"This is why I don't think we have a strong president"

Cenk Uygur, “Edge Show” host Mark Thompson, The Nation’s Lee Fang, and comedian Jimmy Dore criticize President Obama’s inability to deliver on his first-term promise to close Guantanamo Bay. During a White House Press conference, Obama renewed his dedication to closing the prison. “I think it’s one of the great failed promises of this presidency,” Thompson says. “This is why I don’t think we have a strong president,” Cenk says. “This is an executive decision. [Obama] shouldn’t have any conversation with Congress about this.”

It is one of the enduring mysteries to me how closing Gitmo can possibly be so difficult or why it is even controversial. Republicans either are too scared to treat the captives legally, or they simply want to kill them all (as if that would solve anything). Obama's capitulation to the pants-crapping cowardice of the GOP is to say, "well OK; since you have screamed so much about it, we'll let you have your way".

Obama reminds me of one of those parents who refuses to discipline their shrieking, wailing child in the restaurant. You know, just let them cry themselves out.

Bullshit. Take that little urchin out to the car and whip his ass until he understands how to behave. Yeah, it's old school but it's how I was raised. And don't tell me about how people call DHS on parents like that, or that children can sue their parents as part of the analogy.

Republicans -- in addition to being cowards -- are bullies. Stand up to them and they will back down. Don't... and they'll keep up their act. Somebody's got to find their spine once in awhile, and we are way overdue for a discovery among the political class.

You have to hope it happens before Ted Cruz gets elected president, anyway.

It's just amazing to me that it takes a man with a broken back to demonstrate the kind of courage needed to slap Republicans across the face with their hypocrisy.

House Dems block water bill in last stand for schools

While rain slicked the streets of Austin, lawmakers heatedly debated legislation that would use $2 billion from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to pay for the state water plan, an increasingly urgent issue for lawmakers. But, after hours of stop-and-go debate, a procedural error derailed the legislation.

The bill’s author, state Rep. Allan Ritter, a Republican from rainy Southeast Texas, said House Bill 11 was “doorknob dead.”

You know, it's too bad that Ritter couldn't use any of the goodwill he had among Democrats -- you know, from all those years he spent being one -- to save his water bill.

House Democrats, who organized a point of order to kill the bill, said they resorted to that parliamentary tactic only because their demands to put more into Texas’ schools, and fully undo the cuts from 2011, were going unheeded. Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) said they’d like to see the House pass a 2-2-2 plan: $2 billion for roads, $2 billion for water and $2 billion more for public schools, all paid out of the Rainy Day Fund.

Texas Monthly‘s Paul Burka described the Democrats’ dilemma:

This is also the last point in the session when the Democrats will have any leverage. The moment the gavel falls to certify the final passage of HB 11, the Democrats will lose whatever power they have.

But with a reputed 80 votes, and needing 100, it's not just the Dems who stand in the way. (The statehouse is split 95 R and 55 D.) The TP doesn't care much for the bill either, but that's because they don't want to spend anything.

House Bill 11 also faced challenges from the House’s tea party faction, which has been itching for a fight all session. To appease the brawlers, the House GOP caucus chair Rep. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe) presented what one lawmaker called a “nuclear bomb”: an amendment stipulating that if the bill didn’t get a vote of two-thirds of the House, then it would be funded out of general revenue by imposing a $2 billion across-the-board cut. In other words, Creighton would force lawmakers to choose between water and everything else in the state budget.

The proposal, said Turner, puts “water first and everything else is second. By definition your amendment has picked a winner and everyone else stands to lose.”

Creighton’s rejoinder was that everyone would suffer from not funding the water plan. “Whoever is impacted by small reductions in the budget will benefit for years from this move,” he said.

But before the amendment came to a vote, the point of order killed the bill.

The bill could get passed if the Republicans with half a functioning brain could reach Sly Turner's common ground on funding education and transportation. But Ritter says it's dead, so I guess we should take him at his word.

