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Juanita has a big ole crush.  It’s Congressman Alan Grayson from Florida. She’s bought a ring and plans to ask him to marry her.

Even through he represents a conservative district, Grayson took to the House floor and threw a punch at Republicans that will cause them to have to unzip their pants to see out for months to come.  He said that Republicans want to return to the America of the 1930’s.

“There was no unemployment insurance back then,” Grayson said, in one of the more colorful speeches on the issue. “There was no State benefits back then. There was no help for the people who had no jobs. All they could do, like my grandfather, in desperate straits, supporting a family of seven, was to go to the dump and desperately try to find something he could sell.

“That, my friends, is the America that the Republicans are trying to revive. The America of desperate straits, and for them cheap labor. The America where people have nothing, hope for nothing, and are desperate to live to the next day. That is what the Republicans are trying to resurrect by blocking unemployment insurance day after day, week after week, and now month after month.”

“Cheap labor.  That’s what they want.  If parents are living out of their cars, they will work cheap to feed their children.  He’s right – that’s the goal.” Juanita says. “If Republicans could do away with child labor laws, they would do that, too.”

“Those Republicans are so cold that they could freeze a bonfire,” Verdelia interjects.

“And don’t give me that hogwash about them caring about the national debt.  They didn’t care about that as long as their fat cat friends were getting government money to hide away in offshore banks to avoid taxes.”

“Grayson also said that he hopes God has mercy on their souls.  He’s a nicer person than I am,” she admits.

After Grayson spoke, Republican Peter King had a comment   —-

“I am awfully glad he’s not been appointed to be St. Peter. If he could make that call at the pearly gates, I am pretty convinced that every single Republican would be condemned to the fires of hell by his judgment,” said King.”

Not a bad idea.  Not a bad idea at all.

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Not only do we have dead skunks.

We have dead skunks with rabies.

We also have a couple of county commissioners with rabies.  They aren’t dead.

Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

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Juanita has enthusiastically joined a new coalition.

It seems that the Tea Party in Bozeman, Montana, had a parade for the 4th of July last year and somebody in Boseman, Montana, saw the irony of the situation.

“Last year the irony of the Tea Party insisting on shutting down Main Street was that the closure costs were estimated at $1,100 that they would have to pay staff to close the street down for a parade to protest taxation and government spending,” said Leland. “The irony was just too much. So we formed the Coalition and raised enough money not only to offset the closure costs, but also the majority of the Tea Party’s closure costs as well.”

The name of the new coalition that helped raised money to pay back the city government the tax money used for the Tea Party parade?  The Green Coalition of Gay Loggers for Jesus.

I kid you not.

My buddy Tony in Sugar Land has a brother who lives in Bozeman.  Tony is the lucky owner of a swanky tee-shirt proudly announcing his allegiance to the coalition.

Juanita wishes she had one.  She’d wear it.  Everywhere.

The downside is that one genius on the side of the road during the parade called them “buttheads.”  Those Tea Partiers – what a clever bunch they are!

I imagine you could mug Tony for his shirt but I suspect that Tony would fight the devil and give him three punches head start over that shirt.  “Can’t say I blame him,” Juanita grins.

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“I swear to heaven above that if John Cornyn was a fish, we’d have to throw him back,” Juanita started this morning as I got to the beauty salon.

“Yeah, but then we’d have to skim nasty off the river for a week,” I replied.

Texas Senator John Cornyn ain’t winning no popularity contests at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.

John Cornyn went on the teevee this weekend and said these words without breaking into howls of laughter —-

“Bush’s stock has gone up a lot since he left office,” adding: “I think a lot people are looking back with more fondness on President Bush’s administration, and I think history will treat him well.”

“Oh really?” Juanita asks.

I have to agree with her.  Polls show that Bush’s popularity still hovers way below 30%.  And since that’s the 30% of the country who can’t read and write, I doubt history will be kind to Bush at all because the boys at the trailer park won’t be writing any history books.

“Unless, of course,” Juanita warns, “the Texas State Board of Education has anything to do with it.  If they make the history decisions, history books will be written by Jim Bob and Cletus, at church, while drunk, shooting off their firearms, wearing nothing but a coon skin cap and a vacation Bible school sash saying “Wholly Man,” writing on a Big Chief tablet.  In that case, in the history books Bush will make Abraham Lincoln look bad and they’ll put Karl Rove on Mt. Rushmore.”

