Barry Smitherman is currently the Railroad Commissioner for the Ex-Great State of Texas.   Oddly, the Texas Railroad Commissioner regulates oil and gas in Texas.

Barry is currently running for Attorney General because the Attorney General is running for Governor.  Yeah, it’s musical chairs in Texas.

If you will recall, last week Barry said that the problem with Texas is that we women aren’t having enough babies.  And that aborted fetuses would have voted Republican.  And that all state employees should get free license to carry classes.  And that the women who protested at the State Capitol are “satanic, evil, and crude.”

Honey, honey, honey, that child is on a roll and there ain’t no bottom to his hill.

This week he’s got a new one.

Texas is becoming its own Doomsday Preppers.

Listen to his plan for Texas —

“One of the things I’ve focused on in the last 10 years of my public sector life is preparing Texas to be a prosperous and safe place to work, regardless of what happens outside our borders,” he said.

“We are uniquely situated because we have energy resources, fossil and otherwise, and our own independent electrical grid. Generally speaking, we have made great progress in becoming an independent nation, an ‘island nation’ if you will, and I think we want to continue down that path so that if the rest of the country falls apart, Texas can operate as a stand-alone entity with energy, food, water and roads as if we were a closed-loop system.”

Holy food stockpile, this guy thinks Texas can be its own nation.

Now how we’re going to keep Oklahoma, Louisiana, and New Mexico from invading us is a whole ‘nother problem, but I suspect he has a solution for that, too, and it probably involves permit to carry licenses for all state employees and a whole mess of babies.

You know I love my Texas but I gotta say something here.  Every time one of these jackbutted idiots starts talking about Texas seceding, I want to holler, “Hell, we’re gonna be expelled first!”

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Okay, let’s go to Lodi, California, where a local SWAT officer was showing his swat truck, vest, and other cool toys to little kids at a “reading roundup.”

All was going as planned until —

A Lodi Police SWAT officer had a Glock 35 with a flashlight in his thigh holster at a children’s reading event when a boy managed to pull the trigger and shoot the officer.

“It doesn’t have an external safety or anything like that,” said Lt. Sierra Brucia with the department. “The gun functioned how it was supposed to. When the trigger was pulled, the gun went off.”

Ka-bam!

The officer as shot in the leg and will be okay.  Witnesses say a small child – 6 to 8 years old – walked up to the officer and pulled the trigger.  Then apparently hitched a ride to Canada or something.

Officers want to find the child and his parents to piece together what went wrong.

“Hopefully, speaking to the child and the child’s parents to find out how they were able to get access to the officer’s gun, what the child’s intent may have been—we don’t know if it was accidental or unintentional.”

Now here’s the part that rocked my world.

Police say because the gun was in a holster to accommodate the attached flashlight, the trigger was more accessible.

Well, duh.  This is your first time around kids?

In Texas, you can carry a damn submachine gun around in public and it’s considered lawful as long as the weapon is not loaded.  Men with small winkies have been holding demonstrations of such all over Texas.  They just walk around with guns meant to shoot up school yards and call that “exercising their right.”

And with that law, some guys went to the Starbucks in San Antonio carrying their rifles.  Starbucks asked them to leave so they sat outside in full view of everybody.

Look, I’m not going to say anything about the gun between his legs because a picture is worth a thousand words.

The men were ticketed for Disorderly Conduct for merely being there and exercising their rights.  How can that be?

Well, sure ’nuff, there’s a Texas law (Texas Statutes 42.01) that says you have committed Disorderly Conduct when —

(8) displays a firearm or other deadly weapon in a public place in a manner calculated to alarm;

And who gets to decide if it’s alarming?  Anybody.  Me.  You.

So a woman called the police department and reported that she was “freaked out” by the guys being there.  I would be, too.  I have no way of knowing if those rifles are loaded and that guy with a pony tail just got laid off from his job as assistant night manager at the bowling alley.

So, here’s a good rule of thumb.  If you see anybody walking around with a large rifle, call the police.  The correct words are, “I am alarmed as hell.  As a matter of fact, the alarm is dripping down my pants leg.  I am more alarmed than a tornado siren.  Please come do something right now about my alarm.”

