jeb! and the little sisters

Posted on June 17, 2015 by greg

You know, in yesterday’s ~~excitement~~ apathy over Jeb! Bush’s announcement (Oh, did you miss it? Jeb! announced he was really seriously actually going to campaign to become the Republican Party’s failed nominee for President of These United States, plus he surgically attached an exclamation point to his name in the vain hope that somebody, somewhere in a non-vegetative state would show some enthusiasm for him) I missed something. Jeb! actually said something interesting in his speech.

Jeb!

I don’t think he meant to. Or I don’t think he — or anybody in his audience — would find it interesting in the same way I do. But it’s there and since I find it interesting I’m going to inflict it on you. Here’s what Jeb! said:

“[T\he shabby treatment of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Christian charity that dared to voice objections of conscience to Obamacare. The next president needs to make it clear that great charities like the Little Sisters of the Poor need no federal instruction in doing the right thing.

It comes down to a choice between the Little Sisters and Big Brother, and I’m going with the Sisters.”

Like a lot of folks, you probably responded to this comment with a resounding “Huh? Who are these Little Sisters and what have they got against Obamacare?” Allow me to ‘splain.

The Little Sisters of the Poor is a religious order founded in 1839 by St. Jeanne Jugan. They’re devoted primarily to the care of elderly women who haven’t any other means of support. You have to love and respect them for that. It’s a big group, with more than two hundred institutions in over thirty countries. They’re pretty devout, obviously. After the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the Little Sisters sued the Obama administration, saying the requirement to provide contraceptives and other pregnancy-related services to their female employees violated their religious beliefs.

Jeanne!

Okay, nothing new there, right? The Bamz went along with them, and his administration basically told religious institutions “You have a problem with providing contraception to your female employees? Fine, sign this form and you won’t have to. If your female employees want those services, we’ll find some other way to make that happen. But you’ll be off the hook.”

Problem solved! Right?

Wrong. The Little Sisters said even signing the form would violate their religious beliefs on account of it just shifted the sin from them to somebody else. In effect, the Little Sisters are saying that by signing the form they’re merely authorizing somebody else to commit the sin in their place — which doesn’t really absolve them of the sin at all.

There’s undeniable logic there, which we can apply to other situations. Let’s say, for example, a Commander-in-Chief signs a document that authorizes forms of interrogation that most of the world define as torture. That CiC doesn’t actually conduct the torture any more than the Little Sisters actually hand out contraceptives. But by the Little Sisters standard, that doesn’t absolve him of the sin.

W! Torture! Sin! Jeb!

That sort of puts a whole ‘nother spin on

“It comes down to a choice between the Little Sisters and Big Brother, and I’m going with the Sisters.”

I wonder if the news media will ask Jeb! about this.

jeb!

Posted on June 16, 2015 by greg

Our country is on a very bad course. And the question is: What are we going to do about it? The question for me is: What am I going to do about it? And I have decided.

I am a candidate for President of the United States.

Well, there it is. It’s official. Jeb! Bush has decided to seek the office of President of the United States.

What? You thought he was already running? You thought just because he’s been visiting all the early primary states and meeting with local GOP officials and giving speeches and attending political events that he was already campaigning? You thought he was already a candidate just because he’s been accepting tens of millions of dollars in donations and contributions? You thought just because he’s established a Super PAC and hired campaign staff and event coordinators and political consultants and strategists and pollsters that Jeb! Bush was officially in the race?

Pffft. Silly rabbit. Not at all. Jeb! Bush was simply exploring the idea of running for office.

You see, it’s against the law for an actual candidate to directly accept corporate campaign contributions. It’s also against the law for an official candidate to accept foreign contributions, or individual cash contributions in amounts over one hundred dollars, or contributions from government contractors. And hey, it’s also illegal to accept individual non-cash contributions of more than $2,700 per election. Those laws were established to prevent corruption in the electoral process.

