So, here’s the deal.

If you think contraception is about health care, you are one screwed up person.  Contraception is about tax breaks to corporations.

State Rep. Jonathan Stickland (R) introduced a bill in the Texas House of Representatives on Thursday that would give tax breaks to companies that don’t cover emergency contraception such as the morning-after pill.

Now, we cannot afford school teachers in Texas and we’re shutting down 7 state parks, which is a whole ‘nother horror story, but we can afford to give tax breaks to corporations who want to keep women barefoot and pregnant.

We don’t have the money to help women once they are pregnant, but we can pay corporations to keep them that way.

Welcome to Texas – where men are corporations and women are dog dump.

By the way, just in case you were wondering, State Rep. Jonathan Stickland (R) is 29 years old.  He’s married but has no children.  He lists his occupation as “Consultant,” which is a nice way of saying “unemployed.”  He attended Tarrant County College and Parkland College, whose mottos are “Yeah, well, we never heard of you either.”

And, shocker!, he attends North Pointe Baptist Church.

Thanks to Moms Hugs and Aggieland Liz for the heads up.

I have avoided talking about the semi-tragic and what-the-hell-took-so-long split between Sarah Palin and Fox news.

Cannibals with a common enemy will be friends for a while but each of them knows that one of them is going to end up in a pot with some cumin and paprika.  How long the truce lasts depends on how long the enemy does.  If the enemy lasts long enough they’ll turn on each other.

We’re taking bets around here about how long it will take for Sarah starts calling Fox News names.  I suggest “Cracker Time” and “Cheap Cocaine,” but I don’t think she’ll use that.

Sarah will make Fox part of the conspiracy and make really scared people hunker down and move to Alaska.  Which, in my mind, is not a bad idea.  If any of our Palin supporters in Texas want to go, I’ll personally transport them as far as the Arizona state line.

Well, today somebody with too much free time on their hands has figured out that Fox News paid Palin $15 a word for her appearances on Fox and 111 of those words were “Amen.”  Lazy researchers didn’t count how many “you betchas” or Katie Couric snarks were included.

I figure that this, too, is a good thing.  That’s a lotta wasted money at Fox and Palin won’t do anything constructive with the money because she’s not too terribly bright.  Did you notice that?

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

In midtown Houston, the former Obama headquarters is on a fairly busy corner.  I pass by it almost weekly to visit two people I love who live in downtown.

There are two murals on the side of the big yellow building.  I have taken snapshots of them because they are oh so cool.

This one was from 2008 —

And this ten foot tall one is from 2012 —

Can you see the red lines at the top right?  That is the leftovers of paint that was splattered over it by vandals last October.  The sign was re-painted by volunteers.  But the paint splatters around the edges were left.

Last night, the party of NO once again offers their help to make America better.

The murals were painted by local artists as their donation to the cause.

At the time the mural was completed, International Studies professor Rogelio Garcia Contreras of the University of St. Thomas said it spoke more about the movement of change and hope than about Obama as a candidate. With the exception of propaganda campaigns in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, he said, murals generally don’t express ideas about a person.

“I think it reflects the idea that Obama is helping America move toward something they really need, and that’s hope,” Contreras said, “and that’s something different than what we’ve had in the last two centuries as it relates to ethnicity, links to power and some sort of network of support.”

I hope Houston continues to repaint it because I love those murals.  I really do.

It’s a raging battle on Republican talk radio.

Should you be the “selfish, narcissistic, family-destroying whores” kind or the “Sarah Palin kind of feminism that wants to have a husband” kind.

Hey, Ladies, that’s a tough choice but Conservative Christian radio hosts Kevin Swanson and Dave Buehner are going to help us make that choice, because … well, Babe, that’s what men are for.

Okay, if I try to summarize what these dudes say, you will not believe me and you probably shouldn’t because my goodness they have women figured out better than I do.

“Right, there are two forms of feminism, and it actually has to do with a division of how attractive a woman is. So, you have the group that is very attractive, they’re in the sororities, they’re gonna be in the beauty contests. They’re actually going to get the good jobs,” Buehner said. “Now they will probably some of them become the Sarah Palin-style feminists, they’ll get themselves a husband, but they’ll never be dependent on the husband, they’ll never submit to the husband, in fact they will use their power probably to make their husband submit to them.”

“Okay, so you have the cute feminists,” Swanson said.

“Right, you have the good-looking ones,” Buehner explained. “The other ones are those who we should say are, um, attractive-deficient. … These are the kinds that will look for careers mostly likely in academia. … They can get jobs in the government bureaucracy, they can work as an FDA administrator, or you can actually run the EPA if you want, or academia. Academia’s actually the best place because you can be angry, ugly and you can also get tenure. It’s great, it’s the big trifecta.”

Now, far be it from me to be tacky, but here’s the guys who did that talking.

Hunka, hunka burnin’ love.

There are two kinds of Republican radio talk show men.  The pathetic kind who couldn’t get laid at a floozy house with a hundred dollar bill taped to their forehead and … no, wait, there’s just one kind of Republican radio talk show man.

Thanks to Don A for the heads up.

Texas Congressfool Pistol Pete Sessions of the Dallas area is a corker.

Pete was one of Jack Abramoff’s go-to guys.  Pete helped Jack in his scheme to rip off Indian tribes with gambling casinos.  Pete took about $50,000 from Allen Stanford plus went fancy-pants traveling to Fire Island on Stanford’s jet for a Stanford retreat.  Then there was Blimp Wimp where Sessions  added a one and half million dollar earmark for a major contributor and convicted felon lobbyist  “for dirigible research.”  Because Lord knows if there’s anything we need it’s blimp research.

And then there was Countrywide, where Sessions played loose and easy to get a one million dollar loan from the bailed out mammoth.

It has been said that Sessions is the greediest man in Texas, but, Honey, the boy has lots of competition.

He’s also training to be Newt Gingrich in the Ladies’ Man department.  In March on 2011, Pete was squiring around a lovely young woman, 15 years his junior, while still married to his wife of 27 years.  In August, he divorced his wife and less than a year later married his honey.

And for a lovely Christmas gift three months later, he gives his new wife a lifetime membership at the Congressional Club.  Which is real nice, except ….

… he paid for it with his campaign funds.

Let us just hope the used wife also has a lifetime membership and shows up hand-in-hand with John Hamm a time or two.

Ya know, there ought to be a law …..

Thanks to Alfredo for Monday morning coffee over at the Dairy Queen.

Paul Ryan on Meet the Press —

“Look, if we had a [Hillary] Clinton presidency, if we had Erskine Bowles as chief of staff of the White House or president of the United States, I think we would have fixed this fiscal mess by now,” Ryan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

See ya in 2016, Paul.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.