Hospitalizations and deaths are rising at an alarming rate in Texas, but not fast enough for Abbott and Paxton, who have been losing in lower state courts to school districts and counties desperately trying to protect their citizens and students from Abbott’s death plan.  In true Trumpian fashion, Abbott has been sowing chaos all over the state by banning all safety protocols that only morons and religious nuts oppose.  The chaos has overrun the hospitals, and now threatens to overrun the courts.  Yesterday, Abbott was handed two losses in quick succession, one in Dallas and the other in San Antonio, and concerned that the courts might be daring to protect Texans, Abbott instructed indicted felon Ken Paxton to run to the 100% GOP controlled Supreme Court to stop local governments from doing the right thing.  Said court generally follows the party line, backing business and corrupt politicians rather than protecting Texans, but this one really counts.  This is the test – will the judicial system of Texas once again rule against common sense and the common good, or will they surprise us?  I’m not holding my breath.

Florida, The State of Emergency, has another emergency – a nasty hurricane. Maybe not real nasty because it’s a hurricane named Fred. I mean, how nasty can Fred be?

I think maybe God hates Florida. Or, this could fall under the ‘karma is a bitch’ theology.

The Florida attorney general has set up a hotline to report price gouging. So, I was thinking wouldn’t it be cool if people would call the gouging hotline and report, “Hey, my insulin is now $300 a week.” Hell, regular everyday price gouging on things you need to stay alive would give those suckers something to do beside spreading a disease that eats your lungs.

But Governor DeSantis made sure to protect his friends.

Florida’s price gouging law only applies to items and services essential to preparing for or recovering from a storm within the areas of a state of emergency.

So I don’t guess insulin counts.  Thanks, Ron.

We have a focus meeting during the week of teacher orientation every year. A focus meeting is a district wide department meeting where we focus on curriculum and new instructional approaches. They have breakout sessions and this year they had a breakout section on media bias. Of course, the session was led by an instructional specialist that watches Fox News regularly. So, going in I wasn’t expecting much and I probably would have skipped it if I had been warned beforehand.

Yet, it was through this 45 minute session that I was able to cement something I have thought for a long time. We are teaching bias wrong. The materials included an infographic with all of the major media outlets being split into left, right, and center. It registered from far left to far right. Naturally, they put CNN and MSNBC on the far left with NewsMax, Fox, and OAN on the far right.

The implication was already clear based on looking at the infographic, but the instructor hammered home the point anyway. Fox News and CNN (or OAN and MSNBC) are basically the same thing. They are mirror images of each other. Simply seeing that straight off pissed me off. I’m not sure if that was the effect the instructor was going for. Even though I’m sure she was well meaning, the concept of media bias is a complex one. It exists on a number of fronts, and the lesson seemed to focus on one dimension.

Bias seeps into media in a number of different ways. The traditional way regards story choices and charged language. That’s what she showed us. The problem is more pervasive than that. Some networks/media outlets use facts and form opinions around those facts. It is rare to watch CNN or MSNBC and see them report something that wasn’t true. Sure, they focus on storylines that fit a particular narrative. They may pump up an issue as being more important than what someone else would report. However, they print and/or broadcast facts.

The outlets on the far right of the spectrum don’t. In particular, when you leave the news divisions of those particular networks the ratio of fact to fiction levels out significantly. Equating CNN and Fox News is itself a show of extreme bias. Certainly putting NewsMax and OAN in the same category as Fox News is problematic. Heck, they didn’t even mention Breitbart or InfoWars. Accounting for the bias in story selection or perspective is one thing. The lesson never accounted for the bias in whether reporting is actual factual.

Unfortunately, any kind of balanced approach to bias fails to capture what is really going on. This is one of the reasons why the media itself fails so often. They are dedicated to a both sides game where both sides are playing the game in the same way.That might be a balanced approach, but it certainly isn’t a truthful one. Sadly, the answer is not to fight fire with fire. The solution involves damning the torpedoes and telling it like it really is. Fox lies. OAN lies. Newsmax lies. Alex Jones lies. Breitbart lies. It’s one thing to simply disagree on how to interpret a fact. It’s another to make up our own facts. Sadly, as long as this is allowed to continue I’m not sure if we can ever really solve our country’s problems.

Yesterday, a parent responded to his refusal to mandate masks in schools despite the CDC recommendation that all schools must do so to protect the health of children against the delta variant. His response to his constituent on his official Facebook page starts with “WTH is wrong with you?”

Chris Hill also campaigned maskless in November, shaking the hands of many of his constituents. He later discovered he had COVID during this time, and then deleted all of the photos of himself campaigning without a mask.

Elections have consequences, Collin County. Specifically, tent hospitals, refrigerated body trucks, children on ventilators, and 870 fatalities.

Senator Ted Cruz representing the formerly Great State of Texas is totally up in arms about your children being mandated to wear a mask at school.

His daughters attend a ritzy private school in Houston and … oh, I don’t even need to finish that sentence before you start cringing.

Of course, they mandate masks.  This is the same school where parents were warned about international travel prior to spring break and they were not real happy about his daughters and Cancun.  They asked them to isolate for ten days when they returned.

You can see a screen shot of the school’s mask policy by clicking here.

I’m proud to let you know that my own personal county judge has filed a lawsuit against Governor Abbott’s cockamamie idea that he can control county government and schools with the wave of his hand.

But I’m not finished with Ted Cruz.  That hairy chunky guy with the enormous patootie totally shut down the voting rights bill.

There will not be a debate or any discussion because he’s that scared of reason, logic, and facts.  Honey, he’s stirring the fire with a sword and it’s gonna take some doing to get a consensus on anything with that kind of crap happening.

The news today was simultaneously shocking and expected all at the same time. Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation. It will officially take effect in a couple of weeks. His statement came with the usual caveats. He was doing it in the best interests of the state. He gave what seemed like a non-specific apology that admitted nothing. You know the drill.

For those that haven’t been paying attention, the writing was on the wall when an official investigation revealed that he had sexually harassed a number of women on his staff over the years. Add to that the scandal over a cover up on deaths in retirement homes and there was really no other direction that this could have gone for Cuomo.

Except, we all know that isn’t true. That’s what makes handicapping this thing so very hard. On the one hand, a resignation is the bare minimum that could have been expected, so praising anyone for the bare minimum seems ghastly. Yet, so many of our current politicians can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum. I suppose it’s the absence of shame.

We begin with the former president and the over twenty women that accused him of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and whatever else falls under that umbrella. We continue with Matt Gaetz and the persistent charges that he recruited underage women to travel and have sex with him. There is Jim Jordan and his role in the sexual abuse scandal back when he was a coach.

Then there are the numerous politicians that continue to kill their constituents. Cuomo is definitely responsible for his own decisions. Still, what’s the difference between that and Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis? The difference is that one of them is at least doing the bare minimum to own his shame.

We have seen a shift in American politics. The party of personal responsibility has become the Democrats. Al Franken resigned when he was ambushed by a series of charges. Now, Cuomo has resigned. The Republican party seems incapable of feeling shame. They double down on shame. They project that shame to others. They do everything but accept their own shame.

This creates a complex series of emotions. It’s hard to feel sorry for anyone that has been outed for bad behavior. It’s the kind of behavior that would get any of us fired a lot sooner. In some cases, it would land us in jail. Yet, it’s difficult to suppress the feelings for empathy for a group of people that take responsibility for things that others refuse to do for themselves. It’s hard to know what to do with these feelings. I guess I’m open to suggestions.