One of a few potential Republican Texas lieutenant governor candidates declared that she opposes abortion after another possible Lite Gov candidate called her out on the matter.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said in a letter to State Comptroller Susan Combs that her position on abortion was unclear after Combs allegedly: ” … asked pro-life leaders to not oppose your candidacy for Comptroller because you stated it is a “non-policy office” thus your pro-choice stance and defense of Roe vs. Wade would not be a factor.”
Baseball legend Nolan Ryan, left, is statewide chair for Texas Ag Comm. Todd Staples' campaign for Lt. Gov. Too bad. But we still love ya, Nolan.
“Combs said flatly that she has changed her position on the abortion issue, moving from a “pro-choice, but not pro-abortion” position to opposition to abortions. “I’m unequivocal about it. I was wrong,” she said.”
No word has surfaced yet from the non-profit news site, headed by former Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith, as to whether the present governor will throw his unused hat in the ring for the GOP presidential race. Although the Trib’s stance has seemed pretty unbiased about Gov. Rick “Good Hair” Perry and a possible presidential race, it seems for all the world like the Austin-based and Austin-centric Website would love to see Perry run for the White House. Whether that is to get rid of Good Hair as the state’s longest-serving governor like many of us Texans would like to see or because it would give the journalists perceived access to another Texas president as some Texas journalists imagined during the Gee Dubya “Shrub” Bush tenure is unknown.
Texas Comptroller and possible GOP Lt. Gov. candidate Susan Combs, a big, tall, drink o' water of a gal. If she announces for Lite Gov. her slogan will be: Combs: Taller than most Hispanic men!
No words of speculation have been flying around a possible Texas governor’s race next time around. Could it be President Perry or Governor-for-Life Good Hair? God, I hope not. Even with Shrub as president or governor did I ever imagine this, but either of those choices with Perry? I might just have to move from my beloved U.S. of A. in the event of the first possible catastrophe and flee my even more loved Texas should the latter take please. Let’s don’t even think about the two right now as I didn’t sleep well as it was last night.
I couldn’t see rivers and creeks for the dirt while I was traversing Interstate 10 last week while on my way to San Antonio from Beaumont and back. Now the disgusting drought that has expanded through this blazing hot Texas Summer and a new relic of the past has risen to the top because of that same drought. I speak of a large, spherical piece of the doomed Space Shuttle Columbia.
It isn’t so surprising that a piece of the Shuttle has surfaced, even a relatively large one, on the edge of Lake Nacogdoches which is in the heart of a sizeable chunk of East Texas over which the spacecraft broke apart while returning from space eight years ago. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know people would be finding the Space Shuttle Columbia for years. I lived in Waco at the time and drove, while on assignment as a reporter, to where another large unrecognizable part of Columbia lay on a grassy highway median just outside Palestine, Texas. That is about 110 miles from where most of the remains of the astronauts were discovered.
Interstate 45, between Dallas and Houston, in a rough geographic sense divides the prairies and savannahs of east Central Texas, and the Pineywoods of East Texas. East Texas holds the forest lands of the Lone Star State. This is the area that those who know nothing of Texas cannot comprehend due to a lack of rock-filled mountains and mesas. But this is the area where I was born and raised, and spent most of my life here. I knew those sometime thick forests would hold for years and years what was left of that ill-fated flying machine and its amazing crew of American and Israeli spacemen and women.
While the Columbia will forever remain another of the tragedies of space travel it also helps those who dream of the future of our Universe and beyond our lonely planet. How many people — that we know of — have flown in space? Not many at all when you stack them up against the number that hasn’t crossed into that magic land where fat guys like me could even feel light as a feather.
The more that is found of Columbia will help put together the tragic but very useful puzzle of what happened to that day in March 2003 over the cusp of that wooded southeastern area of the United States. I may have mentioned I once wasn’t at all into flying in a plane. Once I learned what happened in many of the airline mishaps over time and the safety innovations that came about because of those investigations made me a much comfortable and, to some extent enlightened, air passenger.
At least the whole drought isn’t a bad thing. But I think it’s now done its good deeds and I sure wish the heck that it would cease and desist.
Our good-haired governor has, for a moment at least, left the national stage to promote a bill that might help veterans with education and jobs down the road.
