Most of you are familiar with Dan Crenshaw, the Texas congressvarnint with the eye patch.

I’m gonna be honest with you and tell you that the eyepatch is all this kid has going for him.  He ain’t real bright and he’s not a pleasant person to talk to.  And now, bless his heart, he’s decided to pit himself up against the biggest Fourth of July yearly party in Texas – the Willie Nelson 4th of July Picnic.

Dan with Miss Nevada and Miss Tennessee

Dan has decided to have a Summer of 1776 festival every year on the Fourth.

His spent at least $144,000 on its “first annual Summer of 1776” fundraiser.  It was held at the Lago Mar Crystal Clear Lagoon in La Marque, Texas, on July 4, with entertainment including a country singer and a drone light show. Proceeds benefited the reelection campaign of the two-term congressman.

The campaign’s disbursements in the second quarter included $84,000 to Lagoon Funatics and Beach 4 Lagoon; $53,000 to Drone Light Show Company; and $7,000 to Tim Montana and the Shrednecks.

His Instagram account shows that the celebration was actually a white boys’ frat kegger.

Dan, I’m not being picky here but you could have done done away with Tim Montana and fed some boys over at the VFW for July 4th.  I guess you didn’t think of that.

The wild world of sports and politics rarely collide, but they did so last week when two assistant coaches in the NFL lost their jobs because they refused to get the vaccine. One of them was former Houston Texans assistant Rick Dennison.

The NFL can’t fire players for refusing to get the vaccine because they have a collective bargaining agreement that bars such action, but you can believe if a player is on the bubble and refused to get the shot, he will likely be out on the street. While the league is not barring players from performing, they are highly incentivizing getting the vaccine.

If a player tests positive without getting the vaccine it could cause his team to forfeit a game. If that happens then no one on either team will get their paycheck. Money is always a great motivator and when you are talking as much as one million dollars in the form of a game check you better believe there will be peer pressure.

However, this is where we get to the point of asking how we even got here in the first place. There are people that are incapable of getting vaccines. They might suffer an allergic reaction or they have some other medical reason why they cannot. While I question it, there are also folks that have a religious objection. I’m not talking about these folks.

Other countries have both sets of folks within their borders and yet have found a way to get more than 70 percent of people 12 and older vaccinated. The U.S. isn’t quite to 50 percent. It is that gap that threatens to keep the virus going through the next several years. It is a merry band of idiots that are either questioning the safety of the vaccine or the efficacy of the vaccine. Then again, I don’t think they are using big words like efficacy.

At the heart of this debate are the rights of the individual and how far they extend. Everyone has the right to be a dumbass up until the exercising of their rights interfere with my safety. We’ve done this for years. Students have to have certain vaccinations by certain dates to be able to attend school. I’m not sure why COVID is so different.

I’m not sure why we have to be so stupid about this. In the past several months, the Texas Education Agency has decided to not fund virtual learning, but students under 12 can’t get vaccinated. Then, you have only 50 percent of those eligible getting vaccinated. If just one of those facts were mitigated somehow we would be okay. Yet, here we are stuck on freedumb. You can’t force me to do a solid for my neighbors and my community.

A party that is supposedly dedicated to life seems to be treating everyone’s life cavalierly. The irony if palpable. We made everyone get the polio vaccine and we eradicated it from the face of the earth. We did the same with small pox. We currently require measles and mumps vaccinations. They’ve even added one for chicken pox. I’m still struggling to understand why this is so difficult.

I betcha do because Dr. Ronny Jackson was pretty damn unforgettable.  He’s the medical doctor who did a press conference announcing that Trump is a fine physical specimen of a viral and terrifically smart man.

The next thing we find out is that Jackson is popping pills and mainlining gin.   Add that with complaints of sexually inappropriate behavior and it appears that the only job he’s completely qualified for is a congressman from Texas.  So, he ran for the 6th congressional district in Texas and won.

Now he’s on Fox with Sean Hannity and Stephen Miller to complete the Cloven Hoof Trio, saying that Joe Biden (corrected due to coffee deficiency) is not all there.

Something's SERIOUSLY wrong with Biden – and it's only going to get WORSE! It's past the point of embarrassment. He's lost. He's confused. He can barely put a coherent sentence together. He MUST have a cognitive exam and release the results! pic.twitter.com/Pk5Pq2V5Um

— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) July 23, 2021

Yeah, he also learned grammar and capitalization from Trump.  And, yeah, they are still bragging that Trump supposedly “aced the cognitive test.” No, that isn’t what that means.

So, greeting from Texas where the crazy gets a birthright.

For Republicans who believe in market forces, this has got to be very disappointing. It appears that their heroes are not so much in demand.

