Presidential candidate Rick Perry on Wednesday apologized for saying that anyone who opposed giving tuition breaks to the children of illegal immigrants “did not have a heart.”That's true, but only because the GOP wasn't quite so batshit 10 years ago.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, the Texas governor said he had made a poor choice of words during the Sept. 22 presidential debate, but he stood by his view that the decision in his state to extend tuition breaks was the right one.
“I was probably a bit over-passionate by using that word and it was inappropriate,” Perry admitted. “In Texas in 2001 we had 181 members of the legislature – only four voted against this piece of legislation – because it wasn’t about immigration it was about education.”
I pay taxes. I am willing to pay even more taxes but I would want accountability that the money was being spent wisely on infrastructure investments; education and retraining; and anything that makes us more competitive and gets people working again. That seems fair doesn’t it?Yes, that "accountability" you seek, Ted, is called "elections." Look into it.
Texas Governor Rick Perry responded Monday to criticism by President Obama regarding his position on climate change, calling the president's remarks "outrageous" and suggesting Mr. Obama was exploiting the fires for political purposes.Where to begin?
"It's outrageous President Obama would use the burning of 1,500 homes, the worst fires in state history, as a political attack," Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan told Politico via email.
“There is a way to talk about Social Security reform without scaring seniors and while demonstrating to younger workers that you’re going to have a modern system that’s going to be there for them,” said Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. “We haven’t heard it yet.”
Putnam, a former Republican congressman, expressed concern about Rick Perry’s criticism about the creation of Social Security in his book. He also mentioned Florida straw poll winner Herman Cain’s repeated references to switching over to the “Chilean model” of entitlement programs.
“Claiming that Social Security is unconstitutional is a way bigger problem than saying it’s a Ponzi scheme,” Putnam said. “And I don’t think the average American aspires to the Chilean standard of living.”
"I was coming in for Perry, like a lot of people, but now I'm not sure," Charles Prachar, 72, a delegate from Macclenny, Florida, said before the vote. "I didn't like how bad he did at the debate and the immigration thing."
But if you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart.That really pissed off Jim Geraghty.
Of course, it is cruel and racist and xenophobic to punish children for their parents' actions. Anyway, short of refudiating himself, I don't see how the Secessionist survives this.Hey, Governor, if we wanted to hear suggestions that folks on the Right are heartless, we would have tuned in to watch a bunch of Democrats.
If you want to alienate Americans concerned about illegal immigration, the quickest and surest way is to suggest that they have cruel, draconian, xenophobic, or racist motives for their focus on border security.
Yikes.Some of us have been insisting that the GOP has been taken over by crazies for a while -- nice to see that even the propagandists at the Standard have come along.
The e-mails flooding into our inbox during the evening were less guarded. Early on, we received this missive from a bright young conservative: “I'm watching my first GOP debate...and WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!”Yes, it obviously was his first GOP debate, because they've been sounding like crazy people for the past decade and a half.
“If we cut government spending, which I normally would be very inclined to do when the deficit’s this big, with interest rates already near zero, you can’t get the benefits out of it,” Clinton said. “So what I’d like to see them do is come up with a bipartisan approach, starting with the payroll tax cuts because they have the biggest return.”
He added, “What I would like to say to both Speaker [John] Boehner and to the president is, OK, you both have your deal. Go work it out. Meanwhile, focus on putting America back to work now, because it just confused Americans.”
CHANGE: Obama Wants Americans to “Pay Their Fair Share” Except For the 47% Who Pay No Taxes.Yeah, that's not true.
Not only is the "ZOMG half the country doesn't pay taxes!" bullshit a lie -- it's a lie that, if they had an single ounce of intellectual consistency, they'd be celebrating.But the modifiers here — federal and income — are important. Income taxes aren’t the only kind of federal taxes that people pay. There are also payroll taxes and investment taxes, among others. And, of course, people pay state and local taxes, too.
Even if the discussion is restricted to federal taxes (for which the statistics are better), a vast majority of households end up paying federal taxes. Congressional Budget Office data suggests that, at most, about 10 percent of all households pay no net federal taxes. The number 10 is obviously a lot smaller than 47.