Gov. Rick “Good Hair” Perry is touting a program penned by Democratic Sen. Leticia Van De Putte of San Antonio which would encourage colleges and the state’s workforce commission to work together toward granting some college credits for veterans military experience. Perry today ceremonially signed the “College Credits for Heroes” program which:
” … helps veterans and military service members transition to civilian life by applying their skills and experience to help them graduate more quickly and save money on tuition,” Perry said.
Perry apparently thought he would spend a little time in Texas prior to his big day of “Prayer and Fasting” on Aug. 6. Were the governor in touch with many real Texans he would find that more were “praying they don’t have to fast.” The Good Hair has still not made up his mind about a presidential bid despite most Texas political pundits saying a decision is likely in “one or two days,” something those pundits have been saying now for two months.
I have never really cared for the cliche “the devil is in the details.” But if one looks at what details there are in Senate Bill 1736, the legislation Sen. Van De Putte wrote for the veterans college program, one gets a distinct feeling we have heard this all before. This is especially so if the “we” are veterans from the past 30 or so years. The legislation states:
(b) The (Texas Workforce) commission shall establish and administer the College Credit for Heroes demonstration program to identify, develop, and support methods to maximize academic or workforce education credit awarded by institutions of higher education to veterans and military service members for military experience, education, and training obtained during military service in order to expedite the entry of veterans and military service members into the workforce.
“(c) The commission shall work cooperatively with other state agencies, including the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, public junior colleges, and other institutions of higher education, to accomplish the purposes of this section.”
I can’t say that the state has tried anything similar in the past three decades or so. My institutional memory of Texas legislation doesn’t go back that distance. But I know there have been countless efforts both through the federal government and the military which would help convert military jobs toward civilian educational credit. Since 1942 the American Council on Education has evaluated military schools, correspondence courses and occupations to determine how much and what level of academic credit each should be awarded to veterans. This is being done currently through programs such as DANTES (Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support) with support also coming from individual military service programs. Even more than 30 years ago when I served in the Navy it was possible for many military personnel to earn at least associate degrees and programs have greatly expanded since then.
That is not to say such a program as Van De Putte established in legislation and our governor signed isn’t a helpful one in theory. From what I have personally experienced and have heard from other veterans, the biggest stumbling block in converting military service into college credit has been the colleges themselves. There is and probably will always be an “Ivory Tower” mindset that thinks the military is made of people who lacked the intellect go to college or at least could not attend a good college.
The legislation SB 1736 is another one of those pieces of law with its heart in the right place, that being for veterans. If it is yet another program that ends up in an endless bureaucratic loop of government, military and academia, then the effort is probably just a waste of time and tax money.
You have no doubt heard the old expression: “Thank God for small favors.”
Well, one may thank whomever they choose in this country but I am thankful this afternoon to Republican Congressman Ron Paul. You see, Paul announced today he would not seek re-election to the U.S. House, where he has held a seat for 24 years. Why am I thanking Paul? I thank him because our GOP-infested Texas Legislature drew a map to redistrict Rep. Paul’s congressional district right into my very own Jefferson County, Texas. That meant Paul would have likely been my congressman beginning in 2013 provided he failed to win the GOP nomination or a third-party bid for president. Even though Paul maintains he quit his current day job as a lawmaker — the 75-year-old is a medical doctor and was a practicing OB/GYN — to concentrate on his presidential run there would have been a very good chance he would be returning to Congress.
Ron Paul will NOT be my congressman. Let's hear some cheers!
Some folks are skeptical that Paul got out of the congressional race to concentrate on a run for president. First of all, Paul has been down this road before. He ran in 1988 as a Libertarian candidate for president. He came in third with 0.5% of the popular vote behind George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis.
In 2008 Paul sought the Republican nomination, which he did not get. You may remember the controversy over his newsletter that was supposedly ghost written, containing a number of racially-tinged comments around the time of that presidential run.