If Jeb! Bush had actually been a candidate, he’d have been legally required to report the amounts of money he’d raised, and who he accepted the money from, and how that money was spent. He’d have been prohibited by law from coordinating any official campaign strategies with the Super PAC that supports him.

But hey, Jeb! Bush hadn’t actually said he was a candidate. He hadn’t actually filed a Statement of Candidacy with the Federal Election Committee. And in his speeches to date he’d been careful to insert the phrase ‘if I decide to run.’ So he wasn’t actually a candidate. Which means Jeb! Bush wasn’t really precisely truly properly undeniably breaking the law.

Not at all. No, Jeb! Bush was merely standing off to one side and pissing on the law.

I will campaign as I would serve, going everywhere, speaking to everyone, keeping my word, facing the issues without flinching, and staying true to what I believe.

I think he’s telling the truth. I think he will campaign exactly as he would serve. I think he’ll stay true to what he believes. I think he believes the law doesn’t really apply to people like him.

He’s Jeb! Bush.

this week in responsible gun ownership!

Posted on June 12, 2015 by greg

A three-year-old boy in Myrtle Beach, SC found a loaded handgun in a dresser drawer and ‘accidentally caused it to discharge.’ Unfortunately, the firearm discharged into the boy. His family rushed him to the hospital, where an ‘unknown situation unfolded between the victim’s family members.’ The unknown situation, which took place in the hospital parking lot, resulted in a Second Amendment exercise in which another family member was shot. The boy was reported to be in stable condition after surgery.

Analysis: Responsible gun owners! It would have been irresponsible to leave their guns at home, unattended, after the toddler had shot himself.

In Orlando, Florida an unnamed 31-year-old man and his wife were awakened by a noise. He grabbed his handgun, went to investigate, and exercised his Second Amendment right by shooting his 17-year-old brother dead. A neighbor said, “[T]hey all seemed to be nice people, but I guess you never know,”

Analysis: Responsible gun owner! Target identification needs work, but his aim was perfect.

Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament and Near Miss.

A 20-year-old man in Altoona, PA has been charged with reckless endangerment after his handgun discharged accidentally during mass at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. Matthew Crawford, the gun owner, was ‘grazed’ during the Second Amendment incident; nobody else was harmed. Crawford’s attorney is seeking to dismiss the charges on the grounds that his client’s conduct didn’t rise to the level of ‘recklessness’.

Analysis: Responsible gun owner! What if a Muslim had decided to attack the cathedral? Preventing a citizen from carrying a loaded, unholstered handgun with the safety off into a cathedral is both tyranny AND an assault on Christianity.

Meanwhile, in Sioux Falls, SD, 36-year-old Nicholas Anderson was charged with recklessly firing a gun after exercising his Second Amendment rights during a domestic dispute with his wife. After she removed pictures from the wall of their home and hurled them at him, Anderson took his wife’s laptop computer into their back yard and fired seven rounds from his handgun at it. It’s unclear if any of the pictures struck Mr. Anderson; however, all seven rounds he fired at the laptop hit the target.

Analysis: Responsible gun owner! Nobody died, nobody was even injured. Without his Second Amendment rights, Anderson would have been forced to throw pictures at his wife’s computer.

In Deltona, Florida an unnamed 29-year-old man was taken to the hospital for a medical episode believed to be related to anxiety. The anxiety appears to have been triggered when the man shot and killed Elvis Valentin. Valentin was arguing with the shooter’s brother after the brother had driven his car across Valentin’s yard. Believing his brother was in danger, the shooter fired one round and killed Valentin.

Analysis: Responsible gun owner! One bullet, one kill. If it’s good enough for SEAL snipers, it’s good enough for defending your sibling. After he trespasses on a neighbor’s lawn. In a car.

Katie Pallante — animal lover.

Twenty-six-year-old Katie Pallante of Phoenix, AZ was forced to use her Second Amendment rights to interrupt a dog fight. Ms. Pallante is apparently an animal lover; she informed police she was caring for 22 dogs and three cats. When two of the dogs began to fight, she attempted to separate them by using water. When that failed, she used her .40 caliber handgun to shoot the male dog. She shot him in the abdomen, according to court records, because “she did not want to kill him.” Unfortunately, the female dog then attacked the male, forcing her to shoot that dog as well.

