Sarah Palin sure knows how to pick 'em

From her Fecebook page:

Texas, it starts with you!

2014 is here. The choices are becoming clearer, and the battle lines are being drawn. The GOP Beltway crowd has convinced itself that the way to maintain or retake the majority is through compromise and capitulation on important issues like amnesty, Obamacare, and the ever-increasing federal debt. They think that by making deals with a deeply unpopular and divisive incumbent president on issues that Americans oppose, they’ll somehow endear themselves to voters.

Enough is enough. The permanent political class in D.C. won’t listen. So, let’s start putting our efforts behind good new candidates who will go to Washington not to line their own pockets, but to help restore our country. It’s time to put inspiration, ingenuity, and integrity over incumbency in the GOP.

Let’s start in Texas. The lines couldn’t be clearer. Katrina Pierson is an emerging leader and important voice for the future of the grassroots conservative movement. Her life’s story is full of hardships she has fought to overcome, which taught her firsthand the importance of self-reliance, hard work, and the blessings of liberty.

A feisty fighter for freedom, Katrina is taking on a powerful incumbent who has so lost touch with the people of his district that he’s not even bothering to spend much time in Texas anymore. It’s not only his district he’s lost touch with, but also the issues important to the voters there. He used his powerful position to oppose the movement to defund Obamacare, has voted to raise the debt ceiling, and has been an advocate for the NSA intrusion into our freedoms. When asked about Katrina’s primary challenge, he said, “these things happen.” Yes, they do. We all know what happens when we come together to support a good candidate like Katrina – the permanent political class loses and We the People win! We win by electing a fighter we can depend on like Katrina Pierson. Ted Cruz calls Katrina “an utterly fearless principled conservative.” He should know. Katrina was among the conservative grassroots warriors in Texas who worked tirelessly to elect Senator Cruz.

Early voting started yesterday, Texas. Get out now and vote for Katrina. Send a message to the GOP elites on behalf of Katrina, just like you did for Ted Cruz in 2012.

And while you are out there voting for Katrina, check the box for another good conservative – Greg Abbott for Governor of Texas. Like Katrina, Greg has overcome many personal obstacles and challenges, which have made him a believer in the power of liberty and the need to defend our freedoms from the overreach of an out-of-control federal government. If he is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me! 

Let's start with her endorsement of Greg Abbott first.   He is endorsed by a one Theodore Nugent who has done the following:

Slept with underage girls
Crapped his pants to avoid being drafted
Called Hillary Clinton a cunt
Called the sitting president of the United States a subhuman mongrel
Lied about helping the DEA, ATF, US Marshalls and FBI conduct raids
Defended George Zimmerman and called Trayvon Martin a “dope smoking, racist gangsta wannabe.”
Said people who hate him hate freedom
Shot a bear illegally in Alaska
Said if President Obama was reelected that he would be dead or in jail.

Now lets move on to Katrina Pierson:

On and off the campaign trail, congressional candidate Katrina Pierson sometimes discusses the hardscrabble background that she says ultimately made her a conservative firebrand.

The troubles in her youth, records show, included an arrest for shoplifting.

In 1997, five days before her 21st birthday, Katrina Pierson, then named Katrina Lanette Shaddix, was arrested on a charge of theft of greater than $50 and less than $500.

Pierson, who is running against Dallas Rep. Pete Sessions in the March 4 Republican primary, acknowledges the mistake. She told police then, and repeated recently, that she was talked into shoplifting by a friend.

“Like an idiot, I went along for the ride,” Pierson said in a recent interview.
She and the other woman were accused of trying to lift nine pieces of women’s clothing from a J.C. 

Penney store in Plano. They stuffed the clothes into shoe boxes in a clumsy, failed heist.
According to a Plano police report, Pierson said she and the woman with her, Laura Elizabeth 
Nelson, told police they needed the clothes for jobs they were trying to obtain.

Pierson told police she was “scared at first and did not want to go through with it.”

Pierson exited the store with four items of clothing in a shoe box inside her shopping bag. They were valued at $168. The report said Pierson had her young son with her when the incident occurred.
She was booked into the Plano City Jail. She eventually pleaded no contest to the charges and received deferred adjudication.

