Southeast Texas Atheists

Comment

Comment by Ted Gresham on February 6, 2012 at 11:47am

Reason Rally in DC, March 24, leaving Houston.  Who can go?  I wanna go and there's discount tic's available.

http://reasonrally.org/2012/02/01/discounts-for-the-reason-rally-bu...

Comment by Ted Gresham on February 4, 2012 at 3:38pm

Hello yall.  Anybody close to Lufkin?  (aka redneck religious hell)

Comment by Jerry McMasters on December 20, 2011 at 10:04pm

I'm checking in after a year and a half or so...I take it still not enough of us to organize a get-together for a brew or coffee...oh well.  Merry X mas to all my fellow freethinkers in East Texas.

 

Comment by David C Silvernail on September 5, 2011 at 2:39pm

Looking for some to have a cup of coffee with. Yes I am and old geezer but I can have discussions on almost any subject.

Comment by Rick on August 24, 2011 at 10:43pm

I'm Runing for the Office of the President. Do you like My Hair?

 

    I was reading online the other day what Republican Party presidential candidate hopeful would like to do.  Reading it I was surprised that the man would even consider doing such things.  But then again, this shows you just how far the so called “Republican Party” has gone to the right.

     Now I grew up in Houston in the only congressional district in Texas, if not the country that carried Berry Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential campaign.  In fact, I remember when Daddy Bush was a local congressman.  Just FYI, Ellington Field was where his son’s Air National Guard unit was stationed, which by the way, was in his congressional district.  Daddy was all for stopping communism, but only if other sons of less influential and non-politically connected families would and could do it.  I have a cousin who has a lovely Purple Heart he got in South Vietnam because it was “expected” that he serve, as his father had during WWII.

     Well, besides that sore point with me…

     Perry would like to do away with having WE THE PEOPLE VOTE WHO WE WANT TO REPRESENT US IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.  Now originally, US Senators were chosen by the individual states government.  This was done away with in the late 1800’s.  They were in short, political appointees. 

     But due to various things, like, oh corruption and the like, an amendment to the Constitution was made, and passed.  The people, not the likes of Tammany Hall, would choose their Senators.

     Also Perry would like to see that any ruling by the US Supreme Court could be overturned by 2/3 of the Congress.  So much for the “Checks and Balances” in our form of government.  So many things, like citizens’ RIGHTS would be so easily taken away.  A woman’s right to abortion, Rights Warning statements to those being arrested, trial by jury, access to the courts, the right to vote even.

     If you think I’m off base here…just go scan the Patriot Act.  Warrantless searches….yup….check it out.  Just like they use to have in the former USSR.  Searches without warrants…..and ya know…it was all due to the needs of “NATOINAL SECURITY” too….

   Then there is the balanced budget he’d like have made part of the Constitution.  Well, here in Texas it is part of the Texas Constitution.  And every year, it has to be balanced.  Now mind you a couple of years ago it wasn’t.  But it did get balanced.  You see, what the Texas State government does is shift a lot of things down to the counties to handle.  Therefore, people are still taxed for these things, but on the county level and not the state. 

     Oh, by the way, with the end of Reconstruction back in the 1800s, after the Civil War, Texas wrote a new state Constitution.  In there was the Balanced Budget part.  This hasn’t changed in about 140 years.  Rick Perry had nothing to do with it.  Sorry Ricky.

     But this isn’t the first time we’ve had this attempt….let’s hop into our time machine and go back to the 1980’s…….

The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (99th Congress, S.1702, Pub.L. 99-177, title II, December 12, 1985, 99 Stat. 1038, 2 U.S.C. § 900) and Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Reaffirmation Act of 1987 (Pub.L. 100-119, title I, Sept. 29, 1987, 101 Stat. 754, 2 U.S.C. § 900) (both often known as Gramm-Rudman) were, according to U.S. Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, "the first binding constraint imposed on federal spending, and its spending caps have become part of every subsequent U.S. budget. Together with a rapidly growing economy it produced the first balanced federal budget in a quarter of a century.”

President Reagan signed the bill on August 21, 1986.

The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 supplanted the fixed deficit targets.

Balanced budgets did not actually emerge until the late 1990s when budget surpluses (not accounting for liabilities to the Social Security Trust Fund) emerged.

….now what is not being brought up is that the Republican Party controlled the Congress and Senate from 1994 until 2006.  With G. W. Bush in the White House, the Republican Party controlled all three from 2001 until 2006.

     Now while I do hold the Democrats as responsible for the unbridled spending, the Republicans were in control and charge.

     So this idea of a balanced budget amendment kind of throws me.  And when I would mention this in chat room and on bulletin boards online, I was told that my “tin foil hat” was on too tight.  Or that with inflation, the cost will be reduced…..

    NOT.

     And of course, there is the “abortion” issue.  Mr. Perry wants to stop all abortion.  This broken record has been the battle cry for the so called Republican Party since the 1992.  When the Republicans saw that the Christian Coalition had Political Action Committees (PAC) which could generate more money the “god”, and the preachers would tell their followers who to vote for, thus giving them a “block” vote, they quickly rolled onto their back, spread their legs and cried, “TAKE ME!”

     Prior to this the idea of a women not having access to birth control, weather prescription or through medical procedures was not acceptable nor taken lightly.  I watched older women who grew up when birth control pills were only a day dream, and abortions were done in backrooms fight tooth and nail to protect their rights to have control over their bodies.  My mother was one of them.

     So when I look at Perry, I just see a slick politician who plays the religious card BIG TIME.   And what is so sad, these religious people just don’t see or want to see how they are being played.  Sad.  It’s really sad.

     But like the old Wobbly union song use to go, “work all day and live on hay, and when you die there will be pie in the sky…”

    I think I’d like to have my pie now, thank you.

Comment by Rick on May 22, 2011 at 5:18pm

  I’m really ticked off now…..BIG TIME!

Last night I expected all the “rapture”  yahoo’s to be gone.  All I expected to find was a bunch

of clothes, empty house, apartments, mobile homes and the like.  Cars just left on the street with the keys in them.

I had planned to go out looting. I was gonna clean up with the cash they left behind, their valuables, jewels, precious metals, silverware, electronics and the such.

BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I even had a SHOPPING LIST!

And I had a list of things my friends wanted…..  Of course, there were some prescription meds certain friends wanted me to get for them…. And some things that weren’t prescription as well….

It only goes to show you, you can’t trust these “rapture” clowns….

Sigh……..back to clipping coupons….

Comment by Sylvia McDougald Holmes on May 9, 2011 at 10:51am

If this group has meetups, please let me know.  I'm interested.

Comment by Sylvia McDougald Holmes on May 9, 2011 at 10:42am

Hello fellow SE Texans!

Comment by Bobby Mattox on March 25, 2011 at 8:29pm

That would be nice. I'd go.

Comment by not shown on March 25, 2011 at 8:25pm

Hmm, no activity since last year. Owell I'll jump in anyway, the pool is empty so I have it all to myself! Anyone still here or interested in any kind of meetups?

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• …
• 5
• Next ›
• Page