Why Does Texas Rep. Jodie Laubenberg (R) Hate America and Low Income Women

Why Does Texas Rep. Jodie Laubenberg (R) Hate America and Low Income Women

Over the past several weeks, thousands of Texas activists have been protesting their GOP-controlled legislature’s decision to push through a controversial package of abortion restrictions. Nonetheless, the anti-abortion bills are successfully advancing this week. The Texas House gave preliminary approval to the legislation on Tuesday evening — after Rep. Jodie Laubenberg (R), the bill’s sponsor, kicked off the debate by prominently displaying a pair of baby shoes “to represent aborted babies who can’t speak out against the procedure.”

Laubenberg has been thrust into the national spotlight amid the ongoing protests over Texas’ proposed abortion bill. And, even as the rest of the country continues to follow the contentious debate in the Lone Star State, the Republican lawmaker has steadfastly refused to back down from her stringent anti-choice agenda. For more than nine hours on Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers attempted to tweak the abortion legislation. They suggested adding an exception for victims of rape or incest, adding an exception for Texans who can prove they didn’t receive accurate sex ed, and repealing the provision that will force abortion clinics across the state to close, among other changes — but Laubenberg rejected each one.

But it’s hardly the first time that the GOP lawmaker from Parker, TX has stubbornly staked out an extreme position. Laubenberg, who ran unopposed in the 2012 election, has a long history of far-right politics in the Texas legislature:

    She’s ranked the third most conservative member of the Texas House.

    The Texas Conservative Coalition gives Laubenberg a 94.15 out of 100 on the “comprehensive TCC scorecard,” which rates lawmakers on their right-wing credentials. That’s the third highest score among all the legislators in her chamber, securing Laubenberg a place in the conservative group’s “Member Spotlight” hall of fame. She joined the state’s Tea Party Caucus in 2010, and she was one of a handful of representatives endorsed by the Texas Tea Party in the 2012 elections.

    She recently claimed rape kits are a form of abortion.

    During Texas’ first special session, Laubenberg attempted to defend the fact that her proposed 20-week abortion ban didn’t include an exception for rape victims. “In the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits where a woman can get cleaned out,” Laubenberg claimed on the House floor, suggesting that rape kits include an optional abortion procedure. In fact, rape kits collect DNA evidence that could be useful in a criminal investigation, and are completely unrelated to pregnancy. The AP reported that Laubenberg “has difficulty debating bills” and chose to remain silent during the rest of the discussion about her abortion legislation, rejecting all future proposed amendments to the bill without speaking.

    She accused Texas’ budget board of using “government math” when it pointed out that cutting family planning funds would lead to more unplanned births.

    In 2011, when the Texas legislature approved deep cuts to family planning programs, the state’s Legislative Budget Board warned lawmakers that decision would have some financial consequences. The government estimated that funding affordable contraception would save Texas $80 million in its next two-year budget because fewer babies would be born to low-income women enrolled in Medicaid (a health outcome that the Health Department regularly measures). “We’re going to save on the non-babies that are being born? We’re going to prevent baby births?” Laubenberg responded. “This has got to be government math.”

    She argued that low-income pregnant women shouldn’t get government-sponsored prenatal care because their fetuses aren’t born yet.

    Laubenberg has been arguing in favor of her proposed abortion restrictions under the logic that life begins at conception. “If you believe that (a fetus) is a human being, then that human being also has rights, and we must protect that baby’s rights,” Laubenberg said earlier this month. But she doesn’t necessarily take that stance when it comes to poorer women’s fetuses. In 2007, she proposed requiring pregnant women to wait three months before becoming eligible to receive prenatal and perinatal benefits under the Children’s Health Insurance Program. When Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchia pointed out that change would kick more than 95,000 low-income women — and their unborn children — out of the government program, Laubenberg responded, “They’re not born yet.” When Anchia suggested her amendment wasn’t pro-life, Laubenberg yelled at him — but later withdrew her amendment.

    She backs unconstitutional legislation to allow Texas to defy federal gun regulations.

    It’s already harder to get an abortion than it is to get a gun, but Laubenberg wants to keep furthering the divide. As just one of many pro-gun advocates in the Texas House, she recently sponsored a bill that would allow firearm and ammunition manufacturers operating inside Texas to exempt themselves from federal gun laws. She also co-sponsored an even more far-reaching proposal that would make enforcing federal gun laws a felony in Texas. Laubenberg’s positions on gun issues have earned her a 92 percent approval rating from the NRA.

