Saturday Funnies

Riddle and Gohmert

Once more, Texas Republicans represent themselves as complete fools.

Texas Republican state legislator Rep. Debbie Riddle was not prepared for Anderson Cooper Tuesday night.

Riddle appeared on "Anderson Cooper 360" to discuss the threat of "terror babies" — a supposed threat in which terrorist organizations send pregnant women to the United States to have their children, who would be US citizens but trained and raised abroad to be terrorists and could enter and leave the US without raising suspicion.

Riddle based her claims on her conversations with "former FBI officials" but Cooper demanded evidence.

"What former FBI officials?" he asked. "What evidence is there of some sort of long-term plot to have American babies born here and then become terrorists?

"Well, at this point, I don't have the hard evidence right here in front of me," Riddle responded. She would not reveal her ex-FBI sources or the basis for their claims, and then tried to change the subject to porous borders and the threat of dirty bombs.

"Border security is certainly an issue, and it's a good topic," Cooper said. "It's not the topic, though...I'm just asking for proof. You say you're still gathering it from unnamed former FBI people."

"When your folks called me in the preliminary, that was part of the conversation," Riddle responded. "They did not tell me that you were going to grill me for this specific information that I was not ready to give to you tonight. They did not tell me that, sir. "

Former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes then appeared on Anderson Cooper's program the next evening to describe Riddle's claims as "ludicrous" and "absurd". Elise Hu at the Texas Tribune also followed up.

I made an open-records request for any records related to communication between Riddle's office and former FBI agents. Her chief of staff, Jon English, replied this afternoon, saying no such records exist. "Unfortunately we don't have any records or emails that could be reproduced for your inquiry," English wrote in an email. "Everything Rep. Riddle was referring to has been in the form of private conversations she has had, although she shares those with myself and our district director."

Then last evening, Cooper had Congressman Louie Gohmert of the 2nd 1st Congressional District of Texas, on presumably to save Riddle's bacon. Watch this:



One excerpt:

COOPER: What research? Can you tell us about the research?

GOHMERT: You are attacking the messenger, Anderson, you are better than this. You used to be good. You used to find that there was a problem and you would go after it.

COOPER: Sir, I am asking you for evidence of something that you said on the floor of the House.

GOHMERT: I did, and you listen, this is a problem. If you would spend as much time looking into the problem as you would have been trying to come after me and belittle me this week --

COOPER: Sir, do you want to offer any evidence? I'm giving you an opportunity to say what research and evidence you have. You've offered none, other than yelling.

These two clowns are among the worst of the Texas Republican contingent. Riddle's general election opponent is Brad Neal. Gohmert -- his district is adjacent to the infamous Winnebago precincts -- has no Democratic challenger. And that may be the saddest fact of all.

Wayne Slater at TrailBlazers has more, and Kuffner collects the snark.

"Hands OFF Our Land" is White's wedge

It's also a Caucasian one. That in a moment.

Back to Basics is moving swiftly to drive a wedge between rural Texans and Rick Perry, and to that end has re-opened a battle front on one of his weakest flanks, the Trans-Texas Corridor.



Just look at the quotes:

The huge government land-grab would have paved over 2,400 square miles of prime, productive farmland and displaced a million Texans from their homes and businesses.iv

The project was rife with corruption from the beginning:

• Perry signed the law allowing free roads to be converted into toll roads.^v
• A former top aide to Perry lobbied for the Spanish consortium – led by CintraConcesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. – that won the lucrative contract to build the first segment.^vi
• Even losing bidders got a government payout, totaling millions in wasted taxpayer dollars. ^vii
• Companies who stood to profit contributed over a million dollars to Rick Perry.^viii

Citizens of all political persuasions were outraged by this government overreach.^ix

Let's look at the checklist: yep, there's Big Government, Big Government Waste, the ubiquitous Perry crony capitalism, and even a dash of 'foreigner' bigotry ("a Spanish company") all nicely mashed together. And this, tying in the importance of a legislative block to executive authority -- and no, we ain't talking about D.C. now...

The legislature tried twice to stop the TTC boondoggle.

First they passed overwhelmingly a moratorium ending the Trans-Texas Corridor. But Perry vetoed that bill, and he refused to sign the law until he succeeded in forcing lawmakers to slip in exceptions to some of his pet projects –- including an exception to allow construction for parts of the Trans-Texas Corridor.^x,xi

Then the legislature tried to protect families with a bill preventing eminent domain abuse. The bill would have placed limitations on the government from taking private property for the gain of another private party. Although lawmakers passed these protections overwhelmingly with the support of land and homeowners across the state, Perry vetoed the law.^xii

And the future threat to Texas farms and ranches, from South Texas to Central Texas to East Texas (that is a lot of  rednecks err, the conservative base, folks) ...

“I don’t think it was a mistake at all to have a vision of how to move people and produce safely and expeditiously in the state of Texas,” he said during the debate.

— Perry on TTC and eminent domain

That could make Perry’s sales job easier in 2011, when, if re-elected, his aides said he would try to put Texas back on the path to private toll roads. “Absolutely, the governor is going to keep pushing, pushing for putting this tool back in the box,” Heckmann said. “If he had waited for the Legislature to raise taxes or for Congress to send us back an even return on what we send to Washington in gas taxes, then nothing would ever get built.”

— Kris Heckmann, Perry’s deputy chief of staff and transportation expert

Of course this is entirely the wrong political environment for a Republican incumbent to be supporting a massive government project, and that Perry problem, as we all know, is just for openers.

The "Rick Perry lives in a ten-grand-a-month rental mansion and reads Food and Wine magazine" meme also exploits his wealthy elitist tendencies, and he just can't shoot enough coyotes to overcome it.

If you also note that Perry fucked up his race card play yesterday, while at the same time recognizing that Bill White continues to focus on religious conservative -- well, Methodist anyway -- themes, then you can clearly see that the Democratic nominee for governor is slowly succeeding in peeling off Republican base voters.

(Let's see how many of Perry's lickspittles actually read this blog. Note to self: if the governor is eventually compelled to address the lingering concerns surrounding the TTC, then White has already won.)