Are You There, God? It's Me, Dick.

I haven’t talked about Texas’ whack-job drooling idiot governor, Dick Perry, for a while.

I didn't think he could get that far.

It’s not that he hasn’t been busy. The Texas Legislature is about to begin its 83rd session, and he’s been warming up by posturing and talking smack about the people he apparently was elected to govern, although not by me, because whack-job drooling idiot. High on his agenda is making sure everyone knows that the crippling cuts he approved to the state’s education system won’t be restored just because some lefty conspiracy-theory nuts think the economy is recovering and tax revenues are on the rise. Or because his own comptroller admitted that she somehow underestimated state revenue (and subsequently Texas’ budget for two years) to the tune of $12 billion. That’s no reason to appropriate funds to our overcrowded schools and underpaid teachers, says Gov. Dick Perry.

He’s also been working hard to ensure that poor and uninsured women of Texas are denied access to health services. See, his GOP good old boys crafted a law stating that if the state’s Women’s Health Program provided even one dollar to the evil baby-killers at Planned Parenthood, which currently serves approximately 50,000 women, the entire program would be defunded. Isn’t that clever? Because clearly it’s better that 10,000 women go without breast cancer screening than a single one get to decide what to do with her own body.

Before you know it, we'll want to wear shoes and leave the house.

But the thing that finally nudged me to devote today’s post to Gov. Dick Perry is his latest pronouncement on gun control. Namely, his statement this week that the most effective deterrent to gun violence is…prayer. Not regulation, not stricter laws, but prayer.

In response to President Obama's new gun control proposals, Gov. Dick Perry said that passing laws to reduce gun violence is for goddamn pussies. Basically, we all need to pray to not be the kind of person who would shoot up a movie theatre or a mall or an elementary school. And then God will grant those prayers, and nobody will ever pick up an assault rifle and slaughter innocent people again. Because God grants all prayers, with the possible exception of the prayers of gun victims’ families that their loved ones would come home safely to them and not be mowed down in senseless acts of violence by an asshole with a military-style arsenal in his basement.

We're supposed to take away people's guns because
their families didn't pray right? Please.

In the eyes of Gov. Dick Perry, placing sensible restrictions on dangerous weapons is unconstitutional. But an elected official sponsoring a giant prayer rally, railing against separation of church and state, and now proposing prayer as a substitute for legislation is the kind of bullshit that gets you re-elected indefinitely in a paranoid red state A-OK.

God help us. Amen.