    She’s the state chair for ALEC in Texas.

    Perhaps unsurprising given her legislative positions, Laubenberg serves as Texas’ state chair for ALEC, the right-wing group that coordinates conservative legislation across different states. The lawmakers who are appointed to state chairmen positions help recruit new members for the group, as well as help push ALEC’s draft legislation — like measures to ban paid sick days, eliminate environmental protections on public lands, allow the use of deadly force for self-defense, bust unions, and ultimately further corporate interests — toward approval in their states.

Jodie Laubenberg is taking us back to the days of the Confederacy, claiming that some Americans have the right to deny other Americans dominion over their own bodies. Jodie, Rick Perry and other anti-American Texas conservatives have passed legislation that will increase dangerous illegal abortions. In her view of what rape kits are, Jodie displays the kind of willful ignorance that one usually finds in radical Islamic fundamentalists - so hey Texas, Jodie and her conservative radical friends just made Texas more like Iran. ALEC is known to be the real life version of the corrupt sleazy money+power organizations we see in political thrillers. They bypass the democratic process, humanity and common decency by buying legislators like Jodie and the legislation they want passed. What is the difference between Jodie and Confederate president Jefferson Davis or between Jodie and the supreme ayatollah of Iran? Not much.

Anti-American Fox News Reporter Todd Starnes Defends Racism and Lies For Paula Deen

Anti-American Fox News Reporter Todd Starnes Defends Racism and Lies For Paula Deen

A Fox News correspondent is attacking "the liberal, anti-South media" for unfairly "trying to crucify Paula Deen" over her admission in a court deposition that she's used racial epithets.

Todd Starnes, who also hosts a Fox News Radio segment, wrote on his Facebook page that the "liberal, anti-South media is trying to crucify Paula Deen. They accuse her of using a derogatory word to describe a black person. Paula admitted she used the word -- back in the 1980s - when a black guy walked into the bank, stuck a gun in her face and ordered her to hand over the cash. The national media failed to mention that part of the story. I'll give credit to the Associated Press for telling the full story."

Starnes also defended Deen via Twitter, writing: "The mainstream media hates Paula Deen [...] I think it's because most of them don't eat meat."

Starnes' defense of Deen doesn't square with reports about Deen's deposition. The Huffington Post reported it "obtained a transcript of the deposition in question" and Deen is quoted as stating she "probably" used the word "in telling my husband" about the incident, and she is "sure" she's used it since then, "but it's been a very long time." She went on to say "my children and my brother object to that word being used in any cruel or mean behavior. As well as I do."

Deen also discussed planning a "really southern plantation wedding" and was asked if she used the n-word then:

    Lawyer: Is there any possibility, in your mind, that you slipped and used the word "n--r"?


    Deen: No, because that's not what these men were. They were professional black men doing a fabulous job.

She apologized today in an online video "to everybody for the wrong that I've done ... Inappropriate and hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable."

In 2011, Starnes tweeted "Blacks riot at Burger King" and linked to a local news story about a cell phone camera capturing a brawl at a Panama City Beach Burger King. The story did not mention or discuss the race of the participants. The tweet was later deleted.

Starnes' Facebook post: see picture above.

I feel a little sorry for Deen, she seems to have some mental and racial issues, and probably needs professional psychological help , instead of sleazy apologists like Starne trying to cover for things she said on the record.. Starnes on the other hand is a malevolent propagandist for the radical anti-American conservatism pushed regularly by Fox News. In the fantasy world of Starnes and Fox America can never really be free until we return to the plantation model of governance.

UnAmerican Fox News Promoted Claim That Benghazi Witness Was Threatened Falls Apart

UnAmerican Fox News Promoted Claim That Benghazi Witness Was Threatened Falls Apart

After Fox News pushed a claim that a Benghazi witness had been "subjected to threats and intimidation" by State Department employees, the witness' lawyer admitted on the network that his client never said he had been threatened by anyone.

In a May 6 article for FoxNews.com previewing the then-upcoming House hearings on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Fox News reporters James Rosen and Chad Pergram wrote that Mark Thompson, one of the scheduled witnesses, "has been subjected to threats and intimidation by as-yet-unnamed superiors at State, in advance of his cooperation with Congress." The claim was sourced to Joseph diGenova, the Republican attorney representing Thompson.