Matt Gaetz and Majorie Taylor Greene joined up with perpetual Washington insider, Load O. Crap, to complete their three ring circus road fundraising tour.  They made big stops around the country and set out to raise money for Gaetz’s creepy state of affairs and Greene’s peroxide.

Not so successful.

But new campaign filings show that not only did the gamble not pay off, but that the much-maligned Republicans actually spent four times as much as they raised.

The actual numbers break down to $59,345.54 raised up against $287,036.19 spent. That’s a $227,691. loss. It appears that their skank quotient didn’t cover their basic necessities.

Their trip included several stops in California.  During the first stop, Greene screamed on about the vaccine and then they told supporters to “fight in the streets.”  Three successive venues in California canceled after that.

The tour started in Florida. It should have stayed there. Any news story that starts with “Florida man …” is going to involve an alligator, and large caliber gun, the drinking kind of alcohol, a woman over the age of 60, a juke box, missing body parts, and a carton of American Spirit cigarettes, not necessarily in that order.

I know y’all have had a very hard time forgetting Ken Cuccinelli and now that you’re like 80% over him, I’m gonna push you back to square one.

Cuccinelli was Acting Director of Homeland Security under Trump because everybody knew he could never pass senate confirmation, mainly because he’s a far right weirdo. In 2020 a federal judge ruled that he was illegally acting as acting director which didn’t even seem weird under Trump because so damn many people were acting at some damn thing.

Well, he’s back.  Now he’s a lawyer.

Okay, remember back in February when Louie Gohmert of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia were both fined $5,000 because they tried to enter the House chamber without going through a security check?  Well, they have decided to appeal it.  No, seriously.

So, they have hired Ken Cuccinelli. Well, in all honestly, I use they term “they” very loosely. Although they both hired him, only Clyde has paid for it.

Louie hasn’t paid his share yet and, gee, he probably never will.  He’s well known as the biggest moocher in Washington.

This will be a fun one to watch.

Now, here’s the fun part.  I wonder if either Cuccinelli or Clyde has realized that they just made Cuccinelli’s home address a part of the public record?  Hell, a fifth grader can now take a picture tour of both the inside and outside of the Cuccinelli home. I’m sure you can figure it out for yourself.

And this guy was Acting Director of Homeland Security.  Dude, if you’re going to work out of your house, get a post office box.

We’ve covered this ground before, but three separate incidents this week came together in my mind to solidify one point. Essentially, the pro gun crowd loves to separate people into a good guy with a gun as opposed to a bad guy with a gun. Supposedly, the good guy with the gun will negate the bad guy with the gun.

Well, I was perusing through HEB the other day and minding my own business (a personal favorite phrase of mine) when I strolled down the periodicals aisle. I noticed eight different magazines dedicated to guns and ammo. That was more than fashion magazines. It was more than the football, basketball, and baseball magazines. It was more than the bridal magazines. It was more than the Texas themed magazines or magazines about food. Apparently, guns are more popular than just about anything else.

While it wasn’t immediately related, I thought to our experience this past weekend an earlier in the week. My wife’s cousin came down to vacation in Galveston. We are only 30 miles away, so we decided to join them for a “quick” dinner. We left the house with plenty of time to spare. An hour and a half later we had travelled three miles.

The same thing happened when we took our daughter to a summer camp. The same thing happened on a different highway when we returned. The delays weren’t as heinous, but the fact that they were occurring on three different highways and different points of the highway was telling.

The coup de grace came when her cousin (we will call him Eugene) announced at dinner that he had built his own AR-15. Eugene is what you might call a computer geek. He has always been socially awkward. He also bragged that he had not connected with one target since he had gone out target shooting with his work friends. Yup, he’s the guy I want having an AR-15.

This isn’t to say I would perform any better. It never occurred to me to try. We’ve discussed abortion in the salon. We’ve discussed voting rights in the salon. We have also discussed guns in the salon. It took my wife’s cousin Eugene to crystallize the slogan we need moving forward. Yes, there are bad people with guns. Yes, there are good people with guns. Unfortunately, there are also idiots with guns.

Eugene is not an idiot in the literal sense. He is somewhat educated and has a professional job. He’s an idiot because he has no idea how to use a gun or how dangerous they can be. His reasoning for doing it is also idiotic. It’s not about protection, sport, or even hobby collection. He wants to belong. He wants other men to see him as manly. The sad thing is that possessing that AR-15 doesn’t change anyone’s opinion. It just makes him seem more pathetic.

In a similar way, posturing about guns, walls, bathroom bills, and voter suppression laws don’t make Greg Abbott seem like a stronger leader. Fixing our roads, schools, and energy grid would do that. Yet, here we are in crumbling schools, inadequate roads, with promises of a useless border wall. It isn’t even so much that he wants all these stupid things. It is that he wants them before fixing the stuff actually broken. We might freeze to death next winter but at least Eugene will have his AR-15 to keep him warm at night.