The Body Count -- Rick Perry

A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Off Luxury Liner Trump

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, a contender along with Trump in 2016 for the presidency and one of Trump's longest serving cabinet members, will be leaving his post as Energy Secretary by the end of November.

Not known as a rocket scientist, Perry has been implicated in the Ukraine extortion scheme because he attended last May President Zelensky's inauguration (in place of VP Pence). So far no evidence has emerged of his joining the pressure campaign on Zelensky to dig up dirt on the Bidens, but "Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to Perry on Tuesday asking him what instructions Trump gave him when the Cabinet official flew to Ukraine in May, as well as who asked Perry to go there in the first place. And three House committees on Monday issued a sweeping subpoena to Trump's personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in part seeking documents related to Perry" (Dino Grandoni).

Perry will not be missed at the Energy Department. He's been a great promoter of fossil fuels (particularly coal).

The Rest of the World Must Declare Us a "Rogue Nation"

“You are a slow learner, Winston."

"How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

― George Orwell, 1984

The climate-change-denier in chief, Donald Trump, has named fellow climate-change-deniers to top posts in his administration -- Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency, Rick Perry at the Energy Department, and Ryan Zinke at the Interior Department.

During the transition period (the first week of December), Trump officials demanded that the Energy Department turn over the names of scientists who had worked on President Obama's climate change initiative, a decree that the department refused, as anyone familiar with the history of witch hunts should have done.

Just yesterday, employees at several federal agencies including the Department of Agriculture have been barred by the Trump administration from making any statements, or providing any documents to the public or journalists -- a "gag order."

A memo sent to staff of the Environmental Protection Agency said that no press releases were to be sent to "external audiences" and that "no social media will be going out," according to a report by The Hill. The memo also says that a digital strategist will be coming in to oversee the agency's social-media policies, and that "existing, individually controlled social-media accounts may become more centrally controlled."

Centrally controlled. Big Brother is watching you.

Staff at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service also got a memo on Monday telling them not to provide any documents to the public, including press releases and social-media content. The email told employees, including about 2,000 staff scientists, that "starting immediately and until further notice," they were not to release any documents or post anything to social media.

The Trump presidency: "We will strangle science in its cradle in order to deny that two plus two is four."

No Hiding Trump's Hostility Toward Government

Okay, we get it, Mr. Trump. You're expressing your perfect contempt for the various departments of government to which you're appointing people with either (a) no qualifications for managing those departments or (b) open hostility toward the departments they are being appointed to manage.

Like this fool.

That's really a funny joke. Hahahahaha. Can't wait to see how it all turns out, if the good people who voted for you will be laughing too.

The scorecard, so far:

Steven Mnuchin at Treasury wants to do away with Dodd-Frank

Andrew Puzder at Labor is a vocal critic of increasing the minimum wage and an opponent of rules that would make more workers eligible for overtime pay

Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency is a primary architect of legal challenges on President Barack Obama’s environmental regulations

Tom Price at the Department of Health and Human Services wants to phase out Medicare

Ben Carson at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who believes that the pyramids were grain storage bins

Jeff Sessions at Justice is no friend of either civil rights or voting rights

Betsy DeVos at the Education Department who intends to cut "the public" out of public education

This bunch has tilted radically to the 1% and decidedly away from "those forgotten people" Trump said he wanted to help. Yeah, these guys are really gonna help!

Shooting Blanks

Okay. I posted this photo yesterday. Then, overnight, I thought that even a prick like Rick wouldn't dare pose in this ridiculous, self-defeating way, and I concluded by the morning light that the photo must be photoshopped. So I took it down this morning. Have been searching since for confirmation.

Juanita Jean thinks it's real, which is good enough for me. Until someone else offers proof to the contrary.

Wait. What?

Texas, My Texas

The Texas state song begins "Texas, Our Texas! all hail the mighty State!" We all learned it in grade school, even in the Panhandle, and as with most state songs, we rarely contemplated the world-view behind the words.

You might be excused for taking that command -- "all hail" -- as just home-state puffery, some fat-gut braggadocio, except there comes the fourth line of the song: "O Empire wide and glorious, you stand supremely blest."

The Roman imperialism at the heart of Texans' view of themselves ain't just atmospherics. It's cultural DNA.

So hardly anyone blinked in Texas when Gov. Rick Perry suggested in 2009 that the state might productively secede from the rest of us, and even though he's now saying that ain't a good idea (which tells you just about everything you need to know about Rick Perry as a politician), I credit the governor with giving oomph to the current rage down there to sign the petition for secession. No other state where that frivolous gesture got started has the numbers of eager "Seceshes" as Texas has.

The song needs editing: "Texas, our Texas. Aw, hell! The mighty state."

