Here’s the Deal / UPDATED Some More
UPDATE: If you want to follow along on Facebook, go LIKE the Texas Democratic Party.
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Click right here to Draft Wendy!
Heads up – if you can’t be there, you can watch live.
If you are anywhere near Texas, you are needed in Austin today. They are voting on whether to deny access to a legal and safe medical procedure for Texas women.
Here’s how it works:
We can’t predict exactly when the debate will begin but we know we want it to go late into the night. Come when you can. Stay til the end. Wear orange.
What: Texas House Debate on SB 5, HB 16 and HB 60
When: Sunday, June 23rd
Doors to the House Gallery open at 1pm
The House convenes at 2pm
Debate on the bills is not expected to begin until late afternoon
Where: Texas House of Representatives
Texas State Capitol
Austin, TX
Who: All Texans who oppose these bills and are ready to end Rick Perry’s War on Women
Doors to the House Gallery are scheduled to open at 1pm
The House convenes at 2pm
Debate on the bills is expected
I am not going to be there this time for several reasons.
Today is my birthday. If I live 600 more years, I will officially be the sign of the devil. That would explain a lot of my weird behavior. But, for now, I am 2/3rds the sign of the devil, which is close enough and ought to scare you anyway. My son has planned a perfect day for me. My kids have had to live with a weird mother their entire lives so I don’t want to screw this up.
It’s hot as hell. No, hotter. I am old. I used to have to worry about my garter strap melting into my leg. Now I have to worry that the wheels on my walker will melt.
I fought like hell for these rights and I figure it’s up to the younger women to fight to keep them. I cannot believe that I have been fighting this crap since 1967.
Go if you can and tell us about it.
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Thanks to customer John A. Kwitkoski for the above graphic.
My buddy Glen Maxey just sent me this picture of the overflow crowd!
Have a very happy birthday! Imagine how much trouble you could cause in another 600 years? And I know you are already doing an excellent job at telling it like it is. Love your commentaries and you really help me explore Texas politics even more. Thank you!
1Happy Birthday. And keep on going, who knows, you might make the magic number.
2Happy Birthday JJ. If you are reincarnated, please be Molly Ivens cause you are so close anyway.
3I’m with you – I’m 77 and I would be in austin if anywhere close. I thought about riding the megabus to austin and getting to the capitol. However, the heat would kill me and I must live to fight another day; it appears we will be fighting this battle forever and ever amen.
Happy Birthday to my favorite Texan. I don’t now where I’d be without your daily dose of comedy based Texas reality.
Wishing you many, many more years of good health & happiness so you can continue entertaining us!
Love you, Juanita Jean!
4Happy 66th, JJ. May the wheels on your walker roll forever!
5Happy Birthday!! Have a wonderful day.
Good luck to all those women. And yes, where are all the young women? Don’t they realize what is at stake for them?
Thanks again for all you do to keep us informed and laughing.
Are you going to play ‘pin the tail’ on the ass?
6You certainly have a variety of choices, louie, rick tom etc…
Have a wonderful day, JJ! I’m sure women will once again pack the hearing room.
7Happy birthday, JJ! Keep on telling it like it is and scaring the daylights out of the Pinheads.
8Happy Birthday Juanita!
9Thomas Jefferson – Ida B. Wells…. doesn’t matter who said it.
Thing is…. it’s the way it is.
The final chapter of Ida B. Wells’ autobiography, Crusade for Justice (University of Chicago Press 1970), begins, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” She goes on to argue that although the United States does have some “wonderful institutions” to protect our liberty, we have grown complacent and need to be “alert as the watchman on the wall.” (415).
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) crusades against the oppression of African American for all of her adult life. She’s is best known for her work against the growing lynchings of African American in the 1890s. See Southern Horrors and A Red Record, her pamphlets which detail her efforts to show that these lynchings were a means of terror to oppressed African Americans.
We thought this fight for the right to control our own reproductive organs was over, when Roe v. Wade was upheld by the Supreme Court. Extremists have been trying to overturn it ever since. The fight goes on.
We thought racism was a thing of the past. It’s not. The fight goes on.
The price of freedom is “eternal vigilance”. Each generation has to continue the fight. I have faith that the women of Texas will do just that.
Don’t mess with Texas Women.
Have a grand family celebration JJ. Many, many more.
10Happy Birthday to a Texas Treasure!! You have made me laugh when I was feeling crappy; you made me smile when I was feeling blue; you most certainly deserve all good things to come you way. Hopefully, Rick & Co. will be laughed out of Texas soon!! 🙂
11A Texas Treasure.
So true.
Happy Birthday Juanita Jean!
12That’s true, the “price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” The problem, as I see it, is that there are no laws against stupidity, insanity, cunning, ignorance, cupidity, and fanaticism. The issues are easy to identify and almost impossible to counteract.
13The only real way is to vote enough of the bad ones out of office to level the playing field. I just keep wondering why those of us who are more balanced are not voting in large enough numbers to stop all of this.
I used to think that you could recognize the crazy ones until one morning not long ago when my husband and I attended a luncheon for police volunteers. I sat next to a delightful little gray-haired lady, shared in a pleasant conversation and was liking her a lot. Then she leaned over to me and whispered confidentially that within two years Texas would secede from the union and our country would implode and cease to exist, and that she was buying land in Chile so that she could escape.
She was just elected by her neighborhood to head up their crime watch. I still can’t wrap my head around that.
Happy Birthday!
May this be your best year….
until next year.
A huge fan
14From one “666-er” to another—have the happiest of birthdays! If every kid had a “weird” mother like you this country would be in a lot better shape. Enjoy your day!
15Happy birthday and keep up the good work. You’re the best.
