In the midst of the bad news and the news of the weird is a bit of good news. Polls are simply data points at the end of the day. Numbers don’t lie by themselves, but people often lie about the numbers. However, it is impossible to look at the current poll data from 538 and think anything good is happening for Ron DeSantis.

Naturally, a comprehensive study of statistics evolves like peeling an onion. We could point out that he was polling near 40 percent at the beginning of the year and has dipped to nearly 20 percent now. That much is easy to see when looking at the graphic. The question of why is a lot more interesting and important. Obviously there are different theories here. A lot of it has to do with Trump and the weird hold he has over the party. Some of it is simply DeSantis himself.

Ultimately this is good news. 2016 should have taught us a very important lesson. There is a thought in party politics that you should root for the worst candidate to make it through the primary on the other side. After all, it would make it easier for your candidate to win. This was the thought in 2016. Clearly, no one in their right mind would choose Donald Trump, so why worry as he runs roughshod over the Republican primary?

Even as he was gaining access to the White House there was another thought that permeated through some circles on the left. Some people thought “how much damage could he really do?” and “maybe this will wake people up and they will finally support more progressive candidates.” We obviously found out on both counts. You never assume a jackass will lose. You never assume a jackass can’t cause immense damage. You never allow a jackass to go any further once he or she has shown themselves to be a jackass.

Ron DeSantis is a jackass. Boil it down and diffuse the vestiges of ideology and he’s just a jackass. Whether one buys into woke or not or even wants to engage in any kind of conversation of what that even is, DeSantis just seems intent on punishing people. He is actively making lives in Florida worse and the purpose seems lost on most people. At any rate, the more and more people hear about him the more and more they are turned off.

This is not about ideology anymore. We need people in government that aren’t jackasses. Maybe there should be a Hippocratic Oath for politicians. Whether you buy into anything you should first do no harm. Maybe there are enough sane people in the universe to expel the jackasses from our midst. Obviously, there are still a number of people that our jackasses. Hopefully, these poll numbers might be a sign that there are more of us than there are of them.

This is real.  Elon is backing out of the cage match fight. I already had ringside seats with my only regret being that one of them had to win.

Here ya go, and I suggest you take a deep breath and center yourself.

As you were going to bed last night …

Elon, Honey, I hate to be the one that’s gotta say this, but that’s what it’s been from the start.  It’s not about brains, courage, skill, creativity, or ability.  It’s always been about something you have absolutely no control over.

On the upside, it’s kinda fun to watch the last remaining vestiges of white privileged heterosexual patriarchy limp to the finish line of shame.

Okay, it’s time to visit Fayette County again.  The Fayette County Record well may be the damn finest bi-weekly newspaper in Texas. It’s news reporting in small town Texas at its finest.

So, this week, we have front page above the fold —

If you’re having trouble reading it because you’re old as rocks, click on it to see the big version.

Barefoot all over women aren’t much news in Texas in the summer, but this summer has been particularly cruel to people who wear clothes.

LaGrange ain’t total strangers to naked women.  Remember The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas? That was LaGrange. And as luck would have it, you can read all about it in this week’s edition of the Register. It’s a story that’ll make you grin all day. Just click right here and the scroll to the bottom of the front page. It continues on page four and you need to click that, too. You’ll thank me later.

We were able to complete one of our bucket list items this past week when the family and I took an Alaskan cruise and were gone nearly ten days total. There are a few things we all learned along the way. The first thing we learned is that relocating to avoid the current state of our politics would be more difficult than we imagined. The cost of living in British Columbia (Victoria) was a little out of our price range and probably that of most people. The same is likely true for Alaska.

We saw the impacts of climate change first hand. The ship was able to go further and faster than in past decades due to the erosion of glaciers and icebergs. We went to the Mendenhall Glacier where we saw the dramatic effects of global warming first hand. People were able to walk on that glacier just 20 years ago. Now, we could see it from a distance. Additionally, there were all kinds of markers on the trails to denote where the ice had been in years past.

Yet, this screed is not about any of this. This is stuff we already know and really hasn’t changed. When you share a boat with 3000 other people you learn a few sobering ideas about yourself and others. There are just some really not nice people in the world. They are rude. They are mean. They are petty and the very sad thing is that I’m describing people I know in addition to strangers. So, I have to provide a shout out to people in that industry. They have to deal with the worst of us when we are at our worst and they do it with a smile on their face.

There are real things that divide us. These real things are ultimately discounted when we frame the world into a left vs. right world. We have honest people and dishonest people. We have nice people and mean people. We have caring people and we have narcissists. We have humanitarians and we have grifters. The most sobering (because this hits so very close to home) thing is that we have snipers and we have fixers.

Snipers are people that would rather complain about a problem than actually do anything about it. Mind you we aren’t even talking politics right now. It could be something as simple as not having any dinner rolls or being out of water or tea. Snipers will just complain. Fixers will take steps to fix the problem. They will talk to wait staff to get more water or a refill on rolls. Their immediate focus is just on fixing the problem and moving on.

In this world, we are led to believe that the main fault line is between left and right. I learned something very valuable this week. Granted, this is something we all instinctively knew before. The main divide isn’t left vs. right. What makes MAGA so dangerous and so disheartening is that it has given people on the opposite side of every other divide cover to behave badly. More than left vs. right, they are the dishonest, they are the rude, they are the not nice, and they are the petty. MAGA just gave them a cover to be the self-actualized versions of themselves. Ultimately, the decent and considerate people of this world have to bound together against the indecent and inconsiderate people. We have to find a way to form coalitions on specific issues where we naturally agree. We have to ignore the fact that we might disagree on 100 other issues. We have to cobble those coalitions together on the fly to make our world a better place to live. The alternative is to watch it all melt away.

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Poor Marjorie Taylor Greene. She can’t catch a break. See, the news just said that the HFC (House Freedom Caucus to all you libtards) just tossed her A-Double-Scribble out of their club for cozying up to the wrong House Speaker. That’s one thing (Speaker) McCarthy has on (Speaker Emeritus) Boehner. McCarthy has an actual by-God sycophant that got herself thrown out of the KKK Klub for 1) voting for him for Speaker, then 2) voting for his Biden-laced debt ceiling bill.

Boehner cried, but nobody died.

Oh, and she also called Congressman Lauren Boebert, a fellow Caucus member, “a little b***h” for filing an impeachment bill that she herself wanted to file.

I know the feeling. In 7th grade, the class bully pushed me into the dirt when I beat him in a foot race to recover an errant ball. He didn’t call me “a little b***h”, but I did get pushed nevertheless. They didn’t kick him out of PE, either, but the analogy is there, I guess.

Poor Marjorie should take comfort in the encouraging words of Michael Bassey Johnson, poet, naturalist, and philosopher, who wrote these words in his book Song of a Nature Lover:

You can throw a seed away, but you can’t stop it from growing into a tree.