Okay, campers, I’m in Austin today to holler at the Texas Democratic Party Platform Committee.

Our party chairman, Gilberto Hinojosa, put me on the platform committee.  Whether he’s the smartest man you ever knew or totally drunk when making the selection is up for speculation and your viewpoint.  I can promise you that the Texas Democrat roaches, who linger even after a decade of being proven wrong, losing everything, and throwing $11 million down the toilet, are still fighting for the “persuadable Republican” instead of firing up the base.  I have one thing to say, “persuadable Republicans” are like unicorns – fun to talk about but they don’t exist.

I will be there to fight for core Democratic values.  Y’all might want to organize a posse with some big ole encyclopedias –    not for the information but for the whacking upside the head value.

I’ll keep you updated if we get a break or some damfool drones on and on about how he dislikes section C, subtext 4, bullet point IV.

Bubba and I arrived last night and, as required by statute, went for Margaritas and tamales with some of our favorite people.  Little did we know that the hole-in-the-wall joint we chose for last night’s cuisine had won an award in 2005 from the Austin Chronicle, an alternative newspaper.

Here ya go.  It was hanging over the door as you exit.  Thanks to Mark for being tall enough to take the picture.  You might have to click the little one to get the big one.

If the Austin Chronicle cannot spell tortilla, then they are an alternative newspaper in every sense of the word – including spelling.

If you’re ever in Austin, their tortilla soup is amazingly great but their Margaritas are the worst ever.  The first hint was blue salt around the rim.

UPDATE:

We took it seriously and we worked nicely together.

I’m home.  We are going to have an excellent platform if it survives the convention committee.  I’m thinking of running for the convention committee.

Just when you thought it was safe …

Tom DeLay slithers out of his hole and hisses …

“This president is undermining the rule of law and the judiciary committee ought to start hearings on it,” DeLay said on his Washington Times radio program, adding that the House may also consider impeaching Obama to serve as a “warning to future presidents” about “undermining the rule of law.”

He also called for a House investigation into Obama’s purported “connections to radical Islamists” and his “leaning and having too much sympathy for radical Islamists.”

Tom, Honey, Barack Obama is the President and you’re going to prison as soon as you run out of money for your lawyer to keep appealing.  And you’re going in a damn hand basket to prepare for the afterlife.

Tom DeLay is a convicted felon.  Damn, I love saying that.

Thanks to Lorraine In Spring for the heads up.

Okay, okay, everybody is all “Damn Those Republicans!” this morning when it became apparent that the GOP had bribed Virginia Democratic State Senator Phillip Pucket to resign and thereby give them the power to reject Obamacare in Virginia.

Hell, I am far madder at the damn Democrat for taking the bribe.  We are supposed to be better than that.

Puckett

The bribe is that his daughter gets a judgeship and Puckett gets the job of deputy director of the state tobacco commission.  So now you have a guy sitting on the state tobacco commission, a job which involves awarding economic development grants funded by the national tobacco litigation settlement.  So you’re going to trust a guy who is bribable to sit on a commission in charge of millions of dollars?

And you want a judge who didn’t get there on her own but through her father’s under the table dealings?  You really want a George W Bush sitting on a court?

Terry Kilgore, a Republican who confirmed the deal, said, “I would say that he wanted to make sure his daughter kept her judgeship. A father’s going do that.”

What father is going to do that?  Certainly not mine.  My Daddy would have said, “Baby Girl, I believe in you.  I think you can be anything you want to be.  I want you to get it on your own so that you will always know that you did it yourself.”  Additionally, my Daddy would have never taken a bribe, especially one where people may die.

Look, I expect Republicans to be crooks.  I live in Tom DeLay’s old district, for pete’s sake.  I walk around at night with a lantern looking for an honest Republican and so far I’ve come up with diddle squat.

From this day forward when I accidentally hit my thumb with a hammer, I am going holler, “Puckett!”

And that’s what Virginia Democrats who let him get away with this can do.  They can Puckett.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

There was a ammosexual demonstration in Houston today right across the street from the Galleria.

