I am unable to go to Austin today and that makes me mad as the dickens.  As you probably know, there is ice flowing in my veins, and I’d hate to give up being a warm blooded creature and lose my career as a semi-famous minor local  E-list celebrity.  Okay, that was an overstatement.  We’ll go with “person vaguely known at the local grocery store.”

So, since the weather in Austin is unwelcoming to cold blooded creatures, I’m leaving it to my younger sisters to go fight the good fight.  They have promised to text me during the day and send pictures.

I’ll post first hand updates here and update it throughout the day.

You go, Girlfriends!

UPDATE:  They encouraged women to show up at 7:00 this morning to sign up to testify.  In this case, the blue shirts are the bad guys and the orange shirts are the good guys.  Rumor had it that the blue shirted government control people were going to be let in first.  So … orange shirts lined up outside the capitol, trying to get in the speak at 7:00 this morning.

UPDATE#2 (11:20) My friend and Matagorda County Democratic Chairman Nora Dearing sent this picture of the line waiting to get into the hearing room.

And her ticket showing that she is in Group #9 to testify.  She is going to have a loooong wait.

Nora says it’s pretty peaceful so far but she did see a sign saying Ohio Supports Pro-Life Texas.  She says the number of blue and orange shirts are about even.

Nora showing off the posters they are giving out at the capitol.

You gotta love Louisiana.  Well, you don’t but I do because it’s right next door and my Daddy was born in New Orleans.  A lot of family couldn’t read a map so they never got to Texas.

So, the Pride Day in Lafayette was held at a public park and the celebrants hoisted a rainbow flag up the flag pole.  No American flags were removed or flown below the rainbow flag.

Korean War veteran Ray Green says he was offended by the flag on public property.

“I did not go overseas and fight for our country so that we could come back and be subject to something like that,” Green said Friday. “Several of us (veterans) feel that the flying of this flag is a poke in the eye of a way of life.”

Now, I don’t want to be picky but a whole bunch of gay folks also served in the military to fight for their right to have a way of life that’s none of Ray Green’s business.

But, let’s not let reason enter into this.  Heavens, no!

Ray continues in the hometown newspaper —

“That has offended many, many, many veterans. It offended me,” he said.

Green said he’s not “against the gays” but is against “the act itself.”

Well then, Ray, don’t do that act.

And he puts icing on the gay cake by adding —

“And I’m against the possibility of them getting together for another demonstration and taking down the American flag,” he said.

And, Ray, I am against the possibility that you might strip yourself nakkid except for some boobie beads and parade down I-10 singing about Marie Laveau.  So we better not let you outta the house.  Hell, you might even do that act itself.   Apparently, just because you haven’t done something before now doesn’t mean you won’t.

We have to careful about things like this.  You just never know.

Thanks to Kyle for the heads up.

Okay, you guys remember when Rick Perry made a total jerk of himself by insulting Wendy Davis on a very personal level.  That was way back on June 26th that he said that.

So, today is July 7th and it took him that long to come up with this.

Speaking Sunday, Perry also addressed inflammatory comments he made last week about Davis’ own history as a teen mother. In the wake of Davis’ filibuster, Perry gave a speech saying it was “unfortunate” that Davis “hasn’t learned from her own example.”

“Those comments were meant to be a compliment to her,” Perry said on Sunday.

I know the man is slower than a sloth on a snail’s back but holy crap I could have come up with something better in two damn weeks.  Two weeks to come up with, “Well, duh, Bubba, I thought calling her names was complimentary.”  I think the word he was looking for is complementary, as in “free.”

He’s gonna want to be President.  So he can finish insulting every other woman in America.  For free.

Thanks to Kyle for the heads up.

Well, if you’ve every wondered how the fool tarnation Rick Perry became a millionaire when he’s never had a job outside of a government paycheck in his entire life, then you ain’t lookin’ hard enough.

It’s crap like this.  All.  The.  Damn.  Time.

The bill pending before the state house and senate in the special session says that all abortion clinics must be upgraded to to ambulatory surgical centers even though there is no evidence that will improve services or that there have been any problems.

And who stands to gain if that happens?

If the bill passes, only five Texas abortion clinics would remain open—those that are already equipped as ambulatory surgical centers, advocates say. But a question remains: would the 420 other ambulatory surgical centers that exist in Texas begin performing the operation? Abortion rights advocates predict that the demand for the procedure won’t disappear with passage of the law.

One company that will be faced with that decision is United Surgical Partners International, based in Addison, TX. Their vice-president of government affairs is Milla Perry Jones, Gov. Rick Perry’s sister. She is also on the board of the Texas Ambulatory Surgical Center Society.

Crap like this.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Locals know the icon of local politics, Bev Carter of the Fort Bend Star.  She never backed down from a fight.  Bev passed away on Saturday evening.

