ID

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Texas Lawmaker Betty Brown suggested in testimony yesterday, that person’s of Korean and Chinese descent, who often have different names on their drivers licenses than their birth certificates, should just change their legal names to make it easier to vote under the new Voter ID legislation.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

More…

More on the Texas minority voter suppression, I mean Voter ID here.

Stagnation and Bleakness

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In the new era of change and hope the GOP has a new strategy to survive as a viable party – we’re going to start calling it the brick wall theory.

In this emergency, the Republican Party’s congressional stance is: Contribute nothing. And reject everything. Texas Gov. Rick Perry recently “rejected $555 million in federal stimulus money that would expand state unemployment benefits. … Perry’s decision comes despite warnings from Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Tom Pauken that the state’s unemployment compensation trust fund could be operating at a deficit by October” (Associated Press online, March 12). Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is doing the same, though his state “ranks fourth in children living below the poverty line” (The New York Times, March 11, p.WK10). South Carolina has the second highest jobless rate in the country at 10.4% (Associated Press online, March 11), but GOP Gov. Mark Sanford is rejecting elements of the stimulus and was against its passage, though it “would bring South Carolina an estimated $2 billion-3 billion” (The Economist, Feb. 14, p.38).

Mr. Ventura (a pinko commie liberal after my own heart) goes on to suppose that by completely screwing over their own constituents (white males), and then flipping the blame to the Democrats in ’10 and ’12, the GOP can retain it’s relevance as a political entity. Maybe we should actually file this under So crazy it just might work, or better yet, Yeah the American People are dumb enough to fall for that again. Although…

Deer-in-the-headlights Republicans have so many things to yell about, it’s hard to prioritize. They’re reduced to ranting about socialists and sounding not quite sane.

Korea's Missles

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The dear leader is talking some crazy shit these days.

If Japan tries to intercept the satellite, the North’s army “will consider this as the start of Japan’s war of re-invasion … and mercilessly destroy all its interceptor means and citadels with the most powerful military means,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday.

More…

When’s the last time a country issued a ‘mercilessly destroy’ decree?

Rick Perry Loves the People

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Unwilling to let his GOP buddy take all the grandstanding, Governor Big Hair has officially (via press release at least) turned down the stimulus unemployment insurance money, as having too many strings attached. This is broadly seen as a thumb-in-your-eye gesture at Kay Bailey who’ll be giving old Rick a run for his money next year in the Texas Republican Primary. Speaking in Houston, the gub let us know he’s with us.

I am here today to stand with Texas employers and the millions of Texans they employ to resist further government intrusion into their businesses through an expansion of our state’s unemployment insurance program.”

To be clear he’s standing with us on refusing lots and lots of federal money for the unemployed. Way to put the people before your political aspirations.

The Senate

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Events beyond my control yesterday left me running around the Capitol for most of the morning. It’s pretty fascinating to watch the  government inaction (and no, I didn’t forget a space there). After waiting in a security line that rivaled an airport to get into the Senate Gallery, I was treated to an hour of recognitions of various high school sports teams, the recognition of NASA day, and pick-your-small-Texas-town day (the fact that they have to share with NASA would seem tot be a little galling to both parties).

After we finally escaped, I made my way int to the House of Representatives which was actually doing something in the form of a no confidence vote for TxDOT (I almost jumped the over the railing to push the  ‘yea’ buttons myself)….

A resolution was brought to the floor of the Texas House today that if passed — would have been a vote of no confidence for the Texas Department of Transportation. It was brought to the floor by Houston Rep Garnet Coleman. The final part said lawmakers and the people of Texas had lost confidence in TxDOT.

The resolution caused a bit of a stir on the floor — with lawmakers agreeing with Rep. Coleman’s sentiment — but not wanting to use such harsh language. Coleman pulled the resolution without a vote — but in a press gaggle after he said there was no question he had the votes to get it passed.

There was shouting, gavels being banged for order, the real deal. Of course nothing actually happened with it, the resolution was just brought to the floor, but hell,  at least they weren’t recognizing the dedication and contributions of Hutto High School Chess Team.

Mr. Rogers-Style Rebuttal

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Following up the President can’t be an easy job, but seriously, I think the American people are above being addressed as if they were two years old these days.  Maybe that goes over well in Louisiana, but there’s a lot of stuff that happens there (shooting people at parades comes to mind) that we don’t need to practice on broader scale. This sums it up nicely though.

After watching Jindal,” one Democratic strategist emailed, “I’d pay a lot of money to be back watching a Palin speech.”

The best part is, this is supposedly the next golden boy of the GOP. Plain/Jindal 2012? Really guys?

More..

Dealerships

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I grew up in a small town, and thus the kids who’s parents owned car dealerships were always the ones who had the big houses out by the lake, the new car every other month, and of course the raddest hypercolor shirts.

Well, that was then…

A record 881 U.S. auto dealerships closed in 2008, with Detroit’s three struggling automakers representing 80 percent of the decline, according to data released on Thursday.

Yowza. More here. Strikes me as yet another sign that we haven’t bottomed out yet.

Musical Torture

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If you were experiencing a heightened interrogation at the hands of the U.S. Armed forces, what obscenely loud music would they use to torture you?

It is an eclectic assemblage of tunes ranging from AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells,” a heavy-metal ditty that sounds as though it had been recorded by an orchestra of buzzsaws, to such seemingly innocuous fare as Don McLean’s “American Pie” and the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.” To be sure, most of the records cited by Reprieve have one thing in common: They’re ear-burstingly loud. But the presence on the list of “I Love You,” the chirpy theme song of “Barney & Friends,” a longtime staple of children’s programming on PBS, suggests that the successful use of music as a tool of coercion entails more than mere volume.

Barney would porbably break me in ten minutes. Thanks to Dad for finding this cool article where i don’t usually tred –  in the print version of the Wall Street Journal.

Non-Profit Journalism

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As the economy collapses, one of the first casualties has been the Newspaper industry. With dailies hemorrhaging money and closing up shop all around the country, Paul Steiger, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, is heading up a new appraoch.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.

There’s more about the non-profit newsroom ProPublica here, and a nice NPR peice on the future of non-profit newspapers.

Think About It

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We Should Be Going From Golden Parachutes To Golden Handcuffs!
– Sen. Kucinich (Crazy D)

While apprecaite the sentiment, gold is a soft metal, and likely to make very poor handcuffs (if expensive) handcuffs. To be fair it’s not a good parachute material either. Points also dedcuted for unneccessary use of an exclamation mark.