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UPDATED at the bottom —

Juanita was pretty much pleased with the election results last night.  We know that because she didn’t start throwing hairbrushes before her first cup of coffee this morning.  Even if Thelma did make the coffee and Thelma’s coffee has the same density and flavor of sludge.

“The progressives did well,” she grins.  “I was glad to see Blanche Lincoln get her rump roasted in Arkansas and a bright new face in Pennsylvania.”

“But even better than that was seeing the Republicans go the road less traveled — Crazyville.  Let’s talk about Rand Paul in Kentucky for a minute,” she says.

When Juanita says she wants to talk about something, Thelma sighs heavily because that means Juanita is gonna make fun of the Republicans.  Thelma is a provisional Republican.  There’s some kind of secret initiation to the GOP and we think Thelma has to violate at least three more commandments while talking about lovin’ Jeeesus before they give her a membership card.

“Ron Paul is one of the three congressvarmints in this county,” Juanita begins, “so we know him well.  First off, anyone with the emotional retardation to actually name their child after Ayn Rand is scary.  All the rest of us got over Ayn Rand by our senior year in high school.”

“And then to cuss that child with the load of joining the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – war, pestilence, death, famine, libertarianism – is just mean.”

“So, poor Rand Paul didn’t stand much of a chance going in,” she admits.

“But, to stand in public and admit that you’re a hateful, greedy, prissy goat takes more gall than most folks can muster.  Except, of course, for those afflicted with a social disease – libertarianism.”

“Libertarians now call themselves the TEA Party because their followers can’t spell Freedom, much less libertarian,” she reports, “but they are looneytarians all the same.”

“I cannot tell you how much fun we’re gonna have with Rand Paul between now and November.  Well, I guess I could, but then we’d have to keep score and that’s a whole lot of trouble.  So, spend today celebrating the gift the GOP has given us and then start getting those Rand Paul jokes ready.”

UPDATE:

Okay, see, if Juanita  says it’s Christmas, you better go buy some little twinkling lights because she’s all that and a sack of okra.

This morning, Rand Paul said that country clubs are not all that exclusive because now there’s a black golfer.

ROBIN: Some people find it a bit ironic that your victory party last night was at a private country club in Kentucky. Doesn’t that kind of send a mixed message there?

PAUL: I think at one time people used to think of golf and golf courses and golf clubs as being exclusive. But I think in recent years now you see a lot of people playing golf. I think Tiger Woods has helped to broaden that in the sense that he’s brought golf to a lot of the cities and to city youth, and so no, I don’t think it’s nearly as exclusive as people once considered it to be.

“Yeah, you can count on black folks to bring something down to the common people,” Juanita grins.

“I’ll give Rand Paul a dollar for every African American he’s played golf with at his country club,” Juanita promises, “and two dollars for every woman he’s played with.”

Juanita thinks she won’t have to open her wallet.

“This guy is gonna be such fun!”

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Juanita’s friend Carl just called the Beauty Salon and roared into the phone.  It seems that Family Values Republican Congressman Mark Souder was just on the teevee machine admitting to his affair with a female staffer.

That’s almost a relief in Republican circles – at least it was a woman, not a farm animal.  And, best we know, there were no battery operated machinery harmed in the making of this affair.  Best we know.

Mark Souder, a Republican congressman from Indiana, has announced that he will resign his seat over an affair with a female aide.

Souder is a former House staffer who was elected to Congress on a “family values” platform in the Republican takeover of 1994. He won a tough contested primary challenge last week, 48 percent to 33 percent.

But, that’s wasn’t what Carl was hollering about.

“Juanita,” hollered Carl (Did I mention that Carl was hollering.  Real Loud?), “Souder just said that he needs to resign to get back in step with his Lord.  His Lord.  Can you even imagine?  Blaming his Lord for this.  No, no, n-o, no.  It is not Jesus’ fault when you do the nakkid with your staff.”

Juanita agrees.  It’s bad enough to haul your family into this when you screw up (or down, as the case may be), but to do the Lord thing is just distasteful.  “Didn’t these people learn anything from all the fun we had with Jimmy Swaggart?  I even think the Angel Michael laughed at Swaggart,” Juanita bets.

“Let me start by saying this,” Juanita begins, “Mark Souder is so slick that he could hold his own in a pond of eels.”

And listen to this —

“I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff,” he said. “In the poisonous environment of Washington, D.C, any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain.

“I am resigning rather than to put my family through that painful, drawn-out process,” he added.

“Oh no, he’s not resigning because he’s a hypocritical untrustworthy son of a motherless goat.  Nope, he’s has to resign because of his family,” Juanita says.

“And I wanna know who exactly made Washington Dee Cee a poisonous environment?  I’ll tell you who – idiots like Mark Souter and his ‘family values’ crowd of hateful, judgmental people.

“Walking with The Lord, my patootie!  I hope The Lord whacks him upside the head a time or two. Or five.”

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A lot of folks are showing up at the Beauty Salon this morning wanting to know about State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar and if whatever it is she has is in any way contagious.  They also want to know where she found such a self-righteous high horse to ride.

The lovely Ms. Dunbar, armed with a degree from Pat Robert’s University and a charter membership to the Belles of Heaven Republican Women’s Club, lives just down the street from the Beauty Salon in upscale downtown Richmond, Texas.

Ms. Dunbar, who wildly and insanely claims to be pro-family, divorced her husband Glen two years ago in  a hotly ugly court proceeding.  And, although he is still registered to vote at her house, they most certainly do not live together any longer.

