Here’s a fun thing to do on a Saturday. Google the terms “Nehls for Congress”. Among the results is the one that takes you HERE. That’s Congressman Troy Nehls’s campaign website. From there, scroll down to the bottom of the page. Now click on the “Pre-Order My Book” menu option.

That takes you HERE. From there, scroll down just a tad until you see this (or click the screen capture below to make bigly):

Note his mailing address. That’s 1612 Crabb River Road. The location seemed familiar, so I asked around, and this is the best answer I got:

“Yep. I just remembered it!  The Z Bar.  Lots of bikers and bare boobs.  If you drove by on your way to the donut shop, the odds were pretty good that “innocent bystander” would appear in your obituary.  They got sued enough times for over serving that it became a nonprofit but not by choice.”

“It sat empty for a while and then became the Republican headquarters.  Truth be known, it was hard to tell the difference.”

That’s right, I told myself, the Z Bar. I used to pass by it on my way to visit Brazos Bend State Park (the latter is a must-see if you’re in the area). I recall that it was a rare weekend that didn’t have news coverage of the worst sort out of that address.

So now I know what happened to it. The GOP took over Z Bar and it became Freedom Hall: aka the Nehls Campaign headquarters. What I don’t know is whether they had a shaman shake bones and waft acrid smoke in the various rooms to exorcise the evil spirits before moving in.

Something tells me “No”.

But that’s not the end of it. Nehls’s Pre-Order page is obviously out-of-date. Google Maps says that “Freedom Hall” is

If you go one step further, type in the address “1612 Crabb River Road Richmond” in Google Maps, you get the precise location of where Z Bar and Freedom Hall used to be, but a tap on the street view photo gives you this:
Wait. What?

That looks like Arabic script. It is Arabic script!

Further clicking got me to the new owners of Troy Nehls’s old HQ, aka “Freedom Hall”: Darul-Quran Masjid.

From Z Bar to the GOP Freedom Hall to a Mosque. How’s that for progress in Texas?

(Hat tip to Alfredo at the Dairy Queen)

“Get up get up get down. 911’s a joke in your town.” — Public Enemy

The political, social, and sports world collided on Friday morning when Masters champion Scottie Scheffler was arrested and charged with second degree assault of a police officer. This came about because he didn’t follow instructions when they asked him not to pull into the parking lot at Valhalla (where the PGA Championship is taking place). Scheffler says it was blown out of proportion. The detective says he was dragged and had his 80 dollar pants ruined.

Thus we have the conundrum of the modern age. Are police generally good guys with tough jobs that have been trodden upon by an unappreciative public or are they dangerous to certain communities and abusive of their own power? I know where I cast my lot, but that is based on personal experience.

About three or four years ago I was picking up my daughter at the skating rink. The officer on duty politely asked me if I noticed anyone in the parking lot looking inside cars. I said no and went inside to look for my daughter. A couple of minutes later he confronted me and asked me why I was looking inside of cars.

I explained that I was just there to pick up my daughter and go home. He yanked me by the arm and drug me out of the premises. This happened in front of my daughter. He obviously discovered that I was there to pick her up and not vandalize cars, but he couldn’t leave well enough alone. He decided I must be drunk.

I offered to take a breathalyzer test, but he said none was unavailable. Instead I went through a field sobriety test. I am diabetic and have horrible balance. I couldn’t pass one under any circumstances. He refused to let my daughter come home with me. So, I called my wife (who had been drinking) to come and drive her. He finally admitted that he could not hold me, so he let me drive on my own “if I felt safe to do so.”

A half hour ordeal could have gone much worse under a few circumstances. He could have tried to bust me for driving under the influence on absolutely zero evidence outside of a field sobriety test. I had not had anything to drink that day, but that didn’t seem to matter. I suppose he could have put handcuffs on me on suspicion of vandalism on zero evidence.

We had a teacher this year that resigned following a DUI arrest. It boggles the mind how close I could have come to career ruin based on the actions of an overzealous cop. I did complain to his department, but I didn’t keep up with the case. I’m guessing he and his supervisors laughed it off as just one of those things to happen on the job. They certainly didn’t think about what it must of have been like for my daughter to see her father yanked out of a skating rink like some criminal.

