John Cornyn, who tries to stay out of Republican messes and tries to play more middle of the road than a white stripe, is a sneaky little devil.

To his credit, he does put on a good show. When he first ran for office in Texas, he had to convince regular Texans to vote for a guy who worked hard not to be a Texan.  So, he decided to dress like a cowboy. Within one year, he singlehandedly put fringe on the endanger species list.  I don’t think he ever wore a jacket that didn’t have fringe on it.

Well, John’s sneaking around again. Ya know Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for senate in Pennsylvania? Yeah, he’s sneaky, too. He lied about holding duel citizenship with the US and Turkey. He voted in the Turkish elections in 2018 and still has holdings there.

So, Oz and Cornyn have much in common.  Who do you think would spot this?  Yeah, Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen.

There ya go. John’s gonna support this rightwing, Trump-lovin’, snake oil salesman but he’s going to try to hide it where most folks never look.  Oz is going to spend his donor money and John’s donor money, but not one damn penny of his own.

Someone is cashing in on his 15 minutes of fame and those minutes are rapidly running out. Kyle Rittenhouse was a student at Arizona State University. Well that turned out to be false. This week he came out and said he was attending Texas A&M University. Apparently, that is news to them. So, he quickly retracted and said he would be attending Blinn Junior College for a year and then transferring to the big school in 2023. Well, as you might have guessed, Rittenhouse is zero for three.

I suppose there is a clown college up the road he can try if he continues to strike out at all of these fine institutions. I really don’t want to cast aspersions upon Blinn College and any other community college. They have a lot of terrific programs that give our students a chance to gain further certifications in the career pathway they chose. For those going onto a four year degree, they offer a very affordable way to get your basics out of the way. One thing they are not is selective. Every kid that applies at our school gets in. So, a failure to get into Blinn is really saying something.

Unfortunately, the end of my high school career was robbed from me. I didn't have the time other students get to properly prepare for the future.

I look forward to attending Blinn College District this year, a feeder school for Texas A&M.

I'm excited to join Texas A&M in 2023!

— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) June 6, 2022

Geez, you can’t help but feel sorry for the kid. I mean, he goes across state lines with a semi-automatic weapon to guard property that’s not his. He subsequently shoots three people where two of them are dead. It could have happened to anyone really. Maybe we could all pause for a moment of silence to ponder the unfortunate future of Rittenhouse’s life. If only he had the time in between a murder trial, numerous guest appearances on conservative television and radio, and whatever speaking engagements he’s had then maybe he would have gotten into at least one of those schools.

Then again, and I’m just spit balling here, maybe those schools would rather not have a kid that’s already killed two people on their campus. Oh heck, who am I kidding? He just didn’t have time to fill out all of the paperwork to get in. I’m sure that must be it. What’s really unfortunate is that no one in his life has bothered to tell him he shouldn’t be bragging about these things. None of this is something to be proud of and really none of us care where he goes. We just like to have a quick laugh at his expense. It’s the very least that he can give us after all he’s done.

Texas State Representative Bryan Slaton thinks a major problem in Texas is allowing children to see drag shows.

I gotta admit that I love drag shows. Back when we were having lotsa of problems the Catholic Priests, I announced that Ru Paul was the only man in a dress that I trusted. Now that it has turned into Southern Baptist preachers being perverts, I have decided that that the only man I trust in a loud, obnoxious suit is Captain America.

Anyway, back to drag shows. Slaton wants to ban children from attending a drag show. Now while you’re wondering if that would include clown costumes at the circus, or muppets who are male but handled by females, or powder puff football for graduating seniors, let me tell you how this came about.

A group sponsored by the LGBTQ caucus in Houston volunteered to do drag story time for children at the public library. The place was packed every Saturday morning with preschoolers and their parents.  Ben was 4 when it started and his Mean Parents (they won’t let him eat ice cream for breakfast) took him. He was charmed. He told me, “Gigi, they wore costumes! Shiny costumes! And we all had fun.”

He was 4 years old and he understood drag.

I wonder if Slaton knows that Shakespeare’s female roles were done in drag?  I think he doesn’t know. I think he’s an idiot.

