Rick Perry's not bad, pretty good week

Shoots a coyote, the TeaBaggers scream with glee. Throws a sop to the Tejanos, they all scream in agony.

Arizona's tough new illegal immigration enforcement law would not be right for Texas, Gov. Rick Perry said on Thursday, upholding the state's long-held tradition of rejecting harsh anti-immigrant policies. ...

“I fully recognize and support a state's right and obligation to protect its citizens, but I have concerns with portions of the law passed in Arizona and believe it would not be the right direction for Texas,” Perry said in a written statement.

“For example, some aspects of the law turn law enforcement officers into immigration officials by requiring them to determine immigration status during any lawful contact with a suspected alien, taking them away from their existing law enforcement duties, which are critical to keeping citizens safe.”

If the comments at Chron.com ever mean anything in the grand scheme -- certainly a debatable proposition -- then Rick Perry has just lost the election.

Though Texas is ruled by conservative Republicans, top GOP leaders from former Texas Gov. George W. Bush to Perry have rejected harsh and punitive immigration policies.

Both Leo Berman and Debbie Riddle (watch the video here and note that almost a third of the Texas House is Latino, thus any bill like this faces far more difficult odds) plan to introduce Arizona-like legislation when the Texas Lege next convenes in January 2011. The governor is signaling a more moderate direction ... which riles the TeaBaggers to no end.

“We need to uphold the great tradition of the melting pot that welcomes and assimilates new arrivals,” Bush said in his 2007 State of the Union address. “We need to resolve the status of the immigrants that are already in our country without animosity and without amnesty.”

Perry took heat during this year's Republican primary for backing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, saying in a debate that the students are on a path to citizenship.

“Texas has a rich history with Mexico, our largest trading partner, and we share more than 1,200 miles of border, more than any other state,” Perry said Thursday. “As the debate on immigration reform intensifies, the focus must remain on border security and the federal government's failure to adequately protect our borders.

“Securing our border is a federal responsibility, but it is a Texas problem, and it must be addressed before comprehensive immigration reform is discussed.”

This stance is truly much more about homebuilder Bob Perry's campaign contributions to the governor than anything else. Perry Homes needs a large supply of cheap workers to keep building those crappy suburban tract houses, no matter what he says publicly (note that linked op-ed calling for immigration reform by Dallas business leaders is almost four years old).

Let's begin and end with this: no matter how much they squall, the TeaBaggers will never desert Rick Perry, even if there were a reasonable (by their standards, not mine) Libertarian option on the ballot. And that's why this is such an effective strategy by the governor: he undercuts a much-needed base of support Bill White must have to defeat him, at no actual political risk to himself.

Governor MoFo has had a good week playing his futures options. Meanwhile, has anybody seen a response from the White campaign yet? Me neither. Update: Stace has and blogged his response, with which I completely agree. More updates: I simply missed the White campaign's responses, which the Texas Tribune noted here and here.

Kuffner has more of the angles regarding the coyote affair. And Rachel was deliciously mean in her aggre-posting.

Last update: This is a good one ...

"I go over to Memorial Park and I have seen coyotes," the Democratic nominee for governor said during a campaign stop in Grand Prairie. "As soon as they see me, they run away."

Perry, of course, had a different experience. In February a coyote made the mistake of eyeballing Perry and his dog. The governor sent him to coyote heaven. So should Perry have been afraid of a scrawny little coyote?

"To me, I don't tend to be afraid of coyotes," White said.

Privatize the oil profits, socialize the cleanup

President Barack Obama pledged an all-out response Thursday to the massive oil spill now expected to reach the Gulf Coast within a day and dispatched top officials to the region to help coordinate defenses against the potential environmental disaster.

After exploding last week and killing eleven workers and spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico for a week, Deepwater Horizon's owner BP -- the former British Petroleum Company, known to you perhaps by their lovely green and yellow logo -- begged the federal government to help them clean up their mess.

It's much worse than they have been saying. In fact it's so bad that they are setting fire to oil on the water.

At the White House, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara said, "We are being very aggressive and we are prepared for the worst case." Federal officials announced inspections would begin immediately of all oil rigs in the Gulf and subpoena powers would be used in the gathering investigation. But the priority was to support the oil company BP PLC in employing booms, skimmers, chemical dispersants and controlled burns to fight the oil surging from the seabed.

