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| Members of Texas-based Klan rally in 1992 |
I'm not sure why Texas doesn't just take all the books out of the schools, have each board member write up little books with pictures in it and pass them out to the students. 
My darling Selah, I certainly hope by the time you are an adult, Texas and this Country has changed. I hope that people will become educated so you don't have to live in a world like this! This is what we call the Republican Party and the Religious Right. They decided somewhere a long the line that they could lie, incite hate, racism and fear and that no one should question it. Up until recently stories were done by real journalist. Now they have a lot of talking heads with opinions. This was a good example of a real journalist. My hat is off to Anderson Cooper on this one and the professionalism he maintained during a hard to watch interview. (I can't even imagine being in his shoes and remaining calm. Good example Selah of educated and uneducated) I hope by the time you are reading this your world has changed and ignorant people like this no longer exist. ♥~GrandmaGohmert previously went to the House floor in June and warned about this evil plan, saying he had heard about it from an unnamed former FBI agent. Then on Wednesday night this week, Cooper hosted an actual former FBI official, who explained that there are no reports of this at all.
Cooper brought Gohmert on last night, and began by asking him whether he had even called the FBI agent. And from there, it turned into a nice one-way shouting match -- that is, Gohmert yelling at Cooper repeatedly. At one point Gohmert did admit that he did not check with the FBI itself: "No, I didn't talk to them, because the point is: when we did the research, we found the hole existed."
At one point, Gohmert was just asking for trouble when he said: "I'm an easy target. You and Jon Stewart can have your fun. But please, at some point look at the gaping hole in our security."
Also, Gohmert said that he promised his former FBI agent source that he would not reveal the man's name. To which Cooper responded: "Well, that's convenient. We have had a former FBI, a high-ranking one on this office who says it's ridiculous."
Gohmert also repeatedly referenced stories about "birth tourism," in which well-off people from other countries time their child's birth to take place here so the child will automatically become a U.S. citizen. This practice does exist, but reportedly encompasses only a few thousand births every year.
A fun exchange:
Gohmert: You have to believe that the terrorists are more stupid than these enterprising people. They say that this business, the so-called birth business -- birth tourism packages are online. Have you looked online? Stay online, all you have to do --
(CROSSTALK)
Cooper: Ok. Sir, again, I am agreeing with you that there are tourists -- sir, you can continue to yell all you want. Again, you're just showing yourself not to have actually any evidence.
What I am saying is, yes, those newspaper articles clearly -- there are many tourists who come here to have babies so they can have U.S. citizenship. Do you have any evidence of terror babies?
And this:
Gohmert: The explosions will not happen for 10 or 15 or 20 years and then you will be one of those blips. I'm not comparable to Winston Churchill, but the detractors like you are comparable to his detractors.
Cooper: Ok.
Gohmert: He tried to tell people these things were going on.
Cooper: All right.
Gohmert: Anderson, do you really believe that the ones that want to destroy the United States are more stupid than these entrepreneurs in China, than these people in Mexico?
And finally, this wonderful kicker for the whole conversation:
Cooper: Sir, you are a former judge. Had somebody done this in your courtroom, you would have asked for evidence, and you have none. I appreciate your time. I appreciate you coming on. I'm disappointed that you did not present evidence.
Gohmert: This isn't a courtroom. We're trying to protect America, Anderson.
Cooper: Everyone wants to protect America, Congressman.
Gohmert: We're trying to protect America. It's not a courtroom.
There has been a lot of discussion lately concerning the avoidance by the MSM of asking about or investigating the Babygate issue in any significant manner. As far as the embarrassment factor for the press goes, I think it is time we all just face the facts: what the press is doing, they are doing on purpose. Yes, they are deliberately avoiding Babygate, but they are also avoiding any issue that might actually begin the downward spiral of the media cash cow and gravy train. The more likely the issue might have some genuine effect in removing this cash cow from our television screens, the more it is avoided by the media. Here is a large, random list of many such questions, ranging from very moderate to powerful in their range of possible effect. If any of these questions have actually been asked at all, then they have either not been asked often enough, or of the right people at the right time, or the person asking the question has simply accepted a stupid Palin answer without delving further. Here we go.