It’s unclear how the House gets the water plan funded now. Any transfer from the Rainy Day Fund, as is preferred by Gov. Perry and other top Republicans, would require a two-thirds vote. The Senate passed a proposed constitutional amendment last week pulling a total of $5.7 billion from the Rainy Day Fund, including $2 billion for water. However, Ritter said that legislation “has a snowball’s chance” in the House.

Ritter and the Democrats pointed to another bill sitting in committee, House Bill 19, which spreads $3.7 billion from the Rainy Day Fund to water and roads.

Without 100 votes, something will have to give to fund the state water plan.

It's called compromise. It's defined as Republicans giving up something -- their apparent desire NOT to fully fund public schools -- in order to get what they want. Which, though difficult for them to manage, beats the kind of intransigence they have demonstrated on other legislative items (such as Medicaid expansion).

Or they could just postpone the scuffle until a special session.

State Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, commenting after Turner’s point of order won out, voiced determination to see a water bill through. “If we don’t fix this, I think a lot of people’s political careers will be on the line,” he said.

Since Larson is the guy who advanced term limits legislation over the objections of the governor, hopefully it's Rick Perry's political career he's referring to.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance would have gotten rid of the entire sequester, not just the part that inconvenienced the few, as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff notes that we might actually get a worthwhile payday lending bill passed this session... if the House follows the Senate's lead.  

WCNews at Eye on Williamson highlights one example of how our legislators decide that ideology trumps morality.  

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know that enablers of racism and fear are planning to build more of that d*mn fence!

Greg Abbott is running for governor in 2014, but is Rick Perry? PDiddie at Brains and Eggs turned over the Magic 8 Ball and it said: "Reply Hazy Try Again".

Over at TexasKaos, Libby Shaw nails Perry on his lethal governing philosophy. Check it out: Texas Recipe for Disaster: Small Government, Lax Regulation, Little Oversight.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

I Wish Fifth Ward invites you to reimagine one of Houston's historic neighborhoods.

Texans for Public Justice tracks the 12 Republicans who went from the Legislature to the lobby since last session.

Nonsequiteuse advises you on getting the most from your fundraiser.

Clay Robison eulogizes Demetrio Rodriguez, one of the earliest champions in the decades-long fight for equity in public school funding.

Harold Cook muses on lizards, henhouses, and snakes in the grass.

Texas Clean Air Matters asks if lax regulations or insufficient oversight are more to blame for the explosion in West.

Flavia Isabel reads "Lean In" and draws some lessons from it.

Pedestrian Pete demonstrates bad parking lot and traffic signal design.

Texas Leftist explains why Barbara is his favorite Bush.

Texpatriate discusses the latest legislative assault on voting rights.

Sunday Funnies

Rick Perry outraged by cartoon explosions, not real ones

Jack Ohman and I were on the same wavelength last week. And for the first time in a very long time, something published in a newspaper got the governor's attention.

Gov. Rick Perry said Friday he's disgusted a California newspaper ran a cartoon that depicts him boasting about booming business in Texas, then shows an explosion, a week after a fertilizer plant explosion killed 14 people in a Texas town.

Perry said he wants an apology from the Sacramento Bee on behalf of the town.

The cartoon in Thursday's edition shows Perry crowing that "Business is Booming," flanked by signs saying "Low Tax!" and "'Low Regs!" It's a play on the Republican's often-repeated mantra that his state's low-regulation, business-friendly climate has its economy humming.

The next panel reads "Boom!" as a blast engulfs the area behind the governor and his signs.

In a letter to the Bee's editor, Perry said it "was with extreme disgust and disappointment I viewed your recent cartoon."

"While I will always welcome healthy policy debate, I won't stand for someone mocking the tragic deaths of my fellow Texans and our fellow Americans," Perry wrote. "Additionally, publishing this on the very day our state and nation paused to honor and mourn those who died only compounds the pain and suffering of the many Texans who lost family and friends in this disaster." 

