Most of my excess is in Texas

Here we are in Houston, Texas.  Yep, the freaking heart of darkness, the deep pulsing Mad Hatter of the tea party, the Bush family's 'secret volcano lair', a place so filled with 'hate' and 'fear' that a wayward sneeze can provoke a minor firefight.  Hope and Change?  They left on the last train for the coast.  Which is weird because the dang place is all but overwhelmed with people moving here from 'civilized' America, not to mention 'super-duper civilized' Europe.  All in all pretty damned popular for a notorious dystopia.

That's not to say that there aren't some pretty strange things going on in the Lone Star state.  Mimi and I took a stroll around my parents rather typical suburban Houston neighborhood on Thanksgiving and saw stuff that you don't see in more 'respectable' climes.  Like the beware of alligator signs.  And with so many Yankees visiting the local gendarmes (not that anyone would refer to them as such) felt compelled to add a warning for the holidays.  Because while it's easy to see the gators and avoid them - after all they are big, blackish and crawl on their bellies.  It is almost impossible to avoid a foraging liberal - they come in all sorts of cammo, have voracious appetites and will consume damn near anything.  Texans consider the species to be an invasive and noxious northern import.  The natives have tried innumerable strategies to get rid of them, even going so far as to get LBJ elected Vice President on the theory that he would lead them Pied Piper like all the way to Washington.  All with limited success.

They find that the most effective strategies are the most direct:  this is a custom liberal hunting truck.  The hunter sits up top with his weapon, Shiner Bock and his liberal calls including one that goes "subbsssideee! subbsssideee!"  and another that imitates the truly disgusting sound that taxes make when they're being raised.  Which you wouldn't think would work but the free range liberal is a rather gullible creature that runs in large, ignorant herds.  Indeed, the clever Texan can bag his (rather generous) limit in one swoop if they can persuade the beasts that universal health care is just on the other side of that tiny 200ft drop off.  There is actually a new call that does precisely that but it's encountered copyright issues as it only works when Barack Obama's voice does the call.

Anyway, Texans are resigned to this chronic low level problem, one that tends to go with territory when you're attracting massive in-migration from the rest of the country.  No matter how much you fumigate a few are going to get through, survive and even thrive.  After all this isn't California or New York.  This is Texas: no matter how misguided or misbegotten all of God's children have a shot here.