I love my real-life friend Pam.  We play politics together.  We also point and laugh a lot.

Bubba asked for Pam’s help with a local political project because he looked up one day to see that he and two other old white guys were trying to make a decision on door hangers.   Pam, who is African American, calls them The OWGs.  Old White Guys. It has kinda stuck, in a loving way.

All OMG aren’t so lovable.

Big, long, worth your time story about a study of gun violence.

Counter to what Republicans are claiming, gun violence is way down in Texas and California.  Both states are down more than double any other state.  Now this is kinda odd since California has very strict gun control laws and Texas has none.  Hell, we give you a gun to hold when you visit the state capitol.

So, what’s causing the decrease in gun violence in those two states and New York?

In past decades, California, New York and Texas’ young Latino men ages 10 to 24 suffered twice the risk of being killed by guns than white, non-Hispanic men aged 40 and older. After enormous population growth, young Hispanic men today are substantially less at risk from guns than older white men.

And why are older white men more at risk?

Despite its Wild West image, Texas’ big gun problem today is not drug-running immigrants, home-invading thugs or vigilantes incited by pro-gun laws. Increasingly, it’s middle-aged white men shooting themselves.

So, there’s hope for Rick Perry and Sean Hannity.

Pam is making an effort to distinguish our OWGs from their OWGs, by re-naming their’s DAWGs – Dumb Ancient White Guys.

 Thanks to Bunny for the heads up.

Let’s say you’re a state representative in … oh, Washington State.  And let’s say you’re planning on moving to, oh I dunno, Ohio.

And now let’s say that state officials in Washington State, where you are drawing a salary as a state representative, discover that you’ve already sold your house and registered to vote in Ohio.

Nobody would be that dumb, right?

Wrong.

We’re talking Republican greedy and dumb.

Republican state Rep. Mike Hope resigned Thursday after it was revealed he’s been registered to vote in two states, Washington and Ohio, since last summer.

But there’ a semi-explanation.

A former Seattle police officer, he now works as a financial adviser with Morgan Stanley. He’s in the midst of a three-year training program that has him traveling to Ohio and New York.

Hope claims he didn’t know he’d registered to vote in Ohio when he simply moved his driver’s license there.  Moving your driver’s license to Ohio must be pretty normal for Washington State house members.

By the way, he also has a budding movie career, so he can undoubtedly pay back his salary.

Thanks to Larry for the heads up.

They build them dumb in Florida.

Tea Party Congressman Curt Clawson sat in an official United States congressional hearing and addressed United States officials as non-citizens from India and began to pompously chastise them.

Well hell, they looked like they were from India.  I mean, they weren’t white.

But, the best line is the last line.  A patronizing wink, a smile, and a “Let’s see some progress,” was an amazing verbal sacrifice to the Irony Goddess.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D10Y-syrWkU

I thought Nisha Biswal was amazing in her restraint.  Actually, asking “Are you drunk?” would have been a more appropriate response.

Okay, I mentioned Sarah Palin’s odd new speech patterns before and one of you mentioned that it was “a slam poetry thing.”  Well, she must be running for poet laureate or some damn thing, because she’s doing it again.

Some sources think she was drunk or on pills, but I’m going with the slam poetry thing.

This sucker is 30 minutes long.  Fast forward to about the 4 minute mark and listen for a few minutes.  If you listen for the whole time, your brain will fall out.  No, really.

See, it’s a thing.  It really is.  And it’s scary.

Y’all, she’s creeping me out.

So, to justify calling up the Texas National Guard, Rick Perry is telling everybody that “criminal aliens” have been charged with 642,000 crimes in Texas.

That sounds just awful, doesn’t it?  But, Rick Perry left out some stuff.

1.  Crimes is rather a broad thing.  That number includes minor class B misdemeanors — minor graffiti and first-offense drunken driving.

2.  These crimes were not all committed by people who crossed the border illegally.  To make things seem dire, Perry throws in the 40% of those here illegally because they have overstayed their visas.

3.  That number covers a 10 year period.

4.  According to the Texas Department of Pubic Safety …

More than 8 percent of the total arrests per month are foreign nationals, regardless of immigration status,” it said of the period between January 2012 and July 2014.

That actually compares favorably with the general population. In 2012, noncitizens made up 11 percent of Texas’ population, so they were arrested at a lower rate than Texans as a whole.

In short, someone who is here legally is more likely to commit a crime than someone who is here illegally.

5.  While there are no specific crime rates only for those who cross the border, we do know that the recent influx of unaccompanied children has not caused crime to increase along the border.

State Rep. Robert Guerra is a Democrat who represents Hidalgo County — the scene of the heaviest influx of Central Americans. In preparation for an interview Thursday, he called the heads of all of the county’s police agencies, who said crime either is the same or down.

Guerra said Perry’s inaccurate claims about border violence do material harm to border cities that have lower crime rates than most Texas communities.

Oh, so what would be Rick Perry’s reason for wanting to hurt economic growth along the border?  Because they are all Democrats?

Look, I’m not saying that Rick Perry fudged on the truth maliciously to make himself look good, but … oh hell, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

He’s a sumbitch, y’all.

My friend Jim found some very interesting research done at Harvard University called The Grant Study.

Among its many cool findings:

Political mindedness correlates with intimacy: Ageing liberals have way more sex.

The most-conservative men ceased sexual relations at an average age of 68.

The most-liberal men had active sex lives into their 80s.

And that’s why old conservative men are so damn cranky and want you to get the hell off their lawn.

Thanks to Jim for the heads up.