I hadn’t really taken much notice of this Rick Perry guy. I mean I’d read about him, but I hadn’t actually seen him in action… until now.
Hoo boy.
This is both a dim bulb and a true believer! In this video, he’s convinced that abstinence-only education works, despite all evidence, because to believe otherwise would threaten his world view. Therefore any “facts” that show otherwise are simply… unimportant.
And, in case you missed it, Jon Stewart does an absolutely brilliant take on the media pretending Ron Paul doesn’t exist…
Video removed… but available here
Wow, I made it a minute deep into that Perry clip before having to stop it. It was simply too cringe-inducing. I’m one of those people with a low threshold for vicarious embarrassment, which apparently suggests that I’m highly empathetic (http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/15/6472696-why-watching-the-office-makes-us-cringe)… so I’ve got that going for me.
And yeah, the Daily Show clip re: the media’s (non)-coverage of Ron Paul was hilarious.
Perry is a social conservative–what do you expect him to say? “Gosh, we have a high teenage pregnancy rate? I guess my program doesn’t work! Back to the drawing board!”
Ah, no. He’s going to say what the voters want him to say, even if it is kinda dumb.
As for Stewart, that was a nice spot on Ron Paul. The media sucks, and I just wanted to smash my fist into the smirks of some of those guys. They’re having their fun, but they are generating a LOT of resentment among a subsection of Republican voters who are going to just stay home when the party nominates its usual objectionable bore for the candidacy. PERRY WILL LOSE to Obama.
Personally, I really dislike Perry, mostly for his over the top socially conservative positions. He has presided over the execution of a man who was likely innocent and didn’t even lift a finger. It’s evil. He sure as Hell isn’t going to be legalizing MJ during his presidency.
As a likely Republican (fiscally conservative) voter, I’m NOT going to take it this time around. Those guys can giggle and smirk and have themselves a good old time excluding Paul, but if Perry is the man when we come down to the election, I’m voting Obama even knowing what I’m getting this time around.
Not sure if anyone has seen this story yet, but I think we can expect a repeat of the Jared Loughner “Reefer Madness” treatment from the usual suspects. (Although I’m beginning to suspect that naming your child “Jared” might be the real culprit.)
“Police were already keeping an eye on 17-year-old expelled student Jared Cano when they were tipped off that he was allegedly planning to bomb his old high school when classes resumed. In his apartment, they found shrapnel, plastic tubing, timing and fuse devices that he was amassing in a plot he intended to be worse than the Columbine mass killings, police said Wednesday.”
“He also had a marijuana-growing operation, police said. On his Facebook page, he says he attends the ‘University of Marijuana,’ where he is studying ‘how to grow weed.'”
The thing about Rick Perry, he’s a states’ rights fanatic. I’m not going to judge him until he gets the question about 2012 marijuana ballot measures. Would his justice department allow states to end prohibition within their own jurisdictions? He supports it for gay marriage, so it stands to reason he might support it for marijuana.
We shall see.
Yes, he did say he supports states’ rights on gay marriage, until he was called on the carpet by the Family Research Council. They he ‘clarified’ that he was in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage nation-wide. Of course, he may just be pandering to the social conservatives to get the nomination. It’ll be interesting to see if he’s a real states’ rights supporter, or only one when the wind blows southerly.
Ugh… I hadn’t seen his “clarification.” That’s disappointing. On the bright side, at least he acknowledges that a constitutional amendment would be required. BTW, does anyone know if he support the repeal of the constitutional amendment that authorized Congress to wage the current war on drugs? (What number was that again?)
His opinion on abstinence education has as much to do with science as Obama’s position on medical marijuana.
Perry was Boosh jr’s Lt Governor and walked in when W got (s)elected (p)resident. Then he beat out Kay Baily Hutchinson and with $4 million from Karl Rove beat Jim Hightower. Now he needs no money because he has been choosen by church profits. Just another Southern Babtist Neocon, nothing even close to a Conservative.
Perry, Romney Burnish Drug Warrior Credentials
Krugman: The Texas unmiracle
What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states. I believe that the appropriate response to this insight is “Well, duh.†The point is that arguing from this experience that depressing wages and dismantling regulation in America as a whole would create more jobs — which is, whatever Perry may say, what Perrynomics amounts to in practice — involves a fallacy of composition: Every state can’t lure jobs away from every other state.
Guide to Rick Perry’s record
Aug. 15: Jim Hightower, former Agriculture Commissioner of Texas, and Erica Grieder, who covers Texas for The Economist, join The Last Word with details on the Texas governor and his stance on the issues.
Scary Rick Perry embraces the Prophets of the New Apostolic Reformation movement
Rick Perry seems to be laying the groundwork for a religious crusade for the presidency by courting some Pentecostal self styled prophets and apostles leading the New Apostolic Reformation movement. What is the New Apostolic Reformation movement? This comes from what should be a must read article at the Texas Observer:
Rick Perry’s Army of God
On this day, the Lord’s messengers arrived in the form of two Texas pastors, Tom Schlueter of Arlington and Bob Long of San Marcos, who called on Perry in the governor’s office inside the state Capitol. Schlueter and Long both oversee small congregations, but they are more than just pastors. They consider themselves modern-day apostles and prophets, blessed with the same gifts as Old Testament prophets or New Testament apostles.
