How's that for fucking cool? Shut off the lights on people bitching to give more of our money to oil companies. Take that, fuckballs!

And the fatties still like their minidonuts.

I mean, you guys will read anything if I just publish it. After all, you've been reading this crap for a while. And you'll really like to hear about some of the cool stuff I have going on in my life. I haven't even told you guys about my collection of Dogs That Aren't Mine!

Moronager (that's what I call the boss... it's a really clever combination of 'moron' and 'manager'. My Mom always said she didn't raise no dummie. Of course, she was looking at my brother when she said that, but I'm certain I was included as well) wanted us to post more 'local' stuff so I started reading the online edition of some newspaper in El Paso. Meanwhile, Moronager comes over and is doing that 'look over the shoulder and breathe heavily' thing that I can't stand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So, I say, "Can I help you, Boss?" and he says "Yeah, why don't you go to the paper in Austin. That's where McBlogger is based, not El Paso."

Oh. OK. FFFFIIIINNNNEEEE. Excuse the hell out of me for not knowing which part of Texas this stupid blog is in. So I go over to a newspaper in Austin and I gotta say, you guys have a good newspaper. Not a GREAT newspaper, but a pretty damn good one. Especially this Selby guy who is really very clever. However, you guys are hella nasty. TYPHOID?

The Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department is investigating about a dozen cases of possible typhus infection, most of them reported in Central Austin.

The type of typhus found in Texas, murine typhus, is most commonly caused by rats and their fleas, but opossums and cats can also be involved in transmitting the disease, according to the Department of State Health Services Web site. People get it from an infected flea.

And women named Mary who like to cook, Statesman! Way to leave that out. Aren't your health inspectors smart enough to check out the staff at restaurants? DUH!

Watch out you people in Austin. Never know when you'll end up all sick and shit.

Hratch Semerjian, long-time director of NIST’s chemical division, was promoted to acting director of NIST in November 2004, and took over the WTC investigation until the completion of the report on the towers. Semerjian is
closely linked to former NIST employee Michael Zachariah, perhaps the world’s most prominent expert on nano-thermites (Zachariah 2008). In fact, Semerjian and Zachariah co-authored ten papers that focus on nano-particles made of silica, ceramics and refractory particles. Zachariah was a major player in the Defense University Research Initiative on Nanotechnology (DURINT), a groundbreaking research effort for nano-thermites.

Most of the so called eyewitnesses on the ground have been identified as either Fundie Christians or defense officials or party faithfuls of the Republican kind.That opens up questions about their reliability.

The only eyewitness that passes the smell test, Amber Theoharis,was a helicopter traffic reporter for Channel 4 in New York who happened to be near the area where the plane was supposed to have impacted WTC2.She was live with her anchor,Susan Hansen, and did not even utter a word about seeing a plane.Instead she reported about an explosion at the Tower.

In the many videos released about the event,a plane is shown entering the Towers at a high speed and simply vanishing inside, leaving behind no damage.This Alice-in-Wonderland fairy tale was important to the perps because the preservation of an intact fuselage was necessary to maintain the lie that a plane had impacted the Tower.That lie became necessary because a clamor for the evidence would have resulted if the plane was shown as broken up.

The intact plane was also necessary to maintain the fiction that the Towers collapsed from the impact of the plane and the heat from the combustion of the fuel. This story sustained the perps for a long time until Professor Jones destroyed that myth.

Because of the lengths to which this administration has gone to sustain the myths,it is necessary to ask how this plane myth even came about.From the very beginning, this administration has made it clear that it needed a New Pearl Harbor to draw the United States into seizing the oil resources of the Middle East,especially the one in Iraq, for the purpose of maintaining US Supremacy for the next century.The New Pearl Harbor had to be an event that would shock the conscience of Americans and at the same time the perps had to be identified as Arabs.Because in the American way of viewing things, an Arab is an Arab is an Arab,it would not matter if it was a Saudi or Iraqi or a transgender Moroccan.Any Arab will do.

The ground work for this operation had been laid long before in 1993 when one of the Towers sustained an explosion set off by a truck bomb.That was clearly the work of an Arab saboteur.Half a world away, Ramzi Yousef, a Pakistani, was supposed to have sent a telegram to Osama Bin Laden that he should blow up the WTC Towers as a way to teach the Americans a lesson.He proposed that air planes be employed to do the dirty work.It is very likely that was disinformation because of the details it disclosed about the operation and the intended target.

