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Juanita’s friend Gramian sent her this to start her day —

If you weren’t going to vote, this is the year to vote.
If you were only going to vote, this is the year to get a yard sign.
If you were only going to get a yard sign, this is the year to give money.
If you were only going to give money, this is the year to get active in the campaign.
We each need to take our involvement up a notch or two. Or three.

“Okay, dudes and dudettes,” Juanita starts, “I cannot take one more day of having Rick Perry for a Governor.  Buy a tee-shirt, donate to Bill, call a friend in Texas, or donate a box of #2 pencils to the Harris County elections administrator.”

“On election night, I want Rick Perry to think he’s walked into a lion’s cage with a pocket full of pork chops.  Rick Perry is a cocky, self-serving, sassy son of a motherless goat and you can write that on the barn with waterproof paint.”

By the way, we just found out that the Texas Association of Realtors (oddly, TAR) endorsed Perry.  I guess they are thrilled with the real estate market in Texas.  “I’m not.  Personally, I think it’s been a TAR pit,” Juanita commented.

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Glenn Smith has come across some interesting ideas about the sudden three alarm fire that destroyed all of Houston’s voting machines.

There’s a video done by a group called True The Vote, a group of folks who believe that everybody is conspiring to take the country away from white men.

In the video, an unidentified spokesman for “TrueTheVote” says, “If we lose Houston, we lose Texas. And guess what? If we lose Texas we lose the country.” The former Mayor of Houston, Democrat Bill White, is running against secessionist Republican Gov. Rick Perry this year. White’s counting on a big turnout in his home town. The fire and the voter suppression campaign guarantee a greatly diminished turnout.

Juanita comments, “If I tell you that a jackrabbit can lay an egg, you better start looking for twigs for the nest, and I’m telling you this ain’t the end of them trying to suppress the Democratic vote in Texas.”

“Honey, never ask a Republican to guard your wallet or plan a fair election.  You’ll lose in both cases.”

.

“Look,” Juanita says, “the reason that 18% of the people in America call Obama a Muslim is because they can’t call him the N word.”

“There.  I said it.  And it’s the damn truth.”

“You need to jot that down somewhere because it’s the truth and you don’t need to forget it.”

She always did kinda tower over John McCain.

(Thanks to Deb for the heads-up!)

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“I dunno,” Juanita starts.  “Maybe it’s just me.  Maybe the Steeple People know where I’m going and plant things along the way to make me stand in awe of what the hell are they thinking.”

Juanita is perplexed.

Returning from Austin this weekend, she encountered —

Click the little one to get the big one.

“That’s a portable cross over there on the left, complete with its own Texas license plate – which we will discuss later – and a pointy board that says ‘Jesus Saves’ pointing at cans.  No kidding, it seems to read Jesus Saves Cans.”

“It’s not every day that you see Cans for Jesus on a major highway, even in the Bible Belt, so I turned around to make sure it said what I thought it said at 70 miles per hour.  Yep.  It said Cans for Jesus.  And as a totally free extra added attraction, there’s a cross on wheels.”

Juanita continued talking as she put Bessie under the hair dryer.   “Being as how I consider myself a fan of Sweet Jesus, things like this fascinate me.  First of all, I dunno if this is a certain fact or not because Jesus doesn’t talk to me a lot in regular English, but I have a sneaking suspicion that when Sweet Jesus comes back, a cross is the last darn thing he’s going to want to see.  I, personally, keep a small stash of gold, frankincense, and myrrh for any unexpected visits from Sweet Jesus.  That seems a far more pleasant welcoming gift.  We Southern women are kinda experts in these welcoming gift things so you might want to trust me on this..”

“And, I don’t think he’s going to be at all that pleased that you got his license plate, Babe.  I mean, really.  A vanity plate is vanity plate, but …. dayum, Honey, that’s Jesus’ plate.  Did you ever think that maybe he might want it?  However, I have to admit that maybe the cross needs a Texas license plate to make the trip to town.”

“Now, I truly appreciate someone trying like the dickens to do outreach with food and clothing for the poor.  That part, as far as I understand, Sweet Jesus would love.  So, I walked around for a minute looking for somebody to take a few dollars.  Nobody was at home.”

“I do not know where they were.  I mean, the cross was parked out front so they couldn’t have gone far.”

And that’s why Juanita loves living in Texas.

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This morning’s news at the Houston Chronicle.

A fire that destroyed nearly all Harris County’s electronic voting machines Friday has election officials scrambling to re-equip the county for an election in which early voting starts in just 51 days.

Even before the pre-dawn fire was out, County Clerk Beverly Kaufman pledged to hold a “timely election” on Nov. 2 but suggested the county may have to run fewer than its planned 739 Election Day polling stations if it cannot find enough machines.

Because she does not know how many machines will be available for each polling location, Kaufman started appealing almost immediately to voters to cast their ballots early to help avoid long lines on Election Day.

Early voting begins Oct. 18.

“You know,” Juanita suggests, “if their entire stock of pencils had gone up in flames, it wouldn’t cost much to replace them.”