My granddaddy used to say that a literate man in Texas is one who knows the difference between a quote from Shakespeare and one from the Bible. If you throw in Ben Franklin and Sophocles, you obviously have a degree from Rice University.

That would not be Smokey Joe Barton.  You will remember Congressvarmint Barton as the Texas Republican who apologized to BP for our water messing up their oil.

Bless his heart, Joe claims to be a Super DeLux Brand Christian but, double bless his heart, he saw the movie version of the Bible.  And he proudly displayed that fact on the teevee.

Bashir: I know you’re a long time member of the Methodist Church. Is that correct?

Barton: Yes, sir. That’s a true statement.

Bashir: How do you square your approach with the Psalm 146, where the Psalmist writes this: “He gives food to the hungry. The lord protects foreigners. He defends orphans and widows.” Isn’t this the exact opposite of the cuts being proposed by Republicans in congress?

Barton: No, the lord helps those who helps themselves…

Bashir: Which verse of scripture is that, sir?

Barton: Well, it’s uh..

Bashir: I don’t think you’ll find that in the Old or New Testament.

Barton: Well, that was taught to me by my father who is president of the United Methodist school board in Waco Texas, and Bryan, Texas.

Oh dear.  I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve had the same argument with people who claim to be front row sitters at the church.  That statement is antithetical to everything – everydarnthing – taught in the New Testament.

Best I know, that statement goes back to Sophocles, who wrote, “No good e’er comes of leisure purposeless; And heaven ne’er helps the men who will not act.”  Sophocles died 400 years before Jesus was born, and his gods were pretty damn Greek.  He worshiped Asclepius, same as Joe Barton, I guess.

How in the world did the teachings of Sweet Jesus become a justification of every man for himself?  How did that happen?

Matthew 25:34-36 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

Read the damn book, Joe.  It’s good.

Thanks to Ralph for the heads-up.

We have this silly little Lyndon LaRouche (read: cult) candidate running for United States Congress in my county as a Democrat … who wants to impeach President Barack Obama. Yeah, you read that right.

The Texas 22nd is Tom DeLay’s old district and solidly Republican.  Democrats rarely bother to run anybody for the seat so Kesha sneaks in and wins the Democratic nomination.  She is such an embarrassment that we’re trying to stop her this time, which means we have to spend money on a candidate we know won’t win in November.  I’d say that Kesha is a Republican plant but the girl ain’t got no root system, if ya know what I mean.  She’s just flat nuts.

She is the Princess of People With Absolutely No Social Skills, misfits, and guys who are just one manic episode away from living in a cabin in the woods as a loner.

Kesha also has some very creepy passive-aggressive tendencies, as you will see with the pictures below.  But let’s face it, standing on street corners with a large picture of the President with a Hitler mustache drawn on his face does not exactly qualify for the mental health award.

I told you about the signs her opponent had made that say she’s not a Democrat.  I wanted them to say that she’s the Fairy Princess of Cultville, but he wouldn’t do that.

Little Bubba went up to vote last Friday and saw that Kesha and her Band of Bozos had placed her poll signs in an odd position.  She moved her signs to place them directly in front our our signs.

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.I have to be honest with you and tell you that Little Bubba and Bubba, Sr., attorneys at law and former football players, do not have a passive / aggressive bone in their bodies.  They will get right in your face and tell you how the cow ate the cabbage.  Men who do not have even a healthy fear of snakes, law suits, chain saws and 300 pound tackles should not be poked with a stick.  Write that down somewhere because you may need it later.

Bubba asked me to document him moving her signs and placing them all 1/4 inch apart in a neat little line because obviously she likes signs that way.  He was just being helpful.

He truly enjoys that he’s getting under her skin, thin as it may be.  A man has to take his pleasures where he can find them and Bubba truly enjoyed hacking off Kesha.

I think the news about JP Morgan is very lopsided and unfair.

Oh sure, they lost $3 billion and their CEO lied to investors about it.

But they did make some good, wise, and highly profitable investments.  Click the little one to get the big one.

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I swear to all that is sane, we should make members of congress wear NASCAR suits.  Or at least a For Sale sign around their necks.

Why is it that every time I go to the Dairy Queen and eat a Blizzard with Alfredo, I come away cynical?  Must be something in the Blizzard, huh?

I want y’all to meet a guy.  His name is Lester “Bubba” Carpenter and he’s a Mississippi State Representative.

