Here's a headline we're tempted to write - or rather, one that we would be tempted to write if we weren't so nice, or so dedicated to avoiding oversimplification:

"Climate-Change Deniers Struck by Climate Change in Texas Tornado Outbreak."

This week two seemingly unrelated but very connected events took place: In the first, freak tornadoes struck the Dallas area today with unexpected ferocity, causing many experts to revisit the issue of whether tornadoes should be included in the list of extreme weather caused by climate change.

In the second, one of the hard-hit area's Representatives bragged about cutting funds for - predicting storms and reducing their impact.

If you think that's bad - and it is - last year Mitt Romney did the Representative one better: He said it would be "immoral" to spend Federal money to help victims of national disasters like the one that just struck Texas.

Immoral.

A Spell of Bad Weather

Even as presumptive GOP nominee Romney was talking like that last year, fourteen weather disasters caused a billion dollars or more in damage. And yet House Republicans insisted on cutting funds for studying the climate, predicting violent storms, early storm warnings, and assistance in helping communities minimize damage and loss of life. They cut $140 billion from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Commission, the agency which monitors the climate and helps minimize damage and loss of life during storms, after trying to cut much more than that.

Last year's GOP budget also slashed more than $500 million from the budget for weather prediction satellites. And they tried to cut funding for FEMA, the agency that helps people get through disasters like these, by more than half the previous year's amount (which would have left FEMA with less than one-third of its 2010 budget).

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In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina members of the media noticed there was widespread devastation in the South. Watching it on television, as a person of Southern heritage, to me it was clear: “Some of that was like that before the storm.” And it was. And it still is years later. Now since the Southern states have primaries for the next few weeks – combined with Mitt Romney doing his best Rand McNally material at campaign stops – the South is in the spotlight once again.

However, in this election cycle there are no real Southern candidates. Newt Gingrich represented Georgia but was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (and retains that accent). To contrast that, both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention events are being held in southern states (North Carolina and Florida).

Here’s what the nation ignores unless there’s a disaster (or an election which could also qualify as a disaster): Of the bottom 10 poorest states in the union – nine of them are Southern states east of Texas. Mississippi is the poorest state of all. Child poverty. Unemployment. Under-employment. Lack of education. Lack of resources. The nation’s highest obesity rates are found south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Despite the conservative bona fides, the South isn’t pulling herself up by her bootstraps … mainly because she can’t see her toes she’s about to lose to diabetes. These are deeply and consistently Republican voters – but being poor and Republican is like being a cow and pro-leather. The South is a parable as to why that is: Their prejudices are being exploited to prod them into being against their own best interests.

In the South there’s been a long (and storied) resentment of outsiders coming in and telling them how to run their lives. But without fail, when the economy is bad anywhere – historically the first group to be blamed are the noobs. Hence why a new wave of anti-immigrant legislation has been pouring out of the southern region of the U.S.

Last year, Alabama passed HB 56 or Hammon-Beason Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act which led to a mass exodus of labor in the state. There were reports of crops rotting in the fields and an estimated cost to the state in the billions. Now the governor of Mississippi has endorsed a similar plan. Capitalizing politicians will say these heavy-handed laws are to keep out illegal immigrants but in practice it’s anyone who looks vaguely foreign being forced to show their paperwork.

Not exactly the land of the free. And sure not Southern hospitality.

Are immigrants, as these laws imply, parasites on the system? It’s actually the poorest (and yes, Southern) states that are the ones not carrying their own weight. For every dollar Alabamans pay in federal taxes, they receive $1.66 in federal money. In Louisiana it’s $1.78 per dollar. Mississippi gets $2.02 per dollar they give the dreaded federal gubmint.

There’s a way to help this region get off the federal dole: Welcome immigrants.

California has a huge immigrant population (both legal and illegal) and while certainly not void of any problems, the state still boasts of having the 8th largest economy in the world. And grumble as you will about Californians, for every dollar they pay in federal taxes – the rest of the country receives nearly a quarter of it.

Southern conservatives can bemoan “paying for someone else’s birth control” but in this way the New England states are paying for “someone else’s” (namely the South’s) Lipitor.

Welcome immigrants. When you welcome immigrants - you welcome tourists, you welcome tax revenue and then, counter-intuitively, the South can be more self-reliant. That’s a conservative principle in a “severely” right-leaning culture.