Those who defend police will say they have a difficult job. They absolutely have a difficult job. They will say there are just a few bad apples. I think there is more to it than that. There are some systemic issues we see everywhere and that is particularly true when dealing with minority communities.

Do we back the blue or are we one of those communists that want to defund the police? Progressives don’t do themselves any favors with these labels, but policing does need to be revamped. There are just too many personal and national stories for it to be a few bad apples. It is a training issue. It is an issue of how they seem themselves within the community. It is an issue of how they view disparate communities. It also is a case of a job that attracts people with certain personalities that lend itself to this sort of thing. Scheffler might have done something wrong, but I seriously doubt that all of this needed to happen. Now, imagine if he were black, Hispanic, or obviously lower class.

Some years after President Nixon shared with a national TV audience the bald-faced lie that he was “not a crook,” he infamously claimed to David Frost in a one-on-one interview this little gem: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

That that guy never served a day in prison is why we are in the fix we are in today.

Donald Von Shitzenpantz never read a thing about Nixon. Of that, I am sure. But he didn’t have to. What his campaign is currently doing in campaign contributions is not a new thing for him or for any given chiseling entrepreneur.

He’s making lucre out of excess donations.

Here is an FEC document that I got from Alfredo at the Dairy Queen. It pretty much sums up the whole larcenous affair. Take a look. We’ll wait.

That’s right. The official presidential campaign of Don Von has pulled in an aggregate of $226,669.43 in interest from funds donated to the campaign, including by people who have donated over the legal limit.

You see, the FEC because it is fair-minded, gives candidates a 60-day time period to discover overpayment, and refund the balance to the donor. A time limit that the Von Shitzenpantz campaign has typically violated. Oh yes, you do clearly see refunds, but just as clearly, you see that they take their damned time about doing it. So much time, and so much money, that the campaign can buy an extra quarter of a million dollars worth of McD’s hamberders for their campaign workers.

According to a pornographic film actor and director, The Former Guy is pretty quick about getting his business done.

Just not this business.

Because they cannot win by following the rules, the WA State GOP decided to play a game of To Tell the Truth. (I’m old, this is the show I remember, not the new one). Our Dem candidate for Governor, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, has a rather common name. What are the chances that TWO other candidates named Robert Ferguson would file for the governor’s race? The REAL Bob Ferguson has been an excellent AG, and has made a name for himself bringing successful challenges ranging from companies responsible for the opioid crisis to dark money in politics to Catholic Church sexual abuse to environmental protection to immigration to scam artists, and even TFG himself (85 times during his term as President). He even made Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2017 (he was fine with not being on the cover). So why would these two doofuses think they could pull a fast one on the Attorney General with lots of justice notches on his belt?

There is a WA state law that they could be liable for a class B felony for attempting to mislead voters. We have a top 2 primary, and these kinds of shenanigans can easily affect the outcome. Of course they don’t see it as election interference at all. It turns out the orchestrator of this strategy, conservative activist Glenn Morgan, was hoping to get a few more Bob Fergusons before last Friday’s 5 pm deadline to file. He’d contacted 12 but ‘ran out of time’.  AG Bob Ferguson was having none of this. He sent a Cease and Desist letter to each of the Bobs, and called on them to withdraw their names by 5 PM yesterday or face legal action. BOOM! Both of the Bobs who were persuaded to file as Democrats to confuse voters withdrew before the deadline,72 hours after they filed. Smart move for a couple of dummies. Chalk up another win for the Good Guy, who was obviously working over the weekend.

There is no amendment in our constitution more integral to the concept of freedom than the freedom of speech. Yet, there is no freedom in our constitution more misunderstood than the freedom of speech.  This comes up for obvious reasons. People on both sides of the Gaza debate are feeling the crunch. College campuses grapple with protestors and how much is too much. More importantly though, we are seeing an increasing heavy hand of government on both sides of the aisle on this issue as government officials circle the wagons in support of Israel.

