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Juanita was not proud to find out that California is laughing at Texas.

“The El Lay Times had an big ole article about how Rick Perry is always strutting around like a gobbler at laying time about how Texas comes to steal jobs from California because Texas has a much better economy than California does.  Honey, that’s a line of caca del torro so thick that you couldn’t cut through it with a Bowie knife,” she says.

“That dog don’t hunt,” she reminds us, “and California just found out.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry delights in telling tales of his California “hunting trips” — hunting for businesses ready to flee the Golden State.

But the latest budget projections out of Texas have sharply changed the discussion: The Lone Star State is facing a budget gap of about $27 billion, putting it in the same league as California among states facing financial meltdowns. The gap amounts to roughly one-third of the state’s budget.

“So, when you get down to it, after hiding behind billions of dollars of stimulus money from the federal government for a year, come to find — Texas is in worse shape than California,” she admits.  “We knew it all along but California, which appears to be a tad slow on the uptake, probably due to that weed stuff they smoke, just found out.  Payback will be a witch.”

“The article says that Rick Perry was ‘too busy’ to be interviewed.  ‘Too busy’ is Texan-speak for ‘too dumb’,” she explains.  “They also said that he was in California last week trying to coax companies to come to Texas.  Hey, I can just hear him now saying, ‘Come to Texas!  We have electricity most days!'”

“While we are cutting services to poor children, laying off 10,000 teachers, closing state parks, and letting our infrastructure make-do with duct tape and paper clips, we get some helpful words from our Governor and Lt. Governor.  This is is the Lt. Governor, David Dewhurst, talking:”

“A lot of the things we are doing arguably aren’t priorities for the people of Texas,” he said. “People could stake me and Gov. Perry on the ground and torture us, and we still would not raise taxes.”

“Okay, but would you let us try?  Please?  I mean, if that’s an offer, dude, I’m ready to take it,” she simply states while hunting up some stakes, rope, and fire ants.

David Dewhurst would serve himself well not to paint visual pictures like that with his words when Juanita is around.  It just gives her ideas.

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Thelma saw this coming.

“First you let a Jew be Speaker of the Texas House, then … well, the domino theory kicks in and you have this kind of stuff happening.

The Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools denied membership to an Islamic school about two months ago, according to the head of a local TAPPS member school uneasy about the process and the potentially divisive decision.

TAPPS is an organization that allows kids in private schools to compete against each other in sports, art, music, and academics.  It’s sort of the University Interscholastic League of private schools.

“Honestly, I don’t think they mind there being Islamic schools and they probably don’t even mind competing against them …. just so long the Muslims promise not to win, especially football,” Thelma reports.  “Can you even imagine how embarrassing that would be?”

This is the second time TAPPS’ handling of membership requests by Islamic schools has ended in controversy.

In 2004, two other Islamic schools applied for membership and received a response letter they perceived as hostile to their faith.

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Talking Points Memo picked up another one this morning: a freshman GOPper congressvarmint who had no idea who pays for her socialistic government-subsidized death-panel health insurance.

New York’s Ann Marie Buerkle held a town hall meeting.

Buerkle, who voted to repeal the health care reform act, was twice asked about the health insurance she receives as a government employee. At first she said she couldn’t understand why people were so interested in her health insurance, and that taxpayers didn’t pay anything for it. She later corrected herself after being handed a note from a staffer. Like most employees, she pays for a portion of her insurance and her employer, the government, pays the rest, she said.

Maybe we should replace the death panels with dumb panels.

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Juanita has just one question:  How come when lawmakers say we need to trim the fat, the hogs never get touched?

Gov. Rick Perry, statewide elected officials and appointed agency leaders — many of whom are paid $150,000 or more — may not personally share the financial pain that teachers, disabled care workers and other state employees are expected to feel when Texas swings a budget ax aimed at trimming its $15 billion budget deficit.

House and Senate draft budgets make no cuts to the salaries of Texas’ statewide elected officials — all Republicans — and the leaders of the state’s largest agencies, including the Texas Education Agency, the department of Health and Human Services, and the departments of Aging and Disability Services and Family Protective Services.

“So, it’s tinkle down economics in Texas,” Juanita explains.  “Rick Perry and his overpaid buddies tinkle down on top of teachers, mental health workers, the guys who keep the lights on at the Capitol, and tell them it’s raining.”

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Against her better judgment, Juanita has begun to tweet.

Her judgmental has change, due in part from this TXDOT tweet.

Okay, so we put the salt on to make the wait tastier?

By the way, the Lege is closed until Monday so we have a three day reprieve on made-up emergencies.

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UPDATED: Read Robert Pierce’s comment on this post. Go to the bottom of this post and click COMMENTS.

Look, look!  An icicle!  It’s at least a half inch long.  Alert the media!

There are some really hacked-off kids in Houston this morning.