I am mad enough to chew nails and spit barbed wire.

Come to find out, 40 damn years after it happened, former Texas Lt. Governor Benny Frank Barnes, who bought a slick suit and started calling himself Ben Barnes, has sat silent carrying the earth-shattering story of deceit and cahooting that changed history.

Ben Barnes

I have never liked Ben Barnes and I always will. That boy was slicker than snot on a doorknob.

Ben Barnes was a bag man for Texas Governor John B. Connally. You remember Connally – he was in the front seat in Dealey Plaza when John Kennedy was killed. Connally was winged and wore a sling for his arm for about two years. Seriously, people told him it was unbecoming a grown man to pump sympathy like that. It ain’t like he was at the Alamo.

Anyway, I could tell you creepy John Connally stories all day but here’s what is important – Kennedy came to Texas to patch up things between Connally and Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, who achieved genuine Texas hero status by punching out Strom Thurmond on the senate floor.

Both were Democrats because Texas was a solid blue state but Yarborough was a liberal and Connally was a conservative and racist sumbitch.

Connally ran for president but got slaughtered in the primaries. He was Texas oilman cocky and that just didn’t go over big in foreign states. Then Connally got behind Ronald Reagan and figured he could be Secretary of State if Reagan owed him for something. You couldn’t slide a greased knife between Reagan and Connally for the whole campaign.

And now —

WASHINGTON — It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

Yep, Connally was the middle man for guns-for-hostages.

Barnes says he’s telling the secret now because Jimmy Carter is fixing to die and “History needs to know that this happened.” No way, Jose. Ben Barnes is 85 and knows that God knows what he did and that there’s no way he did it “unwittingly.” Barnes ain’t that dumb and he and Connally were tighter than skin on a sausage. There’s not a soul in Texas who lived during those times who thinks that Ben Barnes ever did anything unwittingly.

And it’s also interesting to note that John Connally did not get to be Secretary of State. You remember who did? Alexander Haig.

In 1986, Connally filed for bankruptcy and ended up auctioning off his personal possessions – including  furniture, his wife’s jewelry and china place settings – to cover his debts. Two years later, Ben Barnes filed for bankruptcy.

So here we are. Ben Barnes trying to get right with Jesus at 85 years old. By the way, Barnes was the one who got George Dubya in the National Guard so he didn’t have to go to ‘Nam.  So Barnes gave us both Reagan and Baby Bush, so it’s gonna take more than a confession to get right with God.

While we all sit around and wait for indictments, I came across this on the weekend.  Just when you start to think our whole damn country is screwed to hell and back, there’s a school of thought that we do some things right.

My list includes taco trucks or, for that matter, food trucks in general.  In fact, taco trucks are so good that they almost cancel out crappy airports.

We have Dolly Parton, Aaron Sorkin, and Willie Nelson.

Almost everyone plays a musical instrument of some kind, many of them in public. Plus, there’s no yodeling. By the way, I am a giant fan of music on the streets. If you’re downtown and there’s a street musician, give them at least a dollar or all your pocket coins. We need to encourage this. It will make the world safer and better. Even if you don’t like their music or they are not very good, it’s just a damn dollar. Give them a dollar.

Have fun with the list and let us know if you have something to add or subtract from it.

“And when you stop and think about it
You won’t believe it’s true
That all the love you’ve been giving
Has all been meant for you” — Justin Hayward

For some reason, I have been thinking about scumbags lately and when I think of scumbags my mind somehow wanders to Kirk Cameron. For those unfamiliar with Cameron and his work, he gained some fame and notoriety as the child star of “Growing Pains” back in the 1980s. Like most child stars, he didn’t successfully make the transition to adult actor. Once he stopped being cute he left the public eye for the most part.