I am going to refuse to call him Bubba.  Bubba is a term of endearment in Texas.  Every woman who really loves her Texas man calls him Bubba Darlin’, because in Texas a man is required to have two names, and those are two pretty good ones.

Lester the Molester will do just fine for this bloated woman-hater in Mississippi.  Ole Lester is a Baptist boy who didn’t need no damn college education.  He’s a paramedic, having dropped out of two different community colleges, and is on the State Legislature’s Tourism Board.  And, probably in charge of education.

Ole Lester spends his spare time standing on street corner passing out coat hangers.

In a speech this week, Ole Lester explained the upside to Mississippi making abortion illegal.

It’s going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to — Roe vs. Wade. So we’ve done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They’re like, ‘Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger. That’s what we’ve learned over and over and over.’

But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere.”

But hey, what’s one less poor pitiful woman when Mississippi is in desperate need of more children they can refuse to feed, educate, or provide medical care for.

And that right there is some of them “moral values” that Ole Lester is talkin’ about.

Okay, Mississippi girls, I will pay ten dollars cash American money to see a video of one of you chasing Lester down the street with a coat hanger threatening to perform a medically necessary prostate exam with it.  On second thought, I dunno if Lester would run from that.  Give him a little banjo music and some moonshine and he’d probably pay you money to do it.

Thanks to Carl for the heads-up on Ole Lester.

Arizona is a doozy.  South Carolina occasionally tries to be the nuttiest state, but, Darlin’, Arizona has honed crazzzy down to an art form.

Get this:

The man in charge of running Arizona’s elections has gone to the birthers. Secretary of State Ken Bennett now says he’s not convinced Barack Obama was really born in the United States and so he is threatening to keep the president off the ballot in November.

I wouldn't even buy a used car from this guy.

Oh yeah, that right there is the United States of Damn America.  One crazy old fart sheriff in a small town in Arizona, who couldn’t find his own butt with both hands and a search warrant,  gets himself a case of contagious batcrap crazy (Latin name: Guanotitus), spreads it all over the state, and the Center for Disease Control can’t get enough vaccine or reading material over the mountains to save folks so the result is that Barack Obama can’t be on the ballot in that state.  Welcome to Arizona.  Please pass the popcorn.

And why is Ken Bennett, Arizona’s Secretary of State, doing this?  Because he got emails.

Bennett, the state’s No. 2 elected official just below Gov. Jan Brewer (R), said his investigation isn’t personal. He said the reason he started looking into it is because he got more than 1,200 emails asking him to do so after Arpaio’s investigation came out.

Dude, last week I got 1,563 emails asking me to try Viagra but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go buy me a gender re-assignment.  I also won the Nigerian lottery at least that many times in my emails, but you do not see me packing for Africa, do you?

New slogan for the state?  Arizona:  That’s Entertainment!

Thanks to Deb for the heads-up.

Okay, this is a dandy story.

There’s a guy named Joe Rickett who has more money than a Monopoly game.  Rumors started flying about what he was going to do with some of that money.

Joe Ricketts has had quite a day. Thursday morning’s New York Times identified the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade as bankroller of a $10 million super PAC campaign to attack President Obama over his past ties to his old pastor, the hyperbolic Rev. Jeremiah Wright—a favorite villain of the right wing during the 2008 campaign.

Okay, ponder that for a minute.  Ten million dollars to attack a minister who has less influence on Barack Obama than I do.  Or you do.  Or Sarah Palin does.

That seems a tad excessive.

It also seems a tad silly because one of Rickett’s sons is chairman of the Chicago Cubs, a baseball team you might have heard of if you read to the bottom of the scores in the sport’s section.

And the Cubs play in Wriggly Field, which you might have heard of if you studied ancient world history. Wriggly Field was built about the same time as the pyramids.  They’ve had to carbon date second base several times.

Joe Ricketts

So, Rickett’s son is trying to get the city of Chicago to spend $300 million to fix up the crumbling parthenon of baseball.

And the mayor of Chicago is … are you following me, now?  Rahm Emanuel.  Yes, the same Rahm Emanuel who was Obama’s Chief of Staff.  And there are several African American aldermen on city council in Chicago.

So Daddy is spending money to defeat a candidate who is the best friend of the mayor who the son needs to help fix his ballpark.

And to their credit, it only took the Rickett boys about a week to figure out that maybe they are biting off their nose to spite their face.  However, in all fairness, their faces are also in need of some renovation.

So, two statements go out.  The first is this.