Being from Texas,,,please elect Perry and get him out of my state!
I thought people from foreign countries like Texas were ineligible.
Oh my name it is nothin’. My age it means less. The country I come from. Is called the Midwest. I’s taught and brought up there. The laws to abide. And that the land that I live in. Has God on its side. Oh the history books tell it. They tell it so well. The cavalries charged. The Indians fell. The cavalries charged. The Indians died. Oh the country was young. With God on its side. Oh the Spanish-American. War had its day. And the Civil War too. Was soon laid away. And the names of the heroes. l’s made to memorize. With guns in their hands. And God on their side.
AMERICA- Not A Christian Nation
Oh the First World War, boys. It closed out its fate. The reason for fighting. I never got straight. But I learned to accept it. Accept it with pride. For you don’t count the dead.
When God’s on your side. When the Second World War. Came to an end. We forgave the Germans. And we were friends. Though they murdered six million. In the ovens they fried. The Germans now too. Have God on their side. I’ve learned to hate Russians. All through my whole life. If another war starts. It’s them we must fight. To hate them and fear them. To run and to hide. And accept it all bravely. With God on my side.
Blasphemy
But now we got weapons. Of the chemical dust. If fire them we’re forced to. Then fire them we must. One push of the button. And a shot the world wide. And you never ask questions. When God’s on your side. Through many dark hour. I’ve been thinkin’ about this. That Jesus Christ. Was betrayed by a kiss. But I can’t think for you. You’ll have to decide. Whether Judas Iscariot. Had God on his side. So now as I’m leavin’. I’m weary as Hell. The confusion I’m feelin’. Ain’t no tongue can tell. The words fill my head. And fall to the floor. If God’s on our side. He’ll stop the next war. dylan
Perry is a fanatic. He is dangerous and it scares hell out of me that this is the kind of freakazoid they are coming forward with right now. In ordinary times I’d chuckle and not worry a wole bunch about him (or the lunatic Bachmann). But anybody they come up with has got a good chance of beating Obama.
Good to see ya Clay!
Beats me how these dim bulbs get elected with moron tattooed on their foreheads…. first shrub, now perry…. also, check out jon stewart’s take on rick santorum trying to make an analogy between gay marriage and paper towel, or a glass of water…. bachman, palin, the list goes on…. only in america could these people get elected…
.
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They bring home the bacon Peter.
It’s nothing strange to have the public disregard evidence of incompetence. But also I think it unlikely that your presumption that the Know Nothings understand the definition of the word “moron” has any basis in fact.
Rick Perry is affiliated with a group called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a religious sect whose goal is to subvert democracy and replace it with a full blown theocracy. The NAR and Perry would give the sadomorality cops free reign over American society.
More here: http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/rick-perrys-army-of-god
It’s funny, the moderator clearly blows Rick Perry’s mind about halfway through the video when Perry is simply speechless. I really don’t want to have to make a decision between Barry or this moron but if such a disappointing choice arises I guess it will mean my all-important vote in Florida will be wasted on a third party candidate on principle.
Perry is so still when he is thinking that the video compression thinks it is a still frame! That was hard to watch.
Pitiful, just pitiful. And there will be an appalling number of people who will vote for him if he’s nominated because he’s a “Christian.” Ha! If I were Jesus I think I would come down and smack him up ‘side the head for defaming my name.
If you’re looking for another laugh, watch the second half of this video from Fox Business Network’s Bulls and Bears program where Reason’s Matt Welch is asked about his support for legalizing marijuana. I’ve provided a transcript for most of the relevant exchange below. The level of stupid the host brings to the subject is truly impressive.
Host: The FBI would find really problematic your position to uh legalize marijuana because of the law enforcement problems and criminality- criminality there…also the drug gangs would cost more than any fiscal revenue you think would come in from taxing marijuana. They say no way, you should not do it, and it would hurt the uh… you know the country’s children as well.
Welch: Do you hear a lot of talk about the alcohol gangs that maraud the countryside? No, you did during the 1920’s because there was prohibition back then.
Host: [interrupting] No, but Mexican cartels – no wait a minute. There are cartels who are posing law enforcement problems who basically try to smuggle in pot into the United States and it’s a real serious issue with crime and with gangs so that is a serious problem for the FBI.
Welch: No, but the prohibition creates the crime problem. It’s not that the crime problem will go away in Mexico, for sure. But just like in alcohol, if you allowed for the cultivation of marijuana in America, you wouldn’t have to smuggle it at high prices from Mexico. You could grow it in California and Oregon and tax it and regulate it, and prices would go down and all the violence associated with it.
Host: [interrupting] You’d still have criminality. You’d still have a black market and criminality.
Welch: [momentary stunned silence] But if it’s legal, you’re going to have less of a black market. That’s just a fundamental definition of terms.
