Greg Abbott, well known for doing everything wrong, is already sitting in seat 1A on the Crazy Train to 2022.  Because he has primary opponents to his right (if that’s even possible), he’s desperately trying to get farther right and has already targeted women, minorities, women who are minorities, children, the poor, the sick, and anyone not in perfect health.  As part of this targeting, Abbott had the great idea of taking immigration at the southern border away from the feds and empowered local law enforcement and state police to arrest anyone they suspected of crossing the border and being on private property.  The charge?  Trespassing.  The scheme includes not bothering with constitutional rights by quickly convicting, then jailing the immigrants.  When their sentences are served, they are then sent to the Border Patrol for deportation.  It’s illegal as hell, and Abbott knows it, but doesn’t care.

About 1,300 people have been prosecuted under Abbott’s scheme, and apparently that’s not enough, so apparently what’s happening is that when local law enforcement finds someone crossing the border on federal or federal land, the walk them to a ranch or other private property, THEN arrest them for trespassing.  The Val Verde County prosecutor just dropped trespassing charges against 11 men who claim they were apprehended, marched to a private ranch and ordered to climb a fence onto the property when they were promptly arrested.  Conveniently, there was no police body cam video from any of the officers involved in the arrest.  The case was so sketchy that the prosecutor determined the arrest was not prosecutable.

As anyone who is paying attention knows, the problem here is not fixed at the border.  It’s fixed in countries south of the border by forcing (and funding) countries in Mexico, Central and South America to root out corruption and crime as well as providing economic opportunity in these people’s home countries.  We also simply must stop allowing immigration to be a once every two years wedge issue and reform the system of entering the country into a workable system rather than allowing chaos to reign.  There is a solution to this problem, and politicians like Abbott are the wrong people to find it.

The Texas legislature, over long opposition by Democrats and the majority of Texans, passed the most radical voter suppression law of 2021, making Texas the worst state in the union to exercise the Constitutional right to vote.  The GOP knuckle draggers rammed through a bill that wiped out very popular voting alternatives such as drive through voting, extended voting hours, and easy vote by mail rules.  They also empowered partisan goons to intimidate voters at the polls, and criminalized mistakes an honest voter might innocently make.  In short, GOP Fuckheads pushed us back to the days of poll taxes, arbitrary voter tests, and Jim Crow laws with Jim Crow 2.0.

Zero days since Texas was a National Embarrassment, racing other Red States to the bottom.

A concerned parent from Bethany Elementary School in Plano ISD in Plano, Texas forwarded me the PTA newsletter that went out to parents today, as the school grapples with numerous outbreaks of COVID-19. Anna Hulse, the PTA President at Bethany Elementary gathered the following information that proves the impossible circumstances faced by parents, like me, who feel we have no safe education options for our children in Texas public schools.

Chris Hill, the Collin County Judge, is full-on trolling the parents in Collin County with Facebook posts asking parents “WTF is wrong with you?” and “Freedom is more important than education,” when parents challenge him and his interpretation of the law. Well, that freedom has consequences. As of today, 14,000 public school students have tested positive in the state. 15% of all Texans with COVID last week were public school students and staff.

Willam Joy is a reporter for DFW News station WFAA Channel 8

The following Newsletter outlines exactly how few options Texas parents have:

Y’all, Texas politicians are playing politics with our children’s lives in a way that I’ve really never seen in my lifetime. I’ve contacted so many officials and everyone keeps passing the buck all the way up to Governor Abbott, who won’t make any changes no matter how many Texas students fall ill, in order to have a better chance in the next primary against Allen West and Don Huffines.

Four days after the start of the school year, I did something that I never imagined I would do: I unenrolled my 5th grader from public school.  As an avid supporter of and true believer in public schools, this is a decision I never thought I’d make.

I’m a reasonable parent. Knowing there would be no mask mandate, I sent my child in a mask and encouraged her to take reasonable precautions. She is too young to be vaccinated. Our children’s hospitals are full, so I worry that she wouldn’t get adequate care if she got sick or even broke a leg.  I observed that many students weren’t wearing masks, including the student that sits next to her. Hmm.

I decided to call the nurse and ask what the procedure is if there is a COVID case in the classroom. The nurse told me that the TEA would not, at that time, allow for parents to be told if a child has COVID in their class. This changed a couple of days later – the TEA changed guidance to say that if a child gets sick in my kid’s class, I get a notification. So I asked the nurse – do the children have to quarantine if they are exposed to COVID-19?

Her answer: No, it’s a personal choice. Upon notification of positive cases in my child’s class, I observed that children in that class were being sent back to school, without masks, after being exposed. Not many parents were making the choice to quarantine.

I asked the nurse if the schools would be contact tracing. The school nurse informed me that Collin County is in charge of contact tracing and that the school reports every positive case to the county. I called the county, and the county informed me that they are not doing any contact tracing, they just send the reports up to the state. The state is very understaffed and they have made no attempts to contact trace, based on the accounts of several people I know that were exposed in a classroom and have not been contacted.

So we had no masks, no contact tracing, no quarantine. It’s no surprise that my daughter’s school has more than one positive case in every 5th grade classroom as we speak. My kid wasn’t exposed because I pulled her out Monday, and I’m not sending her back until she is vaccinated.

Texas politicians have put politics over children’s health and safety. They’re not making any attempt to mitigate this disease. This year, our kids are going to see teachers die, students hospitalized, and they will all get this infection that may damage their lungs permanently. All because Abbott wants to win a primary.

I’m angrier than I’ve ever been at Republicans, and that’s saying something.

Yesterday this photo started floating around social media and it fits Abbott’s re-election campaign better than any I’ve seen so far…

A picture is worth 1,000 words.  Or, more appropriately, 54,819, today’s current count.

It will come as no surprise that Greg Abbott is now infected with Covid-19 and no one knows how many people he spread the disease to before the announcement today.  Just last night he appeared at a Collin County GOP fundraiser where hundreds of attendees  were maskless and refused to social distance.  Who knows how many knuckle dragging anti-vaxxers were in the room.

Another standing room only event in Collin County tonight.

Thank y’all for the enthusiastic reception.

Let's keep this energy up and send a message that Texas values are NOT up for grabs in 2022. pic.twitter.com/wlPZyrHpx3

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) August 17, 2021

This won’t be a wake up call, though, since Abbott is desperate to be re-elected so he can prepare for the presidential race in 2024.  He doesn’t care if Texans live or die…it’s all about staying in power.  No matter who has to die for him to do it.

On top of everything else we call him, we can now call him #superspreadergreg