TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalTexas Gun Shop ‘Puts The Christ Back In Christmas’ With A Rooftop Santa Holding An AR-15
A gun store owner in Fort Worth, Texas is putting the “Christ back in Christmas” by decorating his rooftop with a Santa Claus holding an AR 15.
Because Jesus always said, “Christmas is a time for guns.” It’s not for little kids. That’s just silly libtard propaganda, duh!
“We’ve got a sign on the door that says, We say Merry Christmas.Let’s put Christ back in Christmas,” Dewayne said
“If someone is messing with the reindeer, he could defend the reindeer,” he said. “You know jacking with the elves he can take care of business.”
Read more: http://www.alan.com/2014/12/08/texas-gun-shop-puts-the-christ-back-in-christmas-with-a-rooftop-santa-holding-an-ar-15/
[font color=green]Turning red cartridge shell casings into Christmas lights is such a nice touch![/font]
Texas won’t issue driver’s license to gay man because he’s married
According to a report in the Des Moines Register, an Iowa gay couple who moved to an Austin suburb can’t get Texas drivers license because of their marriage.
Michael Miller Gribble changed his name on all legal documents after he and his husband married. When they moved to Texas, he brought his marriage license and birth certificate to apply for his new driver’s license. He was turned away because Texas won’t recognize a marriage license from a same-sex couple as proof of a name change.
He was told he could either get a divorce or a legal name change. Opposite-sex couples do not need a court-order to change last names. A marriage license is proof of the change.
The newspaper reports that couples from Iowa have had similar problems in Nebraska, Florida and South Dakota. Iowa has been a marriage-equality state since 2009.
Read more: http://www.dallasvoice.com/texas-issue-drivers-license-gay-man-married-10185855.html
Abbott's top priorities avoid hot-button themes
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Gov.-elect Greg Abbott said Monday that his administration's top priorities will be bolstering early education, securing the Texas-Mexico border, cutting taxes and pumping $4 billion annually into the state's overloaded road and water infrastructure networks — goals that may be more exciting to policy wonks than his conservative base.
Abbott, who takes office Jan. 20, met with the media to discuss his primary agenda but offered little beyond campaign promises. Perhaps most surprising was what Abbott left off his top to-do list: divisive issues such as abortion and his past calls for open carry of handguns.
Following his predecessor Rick Perry's lead, Abbott has said that he'd like a "continuous surge" of security along the nearly 2,000-mile Texas-Mexico border, including hiring 500 new Department of Public Safety troopers. He offered no new details, declaring only that while border security is a federal responsibility, "Texas is not going to stand idly by and wait for Washington."
Abbott has been attorney general since 2002 and is leading a coalition of 20 states that have sued the Obama administration over the president's recently announced executive action on immigration.
Read more: http://www.reporternews.com/news/state/abbotts-top-priorities-avoid-hot-button-themes
Noble Drilling pleads guilty to violations involving Arctic drillship; will pay $12.2M for violation
WASHINGTON — Noble Drilling pleaded guilty Monday to eight felony charges tied to pollution, propulsion and record keeping problems with the two drilling rigs that bored Arctic oil wells for Shell in 2012.
The company, with major U.S. operations in Sugar Land, will pay $12.2 million to settle alleged violations of marine and environmental laws in connection with those vessels, the Noble-owned drillship Discoverer and the Kulluk, a non-propelled drilling unit owned by Shell. As a Shell contractor, Noble crewed the Kulluk and operated the Discoverer in Arctic waters north of Alaska two years ago.
Although Shell Oil Co. is not facing related legal action, the plea agreement and charges filed in federal court Monday are a fresh reminder of the problems the firm encountered during the 2012 Arctic drilling season and may revive concerns about its oversight of contractors. The deal also is fodder for environmentalists who oppose Arctic drilling, even as Shell seeks to persuade regulators it is ready to resume work in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas next summer.
Most of the violations are tied to the Discoverer, centering on insufficient record keeping, improper handling of bilge water and problems with the drillship’s propulsion system.
Read more: http://fuelfix.com/blog/2014/12/08/noble-pleads-guilty-to-violations-involving-arctic-drillship/
Abbott says Texas needs more research universities, though plan to get there fuzzy
Gov.-elect Greg Abbott says he’s bothered by Texas’ absence from lists of top public universities — and wants to do something about it.