A number of talking heads suggest that Paul is intelligent enough to know that there is no way in Hell he could ever win the GOP nomination, or another third-party try for that matter. Paul is instead in the race for as long as he can afford to do so in order to have his message heard. Anyone who has studied political science, or even paid attention in high school government classes for that matter, knows most third-party or long-shot candidates for president run to make a particular point of view heard. Paul has a loyal following and is dubbed by some as the “Father of the Tea Party.” That alone is reason enough for my thanking Congressman Paul for his service, both in the military as a flight surgeon and as an elected official, but most of all for his decision not to run for what would be my member of Congress.
Others out there believe the redistricting job was meant to derail Paul’s chances of returning to office. A post on a Website titled “The Daily Paul” said the Texas Legislature added about 300,000 votes to the new congressional district including my county and part of Galveston County so that Paul would find less voting age Anglos as well as more Hispanics and Blacks.
Nevertheless, Paul won’t be my new congressman and unless something changes with a judicial review of the new districts, neither will Rep. Ted Poe continue to be my old U.S. House member.
Ted Poe will NOT be my congressman either. Let's hear some cheers!
Now I must say that if the race for my congressional member was between Paul and Poe, I’d pick Paul. I’ve had Poe for however long now. At least Paul might get something done for his district unlike Poe, who spends his time waiting for an appearance on one of the right-wing Fox News shows. Wait, is that a redundancy? Otherwise you can find Poe on the border trying shoo the Mexicans away.
The question is, who will run the race for Congress in our district? Will some new Republican emerge from the Brazosport area or perhaps even one from Galveston or Beaumont? Beaumont has long had a Yellow Dog Democrat streak, pushed along by a large organized labor population. A lot of that has, unfortunately, changed. There are capable Democrats right here in Jefferson County who could dip into that pool of wealthy trial lawyer moolah that exists in an area in which the judicial reform types have called “A Judicial Hellhole.” Such wealth couldn’t hurt any candidate for Congress in our neck of the woods. I have asked before why no real Democrat challenge against Poe was organized during the last election. I have yet to get an answer. Poe’s only opponent in 2010 was a Libertarian.
One of the names that immediately pops up as a possible Democratic candidate is former U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson. The former Jefferson County Tax Assessor-Collector lost out during the anti-Democrat sweep during the past election when Lampson ran for the seat vacated by convicted former House GOP kingpin Tom DeLay. Another Democrat name I heard mentioned today was former Jefferson County Judge Carl Griffith. There are other pols who could make a run, former Dem State Sen. David Bernsen, for one. Current Texas legislators, Democrat Rep. Joe Deshotel is a name to float, and since he became a turncoat last year, I guess you could also mention former Democrat-turned GOP Texas House Rep. Allan Ritter.
I have no idea the breadth of Democrat or GOP “talent” which lies in the new congressional district in counties such as Brazoria and Galveston. But if the congressional district holds up to judicial review we might see ourselves with a good-old Southeast Texas “whoop ass” which is something we haven”t seen in a long time in our area U.S. House races. Whomever it might be who ultimately ends up as my congressman, all I hope — whether the lawmaker is a “D” or a “R” — is that the person is a better representative than Ron Paul and Ted Poe.That, of course, isn’t a very high bar I realize.
For now, today at least, I can say: “Yippie-yi-yay!”
“Although I am disappointed lawmakers did not finalize legislation that would have banned sanctuary cities, I commend the Legislature’s work to pass measures that further strengthen our legal system through loser pays lawsuit reform, uphold the integrity of the ballot box by requiring voters to present photo ID at polling places, protect unborn life by requiring an ultrasound before an abortion, strengthen private property rights, and increase penalties for individuals who participate in human trafficking,” Goodhair said in a news release. “And although the airport pat-down bill did not pass, it did initiate a public discussion and some changes in airport security procedures.”
The long-winded Perry statement highlighted what he considered accomplishments during this year’s biennial session and subsequent special session. Not touted by Perry is the damage done by his insistence the state’s nearly $6 billion reserve, or “Rainy Day Fund,” remains in tact while Texas teachers see massive job cuts. In fact, Perry bragged on the healthy fund in New York City while sticking his foot in the water for a presidential run.
Despite the efforts of Perry and the goofballs in the Texas Legislature, at least a bill that might have disrupted air travel and could have put in jeopardy the federal government as well as its efforts to keep the flying public safe went down in flames. Too bad. So sad. Childish yes. Do I give a rat’s rectum? No. I am on vacation.