Analysis: Responsible gun owner! When water fails to break up a dogfight, common sense suggests a .40 caliber solution. Irresponsible pet owner! Why does she have those three cats?

Two employees of The Shootin’ Shop in Abilene, Texas were wounded when a customer’s newly purchased Second Amendment handgun wasn’t working properly. The unnamed customer had bought the weapon and loaded it in the parking lot. It jammed during loading, so he returned to the shop and asked for help. When an employee examined the weapon, it discharged. One employee was struck in the hand, the other received a wound in the abdomen. “It was a pretty scary experience, you know, but it was an accident,” the shop owner said. “The customer feels absolutely terrible about it.” No charges have been filed.

Analysis: Responsible gun owner! When faced with a gun issue, he consulted with experts. Accidents happen. And he felt terrible afterwards. Besides, nobody was killed, praise Jeebus.

Shootin’ Shop shootin’ scene.

i think we can all agree with that

Posted on June 3, 2015 by greg

“The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists.”

Well, yeah, I think we can all agree with that. The Catholic Church has had a rather testy relationship with science. They’ve done some good work (so to speak) in science. Like the Big Bang Theory. Not the television series, which the Church denies being involved with, but the actual concept of the Big Bang. It was a priest, Father George Lemaître, who came up with that idea. On the other hand, the Church pretty much stepped on its own dick when it came to that Earth-is-the-Center-of-the-Universe business. But still, it was an Augustinian friar, Gregor Mendel, who developed the field of genetics. Of course, the Church turned around and pissed all over the theory of evolution. So yeah, the Church got it wrong a few times. I think we can all agree with Rick Santorum on tha….

— Whoa, whoa, wait just a fucking minute here, buddy. Rick Santorum? The smarmy, homophobic, supercilious prick with the pedophile haircut and the sweater-vest — that Rick Santorum? Dude, c’mon — you expect us to agree with him on anything? What the hell was he talking about?

Santorum was talking about the Pope’s views on climate change. He was basically saying that the Pope isn’t a scientist and that…

— Jeebus on cheese toast, Rick Santorum…let me get this straight…you’re saying Rick ‘Man on Dog’ Santorum is arguing that we should listen to scientists? On climate change?

That’s what he said. We’re better off leaving science to the scientists. He was….

— Okay, okay. This is the same Rick Santorum who said “I always have problems when people come up and say the science is settled. That’s what they said about the world being flat.” Right?

Yeah, same guy. Only now he’s…

— The same unctuous Rick Santorum who said “The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical.” Is that who we’re talking about here? That Rick Santorum?

Yeah, that’s him. My point, though, is that Santorum…

— Rick ‘Obamacare is a plot to kill off Republican voters’ Santorum. You’re talking about that particular species of Rick Santorum.

Yeah, but what I’m trying to say here, if you’ll let me finish, is…

— Hold on, hold on. Just want to be clear here. We’re talking about that overbearing toffee-nosed putz who argued that contraception is “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

Yes, that’s correct. That’s the Rick Santorum we’re…wait. Toffee-nosed?

— It’s an old expression. It means…never mind what it means. You know what it means. My point is that Rick Santorum is a festering pustule on the ass of the body politic. He’s a self-righteous, hubristic prig who wants to force everybody to abide by his own medieval religious beliefs. He’s a hypocritical, pretentious, small-minded, petty, pasty-faced bigot who’d be running a cult, except he has the charisma of an under-baked biscuit. There’s no good reason for anybody to listen to anything he has to say on any subject whatsoever. That’s my point.

That’s my point too. That’s exactly the point I was going to make.

— Oh. Well yeah, I think we can all agree with that.

