Apparently, Troy Nehls (T-Tex) had one too many pops the other night, and got on the wrong bus back home.  When he woke up, he was in E. Palestine Ohio, where the chemical laden train derailed last week.  Him falling asleep on the wrong bus is the only logical conclusion one can draw since he represents a radically gerrymandered district in Texas, not Ohio, and he has no business there.  Since he happened to be there anyway, he apparently decided to bring his message of good will from the great state of Texas to the townspeople by lecturing them (and YouTube) asserting that the water is safe to drink, air is safe to breathe, and everything is Oooooooookkkaaaaaaayyyy!  I wasn’t aware that Nehls had advanced degrees in environmental sciences and worked for the EPA.  If you can stomach it, here he is showing people he doesn’t know in a place he doesn’t live that the water is fine to drink.

Rep. Troy Nehls is in E. Palestine and assures everyone that the city’s water is safe to drink, then demonstrates it by drinking a cup of tap water from the China Cafe. “The Fire Chief, everybody says the water is clean to drink.” pic.twitter.com/TFYcMWEZhF

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 17, 2023

Love the cute personalized vest he’s wearing just to make sure everyone knows who he is.  What is it about Republicans today where they run around all over the country sticking their noses in to other states’ business?  Paxton, Abbott, and Paxton are well know for it.  Added to clowns like DeSantis and Graham, Nehls is in good company as far as arrogant showboats go.

Go home, Troy.  People in Ohio don’t need (or want) your “help”.

Well, it’s an election year. Just like any other Texas election, the Republican candidates jostle among themselves to prove which of them is the meanest sumbitch. They pull no punches; in most districts, the winner of the Republican primary will be the de facto winner of the general election.

The race that caught my eye is for U.S. Representative for District 3. This is the district in which I reside and in which I must suffer to see the Republican yard signs in about 1 out of every 3 houses I pass. All of my adjacent neighbors, people I consider kind and often make small talk with, have signs in their yard that say SELF for United States Congress.

Self is challenging incumbent Republican Van Taylor, one of the two Texas Republican representatives that had the cojones to vote for the January 6 commission. This vote, along with the vote to certify the presidential election results (Note: Trump won Texas) has earned him a few primary challengers.

I haven’t seen any poll numbers, but I can tell you that the Republicans of Collin County have SELF yard signs. All of them. I’ve seen 50 or so signs for this guy and not one sign for Van Taylor or any of the other candidates that have declared. He is likely to win the primary based on this anecdotal evidence.

In a ploy to out-sumbitch the rest of the candidates, Self has decided to raise a fuss about a major donor to the Collin County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner. In this annual fundraiser, a dinner is catered and B list Republicans are often paid to headline the event. The 2022 Guest of Honor and headliner is Glenn Beck.

Keith Self wrote the following letter, in which he excoriates the Collin County Republican Party for taking money from a law firm that *checks notes* serves LGBTQ clients. The letter is so poorly written that it is difficult to follow. He is declaring his opposition to marriage equality, and somehow gets a couple of digs at his opponent and shows off his pro-life bonafides, all in one rambling letter. I’ve shared some below, with my comments in bold:

. . . I was disappointed to learn that one of the largest donors to the Collin County Lincoln Day Dinner is a law firm that seems to advocate, almost exclusively, on behalf of homosexual couples. It is not my intent to cast aspersions [That is literally the point of the letter] but I could not sit idly by without saying something. I also feel compelled to remind those in authority that our GOP platform recognizes marriage to be between one man and one woman.

Our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior has guided Tracy and me throughout our lives. We had the opportunity to have children at one time, but we could not adhere to the rigid rules that the doctor imposed that could have required abortion. [Isn’t this kind of over-sharing? And completely irrelevant?] I share this with you because we deem every life precious, even the lives of those who do not share our values. [We value those who do not share our values, but don’t dare take money from people who are friendly to them?]

What we don’t view as precious are the agendas of those who use positions of power to advance agendas contrary to God’s word. God’s word is clear on homosexuality, but just as clear that Christ came to save.”

The law firm in question is called O’Neil Wysocki. Michelle O’Neil responded as such:

“I am stunned and ashamed for Keith Self and for those who support him in his hateful, bigoted, sanctimonious campaign. 30 years ago I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of this country. I have advocated for thousands of people from all walks of life who needed and deserved a voice in our justice system. I have advocated for those in the LGBTQ+ community to have justice in our legal system for literally longer than I have been a lawyer. I am proud that I have done so. I do not support HATE SPEECH or hateful thought or unconstitutional injustice to any citizen being cloaked in the name of the Christian faith OR a political party.”