Host: (dismissively) All right.
‘Stupid’ isn’t the word. What you witness there is institutionalized ignorance. The kind that Upton Sinclair wrote about. Willful obfuscation. Refusal to understand. I run into this all the time on political blogs, where factual evidence is presented on demand from a skeptic, and immediately discarded because it doesn’t match the skeptic’s preconceived (and demonstrably, proven false) ideas.
This is why I keep saying that, when it comes to cannabis issues, the main(a.k.a. lame)stream media must have some sort of editorial playbook which requires a sneering, condescending attitude regarding reportage on cannabis-related events, particularly those involving relegalization efforts.
The evidence is just too overwhelming: almost every mention of such efforts is accompanied by language that deprecates both the concept and its’ adherents. (“Pothead dreams go up in smoke” and other similar jibes.)
The intent, derived from long observation, appears to be to belittle the concept as somehow being childish and not worthy of serious consideration, as the both the idea and its’ proponents are being cast as immature and selfish in their motivations.
When it appears that the efforts may actually be fruitful, such as with what almost happened with Prop19, the media begins to lessen the ‘titter factor’ in their reportage and begin to take the matter seriously. If the effort fails, the snickering condescension resumes. Again, what else could this be but evidence of that aforementioned editorial ‘playbook’.
Again, this is not accidental. Too many repetitions over three decades of observation can provide only one such conclusion. The blow-dried newsreaders and bile-spewing dead-tree pundits who smirk and titter about cannabis issues are doing so on order.
Francis,
Exasperating, isn’t it? The argument that prohibition causes the violence and the criminality is so plain to us over here that it is difficult to imagine how you could see things otherwise. But plenty of people do, maybe even still a majority.
This is what I call the ‘3.9 factor’, as in
2 + 2 = 3.9
The media has a retinal blind spot the size of Jupiter when it comes to the obvious connection between prohibition and the crime, death and destruction it creates.
Like a marathon runner who trips and falls 2 inches before the finish line, they keep running right up to the obvious conclusion and then fall flat on their face, parroting propaganda and bromides instead of making the screamingly obvious logical, inescapable deduction.
More evidence of that above-mentioned ‘playbook’…
Nicely put. I know others have pointed this out, but it’s worth repeating. It is truly amazing (not to mention depressing) that the prohibitionists’ propaganda has successfully convinced so many people to blame “drugs” for the violence and criminality that are actually a result of drug prohibition. Thus, one of prohibition’s greatest failures, the death and destruction it creates, is paradoxically used to perpetuate its continued support! You’re right that the true connection is obvious…once you stop and think about it. But too many people have never done that.
There is a silver lining though. Because the truth is so blindingly obvious, so intuitive, and so easy to demonstrate via the example of alcohol prohibition, explaining this connection to skeptics should represent some pretty low-hanging fruit. Plus, once they “get it,” you’ve done more than just take away one of their reasons for supporting prohibition, you’ve simultaneously given them a strong reason for supporting reform. (Although I admit that Fox host might be hopeless.)
I just found that video. You can find it on Reason here: http://reason.com/blog#article_151661
I watched it and I didn’t think they were that harsh. Remember, Fox at least invites Reason to debate things with them, and Fox is well aware of Reason’s ideological positions. Fox is conservative, but they have to walk a find line reconciling their more libertarian watchers with their more socially conservative watchers–two groups who really don’t get along very well.
So they throw the libertarians a bone from time to time to keep them watching. It’s not much, but it gives Reason a chance to promote its views, which is more than you’re likely to see from, say, MSNBC.
You didn’t think she was that harsh?! Did we watch the same video? I agree that Fox is generally pretty good about inviting on libertarian guests. But it was pretty clear that the host wasn’t just playing the role of skeptic for the purposes of teeing up the question on “criminality.” She essentially asked the same question three times!!! Yet she appeared to be unable (or unwilling as kaptinemo suggests) to understand that the link between marijuana and violence is really a link between prohibition and violence. And this was despite the fact that Matt explained it pretty darn well. (It’s also not rocket science or a particularly new observation.) It was surreal.
“There was among the younger generation a blind eagerness to assert one’s own personality against everyone else at any cost, a fury of what may be called ‘intellectual abdication’, a deep dislike of any effort to explore and bring light by means of logic and reflection into that dark zone which exists in our spirit and where the lower instincts of our nature are kept in check. Mussolini was proud to define himself as antirational, instinctive, anti-intellectual, pragmatic. He disparaged logic and reason as signs of spiritual poverty and creators of weakness of will.
…Mussolini succeeded wonderfully in turning all notions topsy-turvy so well that there were people who never suspected that under a curtain of ‘revolutionary’ words a capitalist-militarist undertaking was being carried out. He used to say: ‘The greater the confusion the better.‘â€
–Gaetano Salvemini, The Origins of Fascism in Italy, 1942; Roberto Vivarelli trans., 1973, pp. 342-3.
C’mon now, ya’ll are letting me down! 23 comments and nobody noticed that Perry basically said that steriod testing is as worthless as abstinence education?
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