But in a May 9 appearance on Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, when diGenova was asked by guest host Stuart Varney about Thompson's claims that "he was the target of threats and intimidation," diGenova responded that Thompson "actually hasn't said that."

Fox News, just another way of saying dangerous thugs who are are threat to true American values.

 The full size chart gives s snapshot of how the sequester affects average Americans.

2013, Congress is More Conservative Than Ever, But They Are The Best Congress Money Can Buy

2013, Congress is More Conservative Than Ever, But They Are The Best Congress Money Can Buy

This piece originally appeared on BillMoyers.com.

If you want to see why the public approval rating of Congress is down in the sub-arctic range — an icy 15 percent by last count — all you have to do is take a quick look at how the House and Senate pay worship at the altar of corporations, banks and other special interests at the expense of public aspirations and need.

Traditionally, political scientists have taught their students that there are two schools of thought about how a legislator should get the job done. One is to vote yay or nay on a bill by following the will of his or her constituency, doing what they say they want. The other is to represent them as that legislator sees fit, acting in the best interest of the voters — whether they like it or not.

But our current Congress — as cranky and inert as an obnoxious old uncle who refuses to move from his easy chair — never went to either of those schools. Its members rarely have the voter in mind at all, unless, of course, that voter’s a cash-laden heavy hitter with the clout to keep an incumbent on the leash and comfortably in office.

How else to explain a Congress that still adamantly refuses to do anything, despite some 90 percent of the American public being in favor of background checks for gun purchases and a healthy majority favoring other gun control measures? Last week, they ignored the pleas of Newtown families and the siege of violence in Boston and yielded once again to the fanatical rants of Wayne LaPierre and the National Rifle Association. In just the first three months of this year, as it shoved back against the renewed push for controls, the NRA spent a record $800,000 keeping congressional members in line.

And how else to explain why corporate tax breaks have more than doubled in the last 25 years? Or why the Senate and House recently gutted the STOCK Act requiring disclosure of financial transactions by White House staff and members of Congress and their staffs and prohibiting them from insider trading? It was passed into law and signed by President Obama last year – an election year – with great self-congratulation from all involved. But fears allegedly arose that there might be security risks for some in the executive branch if their financial business was known. That concern was examined by the Columbia Journalism Review, which “consulted four cybersecurity experts from leading think tanks and private security consultancies. Each came to the same conclusion: that Congress’s rationale for scrapping the financial disclosure rules was bogus.” Nonetheless, the House and Senate leapt at the opportunity to eviscerate key sections of the STOCK Act when almost no one was watching. And the president signed it.

Then there’s the fertilizer plant in West, Texas, where last week, fire and explosion killed at least 15 — 11 of them first responders — and injured more than 200. The Reuters news service reported that the factory “had last year been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.” Why wasn’t Homeland Security on top of this? For one thing, the company was required to tell the department — and didn’t. For another, budget cuts demanded by Congress mean there aren’t enough personnel available for spot inspections.

Same goes for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration – OSHA. The plant hadn’t been inspected in nearly thirty years, and there are so few OSHA inspectors in Texas that it would take 98 years for them to take a look at each workplace in the state once. According to the non-partisan reform group Public Campaign, “Already only able to conduct 40,000 workplace inspections a year in a country with seven million worksites, OSHA will see its budget cut by an additional 8.2 percent this year on account of the sequester.”

Congress quietly acquiesces as the regulations meant for our safety are whittled away.

Twelve members of Congress want to make a bad situation even worse, sponsoring the industry-backed General Duty Clarification Act; its banal title hiding that, as reported by Tim Murphy at Mother Jones magazine, “The bill is designed to sap the Environmental Protection Agency of its powers to regulate safety and security at major chemical sites, as prescribed by the Clean Air Act.”

“‘We call that the Koch brothers bill,’ Greenpeace legislative director Rick Hind says, because the bill’s sponsor, GOP Rep. Mike Pompeo, represents the conservative megadonors’ home city of Wichita, Kansas. (The sponsor of the sister legislation in the senate, GOP Sen. Pat Roberts, represents the Kochs’ home state of Kansas.) The brothers have huge investments in fertilizer production, and Hind thinks they’ll ultimately get what they want, whether or not the bill becomes law.”