The best thing the South can do to save herself is welcome the world. Be a place immigrants move to. Let smart people from other countries call themselves Alabamians. Let hard working people everywhere call Mississippi home. Welcome the world to the South.

Basically enact the opposite of HB 56.

Hopefully the Justice Department can effectively block this stuff and disappoint the ALEC-stacked state legislatures, because it's obviously aimed at suppressing Democratic voter turnout:

(Reuters) - The Obama administration on Monday blocked a new law in Texas requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast a ballot, citing a concern that it could harm Hispanic voters who lacked such documents.

The law, which was approved in May 2011, required voters to show government-issued photo identification, such as a driver's license, military identification card, birth certificate with a photo, current U.S. passport, or concealed handgun permit.

The Justice Department said that data from Texas showed that almost 11 percent of Hispanic voters, or more than 300,000, did not have a driver's license or state-issued identification card, and that plans to mitigate those concerns were incomplete.

And in the meantime, a Wisconsin county judge has issued a permanent injunction against the state's new photo ID law:

Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess has issued a permanent injunction against Wisconsin's new photo ID law. In doing so, Niess became the second judge in less than a week to strike the new law, but the first one did so on a temporary basis.

Four lawsuits have been filed against the law requiring people to present a valid government-issued photo identification card in order to receive a ballot. Monday's ruling was in response to the suit the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed. It contends the provision violates Wisconsin's constitutional protections for voters.

[...] Voters had to follow the law during February's primary and no major problems were reported. Election officials were making preparations for Wisconsin's April 3 presidential primary when a much bigger turnout is expected.

The Supreme Court turned away a challenge to the Indiana voter ID law:

The 65 page PDF file, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the main opinion said " Valid neutral justifications for a nondiscriminatory law, such as SEA 483, should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators."

JUSTICE SCALIA, joined by JUSTICE THOMAS and JUSTICE ALITO, was of the view that petitioners’ premise that the voter-identification law might have imposed a special burden on some voters is irrelevant. The law should be upheld because its overall burden is minimal and justified.

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Really. Via the New York Times:

Thousands of other inmates in the Texas prison system have been eating fewer meals since April after officials stopped serving lunch on the weekends in some prisons as a way to cut food-service costs. About 23,000 inmates in 36 prisons are eating two meals a day on Saturdays and Sundays instead of three. A meal the system calls brunch is usually served between 5 and 7 a.m., followed by dinner between 4 and 6:30 p.m.

The meal reductions are part of an effort to trim $2.8 million in food-related expenses from the 2011 fiscal year budget of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the state prison agency. Other cuts the agency has made to its food service include replacing carton milk with powdered milk and using sliced bread instead of hamburger and hot dog buns.

Prison administrators said that the cuts were made in response to the state’s multibillion-dollar budget shortfall in 2011, and that the weekend lunches were eliminated in consultation with the agency’s health officials and dietitians. Michelle Lyons, an agency spokeswoman, said that inmates with health problems who have been prescribed a therapeutic diet continue to receive three meals per day.

Prison riots can start over something as trivial as a stolen toothbrush, or yes, food. This is why most prisons have decent food and make sure inmates get three square meals a day. So I guess in Texas' case, they're prepared to just shoot first and ask questions later, since riots don't appear to be on their list of concerns.

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The caricature of a parody of a made up know-nothing cowboy politician, Rick Perry is SURGING! Yes! There are Republican primary voters who are telling pollsters they'd vote for him!

From Reuters:

Thirty-three percent said they would vote for Perry, versus 20 percent for Romney. Bachmann had 16 percent support. The rest of the field was in single digits, with Gingrich at 8 percent, Paul and Cain at 6 percent, Santorum at 4 percent and Huntsman with 3 percent.

But wait, remember back in April when Donald Trump was the front-runner? Mediaite reported:

Trump polled at 26% in the survey, trailed by Mau-mauer Mike Huckabee with 17%, and recently-announced mainstream darling Mitt Romney with 15%. In a few short weeks, Trump has managed to completely eclipse former media fulcrum Sarah Palin, who is polling at just 8%, still better than Minnesotans Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, who got 4% each.

So there's basically a third of Republicans that like ANYBODY who's new to the race. They hate the field so much at this point they just subscribe to the GOP Flavor of the Month. Who is it this minute? The Governor of the state with the highest rate of minimum wage jobs in the nation. You know, the one that's number one in executions and dead last in high school graduates.

Nate Silver said it best the day Perry announced:

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Credit: Twitter

The funny thing is that in all these dramatic polls - Romney is the steady one. It maybe the first time in his political career he's been consistent.

