The Texas Counting Curse
Y’all, it’s a Texas thang.
Apparently, not a damn one of us can make a list.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’s new tax plan involves eliminating five major federal agencies, but he was only able to recall four during Tuesday’s Fox Business debate.
If he was trying to show up Rick Perry with the whole cutting-the-government schtick, completing three would have been cause for a standing ovation.
All I can tell you, Honey, is do not send these guys to the grocery store or give them a food order without making them write it down.
Oops.
It is not that he cannot list five things, it is just that after naming three he forgot what he already said. Then again, this is probably how Texas men have gotten out of honey-do’s and grocery lists for years. “Yes, dear, I remember you need diapers, kleenex, and toilet paper.” So he returns with diapers and a six-pack of beer. Oops.
1I would be irked that a presidential candidate needed to read off a list the major agencies that they wanted to eliminate. They better know which ones and why they are being eliminated backwards, forwards, upside down and in their sleep. Otherwise I know they’re just pulling things out of their butt because they are idiots and to appease their even more ignorant followers.
2@Star — too funny.
The thing that always gets me when repubs talk about eliminating agencies and departments and whatnot … they never talk about what they are going to do with the actual work those agencies do. So you want to eliminate the Department of Energy. Great. The DOE monitors nuclear power plants. Are we no longer going to monitor those plants for safety? The DOE monitors nuclear energy around the globe. Are we no longer going to keep track of such things?
These people are fools.
3Of all the things to miscount about, huh?
Well, I guess the best we can say is that if a Texan becomes President, we might be able to fool him into believing he’d reached his goal of department cuts by counting the same one over and over again…
4The best part is that the one he forgot was… Department of Education.
5“The next time I tell you somebody from Texas should not be President… believe me.” — Molly Ivins
OK, I’ll give you LBJ, at least on domestic issues. But I am looking askance at any candidate from Texas for the duration, and that would include Dem candidates until strictly checked out. I don’t know if it’s your schools or something in the water or what, but y’all got more than your share of looneytunes.
6Rhea, it’s a big state. It’s easy for folks to forget the bad things a candidate says and folks believe candidates are lying, anyway, so they mostly vote on looks. Or, back when Ann Richards was running against that cowboy, my neighbor said “I’m voting for Ann because she’s less likely to embarrass us.” That seems to me like a good reason to vote for someone.
7Star, gotta agree. I sent my husband out years ago for 2 gallons of milk and he came back with fire extinguishers.
I kid you not!
8In the immortal word of Homer Jay Simpson “DOH?”.
9Maggie can I interest your husband in some ” Magic Donut Seeds”? Let me find that box of Cheerios.
Rhea, we don’t necessarily raise them here; that’s how we got Pee Bush in office on the last go-round. They just come here because they know where to find the suckers who will vote for them. My sincerest apologies.
10@djw, I have to assume that a good percentage of Texas voters are looneytunes too, or we wouldn’t hear about these people who get elected– they’d be in the family’s attic, quietly playing with their toys or banging on the window and yelling at the neighbors or something.
11That “oops” thing is contagious, but so gratifying that Crazy Cruz caught it.
12@Mark J
13I think that is the point. The DOE and EPA are keeping the poor oppressed energy companies down. How would you feel if you were an oil exec scraping by on a couple billion a year and some government agency told you to not dump radioactive waste or spill oil all over the place. It is better for the 1% if they are gone completely.
As for the Department of Education, consider how truly stupid and uninformed their voting base is. The last thing they want is an educated population.
There are two things I like about Raphael Cruz.
141. Nothing.
Texas: Ted Cruz. Louie Gohmert. Tom Delay. George W. Bush. Greg Abbott. And so on. See what happens when you block access to abortions?
15You could see it in his eyes. The, “Omg, I forgot the fifth! OMG! OMG!” thing. He could see, “Oops,” hanging out there in the air right in front of him.
What to do? What to do? Oh, OK then, just repeat one of them, problem solved. At the end there, when he wasn’t called on it, the huge sigh of relief was also visible. He knew that people who can count to five would be writing about it in all the papers the next day but hey, the word “Oops!” hadn’t cross his lips and that was what mattered as far as he was concerned.
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