No coincidence, perhaps, that the sponsors of the House bill and Senator Roberts, Public Campaign reports, “have collectively taken over $670,000 from the chemical manufacturing industry over their careers.” Since 2011, the industry has spent $85.1 million lobbying.

Congress quietly acquiesces as the regulations meant for our safety are whittled away. The progressive website ThinkProgress notes that even though food related infections — which kill 3,000 and sicken 48 million Americans each year — rose last year, congressional and White House budget cuts may mean up to 600 fewer food inspectors at meat and poultry plants, leaving it up to the industry to police itself. That rot you’re smelling isn’t just some bad hamburger.

It’s true that ninety-two percent of Americans say, yes, reducing the deficit and spending cuts are important, but all on their own the people have figured out cuts that make more sense than anything Congress and its corporate puppeteers want to hear about. Mattea Kramer, research director at the National Priorities Project, says “a strong majority” — 73 percent of us — want a reduced reliance on fossil fuels, and fifty percent want something done about climate change. A carbon tax would help with both, and raise an estimated $125 billion every year. Response from Congress: crickets.

Fifty eight percent of the U.S., according to Gallup, wants “major cuts in military and defense spending,” the average American favoring a reduction of 18 percent. Good luck — the Pentagon and defense contractors already are bellowing about the puny 1.6 percent reduction called for in the new White House budget.

The amazing thing is that one person is responsible for stopping legislation the American people want, Mad Dog Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his henchmen simply threaten to filibuster any legislation that the American people want. That means such legislation would require 60 vote super majority. Since you can't find four conservative Republicans with a backbone or any sense of real patriotism, all bills go to die in the conservative senate.

Bush's Library Dedication Remind American Patriots Of 50 Reasons George W. Bush Should Have Been Tried For Sedition

Bush's Library Dedication Remind American Patriots Of 50 Reasons George W. Bush Should Have Been Tried For Sedition 

Let’s look at 50 reasons, some large and some small, why W. inspired so much anger.

1. He stole the presidency in 2000. People may forget that Republicans in Florida purged more than 50,000 African-American voters before Election Day, and then went to the Supreme Court where the GOP-appointed majority stopped a recount that would have awarded the presidency to Vice-President Al Gore if all votes were counted. National news organizations verified [7] that outcome long after Bush had been sworn in.

2. Bush’s lies started in that race. Bush ran for office claiming he was a “uniter, not a divider [8].” Even though he received fewer popular votes than Gore, he quickly claimed he had the mandate from the American public to push his right-wing agenda. 

3. He covered up his past. He was a party boy, the scion of a powerful political family who got away [9] with being a deserter during the Vietnam War. He was reportedly AWOL for over a year from his assigned unit, the Texas Air National Guard, which other military outfits called [10] the "Champagne Division.”

4. He loved the death penalty. As Texas governor from 1995-2000, he signed [11] the most execution orders of any governor in U.S. history—152 people, including the mentally ill and women who were domestic abuse victims. He spared one man’s life, a serial killer.

5. He was a corporate shill from Day 1. Bush locked up the GOP nomination by raising more campaign money from corporate boardrooms than anyone at that time. He lunched with CEOs who would jet into Austin to "educate" him about their political wish lists.

6. He gutted global political progress.He pulled out [12] of the Kyoto Protocol which set requirements for 38 nations to lower greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change, saying [13] that abiding by the agreement would “harm our economy and hurt our workers.”

7. He embraced global isolationism. He withdrew [14] from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, over Russia’s protest, taking the U.S. in a direction not seen since World War I.

8. He ignored warnings about Osama bin Laden. He ignored the Aug. 6, 2001 White House intelligence briefing titled [15], “Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.” Meanwhile, his chief anti-terrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, and first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, testified [16] in Congress that he was intent on invading Iraq within days of becoming president.

9. Ramped up war on drugs, not terrorists. The Bush administration had twice as many FBI agents assigned to the war on drugs [17] than fighting terrorism before 9/11, and kept thousands in that role after the terror attacks.

10. “My Pet Goat.” He kept reading a picture book to grade-schoolers for seven minutes [18] after his top aides told him that the World Trade Centers had been attacked in 9/11. Then Air Force One flew away from Washington, D.C., vanishing for hours after the attack.

