Harris County (think Houston) elected a total nincompoop as their county Republican Party Chairman.  He’s a flat racist.

The incoming chair, Keith Nielsen, had faced calls to give up the position last month after sharing a Facebook post juxtaposing a Martin Luther King Jr. quote with a banana.

Ya know, Republicans are supposed to be rich.  You’d think this guy could hire someone to come up with something racist that he could post without resorting to such a beat-up, overused, battered trope.

In June, he announced that he was going to resign before taking office in August, but what with racism becoming so popular lately among Republican men, he changed his mind.

He attended a precinct chair meeting and kinda shocked everybody —

“He announced that he would be taking office on Aug. 3,” said Nancy Scott, a precinct chair who was in attendance.

They elected him, they get to keep him. Besides, he wears a cross everywhere he goes so he’s a racist for Jesus and that makes it okay.

Way to go, Harris County.

Just in case you missed it.

A squirrel found in a Colorado town tested positive for bubonic plague, county health officials said.

Jefferson County health officials said in a statement Sunday that a squirrel found in the town of Morrison, which is just west of Denver, tested positive for the bubonic plague on Saturday.

The good news is that we know how to cure this one.  The bad news?  It’s official – Plague!

Planning.  Democrats are pretty damn good at planning.

Republicans are not. They ignore the inevitable and then waste time whining about it when it gets here. Backed into a corner, they can’t make a decision or even take a smidgeon of responsibility when they do. Everybody runs around covering their butts instead of getting anything done.

Republicans make a big damn mess and I’m not even talking about their response to Covid 19.  I’m talking about the political party conventions in Texas.

Democrats opted out of an in-person state convention that was pre-planned for San Antonio.  The state party announced Democrats would have a virtual convention in June and spent a month planning for it, even with the entire party staff working from home.  They hired a television producer to come in and set up the workings on Zoom.  Not much television is being produced right now so it was easy to find one who knew their stuff.

The convention was spectacular and everybody had the best seat in the house.  We had individual senatorial district meetings with a couple hundred people each to elect people to committees (which also met) and national convention delegates.  It went off without a hitch and was pre-planned in detail.

One way you know it was successful is that every past virtual convention in the country has lost money.  Texas Democrats netted $1.5 million.  Instead of 4,000 people attending, hundreds of thousands watched.   They trained and certified 3,400 voter registrars in Texas and trained thousands in every aspect of campaigning.  And all because it was planned like a royal damn wedding.

Now let’s look at the Texas Republican Convention. They wanted to hold it in Houston at the George R Brown. At the time, Houston is a giant Fry Baby of virus. Mayor Turner said nope. They went the court who also said nope. So they smugly took it to the Texas Supreme Court, the most rightwing Republican court in the nation, and even 7 of them said, “are you nuts?” and one abstained and the other is nuttier than squirrel poop. That occurred exactly one week before the convention was to start.

So, all these old straight white men and their Karens run home to see if their Radio Shack Tandy 150 computers can use Zoom.

And then there’s the national convention. Democrats have been planning their’s for two months. Republicans are still trying to find a place to have it. Honey, it has Goat Rodeo written all over it. Trump was even considering putting delegates on cruise ships and docking them near the convention center. He’s gonna wait until the last minute to make a decision and then claim he’s a victim of everybody on the damn planet because he’s not getting his convention.  We will once again hear a spoon being pounded on a high chair tray.

So, there ya go – a great reason to vote for Democrats. They can see trouble a mile off and plan for it.

In the Washington Post…

Try here if you don’t have a subscription.

The Texas Bar Association president said something racist online last week and everybody is having a fit.

ON EDIT: I forgot to tell you.  He has been president of the Texas Bar for three weeks.  Quick work!

He lives in my town. Oh yeah, he’s a former cop and a criminal defense lawyer, but mostly a former cop. He’s as rightwing as you can be without falling off the coast of South Carolina no matter where you live.

His name is Larry McDougal and he advertises his face on billboards and in the local newspaper.

Now I have a question. You have a guy who votes Republican, used to be a cop, and then goes out of his way to look like Boss Hogg, I mean, gets the same hat and obnoxious tie and then you act like he’s some kind of dude all behind criminal justice reform. No. You should have seen that coming a mile off.

Now, here’s what he did last week. He went on a local rightwing (and generally mean and incorrect blog) to offer his unrequested opinion on whether or not the woman in the picture was violating election law with that teeshirt.

Click here to open full size.

Well, he’s damn wrong. Here’s the pertinent question: If one party is associated with black lives matter, which party is the one who believes black lives don’t matter?

Instead of telling you the names of lawyers and law associations who condemned his statement, it would be easier to tell you who supported him: no one.

Some enterprising lawyers started looking through his Facebook page and found, among other things, this.

McDougal issued a statement saying he meant no harm and that he’d changed his mind about Black Lives Matter since 2015. However, after searching Facebook, there was no evidence of when or where that had happened. And, to show how sincere he is about it, he’s gonna form a task force to look into ways to be the State Bar could be more inclusive to minority lawyers – not just African American lawyers, but all minority lawyers. If you break the code, I think he just said All Lives Matter.

A damn Task Force. Honey, we are about a decade beyond a damn task force.

And finally, another of his Facebook posts.  See what I mean about him being more cop than lawyer?

He needs to resign.

Thom Tillis, Republican senator from the state of North Carolina, spoke to the state’s virtual convention and predicted that Republicans will win in November because …

Excuse me, Thom, are you speaking to the ones who are still alive?

Yeah, and the voyage of the Titanic was oh so pleasant before the mild happenstance.

Tell us, Thom, what horror lies around the corner that you know about but we don’t and you’re gonna screw that up, too.

Yeah, back in February when we were just locking kids in cages and separating them from their parents. Boy howdy, those were the good old days!

Thom, Honey, I remember back in Obama when things were really better.