The circumstances of their divorce is why Ms. Dunbar is such a  bitter woman.  I said that I would not reveal the intimate details if she did not run for the Board of Education again.  She is not running for re-election.  So, I will keep my end of the bargain.

However, it would help if she would keep from making an international fool of herself and the entire State of Texas.

Cynthia Dunbar does not have a high regard for her local schools. She has called them unconstitutional, tyrannical and tools of perversion. The conservative Texas lawyer has even likened sending children to her state’s schools to “throwing them in to the enemy’s flames”. Her hostility runs so deep that she educated her own offspring at home and at private Christian establishments.

“Cynthia, babe, you have not earned the right to judge other people,” Juanita warns. “You have not.  You know that.  Everybody in town knows that.  Now, be a nice girl and everybody in England won’t have to know it.”

You gotta love Aladamnbama.  You just gotta.

Dale Peterson is running for Ag Commissioner in Alabama and he’s got a horse and a gun.  Which wouldn’t bother me a whole lot ‘cept he’s talking about “taking no prisoners” and I think he means it in the literal sense.

“I like it when he says that illegals are being ‘bust in by the thousands.’  Honey, the last time I went to Alabama, people were trying to bust out,” Juanita grins.

Alabama:  pines, poverty, and Pentecostals.  Now you can add Peterson.

Texas Governor Rick Perry is just a shiver looking for a spine to run up.

At least that’s what Juanita Jean thinks.

Today we learn the sad news that Rick’s rented Gov Shack is costing the taxpayers $10,000 a month in rent alone.  It has 5 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms.

“Of course it has 7 bathrooms,” Juanita says with some degree of shock that people wouldn’t already know that.  “It has to have 7 bathrooms because Rick Perry is full of poop.”

“And 5 bedrooms are needed because he’s in bed with so many lobbyists.  Gee wiz, people, give the man a break.  If he didn’t use the money saving technique of making lobbyists share bedrooms, he’d have to live in a dorm.”

But, that’s not all –

His 6,386-square-foot rental sits on more than three acres and was advertised in 2007 for sale at $1.85 million. Perry’s state-paid expenses at the home include $18,000 for “consumables” such as household supplies and cleaning products, $1,001.46 in window coverings from upscale retailer Neiman Marcus, a $1,000 “emergency repair” of the governor’s filtered ice machine, a $700 clothes rack, and a little over $70 for a two year subscription to Food & Wine Magazine.

“Y’all, I can agree that maybe, just maybe, Food and Wine Magazine might be a little tiny bit of an unnecessary taxpayer expense, but an ice machine is not a luxury in this Texas heat.  It is not.  I know how upset I get when someone doesn’t refill the ice cube trays so I can see how the Gov would need to hire people to come over and fill the trays and run them up to Alaska so they’ll freeze super quick and then fly them back to Texas, hoping they don’t melt in Arizona  ….. wait, it’s a machine doing it?  never mind.”

By the way, you can buy a whole brand new ice machine that makes and stores a half a ton of ice for $730.  If you need more ice than that, you’re drinking too much.

“So, there stands Governor Rick Perry, grinning from his butt to his eyebrows, living like he won the lottery.  I have one thing to say about the Gov’s new digs,” Juanita concludes, “if he can’t afford it, we can’t afford it.”

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“And all this time we thought Texas had the distributorship monopoly on fruitcakes,” Juanita starts this afternoon after lunch.  She had spent lunch time at the computer with jelly donuts and Diet Coke – the lunch of champions.

“It seems that the Maine GOP held their convention and borrowed some classrooms for their committees to meet.  Big ole mistake.  Giant goof.”

“You cannot allow Republicans to be unsupervised,” she warns.  “Do not leave them in a classroom unless you have someone to take names,” Juanita warns.

Thelma was once a substitute teacher until she sat on a middle school football player and sent a kid to fetch the principal  to come punish him for saying, “Yo Momma’s so fat that when she wears a red dress all the kids yell, “Hey, Kool Aid!”, which was sort of ironic because Thelma’s so fat that when she wear high heels, she sometimes strikes oil.  But, anyway, Thelma retired from substituting after that, with mutual agreement from the school board.  “Republicans are worse than teenagers.  By far,” she estimates.

These Republicans, according to Juanita’s computer, did even worse than a few  Yo Momma’s.

One School Committee member, saying she’s “appalled” by the behavior of some of the Republicans who used a room at King Middle School last weekend, wants to protect the city’s public schools from future harm.

The Republican State Convention was held at the Portland Exposition Building, which is on Park Avenue, near the middle school. Party members from Knox County caucused in a classroom used by eighth-grade social studies teacher Paul Clifford.

When Clifford returned to school on Monday, he found that a favorite poster about the U.S. labor movement had been taken and replaced with a bumper sticker that read, “Working People Vote Republican.”

Later, Clifford learned that his classroom had been searched. Republicans who had attended the convention called Principal Mike McCarthy to complain about “anti-American” things they saw there, including a closed box containing copies of the U.S. Constitution that were published by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“So, the Republican Party apologized, which is kinda like your parents coming to the school to try to talk them out of expelling you because Lord knows your parents don’t want you hanging around the house all day,” Juanita surmises.

And she adds, “I do find it more than a tad amusing that they replace a whole poster with a bumper sticker.  Bumper stickers are the only written word that Republicans can understand.  Or remember.”

Verdelia also has an opinion on this subject.

“Your know how the Republicans claim to be all aglow about the founding fathers?  I wonder what the founding fathers would think about unreasonable search and seizure,” Verdelia asks. “Oh hell, I know what they’d think.  They’d think Republicans are flat supersized bad nuts.  That’s what they’d think.”