Okay, That Does It. Thelma is Running For Governor.
Our head manicurist, Thelma, has had it up to here, and she is ready to bump heads with Rick Perry.
My money is on Thelma.
Rick Perry has announced in the wake of the bomb that went off in West, Texas, that what Texas really needs is less regulation. Yes, you read that right. And unless I made a typo, it says LESS.
Yeah, that’s what caused that explosion – too much regulation and not near enough job creation. However, I do think funeral homes, flower shops and hospitals did quite well.
Several experts believe that had knowledgeable authorities known that 270 tons of ammonium nitrate was stored at a facility so close to school and residences, it would have triggered inspections to see whether the material was safely stored and secured.
But it didn’t trigger inspections because the owners of the facility didn’t report it. All that reporting would have created at least one other job and these job creators can’t be expected to create more jobs when profit is the whole point, you know.
So, Texas now has both Rick Perry and Tea Party Darling Attorney General Greg Abbott in West, Texas, campaigning against each other while standing on rubble, arguing over who thinks rubble is prettier and, dammit, we need more of it.
And amid all this, Texas Democrats have two folks running for Governor – diddle and squat. We are trying to plow around the stump again.
I heard the other day that someone was starting a Draft Bill White campaign, the former Mayor of Houston and practiced loser. Well hell, just check me in at the Nutcracker Suite and put me out of my misery. I know I’m gonna hack off a lot of my Democratic friends but until Bill White gets a glitter enema, stops trying to run as a closet Republican, and releases his damn tax returns, the fat lady is starting on the third verse. His last campaign against Rick Perry was the most pathetic thing I’ve seen since Elvis died.
Then I heard that Kinky Friedman was gonna run as a Democrat. My dog Truman is smarter than Kinky Friedman and a helluva lot better lookin’. Hell, Truman asleep with mange would still be smarter and better lookin’ than Kinky. Plus, Truman knows four tricks, which is 3 more than Rick Perry knows.
And then there’s Thelma, Texas’ only 300 pound skinny jean wearing manicurist. Thelma is a high school graduate and a certified notary public. Not only that, but if the Gov Shack burns down again, she doesn’t need any $10,000 a month mansion rental. She comes complete with her own travel trailer. That makes her the most qualified person in this race. And did I mention that she has big hair? Real big hair.
And Thelma thinks that anything within spittin’ distance of a school should be regulated as all get-out. Thelma says, “You cannot trust crony capitalists, horse thieves, people who talk about Jesus way too much, and ping pong players.” I do not know what Thelma has against ping pong players but I bet it’s a good story.
So, if Democrats can’t come up with something better than Kinky Friedman and Bill White, Thelma is in.
JJ, I’d love to nominate you. You already have a grass roots following.
1Even though I live in CO, I’d sure as heck vote for Thelma!
2Thelma’s great, but I think YOU ought to go after it, JJ.
3🙂
I wonder if Thelma could talk one of the Castro brothers into running with her. I don’t even care which one… It matters not to me whether it’s San Antonio Mayor Julian or his twin brother, State Representative Joaquin…
I like both of them.
A lot.
I’ve even practiced the correct pronunciation of the mayor’s name: “hoo-lee-AHN”. I think I’m okay with the representative’s: “wah-KEEN”.
If I still need some work there, I hope Thelma will let me know.
And when Thelma and her handsome sidekick do some seriously arse-whippin’, I hope they successfully kick the RWNJs to the curb and turn Texas blue by reminding their fellow Texans that it is exactly THE LACK OF state oversight that contributed to the deaths of 14 innocents in West, the physical harm to the injured, and economic and psychological harm to the community.
I hope Friedman doesn’t come along just to split votes like he’s done in the past and give the elections to the Gee Oh Pee, yet again. Sheesh….
Go get ’em, Thelma.
4I’m willing to put half of my Social Security check in the pot for Wendy Davis.
5Okay, here’s some funny stuff —
“Rahm Emanuel Welcomes Rick Perry To Chicago: I Hope ‘He Remembers All 3 Of His Reasons For Coming'”
It’s comments about Rick Perry’s latest visit around the country to poach locals to move their businesses to Texas.
Take a look at:
6http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/rahm-emanuel-rick-perry_n_3138252.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Great piece, JJ. Molly would be proud!
