George HW Bush; George W Bush; Dan Patrick; Ted Cruz; Allen West; Dan Rodimer; Chad Prather.  What do these individuals have in common?  First, they either held, hold, or are running for political office in Texas.  Second, NONE of them are actually from Texas.  HW and W were well known Connecticut blue bloods who wrapped themselves in the Texas flag to run for federal office.  Ted Cruz is from Calgary, Canada. Allen West, who was born in Georgia and went to Congress from Florida, was oddly elected chair of the Texas Republican party and recently resigned to run against Abbott for Texas governor.  That leaves Dan Rodimer, from New Jersey, and Chad Prather, also from New Jersey.  What a coinkydink.

You can correctly characterize all of these men as carpetbaggers; most were/are shitheads.  What separates Rodimer and Prather from the others, though, is that not only are they shitheads, they’re also posers, dressing up in cowboy costumes and talking with that fake gnarly drawl that those who are not from Texas believe is how native Texans talk.  While it’s true that many Texans do talk with that drawl, we also recognize a poser pretending to be from Texas.  And, it mightily pisses us off.  These two clowns really piss me off.

Rodimer is just your everyday weirdo who decided he wanted to be in Congress after he failed at being a professional wrestler, so he moved to Nevada where he ran and was beaten badly after allegations of domestic violence surfaced.  So, he had the great idea of moving to Texas, changing his voice, donning a cowboy hat and renaming himself “Big Dan” Rodimer to run again for Congress.  His chances faded pretty quickly when the Washington Post picked up his story and showed the ad he made pretending to ride a bull using a stunt double.  The ad was simply awful, even cringeworthy.

But compared to Prather, Rodimer is a minor leaguer of fakes.  Prather is the world champion of loudmouthed, boastful, smartass 5-inch-brim-hat-wearing fakes.  He styles himself as a comedian and a “fast-talking, observational humorist”, but has scrubbed his New Jersey roots from his online persona.  In fact, he’s damn near scrubbed all of his past from his online persona. Besides having an online gig on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze website, he’s a YouTuber, usually done from the front seat of his big I-Have-a-Tiny-Penis pick’em-up truck, and he’s a dynamic self-promotion machine.  His videos are a fast talking stream of bile delivered with a smile, whining about “libruls”, Biden, Pelosi, and everyone not Trump.  The most irritating thing about him is his boasting about being “Unapologetically Southern”, not understanding that those of us actually from Texas don’t consider ourselves southern, but Texan.  The South is NOT Texas.  He’s also more than happy to let you mistake him for a native Texan, which he most certainly isn’t.  He got my attention when he announced he was running for governor against Abbott because he got pissed off when Abbott mandated masks for 5 minutes last year before caving to Trump and dropping the mandate WAY too early, contributing to the 53,000 deaths in Texas from the virus.  Prather’s entire platform is made up of two planks: “I’m pissed off about masks”, and “I need to sell some T-Shirts”.  That’s it.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Texas is a most welcoming state and we love for people to move here.  But we need REAL people to move here who are respectful, hardworking, and sincerely wanting to put down roots.  Clowns like Rodimer and Prather are NOT who we’re looking for, and we goddam sure don’t want them trying to represent us in Austin or Washington.  Add Allen West and Dan Patrick to this toxic waste, and Texas looks worse if that’s even possible after the damage done by Abbott, Cruz, and Cornyn.  Here’s how bad it is in Texas Republican politics right now…the primary race is made up of a Trump Mini Me (complete with a failed Wall policy), and two carpetbaggers, West and Prather.  Jesus.

My message to these posers?  Leave us alone and go back to wear you came from.  We have enough problems and we have to get Abbott out of office, but we most certainly don’t need any help from these fakes.  So, #NoPosersinTexas

We all know Sid Miller, childish Ag commissioner of Texas, is a complete jerk, devoting much of his time to insulting half of Texas’ population and publicly displaying his stupidity on social media.  We also know about his weird obsession with the “Jesus Shot”,  which apparently  maintains whatever feel-good it provides, and his use of taxpayer funds to finance his trips to get those shots.  We also know that he wants to replace healthy food options in schools with deep-fried garbage, and are very familiar with his battle against the non-existent “war on cupcakes” for kids’ birthday parties.  One of his most infuriating habits is posting bullshit on Facebook to foment fake outrage against fictional grievances.

We get all that.  Ol’ Sid is a self-absorbed weirdo with an affection for stuffed animals on the walls of his office and screwy conspiracy theories.  In truth, he is the Sas to Louie Gohmert’s Shay.  Between the two of these clowns, it’s all goofball, all the time, and they regularly compete for the title of National Embarrassment of Texas.

