ustxtxb_obs_2007_08_10_50_00035-00000_000.pdf

kind of lawsuit? What Texas judge would everever!—go along with that type of chickenshit lefty ankle-biting, which goes against the demonstrated will of the people and the longstanding traditions of the Great Republic of Texas? And even if Bingo were removed from office, that couldn’t possibly have meaningful implications for George Bush, the elder, who had lived in Washington D.C. for decades, maintaining a fig-leaf hotel room in Houston that, he claimed, made him a resident of Texas and presumptive heir to the state’s trove of electoral votes. Even though the vice president spent no more than a few weeks a year in town, no one would seriously consider the possibility that he, like Bingo Satwell, was not a Houston resident, and so could not vote or claim official residence there as he ran for the presidency. Even a communist newspaper reporter with a diseased brain like yours would realize that no real Texas prosecutor is going to go into court alleging that the vice president and probable next pres ident of the United States has been violating the election code for decades because he is officiallylegallynot a Texan, but still pretends to be, for his own political benefit, Jackie would assert in ever-rising, red-faced outrage that would be poured into a line, punctuated by a finger poking my chest, that I always laughed at, even though it isn’t particularly funny, and even though I always knew it was coming: Even someone like you knows that JUST COULDN’T POSSIBLY BEdon’t you, now, Yankeeboy? Well, don’t you? Now, this scenario was never anything more than an inside joke. It was never publicized or acted on, or even intended to be acted on. Its persistence through time, therefore, stands as testament to Jackie’s genius for enraging enemies. Even today, if you ask around Houston business circles, likely as not you’ll get the bug-eyed, spluttering insistence that Jackie Belfast is a complete charlatan, that it was all a malicious partisan mirage, that everything he did had a single aimto bring down a favorite son of Houston and the next president of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush! In reality, of course, l’affaire du Bingo was aimed entirely at bringing down … well, an amoral and energetic county constable named Bingo Satwell. Lined up in Jackie’s files were dozens of cases, everything from protection rackets for topless bars down to the pleasant little service known in Bingo parlance as wife-scaring, usually purchased during the latter stages of the divorce process. In Bingo Satwell’s Houston, you could discreetly obtain through law enforcement most everything that, in a normal American city, you’d have get from the mob or a street gang. Cheap hookers, arson that would be poorly investigated, quality cocaine taken from a busted dealer, political decisions that would make your business rivals wish they’d never been born, and, if nothing else worked, a simple, solid, tooth-loosening beatingit was all available, if you had AUGUST 10, 2007 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 35