More inductees into this week's Hall of Shame

So many morons tried to apply after the doors were closed that I finally had to weld the door shut on the previous post and start this one.

-- Let's begin with Dr. and Sen. Donna Campbell of San Antonio (and Wonkette). It's SFW but unsafe for your sanity.

Texas Doctor Senator Idiot Lady Says No Abortions Because Men Bleed From Their Butts

(Campbell) would just, as a doctor and a woman, prefer it if the great state of Texas require that abortion clinics meet the regulatory standards for surgical centers, which would just happen to shut down all the state’s abortion clinics but five. But she has a super-good reason for this: because men bleed from their butts, and if a man is bleeding from his butt, then in the ER “We have a surgeon on call. But we don’t have a surgeon on call for someone who is hemorrhaging from the uterus.” Dr. Sen. Campbell, y’all!
 
Most people watching this stream of consciousness performance art from Dr. Sen. Campbell would think: maybe if a woman shows up at the ER hemorrhaging from her uterus, the ER should be required to get a surgeon on call? That seems like it would be a good law. We think Dr. Sen. Campbell should introduce it.

Yes, there is video of her saying these things.



-- RNC chair Rinse Pubis Reince Preibus believes that the fountain of all wisdom in regard to GOP recruitment efforts and gay marriage -- and even women's reproductive rights -- flows from Fox News commentator Mike Huckabee. Some of The Huckster's musings on the topics are republished at the link.

The Onion and Andy Borowitz meeting together in committee could not come up with anything more hilariously ironic than that.

-- The man who could turn Texas blue: Rick Perry.

Rejecting the federal money (for Medicaid expansion) might not pose an immediate political threat to Texas Republicans, whose coalition revolves around white voters responsive to small-government arguments. But renouncing the money represents an enormous gamble for Republicans with the growing Hispanic community, which is expected to approach one-third of the state’s eligible voters in 2016. Hispanics would benefit most from expansion because they constitute 60 percent of the state’s uninsured. A jaw-dropping 3.6 million Texas Hispanics lack insurance.

Texas Democrats are too weak to much affect the Medicaid debate. But if state Republicans reject federal money that could insure 1 million or more Hispanics, they could provide Democrats with an unprecedented opportunity to energize those voters—the key to the party’s long-term revival. With rejection, says Democratic state Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas, Republicans “would dig themselves into an even deeper hole with the Hispanic community.”

In 1994, California Republican Gov. Pete Wilson mobilized his base by promoting Proposition 187, a ballot initiative to deny services to illegal immigrants. He won reelection that year—and then lost the war as Hispanics stampeded from the GOP and helped turn the state lastingly Democratic. Texas Republicans wouldn’t be threatened as quickly, but they may someday judge their impending decision on expanding Medicaid as a similar turning point.

This is absofuckinglutely dead solid accurate. It's also the last shred of logic that might change the governor's mind before the current legislative session expires... or finally flush his presidential aspirations down the toilet and out to the Gulf of Mexico.

I would prefer the former at the terrible price of losing the latter.

-- The only person who comes close to being as violently, arrogantly ignorant as Rick Perry appears to be the new owner of the Houston Astros, Jim Crane.

Larry Dierker will no longer be a part of the Astros organization after April 15, and his departure will be a wrenching moment for anyone who has been a fan of Major League Baseball in this city for the last half-century.

Dierker, the former Astros pitcher, broadcaster and manager who made his Houston debut in 1964 at age 18, said this week he turned down a new contract with the Astros that included personal appearances and studio work on Comcast SportsNet Houston because he did not consider such duties to be “meaningful.”

[...]

Dierker acknowledges he was angry and upset that he did not get the CSN game analyst’s job vacated by Jim Deshaies, and that’s understandable. His booth work was a significant transition between his days as one of the best pitchers in franchise history in the 1960s and ‘70s and his five years (1997-2001) as arguably the most productive manager in the team’s history.

He was, and is, one of the most popular figures associated with the Astros, and he could have spent the next few seasons signing autographs at Larry’s Big Bamboo at Minute Maid Park and chatting about the Astros during CSN’s pre- and postgame shows.

The effronteries just keep piling up: the switch to the AL, the fire-sale destruction of the team that began under Uncle Drayton and has been continued by Crane, the animosity over TV contract negotiations that began months ago with the Rockets and now linger into spring. It might even be appropriate to mention that in a market that worships the Bushes, playing golf with Obama was a bad PR move. (Even the timing of the golf game, not to mention Crane's O&G investments, is not enough to overcome the disgrace of being in a foursome with Tiger Woods, US trade representative Ron Kirk, and the president. Crane's still overcompensating for those ugly racial rumors that surfaced during the due diligence period of his purchase of the team, it appears.)

How could a guy so rich be so stupid? When points of view as disparate as super-agent Scott Boras and fossil/MLB analyst Peter Gammons agree that the Astros will suck for a long, long time, you might be risking your fan base and your current revenue stream and perhaps even the long-range value of your investment. Everybody seems to understand this except Crane and George Postolos and whatever else serves as a brain trust over on Crawford Avenue.

-- Got any more nominees for the HOS? Put them in the comments. But please, no Ted "Carnival" Cruz. I've made it this far ignoring him; I'm going to press on.