Her response is nice, but why on earth are they donating to the Collin County GOP? I guess that’s a question for another day. If I was trying to raise funds for the Democratic party, now would be the time to call O’Neil Wysocki.

Keith Self might be just another sumbitch trying his damndest to appeal to the most hateful and backward of his political base, but his is a serious campaign. The “loud crowd” in Collin County are clear that they want Van Taylor gone. Van Taylor, who is just as anti-gay as the rest of them, signed an amicus brief in the Obergefell Supreme Court case declaring that just because Texas has to allow same-sex partners to marry, they certainly do not have to treat them equally or offer benefits that opposite-sex marriages receive.

Self’s strategy here is to position himself to the right of all of the other candidates. His website opposes Taylor’s membership in the Problem Solver’s caucus that “tries to negotiate big-spending agreements between Democrats and Republicans.” (Why is there a dash between big and spending?)

He is going to send even more National Guard members to guard the border AND close the border to commercial traffic altogether. He will oppose burdensome regulations on private businesses. He will pass regulations that ban private companies from banning Donald Trump’s speech. He will mandate that there can be NO mask or vaccine mandates and make sure doctors are “encouraged” to prescribe meds for COVID that are popular on social media and right-wing blogs. I think this week’s COVID cure from the right-wingers is to drink your own urine. I wish I was making that up. That link is from Reuters, for Pete’s sake.

Last but not least, Keith Self will demand an audit of the 2020 Presidential election in Texas, where Trump won by 5 1/2 points.

This might be amusing if every gay child in Collin County wasn’t passing dozens of homes with his signs in the yard on the way to school each day. Each house with a sign in the yard is one more voter who “opposes” who these children are, how they were born. I hope I am wrong in my prediction that Self will win the Republican primary in March. The race to the bottom continues each election, with no end in sight.

Besides the decades long morphing of the GOP into the “Stupid and Proud of It Party,” Republicans have also become known for the mobster tactic of hostage taking.  The latest example is Moscow Mitch’s cynical filibustering of Democratic efforts to raise the debt limit to pay for Trump’s $7.8 TRILLION spending spree during his 4 year infestation of the WH.  While smirking and speaking with the weight of a law school professor while peddling manure to an eager press, McConnell has said that the Democrats must solve the debt ceiling crisis by themselves while preventing from just that by filibustering their efforts.  Of course, because it can’t be put on a bumper sticker, the press is unable to explain to the public exactly what McConnell is doing, so they report that the Dems are “split”, “in disarray”, and “bear the responsibility” for the problems that were created exclusively by Trump, McConnell, and the lockstep marching GOP caucus in the Congress.

This is not the first time this has happened, and won’t be the last until the idiotic “debt ceiling” fabrication is killed, dead and buried.  In 2011, 2013, and 2015 McConnell, with the aid of our own Ted Cruz, threatened the good faith and credit of the United States by taking the economy hostage with debt ceiling battles and government shutdowns to blackmail the Obama administration to stop Obamacare and other programs that actually help people.  The 2011 shenanigans caused S&P to downgrade the credit rating of US debt for the first time in history.  Since then, they’ve taken immigrants, women, racial minorities, children, the aged, and the environment hostage every single time that a Democrat dared tried to do something positive for the American people.

McConnell and his enablers are no better than petty mobsters playing confidence games with small neighborhood business people by threatening to destroy their businesses unless they pay up.  “Nice economy you have there; it would be a shame if something bad happened to it.”

This is the second excerpt from “I Alone Can Fix It”: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, by Phillip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig, published in the Washington Post this week.  This excerpt is the account of events leading up to and including the insurrection on January 6, and it is chilling to the bone just how close we came to Trump and his goons taking down the government.  This is a must read.

Trust me.

Biden’s speech last night was like a breath of fresh air after we all endured the verbal manure that flowed so freely from Trump’s mouth and Twitterfingers for 4 years.  Biden spoke of a rising America and introduced his trillion dollar American Families Plan that, after decades of decline and neglect, will attempt to make our lives better.

