371 search results for "Rick Perry"

Rick Perry: energy czar
by Tom Sullivan

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.

Among the political right’s weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise and ruthless othering. They love their othering. So much so that wingnuts were throwing down the commie card decades after proclaiming St. Ronald of Reagan had slain the Evil Empire and won the Cold War. During one of the recent political conventions (can’t find a link), Rachel Maddow was on an MSNBC panel with Pat Buchanan when Buchanan made some “socialist” or what-have-you remark about her. Maddow grinned, eyes wide like it was the highlight of her career. Pat Buchanan is red-baiting me!

President Barack Obama, the Kenyan-atheist-Muslim-socialist-usurper, leaves office tomorrow perhaps the most othered political figure in wingnut lore. Remember when “Obama’s czars” was the othering du jour over which the right wing got hot and bothered? Yeah, neither do they.

Ah, but I was so much older then.

But it all came back yesterday when I “red” about Gov. Rick Perry tackling the plum assignment he thought he’d lucked into in the Donald Trump administration. From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — When President-elect Donald J. Trump offered Rick Perry the job of energy secretary five weeks ago, Mr. Perry gladly accepted, believing he was taking on a role as a global ambassador for the American oil and gas industry that he had long championed in his home state.

In the days after, Mr. Perry, the former Texas governor, discovered that he would be no such thing — that in fact, if confirmed by the Senate, he would become the steward of a vast national security complex he knew almost nothing about, caring for the most fearsome weapons on the planet, the United States’ nuclear arsenal.

Don’t laugh. Perry’s future boss, the man who tomorrow will have with his short finger on the nuclear trigger, is just as clueless as Governor Goodhair.

Mr. Perry, who once called for the elimination of the Energy Department, will begin the confirmation process Thursday with a hearing before the Senate Energy Committee. If approved by the Senate, he will take over from a secretary, Ernest J. Moniz, who was chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics department and directed the linear accelerator at M.I.T.’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science. Before Mr. Moniz, the job belonged to Steven Chu, a physicist who won a Nobel Prize.

Rick Perry: energy czar.

Perry joins a short parade of the unqualified auditioning on Capitol Hill this week for Trump’s newest reality show. Betsy DeVos: education czar. Tom Price: Health and Human Services czar. Scott Pruitt: environment czar. Yet there is precious little conservative alarmism about Trump’s czars. Isn’t that strange?

That’s probably just because so few of Trump’s czars have cleared vetting yet. Bloomberg:

Politico’s Michael Crowley has a nice piece explaining the missing National Security Council staffers, and the dangers that could cause if there’s an early crisis. Hundreds of briefing papers have been created by Obama’s NSC and sent to Team Trump, but the New York Times reports that no one knows if they’ve been reviewed.

[…]

And the same is true in department after department. Not to mention agencies without anyone at all nominated by the president-elect.

Overall, out of 690 positions requiring Senate confirmation tracked by the Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, Trump has come up with only 28 people so far.

Good thing Trump has postponed any crises until Monday.

Charlie Pierce observes:

Remember, this is the administration that, in a break with tradition, is demanding that career diplomats leave their posts promptly when the Lincoln Bible bursts into flame beneath Trump’s hand on Friday. There are going to be an awful lot of phones ringing unanswered by Friday afternoon.

Unless, of course, they’ve all been outsourced to Lubyanka Square.

Post-inauguration Washington will be like that scene in Die Hard with a Vengeance when the candy-stealing kid says, “All the cops are into something. It’s Christmas! You could steal City Hall.” Almost as if that was the plan.

World Party:

We’re setting sail to the place on the map
From which no one has ever returned
Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool
By the light of the crosses that burned
Drawn by the promise of the women and the lace
And the gold and the cotton and pearls
It’s the place where they keep all the darkness you need
You sail away from the light of the world on this trip, baby
You will pay tomorrow
You’re gonna pay tomorrow
You will pay tomorrow

Oh, oh, oh
Save me, save me from tomorrow
I don’t want to sail with this ship of fools, no, no
Oh, save me, save me from tomorrow
I don’t want to sail with this ship of fools, no, no
I want to run and hide right now

Rick Perry: Gold star parents should shut up or expect to be vilified

by digby

… at least the one’s who attack Trump. TPM wrote up this interview with Rick Perry in which he proves once again that he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed:

…In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Perry charged Khan with striking “the first blow” by speaking at the convention.

