TFN — “Instead of arrogantly lecturing Wendy Davis and other women who have had unplanned pregnancies and faced challenges he can’t begin to imagine, Rick Perry should address his failure as governor to deal honestly with the teen pregnancy epidemic in his own state,” Miller said. “He opposes girls and young women learning about birth control in sex ed so they can responsibly protect their health and their future. Just as appalling has been his support for policies that limit women’s access to family planning services.”
Miller noted that throughout Gov. Perry’s tenure, Texas has had one of the highest teen birth rates in the nation. Texas had the nation’s fifth highest teen birth rate in 2011 and the nation’s highest rate of repeat births to teens in 2010, the most recent years for which that data is available.
You know what would really help teen moms? Affordable birth control, pregnancy counseling, funding increases for food stamps, WIC and Medicaid, an increase in the minimum wage, vastly better public transit, equal and fair pay, affordable daycare, flex work hours, better pay for teachers and more of them, strengthening the Family Medical Leave Act, edu grants and low interest loans, more rural hospitals, and scrapping the epic failure of abstinence only sex ed. In other words, reversing course on practically every policy Perry has espoused or harmed for his entire clownish, embarrassing, shit-kick’n stint as governor.
And of course he’s going after someone who can’t defend herself and using his secular position to promote a religious view.
Wendy Davis, it must be noted, went on to graduate from the Harvard Law school, in spite of having been a teenage mother. Rick Perry managed to slink out of Texas A&M with a 2.2 GPA and probably couldn’t have gotten admitted to Pat Robertson’s law school. Perry’s primary role, as governor of Texas, is to protect the oil and gas industry at all times. He uses the time he has left to pander to the Christian right and convince people, even stupider than himself, to vote against their self interest. There is no emptier suit, in all of American politics, than Rick Perry.
We need to come up with a secret plan to encourage liberals to move to Texas. Aistin is known to be liberal friendly. Houston and its inner ring suburbs are liberal. And there’s a huge limousine liberal subculture in Houston. Parts of DFW are liberal. Even the Bush family used to be pretty liberal. Barbara Bush is a limo-liberal
And the Texas I grew up in was pretty damn progressive. I blame all those people from up north. All the riff-raff came down here in the 70’s and 80’s. I should know. I grew up in a part of NW Houston known as South Detroit. Native Texans were a minority. Horrible things happened. The worst thing that happened is that I sometimes hear “you guys” with a Southern accent. Thankfully, I also sometimes hear “y’all” with a Great Lakes accent.
I think the problem with Texas is that its progressive trends were thwarted by reactionary natives allying themselves with the wrong kind of immigrants. And I don’t mean Mexicans, or Vietnamese, Hell, I got some German-Mexican ancestry myself. Nah, I mean white folks moving to our burbs. We need to balance that out with new liberal whites, African-Americans of almost any type, and even Muslims and the rare Druze. There’s actually a pretty big Druze community in SE Texas. They fought on Israel’s side in the Lebanese civil war but mostly fled to Liberia and then to the US after Israel gave up its war effort. I find that while Muslims and Druze are social conservatives, they almost always vote against Republican candidates.
But the main question is how can we prevent next week’s vote in the TX Senate? This is serious Gene Sharpe “How to Start a Revolution” stuff. I can make it to Austin to fuck shit up next week. Austin has it coming. The Austin PD infiltrated Occupy Austin and later Occupy Houston, without knowledge of the Houston Police or the Harris County DA. I want to start some shit in Austin. I already have a gig there every four to six weeks and every time I go there I want to fuck with that town. They want 700 protesters in the Capitol again? I can help dragon chain the cops coming to clear them out? I can do that. I was not in the chains at D12Houston, but seeing those who were has inspired me. But I am kinds scared to go up against APD. HPD was very systematic and careful on #D12 Houston. There was no brutality other than a bit of horse trampling that resulted in no major injuries.
Is it possible to blockade the entire Capitol? How long is Perry’s extension of the special session supposed to last? Just one day? I think the Capitol can be blockaded for a day. Are there tunnels? I think I could convince my parents to sit in a tunnel with my dad on his oxygen machine as a result of his exposure to beryllium in his 20’s and my mom with her two canes that allow her to walk.
And if you are you reading your Gene Sharpe, bring your children. Kids stop cop dead in their tracks.
If anyone has links to anyone planning a blockade. Post them here. If you have fake links to a blockade, post them here. Give the NSA something to read.
We can’t lose this. The Democrats used to run away from Austin to deny a quorum, but that’s illegal now. We must blockade the Capitol to deny the vote.
And Perry wonders why the American people determined him to be an unworthy candidate for the presidency …
Self-righteous Rick and his fellow Republicans in the state legislature reside in a political bubble — isolated from the world of verifiable facts and true public opinion — where the only voices that they hear are the reverberating echoes of their own reality-devoid rhetoric.
But, labman, you’ll traumatize those delicate fundies if you insist on dragging facts into the matter.
We know they are gonna come back and jam this down our throats.
Here’s a radical idea – I say if Texas goes through with their radical anti-choice BS – BOYCOTT TEXAS.
Don’t give the Texas economy a fucking dime of your money until and unless they agree to not to this dangerous exercise in demagoguery. Money with change Texas politicians mind – probably nothing else will.
I imagine that Gov. Goodhair will simply wave away the unfortunate
statistics about teen motherhood.
-John Q. Adams
-Ronald W. Reagan
But but but… I thought government regulation of private industry was a bad thing. Oh, wait…
But but but …. teen moms and unplanned pregnancies mean more poor people and that means lower and lower wages for unskilled jobs. Doncha see how Gov. Goodhair is trying to create jobs and save industries from having to relocate to China? /snark