Okay now. So Texas goes back to being its own Empire. You know what the United States of America is going to need immediately? A high fence, especially separating the Empire of Texas from New Mexico and approaches to Colorado. Because Texans lose their minds at the sight of running surface water and have been colonizing the Rockies for decades. Gotta stop that.

My friend Butch Morrison speculated on Facebook about those Texans who will wind up in this country through no fault of their own and become productive Americans. They will need a clear path to American citizenship. And what about those Texans who came here to work to provide better lives for their families? Who'll blame them, once the economy in their own country collapses after the cessation of US subsidies for agriculture and oil drilling, among others?

We'll have to get tough on immigration. I'm thinking long-form birth certificates just to visit in our country!

Republicans, Out of the Closet?

 The national Republican Party seems pretty well positioned now as opposed (and rock-ribbed, about it, too!) to birth control. Way to go, guys. It's not like that gender gap was as wide as it might be.

It was one thing for religious universities and hospitals to see contraception as an unconscionable violation of their faith (and I ain't gonna wade into a debate on religions that claim to own the mortgage on every woman's womb). The president pulled the rug out from under that huff-'n'-puff fit the churches were throwing: Under the president's revision of the rule, women will still get guaranteed access to birth control without co-pays or premiums, no matter where they work, and those religious institutions can refuse to cover it. But, insurance companies will have to step in and do what they should have been doing anyway.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party, led by its presidential candidates and certain members of Congress, most of whom were marinating in self-righteousness all weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), found themselves waaaay out there on that untenable limb -- on the record opposing birth control. (Madam Virginia Foxx sent out her own "I'm-a-good-Catholic-er-Baptist-and-don't-you-forget-it, Bitch" press release. Madam Foxx is not one to pass up an opportunity to pile on.)

The avatar of the Newly Theocratized Republican Party (sorry, Rick Perry): Rick Santorum. He has said abortion doctors should be jailed. He insists birth control is bad. He vehemently opposes gay marriage. He firmly believes religion has a central place in government.

And he's driving Mitt Romney into the same Culture Wars ditch.

It is the biggest Valentine kiss the GOP could give Barack Obama.

Those cut-ups, The Capitol Steps, are at it again.

Bush The Third, Guns Blazing

It's clearly Rick Perry's nomination to lose. It's also clearly the Tea Party's party now. That was nowhere more obvious than when spontaneous cheering erupted in the Reagan Library when Perry's death penalty record in Texas was reviewed -- 234 people put to death. Damn right! The bloody-minded have their candidate!

Perry wouldn't back down, which is the only thing that counts for Tea Partiers. Democrats too, since they have a president who seems to do little else.

The fact that Perry wouldn't answer straight questions with straight answers will not matter at all. Why do a quarter of Texans lack health insurance, if your state is so well governed? His answer: “What [Texans] would like to see is the federal government get out of their business!” In other words (we think), it's none of your effing business. He also attacked Massachusetts and by extension Gov. Mittens, for its government mandated, effing socialist health-care.

Perry was asked (twice!), Who are the scientists ("the many scientists") who you say have cast doubt on global climate change? Perry couldn't name a single one. Instead, he compared himself to Galileo in one of the dumbest moments of the night, as though Galileo wasn't the scientist of the 16th and 17th centuries who suffered at the hands of the science-denying Rick Perrys of that age. But never mind.

He pitched to the 20-somethings that Social Security is a criminal enterprise, a fraud, aimed at taking their money and giving it to granny. Some 20-somethings seem to have bought into this political head-fake. But 20-somethings also don't tend to vote in Republican primaries, so we'll see how that Social-Security-Ponzi-Scheme daisy chain works out for him in the long haul. But we've got it clear now: The Perry Doctrine is that Social Security = Public Menace.

The one issue on which Perry wavered was his executive order in Texas to vaccinate 12-year-old girls against the HPV virus, especially considering his withering contempt for Gov. Mittens' "government mandate" for health care in Massachusetts. Perry's executive order was a mandate for government-sponsored health care. Not only that. The HPV vaccination is the gateway drug for increased teenage girl promiscuity, since the vaccinations are really about making sexual activity safer. Apparently, Big Pharma won that round in Texas, since they had drugs to sell at government mandate. Can't personally think of a more un-Republican thing for Perry to have done, and it was the one piece of his past history that seemed to cause him some visible nervousness.

FADING, FADING ... GONE

Jon Huntsman, you disappointed us! Your campaign has characterized those other six guys and the gal from Minnesota as "a bunch of cranks," but last night you seem to have been blissfully on some other plane of existence -- perhaps posing for a GQ photo spread -- and you conspicuously refused to take the (calfskin) gloves off. If you're not willing to fight for it, how are you any improvement over the incumbent?

Michele Bachmann ... eh.