“In a campaign, if you’re going to go out and think that you can take a shot at somebody and not have incoming coming back at you, shame on you,” Perry said.

He cited Khan’s remarks as a justification for the fiery response from Trump and his supporters, saying that Khan “politically used his time on that stage to go after Donald Trump” and therefore should not get a “free ride” in response.

“Because he had a son that was lost in this war against terror,” Perry asked, “that gives him a free ride to say whatever he would like against a candidate that he is not for? That is not proper. That is not correct.

I guess Perry didn’t bother to watch the RNC because there was a lady there who personally blamed Hillary Clinton for the death of her son and said “Hillary for Prison, she deserves to be in stripes!” — for something that eight different investigations have shown she did not do.

And the Democrats and Clinton didn’t “hit back.” They did nothing in return except extend their condolences for her loss.  You can bet that if she had been on the other side the likes of Trump and Perry would have ripped her to shreds.

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Rick Perry wants to reduce the collateral damage in our movie theatres

by digby

Since gun violence is inevitable — like earthquakes and hurricanes — Perry thinks that if we just have more bullets flying in movie theatres there might, maybe, be fewer casualties among average citizens.

Rick Perry said in an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, earlier this week shows why gun-free zones are “a bad idea” and said he believes people should be able to take their firearms to the movies.

“I think that it makes a lot of sense to send a message across this country,” Perry said when asked by host Jake Tapper if the former governor believed a way to prevent such violence would be to allow moviegoers to take guns inside. “If we believe in the Second Amendment, and we believe in people’s right to protect themselves and defend themselves, and their families.”

John Russell “Rusty” Houser on Thursday shot 11 people, killing two, in a theater using a handgun he legally purchased from a pawn shop, authorities have said. Houser, who authorities say had a history of legal and mental problems, then turned the gun on himself.

“I believe that, with all my heart, that if you have the citizens who are well trained, and particularly in these places that are considered to be gun-free zones, that we can stop that type of activity, or stop it before there’s as many people that are impacted as what we saw in Lafayette,” Perry said.

Right. All citizens must be trained as sharpshooters and carry loaded weapons at all times. for the sake of public safety.

Honestly, of all the daft wingnut ideas out there (and they are legion) this one never fails to amaze me. If you are ever tempted to think the Republicans are interested in practical solutions to problems this should cure of that misconception.

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Rick Perry has signed 279 death warrants. 279!!! And he wants to be president.

by digby

I don’t know if you’ve heard but Rick Perry is about to kill his 279th person today. And this person is severely mentally ill. It remains to be seen if he will agree to commute the sentence, even temporarily, or if the Supremes will weigh in. But the mere fact that this is happening is enough to turn your stomach.

I wrote about this and the history of the Democratic Party’s cynical calculation on the question of the death penalty at Salon today. Here’s the opening:

Perhaps the ugliest moment in former President Bill Clinton’s career was his decision to race back to Arkansas in the middle of the 1992 campaign to oversee the execution of a mentally disabled man named Ricky Ray Rector. It was a perfect example of fighting the last war in which it had become conventional wisdom that Michael Dukakis had blown his chances at the presidency largely because of his position on the death penalty. His answer to moderator Bernard Shaw’s question of whether he would support the death penalty should his wife be raped and murdered was, “no, I don’t, Bernard, and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime.” Journalist Roger Simon recounted the incident in 2007 and described the reaction among the reporters at the debate:

In the press room, the murmurs over Shaw’s question now turned to mutters over Dukakis’ answer. “He’s through.” “That’s all she wrote.” “Get the hook!”

