Some Texas news

Who would have guessed that the State of Texas would put an innocent man to death? Sadly I’m not surprised. I used to support the death penalty until I actually took the time to read about all the cases where people have proven they were wrongly convicted. You would think more effort would be put into a case where someone’s life is on the line. But that just wouldn’t make good headlines. No, we have to look tough on crime.

From the article:

In what some opponents say looks like a political move and Gov. Rick Perry says was “business as usual,” the governor replaced the head of the Texas Forensic Science Commission and two other members on Wednesday, just 48 hours before the commission was to hear testimony from an arson expert who believes that Mr. Willingham was convicted on faulty testimony, a conclusion that has been supported by other experts in the field.

Mr. Perry’s decision to shake up the commission and put one of his political allies in charge has, at the least, delayed the inquiry into the Willingham case. While Mr. Perry says he has no political motive for the move, his opponents have called for the commission to finish its inquiry.

Playing politics with someone’s life; how very Texas Republican of Perry. I guess he’s trying to follow in Bush’s footsteps. After all, Bush played politics with millions of people’s lives around the world, and we all know how that worked out. Everyone sure loves the US right now.

But what really stands out is that bad science is to blame. Well of course we use bad science in Texas, just look at our school board. The right hates science. Hell, I’m more surprised they did any investigation at all. Would have been easier to just tie a rope around the guy’s neck with a rock on the other end and then throw him in a river. If he floated, burn the witch. If he drowned then innocence proved. See how easy this is. All that money wasted on investigations when the Dark Ages provided us with the simplest tests for finding out people’s true nature. I hear thumb screws save a lot of litigation time.

Hank Gilbert calls out Perry’s bullshit:

“Governor Perry’s decision to remove and replace three very competent members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission with three partisan ideologues should surprise absolutely no one.

This was a political decision by a Governor who wanted avoid criticism of the horrendous record Texas has regarding the execution of the innocent. The Governor’s decision should make it crystal clear to every Texan that justice in this state is controlled by the whims of an out-of-control Governor desperate to retain his grip on power.

Governor Perry’s actions were wholly unacceptable. Texas deserves better.”

I would say that humanity deserves better.

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In other news, a Dallas judge has ruled that same sex married couples should be allowed to divorce in Texas. Oh the horror. What is so bad about this? Well, we don’t like them gays in Texas, even though the only things that come from Texas are steers and queers (at least that’s what my drill instructor said in basic training, how original).

Although the case is far from settled, and the state’s constitutional ban on gay marriage is a long way from being thrown out, Dallas state District Judge Tena Callahan’s ruling says the state prohibition of same-sex marriage violates the federal constitutional right to equal protection.

No shit. But we wouldn’t want something as silly as constitutional rights to get in the way of religious justice. We should burn the witches! Seriously, the whole same sex marriage ban is based on far right religious fear mongering; the lies that churches will be forced to perform gay marriages and that traditional marriage will suffer because we will all have to marry a gay person.

Two things; one, marriage is not controlled by religion. The state marries people all the time. Two, allowing states to vote against people’s basic rights is insane. We all know there’s a couple of states in the southern part of our country that would vote back in slavery if given the chance. The whole state’s right argument is crap; the Constitution trumps any state’s decisions. I know Governor Good Hair hates to hear that. Might explain his desire to start his own little fiefdom.

A study has been released showing that “there is no significant difference in emotional problems experienced by children adopted by heterosexual and gay or lesbian parents.” But this won’t stop the right from screaming that gays are a threat to families!

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On a good note, Texas just become home to the largest wind farm in the world.

The farm contains 627 wind turbines on almost 100,000 acres of land near Roscoe, Texas.

Wind energy is big business here in Texas, generating more energy with wind than any other state. The Texas grid is the 10th largest in the world, and 12 percent of our electricity currently comes from the wind. We are set to double that in the next 5 years.

To harness all that wind Texas created the CREZ program, committing to build 2000 miles of transmission lines to bring the energy to market. This is creating a lot of jobs right now which are sorely needed. And the towers being built are made from recycled steel.

We should place a wind mill in front of Governor Perry every time he opens his mouth.

Here we go again

Another war in the making. It’s like Iraq all over again. Sanctioning Iran will only further empower the Iranian government to become even more extreme. It’s a downward spiral. The more we threaten them, the more Tehran will say, “Look at what they are doing to our people, we have no choice but to defend ourselves.” That means more clamping down on democratic protesters, more money spent on the military, and as the average Iranian finds it harder to feed their family, fundamentalist religious views will spread.

We are told to believe that Iran is now really the threat we should all fear. Iraq? Yesterday’s news. Afghanistan? As long as it’s profitable for the military industrial complex we will still be told it’s the “good war”. But Iran offers up a whole new market for war profiteers to enrich themselves. After all, Iraq didn’t really put up any real resistance, and the Taliban never had large weapons systems to begin with. But Iran, now there’s a country that would cost quite a bit to invade.