11. Squandered global goodwill after 9/11. Bush thumbed his nose at world sympathy for the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, by declaring a global war on terrorism and declaring [19] “you are either with us or against us.”

12. Bush turned to Iraq not Afghanistan. The Bush administration soon started beating war drums for an attack on Iraq, where there was no proven Al Qaeda link, instead of Afghanistan, where the 9/11 bombers had trained and Osama bin Laden was based. His 2002 State of the Union speech declared [20] that Iraq was part of an “Axis of Evil.”

13. Attacked United Nation weapons inspectors. The march to war in Iraq started [20] with White House attacks on the credibility of U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, whose claims that Saddam Hussein did not have nuclear weapons proved to be true.

14. He flat-out lied about Iraq’s weapons. In a major speech [21] in October 2002, he said that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to send unmanned aircraft to the U.S. with bombs that could range from chemical weapons to nuclear devices. “We cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” he said.

15. He ignored the U.N. and launched a war. The Bush administration tried to get the U.N. Security Council to authorize an attack on Iraq, which it refused to do. Bush then decided to lead a "preemptive" attack [22] regardless of international consequences. He did not wait [23] for any congressional authorization to launch a war.

16. Abandoned international Criminal Court. Before invading Iraq, Bush told the U.N. that the U.S. was withdrawing [24] from ratifying the International Criminal Court Treaty to protect American troops from persecution and to allow it to pursue preemptive war.

17. Colin Powell’s false evidence at U.N. The highly decorated soldier turned Secretary of State presented false evidence [25] at the U.N. as the American mainstream media began its jingoistic drumbeat to launch a war of choice on Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

18. He launched a war on CIA whistleblowers. When a former ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson, wrote a New York Times op-ed saying there was no nuclear threat from Iraq, the White House retaliated by leaking [26] the name and destroying the career of his wife, Valerie Plame, one of the CIA’s top national security experts.

19. Bush pardoned the Plame affair leaker. Before leaving office, Bush pardoned [26] the vice president’s top staffer, Scooter Libby, for leaking Plame’s name to the press.  

20. Bush launched the second Iraq War. In April 2003, the U.S. military invaded Iraq for the second time in two decades, leading [27] to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and more than a million refugees as a years of sectarian violence took hold on Iraq. Nearly 6,700 U.S. soldiers have died in the Iraq and Afghan wars.

21. Baghdad looted except for oil ministry. The Pentagon failure to plan for a military occupation and transition to civilian rule was seen as Baghdad was looted while troops guarded [28] the oil ministry, suggesting this war was fought for oil riches, not terrorism. 

22. The war did not make the U.S. safer. In 2006, a National Intelligence Estimate [29] (a consensus report of the heads of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies) asserted [20] that the Iraq war had increased Islamic radicalism and had worsened the terror threat.

23. U.S. troops were given unsafe gear. From inadequate vests [30] from protection against snipers to Humvees [31] that could not protect soldiers from roadside bombs, the military did not sufficiently equip its soldiers in Iraq, leading to an epidemic of brain injuries.

24. Meanwhile, the war propaganda continued. From landing on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit to declare [32] “mission accomplished” to surprising troops in Baghdad with a Thanksgiving turkey that was a table decoration [33] used as a prop, Bush defended his war of choice by using soldiers as PR props.

25. He never attended soldiers' funerals. For years after the war started, Bush never attended [34] a funeral even though as of June 2005, 144 soldiers (of the 1,700 killed thus far) were laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetary, about two miles from the White House.

26. Meanwhile, war profiteering surged.The list of top Bush administration officials whose former corporate employers made billions in Pentagon contracts starts with Vice-President Dick Cheney and Halliburton, which made [35] $39.5 billion, and included his daughter, Liz Cheney, who ran [36] a $300 million Middle East partnership program.

The other 24 are at the link. Only in the USA can politicians such as Bush and Cheney do so much harm to the nation, up to and including lying citizens to their death and tanking the economy, and get away with it by saying that those who disagree are just being political. That is simply a way of saying there is no moral line that cannot be crossed, because for conservatives morality is just a matter of which way the wind is blowing on any particular day. They have been wrapping their anti-Americanism in the flag for over half a century and getting away with it. Now they're rewriting the seditious and morally bankrupt Bush presidency. If there is a place below the gutter, that is how far conservatism has sunk.