Archive for the ‘Abbott’
The Unholy Trinity
The Republican party is made up of three primary factions. The oldest faction is the faction the party was built on. The Republican party has always been the party of big business. Leave it to that group to be the possible ultimate undoing of everything else. They always say that politics make strange bedfellows. It is bizarre to see racists, xenophobes, and homophobes get in bed with big business, and then saddle up to religious zealots in a kind of perverse love triangle. I shudder to say this now, but it looks like big business might become the voice of reason.
All of this stands in the backdrop of corporate America’s standoff with the Georgia GOP over their new voter suppression law. Some have dubbed the bill “Jim Crow 2.0.” Whether it is motivated purely by racism or if it is simply a sinister power grab that happens to disproportionately affect African Americans and people of color is open to debate. The impact cannot be debated. Fewer people will vote and that is exactly what the GOP wants.
We can marvel at the simplicity of it. We can marvel at the naked ambition and undemocratic principles of the notion. I choose to marvel at corporate America’s collective response. MLB has pulled it’s all-star game and MLB draft out of Georgia. The collective impact has been estimated at a loss of 100 million dollars of revenues for the city of Atlanta and the state. That kind of loss in revenue has its way of trickling down. Funny how this trickle down method could topple the Republican party as it stands.
See, Corporate America never does anything for anyone else if it doesn’t benefit themselves. MLB and those companies looked at the bottom line and discovered their customer base would be more upset if they just went along with it than if they embraced democracy and free and fair elections. NASCAR made a similar calculation when they came out in opposition to racism and in support of the aims of Black Lives Matter. The comments have been eerily similar from critics of both organizations.
Conservatives from the racism and religious wings have asserted that these companies will suffer at the box office if members of their wings boycott those companies. Businesses don’t stay in business long if they make short-term and rash decisions. Someone thought this through and someone figured out that they would come out ahead. They thought it through and determined that racism, xenophobia, and homophobia was bad for business. That might be the death knell of this entire unholy triumvirate.
Of course, this doesn’t stop the other wings from putting their foot in their mouth. Governor Greg Abbott (I’ll let you choose which wing he belongs to) not only refused to throw out the first pitch at the Rangers game. He also said that Texans didn’t want any part of hosting the all-star game. I’m sure Ray Davis and Bob Simpson were happy to hear that. The Astros aren’t likely to be in line to host the game, but the Rangers surely would have been. They just built a new stadium and MLB has a habit of rewarding cities that build new stadiums. Not all 100 million of that economic impact would have been theirs, but much of it would have been. Abbott’s big mouth just took money out of their pocket.
Nothing pisses off big business faster than stupid people that take money out of their pocket. Never in a million years would I have dreamt that it would be big business that would balk first, but it looks like that is about to happen. Big business is about to drag the Republican party kicking and screaming back into the 21st century and back into democracy. Of course, the racists and religious zealots are powerful and stubborn. Who knows where this finally ends up.
Abbott began his reign as governor as somewhat of a compromise candidate between all of the factions. He’d tip his cap to each as he walked the tightrope between all three. This is certainly true when you compare him with his lieutenant governor. You can’t walk that tightrope long. Eventually you have to choose either one or two sides to favor. Abbott has made his choice and it ultimately will be his undoing. The question comes whether that comes in 2022 or later.
Arlington Republican Says She Can be Racist Because She’s Korean
Arlington must have Republicans taking care of the drinking water, y’all.
Lets go back in time, just a few months, to December of 2020. Representative Ron Wright (R), infamous for complaining that there is no federal protection for the ever-persecuted white American male, is the U.S. Representative for the 6th Congressional District of Texas. He believes that the 2020 election was fraudulent and votes against certifying the election results on the day of the Capitol riot, January 6.
Not long after Rep. Wright made it back to Arlington, he tested positive for COVID. And died. He had spent the entire last year battling lung cancer and tweeting that businesses and schools should re-open because COVID-19 isn’t all that dangerous.
Moving forward, 23 people have filed to run for his seat. Texans will be voting in a special election May 1. One of the candidates, former wrestler and current carpetbagger Dan Rodimer, has already had himself gossiped about at the beauty salon for being a fool. Not to be outdone, let me introduce y’all to one of the ladies running for Wright’s seat.
Sery Kim is Korean. Last week, there was a forum for the GOP candidates where they could out-stupid each other to try and win the Republican votes. Kim decided to play the race-card.
On the subject of Chinese immigrants, “I don’t want them here at all,” Sery Kim said. “They steal our intellectual property, they give us coronavirus, they don’t hold themselves accountable.” She said the racist part out-loud. Trump voters love that.
