The latest from the ongoing fiasco that is Texas school finance:
Monday, February 10, 2014
Revelation, chapter 4
We read chapter 4 of Revelation an hour ago; were still bouncing off the walls:
After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, “Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.”HALLELUJAH!!!
Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne. And He who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald. Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and on the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white robes; and they had crowns of gold on their heads. And from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.
Before the throne there was a sea of glass, like crystal. And in the midst of the throne, and around the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle. The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying:
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!”Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying:
“You are worthy, O Lord, To receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, And by Your will they exist and were created.”
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Joe Straus Committee Chairs: Worse than Barbie!!!
"Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord."
Ephesians 5:22
On Friday, Morgan Willamson of Empower Texans made a shrewd observation:
[M]any might be shocked to know that on the Fiscal Responsibility Index for the 83rd Texas Legislative Session, Senator Wendy Davis actually out-performed a number of House Republicans when it came to taxpayer issues.Which motivated us to cross-check Morgan's list against Joe Straus Committee Chairs.
You guessed it.
Here's the Damage:
- Byron Cook, 42.0, State Affairs.
- Diane Patrick, 36.7, Higher Ed.
- Drew Darby, 35.7, Redistricting.
- John Otto, 35.5, Ways and Means (Vice-Chair).
- Jim Keffer, 35.3, Energy Resources.
- Lyle Larson, 39.0, Local and Consent.
- Charlie Geren, 37.0, House Administration. (Yeah, THAT Charlie Geren)
- Jimmie Don Aycock, 36.2, Public Education.
- John Zerwas, 25.3, General Investigating and Ethics.
- Bill Callegari, 39.0, Pensions.
- Jim Pitts, 29.7, Appropriations. (Yeah, THAT Jim Pitts)
Friday, February 7, 2014
Battleground Texas Promotes Sex Trafficking
The other day, Greg Abbott outlined his proposal to increase security on the Texas-Mexico border. Abbott's proposal expands a successful Perry administration policy. While insufficient, Abbott's proposal is a worthy stopgap measure given Barack Obama's willful failure to secure the border.
During his remarks, Abbott made a comment how Barack Obama's deliberate failures have enabled third world levels of corruption in parts of South Texas.
Unable to discuss Barack Obama's premeditated failure, Obama's campaign lackeys at Battleground Texas chose cheap racial demagoguery instead:
>
.@GregAbbott_TX compared South Texas to a "third-world country." That's offensive. We are all Texas: http://t.co/hnxkdi8rdN #SomosTejas
— Battleground Texas (@BGTX) February 5, 2014
Unfortunately, the third world practices Barack Obama, Wendy Davis, and Battleground Texas promote have very real consequences:
For many migrants trying to reach the U.S. from Mexico, the border region is a terrifying, lawless place, and their fear is often justified. Things are so bad in Matamoros, a border city just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, that last month the city's police were stripped of their weapons, ordered off the streets and replaced by soldiers.Or Battleground Texas could speak with their pals in the Obama administration who are doing the dirty work for the Cartels:
Gang members openly sell pirated gasoline that they've stolen from government pipelines, and lookouts for the drug cartels monitor the south bank of the Rio Grande to make sure no one tries to swim across who hasn't paid for the privilege.
While the overall number of migrants trying to cross illegally into the U.S. has dropped dramatically over the past few years, the trip has grown more dangerous, as some of Mexico's most brutal drug cartels now earn millions of dollars each year from the extortion and smuggling of migrants. Last year, hundreds of migrants went missing or were killed in Mexico, and more than 20,000 were kidnapped.
....
"There's a lot of criminals at the river. You have to pay to cross the river," Perez says. "And on the other side you have to be careful of the Border Patrol. And there's a lot of crime here in Matamoros right now."
He says the gangs want $100 per person just to let migrants swim across the river; it's $3,000 if you want to get delivered to Dallas. Perez can't even afford to jump into the water.
....
The drug cartels have turned the extortion of migrants into a highly sophisticated, and lucrative, criminal enterprise. Migrants are abducted and held in so-called safe houses until family members pay ransoms of hundreds or even thousands of dollars for their release. The migrants are regularly beaten.
"In the past, ordinary smugglers abandoned them, extorted them; but now physical abuse is the norm. And it's very strong and very serious," Gallardo says.
....
"We've had cases where young girls, teenagers, are raped. Cases where migrants are injured when they're attacked either with firearms or a knife. There's the problem of them being used to smuggle drugs across or money," Pena says.
[Emphasis Added]
Battleground Texas: Enabling the rape of teenage Latinas to protect Barack Obama!!!
About that War on Women....
History Lesson: Bob Marley Becomes a Christian
"The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance."