That immediately pushes us towards the responsibilities portion of free speech, but I need to take a few giant steps back. Free speech has never meant freedom from responsibility. I would not be able to (hypothetically speaking) run into the superintendant’s office and call them a jackass without some repercussions.

Yet, millions of Americans would say they have an absolute right to do that without any negative impacts on their own professional or personal life. This is not a liberal or conservative problem necessarily. The Dixie Chicks famously badmouthed George W. Bush on stage during his presidency and lost fans possibly in the millions. It went down exactly as it should. They expressed their views and their fans expressed theirs. That’s how these things work.

The Chicks (as they are now called) were effectively canceled. I throw that term in here intentionally. The whole cancel culture craze is nothing more than people being upset over the fact that they are receiving negative consequences for their speech. That’s a large part of the marketplace of ideas. Some people won’t like them.

When we start arresting people for protesting the Israeli government then we have gone way too far. Employers certainly can take note of someone’s political activities and make a decision for themselves as to whether they want a particular individual to represent their company. That is fair. To make demonstrating illegal as Florida has done in certain circumstances is antithetical to the whole idea of what free speech is all about.

We do have one responsibility as it pertains to speech. We need to be accurate. Our responses need to be accurate. That means actually stopping for a second and listening to what the protesters are saying. I would say that most are not anti-Semitic. Some certainly are. However, the majority are just outraged over what Israel is doing in response to Hamas’ attack. Criticizing Israel doesn’t have to mean that you are supporting Hamas, but that is how this issue is being framed.

You can think that what Hamas did is awful. You can think Hamas needs to be eliminated. You can also think that what Israel is doing in Gaza and to Palestinians in general is abhorrent. These things can all be true at the same time. That viewpoint can also be wrong. People are free to disagree with it and poke holes in it all day long. That’s how these things should be debated. However, simply calling anyone that criticizes Israel as Anti-Semitic doesn’t promote free debate. It shuts it down.

Mind you, there are plenty of Anti-Semitic people out there. I would dare say that many are the same folks levying the charge against those that would criticize Israel. There is no defense like a good offense. All of this is to say that free speech has never truly been free. It costs plenty when it is levied irresponsibly and without respect for others. It also hurts overall when we don’t take the time to truly listen to what the other side is saying and why they are saying it. Sometimes it is racism and bigotry but often times it isn’t.

Well, you might remember some postings on this not-a-damned-blog where Senator Ted Cruz was caught with his hand in the lucre jar with his sweetheart deal with iHeartMedia. It seems the case has been referred to the Federal Election Commission for it to place its consequential weight on what seems to be a clear violation of just about every kind of ethical canon ever written by humankind.

OK, that last one might be hyperbole, but the shoe does fit.

And this writing right here might be [yawn] a little boring and [yawn] repetitious [yawn], but let’s just say [yawn] we need a proper [yawn] story on the endgame [yawn] to round out the whole discussion  [yawn].

In summary, the endgame is this: nothing is going to happen.

The Raw Story has it, but the matter was originally reported by The San Antonio Current:

“Trey Trainor, an attorney serving on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — the panel scheduled to hear the complaint — recently retweeted a photo his wife Lucy Trainor shared of a yard sign outside their Austin-area home promoting the Texas Republican’s campaign for a third term in the U.S. Senate.”

Here is a screenshot of the “tweet”.

It gets worse:

“Trainor’s retweet follows last month’s report by the Current that FEC Chairman Sean J. Cooksey served as Cruz’s deputy chief counsel in 2018. From 2019 until joining the FEC in 2020, Cooksey served as general counsel for Missouri U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a GOP hardliner frequently aligned with Cruz.”

And you’ll never guess who appointed both Trainor and Cooksey to the FEC. You got it, Donald Von Shitzenpantz.

In short, in this jury of 6, Ted Cruz has two FEC “no” votes already in his pocket.

One caveat. If you look at the retweet, you can see that Trey Trainor is not, himself, responsible for sticking Ted Cruz’s campaign sign in his yard. His wife, Lucy Trainor, did it.

Lucy Trainor is currently Election Integrity Director for the Republican Party of Texas.

You just cannot make this stuff up.