She was my first editor and my biggest critic.   I worked for her off and on for twenty five years.  I say off and on because we often butted heads.  I think she fired me once and I quit twice.  Together we scared people.  There are more stories to tell than I really want to remember right now but I specifically recall both of us walking into commissioners court once and the county attorney running for the door.

About once a month we’d show up at the courthouse on Friday afternoons to do “bed checks,” seeing which elected officials left work early.  It worked – they started their weekend at 5:00 just to keep from getting pictures of their empty desks in the newspaper.

I once hid out at her house for a week to avoid a subpoena to reveal a source.  I was willing to go to jail until I found out that they wouldn’t let me bring my own underwear and pillow.

We practically single-handedly got rid of a corrupt district judge and an incompetent district attorney.  We rifled through cell phone bills back when the county was paying by the minute and found thousands and thousands of dollars of personal calls, even hundreds to an elected official’s girlfriend.  During that episode I saw her make a grown man cry and then holler at him for crying.

We were the first to realize that FBISD Superintendent Raj Chopra was a fraud, and we got called every name in the book for going after him because “it made the school district look bad and that hurt business.”  Screw the kids; we can’t hurt real estate agents!

We got into a fight with a police chief, more than one constable, the entire Rotary Club, and the county attorney.

Her newspaper, which she founded and published, did more to make Fort Bend liveable than the chamber of commerce ever did.

When I met her in 1985, she was a Republican.  By 2000 she was a Democrat and didn’t care who knew it.  Her favorite thing to do was to hack off the religious right.

She was married five times but said that didn’t count because she married one of them twice.  I said it most certainly did count because she shot one of them and that should count double.  She shot him and while driving him to the emergency room concocted the story he should tell about shooting himself.  She claimed to have invented the phrase, “that’s my story and I’m sticking to it” when the police came the emergency room to interview her about the “accident.”

She was one tough broad.  She fought COPD, breast cancer, and the recent death of her only daughter.  My last conversation with her was from Austin at the rally with Wendy.  She wanted to know where I got the pink tennis shoes.  I had talked to her the week before and she fussed at me for not writing enough about local politics, so I guess it’s time for me to go piss off the sheriff or the district attorney.

The last story we worked on together was a fun one.  It’s fun when people you don’t like prove that nobody should like them because they are jerks.

Bev leaves behind a son, Michael, his wife Lisa,  three grandchildren she completely adored, and a large grateful fan base who will miss her.

Her last column was a tribute to her father.

She was smart, courageous, and beautiful, but mostly she was fierce.

Okay, this whole “demonstration” thing has really caught hold at the Texas Capitol.

It seems that some folks thought it was hunting season in Austin on the 4th of July.

Armed demonstrators gathered outside the Texas capitol building in Austin on Wednesday, seeking to highlight the state’s right to openly carry rifles. While some were unsettled by the display, the protesters said the event was designed to get people accustomed to the weapons and show that those carrying them were normal citizens.

“That’s why we’re here. Trying to make people feel more at ease, so they don’t feel that way,” said Scott Smith, a member of the group Open Carry Texas, which organized the event.

Look, son, I don’t mean to be tacky but I’m just now barely getting used to pierced eyebrows and Mohawks.  It’s gonna take me a decade or two to feel “at ease” walking through the OK Carrol.

These suckers were carrying loaded weapons.  At one point the DPS Troopers asked the gun nuts to remove the magazines from their weapons but they wouldn’t, stating they were “within their rights” to strut around toting an AK47 filled with enough lead to stock a sinker factory.

They tried to go into the Capitol itself but DPS Troopers put their boots down.

Later in the day, demonstrators attempted to enter the state capitol building with their guns out. They were turned away by a trooper, who told them that while concealed handguns were permitted inside, their semi-automatic assault rifles weren’t.

Well, ain’t that something real special?  They can walk circles around me enjoying the day on the Capitol grounds with live rounds in the chamber, but they can’t go inside where the freekin’ people who made these stoopid laws are sitting around thinking up more stoopid laws.

They have video right here.

Holy crap.  These guys outgunned the DPS.

Thanks to Bubba for calling me and saying, “Wanna hear the damnest thing?”

It happened in Houston, too.  They did it at the police station.   Would I kid you?

“If you don’t use your rights, they can take them away,” said Ed Aldredge of Sugar Land, who brought along his 11-year-old son, Austin, who carried a .22-caliber rifle.

Yep, an 11 year old can carry around a loaded rifle.

And surprise — middle aged white men.

The crowd, composed of mostly middle aged and older white men, dubbed the protest the “Come and Take it Away Freedom Walk” and after an hour or so of marching and posing for photos with their guns, the group decamped to nearby Tony’s Barbecue, a restaurant chosen by the group because it let them bring in their weapons.

Because what’s barbeque if you can’t shoot again after you cook it?

What this country needs is far more black men walking around with heavy artillery.