Sam Samuel Wyly and Charles Wyly - billionaire brothers in Texas who have spent millions funding political campaigns -- committed violations of federal securities laws and fraud by using offshore accounts to secretly trade the shares of public companies whose boards they sat on, reaping more than $550 million in profit, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint filed Thursday.
The politically-active Wylys, who have been generous donors to Republican causes over the years, have faced questions in recent years -- including a Senate probe -- about whether they ran an extensive network of tax shelters.
"The cloak of secrecy has been lifted from the complex web of foreign structures used by the Wylys to evade the securities laws," said SEC deputy director of enforcement Lorin L. Reisner. "They used these structures to conceal hundreds of millions of dollars of gains in violation of the disclosure requirements for corporate insiders."
The SEC alleges that the brothers created an elaborate network of accounts and companies in the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands that they used to trade more than $750 million in stock in four public companies they served as board members. The SEC charges that they also committed an insider trading violation concerning one of the companies, earning almost $32 million.
The Wyly's attorney and stockbroker were also charged.
Charles
"After six years of investigations, the SEC has chosen to make claims against the Wyly brothers - claims that, in our view, are without merit," says William A. Brewer III, partner at Bickel & Brewer and lead counsel for the Wylys. "It will come as little surprise to those who know them that the Wylys intend to vigorously defend themselves -- and expect to be fully vindicated."
The SEC complaint says the public companies whose shares the Wylys improperly traded include Michaels Stores Inc., Sterling Software Inc., Sterling Commerce Inc. and Scottish Annuity & Life Holdings Ltd.
The SEC alleges that by using offshore accounts to trade shares of these public companies, the Wylys were able to escape filing regulatory disclosures required of board members that they were buying or selling shares. "The Wylys and French also knew or were reckless in not knowing that the investing public routinely uses such disclosures to gauge the sentiment of public companies' insiders and large shareholders about the financial condition and prospects of those companies, relying on those disclosures when making investment decisions," the SEC said in a statement.
The fraud lasted 13 years and the Wylys were able to make gains -- hidden from the public -- of more than a half-billion dollars, according to the SEC.
The SEC's charges, which are civil in nature, seek various financial fines and sanctions against the Wylys and their associates.
Great questions but personally I wouldn't hold my breath on getting Palin's supporters to think...just sayin' ~Mem
Murky land deals mark Gov. Rick Perry's past The Dallas Morning News found evidence that Perry's investment was enhanced by a series of professional courtesies and personal favors from friends, campaign donors and the head of a Texas family with a rich history of political power-brokering.
Together they may have enriched Perry by almost $500,000, according to an independent real estate appraisal commissioned by The News.
The governor's staff insists these were routine, legal deals that were properly handled. They point to a bank's appraisal, done when Perry sold his land in 2007, that said the buyer was paying Perry slightly less than market value.
Experts hired by The News dismissed that appraisal as "unsupported" and said it did not meet professional standards. County tax appraisals at the time also indicated that the governor was able to buy the land below market value and sell far above it.
Perry, in a brief interview last week, said every land transaction he has made while in office "has been open and honest, and at arm's length," and disclosed in public records.
"So I would just have folks take a look at the record, and I think the record pretty much speaks for itself," Perry said. "Being open and being honest and being at arm's length is what people expect every day."
At the center of the dispute is a gently sloping, half-acre grassy lot on the shore of Lake Lyndon B. Johnson in the Texas Hill Country resort of Horseshoe Bay. The resort is owned by Doug Jaffe, whose family has long, deep and sometimes controversial ties to Texas politics.
Jaffe's company had sold the parcel to state Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, a friend and political ally of Perry's. Fraser sold the lot to Perry for just above $300,000.
An appraiser hired by The News determined that the land actually was worth $450,000 when Perry bought it.
Perry sold the property in 2007 to Alan Moffatt, a British national who is a business partner and close associate of Jaffe's.
Moffatt, as the owner of an aviation firm, was questioned, but never prosecuted, for his company's international arms shipments to Africa in the 1990s.
He paid Perry $1.15 million for the parcel. The News' appraiser, who has decades of experience in Horseshoe Bay real estate, found that price to be $350,000 above market value.
Moffatt denied that anything improper occurred in the transaction. "It just happened that the governor of Texas owned that lot," he said. "It was a good deal for me."
If Perry was deemed to have received any gifts, he would, as a state officeholder, have been required to disclose them. He did not do so.