2 Peter 3:9
With Bob Marley's birthday yesterday, it's worth remembering how he left this world:
Yesehaq appeared in a 1984 interview with Jamaica Gleaner's Sunday magazine, titled "Abuna Yesehaq Looks Back on 14 Years of Ministry in Jamaica," in which he spoke about Marley's desire to become a Christian long before his death.Beginning and End has more:
"Bob was really a good brother, a child of God, regardless of how people looked at him," Yesehaq said. "He had a desire to be baptized long ago, but there were people close to him who controlled him and who were aligned to a different aspect of Rastafari. But he came to church regularly."
In the interview, Yesehaq addressed claims that Marley's terminal cancer was the motivation behind his acceptance of Jesus Christ as his personal savior.
....
"When Bob was on his dying bed, his wife Rita called me on the phone and said to me that Bob was in such excruciating pain and he stretched out his hand and said, 'Jesus take me.' I was wondering to myself, 'Why is it that Bob said Jesus and not Selassie,'" Mowatt questioned. "Then I met a friend of mine and he said his sister, who is a Christian, was a nurse at the hospital where Bob was before he passed on, and she led him to the Lord Jesus Christ. So when Rita saw him saying 'Jesus take me,' he had already received the Lord Jesus Christ in his life."
February 6th marked what would have been the 67th birthday of Jamaican reggae legend Bob Marley, widely considered one of the greatest and most influential musicians of all time. Marley, who hailed from a lower class area of Kingston, the capital city of Jamaica, saw his rise to prominence in the 1970′s with a musical group known as The Wailers, with their new brand of Jamaican ska music and reggae. His album, Legend, released 3 years after his death, is still the greatest-selling reggae album of all time. In addition to turning reggae into a global music phenomenon, Marley was also the chief promoter of the Rastafarian religion worldwide (an upcoming documentary called “Marley”, to be released in April, will certainly highlight his amazing career). While he is famous for his dreadlocks, Rastafarian ethic and signature voice, what very few know is that Marley converted to Christianity over one year before his death.Hallelujah!!!
Several independent sources confirm the account of Marley’s conversion from Rasta religion to Christianity.
....
When asked why the story of Marley rejecting the Rastafari for Christianity is not more well-known she stated: “If people knew, they would be drawn to Jesus Christ. Nobody wants to promote that in Jamaica. I said it on a popular television programme over there and a Rasta man met me and asked me why did I have to say that? I told him it was because it’s the truth! But he never wanted me to reveal that and I think that nobody wants it to be revealed because so many people would be drawn to Jesus.” Bob Marley’s official website doesn’t even mention his conversion, (although a number of fan sites do.)
....
“Bob Marley himself, before he died, he got baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,” Tommy says with much conviction. “What does Selassie teaches That Jesus Christ is the way. As a matter of fact, in one song you would have heard him militantly (saying) ‘how they crucified my Jesus Christ and they sold Marcus Garvey for rice.’One of his songs said, ‘Give us the teachings if his majesty because we dona’t want the devil’s philosophy.’ Bob, Tommy recalls, called the bishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and told him I need to be baptized now. Just recently Tommy was speaking with the said bishop who described Bob’s baptism. “At one point he (Bob) cried for 45 minutes non-stop; his tears wet the floor. And the Holy Spirit came down upon his body and he cried out Jesus Christ three times ‘Jesus my Savior, Jesus Christ…’”
....
While Bob Marley spent most of his legendary music career promoting the worship of Selassie and railing against Christianity, his final year of life is a testament to God’s grace and the fact that no matter how far someone moves away from God, they can always come back to The Lord in repentance and receive Jesus Christ as their Savior. Bob Marley made music that promoted peace, racial equality and love among all people. Yet he still did not find spiritual fulfillment in his message. Instead he found it in Jesus Christ, the true God in the flesh, who not only preached a message of peace and love but showed the world its sin and the consequences of it. As the book of Romans states: “the wages of sin is death.” But by giving His life on the cross, Jesus Christ paid the price and punishment for those who choose to believe in Him. And praise The Lord that Marley seemed to have learned all of this and professed it before he met his own untimely death. And in Marley’s conversion, not only was his soul saved, but he set an example for Judy Mowatt, Tommy Cowan and hopefully many others. Let the reader learn from Marley’s journey. Believing in peace and love is admirable but will not save your soul. Only forgiveness of sins through the one who came to Earth to give Himself for all of us (for more on what it means to have eternal life and be a born again Christian, see here). Hopefully more fans will get to know the Savior who Marley called: “my sweet Jesus Christ.”
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Sexual Authoritarians demand UT subsidies for boutique "medical" services
From the front page of today's Daily Texan:
Members of UT’s Queer Students Alliance are working on legislation with the goal of convincing University administrators to expand health care benefits available for transgender students.Prudent use of scarce financial resources be damned:
Legislation author Devon Howard, women’s and gender studies junior, said the ultimate goal of the legislation is expanded medical services for transgender students, including hormonal treatments, gender reassignment surgeries and mental health counseling covered by the University.