The CW at the time was that the answer was seen as professorial and most importantly, lacking in the emotion we evidently require in a president. He should have rent his garments and howled in anger at the mere idea of such a terrible circumstance. But the lesson the Democrats took from that incident was that no candidate for president could be elected if he or she were against the death penalty as a matter of principle. (This was one of many opportunistic capitulations on alleged principles to come — welfare and gun control being just two examples.)

I also recount this notorious example of puerile sadism:

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker’s] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. “Did you meet with any of them?” I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. “No, I didn’t meet with any of them,” he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. “I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’

“What was her answer?” I wonder.

“Please,” Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “don’t kill me.”

I wonder if maybe Rick Perry will take to opportunity to be a “compassionate conservative” today. After all, his killing credentials are impeccable. He could use this as a “Sistah Soljah” moment.

But I doubt he’ll do it. These guys have never shown the least bit of concern for the morality of what they’re doing. Why start now?

Update: Thank God

11:47 a.m. Wednesday: The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of execution. The stay is only issued “pending further order of the court,” which is expected to set a schedule for consideration of Panetti’s appeal.

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Getting the job done for the good of Rick Perry’s costume

by digby

What a deal

“House Republicans plan to vote Thursday on a bill that would provide less than a fifth of the funding the president requested to address the ongoing border crisis. After more than 57,500 unaccompanied minors crossed the border illegally since October, President Barack Obama requested $3.7 billion to care for them, speed up deportation proceedings and attempt to deter illegal immigration. Senate Democrats proposed a $2.7 billion package. But the House GOP plan went from an expected $1.5 billion as of a week ago to less than $1 billion on Friday. On Tuesday, House Republicans announced the funding had been pared down even further to a $659 million package that was introduced on Tuesday. ‘I think we should do something before we go home, and we’re working to get there,’ House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters after meeting with Republican members.

Two-thirds of the bill’s funding would go toward border security, such as dispatching National Guard troops to the border, while one-third of the money is meant to provide humanitarian assistance.

So, one fifth of the request was granted. And two thirds of that will essentially be on behalf Rick Perry’s presidential campaign. That sounds like a big win for the wingnuts to me.

They may only control one house of congress but they know how to get the job done. For themselves. In this case, they’ll spend just enough money to allow themselves the privilege of saying they did something while actually paying for some silly “enforcement” that benefits them politically and keeps the “crisis” going. All in a day’s work.

Oh, and they’re making sure those “illegals” get the tough love that’s coming to them. It’s all good.

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California Republicans think bringing Rick Perry to speak for them is a good idea

by David Atkins

How out to lunch is the California Republican Party? They actually think bringing Rick Perry to town is a good idea:

Seemingly ready and raring for a second shot at the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has accepted the top speaking slot at the California Republican Party’s fall convention in Anaheim this fall.

Perry will speak to more than 1,000 members on the future of the party, focusing on next year’s midterm elections and the impending race for the presidency.

While California Republicans are certainly the minority in the state (they trail Democrats by 13 percentage points), the event is the nation’s largest state GOP gathering attracting state activists, donors and officials.

If California Republicans wanted to remind the voters that they don’t share California values, the best way they could do it is by bringing in the arch-conservative from Texas.

The Texan economy is a hollow mess of low wages, poor education, high poverty wages and flimsy safety nets. The California economy, meanwhile, is resurgent after voters gave Democrats a 2/3 supermajority in the statehouse. Yet Republicans are intent on trying to convince America and California of how well they’ve run Texas into the ground, and how much the rest of us should want that for ourselves.

Seems like a great bet.

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“The louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done.”

by digby

What a piece of garbage:

TEXAS GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: “In fact, even the woman who filibustered the Senate the other day was born into difficult circumstances. She was the daughter of as single woman, she was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas senate. It is just unfortunate that she hasn’t learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters.”

It really takes some brass for this privileged jackass to not only tell women what they can do with their own bodies but also lecture them on the lessons they should take from their own life experience. We’re not even allowed to have that, I guess.

