Monday, July 12, 2021

Waiting-to-Testify (*updated with Walkout) Wrangle

The lines were long, the wait lasted the entirety of Saturday and proceeded well into daylight Sunday morning ... and it was all for naught.  As expected.


Bus loads secured by Sen. Borris Miles.

A Texas House committee voted early Sunday morning to advance to the floor a GOP-backed voting bill in the Texas Legislature that includes extensive new voting restrictions, the Texas Tribune reports.

Right along party lines.



That's Sen. Bryan Hughes, far right, looking at the ceiling.  He of the egregious exaggerations.



In defending his controversial voting bill on CNN on Sunday, Texas state Sen. Bryan Hughes claimed half a dozen times that the attorney general's office had 400 open voter fraud cases.

“That's the fact,” Hughes, R-Mineola, said in an interview with CNN host Pamela Brown. “It's documented. There's no question about that.”

Yet that number is almost 10 times larger than the number of people with pending voter fraud charges in Texas, which is 43, according to data from the attorney general’s office. Only one of those pending cases stems from the 2020 election, in which more than 11 million Texans cast ballots.

Sorry, Sen. Hughes; that's not the fact.  There are more than questions about that, especially regarding your -- and Ken Paxton's -- continued insistence that this falsehood is true.


Sen. Royce West took his (graceful) shot.


You'll see and hear (I have to read with closed captions) Sen. West say '43 cases'.  The 44th occurred at the end of last week.


Greg Abbott went on Chris Wallace's Sunday morning program and chose to get, shall we say, exotic with his rationalizations.


Abbott, Paxton, Hughes, et.al. are obviously gaslighting, but Texas Democrats are trying to teach these pigs to sing by offering actual facts, truth and logic to them.  They are not going to be persuaded.  Because if it ain't in the Bible, they don't need to know it.  Exhibit A:


Back to Reality: do you think Abbott and Luis Saenz and the rest of the governor's brain trust sit around and spitball these, or does he just make them up off the French cuff?  Because I'm beginning to wonder who he/they think they're fooling.

On the other hand, I -- and everybody else -- know exactly who he's fooling.


In a survey of 446 Republican primary voters conducted between June 14-17 by Public Opinion Strategies, 77 percent of primary voters said they would vote for the Governor, while 15 percent said they would select another Republican candidate.

[...]

The poll found in a hypothetical primary race, Abbott won 69 percent of the vote, while (former RPT chair Allen) West received 13 percent and (former state Sen. Don) Huffines had 3 percent. Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller also received 3 percent, but since the poll was conducted, he has decided against running for governor and will instead run for re-election.

Abbott fares better among those who consider themselves “strong” Republicans, who represent 61 percent of primary voters. He received 75 percent of the vote, while West won 11 percent, and Huffines had 3 percent. Eight percent were undecided.

All of this business, or con job if you prefer (I do) regarding the voter suppression bill is leading in one direction; a path we've been down before.


I don't think they're bluffing, Governor.

Update: And sure enough, they weren't.


Since I've run long here, I'll put the bail bill (hearings and passage out of committee also done over the weekend), summaries of the laundry list of other neo-fascist legislation, a few more election items, the spike in COVID's Delta variant cases, criminal and social justice news -- including the surge of gun-related deaths -- and whatever else I have left in posts later this week.  Also Part 2 of the environmental collation.  Soothers to close.

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Sunday, July 11, 2021

Sunday "Delta is Ready" Funnies

Which brings us to this piece of gaping idiocy, and I’m not in the habit of expressing my disapproval in quite such stark terms, but we are, after all, talking about Ben Garrison, who delights in over-the-top attacks and who has not only failed to read Don Quixote but hasn’t even grasped the concept of “tilting at windmills.”

Which failure, Derf Backderf points out and documents, he has demonstrated over and over, because, if you’re going to act the fool in public, why not repeat your folly?

And Garrison hilariously follows up: "When a Quixotic Analogy is Wrong but Still Right".

Please support the work of (lefty, intelligent) cartoonists here.
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Friday, July 09, 2021

The Environmental Round-Up, Part 1

Long promised, finally delivered.  It's not all about Texas, as most of my blogging this year has been; the state of the planet -- as much as our Great State's contribution to the climate crisis -- is what's been on my mind.

And the news is bad for any of you who may not have been paying attention.  I decided I'd just embed a few Tweets from the past few weeks to convey that, and keep them in some kind of loose chronological order, unless there was a point to be made by skipping a few days forward or back.

If you're like me, you won't be able to read to the end.  That's okay.  It's a lot to absorb.  Come back later when you feel stronger, or bookmark for weekend reading.  Just don't bury your head in the sand, or in your hands.

We're past the point of mourning.


Where should we start playing the blame game?  Sixty-four years ago, as referenced above?  Fifty?


More recently?


We already know ExxonMobil bought these guys off.  Let's maybe fault the actual source of the greed and corruption.


That's it for now.  More bad news, some good news, some local (i.e. the Permian, coastal Texas and even poor, forsaken Lake Charles, La.) coming in Part 2.
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