School starts next week in Texas.

It’s gonna be hot and sad.

Andy Welch wrote a Back to School letter to parents.

Dear Texas Parent:

We would like to tell you that we are excited about the start of the upcoming school year. But that would not be entirely true.

This past summer, the Texas Legislature cut $4 billion in overall funding for public education, and the impact will be felt in classrooms across the state. Regardless, we pledge to provide your child with the best education possible, in a clean, safe school.

This will be a challenge in a state that previously ranked 44th in funding for public education, and is now likely to fall even lower among the 50 states.

He then goes on to list some of the cuts.

Bubba and I were in the grocery store yesterday and noticed that the third grade school supply list costs about $55.  and that doesn’t even count a backpack.

My teacher friends are spending money out of their own pockets for needed classroom materials.

So, if you are pondering on something nice to do this week, drop by your local school and leave some some pencils, a couple of notebooks, boxes of Kleenex, ball point pens or crayolas.  Or, if you have a teacher friend, give them a gift card to Target to buy some supplies they need.  Consider it a good way to invest in America’s future.

You know that you have an extra $5 to help at your local school so don’t act like you don’t.  You will be appreciated.

Thank you, and now back to our regularly scheduled program.

In one terribly weird event in a wildly weirdy term of office, Rick Perry tried to require by executive order that every 12 year old girl in Texas be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus.

The weird doubled down when it was discovered that Perry had close ties with the sole manufacturer of the vaccine.

Then along came weird with a cherry on top when the rightwing said that vaccinating girls against a sexually transmitted disease would turn them all into nymphomaniac porn stars who have Biblical knowledge of  entire front line of the Dallas Cowboys. You now, overnight.  Like magic.

Even though the State Lege overrode his decision, Rick Perry always stuck by his coyote-killing guns, claiming that the Lege lacked “gumption.”  You know gumption, right?  That’s the ability to act right even when you’re wrong.

Up until last week, Perry was defending his decision.  But then the moon phases changed, or something, and he got a whole new story in that clean New Hampshire air.

“I signed an executive order that allowed for an opt-out, but the fact of the matter is that I didn’t do my research well enough to understand that we needed to have a substantial conversation with our citizenry,” Perry said at the Manchester, N.H., event in response to an audience question about the HPV controversy, according to ABC News’ The Note. “But here’s what I learned: When you get too far out in front of the parade, they will let you know, and that’s exactly what our Legislature did, and I saluted it and I said, ‘Roger that, I hear you loud and clear.’ And they didn’t want to do it and we don’t, so enough said.”

So, today we learn that sticking your butt in someone’s face and calling them names is defined as “saluting.”

The further away from Texas Rick Perry gets, the bigger his lies get.

You thought Frazier and Ali was something?

“Poo, Honey, that was a little bit of nothing whittled down to a point,” Juanita grins as I enter the beauty salon this morning.

“Just you wait and see the hair pullin’ and slappin’ that goes on between Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann,” she says.  “I predict they’ll raise more dust in five minutes than Noah’s flood could have settled.”

It’s already started.  And, semi-appropriately, it’s in Waterloo.  Iowa, that is.

The convergence of two high-profile campaigns at a GOP dinner in Waterloo, IA tonight promises the polite and strained feel of a weigh-in at a boxing match. Fresh from her win at the Ames Straw Poll, Michele Bachmann will appear at the dinner alongside Texas Gov. Rick Perry –- who made his own news Saturday by announcing his presidential bid.

Consider that Waterloo is Bachmann’s childhood city, and this evening’s drama comes into focus.

And then there’s even a bit more drama, plus some hurt feelings: The local Republican Party (the Black Hawk County GOP) says it sent Bachmann — and the other major presidential candidates — an invitation to tonight’s dinner six weeks ago. But the Bachmann campaign, sources tell NBC News, called after 11:00 pm last Tuesday Wednesday with a request: that Bachmann come to the event only if she won the straw poll.

Juanita is putting odds at about even.  “If Perry leaves his coyote pistol at home, it might be a fair fight because Bachmann would fight a buzz saw and give it three turns head start.”

Juanita believes the pickin’s are powerful slim in the GOP primary and Rick Perry thinks he can thin the herd.

“You know,” she says, “after Tom DeLay resigned most folks figured I would, too.  They asked what I’d have to write about with Tom gone.  I reassured them that Texas has a never-ending supply of nincompoops and they abhor a vacuum.  Was I right or was I dirty dog downtown right?”

Thanks to David for the heads-up.

I was there.  I saw it.  I lived through it.  I know it’s a damn lie.

When he was asked if he was prepared for the supposed negative ads that Barack Obama is going to run against him, Rick Perry replied ….

“Can I share with you this one little short story?” Perry asked.

He talked about his first actual run for governor, which was in 2002 (he said 2003, though the race was the November before) after he was elevated to the job when George W. Bush left Texas. His rival was Laredo businessman Tony Sanchez.

“My name ID might have been 30 percent if you gave ’em a few hints,” he said. “I ran against an individual who spent we think conservatively $50 million in Texas just on negative ads.”

Rick Perry, who ran ads accusing Tony Sanchez of being a major player in the Mexican drug cartels is pointing his pinky finger at somebody else?  Rick Perry, whose ads against Kay Bailey Hutchison were vicious and bitchy, is saying he doesn’t go negative?

What a damn knucklehead.

But if you want to know the true Rick Perry, take it from my fellow Texan, Paul Begala.  “It takes a lot of balls to execute an innocent man,” is a line you’ll never forget.

Thanks to David for the heads-up.

Well, he announced.  And he’s got a website.

My personal favorite quote:  “And I will work every day to make Washington, D.C. as inconsequential in your lives as I can.”  Well, I guess we know what that means for Social Security and Medicare, don’t we?

Intelligence has the same effect on Rick Perry as daylight does on Dracula.

The Texas Democratic Party responded with their website, Meet Rick Perry.

I do not know what is funnier, a bad lawyer or one who writes like a histrionic high school  sophomore with flowers up their tookus.

Tom DeLay just made that decision a little easier.

Tom claims that he’s spent $10 million on lawyers.  If that is true, he is the proud owner of the most expensive pile of crap in the nation.

Lookie here.  His high priced appeals lawyer quoted Hollywood movies and Shakespeare (who John Steinbeck did a tad better quoting)  in a trite and silly 107 page brief that basically argues that (1) checks are not money, only cash is money and (2) DeLay used the money he illegally gained to elect a court of appeals who changed the law to make what he did legal.

This is like killing your parents and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you’re a orphan.

Or saying that if I buy your watch and pay with a hot check, that’s okay because checks aren’t money anyway.

There’s an old saying in the legal profession that if you have a guilty client, your best hope is to postpone the case until everyone dies or the law changes.

But, the brief hardly matters and I suspect his lawyer knows that.  The court of appeals in Texas is Republican owned, operated, bought, and paid for.

And that’s how you spend $10 million on lawyers.