Welcome to Texas, where Republican leadership hasn’t lowered our electric bill, our insurance rates, our college tuition, or our taxes, but they have done one helluva job lowering our standard of living.

Citing a funding shortfall and the impact of a historic oil drilling boom, Texas Department of Transportation officials on Thursday announced plans to move forward with converting some roads in West and South Texas to gravel.

Approximately 83 miles of asphalt roads will be torn up and converted to “unpaved” roads, TxDOT Deputy Executive Director John Barton said. The speed limits on those roads will probably be reduced to 30 mph.

I guess going back to cobblestone is out of the question  so once we can’t afford gravel, we got dirt.  Dirt is still pretty damn cheap in Texas and if it was good enough for Davy Crockett, it’s good enough for south Texas.

Now I want you to hear the damnest reasoning I have ever heard.

Commissioner Fred Underwood wanted to make sure the public understood the reasoning behind the decisions.

“This is a safety issue,” Underwood said. “It’s not ‘our roads are bad and we’re not going to keep them up.’ It’s ‘our roads are bad and we’re trying to protect the driving public.’”

What the hell is the difference?  Our roads are bad.  We can’t fix them. Ain’t that kinda like saying, “We can’t afford to fix our broken fire trucks but so we’re going to fix that by not letting people live in wood houses.”

Thank you Rick Perry and the Republican leadership.

Thanks to Jason for the heads up.

Just in case you missed it, be sure to send Congressvarmint Steve King some cantaloupe.

Amazon dot com is getting in on the action.  And if you want to know what the Spanish language new stations are saying about it, have a ball here.

Rumor has it that Louie Gohmert is really, really upset for not being hateful racist of the day.  They were calling him butter because he was on a roll until this.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

In case you were ever wondering what would happen if you got Clarence Thomas’ wife Jenni, John Bolton, Allen West, a top aide to Ted Cruz, and my neighbor Cathy Engelbrecht of True the Vote all together in one room and told them to form a group named Groundswell and make a list of Things To Do … today is your lucky day.

1. “At its weekly meetings, the group aims to strengthen the right’s messaging by crafting Twitter hashtags.”

2. Defeat the nomination of Labor Secretary nominee Thomas Perez by convincing people that he is “is extremely antagonistic toward whites.”

3. Convince Americans that John Kerry cannot be trusted as Secretary of State because “Kerry’s son in law is an Iranian American with extensive family still in Iran.”

4. “If we were all gay illegal aliens, the party likes [sic] us.”

5. Re-brand efforts to restrict access to the polls through voter ID programs and strict scrutiny of minority voters as a “Voter Rights” campaign.

6. Win the hearts and minds of “minorities” by re-positioning themselves as “Fredrick Douglas[sic] Republican[s],” instead of tea partiers or conservatives.

7. Refer to immigration reform as “OBAMAGRATION”

8. Hype the “Fast and the Furious” controversy and the Benghazi embassy attack some more.

9. “A 15 sec internet [YouTube ad] featuring ethnically diverse children on a merry-go-round [soft music]… Nuclear explosion.”

10. “Write articles on [sic] 4th grade level!”

Hey, they’ve got #10 down pat.

Is it just me or is there something kinky going on between Jenni Thomas and John Bolton?  Those two sure concoct a lot of reasons to be in the same room together.

Frederick Douglass Republicans?  Guess who came up with TAT idea?

Thanks to Kyle and many others for the heads up.

If for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction, somebody had to be the polar opposite of Mother Teresa.

Taken in that context, it’s kinda nice of Louie Gohmert to volunteer.

When the House Judiciary Committee was considering an amendment based on racial discriminatory practices, Louie speaks directly to John Conyers of Michigan and Steve Cohen of Tennessee.

“There is nobody in this chamber who is more appreciative than I am for the gentleman from Tennessee and my friend from Michigan standing up for the rights of race, religion, national religion of the Delta Smelt, the snail darter, various lizards, the lesser prairie chicken, the greater sage grouts and so many other insects who would want someone standing for their religion, their race, their national origin and I think that’s wonderful,” Gohmert said of the measure.

Okay, this was not an environmental amendment.  It was about the civil rights of human beings.

So, Ole Louie let the cat out of the bag or the snail out of the swamp, whatever.  He’s a white man and the everybody else is an insert or lesser prairie chicken.

Thought you’d want to know.

Thanks to Frank and Sharon for the heads up.

Louie reacts to the announcement that the Justice Department will support our Democratic effort to fight the redistricting in Texas.   The You Tube is here and it’s the living example of Thelma telling Verdelia, “Girl, you are talking but you ain’t sayin’ nothing.”

He’s bringing up the whole thing about Eric Holder casting asparagus on him.

You’re gonna love this confused man.

Texas Congressmen who voted to give financial incentive to states to kick people off the SNAP program, which feeds hungry children are fittingly the biggest damn hogs in the state.

The ones who took farm subsidies.

Blake Farenthold, who has a net worth of between $10 – $40 million and represents Nueces County, where 19% of the population gets help from the SNAP program.

Randy Neugebauer, who is worth between $6 and $20 million, took at least $4,321 in farm subsidies which came out of the mouths of little children while voting against SNAP.  Neugebauer is known as “Yachting Randy”  because he bought a yacht with his campaign funds even though he lives n the damn desert.

Mac Thornberry from Potter County where 23% of the population need SNAP funds  not to go hungry, took $25,000 in farm subsidies for himself.

Come November 2014, let’s slaughter a few of these hogs.

Thanks to John for the heads up and the graphic.

As I am sure you’ve heard, we are going to have Voter ID in Texas.  It’s a bad idea from bad men with a bad machine set on bad overdrive running on bad gas with bad breath.

B.A.D.  And UnAmerican.

Ector County is out in West Texas in the Midland / Odessa area.  There are some tough folks out there.  Most of them survive on grit alone because water is in short supply and there ain’t no food.

So, when they get mad, they get mad.

The Ector County Elections Office will soon get panic buttons designed to protect the employees in the office.

Ector County Elections Administrator Mitzi Scheible said a contract approved by commissioners on July 8 with Tyco Integrated Security would install panic buttons and an alarm system for the elections warehouse. The alarm system, Scheible said, was for residents who get too upset when they can’t vote in an election. The camera system was used as a way to better monitor their equipment.

Now, when your state government pisses off people so badly that your local government has to order panic buttons at a cost of $3,154.23 and an annual fee of $515.36, then maybe it’s time for the Texas Democratic Party to stand out front of those polls and remind people whose bad idea this was.

Of course, the cheaper alternative was to just arm election workers with some AK47s and leave them to their own devices.

Thanks to Kyle for the heads up and John for the button.