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.

I am a proud native Texan. I’m the product of Texas schools, from 1st grade in Cypress, TX to UNT and UH. In fact, for the totality of my life and the life of my children, we have been legally compelled by the state to attend a school or we face truancy charges. The law mandates that the state is responsible for ensuring every child in Texas is educated. I like that law – overall, it makes Texans smarter, better people, and fuels the economy so we can enjoy these beautiful skies and all the natural resources Texas has to offer.

Lately, I love my state less and less. I’m a mom. I’ve got a freshman in high school who is fully vaccinated against COVID as of today, and a 10 year old who is too young to be vaccinated. Next week, this kid will go back to school, wearing a mask, but the teachers around her will not be permitted to tell the other children that might be sick to wear a mask to protect her and her peers.

One of my closest friends is an ICU nurse administrator at my local hospital, so I happen to know that we have no COVID beds left in my city and that the Children’s ICU/COVID beds are full and not accepting transfers for trauma. I know that the patients in those beds are getting less care than usual because nurses are taking double their patient load – even patients requiring 1:1 care are getting 1:2 care. School has been out for months here, so the daily exposure to hundreds of children isn’t happening. But next week, it starts.

Despite the new data coming out about the delta variant of COVID and how contagious it is to people who are vaccinated, Governor Abbott has tied our hands behind our back. We give our kids a mask and send them out into the world knowing that, vaccinated or not, the new Delta variant will likely infect them if they are exposed. We sigh with relief that our older, vaccinated children will likely fight this variant off and hold our breath that our younger children do not become seriously ill. We could prevent this infection with smart public health policy, but our Governor needs to win a primary. He has mandated that our school district can not require vaccinations for COVID nor can they require mask-wearing. Not under any circumstances.

Our school cannot offer online learning for the children who are immunocompromised because they don’t have the funding – much of the funding in our wealthy district is taken and given to the rural districts that voted for this school funding system so they can build giant football palaces in the middle of the great plains. Children who can’t risk getting COVID will have to be withdrawn from school, and those parents will have to find some way to care for and educate them while also trying to work. If they do not educate the child, they will face jail time for truancy. Teachers who are high-risk or immunocompromised choose between their health and their career.

Texas moms and dads who are facing this reality right now feel powerless. We are like big mama bears with our hands tied behind our backs and just a snap away from being able to bite the man who has tied our hands up. Those of us that are not part of the vast right-wing conspiracy universe see this for what it is: lunacy. We are a Republic, not a libertarian Wild Wild West. It is my hope that the apathetic, non-voting working people and parents of Texas finally wake up to what is going on in our government and vote these guys out.

I don’t know if Beto O’Rourke can win the race, but I fear he is the only candidate who has the name recognition to do it state-wide. I call on him to risk his political future and run for Governor, knowing full well that another huge loss like this will likely end his political career. I think he cares about Texans and if he can walk back his “I’m going to take your guns” comment, he is the only candidate with the fundraising power to challenge Greg Abbott’s corruption campaign chest filled with millions from big donors.

Complete disregard for the health and safety of children has to be the line, doesn’t it? The line where we don’t sit back and take this political nonsense anymore?

I’ve run out of colloquialisms about how mad I am at the Texas Government. Y’all give me your best in the comments if you don’t mind me using them in the future. I’m madder than ….. (fill in the blank)

The Texas Observer ran this story. I’ll do my best to sum it up but y’all go read the details over there- it’s good work.

Let’s review the facts:

• Texas power grid fails and hundreds of Texans die
• Texans who live suffer billions of dollars in damage from broken pipes and water damage (My personal number was $3,544.00)
• Kelcy Warren’s company, Energy Transfer Partners, makes $2.4 Billion in that same week
• Greg Abbott assures Texans all that can be done to fix the grid is done (you be the judge – here’s what they did)
• Kelcy Warren donates a cool $1 million dollars to Greg Abbott’s re-election campaign.

I assumed it was some kind of violation of election finance law for any one person to donate such a huge sum to a campaign. I checked and sure enough, as of May 2015 an individual can make a donation of any amount to a campaign. (Who was governor in May of 2015? Greg Abbott).

The blatant corruption is exhausting. I’m more tired than a one-legged woman in an ass-kicking contest.

Since Dems went to DC to air their grievance over voter suppression laws, Texas Trump Republicans are twisting themselves into knots trying to vilify them.  There’s talk from everyone from Abbott down to Brisco Big Hat Cain talking about vacations, fundraising, “cushy private jets”, so on and so forth, but the one that takes the cake is Trump Republican strategist Corbin Casteel, who said, “[The Democrats are] walking out the door right when they have an opportunity to get their staff paid when they’ve been complaining about it.  It’s a double-edged sword. They may be able to hold off on the voter integrity bill but they’re also screwing their own staff.”  Casteel is referring to the legislative staff, who’s paychecks stop on August 31 due to Abbott’s pocket veto of funding as retaliation for not getting his top priority bill passed in regular session.  That priority to fix the power grid, you ask?  No, silly, the voter suppression bill that makes it harder to vote in that state that is already the hardest in the nation to vote.

