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From the “Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You Department:”

Republicans and other Obama haters kept brushing off the inevitable effects of sequestration until those souls thought the whole matter would just disappear. But guess what? Sequestration didn’t vanish. In fact the big fat buzzard that is sitting on top of our nation at the moment has begun to spread its mighty wings and is beginning what could be continued discomfort. One example is the airline industry.

259 United, land wherever you want to ...
259 United, land wherever you want to …

Passengers are feeling the pain in line. The FAA must furlough workers to save money. And those big ol’ jet airliners Steve Miller sung about some three decades ago are now beginning to gather dust, along with airline passengers. For you see, you can’t fly all the jets in the world when you have droves of air traffic control who aren’t allowed to go to work.

So now, grumpy old congressmen who had either forgotten about that “sequestration thing” or who had both index fingers in each ear going: “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah … ” are looking incredulously at the FAA director and is shouting at him: “Why didn’t you tell us this would happen?” Thus a response from the man in charge of aviation and its infrastructure in America: “WTF?”

Thus sequestration fallout has landed in earnest. Pretty soon it will be landing in a town near you!!!

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Texas AG: My name is “Sue.” How do you do?

Fate would seem to guarantee that had Gregory Wayne Abbott been born a girl his parents would have named him Sue. Or so one would think.

As of September 2012 the Texas Attorney General “Greg” Abbott had run through more than $2.5 million of the taxpayers money from having filed 24 lawsuits against the United States. It also appears that Abbott hasn’t run out of things over which to sue the federal government.

An article today in the right-wing Washington Times says Abbott is once again threatening to sue Uncle Sam. This time Abbott plans to waste more scarce tax dollars in litigation should President Obama sign a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.

Earlier today the UN General Assembly approved the treaty over 23 abstentions and “no” votes coming from North Korea, Iran and Syria. What great company Abbott is in with his animus toward the treaty!

The UN News Center, the official news site for the organization explains what the treaty will and will not do:

 “The treaty regulates all conventional arms within the following categories: battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large-calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers, and small arms and light weapons.

 “According to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, the treaty will not do any of the following: interfere with domestic arms commerce or the right to bear arms in Member States; ban the export of any type of weapon; harm States’ legitimate right to self-defence; or undermine national arms regulation standards already in place.”

Those darned Europeans and their “misspelled: words such as “armoured,” “calibre,” and “defence!” Why it would make a pure-D, red-blooded American want to go buy a big batch of Freedom Fries.

It’s that Second Amendment right of U.S. citizens which has the AG’s boxers in a bunch. Well, I’m not sure he wears boxers and I suppose men’s undies really shouldn’t be a topic here since Abbott is partially paralyzed and wheelchair-bound. That’s not to say Abbott is a great leader in rights for the disabled. He’s not. And even though he is of the Republican religion whose tenets say “thall shall not sue,” Abbott started off his career as a de facto serial plaintiff’s lawyer by suing the owner of the tree that fell on the future Texas AG as he was jogging by.

Abbott said in a letter to the president that the treaty fails to recognize an individual’s right to bear arms and to protect their families. He claims the treaty will be carried out by bureaucrats who are not accountable to U.S. citizens.

“I recognize that the ostensible purpose of the treaty is to combat the illegal international trade of weapons into third-world war zones,” Abbott writes. And writes. “The treaty could, however, draw law-abiding gun owners and gun store operators into a complex web of bureaucratic red tape created by a new department at the UN devoted to overseeing the treaty. For instance, the treaty appears to lay the groundwork for an international gun registry overseen by the bureaucrats at the UN.”

His legal rant to Obama is an example of the “black helicopter” style of paranoia that Abbott taps into for furthering his political career. How can one forget his threat during the 2012 elections to order any international election observer arrested who would dare show up at a Texas polling place?

Was it not that the AG was playing to his Tea Party base the litigant-averse Republicans would burn Mr. Abbott, and presumably his wheelchair, in effigy for the filing of frivolous lawsuits. In fact, a law signed in 2011 by fellow mad dog Republican Gov. Rick Perry seeks payment for court costs in suits in which the loser must pay.  Would that happen with all the frivolous suits filed by Greg Abbott?

Well, it is like that old saying that old sayers say all the time, at least Democratic ones: If hypocrisy was a crime, most of our Texas elected officials would be behind the cross bars!

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Texas Legislature: Has gone way beyond a “government at your own risk”

It seems that I have read less about the current Texas Legislature than any other such state session during my life as a writer. Part of it is that many of the papers I  now read online have cut back or cut out their state Capitol bureaus. Still, there are plenty other blogs where I can get my fill of news on the State Lege goings on. Perhaps bills such as this one gives me pause before reading more.

The jackasses like those legislators quoted in the story linked above make me wish we could abolish our state House and Senate altogether. These folks want Texas law enforcement officers to refuse enforcement of federal “gun control” laws. The damn fools would even tune the law to where cops who do make arrests for these new offenses may be jailed. Why not just ban state and local fuzz from making arrests on any federal charges? Perhaps I should not say that loudly. These idiot lawmakers might just consider that.

Not that any of these laws will even go anywhere.