Asked the biggest difference between himself and George W. Bush, Texas governor and new Republican White House front runner Rick Perry answered, "I went to Texas A&M. He went to Yale." Which isn't far from the truth. After all, their pronouncements on policies and personal beliefs are eerily similar. And when it comes to donning the executioner's hood in the death penalty mecca that is Texas, Rick Perry and George W. Bush are almost indistinguishable.

As the Washington Post documented, Governor Perry is America's reigning death penalty champion, exceeding the body count of his predecessor in Austin:

In his nearly 11 years as the state's chief executive, Perry, now running for the Republican presidential nomination, has overseen more executions than any governor in modern history: 234 and counting. That's more than the combined total in the next two states -- Oklahoma and Virginia -- since the death penalty was restored 35 years ago.

Perry's apparent enthusiasm for Texas' popular death penalty process doesn't end there:

He vetoed a bill that would have spared the mentally retarded, and sharply criticized a Supreme Court ruling that juveniles were not eligible for the death penalty. He has found during his tenure only one inmate on Texas's crowded death row he thought should receive the lesser sentence of life in prison.

If this all sounds hauntingly familiar, it should. During the 2000 campaign, Americans were introduced to another Texas governor who was unapologetic about condemning his state's residents to death.

George W. Bush carried out 152 executions during his days as Governor of Texas, sparing only one death row inmate after his routine 15 minute clemency review. Even those similarly adopting Jesus as their favorite philosopher could expect no leniency from Bush. When his allies on the religious right pressured him to spare murderess turned jailhouse born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, Governor Bush displayed his trademark resolve - and compassion. As Time recounted in 1999:

Tucker Carlson of Talk magazine described the smirk Bush wore as he mimicked convicted murderer turned Christian Karla Faye Tucker begging, "Please don't kill me," something she never actually did.

Bush's seeming bloodlust towards criminal defendants almost derailed his 2000 presidential campaign. During his second debate against Al Gore in October 2000, Bush was asked about his position on hate crimes laws in the wake of the brutal dragging death of African-American James Byrd in his home state of Texas. His disturbing response - accompanied by a sickening grin - produced gasps among the audience:

"The three men who murdered James Byrd, guess what's going to happen to them? They're going to be put to death. A jury found them guilty. It's going to be hard to punish them any worse after they get put to death."

Even the tone-deaf Bush sensed he had crossed the line. In the third debate, he wisely retreated, acknowledging he was "not proud" of Texas' number one ranking in executions.

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So will Texans still chant the right-wing "no such thing as global warming" mantra, or will they finally wise up and start demanding their officials do something to save what's left of our ability to survive on the planet? Oh, and grow crops, too:

Electricity officials in heatwave-hit Texas have warned of impending rolling blackouts from power shortages as the U.S. state struggles to cope with the relentless scorching temperatures.

Texans have turned to air conditioners in huge numbers in a bid to beat one of the hottest summers on record in America's second most populous state.

But bosses for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) say the soaring power demand in the face of the brutal heatwave has left the state one power plant shut-down away from rolling blackouts.

Temperatures in Texas are currently topping 100F (37.8C) and have been soaring for well over a month. Record highs have also been recorded this week in nearby states Oklahoma and Arkansas as the relentless heatwave spreads across southern America.

In Forth Smith and Little Rock, Arkansas, the mercury hit 115F on Wednesday.

ERCOT, which runs the power grid for most of Texas, cut power to some large industrial users after electricity demand hit three consecutive records this week alone. The grid operator now faces rolling blackouts similar to those which hit Texas during a bitter cold snap in February.

In Dallas, Texas, a pensioner died from 'heat-related' causes after her air conditioning unit was stolen from her house.

Power usage in ERCOT reached its highest level ever on Wednesday at 68,294 megawatts, almost four per cent over last year's peak.

The Texas grid faces at least one more day of extreme stress before temperatures cool slightly over the weekend.

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FollowtheMoney.org:

An examination of campaign donations made by ALEC corporate members dating back to the 1990 election cycle shows that they contributed $12.2 million to state-level candidates who were ALEC members, with 98.4 percent of that money going to incumbent and winning candidates, many of whom could vote on proposed legislation. Additional analysis reveals that $11.9 million of the $12.2 million went to Republicans. Click here to download the database.