Ohman is, of course, mocking Perry and not the dead of West, and even Perry is smart enough to understand that. Which is why he's crying like a Boehner about it.

The Bee's editorial page editor, Stuart Leavenworth, responded Friday that the artist, Jack Ohman, "made a strong statement about Gov. Rick Perry's disregard for worker safety, and his attempts to market Texas as a place where industries can thrive with few regulations."

"It is unfortunate that Gov. Perry, and some on the blogosphere, have attempted to interpret the cartoon as being disrespectful for the victims of this tragedy," Leavenworth said. "As Ohman has made clear on his blog, he has complete empathy for the victims and people living by the plant.

"What he finds offensive is a governor who would gamble with the lives of families by not pushing for the strongest safety regulations. Perry's letter is an attempt to distract people from that message."

Rick Perry is, as we know, the guy who ignored every Texas newspaper editorial board on his way to re-election in 2010. Rick Perry is the guy who brags about how great the Texas economy is when the state has the most minimum wage jobs in the nation. Rick Perry is the guy who, in his pitch to out-of-state businessmen, makes analogies of burning buildings about to collapse. And he is also the guy who believes that Texans, with their ballots, have endorsed all of his lazy-ass-faire libertarian notions of regulation.

You cannot make these things up. Rick Perry has exposed himself on a weekly basis for the past two years as the King of All Buffoons, and appears (with an indignant response to a cartoon) to have finally realized that we're onto him. When even the Texas Republicans in the state legislature are tired of your act...

I have to say I am still doubtful, however, that the greater ramifications of Ohman's cartoon will successfully penetrate our governor's dense mind. I just don't think his brain can be fracked. He's been such a national laughingstock for so long that it's hard for me to see anything that occurs outside of his tea bubble will actually influence his actions. That David Dewhurst -- who has a lot of fencing to mend with the extremes in the TXGOP -- would go a step further and demand Ohman's firing is evidence that the Glenn Beck caucus, Texas chapter thinks there is still mileage to be gotten out of strenuously objecting to a cartoon.

Cartoons, as you may recall, were what resulted in the fatwas against both Danish and American cartoonists in the past ten years. And that is essentially the state of play in the Lone Star State today: Texas is right on the verge of becoming the Afghanistan of the western world. That's where the Tea Party has brought us.

Either the people who vote in the GOP primary in Texas will put an end to this bullshit, or they won't. It's up to them.

Hurry up, Battleground Texas.

Bush's Lie-bury opens today

(The media blitz) was part of a carefully choreographed effort surrounding the opening of the Bush library at Southern Methodist University. The rollout includes a series of TV interviews with Bush and his wife, Laura, on ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. Fox News, whose conservative viewers represent the Bush library's biggest target audience, will get two interviews.

The resemblance to the start of a national campaign is no accident. For a former president seeking to turn around public opinion about his tenure, "the presidential library is their key to getting a better place in American history," said Benjamin Hufbauer of the University of Louisville, who is a specialist on presidential libraries.

Bush's reemergence comes after several low-profile years. He did not attend last year's Republican convention and played no role in the 2012 campaign. More recently, he became a grandfather for the first time and attracted unexpected attention for his newest hobby: painting.

"People are surprised," he told the Dallas Morning News. "Of course, some people are surprised I can even read." 

Count me out on the rehab tour.

A few things are clear: This campaign is as much about cleaning up the mess he made for his brother Jeb, who clearly wants to claim his rightful place in the White House, as it is about refurbishing his legacy. Last week Bush told Parade magazine he hopes his brother runs. “I would hope that people would judge [him], if Jeb were to run, on his merits and his track record.…So I hope he will run.”

[...]

He is the worst president in modern history, by any measure. Americans don’t like disliking their presidents, so his (polling) recovery was predictable, but Bush’s media tour is likely to provoke a backlash, or at least closer media scrutiny to his record. Or at least it should.