Why is it that corporations always turn to the federal government for help when they screw things up really badly?

Brice-O'Hara said officials expected the leading edge of the spill to reach the Mississippi Delta sometime on Friday. Workers were racing from six staging areas to deploy more booms to try to hold off the slick and protect sea life and fragile wetlands. Winds and sea conditions Thursday prevented another controlled burn of the kind tried successfully a day earlier with a small test section of the slick.

Top Homeland Security, Interior and Environmental Protection Agency officials were going to the region. Officials emphasized at a White House briefing that all costs of the defense and recovery will ultimately fall on the industry, not taxpayers.

That's encouraging to hear, but for some reason I still kinda doubt it. BP has to be one of the unluckiest companies around. Their refineries explode almost regularly, so maybe their offshore rigs are just following suit. Enough about their incompetence, though.

Obama spoke Thursday with five Gulf state governors from Florida to Texas.

The administration declared the spill to be one of national significance, a designation that eases the transfer of personnel and equipment to the region from all parts of the country.

So the president called and spoke with Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Haley Barbour (MS), Bob Riley (AL) and Charlie Crist -- all Republicans; most of them TeaBaggers but one definite TeaBaggee  --and pledged federal assistance in the cleanup.

Do you suppose any of them said, "no thanks, Mr. President"? "We don't need your socialist help"? 

Do you suppose the Texas governor confronted the US president about that target? Or bragged about blasting that coyote? Or reiterated his desire to secede from the Union, maybe?

When summer settles in and the hurricanes start to swirl and the Gulf Coast governors are forced -- like the rest of us -- to dread the annual onslaught from the sea, will they come crying to Uncle Sam for help if one of their cities gets washed away?

One thing they can certainly count on: the president won't just be flying overhead looking out the window.

Update: John Coby with more.

Stop Rick Perry before he kills again

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a message for wily coyotes out there: Don't mess with my dog.

Perry says he needed just one shot from his laser-sighted pistol to take down a coyote that was menacing his dog during an early morning jog in an undeveloped area near Austin.

Perry told The Associated Press he sometimes carries his pistol, loaded with hollow-pointed bullets, when he jogs on trails because he's scared of snakes — and that he'd seen coyotes in that area.

When the coyote came out of the brush toward his daughter's labrador retriever puppy on a February jog, he charged it and shot it with his .380 Ruger pistol.

"Don't attack my dog or you might get shot ... if you're a coyote," Perry said.

Hollow points and a laser sight on a .38 caliber pistol, apparently worn while jogging. To protect himself -- allegedly -- against snakes and his dog from a coyote.

I'm sure this is because his detail of bodyguards (several similarly-heavily-armed Texas Rangers) just don't afford him enough protection from the crazed Austin liberal with a gun, or the adoring throngs of conservatives that might bum-rush him Justin Bieber-style while he's outside the gates of the $9000-a-month mansion we're all paying for him to live in.

And I just thought he was afraid to debate Bill White.

This man is the biggest coward alive.

Updates: And plenty of 'em. Juanita Jean ...

The creepy news is that he carries the Rugar (sic) because ‘he is afraid of snakes.’  Whoa!  Why should he fear his own species?”


“To make matters worse,” she grins, “I am a little old lady.  I admit that I arm myself against snakes when I’m out walking.  With a damn stick.  It’s a dead stick.  And it’s not even loaded.  And I’m a girl.”

“And to make matters even worse than worse, his hollow bullet Rugar (sic) is laser sighted.  What’s he do?  Shoot at PowerPoint presentations he doesn’t like?”

-- Douchebag Robbie had another orgasm dreaming about pulling Rick's trigger.

-- The AP report notes that Governor MoFo (you really have to click on this link and watch the techno mashup) was without his security detail. Still seems overly cautious to carry a .380 on a run, if for nothing else the chafe factor.

Them again, if you're so afraid of a snake that you have to carry a high caliber handgun with a laser sight and hollow points, then maybe you don't have anything to get chafed.

Sunday Funnies on Monday (your papers, please edition)