Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Impeachment Trial
Okay, I’m watching the Paxton trial. I know it’s of small interest to people from foreign states, but cracks in the MAGA wall are riding on Paxton’s bloated back.
To be honest, I have seen some bad lawyering in my day but Paxton’s lawyer Tony Buzbee just about blew the bottom out of awful yesterday afternoon. First of all, he shows up with a Don Trump spray tan – so orange that he can just go nakkid for Halloween next month. He got himself a slicked-backed hair cut straight out of The Godfathers, when a Peaky Blinders cut would have looked slightly less ridiculous.
And then Rusty Hardin, who used to be a helluva lawyer 20 years ago, appeared confused, disorganized, and – God forbid! – boring. He got scrambled up over his own exhibit numbers, and monotoned his way through witness testimony with all the skill of a morning talk show host interviewing Dinah Shore, which might have been more interesting only because she’s dead. He’s 81 years old – and those were hard years.
Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick is in charge of the circus and the clowns. He he has to call recesses to go talk to his lawyers because he’s dumber than bean dip. He’s 74 years old, spritely by Texas legislature standards, but Honey, you just can’t cover up the bean dip part.
I gotta say this – I believe we are watching the painful last gasps of the straight white patriarchy. It’s about damn time. Old white men — hang it the hell up. You’re just making fools of yourself.
They got started 45 minutes late this morning, but they found a middle aged white woman to lead them all in prayer “in Jesus’ name.”
I’m talking a deep breath and drinking another cup of coffee to brace myself for today.
Paxton lawyer Tony Buzbee on the left. I’m serious. Compare his hands and his face. Dude, he ought to sue somebody for that.
Not watching but from the picture above, besides the spray tan, Mr Buzbee looks like he’s been holding his breath for a long time. Quite a skill to do that and make noise out of his upper food hole.
1Not watching but certainly pulling to see the paxton man kicked the hell out of office even though being a fraudster and crook is fashionable in the R party.
Isn’t Paxton also looking at criminal charges? Maybe find a lawyer who’s a little less George Hamilton.
2Buzbee is obviously an Oompa Loompa.
3I remember back when I was about 13 (or when, as my Dear Ol’ Dad used to say, “Christ was a Corporal”), self-tanning lotion came out and I was thrilled with the idea. I was one of those redheads with very pale skin under all those freckles and didn’t tan, but burned (and freckled, of course). Do I have to tell you how orange it turned me? With red hair and orange skin, I looked like a pumpkin.
On another note, the Texas Lege is obviously in need of some young men of color named Justin. Maybe you can import some from Tennessee.
4Watcha got in the coffee for painkillers. The good stuff I hope.
5Would love to watch, cheer, do a happy dance if there’s some form of justice that slaps him with all the fines and jail time he deserves. I’m sure his missus would be there with pom poms, too.
6ROFL Thank you Ms. JJ for the update and description of events only you can deliver. Well done!
And, yes please, end the old white male patriarchy. Talk about a group of crooks, failures and losers who almost make trickle down economics seem like a possibility for success after 4 decades of failing. Yep. Over two centuries of being wrong should at minimum demand a cease-and-desist order. Albeit some prison time would be delightful schadenfreude.
7After seeing Paxton’s squad from the MLA [Mob Lawyers Association], the only thing that could make this goat roping more interesting would be for Rep. Majorly Tetched Green to show up and sit in Ken’s lap to stiffen his resolve…
8Rats, misspelled ‘Greene”..
9Still funny, no matter how it’s spelled.
10BTW, You just know it’s going to be another hellish day in S TX when your PWS system emails you an alert notice like this :
“The temperature at AcuRite Iris® is above 100.0°F with a reading of 100.4°F at 12:10..”.
Yesterday’s high was 110+, and today is supposed to be higher, and Thursday and Friday even higher still [after months of this]. Don’t even ask about 125+ heat indexes [highest seen this summer was a 136deg HI…].
Ain’t no such thing as climate change/crisis though…
This morning long before sunrise, 0430, it was 90deg on one instrument and another read 93, both with RH [humidity] above 90%, giving dewpoints around 90deg [above high 60s-70s is considered miserably muggy]. Came inside to the aircon soaking wet again after chores.
Y’all give a thought to all the poor animals [and plants] out there in this hellscape..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index
11“The heat index (HI) is an index that combines air temperature and relative humidity, in shaded areas, to posit a human-perceived equivalent temperature, as how hot it would feel if the humidity were some other value in the shade.”
Been watching bits and pieces, very interesting, kinda like watching Andy of Mayberry! Lots of action though with
12Buzbee doing his best racoon look-a-like imitation and gotcha Perry Mason moments while cross examining Jeff Meeter!
Besides this trial, Buzbee launched a THC seltzer and, the real horro, he’s running for City Councilman from my district – noooo!
13I vote for shuffling off all the old white guys without a clue – I’m one of them, and retired(*) in 2020 mostly to make room for another generation. But keep in mind what the younger batch of Republicans contains. Santos, Tuberville, Gaetz, Greene, Boebert, Palin as well as the less noisy fools sent up by too many states. They’re only better than the old ones by being incompetent and so corrupt that they may just get filtered out by the justice system.
(*) Old professors never retire. On my last count I’m still on 7 Ph.D. committees, and while I’ve avoided administrative ones I’m being drafted into local political committees. High-powered stuff like the local farmer’s market one, or for bicycle lanes and parking. The heady heights of power, those are.
14I’ll tell you, I don’t know if I could have picked that lawyer out in a crowd. Good thing you described him so well. Ewww! He makes Tacopena and that new one look almost normal.
15The Surly Professor says: ” Old professors never retire.”
I retired from college teaching 18 years ago, but I’m still the parliamentarian for the Faculty Senate, and I’m on five different boards or commissions state-wide. People also still twist my arm to give the occasional lecture or lead a field excursion.
16Oh, wow! He actually showed up in public like that! Were there people trying to put space between him and themselves?
17Thanks so much for this.
18ProPublica has a good article about Paxton failing on one of the primary jobs of an AG: representing state agencies in lawsuits:
https://www.propublica.org/article/documents-reveal-ken-paxton-denial-record-state-agencies
Also, I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the reason Paxton has been able to stall his fraud case is that the state legislature moved the case from Austin (liberal city where it was filed) to a relatively remote rural district where the Good Ol’ Boys have been friendly to delaying it forever. Any recent Texans here can say if that’s true? It would explain the 7-8 years of nothing happening on that case.
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