Recently posted quotes:

"There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress." Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.” -Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it." -James Madison (1751-1836)

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported." -John Adams (1735-1826)


Friday, November 7, 2014

Where is Texas headed?



While the current Texas Governor is in court defending his bully tactics, the newly elected governor is out letting the fringe know that he will take them where they want to go.

I caught just a short video on the news where supposedly the Texas Governor-elect Greg Abbott validated what his priorities would be in his first term at the wheels of the Texas Government.

I did not personally see the news conference, but read about it in several papers and on even more internet websites. Evidently, Abbott listed his three priorities as jobs, border security and Texas schools. If this is truly the case, then how did the twist happen in what was reported?

The lead of nearly every article or web-post centered on Abbott’s comment: “If Open Carry is good enough for Massachusetts, it’s good enough for Texas.”

There seems to be some link to a campaign promise that Abbott had made to the “Gun Lobby” during his run for the office. This may or may not be true, I don’t know and that’s not really my problem here.

My problem here comes from either one of two sources:

(1)   The newly elected Governor is lying about his stated priorities
Or
(2)   The news media is more concerned about drubbing up exciting outcomes regardless of what is actually said

I have a hard time trying to find anyone in Politics that can tell the truth most of the time. I always read those PolitiFact articles and it seems anytime they challenge a member of the political network of our fine state, the “Truth-O-Meter" always comes out with a rating of Half-True to Mostly-False to False to Pants-ON-Fire.

Checking today’s PolitiFact web page the ratings came out like this:

True                 4
Mostly True     2
Half-True        4
Mostly False    4
False                6
Today’s Total  20

If you group the True & Mostly True together, that leaves 14 of the 20 ratings as some level of false or 70%.

How can a state as smart as ours keep putting liars into office? For that matter, one might ask the same question of our nation.

So, what does this have to do with our governor-elect? It just seems to me that the priorities stated in his first post-election interview shows that not much has changed. There seems to be a new opportunity to tell the truth at every split in the road, but hardly anybody seems to take the truth road.

Maybe, it is the media (print, TV, cable and the internet) that is really the problem. I can’t tell. I thought I used to be able, but that seems to no longer be the case.