UT does not offer these services because of the expenses associated with specialized medical care, according to Theresa Spalding, medical director for University Health Services. Spalding said the University does offer general medical care for all transgender students, including pap smears for students who identify as male, and said the University is committed to working with transgender students as much as possible.Because it's not like students are already being squeezed by Obamacare:
“It would be wonderful if we could provide all services to all patients, but we just don’t have the ability to do all that,” Spalding said. “Trying to be as gender neutral as possible is what we try to do.”
Currently, the insurance plan available for students to purchase, offered through Blue Cross Blue Shield, meets the minimum essential health requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Insurance coverage for one year is $1,432 per student.And anyone who points out inconvenient facts is an intolerant hater:
NOPE, no authoritarianism in that last statement!Marisa Kent, co-director of the Queer Students Alliance, said many students do not understand certain transgender students’ desire for sex-related surgeries.
“It’s not something most people can understand,” Kent said. “Nobody really understands the pain and the struggle [of] living in a body they feel like is not even their own.”
Howard said although some students may view gender reassignment surgeries as purely cosmetic, for some transgender individuals, medical intervention is a critical issue.
“A lot of people see these surgeries as something that is elective and it’s not,” Howard said. “It’s something that needs to be done for survival."
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One personal thought: For this to become University policy, the Board of Regents must approve it. Bill Powers will obviously cave. If we were Wallace Hall, we'd have a field day with this one.
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Former Daily Texan editor Kevin Williamson has a piece about Sandra Fluke today that could double as a commentary on this topic:
For what is she known? For standing in front of a group of legislators saying “I Want!” It is worth remembering that Miss Fluke’s “I Want!” heard ’round the world was a demand for birth-control subsidies at a Catholic institution: What’s a few thousand years of practice and the most highly developed body of moral philosophy in the Western world compared with a callow young law student’s “I Want!”? Public policy can be complicated, but “I Want!” is simple. In the world of responsible politics, there are sometimes conflicts between competing legitimate goods, and there are occasions upon which the necessities of governance run up against the limitations our constitutional order puts upon the political enterprise. Miss Fluke spoke many, many words on the subject but, defying probability, never managed to stumble upon any interesting ones. She ended where she began: “I Want!”They say that what starts at the University of Texas changes the world; sometimes, that is a frightening statement.
The genius of that battle cry is in its simplicity. Given the desultory attention the typical American pays to public affairs and the general moral illiteracy of democratic electorates, the conversion of skepticism about a specific demand originating with a specific woman or group of women into a stinging accusation of hostility toward women categorically is child’s play for a minimally competent politician. That is how defending the position favored more heavily by women than by men becomes, through the magic of feminist rhetoric, anti-woman, even part of a “war on women.”
....
There are certain standing openings in American public life. There is always going to be somebody in the Jesse Jackson role, the Pat Robertson role, the Warren Buffett role. And while the role of feminist-in-chief is currently occupied and probably will be at least through 2016, every sub-polity has a spot for its own Hillary Rodham Clinton, a wide-open channel for the communication of whatever it is that has feminists chanting at any given moment.
Anatomy of a Bogus Attack
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."
Exodus 20:16
Cahnman's Musings understands that it's primary season. We understand tempers will flare. People will say things they later regret. But certain attacks need to be stopped dead in their tracks. The latest slander against YCT is one of them.
Writing at Big Jolly Politics, David Jennings invents a "controversy":
Sounds super-shady; Jennings then lists donations to YCT's PAC from YCT endorsed candidates.Young Conservatives of Texas enter pay-to-play world
Unfortunately, the dates don't match.
- On October 23 of last year YCT endorsed Glenn Hegar.for Comptroller (over, it should be noted, a YCT alum). According to Jennings, Hegar's campaign gave YCT $7000 on January 22. For those of you keeping score at home, that's three months later.
- On October 28, YCT endorsed Wayne Christian for Railroad Commissioner. The corresponding "pay for play" transaction occurred on January 14. Again, that's two and a half months later.
- On November 11, YCT endorsed Sid Miller for Ag. Commissioner. Miller then gave YCT $7000 on January 14. Once again, that's over two months later.
- On December 19, YCT endorsed Dan Patrick for Lt. Gov. Patrick gave YCT $7000 on January 14. Again, that's nearly a month later.
- It's also worth noting that YCT has endorsed Ken Paxton for Attorney General but, at least according to Jennings, they haven't received a dime in return.
The key to 'pay for play' is that pay comes first; anyone who gives away the play before they get paid is, at a minimum, not very good at pay for play.
But why let facts get in the way of a lazy narrative....
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Update: Steve Toth adds his two cents....
Steve Toth Sorry Joe Sager, you're wrong on Young Conservatives of Texas. Show me where they've taken money from candidates and in turn endorsed them. They've endorsed my campaign twice and I've never given them a dime. They've endorsed the vast majority of the folks in the House who score in the mid to high 90's with TFR and haven't given them any money at all. Can't argue with the rest of what you've said though. All the best!
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