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.

Presidential adviser Sean Hannity on the electric teevee last night:

“I’d like to see the perimeter of every school in America surrounded, secured by retired police … have one armed guard on every floor of every school, all over every mall, the perimeter and inside every hall of every mall.”

We have those. They’re called prisons. You just described a prison.

Mitch is in one damn celebrating mood!

The Kentucky Farm Bureau helped, and Mitch’s campaign couldn’t be prouder.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s campaign tweeted out a photo of satirical tombstones over the weekend, including one featuring an election opponent’s name, hours after the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that claimed the lives of 22 people.

The tombstones named Amy McGrath, his main Democratic opponent in the 2020 Senate race for Kentucky, as well as Judge Merrick Garland, whose nomination to the Supreme Court he blocked during the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency.

And just in case you didn’t get the “We want to kill people” thing, they had backup from a bunch of future Brett Kavanaughs.

Yes, they are pretending to strangle Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez while groping her.

She asked Mitch:

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Architectural Digest this morning —

If irony is dead, Annabelle Selldorf and Architectural Digest killed it.

Henry David is gonna rise up and go take a wiz on the side of that house.

Today, Barack Obama broke his characteristic silence, this time on gun violence, prompted by the two mass murders this weekend that has taken 31 lives, wounded 44.  I could summarize it, but it’s better read in long form.  So here it is.  Read it twice – it only gets better.

Michelle and I grieve with all the families in El Paso and Dayton who endured these latest mass shootings. Even if details are still emerging, there are a few things we already know to be true.

First, no other nation on Earth comes close to experiencing the frequency of mass shootings that we see in the United States. No other developed nation tolerates the levels of gun violence that we do. Every time this happens, we’re told that tougher gun laws won’t stop all murders; that they won’t stop every deranged individual from getting a weapon and shooting innocent people in public places. But the evidence shows that they can stop some killings. They can save some families from heartbreak. We are not helpless here. And until all of us stand up and insist on holding public officials accountable for changing our gun laws, these tragedies will keep happening.

Second, while the motivations behind these shootings may not yet be fully known, there are indications that the El Paso shooting follows a dangerous trend: troubled individuals who embrace racist ideologies and see themselves obligated to act violently to preserve white supremacy. Like the followers of ISIS and other foreign terrorist organizations, these individuals may act alone, but they’ve been radicalized by white nationalist websites that proliferate on the internet. That means that both law enforcement agencies and internet platforms need to come up with better strategies to reduce the influence of these hate groups.

But just as important, all of us have to send a clarion call and behave with the values of tolerance and diversity that should be the hallmark of our democracy. We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people. Such language isn’t new – it’s been at the root of most human tragedy throughout history, here in America and around the world. It is at the root of slavery and Jim Crow, the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. It has no place in our politics and our public life. And it’s time for the overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and political party, to say as much – clearly and unequivocally.