Prez Perry

Looks like the new Republican frontrunner is none other than Texas nut burger, dumb-as-a-box-of hammers tool Rick Perry. And he’s a toss-up with Obama in the general election. This a rather sobering prospect, y’all.

Consider Governor Rick's legacy:

• 27 percent of Texas workers lack health insurance compared to 17 percent nationally.
• Fewer than half (48 percent) of the state's workers have access to a retirement plan at work.
• Texas ranks 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores, 36th in the nation in high school graduation rates.
• An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma.
• Texas is 48th out of 50 states in the number of physicians per 100,000 residents.

All this in spite of the fact that Texas was the recipient of over $20 billion in stimulus money in 2010 (half a billion of which he rejected because it would help the unemployed). What a douche.

Read more from the Michael Winship article in in Salon. Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos, former senior writer at "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS and current president of the Writers Guild of America.

I guess what I'm trying to say with this is, while we are beginning to really miss all the folks we left back in Ioway (and Illinois, etc.), we are given daily reminders of one of the reasons we left: the lack of a left.

On a lighter note, cousin Matt came to town. Just to show you what a small town Vancouver really is, here's the story in the Vancouver Sun.

Evelyn Cortes of the Dundarave Beach Tea Hut and Oscar-winning actor Matt Damon pause for a photo outside the West Vancouver concession stand. Damon was buying ice cream for a group of kids. Photograph by: Raymond Poirer, for North Shore News