Yep, another example of Governor Goodhair’s striking wit and intelligence….
From Taegen Goddard’s Political Wire:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry said it was unfair to make comparisons between himself and former president George W. Bush, CNN reports, noting that “I am Rick Perry and he is George Bush. And our records are quite different.”
Asked what the biggest difference is, Perry responded: “I went to Texas A&M. He went to Yale.”
He did not answer when pressed to name a policy difference.
Filed under Politics
I can’t help myself…
Saw this at DailyKos and have to post it myself….
Rick Perry at the Iowa State Fair…
No further comment coming from me….
Talk amongst yourselves!
Rick Perry, aka Governor GoodHair, is the gift that keeps on giving….
There’s almost as much to write about him as there is for Sarah Palin…
From Joshua Holland at Alternet.com:
Rick Perry’s road to the White House will be paved with spin and blatant lies of omission. He’s basing his entire campaign on a single data-point: Texas, with 10 percent of the country’s population, has produced 37 percent of net new jobs in the U.S. since the recovery.
That kernel of truth, as I noted recently, is mostly a result of a massive increase in the state’s population – much of it due to Hispanic immigration. Texas’ unemployment rate has actually risen even as those jobs were being created. Texas also leads the nation in creating crappy minimum wage jobs without benefits – the number of minimum wage workers increased by 150 percent between 2007 and 2010.
He also lucked into a boom in energy prices in his oil and gas-rich state – another factor having nothing to do with his governance.
Under Perry, endless tax breaks for politically connected Texas corporations helped create a massive budget deficit that Perry first addressed with federal stimulus funds – money from a program he decried as a “misguided” desire “to spend our children’s inheritance” — and then by cutting spending on education and the state’s already threadbare social services to the bone. With the exception of a few economic basket-cases like Mississippi, Texas is way ahead of the pack in the race to the bottom.
Filed under Politics, Uncategorized
Seems like lots of people are asking this on Google….
The rumors have been around for years, but no proof….
If you want to read the unsubstantiated rumors, you can Google them yourselves…
Seems like everyone else is….
You can bet the media will be digging into this again…
Especially since he is so publicly, vehemently anti-gay….
Time will tell….
From Tech President (interesting chart if you click the link):
The top search phrase for the query “Is Rick Perry…” is “Is Rick Perry Gay,” Google Suggest tells us.
via Is Rick Perry Gay? Googlers Want to Know | techPresident.
Filed under Politics
Scary, Scary article from James Moore at CNN.com….
Governor Goodhair is by far the most frightening of the possible GOP nominees. He’s ruthless, campaigns very well, is telegenic and from the State that gave us George W. Bush. I also suspect he is the pick of the Corporations and the Rich who don’t think Romney or any of the other lunatics can beat President Obama. They also want to use his religious zealotry to use the Religious Right again.
I can see how they are thinking: Supporter of Corporations and the Rich. Check. Christian Conservative- at least on face value- check. Looks good on TV and print media. Check. And so on….
I think Mr Moore has some valid points, but there is a lot about Rick Perry that has not yet been exposed to the national media….
However, if he is the nominee, it will be the nastiest, most brutal Presidential campaign we have ever seen….
My gut tells me he will fizzle out as time goes by, but I could be wrong as well…
Editor’s note: James Moore is a Texas-based Emmy award-winning former national TV news correspondent and co-author of the best-seller, “Bush’s Brain.”
Austin, Texas (CNN) — As a resident of Texas for 36 years, I keep wondering why the rest of the nation pays any attention to our political and cultural absurdities and yet still chooses Texans as presidents. Our most revered historical moment, the Alamo, was arguably a mass suicide. The slaughter in San Antonio was followed by a massacre at Goliad, the fall of the Confederacy to Union forces, and later by the Houston Astros. Texas has a legacy of losing.
None of this apparently matters, though, because America is beginning the process of electing another Texan to be president. Gigantic tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, a trumped up war and a ruined economy from the last Texan seem incapable of dissuading supporters of Rick Perry.
His Saturday speech in South Carolina will make clear that he is entering the race for the White House and will spawn the ugliest and most expensive presidential race in U.S. history, and he will win. A C and D student, who hates to govern, loves to campaign, and barely has a sixth grader’s understanding of economics, will lead our nation into oblivion.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Filed under Elections, Politics, Uncategorized
The Republicans are all excited about Governor GoodHair’s entry into the GOP Presidential race. They seem to forget how it turned out the last time we “elected” a not-too-bright Texas Governor as President. Or they consider those times the good ole days- 2 elective wars and an economic collapse aside.
