose the teaching of higher order thinking skills…and similar programs which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the students fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority…” okay…are you as blindsided as I am? Basically, what the GOP in Texas is saying is that they don’t want their children to be able to think, to be able to compare facts and reason, or to challenge dogma that is riddled with superstition and lies. So, whatever their ignorant parents teach them about the spaghetti monster in the sky, or that the president is a muslim, socialist, Martian can no longer be challenged by the facts as long as it is “fixed belief”…no wonder the US is falling so far behind the rest of the world in competitiveness and even respect…how can the rest of the world respect a country that has one of its major parties so full of crazies, that treat objective fact as lesser than opinion, and who elevate the purveyors of this nonsense to leadership roles? I fear for this country if the repubs get their way….
I do need to give a little props to Leonard Pitts for his article today where I got the quote from the platform….
If corporations are people…
Well…read an interesting little tidbit in one of the papers this morning that I thought I’d write a short comment about….if corporations are “people” according to the supreme court, why haven’t any of them been sentenced to the death penalty in Texas? There have been many cases of negligence by corporations that have resulted in human deaths there, but not once have they been held accountable as a human would have been. So, what is it Rick? You revel in the fact that you have put more people to death than any other governor in history but when it comes to holding corporations accountable, you just turn a blind eye to make sure your campaign money keeps rolling in. It is such an egregious pattern of allowed lawbreaking by the repubs that puts the rule of law second to political gains and allows felons like Dick Cheney to walk away from breaking both domestic and international law with impunity….oh, I get it…it’s George Orwell at work from “Animal Farm”….”all pigs are equal but some are more equal than others..” Geez….
Okay….look down…I added to the last one….
The republicans vision…
Well..if we want to see the republicans vision in action, all we have to do is look at the state of Texas and the latest attack on schools there…on top of the 4 billion dollars that was chopped out of education in the latest budget, there is now a commission appointed by Rick Perry that is deciding on whether to give the companies that own the oil refineries there refunds on their taxes to pay for upgrades in their pollution controls. Now, let me get this straight…Perry and his cronies are going to give some of the most profitable companies in the world tax breaks to pay for something they are responsible for and shift the burden to the children and college students of Texas? This is class warfare and corporate welfare at it’s worst…what would happen if a regular citizen were to ask for tax breaks to buy a new car since is old one pollutes more than a new one? The repub establishment would be red-faced, screaming socialism, and lecturing the citizen that he or she needs stand on their own…that they can’t come to government to fix their problems. But it’s a different story when your big political donor comes with it’s hand out….that is the distilled vision that the repubs have for America…geez…