But that’s not even the worst of it:

During his remarks, the Texas governor also described Davis’ filibuster as “hijacking of the Democratic process” and said of the pro-choice movement, “the louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done.”

Meanwhile, back in Ohio:

On Tuesday, anti-abortion Republicans in the state added yet another budget provision related to reproductive health. The new amendment would require doctors to look for a fetal heartbeat before performing an abortion, presumably with an unnecessary ultrasound procedure, and then “notify the woman about the presence of the heartbeat.” Abortion doctors would also be required to tell women about the fetus’ likelihood of “surviving to full term.”
[…]
They’ve found their chance with this budget amendment, which actually seeks to redefine the medical terms of pregnancy under Ohio law. The new provision defines a fetus as “human offspring developing during pregnancy from the moment of conception and includes the embryonic stage of development” and ultimately declares that pregnancy begins at fertilization. The commonly accepted scientific definition of pregnancy, however, is the point at which a fertilized egg becomes implanted in the uterine lining.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, changing those scientific definitions goes against decades of precedent in federal law — and could ultimately impact some forms of contraception, like the morning after pill. Emergency contraception is not actually an abortion because it doesn’t prevent implementation and has no effect on women who are already pregnant. But Ohio’s state law may soon define it that way anyway.

Ohio’s budget bill passed out of committee on Tuesday night, and now heads to full votes in the House and Senate on Thursday. Both chambers are expected to approve it. At this point, Gov. John Kasich (R) is the only lawmaker who will be able to edit the budget bill — and, if he chooses, remove some of the abortion-related provisions. But so far, he hasn’t indicated that he’s willing to make any changes once the legislation lands on his desk.

“I think the legislature has a right to stick things in budgets and put policy in budgets… There’s nothing out of the ordinary here in the way in which they’ve decided this,” Kasich said on Wednesday when asked about the fetal heartbeat provision. He said he would make a decision about the bill when it gets closer to the July 1 deadline for its passage. “I’ll look at the language, keeping in mind that I’m pro-life,” the governor added.

The right to abortion has been acknowledged for 40 years now. That they are still pulling this crap a full generation later proves that no matter how much you think your rights are secured, these people will be trying to roll them back. After all, just this week the US Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act at a time of systematic vote suppression.

It’s good to celebrate our progress. But nobody should be complacent.

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Get ready for round two: Rick Perry is calling for a second special session

by digby

He’s very determined:

Gov. Rick Perry is calling for the Texas Legislature to meet in a second special session to pass restrictions on abortion.

The first such effort died following a filibuster and rollicking late Tuesday night protest.

The announcement gives Republicans another crack at passing sweeping anti-abortion rules that would close nearly all clinics performing the procedure in the country’s second-largest state.

It passed the House, but died after Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis led a more than 12-hour filibuster effort. Hundreds of protesters then cheered, disrupting Senate proceedings as the session closed at midnight.

Perry can call as many 30-day extra sessions as he likes, but lawmakers can only take up those issues he assigns.

But he’s only doing it because forcing women to go through childbirth against their will is what ensures Real Americans’ freedom and liberty:

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Responding to Rick Perry

Texas Governor Rick Perry has undertaken an initiative to steal away jobs from California. First came an a small ad buy in California, followed by a personal tour of California in which he met with a number of business owners around the state encouraging them to move to Texas. Californians aren’t terribly worried about it, though:

California officials, however, aren’t that concerned. Business relocations account for only .03% of annual job losses and the state is doing well economically, according to the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development.

“I can understand why Rick Perry is interested in California. We were the national jobs leader for most of the last year with 257,000 new private sector jobs,” said Kish Rajan, the office’s director. “Real job creation comes from California’s history as a national leader in start-ups and the expansion of homegrown businesses.”

Jerry Brown himself was even less kind:

“It’s not a serious story, guys,” the Democratic governor told reporters at a business event here. “It’s not a burp. It’s barely a fart.”