Anyway, ThinkProgress.org has pulled together some of Rick Perry’s greatest hits.
I hope sane people realize just how nuts he is….he’s in Bachmann territory. Of course, that’s probably what it takes to win the GOP Nomination now…
Here is an excerpt and a link to the full article:
With widespread discontent on the right over their current presidential field, all eyes are trained on a likely new entrant: Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R).
Perry, who has been elected governor three times and served for more than 10 years, enjoys bona fides from social conservatives and Tea Party-types alike. Glenn Beck even described Perry as a man he was so enamored with that he wanted to “French kiss.”
However, as conservatives fawn over their newest presidential hopeful, it’s worth taking a closer examination at his record as governor. On issues across the board, from Perry’s support for dropping out of Social Security and Medicaid to his state’s abysmal pollution levels and his proposal that Texas secede from the United States, the Republican governor has amassed a record of far-right extremism.
ThinkProgress has assembled the top ten hits from Perry’s tenure as governor:
(1) PERRY ALLOWED THE EXECUTION OF A LIKELY INNOCENT MAN, THEN IMPEDED AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE MATTER: In 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Huntsville, Texas after being convicted of arson and the murder of his three children. Even after significant evidence emerged showing that arson had not caused the fire (thus exonerating Willingham), Perry refused to grant a stay of execution. Five years after Willingham was executed, a report from a Texas Forensic Science Commission investigator found that the fire could not have been arson. As the commission prepared to hear testimony from the investigator in October 2009, Perry quickly fired and replaced three of its members, forcing an indefinite delay in the hearing.
(2) PERRY WANTS TO REPEAL THE 16th AND 17th AMENDMENTS, ENDING DIRECT ELECTION OF U.S. SENATORS AND THE FEDERAL INCOME TAX: In his 2010 book Fed Up!, Perry called the 16th and 17th Amendments “mistaken” and said they resulted from “a fit of populist rage.” The 16th Amendment allows the federal government to collect income taxes, which is the single biggest source of revenue, accounting for 45 percent of all receipts. The 17th Amendment took electing U.S. senators out of the hands of political insiders and allowed the American public to decide their representation instead. If Perry had his way, the federal government would be stripped of its current ability to fund highway construction projects, food inspectors, and the military, and the American public would not even be permitted to elect their own senators.
(3) PERRY PROPOSED LETTING STATES DROP OUT OF SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICAID: Despite the programs’ importance and popularity, Perry has argued that states like Texas should be allowed to opt out of Social Security and Medicaid. Were Perry to have his way on Social Security, “the entire system would collapse under the weight of too many Social Security beneficiaries who had not paid into the system,” notes Ian Millhiser. On Medicaid, in addition to stripping 3.6 million low-income Texans of their health care, Perry’s proposal would actually hurt, not help, the state’s budget deficit. This is because, as Igor Volsky writes, opting out of Medicaid would take “billions out of the state economy that goes on to support hospitals and other providers,” while forcing hospitals “to swallow the costs of caring for uninsured individuals who will continue to use the emergency room as their primary source of care.”
MORE: Top 10 Things Texas Gov. Rick Perry Doesn’t Want You To Know About Him | ThinkProgress.
With Rick Perry expected to announce he’s running for President today, all I can think about is how much Molly Ivins would have enjoyed this and what she would have had to say about it….
Seems like I’m not the only one thinking along those lines, as this editorial from the Sacramento Bee shows…
Of course, there is still time for Texas to secede, as Gov Perry suggested, and spare us this…
Or we could just sell Texas as I suggested earlier….
Anyway…
Here is a brief excerpt with a link to the entire article- which I encourage you to use….
Editor’s note: Texas Gov. Rick Perry is expected to announce today that he’s running for the Republican presidential nomination. In anticipation, we offer excerpts of columns from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram by the late, great Molly Ivins. Born in Monterey, Ivins covered the Statehouse in Texas for decades and spread her barbs widely. One frequent target was Perry, whom she called “The Coiffure” and “Gov. Goodhair.”
Oct. 12, 2006
I sacrificed an hour Friday evening to watch the Texas gubernatorial debate on your behalf, since I knew none of you would do it. … The Coiffure was in his usual form. As one opponent after another attacked his record, Gov. Rick Perry stood there proudly behind that rabid following he has so richly earned – hey, a whole 35 percent of Texans want him re-elected – and simply disagreed. The Coiffure seemed to consider blanket denials a fully sufficient and adequate response.
