Kay pricks Rick for not taking stimulus $$$ that she voted against

How about another cup of our steaming GOP hypocrisy, Texas Special Blend?

Back in February, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in part because she said the bill “doesn’t actually stimulate.” Today, however, in an early move in the 2010 Republican primary for Texas governor, Hutchison attacked incumbent Gov. Rick Perry for turning down the very stimulus money she believed would do nothing for the economy:

“Governor Perry recklessly turned down the federal unemployment insurance money,” Hutchison said. “He never even looked at cutting the ridiculous federal strings attached to that money like I would have done. He didn’t even attempt to negotiate a way to relieve employers from a tax increase while helping Texans affected by the economic downturn.

“But now, because of a purely political decision to turn down UI funding, Texas has to go into debt and beg the federal government for a $650 million loan,” she said. “And like all loans, this one has to be paid back. And who will pay it back? Texas businesses and hard-working taxpayers already facing enormous hardships.

“It’s not conservative. It’s irresponsible.”

Perry, of course, originally opposed the stimulus, but was recently forced to ask the federal government for a $170 million loan to cover unemployment insurance.

Heh-heh. She said "reckless".

So to be fair, there is a difference between a senator and a governor saying (or voting) no on this matter. When a senator votes no to the stimulus plan, they were voting to kill it before it even got out of the gate.

When a governor says no to stimulus money that has already been approved for distribution, he's just being an idiot for refusing free federal grant dollars which the state and their taxpayers will have to pay back anyway as part of the national debt, regardless of whether they took the money or not.

So the difference is that what Governor MoFo is doing -- besides acting ignorantly -- is worse for Texas then what Hutchison did (hypocrisy notwithstanding).

I am confident, however, that the morons who vote regularly in the Texas Republican primary will not understand this, and instead reward Perry for "bein' true to conservative principles".

You're still not making up any ground, Kay.

Update: Eye on Williamson links to Rachel Maddow's takedown, points out the embarrassment, and suggests that it still might be OK for Kay to get to Austin. I don't agree with that part, but I sure like the way he makes his point.

Comeback

More to post in the next day or two, including some photos of Bolivar Peninsula (starting to look good down there). But this article is humorous for its assembly of jabs, some light-hearted, at the Secretary of State.

Those of you who read here regularly would already know that I was not a supporter of Mrs. Clinton's candidacy (and was lukewarm of Obama's, right up to the Texas primary in March). But I think she's a perfect SoS -- perfect for Obama, perfect for the country. Apparently some would say it's been a rough time lately for her:

And Hillary Clinton thought she was having a bad day when she broke her elbow ...

Today, a meeting of Asian leaders in Thailand turned into the set of "Mean Girls": North Korea called the Secretary of State a "funny lady" who "looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping." Ouch. To be fair, Clinton stirred it up earlier this week when she compared North Korea to "unruly teenagers."

For the Secretary of State, this latest scrap must feel like the cherry on top of a big fat banana peel of a month.

This is Clinton's first trip abroad since she fell and broke her elbow in the White House basement last month. (Does the White House offer workman's comp?) Clinton's duties, naturally, were curtailed somewhat during her recuperation, but political pundits quickly jumped on the fact that while she was laid up, President Obama was gallivanting around the globe sans his Secretary of State.

Fox News asked whether it was a broken elbow or "sinister forces at work" to sideline the Secretary of State. Tina Brown at The Daily Beast blogged that it was "time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa," while the New York Daily News dubbed her plight "The curious case of the steadily shrinking Hillary Clinton." Foreign Policy website noted that Obama has been to several countries without her.

So while Clinton was recuperating from surgery on her broken elbow and handling her job as best as she could from home, she has also had to defend her boss and reassure everyone that, yes, she is, in fact, happy with her job.

Clinton responded to the rumors, speculation and analysis with a quippy "I broke my elbow, not my larynx." ...

More of this if you like. Strikes me as a tempest in a teapot.

The Weekly Wrangle

It's Monday and it's time for another Texas Progressive Alliance blog roundup.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is sick of cronies running our cities our state and our country!

WCNews at Eye On Williamson on more GOP shenanigans: Republicans, hypocrisy, the stimulus, and more Carter "nuttiness".

