Gerrymandering is a disguising, vile, undemocratic, hateful thing to do in America.  Except, of course, when you’re from North Carolina and you get caught opposing it.

Two House Republicans from North Carolina who signed on to a brief urging the end of political gerrymandering say they did so by accident, the Raleigh News and Observer reported on Friday.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) (pictured above), both conservative House members, signed a high-profile amicus brief for a Supreme Court case out of Wisconsin, urging the court to rule against political gerrymandering.

Meadows said his name was added “in error” because when he signed it that meant he was willing to “review it.”

Oh, please.

Jones’ spokesperson say his name was added to the brief “through a misunderstanding.”  I think the only thing he misunderstood is that the end to gerrymandering would cause Republicans to lose their seats and it got a little hot in the kitchen.

Thanks to AlanInAustin for the heads up.

Four Texas Republicans voted against Hurricane Harvey aid for Texas.

I’m fixing to name them right now: Twit, Jerk, Idiot, and Damn Crook.

If you want their birth names, you have to trust someone else because they are all dead to me.

Four Texas Republicans opposed the package: Reps. Joe Barton, Jeb Hensarling, Sam Johnson and Mac Thornberry. But none of them represent counties deemed disaster areas by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Yeah, they live in the Dallas area.

Louie Gohmert and Blake Farenthold both voted for it because their districts were impacted by Harvey.

So, the “government should only get involved if it benefits me personally” continues to be the Texas Republican mantra.

I should not write about this.  There are some things that Republicans do that make even me queazy.

This is one of them.  However, since every damn one of you sent me this story and it does involved a bleached blonde big haired woman, I kinda feel a duty to report this.

Bobby R. Burchfield is a fancy pants Republican lawyer.  He helped George W with the 2000 Florida recount, and now he’s an ethics lawyer for Donald J Trump, which I’m sure keeps him plenty busy.

Burchfield’s wife, Teresa Jo, apparently got bored.  Real bored.

Teresa Jo Burchfield was arrested Tuesday afternoon in a parking lot adjacent to the Fauquier County Adult Detention Center after deputies found her in the backseat of a car with an inmate/trustee at the jail, according to sheriff’s office Sgt. James Hartman.

Burchfield and the 23-year-old inmate were having sex in the car, according to a criminal complaint filed at Fauquier County General District Court.

Not only that, but Teresa Jo was giving the inmate clothes, vitamins, cigarettes, and “other unauthorized items.”

One of the customers here, a lawyer who shall remain unnamed unless he pisses me off, sent the story with a note that said, “I shouldn’t send this.  I actually feel sorry for the guy.”  I had to think for a minute.  Which one – the inmate or the husband?

I’m guessing it was the husband because only a lawyer could feel sorry for another lawyer.  The rest of us think she was just moving up the social scale.

The new head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, who almost believes in science but not quite, said this is not, repeat not, the time to talk about climate change.

Pruitt said Thursday that talking about climate change while a hurricane sliced through the Caribbean on its way to Florida was “very, very insensitive” to the people of Florida.

“Here’s the issue,” Scott Pruitt told CNN. “To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm; versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced.”

God forbid we should be insensitive to people in the path of a hurricane.  I mean, it’s time to blame homosexuals, women having abortions, and that weird dancin’ the kids are doing.

Yeah, and Rick Scott won’t even allow the words climate change to be used in official state documents.

Cuz, you know, it’s too soon.

You guys probably heard that Rush Limbaugh was claiming earlier this week that Irma was a liberal  “hoax” to push their goofy ideas about climate change.  Rush claimed that the weather men were all part of the conspiracy because they knew for a fact that Irma was never going to hit land, and that it would float blissfully out to the Atlantic.

Rush said that grocery stores were in on the hoax to sell groceries and that bottled water companies were counting their profits, too.

Yesterday, Rush announced that he is fleeing from this elaborate hoax perpetrated on his Florida radio studio.

“May as well… announce this. I’m not going to get into details because of the security nature of things, but it turns out that we will not be able to do the program here tomorrow,” Limbaugh said Thursday. “We’ll be on the air next week, folks, from parts unknown.”

Limbaugh said the show will be back on the air Monday, but to be on the air Friday would be “legally impossible” for them do to the show out of South Florida.

“Legally impossible?”  More like … impossible to talk while drowning.

On the same show, he said …

“The views expressed by the host of this program [are] documented to be almost always right 99.8 percent of the time,” Limbaugh said right before announcing he would be leaving South Florida for parts unknown. “There is a reason for that because we engage in a relentless and unstoppable pursuit of the truth and we find and proclaim it and that happens to drive people crazy.”

And, Honey, for Limbaugh’s listeners, that’s a 3 minute drive.

Thanks to Deb for the heads up.

I’m sitting here watching the FEMA morning briefing on Hurricane Irma with Grinning Tom Price and director Brock Long while they are speaking of 8,000 FEMA employees advance deployed and commodities (food, water, medicine) staged from Florida to North Carolina.  They’re speaking of evacuating electricity dependent medical patients, evacuation routes, and other issues that professionals discuss preparing for landfall of major hurricane.

Over the last several weeks, elected officials in Texas and Florida have actually conducted themselves as adults, taking responsibility and using their authority (and government coffers) to serve their constituents.  The weakest person I’ve seen is Greg Abbott who has played a very small role compared to Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris Country judge Ed Emmett, staying pretty much in the background, showing up only to suck up to Cheeto Jesus while he grandstanded during his two brief and embarrassing appearances here in Texas.

Speaking of embarrassing, Donald Trump. His performance during his cringe-inducing visits (accompanied by his wife impersonating Michael Jackson in those silly caps and shades) were nothing short of embarrassing.  Thank God he left to go play golf immediately after instructing shelter victims to “have a great time”.

I digress – what’s really struck me during these events is how Trump administration appointments and elected officials are bringing the force of government to bear to serve its residents.  Trump has already proposed, and the Congress is virtually certain to approve, an initial $8 billion relief appropriation.  Local, state, and federal officials are working together to save lives and shelter victims of the recent storms.  FEMA has been on the ground in Houston since initial rains started and is processing over 300,000 funding applications already filed.

The difference between these responses and the disaster during Katrina 12 years ago is striking; today government is being proactive rather than passive as it was during that crisis where local, state, and federal governments were simply incompetent and totally unprepared.  The current response is strikingly different – in general, politics have been set aside by elected officials to get help to Americans.  There’s none of the nonsense about “compassionate conservatism” which created the shameful Katrina response.  It looks to me that government is pretty much working as it should – for the good of society.

The collective power of people working together using the resources available to soften the blow of catastrophes like Harvey and Irma is how advanced societies are supposed to function.  Government money and resources help; individual citizens volunteering is key; law enforcement and firefighting agencies must galvanize to serve.  In short, this is how it’s supposed to work.  Libertarian ideology goes out the window because it simply doesn’t work.  Radical right wing ideology goes with it because no person is an island.  In short, during crisis, everyone is a socialist working for the collective good.  That’s how society is supposed to work.