Here’s the weather for Austin this week:

But that ain’t nothing compared to the temperature inside the state capitol building.

This is a very complicated story so I’m gonna level it off so that everybody can understand it and not giving up on reading it.

There’s two main characters in this story- both of them are Republicans: Dennis Bonnen, speaker of the Texas House, and Michael Quinn Sullivan, a rotten ass sumbitch who heads a group called Empower Texans.  Needless to say, Empower Texans means empower rich white men and screw everybody else.  They raise tons of money and attempt to take over government, steal every dime, and then overthrow it.

Now I’d like to say there’s a good guy in the story but like every story involving two Republicans, there ain’t.  If there was a boxing match, you’d hope they knocked each other out.

So the story starts like this. For some damn reason, MQS (which is how everybody refers to Michael Quinn Sullivan because it’s too damn hot to type all that out) wanted press passes for his PAC Empower Texans.  So he goes to see Speaker Bonnen. Bonnen is not a friend of Empower Texans, so I have no idea what he was expecting.

Anyway, MQS gets there and Bonnen must have been hitting the bottle pretty hard that day because things went whacky.  MQS, who is such a crook himself that he trusts no one, secretly recorded the meeting.  So, when Bonnen sobered-up and backed out of the deal, MQS went turkey wild.

Holy cow, he blew the top off the capitol dome yelling that he had a recording of Bonnen saying that if EmpowerTexas targeted ten Republican – yes, Republican! – House members, Empower Texans would get their pass.  Yes, he tried to get Republicans to get rid of Republicans.

Needless to say, the ten Republicans on the hit list are a tad pissed off.  But, here’s the catch.  MQS won’t release the tape.  He says it would be too destructive to the GOP for the general public to hear it.  He’s only letting his friends and the ten targeted House members hear it.

But Bonnen knows what’s on the tape and he is crawling on a bed of nails with an elephant on his back begging forgiveness.

Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen apologized Tuesday to members for taking a meeting with hardline conservative activist Michael Quinn Sullivan that has since thrown the lower chamber into chaos — and he’s facing mixed reviews from both Republicans and Democrats in the lower chamber over his apology.

“I was stupid to take a meeting with an individual who has worked hard to divide our House,” Bonnen, an Angleton Republican, wrote to House members in an email. “I said terrible things that are embarrassing to the members, to the House, and to me personally.”

Meh.  He’s embarrassed.  Some stinkin’ apology.

Neither side is releasing the tape.  Wanna know why?  Not because of embarrassment, but because they both may have violated state law by making a quid pro quo.

So, Texas Democrats are making sure nothing happens to that tape.

We don’t want the tape floating down the Comal River without an inner tube.

I’m sorry this took me so long to sort out.  If you want to read more, just Google Bonnen and Empower Texans and you’ll get a thousand local stories.

It’s a damn mess and it doesn’t help Texas Republican one damn bit.

On Tuesday, Mike Pence was speaking before a meeting of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian-liberty organization anti-gay group, and was giving advice about being a Christian in today’s world.  While discussing his beliefs, his advice was, “Spend more time on your knees than on the internet.”  Yes, he really said that.  Predictably, Twitter and other social media lit up mocking Pence, and, none other than Monica Lewinsky joined right in when someone asked who was going to tell him Tweeting, “def not me.”

Should somebody tell him?  Nah, we’ll let Mother do it.  LOL.

Hey Guys, if the website gets wacky over the next few days, that’s because Anna the Geek is doing a major overhaul of the stuff in the background that I believe is magic.

Please be patient while she gets everything fixed and working properly.  We might get lucky and never even notice.

Bubba and I were sitting at the ballgame last night and during the 7th inning stretch, we got to talking about Beto O’Rourke sassing Trump and then Trump telling him to shuddup.

My thought was that Beto should drop out of the presidential race and come home to knock the crap out of John Cornyn.  You know, make a big announcement – say something like I never should have have left my beloved Texas, so I’m coming home to make mincemeat of John Cornyn.

Look, we currently don’t have a candidate running for the Democratic nomination who can beat Cornyn. Hell, most of them can’t even beat each other in the primary.  MJ Hegar is a great candidate but she doesn’t have the name ID to win statewide in Texas.  Royce West – don’t even get me started – let’s just say I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him and he’s a big guy. Chris Bell came in fifth place in Houston’s mayoral race three years ago and then endorsed the Republican in the run off.  As we say – he’s dead man running.

So there’s mealy mouthed Cornyn who’s held that seat so long he has orthopedic campaign promises.  Take away that guy’s fringe leather jacket and he ain’t got an ounce of Texan in him.

So, Bubba and I pretty much agreed that we’d email Beto’s campaign and tell them to come the hell home and whip up on Cornyn.

It ain’t too late.  And I know that because this morning because the Dallas Morning News did some polling.

Forty-six percent of voters said O’Rourke should drop out of the presidential race and run for Senate, while 25% said he should keep running for president and 29% weren’t sure. About 51% of Democrats said O’Rourke should run for Senate instead of the White House.

And then there’s this from all Texans:

The news is not great for Cornyn, the powerful incumbent who’s held the seat since 2003. Only 37% approved of his job performance, while 31% disapproved. The polls found that 33% of Texans were neutral or had no opinion.

The Morning News suggests that O’Rourke may be polling behind Biden in Texas because Texan Democrats want him to come home and run against Cornyn.

We are an unforgiving bunch, we Texas Democrats.

Y’all, Trump wants to go to El Paso tomorrow.  I hope he brings a check because he skipped out on his bill last time he was there.

Click here to see the big one.

Jerk.