As we all know too well, the Texas Gulf Coast, including our own Harris County, home of the Planet Hooston, received its THIRD 500 years storm 10 days ago, flooding over 100,000 homes and causing $150 to $180 billion of damage in Texas.  AGAIN.

Ed Emmett, who is our illustrious County Judge, just had a brilliant idea – why don’t we fix that?  Good idea, Ed.  First let’s talk about some numbers.

• 178,000 structures sit IN the 100 year floodplain (remember, we’ve had 3 – 500 year plus storms in 3 years.  County flooding guru Jeff Lindner said Harvey was the 40,000 year storm.  How’s that feel?
• Here’s what really stupid…The county’s 2,450 miles of bayous and streams can only handle 20% of a 100 year storm.  This is why it floods when it gets humid here.
• There is almost unbridled development going on in flood prone areas.
• Our two western flood control basins, Addicks and Barker, have outlived their limited capacity to control flooding, as demonstrated by the thousands of homes that were flooded after the county started releasing water to protect the dams themselves.

Emmett, who is a mainstream Republican (he uses his brain) is known for his pragmatic management style.  He’s calling for sweeping changes to thinking on flood control, including a new reservoir, buyouts of flood prone houses, and other flood control measures.  In presenting the plan and speaking of the now common flooding, he said, “We can’t continue to say these are anomalies. You’ve got to say, We’re in a new normal, so how are we going to react to it?”

All I say is amen to that.  The $20 billion it would cost to mitigate flood damage is just a fraction of ONE of these debilitating events.

Oh Good Lord.

I have a friend who sorta collects wildly inappropriate 911 remembrances.  I have been given permission to share with you.

This is gonna be long so I fixed it where it continues on the next page.  I’m not worth a damn when it comes to manipulating images on the page so I’ll just let it roll.  You’ll have to click the link at the bottom to see the rest of them.

Veggie Tales is a Netflix children’s show and they took to Twitter.  “The official Twitter for VeggieTales. Helping children discover God Made Them Special and He Loves Them Very Much since 1993.”

I dunno.  That cucumber looks a little too happy.

And to those who are lost on their journey ….

You can get thirty whole minutes of free coffee and mini-muffins at the wildly overpriced Marriott.

And there’s always Jesus …

I do not want to think about where his mouth is.

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Bless his heart.

Ted Cruz was watching porn on Twitter but his hand accidentally slipped and hit the LIKE button, probably at the most inopportune moment.  I dunno.  Plus, I don’t want to know when he hit the button, if you know what I mean.

Okay, so here’s Ted Cruz, rabidly anti-gay, supported a ban on dildos, is anti-choice, and really doesn’t support birth control.  Plus, he’s the Zodiac Killer.

And here’s bi-sexual porn on Twitter.

They meet and it’s instant likeyness.

Plus, Twitter was all aglow about it, because the porn site thanked Ted for watching.

I’m glad Ted has found a hobby.

Thanks to Kyle and Deb for the heads up.

Equifax knew about the data breach for three damn months before they made it public.  During those three months, all their executives unloaded their stock.

They should go to prison.  But, Republicans in Congress?  Republicans in Congress should go to hell.

It’s hard to miss the irony. Last Thursday, on the same day Equifax announced its massive data breach, Congress held a hearing on a bill that would roll back regulations on the nation’s credit bureaus.

Get this – the legislation would cap actual damages and totally eliminate punitive damages.

What this means is that credit bureaus can play fast and loose with your data and face a very low risk of being sued.  And even if they are sued, the damages are far less than the money they would spend actually protecting your data.

The only way to keep businesses from killing you is punitive damages.

Do not talk to be me about the purpose of this legislation being to “curb abuses in the court system.”  There’s already remedies in place for that.

All this does is gives permission to credit bureaus to not be accountable.

“These bills not only hurt consumers, they ultimately have a negative impact on the marketplace by, for example, removing incentives for credit bureaus to ensure accurate information in credit reports.”

And if you don’t think the timing on this legislation means congress (at least the Republicans) knew about the breach before we did, you can kiss my butt.

Y’all, I hate these people.  I really do.

Holy moly, has the GOP really drifted this far right that even this guy with his binders full of women looks okay?

Sources tell UtahPolicy.com that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is preparing to run for Senate in 2018 if Sen. Orrin Hatch decides to retire.

Sources close to Romney say the two-time presidential candidate will jump into the 2018 Utah Senate scrum if Hatch opts not to.

Yeah, Mitt, pile your dog on top of your car and head to DeeCee.  You’re hardly gonna recognize the place.

I wonder if Mitt and Paul Ryan are still speaking.  Anybody know?

So, I saw a headline over at Politico that said, “Democrats plotting primaries against a slate of GOP incumbents.”

No, wait.  That’s not what it says.

Well, okey dokey.  That sounds plenty fine, too.