While Abbott has proposed a 25-percent increase in the state’s support of a fund that helps Texas schools attract outside research grants, that move alone only would spread $40 million over the next two years among 10 campuses.
Abbott, though, sounds as if he has even bigger ambitions.
“One of the areas that disturbs me is the fact that five of the top 10 public universities in the country are from California, with none being from Texas,” he said at a Monday news conference in Austin. “We will begin the process of ensuring that we elevate some of Texas’ elite colleges and universities into the top 10 nationally.”
Read more: http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2014/12/abbott-says-texas-needs-more-research-universities-though-plan-to-get-there-fuzzy.html/
Houston-area teen goes on trial in alleged Satanic ritual killing of girl
HOUSTON — A Houston-area teenager accused of killing a girl in a satanic ritual had gouged out her eye as she begged for her life, prosecutors said Monday during the opening of the teen’s capital murder trial.
Opening statements began in the trial of 18-year-old Jose E. Reyes, who prosecutors say is responsible for the February death of 15-year-old Corriann Cervantes in a vacant apartment southeast of Houston.
A 16-year-old boy also is charged with capital murder and is expected to stand trial later.
Reyes, who was 17 at the time of the crime, faces a life sentence if convicted of capital murder but would be eligible for parole after 40 years, according to the Houston Chronicle. If he’s convicted of murder, the jury would determine his punishment.
Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20141208-houston-area-teen-goes-on-trial-in-alleged-satanic-ritual-killing-of-girl.ece
Taking on tuition deregulation
In 2003, Texas passed a law deregulating tuition at the state’s public colleges and universities. By 2004, average tuition rates had started to climb; by 2013, they had roughly doubled. That being the case, the subject has been controversial for years, with Republicans and Democrats, including some who voted for the bill in the first place. And tuition deregulation is worth considering in light of the recent debate over in-state tuition for unauthorized immigrants. If next year’s Lege repeals a law that passed with nearly unanimous support in 2001, the spiraling costs of college are surely an important piece of context.
Kudos, then, to Charles Schwertner, the Republican state senator from Georgetown, whose op-ed against tuition deregulation, at TribTalk, is completely commendable:
In Schwertner’s analysis, rising tuition costs aren’t the only ill effect of tuition deregulation; also salient are rising debt burdens among student borrowers. The latter trend is salient, and deserves attention, because student debt is so often a burden for the borrower. And, as Schwertner argues, easy access to student loans helps explain why deregulation is a dangerous approach to higher education. In a traditional free market system, consumer decisions are driven by a number of factors, including prices. Heavily promoted (and sometimes subsidized) education loans distort those signals, especially when the borrowers are 18 year olds raised to believe that a college education is crucial to their success.
The op-ed avoids some of the more contentious arguments that have been marshalled against tuition deregulation. Conservatives have also argued that the market ethos doesn’t work well when applied to college tuition because, as Tony McDonald argued in 2009, university regents are still government bureaucrats, not accountable to consumers or voters. A different spin on that argument is that higher education, in Texas, is oligopolistic; the state’s top public universities could hike tuition to $50,000 a year and still fill their freshman classes twice. Further, by triggering a rise in tuition costs, the 2003 deregulation has arguably forestalled equity improvements; a new study finds that more Hispanic first-time college students would have enrolled between 2003 and 2007 if not for the swelling prices. And then there are the questions of what the university administrators are actually doing with the money: UT Austin may be twice as expensive as it was ten years ago, but is it twice as good?
Read more: http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/taking-tuition-deregulation
Greg Abbott says lawsuit is about Barack Obama’s abuse of power
In his first “Meet the Press” appearance, Gov.-elect Greg Abbott said Sunday that the lawsuit he brought last week as attorney general seeking to block President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration is not about immigration but abuse of power.
“This issue in this lawsuit is not about immigration; the issue in this lawsuit is about abuse of executive power and if this abuse is not stopped it will erode the Constitution that has attracted so many people to this country for generations,” Abbott told “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd.
The lawsuit was filed in a Brownsville federal court on behalf of Texas and what has grown to 19 other states.
Abbott said that the financial burden the executive action will place on Texas gives the state the right to bring the suit. Abbott says this action, like a similar Obama order in 2012, will spur more illegal border crossings, leading to increase costs for law enforcement and education, among other areas.