My team leader, who is a hairy knob, must have found out about my commenting on Taylor Swift’s MySpace. I go by the name Rose Petal. Taylor is so cool. I wish I was her. I’m always sending her poems, books, a lock of my hair, and one time, my dead pet mouse. Oh, oh, oh, I snuck backstage at her concert and was able to touch her when she walked by. Seriously, it was only a small bruise. The papers made such a big deal out of it.

One day, I was handed something that said restraining order. I don’t know what that is, but I framed it, pricked my finger and spread blood over it, and put it in my special closest.

Anyway, the team leader motions me to his cubicle. He thinks he’s all that because he has a plant on top of his desk and an autographed picture of some freaky guy named Carrot Top. I’m already thinking what I’m going to say at the temp agency, but instead of firing me, he wants me to post stuff on this political blog in Texas called McBlogger. Gross! Why couldn’t they have called it McTacoBell?

I’ve heard of Obama. He’s kinda cute, but I thought he just beat some old lady for president. Now, they’re telling me that he’s against somebody called John McCain. The guy in Live Free or Die Hard? That guy is a little creepy.

Oh my God. Jeannette, who sits beside me, just showed me a picture of the real John McCain. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. You can’t be serious. He looks like the old dudes at the nursing home where Great Granny lives. They’re always pooping and wetting themselves.

So call me. We can share my new ring tone of Fergie’s new song. I think she’s a nice person and I bet we could sit down in the park and talk about clothes and stuff. Maybe, I’ll comment on her MySpace.

Of course, I know what a blog is. I maintain one on MySpace.

I guess I should say I don't really get all this politics stuff. Like these people arguing about drilling for gas? Don't the dummies know all they have to do is just go down to the Valero and get some? Just don't put it in a glass bottle and make sure (if you're driving a pickup) to take whatever you're putting the gas in OUT of the bed. They get really mad about that. Apparently, according to 'them', it can also explode.

So what do you guys think? Who are you going to vote for in the Presidential race? I'm going for

He says he’s got a problem in Texas. That’s my cue to pack the bags and go on a trip. Texas? What the hell. Who goes to that place anymore? He hears on the grapevine that some blog run by some nancy boys is going on strike to raise 100 G’s for some hillbilly politician called Jim Bob or Bubba Joe or some Walton family wet dream name, and a lady who is Michael Bolton’s daughter.

Well, it’s really less a problem and more the boss wants to go legit. He’s been keeping track of these mega churches’ televangelists who get the rubes all riled up about gays, Jews, and immigrants, and they give these guys millions so Jesus will save them from the fiery pit. The boss calls it prosperity theology. This could be good for the boss since he can be very persuasive.

So he sees this opportunity to take over this established blog and start influencing readers. Oh yeah, and have the 100G’s donated to the cause. That’s where I come in. Hey, don’t think I’m just some stupid gumba. I know my way around a website. Back in the day, we twisted some arms till they saw the light, but we now take a kinder and gentler approach – unless. Fair warning

They’ll be calling me a scab. So what? The ex used to call me worse even when I was slipping her the one-eyed jack. When I’m done with you guys, you’ll finally have grown a pair. So start handing over the protection money, uh, I mean donations. We have plans.

1) Not allowing us to drink during lunch.
2) Not allowing us to drink during staff meetings.
3) Not allowing us to nap in the early afternoon after a big lunch.
4) Not paying for the aforementioned big lunch.
5) Requiring that 'happy hour' start at 5, not 10:30.
6) Threatening to fire us for showing up to work drunk (YOU try staying sober after a pitcher of bloody marys).
7) Making us actually, you know, blog. And hang out with bloggers.

So, in an effort to show our new Corporate Masters who is really running things, we're ON STRIKE. In the meantime, we would like to encourage you to contribute to some great candidates. Like Larry Joe Doherty and Valinda Bolton. In fact, if we can raise a significant amount of money, say $100,000, we might be coaxed to come back to work. As long as we get that and the other shit we want. And the kegerator back in the break room.

And the wet bar in my office.

Those few of you who don't know Pat should just take our word that she's an exceptional person with a razor sharp mind, phenomenal wit and an easy, infectious laugh. You should also know that's she's one of few operatives in Travis County for whom we have genuine affection (we like and respect a whole bunch of you, but there are few we really love. Pat is one of them).

Please keep Pat and her family in your thoughts and prayers.

..."The most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices." Searches have uncovered "violent jihadist materials" as well as images of child pornography...