7That picture makes me stop and wonder if that is what the majority of Texas will look like in the next decade or so, if people like Perry or Abbott continue to be elected; visions of Mad Max.
8Even lab rats are capable of learning not to go the wrong way in the maze twice, but the GoverNOT and his cronies are determined to crash and burn in Texas repeatedly. May the Force be with you, Thelma!
9Yes the Houston Chronicle had the govs comments on the front page and they’ve been hittin on him pretty bad lately but dammit they endorsed the sumbitch every election. I’m so proud to live in the land of the “free”. Free to die on the job site. Free to be killed by a careless, ignorant or downright greedy lawless heartless SOB (you choose the adjective) company owner/management. Free to work for poverty wages. Free to die for lack of affordable healthcare. Free to die from pollution…. But oh we can’t hurt the job creators. What a kettle of rotten fish. They never mention the companies and the countries that do the right thing and prosper.
10I’m so ready to choke me some rethugs, and their willfully ignorant acolytes. They really do have blood on their hands.
TCEQ is not a regulatory agency if it acts only when a complaint is received about the stench of ammonia.
“There’s nothing TCEQ could have done to prevent this because plant management didn’t tell us it had 270 tons of ammonium nitrate parked right next to a school, homes, and a nursing home.”
Listen real careful now, and I’m gonna type this real sloooow so even Gomer Gohmert can understand: WHY NOT INSPECT THESE PLANTS FROM TIME TO TIME????
But that’s the whole point, isn’t it. We wouldn’t want to inconvenience the “job creators”, would we?
Sadly, this disaster will change nothing, just as Newtown changed nothing. Too many voters have bought into the toxic ideology that passes itself off as conservatism.
We really do deserve the gummint we have.
My only hope is that Churchill’s remark about Americans remains true: “In the long run, Americans will always do the right thing — after exploring all other alternatives…”
11I wish I could be funny – but I’m up here in the “Liberal… ie Yankee” Northeast, where there is a lost, 19 year old kid in a Hospital bed whose fate is being debated by Texas Senators and the entire country, calling for him to be tortured, drawn and quartered , convicted and executed while still intubated….YET… in West, the privately held Corporation(Which, according to SCOTUS, is a citizen) has already filed for their Corporate Insurance, and no one, no one – is talking about charging that “Citizen” with Murder, which is exactly what it is…..The bombing in Boston was a horrible act of Terrorism that cost 3 people their lives…..And the Bombing in West, where the body count continues to rise is exactly, if not more of, an act of terrorism perpetrated by the biggest threat to our country and it’s people, the Army of Mammon, and yet – they get their insurance money and to have Political Candidates dance around their ground zero, saying “Poor Corporations….The big Bad Gomnt is reaching into your pockets with all these pesky regulations to take your money….saving lives and preventing out in out MURDER has no place in Bin’ness. Oh lord, my blood pressure is 10 ft high and risen…. I, Along with Jesus, continue to weep
12Have the Texas Democrats considered importing someone from Canada? It worked for the GOPBaggers.
13My money’s on Thelma. After all, “The higher the hair, the closer to G-d!”
14Litlhorn, that’s one of the best rants I’ve seen in a while!
15You don’t know the Ping Pong story? If you had any balls you would have. How’d you like it if someone took to banging your balls back and forth? He said, and here I have to plead ignorance of the Chinese language so didn’t catch the punch line.
16If Whatever they are calling this new Democratic initiative in Texas… ah yes…… “Battleground Texas” cannot come up with a candidate to FUND and RUN against whoever it is…. Perry or Abbott….. What Good Are They?
I don’t mind that we give the Democratic Party our money, that they take and spend in other states…. to elect Democrats to office. Well….. Yeah….. actually I do.
But I will be da***d……. if I’ll give them any more of our innocent people. If the Democrats can’t come up with a viable candidate to throw these idiots out of office…. I’m done with them.
Thelma has my vote. I’ll write her in.
17BTW – @Litlhorn.. I read a blogger who lives in West, Texas.
She used to volunteer at the nursing home…. which like a lot of other things is no longer there. Her blog today states that the Employees…….(people who worked there for years,) ….. of that nursing home….. will receive (1) week’s pay. And I guess….. a Good Luck….. and God Bless.