What also happened is that Cameron went through a pretty dramatic conversion to Christianity. This conversion to Christianity may or may not have resulted in an actress getting fired from the show. For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, Julie McCullough played his girlfriend on the show, but it was discovered that she had posed for Playboy. The rumor was that Cameron had her fired, because that kind of image didn’t jive with his new found Christian beliefs. Of course, he denies this version of the story. Needless to say, her career went the way of the doodoo bird and he went on to make more sanctimonious films and creative works.

Well, all that is old is new once again. Cameron is embarking on a library tour to read his children’s books. A Hendersonville Library director made the call to cancel an event involving Cameron as a way to keep the library from becoming a venue that would take part in a culture war. The director in question stated that he wanted to keep all potentially controversial events away from the library. This would include drag queens reading to children as well. Fair is fair after all. Well, the Sumner County Library board voted 4-3 to terminate the director of the library after Cameron and his group complained.

In a growing trend, some threatened violence if they didn’t get their way. To be perfectly fair, his supporters were not the only ones to threaten violence. Some on the left responded with threats as well. We aim to be fair here as much as possible and being fair means calling out bad behavior all the way around. All that being said, this is a pattern with Cameron. I’m legitimately thrilled when anyone finds a religion that works for them. If his Christian beliefs keep him on the straight and narrow then that is fantastic. Those Christian beliefs are also supposed to be tolerant and forgiving of those that may not subscribe to the same mode of thinking.

That goes for a young actress that may have made a decision she regrets and it goes for a librarian that decides that he doesn’t want his library to be used in a game of political ping pong. Free speech is a right that protects people from government oppression or government censorship. I suppose a library is in some way an extension of that, but the first amendment states, “Congress shall make no law…” It certainly doesn’t guarantee you the right to a platform and it certainly doesn’t make you look more Christian if you use coercion and threats to get your way. I’m sure Cameron’s books have a nice message, but that message is at least somewhat sullied by his tactics to get the story heard in the first place.

Hey, Ted Cruz is now touting hisownself as a “best selling author.”  And he is – at his own address.

I don’t know this to be true, but I’ve heard that if you buy a hot dog at a ballgame, you get a free Ted Cruz book you can use as a napkin. However, complains were filed that those thin paper napkins were far superior to Ted’s grammar.

Since all of us at the World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc. have been lazy this week, there’s something I’ve been meaning to share with you for a couple of months now but just never got around to it.

Remember back during Covid when low interest loans were given by the federal government to small businesses so they could make payroll?  Well, it appears that most of those loans have been forgiven.

Now here’s my problem, I think it’s a good thing to keep people employed. But when I see the names of local rich, rich, rich anti-government guys in my own small town get $2 million free and clear from the government they hate while whining about paying any taxes whatsodamnever, it kinda steams me.  They want all the profits but none of the risks.

And I am also bothered about forgiven loans to churches and religious schools – especially the far right wing ones who were telling people not to wear masks.  What’s the matter, dudes? God didn’t answer your prayers?

So anyway, the next time I hear my very politically active neighbor Joe Guerecky (who owns a large machine shop) try to own-the-libs by griping about taxes, I have already made a copy of his forgiven loans to show him where the hell my tax money goes – over a million dollars of it went in his pocket. You may want some receipts from your hometown and notify these people that you haven’t gotten your thank you note from them yet.

So, here ya go.

So, we didn’t do diddle squat after the last bank bail out, and now we’re all surprised that there’s another.  Yes another, who incidentally gave enormous bonuses to their top executives a couple of hours before padlocking the front door.

I have a solution. No bail out.

Here’s how we handle it. We have all of their executives show up at the bank for a “party.” Once they arrive we strip them down to their boxers and hand them a big box with all their money in the world, except for $250,000 which we allow them to keep, and then open the door to account holders.

It would be a mess, but we’d never see a bank fail again.

Oh yeah, we also give a microphone to Elizabeth Warren so she can remote broadcast color commentary of the big event.

A friend sent me a tweet that makes me chuckle.

Hope your Monday has some good news.