“That’s what the attorney guy told me to do,” she said. “My defense was as good as I could afford.”
Pierson, a tea party leader from Garland, said she knew her background would be open for scrutiny if she decided to take on Sessions, the powerful incumbent.

Pierson says the incident helped turn her life around, showing her that mistakes often come with consequences.

And the 37-year-old says the shoplifting charge was nothing compared with what could have happened in her life.

Pierson says she was born to a 15-year-old mother and grew up exposed to the wrong crowd, folks involved in gangs and other unsavory activities. An early marriage lasted just three months.
“I’m surprised I made it out,” Pierson said.

Pierson said Sessions’ supporters are mounting a smear campaign, but added that she has nothing to hide.

A Sessions spokesman declined to comment on the arrest. Sessions has said he’s never been arrested.

Pierson says she’s willing to discuss her shoplifting charge, and other issues, with Sessions, chiding her opponent for refusing to consent to a public debate before the primary.

“Why don’t we both meet up in a public forum and talk about it?” she said.

Katrina sounds like Diana Palin, taking her kid along for illegal activities!

Rick Perry cuts funding for fire departments, then prays for rain

From Politico

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry has stayed in-state for the past two days dealing with the record forest fires there, a reader pointed out to me the fact that the state was set earlier this year to cut the budget of the agency that deals with fighting such blazes.

Texas lawmakers are set to slash funding for the agency responsible for fighting wildfires in the midst of a historic wildfire season in which some 2.5 million acres have burned.

The Texas Forest Service faces almost $34 million in budget cuts over the next two years, roughly a third of the agency's total budget. The cuts are in both the House and Senate versions of the proposed state budget.
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The Forest Service has about 200 firefighters and offers assistance grants to volunteer fire departments. Assistance grants are likely to take the biggest hit.

Volunteers — two of whom were killed in fighting this year's fires — make up nearly 80 percent of the state's fire-fighting force and are first responders to roughly 90 percent of wildfires in Texas.

"Volunteer programs are our No. 1 defense," Forest Service Director Tom Boggus told Reuters.

A month earlier, Perry and the Texas congressional delegation had asked President Obama to "grant a disaster declaration" that would have brought federal funds to cover much of the fire-fighting.

It's not immediately clear what the outcome of the proposed budget slashing, and a Perry spokesman didn't respond to an email for comment earlier today.

But, putting aside the seriousness of the situation in Texas, this is a problem that many small-government state chief executives find themselves in at a national level - squaring budget cuts with federal asks.

Rick Perry wants to make America like Texas

From the Christian Science Monitor

Presidential candidate Rick Perry had a simple message for a job-hungry nation on Friday: The energy business isn't just for his home state of Texas.

In remarks at a Pittsburgh-area steel plant, Governor Perry sketched a vision of a nation where more than 1 million additional workers can be busy drilling for oil and gas, mining for coal, and finding new offshore resources.

"Right here in Pennsylvania, and across the state line in West Virginia and Ohio, we will tap the full potential of the Marcellus Shale and create another 250,000 jobs," he said in unveiling a major piece of his overall economic plan.

How well do you know Rick Perry? Take our quiz

In short, his point is that the nation's job climate wouldn't be so bleak if the rest of the nation takes a cue from his own home state. And he pledged that if elected president, he would lead the charge with efforts to clear regulatory hurdles out of the way.

"We have the resources we need to fuel our cars, our homes, and our power plants," Perry said. "They can be found in ... Oklahoma, North Dakota, New Mexico, Alabama, Kentucky, throughout the American West, and, of course, Alaska."

He didn't tout energy development as the only solution needed for an economy where some 14 million workers are now unemployed. But he suggested that 1.2 million jobs could come from such efforts, while also making the nation more secure from dependence on foreign oil.

Perry is putting forth his proposal, which he named "Energizing American Jobs and Security," at a time his campaign needs a boost. In recent weeks he has been outflanked by the rise of Herman Cain, whose "9-9-9" plan for tax reform has found broad appeal. And Perry has hurt his own candidacy with weak performances in TV debates.