Off the Kuff notes that as Texas' unemployment rate continues to rise, we are now in the position of having to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to fulfill our unemployment insurance obligations. Heckuva job, Governor Perry!

John Coby at Bay Area Houston has posted a A How to Guide for Illegal Immigrants to Vote in Texas Elections.

Xanthippas takes on more disability-as-diversity nonsense. Also, on a side note, his blog Three Wise Men's 5th anniversary is this Tuesday. We'll be putting up a special post in commemoration.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks at how the NTTA will be raising rates because volume is down. So much for supply and demand theory.

This week, an old author returns to McBlogger with a true story about dogs. Completely unrelated to politics and nothing but funny.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted a video of him reciting the words of the 1848 Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" as a ship passes behind him on Galveston island. Coming up this week at Texas Liberal will be a video shot at the San Jacinto battlefield.

Upon the arrival of Fashion Week in Austin, Mean Rachel wants to know "Does this city make my butt look hot?"

Citizen Sarah at Texas Vox expresses disappointment, to say the least, that the Public Utility Commission denied Sylvester Turner's petition to protect our most vulnerable from dangerous summer heat.

Teddy at the fourth estate will be able to survive the economic recession and into the new digital age. Left of College Station also reviews the week in headlines.

The Texas Tribune, a new media project headed up by soon-to-be-former Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith, is an idea that shows lots of promise. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has more details about it.

Just as during the campaign, malicious emails are being sent, especially to the elderly. One paticularly nasty one is entitled: SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS. Over at TexasKaos, lightseeker takes on piece of electronic hit mail and offers some ideas on fighting back in his diary, Healthcare Scare Mail and what You Can Do To Help.

Sunday Funnies

See, it's not "affordable health insurance" that the American people need. It's AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE. Tell your Congress critters that. Especially if they are conservative (Blue Dog or worse).

Walter Cronkite 1916 - 2009

Another iconic figure of my formative years goes into that good night.

Walter Cronkite, who pioneered and then mastered the role of television news anchorman with such plain-spoken grace that he was called the most trusted man in America, died Friday at his home in New York. He was 92. ...

From 1962 to 1981, Mr. Cronkite was a nightly presence in American homes and always a reassuring one, guiding viewers through national triumphs and tragedies alike, from moonwalks to war, in an era when network news was central to many people’s lives.

He became something of a national institution, with an unflappable delivery, a distinctively avuncular voice and a daily benediction: “And that’s the way it is.” He was Uncle Walter to many: respected, liked and listened to. With his trimmed mustache and calm manner, he even bore a resemblance to another trusted American fixture, another Walter — Walt Disney.

That photo to the right is how I remember him: his hair and sideburns a little longer in the style of the '70's. A little whiter also. I don't remember "the flash from Dallas, apparently official" or his declaration that the Vietnam War was lost. I don't really remember the Apollo missions or the conventions he covered. I just recall that his was the voice of reason and authority in our house. At a time when there was only thirty minutes of national news a day, beginning promptly at 5:30 p.m. Central -- and you had three choices where to get it -- he was 'the gold standard', as longtime producer Don Hewitt has said. He certainly invented the post of broadcast news anchorman, though he referred to himself by a newspaper term, managing editor. (In Sweden, newscasters are actually called Kronkiters.)

Some viewers thought Cronkite was liberal, and they were right. But he wasn't a Democrat. (A personal aside: mine was a Democratic and union household growing up, but my wife's was Cuban-born and Republican. She said her father suspected his political leanings, and thus they were presumably a Huntley-Brinkley home.) Cronkite lived during an era when "liberal" and "conservative" applied to both political parties evenly.

Now, of course, all the thinking conservatives have abandoned the GOP. But I digress.

On Oct. 27, 1972, his 14-minute report on Watergate, followed by an eight-minute segment four days later, “put the Watergate story clearly and substantially before millions of Americans” for the first time, the broadcast historian Marvin Barrett wrote in “Moments of Truth?” (1975).

In 1977, his separate interviews with President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel were instrumental in Sadat’s visiting Jerusalem. The countries later signed a peace treaty.

“From his earliest days,” Mr. Halberstam wrote, “he was one of the hungriest reporters around, wildly competitive, no one was going to beat Walter Cronkite on a story, and as he grew older and more successful, the marvel of it was that he never changed, the wild fires still burned.”

Rest in Peace, Uncle Walter.