The reason is that poor families generally pay more in payroll taxes than they receive through benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit. It’s not just poor families for whom the payroll tax is a big deal, either. About three-quarters of all American households pay more in payroll taxes, which go toward Medicare and Social Security, than in income taxes.
In 6 days, Obama will have proposed over $2 trillion (that trillion with a ”t”) in new taxes, above and beyond what we already pay.
The big spender is on a tax hike bender.
1) Taxes are at historic lows.
2) The gap between the top 1% and everyone else is at historic highs.
3) Taxing rich people is very popular.
I understand that all they care about is keeping taxes low for rich people, but you'd think some of their shrieking would acknowledge -- however slightly -- at least some of these actual facts.
Up next, the manic progressive wing starts screaming about Obama not just making his job plan law by waving a magic wand, the “bully pulpit” chorus begins, all while the media completely ignore Republican intransigence and instead focuses on the “rift” inside the Democratic party while having concerned and excited chats about Obama’s sagging popularity.
Erickson. Coulter. Ace of Spades. Leon Wolf. These are the sorts of people -- indeed they are the very individuals -- who draw on tribal loyalty and employ vitriol to enforce political orthodoxies. Amazingly, they seem genuinely shocked that a pathological culture impervious to reason now exists around Palin, as if a movement that began with critics being assigned to a virtual leper colony could end any other way. Loath as these people are to admit it, Kathleen Parker was right all along. So was Daniel Larison and David Brooks (and to be frank, I was as prescient as anyone).Adding, the entire left (and the majority of independents) were right all along as well. Pretty much everyone except the GOP rump, including Glenn Reynolds.
“We need to work more on the message,” Mr. Rodriguez said, adding that much of Mr. Obama’s challenge stems from a group of Republicans who “simply say no” to all of his advances. “We have to re-energize people and get them back to the party.”What message? Hard to "re-energize" people when you're not telling them anything.
Abraham Lincoln helped establish the Republican Party with a speech denouncing an 1854 law, written by a Democrat Senator, that allowed slavery to expand into the western territories.Idiots.
MICHAEL BARONE: Obama The Unhappy Warrior: “Barack Obama looked and sounded angry in his speech to the joint session of Congress.
I kinda feel like the pinata at the party here.
To paraphrase Ann, a lot of us fell in love with Sarah Palin because of her enemies and a lot of us have fallen out of love with Sarah Palin because of her fans.
Under Gov. Rick Perry (R) this year, Texas slashed state funding for the volunteer fire departments that protect most of the state from wildfires like the ones that have recently destroyed more than 700 homes.
Volunteer departments that were already facing financial strain were slated to have their funding cut from $30 million to $7 million, according to KVUE.
The majority of Texas is protected by volunteer fire departments. There are 879 volunteer fire departments in Texas and only 114 paid fire departments. Another 187 departments are a combination of volunteer and paid.
Public pessimism about the direction of the country has jumped to its highest level in nearly three years, erasing the sense of hope that followed President Obama’s inauguration and pushing his approval ratings to a record low, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
More than 60 percent of those surveyed say they disapprove of the way the president is handling the economy and, what has become issue No. 1, the stagnant jobs situation. Just 43 percent now approve of the job he is doing overall, a new career low; 53 percent disapprove, a new high.
"We're going to see if we've got some straight shooters in Congress. We're going to see if congressional Republicans will put country before party."Going to see?
Dr. Jim Jirjis, director of general internal medicine at Vanderbilt University, said people, like Willis, without access to care often die of conditions that were much more common decades ago.
"He [Willis] might as well have been living in 1927," Jirjis said. "All of the advances we've made in medicine today and are proud of, for people who don't have coverage, you might as well never have developed those."
Let me save you some trouble here, wingnuts. You’re going to need to do a little better than a Big Oil-funded flat-earther from the University of Tractor Fixin’ and Bible Learnin’ to override every major scientific society and academy on the planet.
Just trying to save you a little trouble here.
Black unemployment is at 16.7%.Reminded me of this.
Black male unemployment is at 18%.
White unemployment is at 8%.
Unemployment for those 25+ with bachelor's degree or more education is at 4.3%.
“It is a big deal that the House said ‘no’ to the president from our end,” a White House source with intimate knowledge of what took place between the House and the president told me Thursday. “This confirms what we all know: They will do anything in the House to muck us up.”This confirms? Way to keep up, guys.
