Guys, here is an excerpt from my latest HuffingtonPost.com Off the Bus submission.  I'm too busy just yet to figure out how to "extend" a post.  I tried it once and the whole thing disappeared.  So until after the election, anyway, for this particular post, I'm going to post here the first few paragraphs and then provide the link to Off the Bus.

You can come back and comment here, or leave a comment there, or as always, you are more than welcome to visit the post or any of my others from way back over at my home site:  http://deaniemills.com

Boy, I wish Molly Ivins had lived to see this.

Back in 2000, with co-author Lou Dubose, Ivins wrote a book called, Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush. The premise of the book was stated in its introduction:

"Youthful political reporters are always told there are three ways to judge a politician. The first is to look at the record. The second is to look at the record. And third, look at the record."

Of course, nobody wanted to look at the record, since Dubya was just such a fun guy to have a beer with.

A few years later, she and Dubose wrote, Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America, in which she decried his "crony capitalism" and the resulting disaster of his presidency.

But again, America and especially Texas, ignored Molly, to their own peril, and put Shrub right back in the White House because hey, he just hadn't done enough damage the first four years to suit us.

You can't just blame the right-wingers who flooded to take over the state in the wake of Bush's gubernatorial hurricane. At the same time, Texan Democrats refused to leave their creaky old party houses in spite of numerous storm warnings, and seemed surprised when they lost not just the governorship, but the state House and Senate too, while the Wicked Wizard of the West, Tom DeLay, worked his dark magic to jerrymander the entire state to Republican hell.

After that, Democrats everywhere seemed to give up on Texas. It's so reliably red on all the polling maps that I'm surprised they even bother including it anymore.

Back in 2004, I tried in vain to find a state headquarters office for the John Kerry campaign. When that didn't work, I drove a hundred miles to attend a John Kerry meet-up.

Six people showed up.

Next, I drove a hundred miles in the opposite direction to find a local Democratic party field office. There was one in that city. I know because I called 'em on the phone. Then I drove up and down, up and down the street where it was supposed to be located, finally driving back home in disgust when I couldn't get an answer to my increasingly frustrated phone calls for help.

Later, I learned that the Democratic field office had been located in a spare room at the rear of a local government office. I guess you had to know a secret password to get in because there wasn't even so much as a blue bumper sticker in the window informing you that this was the Democratic Party field office for that city.

It's like they were embarrassed to be there or something.

So yeah, Bush took the state with something like a thousand points.

But it's different now, and if Molly could see what's going on in Texas these days, she'd let out a hoo-rah and a big laugh.

Texas politics are on the move, and for the first time in years, it's exciting to be a Democrat in this very red state. I'd like to tip my hat (as you can see in the photo, I actually have one), not just to Molly's memory, but to Sen. Barack Obama for making it happen.

(You can read the rest here at HuffPo:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deanie-mills/if-molly-ivins-could-only_b_139056.html or here at http://deaniemills.com  and I promise I'll figure out how to manage this new TPM software and get things right after the election!)