Jan. 12, 2006
The governor of Texas is despicable. Of all the crass pandering, of all the gross political kowtowing to ignorance, we haven’t seen anything this rank from Gov. Goodhair since … gee, last fall.
Then he was trying to draw attention away from his spectacular failure on public schools by convincing Texans that gay marriage was a horrible threat to us all. Now he’s trying to disguise the fact that the schools are in free-fall by proposing that we teach creationism in biology classes.
The funding of the whole school system is so unfair that it has been declared unconstitutional by the Texas Supreme Court. All last year, Rick Perry haplessly called special session after special session, trying to fix the problem, and couldn’t get anywhere – not an iota, not a scintilla, of leadership.
Instead of facing the grave crisis that might yet result in the schools’ being closed, Perry has blithely gone off on creationism – teach the little perishers the Earth is 6,000 or so years old, that people lived at the same time as dinosaurs, and who cares if the school building is falling apart?
Jan. 11, 2004
I have failed to give sufficient recognition to our only governor, Rick “Goodhair” Perry, who is adding to the old je ne sais quoi in truly impressive quantities.
Goodhair gave such an amazing performance at his end-of-the-year news conference that I was forced to call a perfectly reliable reporter for the Dallas Morning News and ask if it was a joke. …
The guv remains convinced that his greatest accomplishment was not raising taxes, even though fees, tuition, fines and everything else that the Leg could find to jack up without calling it a tax was jacked sky-high. …
You may think the guv’s had a rough year – three special sessions on top of the regular session just to pass that misbegotten redistricting bill, not counting the two bolts by Democrats and such minor unpleasantness as having to hack $10 billion out of the state budget.
For some, the budget-cutting, aimed mostly at services for desperately needy people, was a painful and even tragic exercise. Especially knocking 250,000 poor children off health insurance.
Fortunately, Gov. Goodhair has a firm grasp on priorities, and when asked his biggest disappointment of the year, he replied: “Aggie football.”
This was quite the buzz a few years ago in Texas and on the internet…
I truly hope it’s not true. I don’t want him in my Club….
From The Huffington Post:
Texas Governor Rick Perry’s camp is prepared to tackle unfounded rumors dating back to as early as 2004 about the Lone Star State Republican’s personal life should he run for president and the allegations resurface, according to Politico.
Roughly seven years ago, Perry himself addressed the unsubstantiated buzz that he and his wife planned to divorce and that he was gay. He denied the rumors and told the Austin American-Statesman at the time that he was the victim of a “smear campaign” being conducted by his political enemies. The AP reported in March of 2004:
Perry said the rumors “are not correct in any shape, form or fashion. These are irresponsible. They’re salacious. They’re hurtful to my family.”
…
“I don’t think a rumor can just get to critical mass by itself,” Perry said. “I think you have to have a well thought-out, organized effort to disseminate that kind of information and keep it going day after day after day after day.”
According to Politico:
The crusted-over rumors were in the ether among some attendees at a dinner hosted last week by the Manhattan County GOP, where Perry gave the keynote speech.
…
But Team Perry, asked about how it’s prepared to handle them when they emerge if he runs, said it remains “false and misleading.”
It remains to be seen whether Perry will jump into the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. After previously denying he had any intention of entering the primary election contest, the Texas Governor recently signaled interest in pursuing a campaign for the White House.
via Rick Perry Gay Rumors: Governor’s Aides Prepared To Tackle Allegations Should They Resurface: Report.
Filed under Elections, Politics, Uncategorized
I knew they would get around to him eventually….
The GOP did so well with their last empty-headed Texas Governor/Figurehead…
All I can think is how the late, great Molly Ivins always called him Rick”Good Hair” Perry…
Good Hair/ Empty Head….
From Political Wire:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) chief political strategist, Dave Carney, tells the Texas Tribune Perry is probably mulling a presidential bid.
Said Carney: “Obviously, it’s flattering to have everybody, Rush Limbaugh and all these other conservative, right-of-center leaders, talk about you, urging you to think about it, urging you to run, saying they support you. But I don’t see any difference in terms of the governor’s thinking… I’m sure he’s thinking about it because it’s just human nature when you have Rush Limbaugh spend 20 minutes talking about you and have all these other people mention you, that you don’t sort of think that’s flattering and think about it. But I don’t see any change in his direction, what he’s planning to do.”
Lost in the 21st Century 