Rick “I’m a little teapot’ Santorum

i love fútbol — i fucking hate fifa

Posted on May 28, 2015 by greg

I love fútbol. I love the game and I love the term fútbol. It just sounds and looks so much more interesting than either ‘football’ or ‘soccer’. Plus fútbol more appropriately reflects the international nature of the game.

I particularly love women’s fútbol. It’s not quite as fast as the men’s game, but I prefer their style of play. There are fewer players who engage in diving, there is more emphasis on teamwork, there are fewer prima donnas, and above all there is more pure joy from the players in their athleticism. Women’s fútbol is simply more fun to watch.

So I’m completely over the moon that, in just over a week, the Women’s World Cup will begin in Canada. And I’m completely pissed off about the way the best women fútbol players in the world are being treated.

There has never, in the entire history of the World Cup, been a match played on artificial turf. Until now. All of the venues in which the Women’s World Cup will be played this year have artificial surfaces. That’s bad — bad for the players and bad for the game.

It’s bad for the players because playing on artificial turf increases the chances for injury. We’re not just talking about turf burns, which may seem relatively minor (but aren’t); we’re talking about serious injuries. There are more ankle injuries — some of which might only slow a player down, some of which might cause a player to miss a game, some of which might end a career. Artificial turf can cause a metatarsophalangeal joint sprain — more commonly known as ‘turf toe’ — in which a player’s big toe becomes hyper-extended. Have you ever had a toe injury? It changes the way you walk (assuming you can even wear a shoe), so imagine how it affects a player in a running sport. And if that’s not bad enough, playing on artificial turf increases a player’s chance of concussion. That’s true even for American football players — and those guys wear helmets.

Turf burns

It’s bad for the game because the increased risk of injury affects the style of play. Here’s what Heather O’Reilly — a midfielder on the US team — had to say about playing on artificial turf:

“Slide tackling on grass – you know, you get up, you shake the grass off, get the dirt off. On turf unfortunately, a little layer of your skin comes up with every slide tackle so you get turf burns. Those diving headers that are so exciting on the world stage aren’t going to happen on artificial turf because you can get injured. So it changes the game quite a bit.”

Another problem is the ball moves quite a bit faster on artificial turf. That means more balls going out of bounds, which translates into more throw-ins, which results in less action on the field. The rhythm and fluidity of the game changed.

Let me say it again. Playing fútbol on artificial turf is bad for the players and bad for the game. Here’s former Canadian national team player Carrie Serwetnyk on the issue:

“[The decision to use artificial turf] like saying that women’s Olympic track would be taking place on a cinder track instead of a rubber one.”

It’s pretty much unthinkable that the same decision would be made in the men’s World Cup, or in any of the qualifying matches. So why is the Women’s World Cup being played on artificial turf? Because FIFA, the organization that runs international fútbol, has no respect for women as athletes. That’s it. That’s the entire reason.

How do we know that? Because when the women players learned they’d be playing on artificial turf, they complained to FIFA. Sixteen months before the World Cup starting date, more than 70 top-ranked players from at least 17 national teams signed a letter, asking FIFA to insist on grass surfaces. FIFA ignored them. So the women sued FIFA, accusing them of gender discrimination, arguing that men’s teams would never be forced to play on an artificial surface instead of natural grass. FIFA refused to publicly address the lawsuit, and stalled. Eight months ago the women asked the court for an expedited hearing, since the turf would have to be changed before the games began. FIFA continued to stall and refused all attempts to negotiate. According to their lawyer, some of the women involved in the suit were threatened with suspension from their local governing bodies.

In January, when it became clear nothing was going to happen, the women withdrew their suit to concentrate on preparing for the World Cup. FIFA didn’t comment.

There’s a lot of money in FIFA. A lot of money and a lot of secrecy. The bonuses — not the salaries, just the annual bonuses — for FIFA officials in 2012 amounted to more than thirty million dollars. The recently indicted FIFA officials were accused of taking more than US$150 million in bribes.

