Way to go, Ted Cruz.

Ted has a new ad out promising to be the one who puts the last nail in Planned Parenthood’s coffin.

The ad opens with shots of poor little children struck with polio and how much America loved and helped these children.

What a damn dope.

One of the earliest advances with fetal tissue was to use fetal kidney cells to create the first poliovirus vaccines, which are now estimated to save 550,000 lives worldwide every year.

In the early days of making the vaccine, researchers infected fetal kidney cells in Petri dishes to produce a large amount of virus that they could then harvest, purify and use to vaccinate people.

So he wants to un-cure polio?  Is that what he’s saying?  I dunno.  I guess so because what the hell else does polio have to do with abortion?

Stomp Out Science:  Elect Ted Cruz!

Thanks to Rick for the heads up.

Ferguson, Missouri has been turned into a war zone.  Why?  Because they can.

The city of Ferguson, Missouri, is being forced by the Obama administration to return two military vehicles that it obtained from the Pentagon, amid widespread concern and criticism over the deployment on American streets of equipment intended for war zones.

The US Department of Defense will reclaim a pair of Humvees that were given to the beleaguered St Louis suburb under a controversial program to distribute surplus weapons, vehicles and other gear, according to several government officials involved in the process.

What the hell?

I want to tell you the truth.  My husband is a small town country lawyer.  He is mortified that small town police departments have become military powers.  Their “raid teams” smash down doors and do a full scale raid when the suspect isn’t even there.  `

The front page of my local newspaper today boasts that the local police made a major bust of 70 pounds of marijuana, a substance that is legal one state over.  What the hell? It will cost us a small fortune to arrest this guy, detain him, get him a court appointed lawyer, try his case, and then put his butt in prison where we will feed, house, and give him healthcare for possession of something that is legal one state over.

But let me get back to the militarization of local police departments.  It scares the crapola out of me. The police are here to protect and serve, not walk around in riot gear in a small town.

Take the damn military surplus back.  Beat it into plowshares.

We do need riot police. But at the very least it should regional, ready, and small.  If you have all this fancy equipment it’s real easy to turn a traffic stop into a riot.  And I also think that having all this junk is making our cops paranoid and far more likely to escalate a situation.

The military is trained to kill people. The police should be trained to save them.

Okay, here’s your soapbox back.

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is a man living on the edge.  Odds are pretty good that he’s gonna be convicted of felony stealing-other-people’s-money.  But, far be in from Ken to stay quiet.

Paxton Mug Shot

He’s also a big giant muddy nasty piece of poopie del pollo.

He was charged with contempt of court because he refused to follow a judicial order to list same-gender spouses on death certificates.  But when the hearing that could land him in jail for contempt got close, he backed down.

Wednesday’s contempt of court hearing for Attorney General Ken Paxton and a state health official was canceled Monday after state officials agreed to allow death certificates to acknowledge same-sex marriages, a lawyer involved in the case said.

And to keep the wacko GOP base from chewing his butt for backing down, he immediately went on the attack.

Female employees of religious nonprofits should not be given insurance coverage for birth control if their employers object to certain contraceptives on religious grounds, according to a brief filed at the U.S. Supreme Court by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

I want you to think about this.  The Baptists are against abortion and contraceptives.  How the hell do they get any woman to work for them when the women are all barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.  But, maybe that’s the whole point here, ya know?

Thanks to S Gray for the heads up.

Well, well, well, it looks like Cowboy Rick is hanging up his spurs.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign team in South Carolina is no longer being paid by his presidential campaign, National Journal has learned.

It is not clear if or when paychecks will start backing up for Perry’s team in South Carolina. Dawson said that Perry staffers in the state “have been paid up to two weeks ago.”

The rich folks in South Carolina say they will continue to campaign for him, but he just didn’t raise enough money to keep paid staffers there.

Perry has struggled in his repeat bid for president in 2016. He raised a meager $1.1 million in the second quarter and his campaign will depend almost entirely on his far better-funded super PAC. Notably, Perry also missed the main debate stage last week, despite a weeks-long push of television ads by his super PAC in Iowa.

Anybody want to guess when Rick will be coming home?  I give him another 45 days of sliding on bad momentum and because he really doesn’t know how to do anything else.

Thanks to Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen for the heads up.

Well, it seems like Sam Brownback has more to worry about than his bully brother in Kansas.

Now he’s got to worry about people who can do math.

Beth Clarkson

Wichita State University’s Beth Clarkson (who is also chief statistician of WSU’s National Institute for Aviation Research) discovered “odd patterns” in Kansas electoral voting records, so she requested public docs to help her get to the bottom of things — requests that state officials ignored, dodged, and stalled.

Professor Clarkson is asking to see the paper tapes from the voting machines.  They do not tell how someone voted, but “merely timestamped votes with associated metadata.”

No can do, says Kansas.  The reason?

Because the software is proprietary, even elections officials can’t examine it and postelection audits can’t be done, according to Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting Foundation, a nonprofit agency whose mission is to safeguard elections in the digital age.

Okay, so we privatize elections and end up with private elections.

And if you didn’t click the link about Brownback’s brother, you missed some of the best purple prose I’ve ever read.

Adversaries say he has woven a liquor-infused tapestry of fear colored by intimidation, abuse and lies. The saga features stalking, death threats, trespassing, drive-by gunfire, massive explosions, cattle theft, loan defaults, hit-and-run driving and marital strife. Linn County Sheriff’s Department files bulge with complaints about him.

That’s not  dude you’d want to mess with.

Thanks to Rick and Craig for the heads up.