Welcome to Bexar County (think San Antonio).

On Christmas Eve in 2009, Ezekiel Gilbert paid a 23-year-old Craigslist “escort” $150.  Then, she wouldn’t have sex with him.  So Ezekiel did what he had to do.  He shot her in the neck.  Yu know, just your average Christmas Eve.

She became paralyzed and later died.

So Ezekiel finally went to trial.  He was found not guilty.

Gilbert’s defense argued that the shooting wasn’t meant to kill, and that Gilbert’s actions were justified, because he believed that sex was included as part of the fee. Texas law allows people “to use deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft.”

So, that happened.  In Texas.

Thanks to J. Barrett for the heads up.

Guess who has gone begging?  From the federal damn government?

That money will have Obama cooties on it.  And since this was in my local newspaper, I hope every damn Republican in the county sees it.

Abbott won’t take money intended for Medicaid for working class families and their children t get needed medical care.  But a flood, well, that’s different because water rises even for the rich as well as the poor.

There’s worse things than growing up gay in Texas.  I can’t think of what they are, but Dante’s inferno might come close.

We try to cure gay in Texas.

A Texas teen’s extended family is asking the public for help to “Save Sarah,” a 17-year-old girl whose parents sent her off to an East Texas boarding facility to “pray the gay away” after she took her girlfriend to prom.

Some people doubt this is real.  I have every reason on God’s green earth to believe it is.  They had me at “East Texas.”

The CHA Law Group representing the teen and her family confirmed the statements on the GoFundMe page on Wednesday.

“I can’t comment on pending litigation, other than to authenticate that to the best of my knowledge, the background information on the GoFundMe shared by Sarah’s cousin is truthful,” Sarah’s lawyer Christine Andresen said.

This is East Texas, bygawd, and we can cure anything.

Last night, Donald Trump gave a prepared speech after Hillary and before Bernie. It was an awkward place for him to be, since the night was so clearly a Democratic family affair. But there he was, reading from a TelePrompter, his eyes widening from a confused squint only when he dropped in an ad lib and mugged for the camera. He stayed away from his recent Trump U-related contretemps; stayed away, in fact, from most of the controversial topics that won him the nomination. Stayed away, too, from policy, governance, ideas and diction.

Instead, he focused his inconsiderable logic on touching all the bases that comprise red meat for the rest of the Republican base, especially fear, fear and fear. He also threw in a few becks to the Bernie crowd, talking about general election polls and how he “beat a rigged system.”

So rally ’round his rigged-system-thrashing flag, boys.

This was a speech meant to reassure the GOP, and hold it together in the face of the existential cataclysm which is the mouth of their nominee. “You’ve given me the honor to lead the Republican party to victory this fall,” he said, “I understand the responsibility of carrying the mantle.”

No, he doesn’t, but he needed to say he did after the week he’s had.   He’s trying to hold a powder keg together by wrapping duct-tape around and around and around it: the fuse is already lit, so wrapping it tighter will just make for a bigger blow when it goes off.

As much as the snacilbupeR may or may not be re-assured, however, we – and the rest of Planet Earth – can all take comfort in the fact that Trump clearly doesn’t know what he’s doing. Recent reporting from several sources along several lines of inquiry show a campaign where there is no actual campaign going on: there’s no staff, there’s no data, there’s no policy team, there’s no one who wants to be VP, there’s no surrogate team, there’s no coordinated messaging, there’s no fund-raising, there’s no field, there’s clearly no speechwriter.

There’s just no there, there.

Rumors have also come out that Trump’s focus for winning in November include chasing down the northern tier post-Industrial states, as well as New York and California. New York! California! I know, right? Surely not!

I’ve been ev’rywhere much more than THIS guy

Not so fast, there. Here’s what he said last night: “I’ve traveled to many of our states and seen the suffering in people’s eyes. I’ve visited communities in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana, and Ohio…”

Pennsylvania and Ohio are two swing states that make sense for Republicans to chase, as they have been. Indiana is something he may need to shore up. These – along with states like, say, Florida – are standard shout-outs in a general election campaign speech like this. But this is the first inkling we see that Trump is unable to let go of his home state, as well as its satellites. It’s almost as if he’s trying to run a Rockefeller map in a Goldwater election.

It’s almost as if he wants to lose. If so, he chose the right Party for it.

Eight years ago, my Momma was 82 years old.  She confessed to me that she felt a little guilty about voting for Barack Obama in the primary.   Her momma didn’t even have the right to vote until she was grown up.

“I wanted to see a woman in the White House before I die,” she wistfully told me.

“Well, Momma, that means you just gotta live 8 more years,” I laughed.

She did and at 90 years old, she voted for Hillary in the primary.  Although she votes by mail now, I am going to take her to vote in person this November.  It’s important.

Here’s Momma and her only little baby girl.  We are going to go vote together.

John Oliver, my favorite investigative comic, bought something valuable.

Some 9,000 people stuck with delinquent medical bills had their debts forgiven courtesy of HBO host John Oliver.

Oliver, on his “Last Week Tonight” program Sunday, took the action to illustrate a story about the practices of companies that purchase the records of debtors and attempt to collect on them. The show set up its own company to acquire $15 million worth of debt owed to hospitals in Texas, paying $60,000.

This is Texas, where our Governor is refusing Medicaid funds to help sick people who are working class but without health insurance.  Medicaid ain’t welfare. Our Governor doesn’t want the federal money because Barack Obama touched it, so now it has cooties all over it.

John Oliver, who is in this country on a green card and could be Mexican as far as Greg Abbott knows, helped Texans when Abbott and the Republican Legislature wouldn’t.

Now how a business can pay $60,000 for $15 million in potential profit is a whole ‘nother story.

Thank you, John Oliver.  Please come to Texas and run for Governor.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.