Written by Nick Caraway

As most folks around here know, I work as a teacher. To be more specific, I work as a support facilitator and case manager. That basically means I work with special education students. Half of my job is taken up helping students prepare for the STAAR exam. I make sure they have the right accommodations and help their classroom teacher tutor them.

As much as I enjoy tutoring students for a state test they struggle to pass, I think I speak for almost every teacher when I say it’s beyond time for the state to cancel this year’s test. Of course, they can cancel it forever as far as I’m concerned, but that’s mainly because of how it effects my students.

Beyond that, we know most districts half been split between distance learning and brick and mortar learning. Most lost this past week and will likely lose part of this next week as well. Add to that lost instructional time during the fall when hurricane season was in full swing. So, this is a plea for TEA to have a heart. We are barely holding on here as it is.

Nick

General Russell Honore is one of my heroes. I saw what he did cleaning up Bush’s mess after Katrina. And everything he did during Rita.

When Nancy Pelosi appointed him to investigate what happened at the capitol, I knew he was one of the few people in the world willing to jump into a pile of poop and dig around to find the pony. I have just been given more reason to trust him – Republicans are squealing like stuck pigs.

Why?  Oh, you didn’t know Honore is a “dedicated partisan.”

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, tweeted Wednesday: ‘General Honoré is an extreme partisan and should be the LAST person to head up an investigation of what happened at the Capitol on Jan 6th.’

Ron Johnson doesn’t believe there was an insurrection that day because not everybody had a gun.

Yeah, they are scared. It’s Honore.

• Tweeted days after the riot that Hawley ‘should be run out of DC’ and called him a ‘little piece of s***”
• A number of PACs said they would refuse to donate to Hawley after he sought to overturn election results after the riot
• Hawley called Honore’s comments ‘very disturbing’

Disturbing to Hawley maybe.  Honore made the statement in response to Professor Lawrence Tribe, head constitutional law professor at Harvard Law, who said Hawley should be removed from the senate.

Honore also suggested that the Sergeant of Arms and the capitol police “may have been complicit.”  Well, let’s find out.

Thanks to SGray for the heads up.

Yeah, he’s still alive and dumber than ever.

You wanna know whose fault our crisis of energy was?  Joe Biden. That’s right.

Perry, like other conservatives, blamed Texas’ renewable energy sources for the outages, and alleged the Biden administration’s focus on decreasing fossil fuel dependence would make this happen again.

Okay, so that was proven 110% wrong, wrong, double dog wrong. So, he took another viewpoint.

“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” Perry is quoted as saying. “Try not to let whatever the crisis of the day is take your eye off of having a resilient grid that keeps America safe personally, economically, and strategically.”

Yeah, well, it turned out to be 5 days but I suspect even if it were three, the majority of Texans would rather smoke some brisket over Rick’s body than go without energy in 12 degrees with icy streets even for one night. I know I would, except I’d enjoy it more than most people.

You mark my words. Rick Perry is gonna have blood all over his hands in a major way if it ever gets nut crackin’ time.

My county has three state representatives because we’re gerrymandered to East Paris France and back.  Our newly elected state representative, Republican Gary Gates, fled the state when the going got tough.

Gates went to Orlando, so at least he was unlike Cruz who crossed the Mexican border in search of a better life.

However, like Cruz, Gates has conflicting stories about why he left.

Gates acknowledged the frustration of his critics, but stated that the decision to leave Texas was based on the needs of his family. His pipes burst, he said, and 30 percent of his home was flooded, leaving his sick wife and special needs daughter at risk.

“My wife is still recovering from an illness she has been battling for two weeks, and the room of my adult daughter, who is mentally handicapped and still lives with us, flooded,” Gates said.

He said that things started to mold. Yeah, oddly science works everywhere, not just Gates’ house.  So everybody else in the whole damn state – sick or well – was battling science. However, he left on Wednesday, the day after the first hard freeze so he must have some dandy super mold or something.

Then come to find out, he was meeting with vendors in Florida about his apartment buildings in Houston. Yeah, he’s a multi-millionaire landlord of apartment complexes so business meetings always come first.

“Since arriving in Florida, I have had functioning internet and reliable mobile coverage,” he said. “I have been able to monitor the power restoration process, correspond with constituents and direct the recovery efforts at our apartment complexes.”

And you weren’t cold, or, one to think of it, actually helping anybody. Most importantly, he’s talking about the apartment complexes where he evicted 100 families last September in the middle of the Covid crisis, so I imagine they’d just as soon he leave the state.

Ted Cruz. Oh yeah, there’s more …

This FEC advisory opinion has been controversial and there’s no guarantee that the FEC will allow campaign funds to be used to pay for personal bodyguards.

Ted Cruz didn’t wait. He used campaign funds to hire a security firm last fall and they are guarding his home right now.

“Is this Senator Cruz’s house?” the reporter asked a man who stepped out of a vehicle parked in the driveway.

The man, who identified himself as a security guard, said it was and that the senator wasn’t home.

When asked who was taking care of the lonely mutt in the presumably chilly house, the guard said he was.

And if you know where to look, you can find how much money Ted’s donors are paying for this very special service.

Atlas Glinn even has Ted’s picture on the front page of their website. (Scroll to the almost bottom.)

Yep, Ted and his family flew off to Cancun, which is bad enough, but y’all, he left his little tiny poodle at home, alone, standing at the door, crying.

Look closely and see that dog has something around his neck.

I know, I know, it’s real hard to tell, but bygawd it sure the dickens looks like a security guard badge to me.

Thanks to Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen for the heads up.

Here’s a little story to make you smile.

Karen got arrested yesterday in my hometown.  There were only 5 people arrested in my county yesterday. One of them, a woman, repeatedly dialed 911 demanding that they turn on her electricity. They asked her to stop calling because there were people who needed their help and there is nothing they can do about her electricity.

She finally screamed in to the phone, “I am going to keep calling back until y’all send somebody over here to turn on my electricity!”

”Oh, we’ll be right over there,” the dispatcher cheerfully responded.  Karen spent the night in jail and was bonded out this morning by a really pissed off husband.

And I see you guys know all about Ted Cruz.  But you may not have known this.

You know, like the sheriff’s department didn’t have anything better to do.

He’s on his way back and I say he gets the welcome he deserves.