That’s what a “Right to Work State” is good for.
18I’m with Litihorn and JJ.
That plant owner is as guilty as sin. Bet he was not insured enough to take care of the folks he killed and maimed. Plus all of the destroyed homes. A pox on the trustees who built the school so close to his plant. My high school is almost built on a Kerr McGee pipeline. Those damn things are everywhere.
We need a candidate.
I saw Kinky once because he had a fundraiser a couple of blocks from me. He was a dud as a politician. I even have an autograph bumper sticker when he ran for some county office as a Republican.
19“Lack of oversight”, of course, did not CAUSE the explosion. It ALLOWED the disaster to happen.
20Thank you! After all these years I finally found out Thelma’s dimensions.
21Some suggestions on West, Tx.
The very people that spoke out against the Sandy funding, are asking for us to cover because a bidnessman had neither sense, nor likely any liability insurance… Since we are better than they are, I suggest we let them have it, no whining on our part, no hippocracy reminder, just with a small twist… (we are allowed to remind them of the difference between an act of nature, and the predictable result of human stupidity.)
Attach their disaster relief to a bill that funds OSHA sufficiently to support the hiring of enough agents that it wouldn’t require a full century to inspect the workplaces of Texas.
Require places that operate an explosive depot, carry enough liability insurance to pay for every thing in their blast radius. Enough with this expecting the public to pay for cleaning up their messes. Libertarian’s are all about being able to sue the person who damaged you. (not yet having the concept “judgement proof”)
Oh yea, for places storing things that can go bang with some authority (say enough that the NFPA says they should have a 1,000 foot buffer) that they get inspected/audited at least annually, without there having to be a complaint or injury first. (and places that qualify for the annual dangerous stuff inspections should pay a fee for this audit – wouldn’t want an unfunded mandate…)
A national ban on k-12 schools, hospitals, and other skilled nursing facilities located within the NFPA buffer zone of hazardous material storage sites, with NO GRANDFATHERING OF EXISTING FACILITIES. If a school is too close, you get two years to either move your bombs, or pay to relocate the school.
Places that store of dangerous materials must be someplace served by a full time paid fire department. The fireman must receive full training on how to deal with, and the locations of all the chemical weapons they happen to keep around. They get to pay for creating it if it doesn’t exist. (this is not to denigrate the wonderful people that volunteer. This is to ensure 24/7 coverage, and reduce response time. If someone is at the far end of the north 1,000 (it is Texas after all) its going to take them some time to get to the station, compared to the time it takes to put down their hand of cards and throw on their turnout gear of a dedicated crew pulling their shift at the station.)
For those that don’t know NFPA is the National Fire Protection assn. They write lots of standards on how you should build for and handle safely, thing that go boom in the night. Unfortunately their standards are behind a pay wall, so I can’t look up just how big their buffer should have been. But for 50,000 lbs (one tenth of what they reported), they recommend 1,500 feet if you have barriers in place, and 2,000 feet if its level ground.
We could go for a twofer – (especially if it turns out that the brothers Caucasian took the gun show loophole) attach all this to the “You will background check ALL gun sales” bill.
22Gregg is sitting on $18 million in a warchest for his next campaign http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/does-attorney-generals-visit-to-west-signal-gubern/nXTCf/ I would love to see Greg and Goodhair get into a primary fight.
23My daughter and her compatriots are fighting against a gas station planned to be built right next to an elementary school and the school board and the county executives just don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Seems to me billboard size pix of the mess in West, Texas might get their attention.
24If Rick Perry is casting about for more unregulated businesses to set down in Texas, and a few more of them end up looking like the photo above (not too far fetched with all the fertilizer and petroleum plants in the state), maybe his plan is to give Hollywood some big tax incentives to film Mad Max 4 (&5, & 6) on location as apocalyptic movie sets make their appearance after each succeeding accident. He could play the governor in the franchise.
25And I read this morning that when the plant in West was fined $10,000 in 2011, they claimed they didn’t have the money to pay and the fine was halved. What? It is impossible to me that there is not one fine Democrat (I’ve met some) in the state of Texas that can run against this bunch in the GOP. Until one of the Castro brothers decides, I’m for Thelma.
