As A Matter of Fact, It Is Something In The Water
I swear to my best curling iron that we ought to stand at the back door to the Texas Lege and hand out red rubber noses.
So last week they were discussing making it illegal to text while driving. Because that kills people and not just the person texting. Well, it passed but without the support of the three powerfully unfortunate-looking white boys from East Texas.
And why would they we opposed to this? FREEDOM!
“I view it as government overreach,” [Will] Metcalf said Friday. “What are we going to outlaw next — changing your radio station, taking a drink of water, adjusting (your air conditioning)?”
State Rep Mark Keough sees other problems.
Another consequence Keough worries about is how law enforcement will enforce the new law.
“While they’re driving, they will have to do the very thing they’re telling us not to do,” Keough said.
He said law enforcement personnel will have to take their eyes off the road to see whether drivers are using their mobile devices.
Which is also what they have to do to see if you’re speeding, running a red light, or driving while stoopid. FREEDOM!
But, Keough has a solution.
Keough said he’d like to see a campaign similar to “Don’t Mess with Texas” that changes the culture of distracted driving.
Yeah, there is now zero, completely zero litter in Texas. But we do have lots of FREEDOM!
Thanks to Gene for the heads up.
“Smart” ass with absolutely no concept of governance so he opens his mouth and lets stupid fall out! Hope some parents and family members of folks killed while texting or by a texting driver dump on him big time. It will be the only way he will learn. Free-Dumb!
1Legislating while Texan wingnut should be a capital offense.
2Republican base: Freedom to do whatever you damn well please.
Democratic base: Freedom not to be creamed by somebody doing whatever they damn well please.
Interesting column about southern plantation culture notions of freedom vs Yankee culture ditto, and how we’ve been taken over by the latter, leading to people packing heat in the Dairy Queen just because:
http://www.alternet.org/story/156071/conservative_southern_values_revived%3A_how_a_brutal_strain_of_american_aristocrats_have_come_to_rule_america
3I’ve often wondered why these “Freedom doofuses” aren’t screaming about the speed limit too. I mean, why should the government mandate how fast I can drive? And while we’re at it, let’s eliminate stop signs. If I can text on a “smart(?)” phone while driving a hundred and ten mph, why should I have to stop just because some nerd with a map decides I should? Caveat emptor for everything – the “buyer” in this instance, anyone operating a vehicle. I fear deeply for our country.
4Thanks for that one JJ…My dogs are wonderin’ why I keep pounding my head on my desk…I can’t give ’em a good answer…head still spinning…
5Was that a Rick Perry “three” from East Texas you were citing?
6In 2007, four young girls were killed when their SUV crashed head-on into a tractor trailer on a rural road in western NY. They had graduated from high school only days before. The driver was texting, and overcorrected her steering after swerving. The truck driver was devastated but there was nothing he could do to avoid the car or rescue the girls from the wreckage, although he tried.
We now have a very strict law against using cell phones and texting while driving. And you know what happened here in NY? Accidents involving drivers texting have gone DOWN! Lives have been saved!
I’m sure the families of those four girls would have gladly given up their ‘freedom’ in order to have their daughters back.
7I thought there was already a program to discourage texting and driving. I see messages all the time on the freeway signs warning against it, as well as other media. Perhaps the representative can’t read? Or is afraid to take his eyes off the road to read the signs? I would assume the former.
8Rhea, thanks for the link re: Southern leadership. It definitely provides a good background to why we are so screwed up in our government these days, and why the stupid seems to be winning.
9Don’t text with Mess-us.
10How ’bout we take them boys out to the Big Empty in west Texas and let them text to their hearts’ content while driving around acres and acres of bumpy, prickly ground until they all blow up their tires or something. We could charge admission.
11Thank you, Rhea, for the excellent link! That pretty much covers it.
12This attitude of belligerence so evident in rwnj’s refusal to acknowledge that saving lives takes precedence over absolute freedom, are stunted with teenaged-underdevloped minds.
13They should have to pass an MRI of the brain.
Maybe people don’t want to mess with TXass because they don’t want to catch what they are spreading around TXass. No offense Juanita. I just had to say it.
14I read Rhea’s link and I have 3 things to say:
1. That’s very persuasive information.
152. I kinda wish I didn’t know that.
3. Opps. I forgot.