Read more: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/abbott-on-meet-the-press-says-lawsuit-is-about-oba/njNG4/
Christmas compassion for HIV/AIDS, lumps of coal for naughty pastor
Donations can be made at https://www.crowdrise.com/coal/fundraiser/Planting-Peace/ .
Faithful Word Baptist Church Deserves A Lump of Coal
By Carol Morgan
The last place we should expect to hear hate speech is in church. Unfortunately, that’s exactly where the most recent hate speech is coming from—the pulpit. From the Westboro Baptist Church to Koran-burning-crazy Terry Jones, it seems to get worse every year.
By now, everyone’s read about the sermon of Pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. On November 30, he preached that if all gays were killed, we would be AIDS-free by Christmas.
Yes, you read it right. He advocated killing an entire group of people.
This isn’t the first time that Pastor Anderson and his hateful sermons have made the news. In 2009, Anderson gave a sermon called “Why I Hate Barack Obama” and actually prayed for PBO to die and “go to Hell”.
Apparently, the Pastor’s words hold so much sway with his parishioners that one of them, Christopher Broughton, was caught with an assault rifle at an Obama Rally in Arizona. He even told gay radio host, Michelangelo Signorile, live on air that he hoped Signorile would “get brain cancer, like Ted Kennedy.”
The Faithful Word Baptist Church is a small church located in a strip mall in Tempe, Arizona. According to their website: “Don't expect anything contemporary or liberal. We are an old-fashioned, independent, fundamental, King James Bible only, soul-winning Baptist church”.
And a little word to women from Pastor Anderson, you are NOT to speak at all in his church; not even an amen or a question. As quoted from his sermon on YouTube, women may chat before the service and even sing hymns, but "when it's learning time, it's silence time."
If a wife has a question, she must wait until she gets home and ask her husband...
Faithful Word Baptist Church is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and with good reason.
According to SPLC, Anderson is the operator of the True Sons of Liberty website, and he calls for abolishing the IRS, the Federal Reserve, Social Security and Child Protective Services state agencies. In April 2009, he refused to get out of his car or answer questions from Border Patrol agents at the California-Arizona border. Agents broke his window and tasered him as a result.
The irrational and hateful rantings of Steven Anderson, and those like him, has no place in a house of God.
In a recent piece, New Jersey Rabbi, Gerald Zelizer, put extreme preachers in their place: “At a time when doubts about both God and the need for religious institutions are increasing, clergy should not get sidetracked by politics. Instead, they should spend time focusing on how to recast their church and explain God more effectively -- to ease the doubts of the young and to draw more people through the doors.”
As we head toward Christmas, church congregations, whatever their religious label, should be mindful of keeping what is Caesar’s separate from that which belongs to God.
For that reason, Pastor Steven Anderson, and those who support his hate church, should be rewarded with a lump of coal, just like the naughty children of Christmases past.
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Carol Morgan is a career/college counselor, writer, speaker, former Democratic candidate for the Texas House and the award-winning author of Of Tapestry, Time and Tears, a historical fiction about the 1947 Partition of India. Email Carol at elizabethcmorgan@sbcglobal.net , follow her on Twitter and on Facebook or visit her writer’s blog at www.carolmorgan.org
http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/carol-morgan/2014-12-07/faithful-word-baptist-church-deserves-lump-coal#.VIUWU8nuPoE
Permission granted to post Carol's blog in its entirety.
Donations can be made at https://www.crowdrise.com/coal/fundraiser/Planting-Peace/ .
GOP Congressman Wants To Defund Air Force One
If you stayed home on during the midterm elections, then this is what you gifted the rest of us with. Republicans don’t believe that House Speaker John Boehner is aggressive enough, so they’re jumping off the crazy cliff in hopes that he will follow their lead.
Via the Washington Post:
“I’d rather defund Air Force One,” Huelskamp said. “Congress took a 19 percent cut on its budgets — we should do the same for the White House.” On the State of the Union, he added: “In the spirit of George Washington, he could send it to us in writing. It’d save some time.”
Read more: http://www.alan.com/2014/12/06/gop-congressman-wants-to-defund-air-force-one/
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
Home country: United States
Current location: Bryan, Texas
Member since: Sun Aug 14, 2011, 03:57 AM
Number of posts: 112,128