16Happy birthday JJ! Find a shady spot, get comfy with your choice of cold beverage, and make someone fan you with a bunch of palm fronds – it’s your birthday and they have to 😉
17Happy B-Day, JJ aka Susan. You make the world a better place every day you get up and get out of bed. I second what @Adrian said. Your kids are lucky to have been born to you and Bubba. I think the universe planned for you to have the Super Moon on your birthday. Enjoy it. We love you.
18Happy Birthday, JJ-Susan! You are one of my heroes! Have a fabulous day–much love to you and your family..weird mothers can be a trial and a blessing, I know because I am one! It’ll be fine, we’ll all hang together!
19Blessings!
Happy Birthday, Juanita Jean! You never cease to amaze me with your intelligence, wit and energy; you certainly contribute a lot to keeping me sane.
May all your birthday wises come true.
20Best wishes for you on your birthday, JJ. Enjoy and cherish (as I know you do) this day with your family. As others have said, thank the powers that be for your activism and humor, it’s keeps us all smiling. Hippy bird day! Yea!
21Happy Birthday.
Like you, I thought this was resolved a long time ago. Although one of the brightest spots of my 74 years was being in the Capital with a bunch of women on this same subject.
It was during the time those pink ladies came to Austin to serve brownies to the reps. Their Catholic and Mormon husbands brought them. One of their husbands told me that I was “going to hell for going against the will of God”.
In the olden days there was a phone exchange around Bellaire that started with 666. I always wondered if those guys over at SWB ever read the Bible.
22I hope you are just a wallowin’ in birthday happiness Miz Juanita Jean!!!!!
23Susan, Happy Happy!
YES – it is time for those women of child- bearing age to get in the streets – we already Won this fight 40 years ago.
They need to be raising Hades about the student loans while they for their other rights!
24*fight for…
25Happy birthday, JJ, and long may you wave! Thank you for lengthening the list of smart, sassy, leftie Texas women who don’t take crap from anybody.
I’d be in Austin but I’m in Maryland, and it’s kind of a long commute. All power to the troops!
I’d also like to note that that pink sign, with which I heartily agree, is about the first one I can remember seeing that is both misspelled and *not* right-wing loony.
Love the other one about women’s choices.
26Happy birthday. Texas will be blue soon.
27Happy birthday!!! I hope it is indeed a perfect day.
28Happy birthday. You’re still young. I had my 66th a couple of weeks ago, so you can never catch up. You ain’t old until you feel old, and give up to it. I don’t plan to ever give up, and I doubt you do.
29Happy Birthday JJ. And I have to ask, why wear orange? Because it’s the color of prison jumpsuits and women and their doctors are/ soon will be criminals?
30Are we supposed to go back to the bus trips to Mexico days just because the Rs want us to?
31Am I completely techno-stupid?… I can SEE what’s happening in the Chambers… NO audio? ? ? ? Drives me crazy, which is a short trip.
Corinne Sabo: My college roommate at WTSU had an abortion in Juarez. Scarey Scarey… OMG. Then I went of to a prissy girls school in Atlanta to “study fashion” and spend my summers in London/Paris doing same…. and about 2 weeks after I got to Atlanta, a girl down the hall had a back alley special and damned near died. Those SOB’s haven’t a clue.
32Happy Birthday, JJ-Susan! You absolutely make my day start right when I’m reading the various blogs that I read every morning … yours, however, I check throughout the day to see what other morsel of TX crazy you have added to the daily read!
I don’t know you, but I love you, Sweetie … I just hope you’re having a magnificent day today despite the heat! It’s pretty hot up here in Colorado, too!! Tons of Hugs!!!
33Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Keep exposing the morons
And we’ll turn Texas Blue!
Many happy returns beautiful lady!
34Happy Birthday, Juanita Jean! Molly Ivins would be plum proud of you, and would be the first to tell you that birthdays go to the head of the line. It sounds like there are a goodly number of young Texas gals to pick up the signs and the energy to face off against the Tea Party yahoos in the Texas Leg! As for those assaulting our lady parts, Be afraid. Be very afraid! We know who you are and we are coming after you.
35Bless you , JJ! There’s an old toast that goes like this: May you live a hundred years!
36I bless the day you were born!
37Happy Birthday! Keep on keeping on!
38Happy birthday! Just so you know, I’m sitting in the House gallery right now, facing that speaker. Amazed at the political dexterity of Jessica Farrar and the other democratic reps.
39Also sitting next to a wonderful young lady from San Antonio, Jennifer Longoria. I’m encouraged by the next generation of young women.
@aggieland liz: Whoop!
@juanitajean: And many, many more!
40http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/13684/texas-capitol-floods-with-support-for-womens-rights
41We have the same birthday! No wonder I have loved your work for years. ‘Specially after moving to foreign lands and states n stuff. May we both have many more years of having fun and making trouble.
42Happy birthday, JJ! I bless the day I found your website. You give hope and encouragement to many Blue Texans. Keep up the good fight!
43Back from 12 hours in the Capitol. I left my seat open for one of the many young women who had on 50 shades of orange T-shirts and were waiting in line to come in. I’ll go back in the morning, if needed, (this was the 2nd reading!) while the young things go to work or school. Met a number of jolly folks, successfully argued with a pro lady physician that forced pregnancy takes God’s free will gift and subsumes it to a bunch of legislators that would fail 8th grade health class.
Happy Birthday!
44A belated happy birthday from one weird mother to another. It’s just the best way to roll. 😉
45Many, many happy returns of the day to you – an island of sanity in a country gone crazy (because it isn’t just Texas-I live in Michigan and it’s getting sad and scary here too!)
46