Oh crap.  All at once everybody in the room realized why every fruitcake in Texas in on the State Board of Education:  Jim Bob and Cletus will be writing textbooks and that’s the plan.

Oh crap.

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My friend Robert Leleux contends that some stories could only happen in Texas.

This story could happen anywhere, I suspect, but it’s just so much more fun when it happens in Texas.

This was the banner headline in the local Richmond / Rosenberg daily newspaper in the Sunday edition.

He did not know his wife was a man

Now, this story doesn’t take place in Richmond / Rosenberg or even Fort Bend County, but some news days are oh so slow and God knows that people are going to read this story to find out how you could NOT know you were a man married to a man.  Those things, even in Texas, generally don’t happen accidentally.

Well, this wonderful guy named Thomas dies heroically on July 3rd of last month as a volunteer firefighter fighting a fire at Maxim Egg Farm down in Boling, Texas, which is in Wharton County.  Nine days after he dies, his mother Simona files papers in court trying to get her son’s life insurance and estate away from his wife, Nikki.  In Texas, if you die without a will, half your estate goes to your spouse and the other half goes to your kids.  Your mother gets diddle squat.

Simona contends that her son was married to a transsexual but did not know it.

Oh, really?

Wouldn’t it be more dignified to put a bumper sticker on your car with “Ask me About My Son’s Sex Life”  the day after his funeral?

But, it gets better.

Two days after that, his ex-wife and the mother of his two children also files papers wanting the money.  I suspect that Thomas never got this much attention prior to becoming rich … and, coincidentally, dead.  But, I could be wrong about that, all because of Nikki.

Nikki, it seems, was born in California in 1975 with the name Justin.  In 1996, Justin filed these papers requesting a name change in Harris County, Texas.

“I, Justin Purdue, am a woman with male anatomy, working toward a sex change. I have been living and working as a woman for over one year and seek to make my new name legal and permanent.”

In Juanita’s mind, that settles it.  “If you stand up and say you’re a woman, Honey, you are a woman.  When the judge granted that decree, Justin can start using the ladies’ room as far as I’m concerned.  It’s hard enough being a woman with a woman’s body.  I cannot even begin to imagine how hard it is to be a woman with a man’s body.  Jock itch, yuck!”

Juanita also says she’s anxious to know how a boy’s momma or his ex-wife intends to prove in court that her son did not know Nikki was born male.  “Can’t you just imagine someone testifying that their son repeatedly told them that he was not, I repeat not, married to someone born male?”

My favorite part of the whole story is that the only person without a comment is Nikki.

Nikki is the only one with a shred of dignity for Thomas’ name and reputation. That, my friends, is the definition of a real woman.

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Juanita freely admits a certain fascination with the Republican women of the TEA Party Movement.  Having committed herself to the belief that Tea parties are for little girls and their imaginary friends, Juanita is totally delighted when little girls in grown up bodies prove her point.

Michele Bachmann is like manna from heaven for Juanita.

Rep. Michele Bachmann was among the few members of Congress to immediately embrace the tea party, and now she’s trying to give the loosely structured movement an official presence on Capitol Hill.

Bachmann, R-Stillwater, has asked the House Administration Committee to register the House Tea Party Caucus as a Congressional Member Organization.

And Friday, she asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to support her effort to establish the caucus for a movement that seems to have the overthrow of Pelosi as one of its main goals.

“I’d love to see the tea party caucus be bipartisan,” Bachmann said.

“I’m not saying that she’s totally delusional,” Juanita says, “but she does have a screw loose in her thinker assembly.”

“I would rather teach a mermaid to do the slips than try to make sense of this woman,” Juanita admits.  “I honestly believe that sometimes she’s just speaking in tongues, hoping that somebody will eventually be able to figure out what she’s saying.”

“I have no idea why she needs a tea party caucus.  We already have one.  It’s called “Grumpy Stoopid Old White People on Social Security Who Didn’t Care Squat About The National Debt When Grumpy Old Stoopid Dick Cheney Was Causing It But Now That A Black Man Can’t Fix It Overnight They’re All Banging Their Spoons on The Table At Luby’s Cafeteria.”  I guess that ain’t catchy enough to put on a tee-shirt.”