Predictably, the Republicans hate it, all of it, and it’s all predictable.  This morning on CBS News, Rick Scott was given a remarkable 5 minutes of national airtime to spew nonsense and childish attacks against  Biden and the GOP’s other favorite targets.  His lies came fast and furious, blaming Biden for all the ills HIS side caused.

Why are Republicans so opposed to anything that makes Americans’ lives better?  Because if people are happy, they won’t keep them in power.  The GOP has raised hatemongering to an art form because they know that if they can keep millions of Americans miserable and pissed off, they can then blame Dems for that misery and drive angry people to the polls.  And it works like a charm.  The GOP base is driven by adrenaline fueled anger, fomented by hate radio, Newsmax, OAN, Fox Noise, and the NY Post where the blame is regularly placed on “socialists, gays, Satanists, Pelosi, AOC, and Bernie.” Instead of focusing on real issues like education, income inequality, job security, and healthcare, they focus on bathroom bills, gay wedding cakes, and now the new target “boys pretending to be girls leering at your daughters in the locker room” accusing trans kids of trying to take advantage by posing as the opposite sex.

If the GOP had to actually face voters over their piss poor performance they would lose every time.  THAT’s why they are willing to inflict generational misery to the populace so they can keep everyone pissed off and insecure so their base will blame the rest of us.  That’s also why they are trying to push through voter suppression bills to make it harder to vote.  They know the truth and are really worried now because Biden rammed through the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that helped to relieve some of that misery.  If we follow that with making airports, roads, and other public infrastructure once again usable, the GOP is terrified that their supporters will like their lives made better and the veil finally lifted on their scam.

And that’s why they have zero interest in doing their jobs and making Americans’ lives better.

Let’s face it – a majority of Texans who bother to vote are stupid.  After all, we get politicians like Fled Cruz (from Canada), Screwy Louie Gohmert, Sid Jesus Shot Miller, Dan I’m a Navy Seal! I’m a Navy Seal! Crenshaw, Rootin’ Tootin’ Rick Perry, Greg I Sue and You Can’t Abbott among many others.  There are perpetually zero days since some Texas politician makes us a national embarrassment to normal people.  Well, it’s gotten worse if that’s even possible; we have another carpetbagger.

Enter Dan Rodimer.  Ol’ Dan (who calls himself Big Dan) is from New Jersey, born and raised.  He attended Seton Hall prep school, played football for the University of South Florida, and graduated from Ava Maria Law School in 2013.  But that’s not all he’s done; between college and law school, Big Dan played semi-pro football and arena football, then changed his name to Dan Rodman and became a professional wrestler, associated with WWE (yeah, THAT WWE).  Oh, and was charged with assault and domestic assault (by his now wife) between 2010 and 2013.  He agreed to deferred adjudication in one case and attended anger management training to get those charges dropped.

And there’s more; a lot more.  In 2018, Rodimer moved to Nevada and ran for the Nevada State senate.  He lost.  THEN, Rodimer ran for the US House from the Third District of Nevada.  He lost to incumbent, Susan Lee, a Democrat.  He’s not done, though.  Earlier this year, he moved to Mansfield, Texas, bought a cowboy hat and boots, then gained a southern drawl, to position himself to run in a special election for the Sixth District, now vacant since Ron Wright died from COVID in February.  Oh, and there’s more.  He’s positioning himself as none other than a bull rider, wearing the now familiar flak vest riders now wear to provide some protection when they get stomped by some angry bovine.

Rodimer is as fake as Trump’s hair.  He’s a chameleon, desperately trying to be relevant by getting a high profile job somewhere – New Jersey prep boy, second rate Florida football player, professional fake wrestler, fake Nevadan, now fake Texan and fake bull rider.  His new video ad includes a bull ride where Big Dan a stand-in actually got on a bull. How bad is Rodiman’s charade? None other than Matt Gaetz, drooling Trumpist and career liar, condemned Rodimer as a fake Texan:

Fake Texan makes fake video of fake bull ride.

We already have enough phonies in congress.

Texans, please send this Nevada man back to his true home state (where he lost two prior elections).

Texas shouldn’t import its congressmen.

Big Dan is all hat, no cattle. https://t.co/CcGZsUG4kv

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) March 26, 2021

First time I’ve ever agreed (or ever will) with Gaetz.  Advice for “Big Dan”:  Go home, wherever that is.  Leave us alone.  We want you to leave because Texas voters are stupid and will probably fall for you.  The last thing Texas needs is another snake oil salesman representing us.  We’re full up on those.