"Violent jihadist materials"? Does al Qaeda have some knock-off video game called Grand Theft Camel? And while kiddie porn will find few friends, exactly what sort of a threat does it pose to the security of the Republic? Remember when Republicans were all about getting government "off our backs". not about expanding powers of search and seizure? Where are all those "strict constructionists" these days, anyway?

Even more chilling is the information from the original linked article that

The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' "

And that got me to wondering. Where had I run across this sort of paranoia, this fear of words which might be smuggled, like a contagion, across borders. And then I remembered. Among the books in the McSleaze library is a copy of the 1914 Baedeker guide for travellers to Russia, which warns prospective visitors

Books in large quantities are submitted to a censor. Travellers should avoid works of a political, social, or historical nature.

Unprinted paper only should be used for packing, to avoid any cause of suspicion.

Russia, of course, was in those days regarded as a tyranny. A few years later, the tsars were gone and the Bolsheviks erected a tyranny of their own. Now they are gone and what is modern Russia? Well, certainly a state where ruler, a former bigshot in the secret police, hand-picks his successor and still seems to be running the place is no Smileygrad. And America? I can't help but recall something Lincoln wrote to an associate in 1855, while still a rather obscure Illinois lawyer. And to put this in some sort of context, Lincoln was commenting on the Know-Nothings, antebellum America's precursors of Lou Dobbs:

I am not a Know-Nothing--that is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of the negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equal except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to that, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

One wonders how the Great Emancipator would rate American despotism, vintage 2008.

Here's Pete with some supporters. We're really not sure which one is Pete (it was hella dark in the club) but we're reasonably certain he's not Asian. And that he's not a woman.

Here's some more on the scandal with audio and then there's this from D Magazine.

Really, Pete, a burlesque show? What is this, the 1890's??!? Do you really think anyone's going to be believe that you weren't watching the dancing ladies and that 'Little Pete' (girls talk) wasn't standing at full mast?

I wanted to give you an update on the campaign. You all know that we've knocked on quite a few doors and now we are starting to get a lot of attention as a battleground district in Texas. In a Quorum Report article, a well known GOP political consultant offered a simple turnout ratio as a metric for active battleground races in Texas. A 2:1 Democrat to Republican ratio was a clear Democratic district. Anything at 1.5:1 or lower is leaning towards the Republican. However, everything in between should be considered a battleground district that can be won by a fighting Democrat in November. Texas House District 135 was at nearly a 1.8 : 1 ratio. With the high turnout combined with the Cy Fair ISD financial crisis, our major transportation challenges in Northwest Houston and the recent Texas Ethics Commission complaints against my opponent (for allegedly using campaign funds to pay for his personal property in Austin), this district is now heavily in play! As such, my campaign finance plan has now increased substantially and I need to raise much more money than originally anticipated. Fortunately I have picked up the support of several major contributors in town but I need to reach out to everyone I know for support where possible. I'm contributing a substantial amount of my own money to cover our grassroots costs but we've got to grow the mass media capability. I'm shooting for an additional $30,000 by September 2. That is where each of you come in. If you or anyone you know can help out, be it $25, $250 or more, every dime will help out. I have a link set up whereby you can contribute online, or you can send a check to the Fleming for Texas campaign at the address below. Thanks in advance and let's get fired up for a great run to November!

Why yes, I will be supporting anyone with the good sense to be named Trey!

TXsharon challenges you to view these pictures of Domestic Drilling Armageddon in the Barnett Shale and still support the Drill and Burn Domestic Drilling agenda.

U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez' Republican challenger for the 23rd Congressional seat is taken to task by Mike Thomas of Rhetoric & Rhythm for shirking his responsiblity on a critical hospital expansion vote before the Bexar County Commissioner's Court.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the GOP's "latest" energy plan in Carter, Oil, & Hair Of The Dog.

Neil at Texas Liberal asks what would be the impact if Polar Bears could vote.

Off the Kuff looks at a Texas Monthly overview of the effects of the Presidential race on downballot elections in Texas and offers his criticism of it.

Guest Columnist JR Behrman at Texas Kaos has a few strong words about Energy Policy: Democrats Routed. He also has a Texas Plan.

Julie Pippert of the MOMocrats asks the Obama campaign to explain its absence in Texas after they announced the roll-out of their Spanish-Language ads as an outreach to Hispanic voters, then discusses a Senate proposal that would require 50% of US cars to have a flexible fuel system by 2012, and finally the MOMocrats share the draft of their position paper to be submitted to the Democratic National Committee for inclusion in the party platform.