What’s The Matter With Texas?

From a 2011 column by Paul Krugman:

I can’t be the only person watching Rick Perry’s performance as a presidential candidate and wondering, how did this guy become a Texas political legend, an unstoppable force who never lost? Did nobody ever ask him a slightly hard question before? 

So I asked my favorite Texan, aka my wife, and she said, “Texas is feudal”. Meaning that Perry was the candidate of the bidness community, and in Texas, what bidness wants, bidness gets.

So Perry’s a business puppet. K.  He does whatever his corporate overlords dictate. Gotcha.

And what about this next shit stain? Was he dropped on his head, repeatedly, at birth? How did he get elected? Were all the women folk locked in closets that day?

From RH Reality Check:

Rep. Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler) put forward an amendment that would make it illegal to terminate a pregnancy after 20 weeks, even if a fetus “has a severe and irreversible abnormality,” effectively forcing families with wanted, but unsustainable pregnancies to carry to term at the behest of the state and against the advice of their doctors or their own wishes.

The painfully missed Texan, Molly Ivins succinctly put the whole late term abortion in perfect focus.

"I almost get the impression that somebody thinks women don't have no moral sense at all. No woman who is seven months pregnant, ever waddles past an abortion clinic and says, 'Darn, I knew there was something I've been meaning to get around to.'

This is ridiculous. You have those late-term abortions, because either the mother is going to die, the child is going to die, or both are going to die."

Schaefer said that suffering is “part of the human condition, since sin entered the world.”

He really, actually, truly said that.

Hey you! Yeah you, the diseased, rat fucking, midget dicked,  suppurating pemphigus sore standing over there trying to turn back the clock to the Dark fucking Ages. I hope that no one ever has the astronomically poor judgment and/or heinously low self esteem to become involved with you. I hope you die painfully and alone.

Then there’s the whole Jade Helm brouhaha.

In response to the current Senator Loon Brain’s statement—"Just because you're paranoid," said Ted Cruz, "doesn't mean they're not out to get you,"—the always spot on, wise and knife’s edge witty Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station had this, amongst much else, to say

And just because you have the word "Senator" in front of your name doesn't mean you're sane, rational, qualified to run the country, or have an IQ higher than that of a sea cucumber. 

Seriously, somebody help me out here: what the fuck happened to Texas?

Go read the whole column. He explains the strange hysteria which has gripped the Lone Star state and brings the reality and...well...more reality.

Texas wasn’t always like this, was it? Anne Richards was the powerhouse governor and Molly Ivins was the mega tart, witty, respected and renowned journo. Biography.com refers to Richards as “feisty.” Dunno if the person who wrote the bit understands how condescending, twee and insulting that term is. Would Rick (Braindead) Perry ever be referred to as “feisty.” Nope—that’s an adjective used for old people and women who don’t play the girlie girl card.

Now the state has (and boasts!) Perry, Ted Cruz, Louis Gohmert, Matt Schaefer and a host of other brain deadedly Tea Bagging bits of snail excrescence.

The always awesome Charles Pierce had this to say amongst other things:

The voters in the state of Texas would prefer Louie Gohmert, the lowest watt bulb in what is an admittedly dim chandelier, to Julian Castro, one of the best young candidates the Democratic party in that state has to offer. And they would do so by nine fking points. A full nine percent more of them would vote for a man who thinks people are sneaking into the country to have babies for the purposes of having them grow up to be terrorists, who thinks pipelines are good because caribou like to hump next to them, who thinks the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the White House, who thinks the Aurora theater shooting was God's angry vengeance for the absence of prayer in the schools, and who nominated Allen West for Speaker of the House after West already had lost for re-election. This isn't sending your government off the rails. It's sending it over a cliff, lighting it on fire on the way down, and feeding the flaming embers to great white sharks with asbestos mouths.

I have a niece who lives down there! Mind you, she’s in Austin—a bastion of sanity in that vast sea of batshittedness. She was born and raised there as was her mother, my beloved Helen. I have other equally sane, wonderful friends down in this cesspool of crazy.

I worry. I fret. I'm concerned for their safety.

Is there some nutso, paranoiac, racist, sexist and just generally reality blocking drug in the water supply?