How much would it have cost for FIFA to equip the World Cup 2015 stadiums with grass? Between three and six million dollars. Money wasn’t the issue. The issue was the health and safety of the women players. The issue was respect.

I love fútbol. I love the Women’s World Cup, and I’ll watch almost every match. I love fútbol. But I fucking hate FIFA.

memorial my ass

Posted on May 25, 2015 by greg

Yeah, I pretty much dislike Memorial Day. Don’t get me wrong; the idea of honoring the men and women who died while serving the nation — that I respect. But that’s not really what Memorial Day is anymore. Now it’s mostly a day to say something nice about veterans, maybe see a parade, go shopping, then eat a hamburger. And you can usually skip right to the hamburger.

The thing is, a lot of folks don’t even understand Memorial Day. They get it confused with Veterans Day, which is a different beast altogether. The confusion is understandable, on account of they’re both about people in uniforms and big big big shopping discounts and picnics with hamburgers.

Allow me to ‘splain the differences. Memorial Day is the one where you say nice things about folks that actually died while in uniform. Veterans Day is the one where you offer ritual thanks for everybody who put on military harness — dead, living, somewhere in between (and if you think that’s just a figure of speech, go visit a VA hospital).

I like Veterans Day. That’s what we call it in the U.S., although most Western nations call it Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. I like it because it still retains some meaning. It’s still celebrated on the same day — the anniversary of the end of the First World War. The 11th day of the 11th month.

Memorial Day used to have meaning. It began as Decoration Day — a day when folks would decorate the graves of soldiers who died during the American Civil War. It was an organic holiday. It began spontaneously, on different days, in different years, in different parts of the nation. Folks just went to cemeteries where Civil War troops were buried and decorated the graves. You know, out of respect.

One of the earliest Decoration Day events took place in Charleston, South Carolina. Union prisoners of war had been interned at the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club. More than 250 of them died and were buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. In April of 1865, a small group of freed slaves reburied the bodies in individual graves. They constructed a fence around the burial site, and put up an arched entryway with the inscription Martyrs of the Race Course. Then on the first day of May, some ten thousand former slaves and some white missionaries decorated the cemetery with flowers, and they held a picnic on the site.

New graves of Union soldiers at the Washington Race Course

Now that is a serious show of respect. Over time, Decoration Day became Memorial Day and through some sort of osmotic agreement, it was celebrated throughout the nation on May 30th. At least it was until 1968, when everything changed. But I’ll come back to that in a bit. First let’s reduce this national holiday to the personal level.

In April of that same year, 1968, a young photographer named Art Greenspon shot this photograph in the jungle southwest of Hue. Alpha Company of the 101st Airborne had walked into an ambush. Several killed, more wounded. Bad weather prevented any medevac until the following day. So the troops sat awake all night, in the rain, with their wounded and dead, wondering if they’d get hit again. The next day, when the rain lifted enough for a medevac, Greenspon got this shot of a soldier directing the chopper. By that point it had rained so long and hard that when Greenspon tried to rewind the film in his camera, it stuck to the pressure plate.

Here’s some military esoterica for you: the first choppers take the wounded; the last choppers take the bodies. The bodies can wait; they’re not going to get any more dead. Greenspon flew out on a chopper filled with body bags. When he got back to his base, he discovered most of the shots weren’t usable. This one was.

Art Greenspon was paid US$15 for that photograph. That’s all he’s ever been paid for it. A week later he and another photographer, Charles Eggleston, found themselves in a firefight outside of Saigon. Eggleston was hit by rifle fire and killed. One of the bullets passed through Eggleston’s hand, which slowed the round enough that when it hit Greenspon in the face, it didn’t kill him. Instead, the bullet lodged in his sinus cavity. In order to remove the bullet and minimize the facial scarring, the surgeons broke his cheekbone from inside his mouth.