Over the seven (10 for some states) election cycles covered in a donor-data analysis by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, ALEC corporate members contributed $516.2 million to state-level politics: $202.1 million to state-level candidates, $228.3 million to high-dollar ballot-measure campaigns, and $85.8 million to state political party committees.

Half a billion dollars. A serious relationship. It seems ALEC is not afraid of commitment.

According to Texas Watchdog, one of the biggest beneficiaries of ALEC members' largesse was Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Because of the council leak, the Institute for Money in State Politics was able to link specific corporate money with specific legislators and issues. Of the $516.2 million given over the past 20 years, corporate donors spent $228.3 million on campaigns in support of issues on ballots in various states. Another $202.1 million went to candidates and $85.8 million went to almost exclusively Republican state committees.

Perry was, by far, the most popular donor target in Texas. Former Republican House Speaker and Exchange Council member, Tom Craddick, got $878,000 from corporate council members.

Other leaders were: State Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, $315,000; Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, $163,000; and Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, $124,000.

So let's see. Texas has a draconian tort reform law, is a oil welfare state, and is in the process of privatizing and destroying its public education system.

AlterNet:

In this, Perry is absolutely, 100 percent correct. He slashed taxes to the bone, handing out credits to his political cronies like they were candy. He decried the evils of Big Government while hypocritically using federal stimulus funds to help close Texas' budget gap in the short term, and now he's using the state's longer term fiscal disaster – one of his own creation – as a premise for destroying an already threadbare social safety net serving the neediest Texans. As a result of these policies, plus immigration and other external factors, his state's added a lot of low-paying poverty jobs without decent benefits. He's added very little in the way of “prosperity.”

In the final analysis, Texas is indeed a shining example of conservative governance, as well as an almost perfect model for winning the race to the bottom.

Thanks for that, ALEC. And now Rick Perry is about to be unleashed on the nation. At least we have Texas as a harbinger of things to come.

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Here's a guy who said secession should be an option for states as recently as November of 2010, who thinks states should be in charge of Social Security and Medicare, and has balanced the Texas state budget with federal funds while refusing to take federal funds. Yep. that's Texas Governor Rick Perry, current head of the Republican Governors' Association, and wingnut extraordinaire.

This valiant break-up-the-federal-government hardcore states rights guy is now considering some new options, like...running for President in 2012?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Friday he will consider a run for the Republican presidential nomination.

"I'm going to think about it" after the Texas legislative session ends on Monday, Perry told reporters in Austin after a bill signing. Perry added, "But I think about a lot of things."

Perry's remarks come on the heels of a Fox News interview this week in which he admitted that he is "tempted" to run for president.

"Oh, I can't say I'm not tempted, but the fact is this is something I don't want to do," Perry said.

For all of our sakes, let's hope he doesn't want to do it so much he drops the idea altogether. Though I confess this much: It would be very entertaining to watch Perry, Bachmann and Sarah Palin "debate".

I read an interview yesterday with one of the women who had an abortion at the horrible clinic that was shut down in Philadelphia. She said she'd tried to go to one of the well-known, respectable clinics -- but she was scared off by the protesters. She went to the criminally-negligent clinic because someone told her there wouldn't be any protesters.

Women who are under the stress of an unwanted pregnancy have enough trouble just getting past the logistics (money, insurance, state waiting periods, etc.). To add the emotional coercion and financial demand of forcing them to undergo a sonogram -- well, that's just plain mean. As I keep reminding people, abortion is still legal in America, and a woman's reason for choosing one is her own damned business. She shouldn't have to jump through these hoops to exercise her right to the procedure:

Gov. Rick Perry has fast-tracked legislation that requires physicians to show women a sonogram before they have an abortion.

Perry this weekend added the issue to his list of emergency items, giving lawmakers the ability to consider such bills in the first 30 days of the session.

“When you consider the magnitude of the decision to have an abortion, ensuring that the patient understands what’s truly at stake seems a small step to take,” Perry said in a statement.'<]/strong> “When someone has all the information, the right choice – the choice of life – becomes clear. Now our legislature can take fast action on this important bill because we all know when it comes to saving lives, every second counts.”

The list of emergency item this session has now grown to five. Other emergency items that Perry has set include establishing tougher eminent domain laws, abolishing sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants, requiring voters to present a photo identification at the polls and calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would require the federal government to have a balanced budget.

The state faces a budget shortfall of between $15 and $27 billion. Critics have questioned the governor's selection of such emergency items at a time when public education, higher education and health care are facing deep cuts.