So, Abbott and the GQP are resorting to the same mob tactics as Trump – break something and then threaten the victims who don’t cave in to their demands.  Abbott could fix the problem he created with the stroke of a pen, and pressure will mount on him because he’s punishing Republican staffers with the same mob tactic.  We all know, including the Republicans pushing The Big Lie, that the whole “election integrity” issue is bullshit.  This entire issue is a desperate effort to cling to power.

So let’s be clear who the villains are – Abbott and his enablers in the statehouse, who are taking unprecedented actions to pander to their Trump base and keep people from voting.  It’s anti-democratic, unAmerican, and most certainly unTexan.  They must be stopped, and that will only happen at the federal level.

As was widely reported this morning, Texas Democrats have decided to take their big blue butts to Washington, D.C. today. This will deny Texas Republicans the quorum they need to pass restrictive voting legislation that they were unable to pass in the regular legislative session, earlier this year. Whether they can be arrested outside of the state is unclear, but the House rules about the arrests are as follows:

“All absentees for whom no sufficient excuse is made may, by order of a majority of those present, be sent for and arrested, wherever they may be found, by the sergeant-at-arms or an officer appointed by the sergeant-at-arms for that purpose, and their attendance shall be secured and retained. The house shall determine on what conditions they shall be discharged.”

It’s a ballsy move by the Democrats and I am glad they are doing it. In terms of whether their reason is “sufficient” or not, the sergeant-at-arms will have to travel quite a long way to find them. They’ll have to stay gone for a while, as Abbott can continue to call a special session at least through the end of the summer.

Now, if the special session addressed the power grid or some other substantive legislation instead of Abbott’s campaign materials, I’d feel differently. This entire special session is a waste of the state’s time and money. There’s no reason to restrict the distribution of mail-in ballots. My granddaddy’s been voting by mail since he retired from the postal service in 1986 and he always gets an application mailed to him.

During the pandemic, my shero and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo successfully implemented drive-thru voting and 24 hour voting. Hidalgo allowed both Democrats and Republicans to vote using both of these options so I don’t know what the Republicans are so pissy about. Instead of trying to block Democratic counties to vote, they should be working on turning out their own voters. Instead, they call a special session to try and eliminate any voting technology or innovation faster than you can say “Varmint.”

Of course, for the last twenty years, the Republicans have made their tent so small that Greg Abbott might be seen as too liberal to govern in the upcoming gubernatorial primary, so it seems that winning more voters isn’t going to happen. All they’ve got left is meanness and trickery. If we don’t vote these schmucks out we get the legislature we deserve.

Governor Abbott, who is slimier than a bucket of snails, has called a special session of the Texas legislature. It is well within his right to do – as a Texas Governor can call a special session for any reason she wishes just so long as she states a reason. In this case, he has outlined 13 reasons that are so important that the Republican majority legislature failed to pass them in a regular session. I suggest you wipe your rear end with that memo and read my list, because it’s a hell of a lot more honest.

Reasons for calling a special session:

1. Democrats denied the legislature a quorum, and ain’t no way the GOP is gonna accept the fact that they lost a battle. See: Trump 2020 election.
2. He wants to distract from the power grid disasters of 2021 – there is no mention of doing any legislative work on the power grid or ERCOT, despite the fact that it’s the real elephant in the room – even bigger than Allen West running for Governor.
3. Texans must perform genital checks on children playing tee-ball.
4. One-upping his Republican primary opponents Huffines and West by using state funds to build a wall. He never seemed interested in doing so until he was up for re-election against GQP candidates crazier than him.
5. He needs to dog-whistle the racist voters by using the words “Critical race theory.”
6. Make it somehow harder for brown people to vote.
7. – 13. He’s campaigning for re-election. 

We all know that Abbott called this session to rile up his base. In his list of thirteen priorities, there is not one single mention of the energy grid or ERCOT. Notably, there is no mention of vaccines or COVID-19, either, because his base is still pissed off at him for being somewhat responsible and making some businesses reduce capacity or close during a pandemic that killed 52,715 Texans as of today.

Texas Republicans don’t care if you fail at legislating so bad that thousands die unnecessarily from disease or freezing to death, they just want to make sure you can be really mean.

Abbott is doing his damnedest, isn’t he?