Barry C. Beard is running for Richmond City Council.  He is 67 years old, claims to be SVP of Moody Bank, and votes in very Republican primary.  If you have money, don’t give it to Barry. I’m fixing to tell you why.

Here is a picture of Barry.  This was the best picture he had of himself to put on his mailer asking me to vote for him. He looks like a turtle that just woke up from a nap, saying, “Hey, hey, is that some lettuce you got there?”

Thelma says that to her he looks like a guy at the David Copperfield show in Vegas asking, “How’s that little guy do that?  Is he a wizard or something?”

In Texas, we passed a law in the last legislative session, thanks Glen Maxey!, that if you register to vote by mail because you’re 65 or older, the registration is good for a full year and you automatically get a mail ballot for every election that year. I did that.

I got a ballot to vote for the new Richmond City Councilman two weeks ago.  It’s been marked and mailed back in, thanks to the new Texas law.  Thank you Sweet Jesus, I did not vote for Barry.

Here’s why I am thanking Sweet Jesus.

Barry sent me some mail.  It got here at 5:15 pm on Saturday, April 2nd. It’s a handy request for a ballot by mail for the Richmond City Council election. No, wait. Barry sent me two mailers, exactly alike. This does not make me feel like Barry likes me better than he likes everybody else. Instead, it makes me feel that Barry thinks money grow on trees. These mailers ain’t free.

Then there’s this.  I got this on Saturday.  It would have to be filled out and in the election administrator’s office by April 7th.  That’s this Thursday.  So if I mail it back tomorrow, I gotta just pray they get it by Thursday.  Nothing like a guy who cuts deadlines that close running your city. Plus, if he had mailed them earlier, he could have used a bulk rate and saved a ton of money.

Here’s what I’m wondering.  If Barry doesn’t respect his campaign account enough to not send me two mail ballot requests at the last minute when public records reveal that I already have mail ballots sent to my house, how can I expect him to respect my money when he’s on city council?

I can’t.

He’s either too damn dumb or too damn extravagant to handle my tax money.

I think I want to elect a good planner who squeezes every penny of tax money in hopes it will go twice as far for half the money.  That right there is three strikes and Barry’s out.

Susan Deschambault seems like a perfectly nice lady.  She is a Maine Democrat who won a special election for the Senate District 32 seat.

Deschambault, along with her family, friends, and supporters, showed up at the Maine state house last Friday to be sworn in by Governor Paul LePage.

There was a small glitch in the ceremony.  LePage refused to attend.  Why, you might ask.  Because he’s Paul Damn LePage.  LePage is a mule’s hiney of a man.

He did nothing to soil his image of being a crazybutt sumbitch.

Gov. Paul LePage abruptly canceled a swearing-in ceremony Friday morning for a newly elected senator in response to Democratic lawmakers’ votes against one of his nominees.

LePage’s spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett said the governor canceled the ceremony in response to Democrats voting against Steven Webster’s nomination to the Maine Unemployment Insurance Commission.

Okay, so if you have a bag of apples and a bag of oranges …

Democrats are under no Constitutional obligation to approve the Governor’s appointment to boards and commissions. However, the swearing-in of duly elected members of the state senate is the Governor’s duty.

So the good people of Senate District 32 in Maine have taxation without representation because Paul LePage is a damn ninny. By the way, Deschambault won by 17 percentage points.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Okay, we have a little fun game you can play along.

Donald Trump just said …

“If I win, all of the bad things happening in the U.S. will be rapidly reversed!”

Okay.  All?  Did you mean all in the sense of everything?

Racism

Acne

When your ice cream cone drips all over your hand

Comcast

Injustice

NFL Stars battering their wives

That thing when you run out of bobbin while sewing and you don’t know so you just keep on sewing but you’re not really sewing because you ran out of damn bobbin

Cancer

Tiger Wood’s golf swing

Ants at picnics

Baptists

Armed robbery

Chip-proof nail polish that always chips

Please feel free to add to the list.

Y’all Mississippi.

A woman formerly involved with the mayor of Hernando allegedly sent a naked picture of the mayor to city aldermen.

Friday morning, Mayor Chip Johnson said a woman he was involved with sent a naked selfie of him to an unknown number of aldermen earlier this week.

You know how we tell kids not to take naked picture of themselves?  Kids, we tell kids that.  We suspect that grown ups would know better.

When asked if he was still involved with the woman, Johnson said “absolutely not.”

Well, that’s a shocker.

And then, apparently totally tone deaf, the mayor says …

“The people have asked me to do this job and I’m sitting at my desk right now.”

… with my pants off.

Way to go, Mississippi.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

This was written by my friend Deb in Missouri.  I am putting it here because (1) Deb tells a good story, and (2) there is no way to be funny about this.

Kansas has found the ultimate way to punish the poor

Work with me on this one…..

Kansas gives poor folk getting public assistance a debit card, as a part of “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,” a small program that, unlike food stamps or housing assistance, provides parents and children funds they can use for all kinds of purchases. A single mother with two children is a typical beneficiary, and a family of three in Kansas received an average of $354 in 2012. Current estimates indicate the average beneficiary receives approximately $400 a month.

The Kansas legislature placed a daily cap of $25 on cash withdrawals from the debit card, since most banking machines are stocked only with $20 bills, the $25 limit is effectively a $20 limit.

In Kansas’s system, every withdrawal incurs a $1 fee, and if the beneficiary doesn’t have a bank account, they will have to pay the ATM fee, too. ATM fees (US NEWS indicates that the average fee to use an ATM in the US was $4.52 as of October 2015.

Add to this the fact that the card issued by the state of Kansas isn’t like a debit card from an ordinary bank. Ordinary debit cards allow their holders to make purchases for free in stores. In Kansas however, beneficiaries only get two free purchases a month. After that, they pay 40 cents every time they use the card to buy something.

So I’m trying to do the math here, since the research indicates most poor folks don’t have checking accounts and as such they pay their bills in cash or through postal money orders (Postal money orders for amounts up to $500 are available for a $1.25 fee) how big a hit could a poor Kansan take as a result of this?

Worst case scenario: 20 $20 ATM withdrawals, minus a $1 per withdraw a fee, minus the $4.52 ATM withdrawal fee ($5.52 X 20 = $110.40) equates to approximately a 25% reduction in benefits ($400-$110.40 leaving you with roughly $289.60). So once again the banks get richer and the poor get screwed!

Thanks to Deb.

Texas got the semi-exciting news that Clint Eastwood is moving to New Braunfels, Texas.

New Braunfels is in the Texas Hill County and is best known for its German heritage.  The city is 85% white and 1.5% African American.

“I’m just tired of the California lifestyle and the fake people, honestly, and I feel like, at this point in my life, I’d rather just live in a place full of real, genuine people. I’ve been to New Braunfels a few times over the years and the people there are real… they’re genuine people, and yeah every community has its problems but the people here are good, decent people and they care about their community. Those are the things I find most important in deciding where to live,” Eastwood told the magazine.

Dog whistle:  “Good, decent people.”

And I imagine they have lots of empty chairs for him to talk to.

Thanks to Steve for the heads up.