Two months after that, during the darkest days of the war in Vietnam, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. The intent of the act was to change the date on which four holidays were traditionally celebrated in order to create three-day weekends. Great news for workers and a boon to commercial enterprises. The effect, however, was to trivialize those holidays. Now Presidents Day, Columbus Day, Labor Day, and Memorial Day are all about mattress sales and potato salad. We’re not really thinking about the men and women dying in jungles or deserts; we’re thinking about buying summer clothes.

Oh, we’ll still say nice things about the men and women who died in uniform. We’ll still have parades (that very few people attend), and politicians will still give speeches (that very few people will listen to), but mostly we’re just glad to have that extra day on the weekend, and a chance to save a buck on a mattress, and hey, it’s a good time of year for a picnic.

But Memorial Day isn’t — or shouldn’t be — about picnics. It’s about the people Art Greenspon flew with in that chopper; it’s about those bodies in the bags.

So yeah, I pretty much dislike Memorial Day. I don’t want to see the parade. I don’t want to buy a pair of cheap-ass flip-flops. I don’t want to hear any fucking politician thanking the troops for their sacrifice.

I want politicians to stop sacrificing them.

ADDENDUM: Last year on Memorial Day I wrote about my accidental visit to the local cemetery in the small town of Maxwell, Iowa. This year, while running around, I made an intentional detour to Maxwell. It looks exactly the same as it did last year (and probably for the last umpty-ump years) — flags lining the tiny town center, and all over the cemetery.

Maxwell, IA. Memorial Day, 2015

It doesn’t make up for the apathy and commercialism, but there’s something innocent and fundamentally decent about the way these small towns continue to honor their dead.

long title, short poem

Posted on May 13, 2015 by greg

A Short Poem in the Style of e.e.cummings Celebrating Iowa Congressional Representative Steve King, Who Recently Stated President Obama is Moving Our Country to the Left Towards the Ideology of Karl Marx

what
are you fucking
stupid?

ADDENDUM: It appears some old man hippie beatnik read my poem in public a few years before I wrote it. Coincidence? Or conspiracy?

And there it is.

in which i praise a texas republican

Posted on May 10, 2015 by greg

I have ~~on occasion~~ frequently mocked Republicans from Texas. In my defense, that particular breed of Republican richly deserves mocking. If you have any spare mocking lying about, spend it on Republicans from Texas. You won’t find a more mock-worthy group of folks.

So I’m delighted to say that today I have nothing but praise for one specific Republican from Texas. I’m talking about former Texas State Representative Todd Smith of Euless (which, by the way, is also known as ‘Tree City USA’.and which, I’m reliably informed, ranks ninth in the percentage of same-sex couples among cities in Texas — two facts that are completely unrelated. Which is a good thing, otherwise Republicans in Texas would likely engage in radical deforestation).

Why am I praising Republican Todd Smith? I’m about to tell you. But first, let’s chat a bit about Jade Helm 15. If you aren’t familiar with Jade Helm, let me first assure you it’s NOT the name of a Marvel Comics superhero. It’s actually a U.S. military training exercise scheduled to take place over a couple of months this summer. Similar exercises have been run in the United States for decades. But we live in Lunatic Times, which means there are a LOT of really stupid, paranoid people (almost all of whom belong to one or another febrile subset of the Republican party) who see Jade Helm as a strategy by our Muslim Kenyan president to…well, the true purpose of Jade Helm depends on which conspiracy theory you prefer to see revealed in ALL CAPS!!!

Here are some of the favorite theories. Jade Helm is a plot to: 1) Give Texas back to Mexico, 2) Impose martial law on…somebody, probably Texans, but can you trust Obama to stop there?, 3) Allow Baraq Hussein Obama to seize control of the entire nation, cancel the presidential elections, and declare him Dictator For Life, 4) Disarm patriotic, freedom-loving gun-owning white Christian patriots and intern them in FEMA camps, 5) Prepare a staging area in the American Southwest for Chinese troops to invade across the Mexican border, 6) Same scenario, only with Russian troops who’ve been arming Mexican drug cartels, 7) Same scenario, only with drug cartels and Islamic terrorists who have been training together for months in Juarez, 8) Same scenario again, only with United Nations peacekeeper troops.