The ad buy Perry announced Monday is relatively small, at about $24,000, but it gained widespread attention in the media. Brown called the amount “the smallest entry into the media market of California.”

“If they want to get in the game, let them spend $25 million on radio and television,” Brown said. “Then I’ll take them seriously.”

Still, some communities may be directly affected by Perry’s overtures. One of those is the city of Oxnard, where Rick Perry is attempting to steal away the planned $20 million expansion of Haas Automation, a machining company located in Oxnard. Perry met with owner Gene Haas yesterday, and yours truly was on hand to protest. The Ventura County Democratic Party (of which I’m the Chair) also issued the following statement:

Ventura County Democrats hope that Texas Governor Rick Perry will learn from California’s recent success how he can improve his state’s dismal record on poverty, wages, education standards and social services. The Golden State has the most Fortune 500 companies of any in the nation, with over 100,000 new businesses started every year. We’re confident that despite Rick Perry’s effort to steal away the fruits of California’s labor to prop up the hollow Texan economy, California businesses will see past his empty promises and continue to enjoy California’s warm, prosperous and demand-driven economic climate.

It’s also worth noting that Gene Haas went to prison for tax evasion and witness intimidation. There’s little doubt that Rick Perry targeted him as someone particularly sensitive to tax issues.

But as Greg LeRoy persuasively argues in his excellent book The Great American Jobs Scam, most companies don’t actually make their location and expansion decisions based on tax and incentive policies. They do so based on a variety of other factors, including education, cost of living, quality of life, and many others. They simply pretend to make decisions on that basis in order to force competing communities into concessions that ultimately won’t significantly affect the final decision.

It’s more than likely that Gene Haas is playing the same game: using the attention to play Texas and California off one another to extract concessions that won’t ultimately affect his final decision.

Regardless, the proper way to respond to the predations of red state governors like Rick Perry is to point out the egregious failures in their own states. Failures like high poverty rates, low wages and inadequate education standards. There is no reason for blue states to be on the defensive when the likes of Rick Perry come calling. Blue states tend to be the leaders in innovation and high-wage job growth, while red states hollow out their economies with low wages and low quality of life. No matter where they live, either to defend their own states or to change them, progressives shouldn’t shy away from saying so.

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Rick Perry needs to zip it

by digby

A little friendly rivalry is fine, but Texas Governor Rick Perry’s taking it a bit far. Here’s the Sacramento Bee:

Poor Texas. With its high dropout rate, lack of health insurance coverage and economic disparities, the Lone Star State appears to be desperate, or least its governor is. How else to explain Gov. Rick Perry’s unseemly radio ads attempting to lure businesses away from California?

“Building a business is tough, but I hear building a business in California is next to impossible,” the Republican governor says in the ad. “This is Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and I have a message for California businesses: Come check out Texas.”

Yes, come check out Texas. Check out a state that ranks dead last in the percent of its population with high school diplomas. Come check out a state that is last in mental health expenditures and workers’ compensation coverage. Come check out a state that ranks first in the number of executions, first in the number of uninsured, first in the amount of carbon dioxide emitted and first in the amount of toxic chemicals released into water.

Texas certainly has some attractions for business, and California certainly needs to work harder to create a friendly place to start companies and grow jobs. But California is creating businesses all the time, partly because of our natural assets – great weather and stunning mountains, beaches and deserts – and an excellent although underfunded system of higher education.

If we invest in that system and protect our environment, our state will continue to create companies such as Apple, Google, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Craigslist, Yelp, Twitter, Sun Microsystems, Genentech, Cisco, Intel and Qualcomm, and the list goes on and on.

Also too: The 850 mile coastline. The tidal shoreline including small bays and inlets is 3427 miles. Plus mountains. And other stuff.

Texas certainly has much to recommend it, not the least of which is some very good people. But it’s silly for Perry to diss California. After all, Republicans once ran California too. And then they decided to be nasty to Latinos. It didn’t work out well for them. There’s every reason to believe it won’t work out for them well in Texas either.

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