What’s worse, the big players in the game are using Iran as a political tool. Look at the Russian’s response. Once we took the missile defense shield off the table, suddenly they see Iran as a problem. It was good for their politicians to resist us and use Iran as a pawn. Makes me wonder what other concessions our government made. No doubt there is a nice fat oil deal or two somewhere in all this for them.

And I’d bet Israel is busy buying up all the military hardware they can get their hands on in anticipation for a war with Iran. The Israeli government is doing the same thing Bush’s administration did; creating the need for more military spending by pumping fear into their people. When the masses are terrified, they have no problem giving into the notion that war will somehow save us all.

It’s sad really. Iran was once a democracy, but our government couldn’t live with the fact that they wouldn’t bow to western corporate profits. How dare they not let us steal their oil for our own gain. What bastards. And that is what this is really about, corporate profits.

Notice how North Korea isn’t on the “to invade” list right now? Oh sure, maybe to some neo-cons. But China would never agree to that, and the reality is that our country is so heavily dependent on loans from China that we wouldn’t dare piss them off. Never mind that China is now home to all our manufacturing base. No, China sells us too much crap to be made an enemy; too many US corporations are making a killing off their slave labor in Chinese factories filling Walmart’s shelves to want to butt heads with the communists.

But if we can convince enough people that war with Iran is a “good war”, then they will have no problem making corporations richer. Because that is what war is really all about; profit. Nothing pisses off the boardroom executives more than knowing that all that oil in Iran is not in their portfolios. The green revolution? Fuck em. It’s better to create an enemy that will require a larger defense budget than to admit we have no business telling other countries what they can do.

Funny how our insane levels of military spending never seem to get mentioned by the teabaggers. Of course not. A single payer health care system wouldn’t be as profitable for the corporate fatcats. We could insure every citizen and then some with much less than we spend building weapons of war. And it would help the average American a hell of a lot more than buying more jets, more bombs and more missiles. But it wouldn’t make the people that are already rich any richer.

There will always be a grave danger to our society as long as money can be made from war. There will always be a need for new weapons systems, bigger “defense” budgets and a further degrading of our constitutional rights. The cycle will never end because our government and the corporations are too in bed together. And our media is owned by the same people that profit from war (I’m looking at you GE). So don’t look to the evening news for the truth. (On a side note, how many of the teabaggers buy communist made product every day while decrying a fear of communism?)

Will we invade Iran? Personally I think we are being primed for an Israeli attack, one that this country will have no option but to support. This works for Israel because they will use it as an excuse to commit further crimes against the Palestinians in the hope that the Palestinians will rise up in response to bombs being dropped in Iran. Same goes for Lebanon and Syria.

And even if an invasion never happens just the threat of one demands an increase in military spending. We have to be prepared after all. And what a great way to change the subject. Torture? Look over here at Iran. Banks getting richer even as the economy crumbles? Iran wants nukes. Health care crisis? Fucking Iran is going to kill us all! Racism alive and well in America? You’re all going to die! Bomb Iran!

So we threaten, and they threaten, and we say we have no choice but war. After all we tried to be nice when we made it impossible for them to feed their families, when we used our might to make them desperate. We corner them, they react, we are justified. Sounds about right. And profitable too.

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Thanks goes to my one reader for the links.

Tonite’s Circle Jerk

Ok kids, here goes another exercise in futility. What are the chances that anything substantial will be discussed tonite? My guess is not much.

Will Ayers finally be mentioned? What about Liddy? Hell, for that matter what about Rezko and Simmons? Who knows. Will anyone care? My guess is not much.

Will we hear about how both men plan on saving the universe with their super amazing plans? Probably. How much of anything they promise will actually come to fruition? My guess is still not much.

What do you think? (I know no one reads this, but it makes me feel better to pretend.) Here’s my guess for what will be said about the debate tomorrow that wasn’t said about the last two: not much.

Another Night of Banality

So, will we get an actual debate about actual issues, or 90 minutes of McCain attacking Obama? My bet is on the latter. McCain has nothing else to go with at this point. Hell, maybe he’ll just send out Palin to scream at Obama for the whole debate instead.

Anyhow, be back after the debate.

Update:

Well, that was crap. Neither of them will admit to the elephant in the room, and I don’t mean McCain. Notice how both want to EXPAND the fucking military, want to make love to Israel, want to give money to everyone and anyone, and both want us to invade other countries when ever we feel like it.

For fucks sake, this is why people hate us. This arrogance is what makes people want to kill Americans. While our country is falling apart our politicians still talk about spending more money on misadventures around the world. Meanwhile they want to place the blame for all our woes on anyone but who is at fault: namely all of us.