Obama, along with all of the ex-presidents, will be there today. After raising money for Texas Democrats last night, the president will also speak at a memorial for West blast victims in addition to the library dedication.

A partial listing of library exhibits I would like to see, if I ever go...

• The 'Mission Accomplished' banner and the codpiece he wore ten years ago when he declared that major combat operations had ended in Iraq even though they continued for the rest of his presidency.

• The chair in which he sat, frozen, at Booker Elementary School on 9/11 after he was told "America is under attack." Also his dog-eared copy of "The Pet Goat."

• A bag of pretzels, of course.

• On a continuous loop in the lobby: a recording of the push-poll question his campaign used to destroy John McCain in 2000…

"Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"

...just to show visiting school kids what a classy guy Bush is.

• A piece of the birthday cake he shared with John McCain in Phoenix as the levees were busting open in New Orleans.

• The golf club he swung immediately after vowing to "stop these terrorist killers."

• The 2005 "Can I go pee?" note he scribbled to Condi Rice at the United Nations.

• The Segway he fell off of in 2003.

• A credit card bill forwarded from the White House to "The People of the United States of America" with a balance of $10 trillion.

• The August 6, 2001 PDB: Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside US.

• Some aluminum tubes.

• The vial of baby powder Colin Powell used to scare us to death at the United Nations.

• The best of FEMA Director Michael Brown's Katrina emails, including "I am a fashion god" and "Can I quit now? Can I go home?"

• A photo collage of the U.S. soldiers who died during the Iraq war underneath a sign that says, "Oops!"

• The shoes that were thrown at him by a journalist during his last visit to Iraq.

• The shirt Bill Clinton was wearing in Haiti when Bush used it as a rag to wipe a commoner's cooties off his hand in 2010.

The free market levels the playing field

And also the apartments, and the nursing home, and several homes in the adjacent neighborhood. Along with the people living in them, and the first responders.

Gov. Rick Perry said Monday that spending more state money on inspections would not have prevented the deadly explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. plant that was last investigated by Texas environmental regulators in 2006.

Perry told The Associated Press that he remains comfortable with the state's level of oversight following last week's massive blast in the rural farming town of West that killed 14 people and injured 200. Federal and state investigators say they have yet to identify the cause of the explosion.

Perry suggested that the majority of Texas residents agree with him.

"(People) through their elected officials clearly send the message of their comfort with the amount of oversight," Perry said Monday. 

So there you have it: the governor believes he has a mandate for inaction. Whether he actually does or not depends on whether Texas Republicans are willing to extend his political career as governor in 2014... or in a rerun for the presidency in 2016.

In the meantime it would be great if the invisible hand of the free market whips Rick Perry's ass.

Greg Abbott is running for governor of Texas in 2014, but is Rick Perry?

The incumbent keeps head-faking.

"Why would you want to change?"

The challenger, meanwhile, beat him out to West.

The day after the horrific blast last week, Gov. Rick Perry held a press conference at the Department of Public Safety headquarters in Austin. He wore casual clothes with an open collar, and flanked by the lieutenant governor and other officials, talked about making sure the state sent whatever was needed to the tiny town best known as a Kolaches stop on Interstate-35.

A few hours later, Abbott was the first elected, statewide official on the scene wearing a fleece and a serious expression, taking an aerial tour of the damage and returning to brief journalists. In past disasters, that was Perry's job. The governor didn't make it to West until the next day.

Many may ask what role does an attorney general play in responding to an industrial accident. Not much really, though Abbott did take the opportunity to warn local businesses against price gouging for food and shelter. But his appearance makes a little more sense if you consider that Abbott is widely seen as Perry's chosen successor to the governor's mansion.

It was a quick return trip to the Waco area for Abbott. He was there just the day before the explosion telling people that Battleground Texas was a "far greater threat" than Kim Jong-un.

