I am a native Houstonian.  I live about 35 miles away from there now, which is close enough to go to ballgames and see my Houstonian grandbaby.

Houston is a liberal city, causing it to become the most diverse city in America.  You should come visit Houston for the food alone. If you can bear the weather, Houston just might be the best place in America to live. You know people have to love Houston to live where the season “Too Damn Hot” starts in April and ends in November. Contrary to what you’ve heard, we do have spring here.  This year it was on a Tuesday at the end of March.

So, when a rumor started on Facebook that a group called Antifa was going to insist on removing a statue of General Sam Houston because Houston was a slave-holder (he was), ears perked up. We may be liberal, but we love General Sam.  He is a fascinating character.

Fresh on the heels of removing confederate generals from New Orleans, the far right went nuts. They seemed to be completely unaware that Sam Houston was a liberal.  (More on that later.)

The rumor was untrue.  One Houston teevee station did a story about Antifa and their plans to commit sacrilege upon the statue of Sam Houston.  It should have know something was not quite right when they were unable to find anyone actually connected to the group.  The Houston Chronicle, on May 31st, also did a story (you might not be able to get it because it’s by subscription only).  Neither of them talked to anyone associated with the group … because it was a joke.

But, not to the far right gun nuts.  No siree, this was too good an opportunity.  They promptly scheduled a protest on the rumored day that Antifa was going to protest.

So, they show up armed to the hilt at a public park near the zoo, Rice University, the Museum of Natural Science, Theater Under the Stars, and an enormous city park on a Saturday when everybody is out with their children.  I have a few pictures.

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I do not know how Sam Houston felt about guns, but I do know that he fought bravely in the War of 1812 and he was the general who captured Santa Ana after the Battle of the Alamo and he’s kinda beloved for that.  So I kinda suspect he’d tell those weenies with weapons to go join the military.

But, I do know how Sam Houston felt about the confederacy.  He hated it.  General Sam was a congressman, the Governor of Tennessee, President of the Republic of Texas, and a senator from Texas.  When Texas joined the confederacy, General Sam opposed it strongly and resigned as Governor of Texas instead of joining the confederacy.  He wrote …

“I love Texas too well to bring civil strife and bloodshed upon her. To avert this calamity, I shall make no endeavor to maintain my authority as Chief Executive of this State, except by the peaceful exercise of my functions … ” He was evicted from his office on March 16, 1861, for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy.

So you jerks prancing around with the stars and bars shame Sam Houston.  I am dearly surprised that Sam didn’t climb down off his horse and whip the hell out of all of you. You know, like the yankees did your great grandfathers.

In Galveston on April 19, 1861 from a hotel window he told a crowd:

Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South.

Nobody wants to take down Sam’s statue you damn fools.  He gave up his beloved Texas trying to stay an American.

You ought to consider that.

Sorry to have been MIA of late. I have a new role at the same International Behemoth Corporation (IBC) I’ve worked at off and on for so long, that when I told a new co-worker the other day the year I started, he said “Oh, that’s the year I was born.”  He didn’t mean it as a joke, and I didn’t take it as one.

do I LOOK like I’m laughing

Anyway, this was a minor promotion and I am, of course, both finishing projects from my previous gig and frantically trying to stand up in my new job.  So I’ve had time for little more than 140 characters of snark, lately.

Years ago, back in the 90s, when I started working for IBC, it was just a local Chicagoland behemoth, and we had a very strict corporate identity. The fact that I was allowed a mustache was put down to me being that crazy computer guy, who wasn’t client-facing anyway.

NOT IBC HQ
but you get the idea

At least once a week, my manager would stop by and say we had a meeting that afternoon in conference room K, which was code for Kevin’s, the dimly lit bar downstairs. We had a core group of 6 of us, including a young foreign-born man. One afternoon, in hushed tones better suited for the Confessional, he confided to us that he was gay.  In a company where too much facial hair was a professional risk, such a secret, spilled to the wrong folks, could have had heavy career impacts.  Of course, I would not have been friends with any of these folks if this had, indeed, been a risky confession.  We were all supportive, and discreet.

actually, none of us was

Flash forward to today, and the current incarnation of International Behemoth. My mustache has long since been joined by a beard and, now, a pony tail.  People in suits and ties – de rigeur, in my early days – just look plain weird.  I had something to tell a woman in my new group, and she asked me to email it because she was heading out for a brief vacation.

“Oh, where are you headed?” I asked.

“Washington, DC,” she said to me, a virtual stranger, “my wife and I are attending the Pride Parade.”

I revealed that my first attendance at a Pride Parade was also in DC, accidentally, as it was right outside my hotel near DuPont Circle, way back before I  joined IBC the first time. Crossing the street, I briefly was part of the parade itself.

with my mustache, I fit right in

And later on I marveled: in the space of my own career, the United States – as exemplified by my bread and butter, International Behemoth – has come around to the view that being gay is now water cooler chat; you know: No Big Deal. And in the words of the greatest Vice President of my lifetime, that’s a Big F***ing Deal.

Yes, there are millions yet, blinded by ignorance, benighted by intolerance, brought up to hate what they fear, the Other.

But, albeit with a few reversals along the way, the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend toward justice, and their fulminous fallacious fury is no longer welcome at IBC; their intolerance is no longer even tolerated, much less institutionalized. And that’s a Behemoth F***ing Deal.

