And, yeah, we’re getting belted again —

I’m still high and dry.

Another reason to really, really like Facebook.  The Louie Gohmert Fan Club.

My friend Karen, who lives in Louie’s district, says this is gonna be fun.

The good news:  The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case on the constitutionality of Texas redistricting based on the one man / one vote principle.

The bad news:  This Supreme Court is as worthless as a four card flush.

I thought about writing more about this, but that right there pretty much says it all.

Two male Republicans came this close to getting into a fist fight on the Texas House floor over an abortion bill.  If the sergeant at arms staff hadn’t stop it, Republicans Rep. Jonathan Stickland and Republican Rep. Byron Cook could have sold pay-per-view tickets.

On an abortion bill.  Two males.  Doesn’t that seem odd to anybody?

Here’s what the fight was about:

SB575 is a bill about “elective” abortions.  It would require women who want to be covered for abortions under their health insurance to purchase supplemental plans.  It didn’t look like it was going to get out of committee.

Jonathan Stickland, who is one kinky guy, decided to add an amendment on some other bill about roads or some damn thing.  His amendment would force a house vote on an amendment “to prohibit abortions on the basis of fetal abnormalities.”

Yeah, that’s some crap.  A woman would be required to carry a non-viable fetus until it died and was expelled from her body naturally.  Yeah, that crap.  The crap that kills women.

So anyway, Stickland agreed to pull the amendment in exchange for a promise from the Republican leadership that SB575 would get reported out of committee.

Although Cook kept his word, three Republican women on the Calendars Committee — Reps. Sarah Davis, Debbie Riddle and Patricia Harless — backed out of supporting the bill at the last minute and sided with the Democrats, killing the measure with a 7-7 vote.

Strickland got screwed by Republican women.  But you can’t hit women so he decided to hit Cook instead.

The result?

But in the end, Stickland’s temper tantrum worked.

The Calendars Committee reconvened after the House session and voted to move SB575 forward by a vote of 8-0. Two Republicans and all of the Democrats were marked as absent. Republican Rep. Debbie Riddle swung her vote in support of the bill, but it was not immediately clear why she had changed her mind.

Debbie Riddle is kinda nuts.  You’ve read about her here before.  You can call her office and fuss up a storm about her caving to a temper tantrum worthy of a two year old.   281-257-4222 .  Be nice.  Don’t cuss.  But don’t back down.

Ole Bubba and I lived through a night of constant lightning and thunder last night.  Damnest thing I’ve ever seen.  They say we got ten inches of rain in about 4 hours.  And it’s only just begun.

We have power but no one else we know does.  We have friends with 2 feet of water in their houses, a large oak tree on their roofs, or the Brazos River eating their property.  Bubba just went up to check on his office.

We are waiting on Pat Robertson to blame all the ultra conservative actions of the state legislature for this act of a pissed off God.

John Zerwas is one of four state representatives from my county.  I am ready to admit that he’s only a 4 on the Crazy-Mean-Hateful Republican scale.  I mean, we do have one who sponsored a hate-the-gays bill whose son is a leading HIV advocate in Houston and a proud gay man, so the bar is set pretty high.

But Zerwas pulled a stunt worthy of making me want to go to the state capitol and run circles around him yelling, “Are you nuts?  Are you nuts?  John, are you nuts?”  I did that once before to another state rep who promptly got sick and had to retire.  I jokingly got the blame for his illness.  If that were true, there would be a lot more sick state reps.

Two things:  The Lege wants to hold a special election to cut tax rates which will mean $125 a year for most folks.  The other thing: John Zerwas is not a veteran.  Here’s how those two things meet and shake hands.

The Texas lege meets for 140 days every two years, which is about 139 days too much.  Since the session is coming to a close, they will meet on Memorial Day.

John Zerwas wrote a bill that would dramatically cut education benefits for Texas veterans.  It came to the floor the day before Memorial Day.  Holy cow, man.  Just holy cow.  Are you nuts?  You didn’t see this coming?  You’re going to cut veterans benefits on Memorial Day?

Zerwas says we cannot afford to continue to pay these benefits.  Oh yeah, but we can afford to fight abortion and marriage equality to the Supreme Court, which is very, very expensive.

I do not need to lecture anybody about veteran educational benefits pulling us out of the depression and giving us an educated America.  But since Zerwas has never served in the military, nor have any of his sons, he doesn’t know that we pay our military squat and we send them into harm’s way. Some will never come back and their children deserve those educational benefits.

Most kids enlist in the military solely for the educational benefits.  You gotta admire and be in awe of that, not undercut it.  They are willing to risk their lives for an education.  Hell, I’d double their benefits because I know it will pay off in the future with productive tax-paying educated members of society.

The bill got pulled because even some Republicans realize that messing with veterans just ain’t right.

John, you screwed up royally.  On Memorial Day.  Shame on you.  Go find a veteran and apologize.