I think that’s a good idea.  How many psychotic killers are now “demonstrating” outside of Starbuck just waiting for their ex-girlfriend to show up?  That alarms me.

Thanks to Llana for the heads up.

Well, a Grand Jury is being convened in Travis County to decide if District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg and/or Governor Rick Perry overstepped the boundaries of abuse of office.

The DA was arrested on a DWI charge the night following the death of a close friend (no excuses) and pretty much acted like a horses’ patoot while under arrest, asking if they knew who she was and had they called the sheriff.  She was sloppy drunk and voluntarily spent 22 days in jail for a first time DWI.  There are video tapes of the entire thing and some folks think she tried to pull rank that night and that it was abuse of power.

Immediately thereafter, Rick Perry demanded that she resign.  Lehmberg is a Democrat (and she prosecuted Tom DeLay, a case still on appeal).  If she resigns, Rick Perry got to appoint the new DA.  We are pretty danged sure that Perry would appoint a Republican.

The Travis County DA is responsible for prosecuting public corruption in Texas.  So, Rick pulled a rabbit out of a hat.  He threatened to veto funding for the public corruption unit unless Lehmberg resigned.  That’s kind of extortion.  She turned down his offer and he vetoed the funding.

Perry’s veto read in part, “I cannot in good conscious support continued state funding when the person charged with the ultimate responsibility of that unit has lost the public’s confidence.”

However, the Travis County commissioners court had not lost confidence so they dug around and found the money to partially fund the unit.  I can assure you that Lehmberg would be re-elected in a heartbeat in Travis County.

So, a special prosecutor was obtained to see if either of them abused their power.

Pass the popcorn.

Thanks to Kyle for the heads up.

I guess the world is ending.  And, with things as they are, it’s probably not a big loss in the cosmic overview.

The NRA and the ACLU have teamed up to fight the NSA, the FBI, the DOJ, the DOD and a particularly militant branch of the AARP.  (Okay, I made up the AARP part but I couldn’t help myself so it doesn’t count.)

The NRA and ACLU want the rest of them to stop datamining.

Datamining is in the eye of the beholder.  The government already knows how much money I make, what my house is worth, how many people live here and through medicare, all my aches and pains.

But that’s not all —

Kroger knows everything I ate for the past six months, how much toilet paper I use, whether or not I have a dog, if I have an alcohol problem and my favorite shade of nail polish.

Google knows everything I have bought or thought about buying on the internet.  So does Facebook.

My city government knows when I water my yard and how much garbage I have.  My county government knows what books I have checked out of the library and they also have my birth certificate, any lawsuits I have been involved in, what political primary I vote in, how many registered voters there are in my house, and how to find me for jury duty.

My state government knows what kind of car I drive, if I speed, and what letters I have written to Rick Perry.

American Express knows me better than my Momma does.

Yeah, I don’t want the government listening in on my phone calls.  Damn straight.  But, I wondering why we’re just starting to complain now.

Thanks to Mike for the heads up.

I guess the daughter of Darth Cheney can pretty well claim anything she wants to.  Her Dad rules the world and can shoot people in the face and get them to apologize.  Good Lord, the man is a Bond villain.

Liz went to speak to the Tea Party in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she is running for congress to stab an old family friend in the back just for the helluvit.

Cheney filled her 90-minute speech and question-and-answer session with red meat for the conservative crowd. She compared herself to Winston Churchill standing up to Adolf Hitler and suggested members of both parties in Congress are hiding information about Obamacare from the public.

And that’s not all —

She said she would like to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. The U.S. Department of Education has provided no benefits to the American people either, Cheney said.

Girl, listen, congress doesn’t provide any benefit to the American people either, but I don’t see you wanting to get rid of it.  Yet.

And remember that whole lying to get a fishing license thing?  That was her opponent’s fault for talking about it.  If he hadn’t talked about it, it woudn’t have happened in -woowoo- Cheney World.

.

Hey, any woman who would throw her sister under the bus would not even think twice about tying grandma to the railroad tracks.

Thanks to Brian for the heads up and John for the picture.