Click the title one to get the big one.

Check out the sign.  If you can’t make it out, it says, “Accept our Gun Fetish”.  He obviously wasn’t with them.

Okay, here’s my question.  Have you ever noticed that these people are all very unfortunate in the looks department? Okay, I know that’s mean to say.  I know they can’t help it.  But, none of them are going to be the centerfold in GQ either.  Hell, they wouldn’t even make the Academy catalog.

Really?  A parking lot at The Container Store?  That’s the best you’ve got on a Saturday in Houston?

Thanks to Mark for the heads up.

The good news is that they didn’t shoot each other.  No, wait, maybe that’s the bad news.  I get confused.

Anyway, they just made faces and called each other “cootie brains” and “poo-poo head.”  That’s certainly a start to good government.

There was some ammo-action in the Rules Committee.  One delegate said that others disagreed with his vote “on how candidates are approved for placement on ballots and how candidates are censured by the party.”  The purpose of the rule is to keep people from running as Republicans if the lunatic wing of the GOP didn’t approve of them.  He voted against it and was called over for extra-credit debate camp by two other delegates.  When he refused to change his vote …

“I’m in the corner of the convention hall when three people confronted me and asked why I voted the way I voted,” Haddock said in an interview Friday. “I told them I was responsible to vote for the principles of the Republican Party.”

The woman in the group said Haddock should have voted with his constituents while a man with a handgun moved closer to him, Haddock said.

“I interpreted this as an effort to intimidate me and influence my vote,” Haddock said. “I told them all to back up. You are not going to threaten me. I thought it clearly was an over-the-top effort to affect my vote.”

The man with the gun countered, “it was not a weapon or a firearm. It was a black powder pistol and perfectly legal.”

Black Powder Revolver

Well,  I have to admit that it does look like a gun to me.  And it shoots like a gun.  And it can kill you like a gun.

An observer dismissed it as delegates being “a little too boisterous.”  Personally, I wouldn’t taunt them if I were you.

Then they decided to hate Mexicans.  Yeah, the platform had a guest worker plank in it but Dan Patrick, the whitest man in Texas, decided that had to go.

Patrick refers constantly to the “illegal invasion” of people across the border.  You know, like they are claiming Texas as their own.

Scott Braddock reported that Texas Republicans said that “any discussion of legal status for the undocumented was equated to negotiating with terrorists.”

Patrick dismissed his opponent, the formidable Leticia Van De Putte as “a nice lady, but wrong on the issues.”

Dan has the distinction of  being not a nice gentleman AND being wrong on the issues.

Yeah, a nice lady.  Really.  Somebody alert Dan Patrick that Leticia Van De Putte is coming after him with intent to barbeque.  And you might let him know that patronizing her does not work.

The last time she was patronized she caused the Texas Capitol to be shut down until after midnight.

And that’s how she does things “nicely.”

Wait until Patrick comes after her Momma, her children, and her people.

There was some other fun stuff at their convention.

They are offering to “fix” gay people with therapy.  Hell it worked for Michele Bachmann’s husband.  He’s not the least bit gay now.

The best I understand it, this is what’s in their platform:  You can be gay, you just can’t act gay.  Or be a gay actor, probably.  Oh hell, I don’t know.  I don’t have a clue why everybody has to change to fit their image.  What are they, God?

The clear winner of the convention door-prize is Ted Cruz.  The biggest loser is Rick Perry.  I mean, at the convention. Perry was a loser at the convention, not in life.  Well, wait.  Maybe that, too.

Ted Cruz wins the Texas Republican Party presidential straw poll with 43 percent of the vote. Texas Gov. Rick Perry finished fourth, behind Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

How quickly they fall.

I’m sure I’m going to think of more crazy crap they did in the coming week, including Greg Abbott’s statement of “we must invest more in public schools — but not with new taxes.”  Then with what?  Dan Patrick’s leftover fence posts?

A fun time was had by all.