Sid’s latest crusade?  BBQ joints.  Sid, as the self-appointed arbiter of everything animal protein, has decided to defy state law and the governor’s directives to go after…wait for it…your neighborhood BBQ spot.  That’s right, even though the state of Texas has exempted small BBQ places from paying big bucks to certify their scales to weigh BBQ, ol’ Jesus Shot Sid himself has decided that, uncharacteristically, he is the Righteous Protector of BBQ Consumers, prosecuting independent pitmasters over a bullshit rule that he invented for some unknown reason, beyond being able to put his name on some Texas state certification sticker.  You do know that he’s printed stickers to put his name on every gas pump in Texas, right?

The only good news here is that Deep Fryer Sid is being opposed by an actual adult in the 2018 race.  Kim Olson, retired Air Force officer, farmer, and Normal Person, is aggressively campaigning to retire him back to the ranch.  We say, come on, Kim!

Look – We all know that Sid Miller is a gigantic asshole. Like Trump, he loves to piss people off just for the pleasure of pissing people off.  We also know that he is self absorbed, corrupt, and has modeled his behavior as Trump’s Mini Me.  I get all that.  But all that aside, Deepfryer Sid is interfering with the National Business of Texas – BBQ.  And when he does that, he disqualifies himself as not only a true Texan, but more importantly, an actual human being.

Go home, Sid, please stop helping.

Today, a judge in Alabama brushed aside Roy Moore’s lawsuit claiming systematic voter fraud, and the state certified the election of Democrat Doug Jones to the US Senate.  Maybe Roy will have more time now to actually learn how to ride a horse.

https://youtu.be/knz68RTjiN8

While the media was obsessing this weekend over Trump’s latest foul-mouthed tirade, his staff extended the Muslim travel ban and Republicans in the Senate wrote in more payoffs to hold out Senators to get them to vote for gutting the US healthcare system.  This has become a common occurrence since Cheeto Jesus infested the WH, and I don’t believe it’s a strategy put in place by him; I believe it’s a strategy developed by very evil and very smart people who are exploiting his proclivity for attention-getting bombast.

Trump’s childish tirades and embarrassing behavior are well known.  They’re also predictably unpredictable.  Almost every time he engages in outrageous behavior, his staff slips something out to the public – unwinding environmental protections, rounding up immigrants, issuing some other cringe-inducing executive order.

This weekend, Trump attacked NFL and NBA players for various fake affronts.  Steph Curry declined to come to the WH with his NBA team, so Trump rescinded the invitation in a Twitter based insult.  Later, in one of his silly campaign rallies, this time in Alabama in support of appropriately named Luther Strange, Trump started his war on NFL players who refuse to stand for the national anthem as a form of protest against violence against racial minorities by police.

During the ensuing firestorm, his staff issued a new travel ban, adding countries to the existing ban that has been blocked by the courts.  Also, under the cover of this circus, Senate Republicans added payoffs for Arizona, Kentucky, and Alaska to the latest effort to destroy healthcare for millions of Americans in an effort to get yes votes from John McCain, Rand Paul, and Lisa Murkowski.

Stayed outraged.  But pay attention.

As we’ve all heard, the latest iteration of the GOP’s “Appeal and Replace”, better known as “Search and Destroy”, died last night when two conservative senators, Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas, said they couldn’t vote for the bill because it didn’t wreak enough havoc or kill enough Americans to suit them.  Later in the evening, TurtleNeck McConnell predictably announced that the Senate would then just vote to repeal with no replacement so even MORE people would die.  That idiotic notion died a sudden death today when less insane Republicans said no to that.  So what is left of this issue, Donald Trump’s biggest promise to his red-capped mobs who voted for him?  This:

For the Republicans, who are hell-bent on erasing Barack Obama from the history books to satisfy their mouth breather base, they can only offer Kabuki, or highly stylized and exaggerated staging, like signing ceremonies for letters, executive orders, and silly truck shows on the White House lawn to make it look like they’re really doing something when they’re not.

In these days of clowns, carnival barkers, and totalitarians infesting the White House, I’ll certainly take nothing over something, which is what the Congress is producing, at least so far.

You recall how the fashion police went after Michelle Obama every time she stepped out of the WH residence.  They hated her dresses, hated her in short sleeves, hated her in sleeveless gowns.  They hated her hair, so on and so forth.  The noise machine was continuous and loud.  So, I find it pretty ironic that zero has been said about how Melania Trump was dressed last night for the hospital visit with His Orangeness:

Here’s the close up:

Under normal circumstances, I would say that’s a beautiful dress on a beautiful woman.  But I can’t be that charitable.  After listening to 8 years of horrible insults and howling about Michelle’s appearance, I find it ironic that all we’ve heard is crickets over Melania’s attire.  Can you imagine the din if this was Michelle and she was showing this much thigh?  Especially on an official presidential visit?

Just sayin’