A risk is that his emphasis on energy will seem narrow-bore and predictable (any surprise that a Texas governor likes domestic oil production?). Perry made a point of noting that he has other pieces of his economic plan on the way, including proposals for a tax-code overhaul, entitlement reform, and taming federal deficits. And by going into detail on energy, Perry arguably can show supporters that he's prepared to lead in a new direction on an important national issue.

He sought to draw a clear contrast with President Obama.

"His energy policies are driven by the concerns of activists in his party, my policies are driven by the concerns of American workers without jobs," Perry said.

He said the Obama administration has opposed fossil fuel development at home, while encouraging countries like Brazil to drill offshore and sell it to American consumers. "The American economy should not be beaten into the ground when greater energy independence and lower energy costs lie right under American soil," he said.

Is Perry right that energy is a ripe field for job creation?

Not all economists would put domestic energy production among their top five priorities for job growth. But many do see significant potential in this field, as the Perry campaign does.

For example, economist Peter Morici at the University of Maryland, in a recent analysis of the nation's employment crisis, wrote that "shutting down US oil and gas development is costing the US economy millions of jobs."

His view: An emphasis on domestic production could create jobs by dramatically reducing America's trade deficit, thus recycling more consumer dollars in the domestic economy. Promotion of energy production would also spill over into job creation in other industries, Mr. Morici says, as a need for refineries and pipelines boosts demand for construction workers, steel, and heavy machinery.

Even in Texas, the industries classified by the US Labor Department as "oil and gas extraction" and "mining support" account for just about 2 of every 100 jobs. But jobs in basic industries like mining or manufacturing typically help sustain many other jobs throughout a local economy. And over the past decade, Texas has seen energy jobs rise as a share of its economy.

Compared with Texas, other states appear to have plenty of room to grow. In the other 49 states collectively, the "oil and gas" and "mining support" industries account for less than 0.3 percent of all jobs. Those totals don't include some other energy-related jobs, such as in coal mining or renewable sources.

Obama, for his part, has called for some expansion of domestic fossil-fuel production, but has put his greatest emphasis on encouraging renewable sources of energy. Where the words "conservation" and "efficiency" appear nowhere in Perry's speech, Obama has backed programs to encourage energy-saving retrofits of
buildings and a shift toward higher-mileage vehicles.

If America did seek a Perry-style fossil-fuel renaissance, controversial questions of environmental regulation would quickly come to the surface.

Perry's speech Friday embodied one long American tradition, a focus on tapping the abundant resources with which the land is blessed. But his approach might run headlong into a parallel tradition of environmental protection.

He blasted the Interior Department for halting offshore oil exploration off the Virginia coast. He said 175,000 jobs could be created by the controversial move of opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other parts of Alaska to exploration. And he called for a radical down-scaling of the Environmental Protection Agency's mission, turning many of its duties back to the states.

"The EPA’s war on American fossil fuel production comes despite the fact they can’t point to a single incident of unsafe hydraulic fracturing [to mine] natural gas," Perry said at one point in the speech.

Citing the large presence of wind energy in Texas, Perry said he sees an important role for green energy sources. But he called for an end to subsidies for "any and all" segments of the energy industry, including a phaseout of tax credits for energy producers.

Perry said he would continue federal tax incentives for energy research and development.

This is a serious concern because Texas i3 #1 in the nation in the following categories:

Uninsured Citizens
Uninsured Children
Homeless Children
Wrongful Convictions
Executions
Sexual Assaults in Prisons
Teen Births
Carbon Dioxide Emissions
Mercury Emissions
Toxic Chemicals in Water
Carcinogens in Air

Reason #48 not to vote for Sarah Palin for anything

It is no surprise that Sarah endorsed Rick Perry who like her husband Todd favors secessionism.

Rick also allows his religious beliefs to dictate his policies (anti-gay, anti-abortion) He also agrees with the strict right wing nutjob beliefs of Rev John Hagee.  He also believes Texas has the right to secede from the Union.  (A little incident called the Civil War circa 1861-65 took care of that).  And he is a fiscal conservative yet took several trips to outside the United States where he billed the State of Texas for security detail costing over a million dollars.

After President Obama went to Alabama to see the tornado damage, Perry bitched that Obama was ignoring Texas.  This coming from a guy to who favors seccession.