Happy Pride Month, my friends. Love is Love is Love is Love.  It’s something we can ALL be proud of.

e Pluribus Unum
truly

All of our glorified politicians and Chamber of Commerce representatives continually crow about Texas being a “free market” state with a “light touch” when it comes to regulations.  But is that really true?  Actually, no.  It’s only free market for those who pay for it.  To wit:

• You can’t buy a Tesla directly from the company in Texas.  You have to buy it online and have it delivered from California.  Bills to allow direct sales have died 3 times since 2013, killed by big money from the powerful auto dealers lobby to protect their own dealer franchises.
• Under the same Byzantine laws promoted by Texas auto dealers, Warren Buffett was prevented from keeping his chain of auto dealers in Texas because his company happens to also own an RV manufacturing company in Indiana. Buffett tried to fix the problem, but Teabaggers shut him down and the bill never made it to the floor.  In Texas, manufacturers cannot sell cars.  I know, weird, right?
• You can’t buy wine online in Texas like you can in most other states.  The powerful liquor lobby controls the governor’s mansion and both houses in the legislature, and has had enacted more Byzantine laws that are inconsistently applied.  These laws treat beer, distilled spirits, and wine differently, with complicated permitting requirements.  A national online distributor, Wines Til Sold Out, recently received a cease and desist letter from the State of Texas and has shut down sales to the state.  Texas consumers lose again.
• This year, the powerful beer distributor lobby, which has doled out over $11 million to Texas elected officials (Greg Abbott got $1.4 million, and Dan Patrick got $688,000), got a roll back of the beer law passed in 2013 which encouraged small craft brewers to invest in Texas by lifting insanely low limits on how much beer can be made by small brewers and allowing in-brewery sales directly to customers.  That law was so successful that small brewers increased by 3 fold since 2011 drawing the ire of the beer distributors who don’t like competition.  They hate it so much that they got a new law passed this year that limits the size of brewers who can sell directly in their own taprooms.  The limit is a production size of 225,000 barrels in all of their facilities regardless of whether those facilities are actually in Texas.  This shuts down craft beer company Oskar Blues of Colorado, who just spent millions opening a new brewery and tap room in Austin, and also affects Deep Ellum Brewing which is near the 225,000 barrel limit and has already announced that, because of this law, it will now seek to invest in other more friendly states.  Oh, and BTW, mega brewers like Anheuser Busch, Heineken, and Miller-Coors were all given carve outs to the size requirement.  I’m shocked, just shocked, I tell you.  Well, not really.  Oh, and for reference, Anheuser Busch produces about 125 million barrels a year.
• But it gets worse…In this same law, small craft brewers must pay a per barrel fee to local beer distributors for beer they sell in their own facilities and that is never actually touched by the distributor.  That’s right, folks, the Great State of Texas is so “free market” that it has made a law that allows huge multi-billion dollar distributing companies to freely extort money from small brewers for the privilege for selling their own beer in their own taprooms.  You’re welcome.  This bill is on Abbott’s desk, and if he doesn’t veto it, will become law on June 18th.  With $1.4 million of beer lobby money in his pocket, what do you predict he’ll do?

By now, most of those paying attention know that Texas is not a “free market” state, not in the slightest.  It has been turned into a corrupt banana republic that benefits the wealthy and powerful while trampling on the small businesses all over the state it claims to promote.  But the really weird thing?  Those same business people and consumers who are hurt by this corruption are the very people who support and vote for those who participate in it on a daily basis.

You can only draw one conclusion from these clear facts – voters in Texas are stupid.

You remember that idiot doctor in New York, right?  You know, Dr. Harold Bornstein, the one who published the letter about Trump’s health that said,

“If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

Everyone, even conservatives, laughed at that one.  Well, it happened again today, sort of, when Trump’s lawyer issued a two-page statement of lies saying Trump has been “completely vindicated” by James Comey’s testimony today.  It’s exactly the kind of manure that regularly issues forth from Trump’s team, but THAT is not the real entertainment value here.  The actual entertainment value is that this lawyer, personal counsel to the President of the United States, misspelled the word president.  No, really, he misspelled the word president.  Here it is, for all to see.

Trump can sure pick ’em.  LOL.

He also doesn’t know what a Qatar is, but he’s pretty sure that George Harrison played one on Rubber Soul.

We’re going to go to Douglas County, Oregon, first.  That place is a mess.  They voted 65% for Donald Trump.   When Barack Obama came to the town after the shooting of nine people at the local community college, “he was greeted by hundreds of angry protestors, who lined the streets waving signs saying “Obama-Free Zone,” “NOBAMA,” and even “Go Back To Kenya.”

This week, the county closed their last public library, because … freedom.

David Jacques, publisher of the Roseburg Beacon, a conservative weekly newspaper, told Vocativ that residents weren’t against public libraries, but a tax increase of any kind. “We’re an independent bunch,” he said. “We don’t have a high expectation of government services. Many of us would like to see them significantly scaled back.”

Tax cuts have resulted in emergency services no longer operating 24 hours a day.  I suppose this is because they are an independent bunch.

But, here’s the most important result: They may not have enough money to hold future elections.

They, like many other tax haters, did not learn diddle squat from Kansas.

Kansas Republican Governor Sam Brownback preened all over the damn country promising that tax cuts would lead to grand prosperity and wonderment to blow your socks off.  Instead, they were down to cutting massive amounts of K-12 public education.

The legislature passed a tax increase.  Brownback vetoed it. The legislature overrode it.

State Rep. Barbara Ballard, a Lawrence Democrat, described feeling tremendous relief, and said she believes many Kansans will share that sensation.

“Now we have a source of money. Then we can work our way out of the hole that we’re in,” she said. “It’s almost like you can breathe.”

There is no trickle down. There is only violation of the social contract. And greed. Greed is a booger.

Thanks to Rick and Sandy for the heads up.