Do you wanna know what I just found out?

17,000 gallons of crude oil spilled from an eight-inch pipeline owned by Koch Pipeline Company on Tuesday, the Railroad Commission of Texas reported Wednesday.

The spill impacted a rural area and two livestock ponds near Smithville and was discovered on a routine aerial inspection, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Let me tell you where Smithville Texas is.  Smithville is half way between me and Austin.  I drive through Smithville every time I go to Austin, which is pretty damn often.  It is also dangerously close to Buescher State Park, one of my personal favorites.

UPI is reporting that Koch “had no estimated time for repairs. Neither Koch nor the Texas Railroad Commission had a public statement about the incident.”

Yeah, if you don’t say anything about it, it never happened.

Do you wanna know what smells worst than a wet dog?  Crude oil.  That’s what.  You wanna know what smells worse than that?  Koch Industries, that’s what.

Thanks to Brian C for the heads up.

Remember when Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face?

Well, he just fish-hooked another friend in the face.

Liz Cheney decided she really, really wants to be a United States senator and since she’s just a more calmly dressed but far more evil Kardashian, she picked a long time family friend, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, to run against.  Her daddy’s money always buys Liz what she wants.

Enzi was stunned.  He thought the Cheneys were his friends.  Enzi said that Dick Cheney has been a fishing buddy.

Cheney pops back that he’s never been fishing with Enzi.  Personally, I suspect that makes Enzi a very lucky man, and Dick a giant liar again.

The bottom line is that Dick and Liz have no particular dislike or political disagreement with Enzi.  They just want his seat to prove they can buy whatever they want – including Dick’s new heart that most certainly would never have been given to any other man his age or in his health.

I’m not saying that Liz Cheney has the power to call out the flying monkeys, but I’d be on the alert anyway.

Maureen Dowd lays this out nicely today.

Enzi will be the only Republican I am rooting for on election night.

Thanks to Kary for the heads up and John for the graphic.

This is what I’m talking about.  This.

I would rather sort out a bushel basket of wire coat hangers than figure this out.

You know the GOP Senators who voted to raise the debt ceiling?  Well, they simply do not approve of themselves.

Twenty-seven Republican senators voted with Democrats on Oct. 16 to lift the debt ceiling and avert a catastrophic default. And each one of those 27 senators voted Tuesday to “disapprove” of their own votes.

The vote Tuesday was a symbolic “resolution to disapprove” of the debt limit hike.

So, I suspect the means you can symbolically thumb your nose at them.

From this day forward, satire must be clearly marked as such.

This world has gotten crazy.  Seriously.  Think about this:  The Republican Party has become so unpopular that Ted Cruz is now the Republican Party frontrunner for president because he badmouths … the Republican Party.

Last night I was playing on the internet machine and watching Rachel Maddow when ole Bubba starts making grumbling noises that he generally reserves for when the newspaper delivery person throws his morning newspaper in the only mud puddle in a fifty mile radius.

Ole Bubba was reading this.

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Rick Perry has called a judge’s ruling on the restrictive new abortion law passed last July by the Texas legislature “a threat to men’s rights as keepers of women.”

“We will continue fighting to implement the laws passed by the duly-elected officials of our state, laws that reflect the will and values of Texans. Yeakel’s decision is a threat to men’s rights as keepers of women and their role as family protectors,” read the statement.

Ole Bubba was so riled that he damn near beat his La-z-Boy recliner into submission.  He messaged me a copy – that’s the modern day way of passing the newspaper – while making very rude comments about Rick Perry having no damn clue what a man is supposed to act like.

Now, Ole Bubba’s comments stand but the article doesn’t.

Here’s the problem, Ole Bubba, who has two advanced degrees so he’s not hangdog dumb, had to read it twice and check it out with Facebook to figure out that it was satire.  It is getting way too hard to tell, especially in Texas.

So, I go to Facebook this morning and three very smart people on Facebook think it’s real.

So either Texas Republicans have to stop talking so damn crazy when they are serious, or satire must be clearly marked with a warning.  And I’m going to tell you that doing the second one is going to be much easier.

I want to tell you about my friend Karen Wilkerson.  She lives gaily in Tyler, Texas.  You know, where Louie Gohmert is her congressman and a whole bundle of other crazy people represent her in Austin.

When I say she lives gaily, I mean that literally.  Karen is a smart, gorgeous, funny, gay woman.  It’s not so hard to be a gay person in Houston or Dallas, but holy crap, Karen is a gay person in the Free State of Tyler, Texas.

But, do you think that bothers her?  Nope.  This sign makes me so damn happy that I do a little dance every time I see it.

Karen says, “It’s been up a few years. Several bullet holes in one of them (in a tight pattern, I hasten to add) and the other went missing once, but we got a replacement from the state. I’m always surprised that nobody throws stuff at us when we do cleanup. Actually, our stretch of the road stays pretty clean compared to others. Hmmm…”

Karen would fight a rattlesnake with one hand tied behind her back and give the snake three bites head start.  It makes me proud that there are people like her in Texas.   That’s why I stay here.

So you’re 93 years old and you drive your red Cadillac to the eye doctor because you can’t see diddle squat and then everybody makes a big deal that you had a little fender bender.

Please God, I want to be in the driver’s seat when I die, not walking down the sidewalk.