Remember Allen West from Florida?  Got defeated, gets to be on the teevee.  Got defeated, gets paid to make speeches.  Got defeated, won’t go away.

Former Rep. Allen West (R-FL), a Fox News contributor, suggested this week that focus on nearly 300 kidnapped girls in Nigeria was a “fishy” plot to take attention away from President Barack Obama’s “scandals,” including the terrorist attacks in Benghazi.

In a Monday column on his website, West opined that concern about the terrorist group Boko Haram, which kidnapped the girls, “right now seems fishy to me.”

Yep, the whole thing is made up to distract from Benghazi.  Because Benghazi is the single most important thing on earth.  Maybe even the universe.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.  President Obama is in cahoots with Boko Haram.

“Are we witnessing an Obama ‘Wag the Dog’ moment with Boko Haram in Nigeria? I say yes,” he asserted. “Consider all the scandals facing the Obama administration, especially Benghazi and the Select Committee, which Rep. Nancy Pelosi referred to as a ‘political stunt.’”

It ain’t easy being that crazy, y’all.

Our artist in residence, John, is back to making fun of Republicans because they make it so easy.

Thanks to John Kwitkoski for the art.

John Boehner is a touchy subject here at the beauty salon.  Ever since Dirt Janochek commented about Boehner’s distinctive coloring, “Do y’all suspect that dude farts Cheetos dust?” we are not allowed to mention his name for fear of spoiling Thelma’s lunch snacks.

But, maybe this is good news from a very, very conservative flat-earth website.

John Boehner told business leaders in San Antonio on Monday that he expects to be House speaker next year but is unsure if he will still be in Congress in November 2016.

That’s a good thing because I don’t think he’s going to get along with President Hillary.  And being minority leader is such a demotion!

Ted Cruz is gonna start an international incident.  I just know it.  He’s gonna do it.

He’s running for President so he’s off to show his foreign policy experience.  He has yet to relinquish his Canadian citizenship, which I am convinced he is using for a backup plan if his crazy economic policies don’t work, so God only knows what passport he’s carrying.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas will visit Ukraine this month and meet with leaders of the protest movement that forced out the country’s pro-Russian president.

Dates and details of his other stops were not immediately released Tuesday by his office. Ukraine has a May 25 presidential election.

I need to be honest and say that I will pay cash money to see Cruz and Putin wrestle.  Thelma says she’ll pitch in an extra ten bucks if they promise to keep their shirts on.

Now, get this.

Cruz has said the U.S. should install anti-ballistic missile batteries in Poland and the Czech Republic as safeguards for Eastern Europe, and push for liquefied natural gas exports to reduce Ukraine’s dependence on Russia.

You’re going to put antiballistic missiles in Poland?  Oh, that’ll be cheap.  We can totally afford that.  And we’re going to give away liquified natural gas?  What’s that?  Ted’s plan to make America totally dependent on foreign oil?  Plus, it would take 7 to 10 years to develop the method to get it there.

Honey, I live in a part of Texas that up until about 5 years ago had a radio station that broadcasted in Czechoslovakian.  Hell, they don’t even broadcast in Czechoslovakian in Czechoslovakia.  So, I know what I’m talking about.  The Czech Republic has their own natural defense system – accordions.

Thanks to Carl for the heads up.

Okay, today I’m going to tell you a story.

We Democrats have a caucus system in Texas.  You attend your state senatorial district convention where you get elected to the state Democratic convention.  Once you are at the state convention, you elect members of the State Democratic Executive Committee, the governing body of the state party.   You do other stuff, too, like elect national delegates in Presidential years.

So, in years past, people signed-in at their senatorial convention on sheets of paper that made two copies.  One stayed with the  chairman of the senatorial convention, another one went to the state party to make up the delegate list.  The state party’s copy was so messed up that you could hardly read it.

In order to achieve a balance of all voices, we have “add-on” members to the State Democratic Executive Committee.  For example, Young Democrats get a male and a female member of the SDEC.  LGBT, Disabled Democrats, Veterans, African American, Hispanic, etc. get two seats each.  For the most part, these people are also elected at the state convention.  If you don’t have a readable list of people of who is disabled, LGBT, young, etc, that makes things as messy as a two year old with finger paints.

So, since we live in the technology era, it was decided by some really bright people that Democrats could sign up online for their senatorial conventions and then the Excel sheet from each senatorial convention could be sent back down to each convention.  It made perfect sense and it worked like a $20 hammer on a greased nail.  We could finally read email addresses and phone numbers!

Except for one thing.

This morning I looked at the list of disabled people attending the state convention and holy cow! there was like 450 of them.  We usually have about 30 people at our caucus.  Then I kept looking and some people I knew for damn fact weren’t disabled, were listed as being disabled.

So, I email my friend Glen Maxey who is generally knowledgeable about this stuff and I say, “Since when is Joe Smith, Sally Jones, David Frontage, and a whole mess of other people, including a couple of State Representatives, become disabled?”  He emailed back, “Look at the LGBT list!  75% of the people coming are LGBT.”  He was right.

When Glen first noticed this odd thing, he called a couple of the people he knew weren’t LGBT and asked why they checked the box for the LGBT caucus.

Come to find out, we’re damn Democrats.  We are accustomed to checking the boxes of things we support.  So some people just checked boxes.  Veterans caucus?  Hell, you support veterans whether you’re a veteran or not.  You support disabled people, check that box!  LGBT Caucus?  Hell, I’ll watch them get married and throw a party for them afterwards!  I’m a damn Democrat.  I support everybody!

And that is Reason #4,519 why I love Democrats. We pretty much just wanna hug ya.

New Hampshire for once.

Glenn Ranfos is 57 years old and has more lead in him than fishing sinker factory.

Glenn Ranfos

He was shot by his hunting partner of 40 years, his own cousin Kenneth Ranfos, who was about 30 yards away in some deep woods and armed with a shotgun.

He saw Glenn remove his hat, and the quick movement combined with Glenn’s bald head, may have thrown Kenny off.

“I instantly started bleeding from the forehead,” said Glenn. “And I could feel penetration on my side and I stood up and said to Kenny ‘you shot me’ and he was in disbelief. He really thought he shot a turkey.”

You know, maybe he did.  I’m not saying that’s impossible.   Pretty close, though.

Thanks to Craig for the heads up.

So, those of you who have heard Sam Brownback’s name tossed around as presidential timber don’t even need to sharpen your axe.  He’s bringing himself down.

Tax revenue in April dropped 45 percent from a year ago, the Kansas Department of Revenue announced Wednesday.

The state’s revenue for the year is $92.9 million less than projected earlier this month….

Okay, so what caused this completely predictable turn of events?  Tax cuts, of course.

Despite all crushing evidence that it doesn’t work, the mush for brains Republicans believe that tax cuts on the rich, like Brownback’s crazy scheme, will gleefully trickle down and everybody wins.  Okay, so rich people win.  Hey, they do have that part right.  As always happens, the tax burden shifted to the middle class.

And do you want to know who Brownback blames for this loss of $93 million?  If you guessed Benghazi, you’re close.  He blames Barack Obama.

Yes, the state of Kansas has a faulty economic plan and it’s Barack Obama’s fault.

Oddly, the Congressional Budget office reports that the U.S. Treasury Department booked a $114 billion surplus in April because Barack Obama raised taxes on the rich.

So, wait, it’s a damn miracle.  You raise taxes on the rich and cut taxes on the middle class and your revenues go up.  You lower taxes on the rich and shift the burden to the middle class and … it’s Barack Obama’s damn fault.

Brownback, you broke it, you own it.

Thanks to Larry at the airport in far away places for the heads up.