All Republicans are nincompoops. They will steal the gold out of their grandma’s teeth.

Here ya go.

The Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) concluded in a report made public on Monday that there is “substantial” evidence that Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.) misused campaign as well as official funds and used his office to help his brother in violation of House rules.

Yep, it’s a white guy from Mississippi.  He charged his campaign $82,363  to use his lakeside property as a campaign headquarters.  He was trying to sell the property and it needed sprucing-up.  He also sent his staff to the property to oversee the maintenance and help with selling it.

And … he had his staff get his kids ready for camp and send them goodie boxes while they were at camp.

And … he helped his brother to upgrade his reenlistment code for the Navy.

And I’m sure there’s more.  He’s being represented by, of course, a former a congressman.

Okay, okay, I’m calm. At least I’m trying to be but normal people would be so nervous that they could thread a sewing machine while it’s running.

Space hurricanes.  Yeah, that’s a thing. Scientist are talking about it.

See, here’s what I don’t get. We’ve got a whole mess of Q people who have to make up conspiracies to have things to worry about.  Normal people don’t have to do that because we’ve got a pandemic and damn murder hornets on the way just when it’s safe to go outside from the damn pandemic. Not just your regular murder hornets, nope, we’ve got Asian Giant Murder Hornets right here in the country.

We want more!  Give us more! We’ve got dopes thinking they can bring down the government by stealing Nancy Pelosi’s laptop and getting Delbert and Dewayne to rifle through Ted Cruz’s senate desk but they ain’t got a damn rifle.

We can take it. Give us something mean and hard to survive! Give us your best shot!

Oh no, wait.

Y’all, there’s a space hurricane. It’s the first one we’ve seen on earth. It’s “raining electrons.”  I do not know what one does to prepare for a space hurricane but I’d be willing to bet that flashlight batteries and cooler filled with ice ain’t gonna cut it.

Written by Nick Caraway — 

“I wish I had the presence of mind to write these things down, but I saw Pete Hegseth at CPAC claim to know what most of us average folks talk about when we go to the local diner. Apparently, we don’t talk about equal rights or any mumbo jumbo like that. Apparently, we are talking about three things: standing for the anthem, the tenth amendment, and of course the Bible.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m getting sick and tired of people presume they can speak for me and what I’m talking about when I’m meeting with friends. Maybe I’m not an average guy. Maybe the good folks that come around here are not average folks. That’s probably one of the best dodges for folks like Hegseth. How we define average is a floating standard that changes to meet our rhetorical needs.

My personal favorite was the tenth amendment. I’m calling shenanigans on that one. I’d imagine less than 20 percent of his “average people” couldn’t even quote the second amendment to you much less than tenth. Even if they could look it up on the Google machine it would likely take them an hour to figure out what it meant.

To put forth the idea that anyone is discussing politics with friends is far-fetched but we certainly aren’t discussing false flag issues like that. I don’t know many constitutional scholars and I’m a former Government teacher. I’m not sure how often the anthem or the Bible come up in casual conversation either.

I’ll make a deal with Mr. Hegseth, Mr. Perry, and Mr. Patrick. I won’t speak for you and you don’t speak for me. I certainly don’t know if I’m average or not and I don’t want any jackass in Austin or Washington telling anyone else what I’m willing or not willing to sacrifice. I can make up my own mind on that. One more thing: I’d suggest some new dinner conversation topics before all of your friends bail on you in the diner.”

Nick

We promised people a $15 minimum wage.

A $15 minimum wage comes close to providing a living wage for someone who works 40 hours a week.  They also deserve sick days, health insurance, paid vacation, and a retirement plan, but we’ll get to that later.

Right now, we owe them a $15 an hour minimum wage.

I do not want to hear that we can’t do it because we can. What I hear is that we won’t do it.

That is wrong. We need to be as good as our word. More importantly, we need to be good for America and for Americans.

I am disappointed in my party.  If Mitt Romney has courage to say that about his party, I need to gut up and say it about mine.

One more thing. Friday was kinda a special day for Bubba and me so we went out the eat for the first time in more than a year.  It’s a family owned restaurant with great enchiladas and a big patio.  We went at an off hour so the place was almost empty. We always tip 20% because we’re Democrats and we gotta walk the walk.  Our waitress was attentive and very careful serving us so we tipped a little extra. As we were getting into our car, she opened the door of the restaurant and waved at us saying, “Thank you.”

I’m sure she works on tips – life has gotta be kinda bleak for her.  So, tip a little extra.

Okay, so Hyatt Hotels issued a statement saying that symbols of hate are “abhorrent.”

That’s really nice of them for saying that as they stand in their hotel’s ballroom looking at a giant rune used by the Nazis and CPAC. Ya know, tsk-tsking at Nazi symbols while stuffing money into your pockets really doesn’t count more than about a 2 on the 100 point sincerity scale.

The ceiling of the conference room featured a lighting display in the same shape as the stage, according to Reuters photographs.

Though seemingly impossible from the seat in his wheelchair, governor Greg Abbott has been doing the Texas Side Step now going on two weeks since the days-long massive power failure and other cascading events, including the failure of water systems throughout the state.  He’s blaming everyone but himself, backed up by a chorus of other conservative Republican libertarian politicians.

Let’s again place blame where the responsibility for this catastrophe actually lay – in the laps of every statewide and legislative politician who has served at any time during the last 25 years.  Late last week, Texas Monthly laid out the history of power deregulation in Texas and the disaster it predictably precipitated.  Not only is Texas an island unto itself when it comes to power, this island is less reliable, AND Texans get to pay more for that privilege.

The fallout from this disaster is an open wound to Texas voters, even as Abbott has shot a few hostages and is now urging the state to “move on”.  He’s urging an investigation into ERCOT, the state’s grid manager, but has ignored the actual problem – him, the two previous governors, Perry and GWB, and the state legislature that has had a single party death grip on power for 19 years in the House and 25 years in the Senate.  Even after calls for tightening regulations after the 2011 and 2017 blackouts, the legislature, under conservative Republican libertarian leadership let every single bill mandating standards and winterizing to die in committee, just so no conservative Republican libertarian would have been forced to vote against it.  And Abbott has now blamed everyone but himself and the cronies he installed at the real problem, the Texas PUC.

This is the point of conservatism Repubulicanism libertarianism power – you get all the perks, but don’t take responsibility when something goes wrong.  Here are some other really clear examples of conservatism Repubulicanism libertarianism that has gripped our state and federal government now for decades: 1) The US Senate and House delegating their Constitutional trade authority to the president; 2) Delegating acts of war to the President (Patriot Act, and others); 3) Pushing the responsibility of care for the mentally ill to the states, but unfunded (Reagan); 4) Privatizing (prisons, air traffic functions, military support functions, and numerous other functions totaling hundreds of billions of dollars per year; 5) Failing to address the Coronavirus pandemic; 6) Delegating all pandemic response to the states (unfunded).  It goes on and on.  Even conservative Repubulican libertarian Florida governor Ron DeSantis declared this last weekend that he believes NO vaccine distribution plan for his state is best.  You see, if you don’t make a decision, you can’t get blamed.

Conservatism Repubulicanism libertarianism works great until it doesn’t.  This is not a matter of ideology here; this is the difference between people who believe in government and those who don’t.  We have now had a state controlled for two and a half decades by those who don’t believe in a functioning government, and the results are not pretty.

Will freezing Texans in the dark for days change votes?  One would only hope.