
I am trying to cut down on political notions and noodling in this blog. It is like sugar to a humor writer. The easy laughs are sweet, but if you are diabetic, they will eventually build up and kill you.
But between Twitter-tweeting twit-wits and Facebook false-fact fools, I keep getting drawn back in. The gang of kids I grew up with in Iowa are seriously infected with Tea Party propaganda now that they are old coots like me, and continue to vote for Teabagger trolls (And I mean literal trolls. Steve King, Congressman from Iowa, has green skin and lives under a bridge… and maybe eats foolish children when they try to cross) for public office. And of course, I live now in Texas where gun-toting cowboys look at you intently to find any possible reason to shoot you and then thank Jesus if you are fool enough to give them one (like admitting to be mostly a Democrat in your political persuasion). They want to argue anything and everything I post on Facebook. Apparently even my bird pictures and cat videos politically offend them.

Oooh! This one really offends Teabaggers… especially the ones who make $25/hr or less.

Can you pick out the Trump voters in this line? All of them maybe?
And I am not suggesting that people who voted Republican in the last election aren’t as smart as my side. I waited until now in this essay to say that, because the childhood friends and family members in that group who read my blog will have all stopped reading by this point. I really don’t need to give them any more ammunition for Facebook and dinner table arguments.
But my side of the table are not wholly guilt free.
I regularly tweet or post things like these, innocently believing these heroes of the heart and mind have universal appeal because they champion truth and science and facts. But I become alarmed when I learn how much Bill Nye offends them. They tell me, “That guy is not a scientist! He has no right to argue for climate change issues or the non-existence of God. He’s just a TV guy.” And, I suppose they have a point. I mean, his extensive education and background in engineering, or his years in television promoting science to kids in research-based creative ways, doesn’t necessarily make him an expert on all science. And Neil DeGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist. He doesn’t have a degree in EVERYTHING. And when I point out that their so-called experts on climate-change denial from Fox News cannot even claim to be TV weathermen, they are further put out by my brain-bashing bullying way of using my superior knowledge of science to put them down. Okay, I get it. I am not being careful enough of your feelings. (Oh, I forgot, you stopped reading this a while back.)
But the point of this is, we have to stop listening to and electing stupid people, while at the same time being a bit nicer to each other. We have to approach the discussion with the notion that you yourself may not be totally right about everything, and you may actually learn something by talking about it. (Which is, of course, no problem for me since I really don’t know anything for certain and need to learn practically everything as if I were still four years old.)

Okay, Bill, I get it. I am probably wrong about that too.





At long last, Robert Mueller Smurf began investigating the election hack by Gargamel and the subsequent obstruction of justice committed by Trumpy with the aid of Azrael, Gargamel’s very hungry cat. He revealed that Gargamel had secretly intercepted the ballot boxes and removed all the votes for Smurfette. Thus Trumpy won by a margin of one vote to nothing. Clumsy Smurf had been the only one stupid enough to vote for Trumpy.





The Republicans have found another scandal to pursue. Two FBI personnel were texting each other messages about how stupid and incompetent Donald Trump is. (As well as why one of them may have voted for him since they hated Hillary too.) The one agent who was involved in the Mueller investigation of Trump was immediately removed from the investigation when evidence of the possibility of lack of impartiality surfaced. This happened long before the Republican Conspiracy Elephants sniffed out the detail to make a big stinky in the media about it. Now, apparently the FBI has become a secret society wrongfully plotting against Trump.










Of course, “Why should anyone believe me of all people?” is definitely the question. I am only a retired school teacher who spent a career finding and verifying information, followed by a simple and clearly-defined presentation of the information to be learned. I have revealed myself in this blog to have the letter “L” on my forehead for “liberal” which translate into Republicanese as “loser”. And that’s where we will stay if we don’t fight back.


Blue Waves, Blue Birds, and Red Hope
My political opinions are worth about as much as the intestinal gas they are made of. That being said, at least I don’t light them on fire in the manner my conservative friends with Tea Party hemorrhoids do. Living in the Red State of Texas and being mildly liberal has forced me to listen to incessant streams of flaming insults and invective. It seems “liberal” is a bad word in Texas. We are apparently the primary cause of everything that’s wrong with the world. If you just have more conservative views, like having gleeful titter-fits over tax cuts for rich folks no matter how much they will hurt the working poor in the long run, then you are a good person, and Jesus loves you, and we forgive your three divorces, unpaid alimony and child support, and that Mexican-American you killed with your concealed carry because of the Stand-Your-Ground law.
But, my intestinal gas is bubbling after yesterday’s primary elections in Texas. Huffines lost the Republican primary to Paxton. Why is this significant, you may ask? Because the most corrupt and richest candidate did not win. Texas tradition is totally upended. And while both of them campaigned with lots of mud and bad words (yes, they actually called each other “liberals”), one of them is against both higher property taxes and reduced funding of education (which is the primary cause of higher property taxes). Paxton at least sounds like she is for spending more money on public education (heresy to the traditional Republican view of education). So there are signs of change in the Republican landscape.
And it appears that things are changing color in the reddest of Red States. Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for Ted Cruz’s Senate seat, solidified his chances in November by becoming the Democratic Party victor in the primary. And so far his small-donor contributions have come in waves, giving him a fund-raising lead over the Republican Party’s most hated lizard-man Senator. There is a feeling of a rising blue tide coming to sweep away Republican anchor stakes like Cruz and Pete Sessions. Democrats may actually win despite Republican cheating through voter suppression, gerrymandering, and corrupt dark money.
But the point of this whole long intestinal-gas-fueled display of political insight is not that I want the Red State of Texas to turn completely blue. I think that too many liberals is just as much of a problem and a breeding ground for corruption as too many conservatives. The biggest problem has been that the blue donkeys and the red elephants haven’t done much but hate each other and call each other names for too long.
We need two sides to have a decent debate that can hammer out the kind of decently balanced solutions that solves problems for everybody. Texas Republicans have been in complete control for too long. They ignore problems like equitable school funding, racial problems in law enforcement, and income inequality. They give all their attention to smoothing the way for corporations and money-making interests. As long as the rich guys are happy, the world is good for Republicans. We need to balance the Republicans again with more moderate policies and beliefs. If you look at the political platform of the Republican Eisenhower Presidency and compare that to the Democratic Obama Presidency, you can see that they are very much the same. I think the chaos that the current Presidency has brought to the Republican Party has already produced some hopeful signs of the reversal of some of their most hostile and heartless positions. The high priests of greed and corruption that have taken over the Republicans since Nixon are beginning to experience rebellion among their acolytes. Republican pundits, thinkers, and operatives whom I actually respect are turning away from Trumpism and denouncing it in the mass media. Some of them have even left the party.
But I am not hoping for the death of the Republican Party. I am hoping for a fundamental change in who they are and what they support. I think recent election results are strengthening that hope. We need them to renounce their Gordon Gecko religion of “Greed is good!” We need them to turn away from the corruption, anger, and intractable stupidity of the Tea Party. We need decent moderate Republicans to return to prominence once again.
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