You know what is annoying like a dripping kitchen sink about Republicans? They want government out of our lives except when it comes to good, clean fun.

Paul Gosar, congressman from the Great State of Befuddlement, is having himself a snot nosed hissy fit over pornography because, of all the troubles we have in America right now, pornography ranks right up in the top, oh, I dunno, bottom 250 or so.

Gosar, being a Republican generally uses the pornography debate as an excuse to talk dirty right out in public. Kinda like when he Tweeted a cartoon of himself committing acts of unspeakable violence against female members of congress and then calling it a joke.  He got censured for that one.

But what distinguished himself from his run-of-mill goofiness this time was some oratory delight. He begins by bashing “liberal courts” as do all good right-wingers.  Then he says …

“This, combined with the horrible effects it’s having on our young men and women, means that one who opposes any restrictions on porn is ignorant at best and malicious at worst… But leftists refuse to budge an inch for the sake of sexual immorality.”

He said this less than 10 days after the massacre in Uvalde.

Budge an inch? Oh dear. There are many exceptions to the first amendment: defamation, child pornography, perjury, blackmail, solicitation to commit crime, incitement to imminent lawless action, fraud, and threats – to name a few.

Now let’s name the exceptions to the Second Amendment: You cannot personally own a nuclear weapon. And that’s about it.

So, do not talk to me about budging an inch.  Talk to me about rational, even though I suspect you’re about 20 years and 50 IQ points beyond that.

And just so I make myself clear – there is a pile of stuff that is immoral that doesn’t have squat to do with mattress thrashing.

When I was a kid, one of my teacher’s husband owned a small toy store. Even back then it was unique because he also repaired our toys. Fast-forward forty years and that store is no longer there. In fact, Toys Are Us has closed their doors and no one repairs toys anymore. No one delivers ice or milk door to door. Sears is virtually dead and Montgomery Ward is dead too. Blockbuster Video came and went along with the other mom and pop video stores.

Change is a part of history. Usually it is for the better, but I suppose that’s debatable. We can make our own ice now. We can drive the few minutes to the grocery store to get our milk. We can stream just about any movie we want any time we want. However, every once in awhile we miss that personal touch that those people brought to us.

That’s likely the psychology at play when conservatives fight tooth and nail to keep coal and gas alive. Trains are probably the only major thing that uses coal. Even many of them don’t do that anymore. Homes certainly don’t use coal anymore and there are fewer coal miners in the United States than people working at JC Penny. Anyone that’s been in a JC Penny lately knows how patently absurd that is..

So, coal is literally dead industry walking. People usually call those zombies. I don’t want to underscore the fear and anxiety that is caused by being a part of a dying industry. What do I do now? What else am I trained for? How do I feed my family? These are questions that have historically had answers, but those answers didn’t come overnight. Politicians could help in that regard, but they are too busy feeding that anxiety.

That brings us to oil and gas. A high school classmate of mine published a picture of the gas prices where he lives. They were over nine dollars a gallon. We can calmly explain rudimentary concepts of supply and demand. We can calmly explain that we knew this would happen. They taught us this in social studies classes. Fossil fuels are a finite resource. One day they will be gone. I don’t know exactly when that day will be, but I know we’ve been discussing it for at least forty years.

Another of his friends chose to lambast the Green New Deal. It has become the bogeyman for those resistant to change. He said there was no way that our infrastructure could handle a nation full of electric cars. So, somehow the left is responsible for the market collapsing before our very eyes. Then, we get the not so subtle misunderstanding of what the Green New Deal was all about. We also get to the not so gentle misunderstanding of why that infrastructure is not currently in place.

The Green New Deal is not even a single piece of legislation really. The whole idea is that we know coal and gas will go away and needs to go away. We know the environment can’t withstand unlimited amounts of emissions. We know that renewable energy is ultimately safer, cheaper, and better for the environment. We know that it would lead to energy independence. We know if we start making the transition now then those working in those industries can make smoother transitions to something else.

This post was written by our friend Deb T.  

A few days ago, Republicans in Ohio passed a change to state law under the guise of protecting girls sports. Now whenever you hear the phrase, “protecting girls sports,” it should give you pause. This is no exception.

Click the little one to see the big one.

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