PURE ENTERTAINMENT

Newt Gingrich, whose Statler-and-Waldorf angry muppet act has become a drinking game at our house.

Ron Paul, who I believe promised to get me a gallon of gas for a dime.

Herman Cain, who wandered off into the dusty weeds over "the Chilean model" for Social Security.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

Taller. Marginally more articulate. But with a similar arrogance, driven by a C- intellect and the bright idea that he's been chosen by God.

Peachy!

Michele's Survival Requires Rick's Extermination

An item in "Under the Dome" caught our eye. Bob Harris, an apparatchik of the old Jesse Helms machine and evidently an acolyte of "Freedom for Light Bulbs But Not for Women" Michele Bachmann, has founded an "independent campaign expenditure" fund to preemptively bash the dickens out of Texas Gov. (and HUGE JESUS-LOVER) Rick Perry (or "Parry").

His org is called "Keep Conservatives United," and he sez he intends to display Perry (or "Parry") in the political nude, so to speak, so you fans of Perry/Parry in the audience may want to wear your 3-D glasses.

Everyone in the Ames, Iowa, debate last night seemed just as pleased as fishhouse punch to have Rick coming in to the race, especially Ron Paul who opined that the more establishment candidates, the better for him, though we doubt he needs any more contrast to stand out substantially from the wallpaper (a.k.a., Mitt Romney).

Speaking of Romney, his grin-and-bear-it indulgence of the tantrums being thrown on every side of him last night strikes us as the thinnest of disguises. But we are glad to have him on the record from the Iowa State Fair: "Corporations are people, bitches, so suck it!"

God Hates Off-Shore Drilling?

Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tex.) got testy yesterday with a reporter, and some surprising news about Jehovah leaked out from the man who apparently knows Him best. The event was a "free enterprise" conference hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to push deregulation and anti-tax policies. During a press conference, an uppity reporter raised the BP oil disaster, the Massey coal mine disaster, and the misbehavior of Big Banks as a pattern which suggested that society might be better off with a little more regulation. Gov. Perry got so pissed he mangled his syntax:

We don't know what the event that has allowed [sic] for this massive oil to be released. And until we know that, I hope we don't see a knee-jerk reaction across this country that says we're going to shut down drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, because the cost to this country will be staggering .... From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented.

Gov. Perry didn't attempt to explain why God would act so unilaterally against British Petroleum.

The "God did it" explanation is perhaps slightly less inflammatory than the line Rush Limbaugh and Fox News have been pushing ... deliberate sabotage. Apparently, the foreign-born terrorist Barack Obama donned a wet suit and swam silently up to the Deepwater Horizon, 50 miles out, and ... Well, you know the rest of that sordid story!

Ah, Texas

Reader Jeff sent me this essay by James Moore about the current movement toward secession in Texas, a flirtation with treason led by that state's governor (and towering cathedral of sapience), Rick Perry.

James Moore is one of our favorite Texas authors, now that Molly Ivins is no more with us. He co-authored "Bush's Brain" about that other towering monument of self-aggrandisement, Karl Rove. It was in that book that I learned that Karl Rove and I shared Salt Lake City at the same time, he an aspiring Young Republican at Highland High School while I was studying Milton and English revolutionaries at the University of Utah. We turned out differently. He's rich.

Moore's little essay about some recent history of Texas separationists and the current Republican psychosis (it's called "defeat," guys) flooded me with my own memories of growing up in the Lone Star State, where most male babies seem to be born with a swagger and an innate drive to over-compensate.

Texans will talk to complete strangers. They almost prefer strangers, especially when delivering proclamations of intolerance. I was catching a plane in Houston once, and a gentleman in regulation Texas-wear -- a big white cowboy hat, boots, leather jacket (I'm NOT making this up) -- turned to me from the next seat over, asked, "Where bound?" I replied, "Washington, D.C." He snorted. "Whole place needs to be nuked," he said, and though the extravagance of that prescription seemed to invite laughter, you could tell from the steeliness of his gaze and the total lack of humor in his affect, that he totally and completely meant it.

For the next 30 minutes and until my flight was called, thankfully, he outlined a typical Texan's beef not just with the national government but pretty much with all government. I didn't argue with him. I mainly nodded and said "That so?" the way you'd converse with a meth addict playing with a gun.

In the household I grew up in, my father made fun of Texas dudes like that one, though he worked for them all his life, guys with big booming voices and big ideas and big egos. My father knew they called the shots, but they were just larger-than-usual pissants when the door was closed.

My political science teacher while I was still in Texas once told me, when the topic turned to Lyndon Baines Johnson and his whole history of chicanery, which was well known in Texas, "Son, given the choice between an outright crook and a complete idiot, Texans will always choose the crook."

In the case of Rick Perry, they apparently went with the idiot, and a larger-than-usual pissant.