The troublesome thing for the attorney general is that the governor might not be ready to move on. Ross Ramsey lays out the case for both directions, in or out.

Rick Perry is being so cagey that even I won't speculate -- yet -- on what he might do. I do know that the guy who will know first is Eric Bearse.

Abbott's campaign consultant, Eric Bearse, responded mildly saying that he isn't privy to Perry and Abbott's conversations. But Bearse also happens to be a Perry campaign consultant who helped write Perry's book on scouting, "On My Honor." He also worked on Perry's presidential campaign.

Bearse declined to comment to The Associated Press on Perry's plans, or if Abbott is preparing a run for governor. But going into his 11th year in office, Abbott is known to be restless for something bigger and an attorney general candidate doesn't need an $18 million war chest to run virtually unchallenged for re-election.

Well, it is certainly true that Abbott is bored being the state attorney general.

Earlier this year he was asked what his job entailed. “I go into the office in the morning,” he replied. “I sue Barack Obama, and then I go home.” 

I guess that beats stuffing your boot in your mouth on a weekly basis. Here's the governor, just days before West.

If you’re a business owner in Illinois, I want to express my admiration for your ability to survive in an environment that, intentionally or not, is designed for you to fail.

With rising taxes and government interference on the upswing, your situation is not unlike a burning building on the verge of collapse. If you’re thinking of “just riding it out” you might want to reconsider.

Yeah, a burning building about to collapse. Or it might be just like living next to a fertilizer plant with 1,350 times the legal limit of ammonium nitrate and no inspections by OSHA since 1985. Anyway, Eric Bearse.

Perry-watchers can find evidence for either case. His failure to declare any emergency items this legislative session — a first since he took office — shows that his mind is elsewhere, as does his travel to California and an upcoming trip to Illinois, Democratic states with big Republican donors.

On the other hand, Perry talks about how much he loves his job and how the Texas economy is thriving due to the state's leadership current leadership.

So it is from this fog of uncertainty about Perry's plans that Abbott emerges alone in West, meeting with first responders, comforting the grief-stricken and acting very much like a governor.

If the speculation is true, and Bearse is charged with managing an orderly transition from Perry to Abbott, then Texans may have already witnessed the first act.

I can't stand the thought of either of these two as governor of Texas in 2014. C'mon, Republicans: can't you do any better than this?

The Hell Week Wrangle

The thoughts and prayers of the Texas Progressive Alliance are with the people of Boston and West as we bring you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff explains what electric car makers and microbreweries have in common.

There's always a price for stupidity and it's usually steep, especially when it comes to the stupid decision not the regulate key industries. McBlogger observes that the bill for Rick Perry's low regulation heaven came due last week in West.

Before all of the other things happened last week, Swift Boat Bob Perry passed on to his greater reward. Which, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs hopes, is a low-paying job in an extremely warm climate.  

WCNews at Eye on Williamson posts about the former Williamson County DA being charged with a crime: Ken Anderson will be charged with criminal wrongdoing in Michael Morton case.

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw reminds us that there are no signs of Rick Perry become a human being anytime soon. Check out Rick Perry's Texas: Tax Cuts for Businesses. No Mercy for the Poor.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

TFN Insider reminds us that the creationists are still at work in the Legislature.

The Great God Pan Is Dead joins with the Houston Art Alliance to paint some trees blue.

Concerned Citizens warns about a teabagger group that targets progressive municipal candidates with nuisance ethics complaints.

Jason Stanford doesn't believe in miracles, at least not as far as test scores are concerned.

Mark Bennett illustrates how spousal privilege may come into play in the Kaufman County murder trials.

Texpatriate finds a reason to be proud of his (Republican) Senator.

Texas Watch offers some tips for dealing with your insurance company after a disaster.

 Texas Leftist gives his impressions of the Gang of Eight immigration bill.

And finally, Flavia Isabel has some helpful hints for domestic bliss.

Sunday Funnies