Perry has portrayed himself as one of the most financially transparent governors in Texas history, and has attacked Democratic nominee Bill White for not releasing all tax returns.
Republican Perry, running for re-election to a record third four-year term, has been criticized by political opponents, including GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, for enriching himself via land deals while in office.
The head of a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes transparency in government said Perry's Horseshoe Bay transactions look questionable.
"The man on the street on this would think that this is a series of deals that smell of special favors being created for elected officials to curry their favor," said Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation in Washington, D.C.
The Perry deal was hardly the first time the Jaffe family has operated among shadowy businessmen and influential officeholders.
For the Jaffes, it has been a way of life.
Doug Jaffe and his late father, Morris, have built widely chronicled reputations as big-money backers of Democratic politicians going back to Lyndon Johnson's days as a U.S. senator. Johnson and Gov. John Connally were occasional dinner guests at the Jaffe mansion in a San Antonio suburb.
Morris Jaffe, who died in 2001, rose from poverty on San Antonio's west side to create an empire that included oil and gas exploration, real estate, a department store chain and an insurance firm. Among his business partners was Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt, who went to prison in 2007 for paying kickbacks to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The Jaffes were implicated in a federal investigation of billionaire rancher Clinton Manges, a protégé of legendary South Texas political boss George Parr. Manges was convicted of using the mail to file false claims with a state land official to retain an oil lease for the Jaffes.
"Anything they do is wheeling and dealing," said Bob Wallace, a former business associate of the Jaffes whose venture with them fell apart. "Anything they do is complicated."
Doug Jaffe found success in the vending machine business and made a fortune selling "hush kits" that allowed older commercial jets to meet government noise restrictions. His worldwide client list included the government of Nicolae Ceausescu, communist dictator of Romania, and Samuel Doe, a notoriously repressive president of Liberia.
In 1989, numerous press accounts reported that a congressional ethics committee investigating House Speaker Jim Wright subpoenaed both Jaffes to testify about an East Texas oil exploration venture that, despite producing nothing, earned Wright about $150,000.
The Jaffes disputed allegations that they helped enrich Wright so that he would support a bid by one of their companies to win a $3 billion military aircraft contract.
The federal Office of Independent Counsel also investigated the Jaffes as part of a probe of former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, then the U.S. housing secretary, according to the counsel's report. The Jaffes acknowledged they had made thousands of dollars in loans to Linda Medlar Jones, a former Cisneros girlfriend.
While best known for backing Democrats, the Jaffe family also has contributed to Republicans when the GOP was in power. After giving $25,000 to Perry's Democratic rival in 1998, Doug Jaffe gave $5,000 to Perry's campaign fund for governor in 2004, campaign records show.
Doug Jaffe said he appreciated Perry's stewardship of the Texas economy. "I feel blessed that we've had him there," he said recently.
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, a longtime Democratic ally of the Jaffe family, chuckled when asked if he thought Doug Jaffe was a Perry supporter.
"Money," he said, "generally follows the candidate they think is going to win."
Obama/Biden-11-10-08-Mem
Race Boating: Swift Boat Backer Funds Racist Mail In Texas
by: Glen W. SmithA group called "Empower Texans," chaired by Tim Dunn of Midland, an associate of Republican Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, attacked Democratic state House candidate Joel Redmond of Pasadena with a direct mail piece featuring fuzzy images of black and Hispanic lawmakers (plus Barack Obama), several black birds resembling crows, and a picture of the white Redmund. The tag line: "Birds of a feather flock together."
Anyone with any racial sensitivity gets the meaning of the mailer: Redmond has betrayed whites by befriending people of color. He can't be trusted.
This is happening in the Houston area, down the road from Tom DeLay. George Bush's hometown. While an African-American, Barack Obama, is the Democratic nominee for president.
Today's Race Boaters aren't like the Swift Boaters. They ARE the Swift Boaters. Bob Perry. Tom DeLay. Tom Craddick. The same people whose 2002 campaign funding scheme led to Tuesday's guilty plea from the Texas Association of Business, another organization with close ties to the Race Boaters. That plea came from the same investigation that led to the indictment against DeLay.
HALF PAGE AD TAKEN OUT IN LOCAL NEWSPAPER BY AN 81 YEAR OLD MAN
