Randi Rhodes: Tex-Ass

HOUR TWO GUEST: Jim Hightower will separate Rick Perry fact from fiction.

That didn’t take long. If you were wondering how long it would take for Rick Perry to cross the line, it looks like he’s starting out from across the line. When asked if he was suggesting that President Obama does not love America, Perry said “You need to ask him.” Congratulations, Rick. You’ve been in this race something like 48 hours and you’ve already broken Sarah Palin’s “pals around with terrorists” record for incivility.

Rick Perry isn’t just attacking President Obama. Yesterday Perry warned Federal Reserve Chairman Bill Bernanke against “printing more money.” And since in Rick Perry’s world, no warning is considered serious unless it’s accompanied by a threat, he threw one in. Perry said that if Bernanke “prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.” What kind of thing is that to say? I’d be very angry if I were Ben Bernanke. And I’d be infuriated if I were from Texas. Then Perry said that printing more money is “almost treasonous in my opinion.” Wow. Perry is a guy who has openly advocated secession. I didn’t know if ANYTHING could be treasonous in his opinion. Ever notice that people with a southern accent often intentionally make their southern drawl more extreme when they want to intimidate people? They know we’ve all seen the movie “Deliverance.”

When Rick Perry was asked if he wasn’t a little bit too much like George Bush, he said “one of the quick you can tell the difference is that he’s a Yale graduate; I’m a Texas A&M graduate.” Got that? The only problem with George Bush was that golldarned Ivy League education. I never thought that the fact that George Bush went to Yale University said anything bad about George Bush. It said plenty of bad things about Yale University.

As far as Rick Perry’s “Texas Miracle” goes, it seems like Texas ranks last or next to last in every ranking for things you don’t want to be last in. The only reason Texas is not dead last in everything is the existence of the state of Mississippi. It’s like the Third World is coming to America, and it’s going through Texas to get here.

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Bill Clinton weighed in on Rick "Good-Looking Rascal" Perry and the GOP's anti-government religion yesterday in NYC...