Things are getting scary in Texas, especially in places like Lubbock and Abilene, which have been measure at the top of the list of most conservative cities in the USA. I think the irrational feeling of fear in Texas, about President Obama, is rooted in prejudice. Children brought up in such ultra-conservative cities, as listed above, learn wrongly by the age of 1 or 2, that Blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities are not equal to whites, who are god's supreme race.
Although racial prejudice has gradually abated in Texas, since the early '60s, it will take generations for the old racial biases of the pass to work their way out. #-------------------------------------- Official Stirs Texas City With Talk of Rebellion By MANNY FERNANDEZ Published: August 27, 2012 LUBBOCK, Tex. — A hearing on a proposed tax increase had just started at the county courthouse here Monday when Grace Rogers, a retired teacher, addressed local leaders. Ms. Rogers said she supported the idea of increasing the property tax to 34.6 cents per $100 valuation from 32.9 cents to finance the hiring of additional sheriff’s deputies — with one reservation. It was that, she said, “it does not fund a paramilitary to create an insurrection and rebellion against the United States.” Her comments might have sounded absurd at some other time, in some other place. But these days in Lubbock, a West Texas city known as the birthplace of the 1950s rock ’n’ roll pioneer Buddy Holly, Ms. Rogers’s request was timely and appropriate, under the circumstances. A few days before, the county’s top elected official, County Judge Tom Head, made an appearance on a local television station to generate support for the tax increase. He said he was expecting civil unrest if President Obama is re-elected, and that the president would send United Nations forces into Lubbock, population 233,740, to stop any uprising. “He is going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the U.N.,” Mr. Head said on Fox 34 last week. “O.K., what’s going to happen when that happens? I’m thinking worst-case scenario: civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war, maybe. And we’re not talking just a few riots here and demonstrations. We’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.” And if the president did send in United Nations troops, Mr. Head continued, “I don’t want ’em in Lubbock County. O.K. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carriers and say, ‘You’re not coming in here.’ And the sheriff, I’ve already asked him. I said, ‘You gonna back me?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’ll back you.’ “Well, I don’t want a bunch of rookies back there,” Mr. Head said. “I want trained, equipped, seasoned veteran officers to back me.” Mr. Head, a Republican who serves as the county’s emergency management director and presides over the commissioner’s court, made international headlines. He has not apologized, though he said that his statements were taken out of context and that he was using civil unrest only as an example of how he must prepare for worst-case scenarios. On Monday, Mr. Head sat straight-faced and calm at the hearing as more than two dozen residents sounded off on the tax increase and his statements. In an interview, Sheriff Kelly Rowe said he never had any discussions with Mr. Head involving any Obama-related uprisings or invasions, but he declined to say what he thought of Mr. Head’s remarks. To many in Lubbock, the notion of United Nations armored personnel carriers rolling down the brick-paved Buddy Holly Avenue, past the Greyhound bus station and the Disabled American Veterans thrift store, has been an outrage and an embarrassment. Kenny Ketner, the chairman of the Lubbock County Democratic Party, has called for Mr. Head to resign, as did the local newspaper, The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, which wrote in an editorial that Mr. Head “threw civility out the window and went in a bizarre direction that not only embarrassed himself but all county and West Texas residents.” Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, publicly questioned Mr. Head’s “mental competency to hold elected office.” Ms. Rogers, 74, said after the hearing that she took matters further, placing a phone call to the Secret Service. “There is an element in this city that is so anti-Obama that I think they have lost grip a little bit on reality,” she said. As the hearing on Monday made clear, Mr. Head and his statements have received a small but vocal chorus of support in a place that the Bay Area Center for Voting Research, based in California, once called the second-most conservative city in the country (behind Provo, Utah) among those with more than 100,000 people. A handful of residents said that Mr. Head was right in preparing for the worst. “I believe that we need a sheriff’s militia to protect Lubbock County, and get all the sheriffs in Texas to start a militia to protect Texas,” Kim Wade Gatewood, 48, told the commissioners and Mr. Head. After the hearing, Mr. Gatewood, an agricultural contractor, identified himself as the counsel general of the interim government of the Republic of Texas, which he said was not active at the moment. “If secession happens,” he said, “it’ll be active in a split second.” Down the street from the courthouse, blue United Nations flags flapped in the breeze outside the office windows of Rod Hobson, a criminal defense lawyer. The flags flew in jest, not in support of Mr. Head. Inside, Mr. Hobson’s 5 ½-pound Yorkshire terrier was on patrol, dressed as a “war dog” in a blue United Nations beret made by his wife. It is hard to be pro-Obama in Lubbock, but it is even harder to find official-looking United Nations flags to wave outside an office. Mr. Hobson and his wife bought what were probably the only two in town, at A-1 Flags. “They were the only ones I had in stock,” said the store’s co-owner, Steve Hayes, 50. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: August 27, 2012 A previous version of this article misstated a proposed property tax increase in Lubbock, Tex. The increase is to 34.6 cents per $100 valuation from 32.9 cents, not 1.7 percent http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/us/lubbock-official-tom-head-stirs-city-with-remark.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120828 or http://tinyurl.com/8m5m5et #----------------------------------------- Regards, LelandJ _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. 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