Sunday Funnies
“If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.” – Jimmy Buffett
Welcome to another installment of Life Its Ownself. If you like what you read, please 1) hit the Like button at the bottom of this post, 2) subscribe to this newsletter, and 3) tell your 1,000 best friends to read and subscribe. Also, feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Sunday, April 11, 2026
Donald Trump graced the world with more Deep Thoughts from El Caudillo™ this morning, adding yet another twisted plotline to the World’s Worst Reality TV Show:
That’s right: because Iran has not lifted its blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, the United States Navy will now also blockade the Strait, focusing on those vessels that have paid Iran’s alleged “toll” for transiting the Strait. Meanwhile, the “cease-fire” of which Trump is so proud continues to be ignored by the Israels (still bombing Lebanon) and Iran (still taking potshots at the oil infrastructure of our allies in the Gulf).
Trump speculated last week that he might like to get in on the Iranians’ toll-charging racket, but did not mention that in this morning’s post. However, we all know that in Trump’s mind, the distance between “THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted,” to levying his own $1-per-barrel fee on oil is a very small one.
This is Trump’s version of “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Meanwhile, in Texas, our homegrown kakistocracy continues to prove itself worthy of the “MAGA” title. (Is there a MTGA – Make Texas Great Again? Since the GOP has been running the state tip to toe for thirty years, when wasn’t Texas great?)
You may recall that last year the GOP leadership finally succeeded in passing the voucher bill they’d been fighting for since James Leininger started throwing money around like confetti in the early 2000s. They finally solved the major obstacle to passage, which turned out to be rural legislators, almost exclusively Republican, who insisted on representing their constituents a) for whom the local schools were a big employer and the center of community life, and b) who had no prospects of seeing a private school in their sparsely-populated areas.
(Greg Abbott celebrates blurring the lines
between Church and State at a rally in Houston.)
Greg Abbott had a brilliant, and ultimately successful, strategy:
1) Carpet-bomb their districts with unholy amounts of money from the pro-voucher industrial complex; and
2) Accuse the recalcitrant legislators of being pro-trans athletes, or pro-open borders, or pro-Democrat (gasp!) – anything except the truth, which was that they were pro-neighborhood schools, which is why they were targeted in the first place.
And so, the political preconditions being met, a voucher bill finally passed. It allows vouchers of up to $10,000 to children attending private schools enrolled in the program, whether secular or sectarian. And of course, it is open to all religious affiliations, because to do otherwise would be blatantly unconstitutional (heck, even the Texas Constitution forbids discrimination based on religion).
When it came time to implement the law, though, Comptroller Kelly Hancock made an interesting discovery: all the Muslim-affiliated private academies that applied were effectively terrorist cells, under the sinister control of the Muslim Brotherhood or the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim equivalent of the NAACP or the Ancient Order of Hibernians.
Well, a group of Islamic schools sued to challenge the blackballing, saying the State had produced no convincing evidence that they had terrorist entanglements. A federal judge agreed, and ordered the state to allow these Muslim academies to enroll in the voucher program.
Much of this caterwauling occurred against the backdrop of the GOP primary, which we all hope will come to a merciful conclusion on May 26. Hancock was running against uber-rightwing former senator Don Huffines (Fun Fact: the current owner of the infamous Epstein “Zorro ranch” in New Mexico). Ken Paxton, who as Attorney General represented Hancock in the lawsuit, is in an expensive contest to unseat John Cornyn as the state’s senior senator.
After the State was poured out in federal court, Hancock sent a testy letter accusing the Attorney General’s Office of incompetence in its representation. Paxton replied with a letter withdrawing the AG’s Office from the case, castigating Hancock’s incompetent leadership of the Comptroller’s Office and urging Governor Abbott to replace him.
As things stand now, Hancock is a Dead Comptroller Walking, having been shellacked by Huffines in their primary race. Paxton is locked in what may be the most expensive Senate primary race ever against Cornyn. And Muslim-affiliated schools are eligible to receive vouchers, as Allah and the Founders intended.
The State appropriated $1 billion for the program this coming year – enough to provide vouchers for about 9,000 children. However, the Texas Observer reports that about 275,000 students have applied for a voucher, the vast majority of whom (78%) are already attending private schools or are homeschooled.
Depending on how the voucher vendor Odyssey – which has a spotty record in other states – makes its decisions, most of this taxpayer money could go to families that already have the resources to provide a private education for their kids. The rich get richer … you know the rest.
And, of course, very little will go to rural communities – 148 of Texas’s 254 counties do not have a private school within them.
A cynic may well ask, “Was all this Sturm und Drang over vouchers really about improving educational opportunity for Texas schoolchildren, or was it about the State subsidizing yet another private industry with political money to burn?
When you put it that way, it sounds kinda bad.
🤣you put it that way it sounds kinda bad😂
I like the line, "Either open the Strait of Hormuz or I'm closing the Strait of Hormuz." I think that succinctly sums up the entirety of the Trump administration.