My local newspaper charges a full print subscription rate for the online version which seems kinda damn outrageous to me.

So, I freely hand out clips from it since I paid so damn much for a newspaper that you can skim in 10 minutes and it generally just pisses me off anyway.

For example ….

Here’s an article about how my tax dollars are being spent.  (Click it for a better copy.)

Here’s a guy who has a wicked sense of humor, strong convictions, and a clear – or at least semi-clear – plan.  Now I gotta pay for his upkeep in the county jail for six months which the $2,000 fine doesn’t come close to covering, and his lawyer.  

They say he’s going to jail not for the weed, but because he didn’t respect the law.  Damn, you fools, this is exactly why people don’t respect the law.  Some guy walks away with probation for wife beating but this dude gets six months in jail.  

Hey, I am not comparing this guy to Rosa Parks, but holy crap, it’s gonna cost the taxpayers about $22,000 to keep him in jail.  I can think of a thing or two better to do with $22,000.  

Yeah, I live in a red Texas county. It sucks.

You know, I think most Republicans would feel a whole lot better if they just went on and said the N-word.

Poor Antonin Scalia, he had to say that blacks are inferior people without using the N-word or the word inferior.  It was tough but he did an admirable job.

In oral arguments over the case Fisher v. the University of Texas Wednesday, Scalia suggested African-American students would do better at “slower-track schools” than UT. He added that black students come from “lesser schools, where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.”

But, damn him, I had to call the black UT grads I know and apologize for how much harder it was for them than it was for everybody else.

Lord knows I have given Harry Reid a lot of guff over the years, but he gets a pat on the back from me today.  He said …

“The only difference between the ideas endorsed by Trump and Scalia is that Scalia has a robe and a lifetime appointment.”

Hell, think it troubles him that he has to wear a black robe.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Look at this stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G2puQw5Y98

Look at the fear on his face.

Donald Trump is afraid of a damn bird.

Hell, I could whip a bird. I’d take on a bird, no problem.  I could even whip Big Bird if I had a hammer or something.  I executed a turkey once.

I ain’t scared of no bird.

But I imagine chickens are.

Okay, here’s the deal.  I am not making this stuff up.

The gun-freaks in Texas have a charming and delightful idea right here before celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace.

Gun rights groups say they will conduct a mock mass shooting this weekend at the University of Texas campus as they try to end gun-free zones.

The Open Carry Walk and Crisis Performance Event will involve actors “shot” by perpetrators armed with cardboard weapons, said Matthew Short, a spokesman for the gun rights groups Come and Take It Texas and DontComply.com.

“It’s a fake mass shooting, and we’ll use fake blood,” he said. He said gun noises will be blared from bullhorns.

What could possibly go wrong?  You know, except good guys with a gun showing up and shooting everybody acting the fool.  There’s that. You know, because people on a college campus with guns is a perfectly safe thing to see.

The gun holders will first walk around Austin with fully loaded weapons before heading to campus.  That is called foreplay.

Also, it’s the week before finals so students can’t just stay at home that day.  Stressed out people mixed with wild eyed crazybutt people is gonna make a mess.

These dudes have a Facebook page, but fair warning – your eyes will burn.

Just minutes ago this happened.

A University of Texas spokesman says the planned mock mass shooting demonstration this weekend would be considered criminal trespass if participants do not leave when asked.

Look, I’m not saying this is in bad taste right after San Bernardino and Paris, but … Oh hell,  Holy Damn Crap, this is just raw genuine awful.

The head of the gun nuts asked about this being a tad scary, and he replied, “We love freedom and we’re trying to make more freedom.”

Somebody, please, tell me what the fool tarnation that means?

Thanks to Carol for the first heads up.

by Primo Encarnación

Whither the GOP?

A past of sub rosa bigotry masquerading as pandering to “values” voters has led to a future of subfusc outlook for the Republican Party. Unable to compete in the marketplace of ideas, especially as it pertains to supply-side economics, the GOP has embarked on a race to the electoral bottom, convincing “real” Americans that all their “worser” angels are, in fact, patriots on their right shoulder. The path that got us here is clear and unambiguous. And while a certain amount of schadenfreude has accompanied the current discomfiture of the Republican elite, now that their darker chickens have come home to roost, I actually view with alarm the impending explosion of the Republican Party.

The concept of America functions best when competing ideologies bring solutions for issues to the table and then work out a compromise that leaves no one satisfied but everyone moving forward in roughly the same direction. This concept results in a fits-and-starts progress which, when it works, is maddeningly slow and unsatisfactory.

But it’s better than the alternative, which is what we now face: entrenched ideological opposition to anything but total victory, with legislators living in fear of being found insufficiently radical. So the Jacobins ousted John Boehner and his lieutenants, going so far as to primary Eric Cantor, merely for appearing to compromise. They stood these fellows against the wall, “pour encourager les autres.”

So what comes next? Here is a phrase I have trouble uttering: I don’t know. I have been trying for weeks to put myself into the tasseled loafers of the GOP elite and figure a way out of this mess. All I’ve come up with is that Reince Priebus has to go. His whole raison d’etre – President Scott Walker – is back licking his wounds under a Wisconsin rock. His singular achievement was a report after the last electoral beat down they took investigating why people don’t like the GOP candidates, because they’re all such nice old white guys. This waaahmbulance was promptly ignored, and the nightmare clown-car scenario it sought to avoid now stalks the earth, fanged and frothing.

So that’s all I’ve got. Reince has to go, and needs to be replaced by someone strong but not crazy, with an impeccable Republican resume and the cojones to match, who can call this whole pack of candidates baying at the moon to heel, and build a successful, loyal opposition invested in governing in harness with the next Democratic president for the next 8 years. Who is this avatar of center-rectitude?

I have no idea. Almost anyone of note that you could name is either too old, too weak, or too tainted by radical pandering and/or dark money and/or being in a Bush Administration. Who does that leave? Seriously, I open this discussion up to you folks; I haven’t got a clue how to save them from themselves.

Assuming we want to.

Okay, South Carolina, you’re keeping up your end of the craziness stick.

Rep. Chris Corley, who over the summer was staunchly opposed to the state taking the Confederate flag down from public property following the Charleston massacre, sent out cards showing the South Carolina Statehouse with the flag flying next to it and his family’s name inscribed underneath.

And do you want to know what was inscribed inside?  Of course you don’t but I’m gonna tell you anyway.

“May your Christmas be filled with memories of a happier time when South Carolina’s leaders possessed morals, convictions and the principles to stand for what is right,” the back of the card read. “May you have a blessed Christmas, and may you take this joyous time as an opportunity to ask for forgiveness of all your sins such as betrayal.”

Once the card became a matter of public horror, Corley pretended it was “a joke.”  It should be noted, however, that he pre-filed a bill for the next legislative session asking for a referendum to put the confederate flag back on the state grounds.  Maybe he did that as “a joke,” too.

If you are offended by this, it’s your own damn fault.  As Corley points out —

“If somebody’s feelings are legitimately hurt about that Christmas card, I think that might speak more to their conscience than the content of the card,” Corley said.

Yeah well, that knuckle dragging meathead festering pile of hate filled slime is right about that.  But not in the way I think he meant.

Thanks to Rhea for the heads up.