We the people have a trillion dollar credit card bill. We the people elect and re-elect these assholes. We the people move our 401k’s around to who ever is making the most money, forcing investors to develop ever creative ways of creating returns. We the people bought houses and cars and crap we couldn’t afford. And now we want the government to fix it without spending any money, creating any new debt, applying any more regulations or making any more laws. Are you fucking kidding me?

Look, the system is fundamentally fucked because we the people are a bunch of spoiled brats who want new cheap shit to continue to fill the shelves at Walmart. And now we have a choice to make between a corrupt old war monger and a corrupt young war monger. Wonderful.

……….

Free market capitalism is crap. But so is socialism. Religion is crap. But so is atheism. What we are left with is reality, which is that we have a finite amount of space and resources and we are running out of both. We are stuck with each other so we better get over what ever it is that drives us apart. We are at beast semi-conscious carbon based organisms floating on a speck of dust in a sea of infinity. Statically speaking there is zero life in the universe, and we are working hard to reach zero.

……….

One last thing. I will still vote for Obama in November because I do think he is a little bit less of an asshole then McCain. Not much, but that’s what we have to go with. Life ain’t fair and it ain’t pretty. I hate the fact that the parties have a head lock on our democracy. I have yet to hear from anyone yet who seems to get it, so once again it’s down to the lesser of two evils.

Which sucks because I’ve tried and tried to get excited about candidates and participating only to realize that it’s all smoke and mirrors. I’d run myself if I thought I could actually change anything.

Arlington, Texas – A to(w)n of debt

Let’s step away from national news to focus on something a little closer to home. Arlington, Texas, or as I call it “Jonestown” (for those of you who don’t know, we are the unlucky folks who get the new Jerry Jones boondoggle, the new Cowboy’s football stadium), is already deeply in depth. A town of 371,038 people, we have a debt of $780 million dollars, not including interest. That’s about $2100 per citizen.

Now, you might say that’s not too much debt. I happen to disagree. Any debt is too much debt. We owe $350 million alone for the Jonestown spoiled millionaire’s playpen. Never mind the fact that they won’t at least be called the “Arlington Cowboy’s”, why the hell are my tax dollars being used to build playgrounds for the filthy rich, especially when there is a recession going on?

Which brings me to this:

ARLINGTON — Voters will go to the polls in November to consider a $140.8 million bond package, the biggest proposal in the city’s history, that includes money for roads, parks and fixing flooding along Rush Creek.

If approved, general obligation bonds for the projects would be sold over five years and repaid from property tax revenue, city officials said. The bond package has already drawn some opposition.
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Because we need more debt. Gee, maybe if we weren’t blowing $350 million on a fucking stadium we don’t need, we could fund our city just fine.

First off, I like how all this will be paid for through property taxes. I thought those funded our schools (which happen to already be underfunded). Second, what is this new debt for? Sure there’s some money for park improvements, building fire stations and flood control, but most of this debt ($103 million) is for rebuilding streets around the stadium.

If you’ve driven along I-30 lately, you’ve already seen all the construction going on. All for the stadium. All from tax dollars, be they city, state or federal. What a bunch of crap. And now we are being asked to add more debt to the pile November 4th. Because that’s what we need as citizens, more debt. Add in some county, state and federal debt, and we are some broke people. Maybe we can just charge all this to our trillion dollar credit card debt.

Seriously folks, there comes time when we have to say enough already. Building that useless stadium after just paying off the last useless stadium (I’m talking about you Ballpark) is breaking us. Stop, just stop. We will have to learn to do without for a while.

I say vote no to more debt on November 4th.

VP Debate

I was going to write about the “debate”, but Juan Cole already pretty much nailed it:

Not only was there no debate but Sarah Palin was not required actually to answer any of the questions put to her, and she announced before she began that she was just going to throw up on us all the talking points that she had binged on in Arizona for the past few days.

She mugged for the camera, winked like a bar fly, and just went on talking and talking and talking, oblivious to whatever anyone else said. Not only did she ignore most of Gwen Ifill’s questions,she paid no attention to what Joe Biden said. When he choked up over the loss of his family, she did not have the decency to express any kind of condolences. It is almost as though she is narcissistic and unable to connect with human beings.

Not only was it not a debate and not only did Palin answer virtually none of the questions put to her, but the whole idea of such an event was ridiculous.

I like transcripts

Here’s tonite’s.

Oops

Ain’t life a bitch: (follow link for talking points)

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In suspending his campaign to address the continuing financial crisis, John McCain’s campaign is pushing the theme of “having both parties come together to solve this problem,” according to campaign talking points inadvertently released Wednesday….

The talking points were accidentally sent out to members of the Colorado press early Wednesday afternoon by McCain spokesperson Tom Kise.
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If true, this is just shows that McCain doesn’t give a shit about America. Or it may be a plant. All depends on how it plays out in the MSM over the next day or two.