It doesn’t take a lawyer to figure out that these laws prohibiting enforcement of federal offenses will not — even in the long-shot that the laws are passed — pass muster in higher federal courts. And the legislators know that. They don’t care. These cats just want to waste our time and our money making laws strictly to make a point.

The last time I visited the Capitol on a news story was 2005. This was the session after the “Killer D’s” fled the state to Oklahoma to prevent redistricting. Those Democrats should have just kept on going. We now not only have a Republican majority in the Texas Legislature. We have a fool’s majority. And it makes me want to spend a lot less time on reading what these fools are up to. I know that is not being a responsible citizen. But you have to pick and choose sometimes.

Having the state lawmakers in session has always been “government at your own risk.” It has gone way beyond that stage.

 

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The congressional Little Train That Won’t scores one, ties one for the good guys

Surely the House Republicans — words that now rank up there in refuse as “dirty bastards” — are patting themselves on the back. You see, the voted to keep the government open until the end of the fiscal year in September. Finally, they do something, kind of, almost on the order of doing what it is they are supposed to do.

“This a bill to keep the government operating while we debate then how with sequestration,” said House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky. “This is not a sequestration bill.”

Meanwhile, the GOP brethren in the Senate, employed a filibuster to delay naming John Brennan as CIA director. The cause would, ostensibly, be one in need of a good discussion, only in some other forum than a vote for the nation’s top spook. Instead, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. and son of the goofy former Republican Rep. Ron Paul, decided he would hold up the CIA nomination over a statement made in a letter by Attorney General Eric Holder opining that drone strikes could be legally carried out on American citizens on American soil.

Granted, that former White House counter terrorism head Brennan had said early in the confirmation process that he could foresee extraordinary circumstances when domestic drone strikes could be carried out. I think such moves should be explained by government officials to the best of their abilities. I mean we’ve all seen movies where the Army or CIA or both come rolling in at just the right time to fight the bad guys. And we just love it! I don’t like the willy-nilly use of drones. I don’t think police should use them. I don’t think private citizens should have them. So it stands to reason I probably wouldn’t want them blasting to pieces some couple who where just making out on Lover’s Leap. Of course, without domestic drones where else would the folks who draw on their Second Amendment rights to own Tomahawk missiles mount the damn things!

Were it not for the likes of those who crave Fox News stardom like Paul and McCarthyite Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a civil discussion on the use of drones in the U.S. of A. would be something worthwhile. But what you have is Paul and Cruz with dreams of the Oval Office and kicking Democrats in mid-air off Air Force One. Plus the fact that these senators are off track holding up confirmation of such an important office with an issue that really has nothing to do with the CIA except perhaps in a consulting role.

I remembering Republicans crying bloody murder when the Democrats blocked confirmation of some federal judges appointed to the bench by Gee Dubya Bush. “This has never happened in history!” was the GOP talking-point heading. But the Republicans do not think twice about holding up anything that can be construed as progress for the Democrats, the President or the United States.

It has been awhile since I read what it would take for the so-called “Nuclear Option,” — the nickname for disposing of the filibuster in Senate rules — to occur. I think maybe the time has come for that option. Just maybe the Republicans would think twice about going off the tracks to interrupt any type of move which might help better our country.

Then again, the Tea Party wing of the GOP wants “their country back.” They want their country “the way it used to be.” You know, where the blacks wouldn’t vote, much less get elected as the nation’s CEO.

 

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What to call the ex-Pope, Sequestration woes, and thanks for all the fish

Today brought a little relief for me. First, I found out that my bunch won’t be getting the old sequestration up the butt, at least no furloughs, and at least for now. That is, of course, if sequestration comes knocking Friday, as it seems to be headed that way. At any rate I can now rest until next month until the next manufactured crisis and threats from the Tea Party emerge once more to shut down the government.

And relief for all those others who have been frantically worrying … we now know what the Pope will be called once he retires. Are you ready? He will be called Ben Bernanke. No, just kidding. He will be called Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus. I don’t know if I could sleep at night if I didn’t know what to call the pope after he sails off into the sunset in his little Ex-Pope Sailboat named the “Così lungo. E ringrazia per tutto il pesce.”  Look it up in one of the online translators and only if you are a friend of Douglas Adams.

I find humor in strange places. Under the bed. Under the table. Under water. Underground. Undercover. Really, I’ve never been undercover, in the TV police style. I participated in a surveillance once of someone, who someone else, thought that the first someone might torch his house. Stake-out! In a hotel room, no less. Maybe I will tell you about it sometime, if I haven’t already.

Seriously, although it looks as if I may have dodged the sequestration bullet, hundreds of thousands, perhaps, will likely not. The Republican Tea Party Boys and Girls in the House are patting themselves on the back for all the cut dollars. Meanwhile, the more established of the GOP House members are, as my Daddy used to say,  “Sweating like a whore in church.” These wise men know that if Sequestration takes place, and then the closure of government later on, it will cause an economic disaster. Our unemployment numbers were finally going the right way. Some folks are even seeing a healthy economy emerge. But when you have thousands go without work, for even a day, that represents money not spent. It doesn’t take an economist to figure all this stuff out.

It’s so terribly depressing. But at least we know what to call the Pope after he retires. Aren’t you glad? I know I am certainly relieved, and I am not even Catholic.