26Excellent post!
27And I’d sure like to hear the full ping pong player story.
Jeff Del Papa: awesome list of ideas to attach to West, TX relief bill:
281.fund OSHA
2. require liability insurance
3. establish buffer zones around dangerous materials
4. require full-time, trained fire departments close by
5. require background checks for all gun transactions
I would add
6. Ban voter ID requirements
@Jeff Del Papa, I like your suggestions, but you can bet your best pair of underwear that our Neanderthal Lege would never, ever agree to such common sense regulations since it’s more important to them that bidnesses be allowed to operate without rules and regulations.
Since you live in a true blue foreign state, you may not know that our goverNot runs all over the country showing his azz and paying bidnesses to move to Texas with taxpayers’ money. Of course, part of the deal is that such bidnesses have to contribute to the goverNot’s campaign.
So, I would add to your fine list that no, nada, zero, zilch taxpayer or state money, be it cash, forgiveness of taxes of any kind, or any monetary inducements of any kind, shall be given to any relocating bidness that may be considered hazardous to people or property.
29My poor Canadian house guests have listened to me rant all day about Texas politics. Finally the husband said, “I don’t think I’ve heard you say one good thing today about Governor Perry.” After thinking long and hard I said, “Well, he has good hair.” His response? “Hair today, gone tomorrow.” We should be so lucky. Anyway thanks for winding up with Thelma running for governor. Y’all givin’ away bumper stickers? Actually I think that would be cool, don’t you?
30Go Thelma!!!!!!
31June:
I don’t expect the Texas Lege to attempt to regulate anything other than the lady parts of its citizens. I want the hazmat safety stuff to be national. A bomb doesn’t care much what state you store it in. A blast is going to level a Montana school just as easy as an Alabaman nursing home.
I remember (and I think it was Molly Ivins) saying “Texas is Mississippi with good roads” I remember one trip we made to Louisiana, We took a day, rented a car and drove north along a bit of two lane blacktop, running right beside the levee. As is typical with channeled rivers, you have to keep adding to the top of the levee as the channel silts up, and the riverbed rises. Eventually you wind up with the bottom of the river above the surrounding territory.
So we are driving along, and I see what looks like a little hill, with a whole fractioning tower, and a lot of pipe decorating it. Eventually we pass in front of it.
Now in terms of siting, it wasn’t quite as bad as in West. There weren’t houses, etc built right up to the edge of the berms that surrounded three sides of the plant, to about half its height. And the plant was set back from the road about as far as it was tall….. Still it was like 300 feet to the river channel.
You notice I said “berms on three sides”. The only thing keeping the river from washing the exterior of the plant was the single earthen levee, and a chain link fence. It was open to the road, at ground level.
So if they had a breach in the levee anywhere within about 5 miles of the plant, there would be 20 feet of river to trade whatever was on or in the plant for mud. If it was a close breach, it might even manage to undermine the foundation of the tower, and topple it. (local geology, about 1,000 feet of clay/mud before you get to actual rock. You drive piles, and don’t build that tall)
Ok, so the river can take a good hard swing at the place, you said there aren’t people living next to it. The water might even mitigate some of the fire…
Two reasons: They were 10 miles or so upstream from where New Orleans draws its drinking water. The other: It was a pesticide plant. They were in the bidness of making poison. And if something went wrong it would be draining directly into the delta, and from there the gulf.
This is the kind of thing you stick in a stinking desert. Someplace where if the worst happened there isn’t any ground water to contaminate, never mind a large river to spread it around quickly.
At least if they got reviewed, someone might tell them to finish the berm across the front, so there would be two things to fail before the river hit the fan…
32According to Dallas Morning News reports today, there is no agency in Texas that is responsible for oversight of storage of ammonium nitrate . The report also said that the citizens of West knew what was stored there.
33There may be a few lawsuits filed, but it doesn’t sound to me like anyone can be charged with much of anything at this point in the investigation.
Want to save a whole lotta people from their own foolishness… like a whole big state-full of foolish people? Impose term limits on governors.
Freaky Friedman is politically to the right of Genghis Kahn. If Dems give him a dime, they’re dumber than all those dumb Texans that voted for Gov. Goodhair yet again.
34