Seriously?

*  Rick Perry's comments about Social Security scare me.  We have another extreme right wing Republican tea partier that wants to get rid of Social Security and Medicare.

ThinkProgress:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has, to say the least, a very odd understanding of the Constitution. He thinks Texas should be able to opt out of Social Security, and he believes that everything from federal public school programs to clean air laws are unconstitutional. Yet in an interview with the Daily Beast’s Andrew Romano, Perry makes his most outlandish claim to date — Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional:

The Constitution says that “the Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes… to provide for the… general Welfare of the United States.” But I noticed that when you quoted this section on page 116, you left “general welfare” out and put an ellipsis in its place. Progressives would say that “general welfare” includes things like Social Security or Medicare—that it gives the government the flexibility to tackle more than just the basic responsibilities laid out explicitly in our founding document. What does “general welfare” mean to you?

[PERRY:] I don’t think our founding fathers when they were putting the term “general welfare” in there were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of health care. What they clearly said was that those were issues that the states need to address. Not the federal government. I stand very clear on that. From my perspective, the states could substantially better operate those programs if that’s what those states decided to do......

Time Magazine has this:

.....Last week, the Daily Beast released the transcript of an interview with Perry from last fall. He was asked about his assertion in a book he had written that Social Security is a "failure" that "we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years." Perry called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" and pressed for a "legitimate conversation about let[ting] the states keep their money and implement" their own version of it.....

....Social Security critics do not like to talk about the fact that the Supreme Court definitively put the question to rest in 1937. After Congress adopted the Social Security Act at President Franklin Roosevelt's urging, it was challenged on constitutional grounds. In Helvering v. Davis, the Supreme Court upheld the act by a 7-2 vote. Justice Benjamin Cardozo, writing for the majority, said the Taxing and Spending Clause authorized Congress to levy taxes and spend money to advance the "general welfare" and that Congress was within its right to find "that the award of old age benefits would be conducive to the general welfare."

In its opinion, the Supreme Court also powerfully reminded people of why Congress had passed the act. "The hope behind this statute," Justice Cardozo wrote, "is to save men and women from the rigors of the poor house, as well as from the haunting fear that such a lot awaits them when journey's end is near."

Once again we see that Perry doesn't understand the Constitution.  Rick Perry's college transcript from Texas A&M shows that he should have studied harder, especially in those history classes that he received C's, and the D in an economics class.

Rick Perry's extreme prayer meeting of a couple of weeks ago, showed his association with some very controversial preachers. Rightwingwatch has this on just one of Perry's preachers, John Hagee:

John Hagee
While Senator John McCain rejected John Hagee’s endorsement during the 2008 presidential campaign for his “deeply offensive and indefensible” remarks, Perry invited Hagee to join The Response. Hagee leads a megachurch in San Antonio, Texas, and is a purveyor of End Times prophesies. Like members of the International House of Prayer, Hagee utilizes language of spiritual warfare and says he is part of “the army of the living God.” He runs the prominent group Christians United For Israel, which believes that eventually a cataclysmic war in the Middle East will bring about the Rapture.
John McCain was forced to disavow Hagee for a reason as the Texas pastor:

• claimed that God sent Hitler to be a “hunter” of Jews to usher in the establishment of Israel and “do God’s work,” lamenting that Jews are no longer “spiritually alive.”
• referred to the Catholic Church as ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.’
• believes that Hurricane Katrina “looked like the curse of God” and ravaged New Orleans in order to stop a “homosexual rally” and punish the city’s high “level of sin.”
• said that if gay marriage becomes legal “you can kiss this country goodbye,” alleged that the US is “rebirthing Sodom and Gomorrah,” and demanded that the government stop funding AIDS research and treatment to stop benefiting a “sinful lifestyle.”
• demands that “wives submit yourselves to your husbands” and said that the “husband has a God-given role as leader of your home.”
• said that God won’t allow the United States to win wars anymore because “we have allowed the worship of Satanism in the U.S. military.”

Obviously, Perry doesn't want to win the Catholic vote.

 >>>  Today, we mourn the passing of former member of the House of Representatives, Robert Shamansky.  He represented part of Columbus during his one term in Congress.  See the Dayton Daily News for information.