At least Texas was blessed by Rick Perry being stoopid.

We are not so lucky with Greg Abbott.  Greg Abbott is smart.  He knows how to finagle and cover up. He knows how to delay gratification and paybacks so that they don’t look like paybacks.

In Texas, former Deputy Chief of Consumer Protection, John Owens, has retired but he kept a 14 page summary of the charges against Donald Trump and Trump U defrauding consumers in Texas.

Owens, now retired, said his team had built a solid case against the now-presumptive Republican presidential nominee, but was told to drop it after Trump’s company agreed to cease operations in Texas.

The former state regulator told The Associated Press on Friday that decision was highly unusual and left the bilked students on their own to attempt to recover their tuition money from the celebrity businessman.

Owens found the “stand down” order he was given to be odd because it meant that Trump was being treated differently than others who commit fraud in Texas.

Owens’ boss at the time was then-Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is now the state’s GOP governor.

The Associated Press first reported Thursday that Trump gave donations totaling $35,000 to Abbott’s gubernatorial campaign three years after his office closed the Trump U case. Several Texas media outlets then reported Owens’ accusation that the probe was dropped for political reasons.

Abbott’s people claim the order didn’t come from him but from people lower down on the Greg Abbott scale of importance. Additionally, they add, it was three years after Abbott’s office saved Trump a couple of million that the pay-off came.

Oh yeah.  Three years is like a whole different epoch.

Then to add smoke to this fire, indicted felon Ken Paxton, our current attorney general, has issued a cease and desist letter against Owens. Apparently Owens has broken a Texas law against truth-telling and our attorney general is headed for Shut The Hell Up Corral.

Holy crap, I live here, y’all.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Y’all, Phyllis Schlafly went to the great beyond today.  That loud gasp you heard is Phyllis discovering that God is liberal black woman who wants to have a little chat with her.

Phyllis was 92 years old, proving once again that the good die young.

Okay, I’m not saying that the last damn thing on Governor Greg Abbott’s mind is the working people of Texas, but it’s gotta be way at the bottom.

Thank you, Governor Abbott, for reminding us once again that you’re an idiot and that you never served in the military.

Thanks to Elizabeth for the heads up.

So this 72 year old guy in Ohio goes to the dentist and gets gassed-up on Nitrous Oxide.

Then, dammit, his cell phone rings in his pocket. You know, like it always does when you’re high on some damn thing.

Instead, James Short grabbed his pistol, firing it and striking himself in the hand, NBC affiliate WCMH reported. The bullet also grazed Short’s stomach.

Short, who was scheduled on Thursday to receive a filling at New Carlisle Dental Group, northeast of Dayton, had a concealed-carry permit for the gun, according to the station, and the dentist did not ban concealed weapons.

Okay, first of all, if you gotta have a gun at the dentist’s office then just maybe you need to get another dentist.

And then there’s this from the local sheriff’s department —

Sgt. Christina Evans-Fisher of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office offered the incident as a warning: “If you’re going to a doctor’s office where you might be put under some kind of medication that might alter your mental status … you might not want to carry a weapon.”

Please note that the word “might” appears three times in that statement like this is pure conjecture.  Warning, my sweet patootie.  That wasn’t a warning.  That was a laugh your butt off at some crazy old man who can’t tell his damn cell phone from a gun.  Thank goodness he didn’t answer it and blow off his ear.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

So, I guess he’s anti taco truck on every corner —

Impressive spelling, though.

A friend of mine, Sheila Healy, is the Executive Director of the Arizona Democratic Party.  Sheila is having way too much fun.  Lookie here —

And then they’ve had this little bit of unintentional humor on a clearly not-funny subject:

Ann Kirkpatrick is running against John McCain and the race appears to be a dead heat.

So the Arizona Republican Party decides to take it to the limit.  They came out with a Wanted posted of Ann Kirkpatrick.  Here ya go  —-

See those bullet holes around the edge of her picture?  You know, in the same state where Gabby Giffords was shot.

No, you do not. You do NOT see those bullet holes. No, sireee. No bullet holes. Close your damn eyes and you cannot see them. See?

Arizona Republican Party spokesperson Matt Specht explains it to you:

Specht in a telephone interview Friday said that round splotches on the poster Kirkpatrick labeled as bullet holes were intended at conveying a weathered image of the Old West.

“They could be just holes, whether it was something that was nailed to a tree or wall,” he said.

Well, there ya go.

The Kirkpatrick campaign has a link to the template the GOP used for the poster and it is described as  “old and dirty paper with bullet holes.”

What bullet holes?  There’s no bullet holes. Here’s the poster on the Arizona GOP website.