caption maybe — The Russian Gambit — Jade Helm Variation

The evidence for these plots? Somebody spoke to a guy who is a former SEAL who says he saw a train with cattle cars fitted out with shackles. This completely reliable information can only mean the government is going to arrest Christian patriots and haul them to indoctrination camps. Also, Wal-Mart has closed several stores because of “plumbing problems”. Obviously this is a ruse. In reality, those stores are being converted into food distribution centers to feed the invading Chinese/Russian/drug cartel/ISIS/United Nations invasion troops. Also too, the US military has announced its intentions to operate this so-called “exercise” as a means of pacifying resistance, and they’ve asked permission from both State and County governments to conduct the exercise in their territory — and asking permission is completely fucking suspicious. Also too plus in addition, when asked about Jade Helm, military spokesmen claim it’s just a harmless exercise — and they are liars, because it’s perfectly clear that:

For years now, our veterans, Christians, patriots, gun owners, constitutionalists, pro-life advocates, small government supporters, small businesses, real journalists in the press, anti-corruption activists, anti-UN Agenda 21 advocates, anti-global warming supporters, anti-war patriots, anti-criminal immigration supporters, have all been targeted by this administration as enemies of the United States, even within government documents. Are we supposed to trust that they have pure intentions now?

Clearly, the people who believe any of these theories — or even spend a moment seriously considering them — are totally fucking nuts. Or suffering from some sort of terminal prion disease. Or both.

Infected with Jade Helmism — Gov. Abbott desperately trying to save Tinkerbelle

One of those people is Greg Abbott. A lot of folks confuse Greg Abbott with Bud Abbott. Easy mistake to make. Bud Abbott was the chubby putz who was half of the classic comedy team of Abbott and Costello. Greg Abbot is the putz who is the newly elected Governor of Texas. Gov. Abbott, concerned for the “safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties” of Texans, ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor the military exercise.

And that finally brings me to Todd Smith. Smith served 16 years in the Texas legislature. He’s a solidly conservative Republican. And he just wrote the best goddamned letter to Greg Abbott. Granted, Smith’s prose is a tad convoluted, but it’s the thought that counts, right? I’m going to print the letter in its entirety. It’s that good.

Dear Governor Abbott,

Let me apologize in advance that your letter pandering to idiots who believe that US navy Seals and other US military personnel are somehow a threat to be watched has left me livid. As a 16 year Republican member of the Texas House and a patriotic AMERICAN, I am horrified that I have to choose between the possibility that my Governor actually believes this stuff and the possibility that my Governor doesn’t have the backbone to stand up to those who do. I’m not sure which is worse. As one of the remaining Republicans who actually believes in making decisions based on facts and evidence — you used to be a judge? — I am appalled that you would give credence to the nonsense mouthed by those who instead make decisions based on internet or radio chock jock driven hysteria. Is there ANYBODY who is going to stand up to this radical nonsense that is cancer on our State and Party? It is alarming that our State Republican leadership is such that we must choose between DEGREES of demagoguery. I know that in many cases you are the better of the two demagogues (see the Lieutenant Governor driven nut job rant regarding your Pre-K program as a recent example). Having been there, I also know that politicians are not always able to speak their mind because they represent large groups of people and not just themselves. But this bone that you have thrown to those who believe that the US Military is a threat to the State of Texas is an embarrassing distance beyond the pale. You are Governor of Texas! This is an open request–from a ghost of our State’s recent Republican past–that you act like it. Enough is enough. You have embarrassed and disappointed all Texans who are informed, patriotic Americans. And it is important to rational governance that thinking Republicans call you out on it.

And he signs it sincerely. How great is that? Pretty great, is how great.

I’m confident I’d have some serious ideological and political (and grammatical) differences with Todd Smith, but at long last there’s a Republican (and one from Texas) who is calling bullshit on these lunatics and the Fuckwit Collective politicians who pander to them.

Yay for Todd Smith.

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job