“And quite frankly, I can say that because I’m Korean,” she added.
She has refused to apologize, saying it’s the big bad liberal media’s fault and that she “will not back down from speaking the truth.” She lost the endorsements of the two Korean Republican Representatives in the House: Young Kim and Michelle Steel.
In a political climate where you’ve got to be a giant jack-ass to get on the ballot, she just might have a shot.
As I was writing this, I saw some more political news out of Arlington. Governor Abbott has turned down the offer to throw out the first pitch at the Ranger’s game this week, citing Major League Baseball’s opposition to Georgia’s restrictive Voter ID law. I’d wager three jars of El Jefe’s South Texas Pucker Up & Slap Yo’ Knee Bread n’ Butter pickles that Abbott expects to be boo’d out of the stadium by Texans still pissed off about last month’s power grid failure. Besides, no one watches the Rangers anyway. Go ‘Stros!
Texas Senate: “Voting? We don’t need no Stinkin’ Voting.”
In the Texas election last year, turnout was 6.6 percent higher than in 2016. In my view, there were two reasons for this:
- Voters not normally engaged in public policy were alarmed by the disaster that was Trump’s infestation of the White House. Trump’s childish attacks on social media, continuous stream of outrageous lies, and soaring Covid cases and deaths finally broke through the fog of disinformation pouring out of right wing media and drove people to the polls.
- Efforts by local officials to make it easier to vote, especially after Trump’s new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, intentionally sabotaged the Post Office and undermined voters’ confidence that their mail in ballots would be counted.
The turnout was bipartisan. Even though Biden decisively won the national election, Republicans maintained their iron grip on Texas and made gains in the US House (I’m ignoring gerrymandering at this moment.) Turnout us up across the country this last election, so the response from GOP controlled statehouses around the country was predictable – make sweeping changes to make it harder for Americans to votes. Over 250 bills in 43 states are being rammed through state legislatures as I write this.
In fact, last night while we were all asleep, the Texas Senate voted to advance Senate Bill 7, that places additional sweeping restrictions on voting including reducing early voting days and hours, eliminating highly successful and popular drive-through voting, and making it illegal for local officials to send mail in ballot applications to those who don’t request them, even though they are qualified. They are ramming this bill through as fast as possible, even though the majority of testimony in Senate hearings opposed these laws as unnecessary and just more voter suppression. The House could vote on this bill by the Texas House and signed by Abbott as early as next week. It’s passage is as certain as the sunrise tomorrow.
This anti-American undemocratic bill is being passed so the GOP, controlled by old pot-bellied rednecks can cling to power for another cycle. Elections have consequences. When the bad guys win, bad things happen. Welcome to “democracy” in the 21st century. Any more of this kind of “democracy” our status as a failed state will be cemented for decades.
Biden Insults Neanderthals
Yesterday, Biden responded to Greg Abbott’s and Mississippi governor Tate Reeves’ announcements lifting all state restrictions that protect their citizens from Coronavirus infections. In his response, Biden said,
“We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because of the way in which we’re able to get vaccines in people’s arms. … The last thing, the last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking — that, ‘In the meantime, everything’s fine. Take off your mask. Forget it.’ It still matters.”
How dare Biden denigrate the memory of neanderthals so insensitively. Their thinking was much more developed than today’s rightwing knuckle draggers. He should be more careful with his rhetoric.
We’re Number 48!
That’s right, folks, even as Greg Magical Thinking Abbott proclaimed the Coronavirus pandemic over and rescinded all statewide restrictions, the pandemic continues to rage and continues to take lives. Our positivity rate is 13.5% this week, nearly triple the rate the CDC recommends before opening. On top of that, Texas ranks 48th in vaccinations, with less than 7% of Texans vaccinated. The positivity rate now is about the same as last October when the pandemic was beginning its holiday spike that killed thousands of Texans. What Abbott is doing is stupid. The real tragedy is that he’s smart enough to know it’s stupid, but having now lost a lot of the center after letting millions of Texans freeze in the dark, his only path to keeping his job next year is to take the Trump path, whip up the extreme right mouthbreathers.
This is classic right-winger response to crises, just like the Great Blackout of 2021 – break the system, make sure it doesn’t function properly, take huge risks while falsely boasting about how great we are, don’t do anything when obvious problems show themselves, then pretend it’s someone else’s fault and throw a staffer under the bus when the system fails. During the blackout, Abbott threw wind farms, the PUC, and ERCOT all under the bus even though the responsibility for the disaster lay right in his lap and that of the state legislature.
Everyone needs to brace for the next big wave that is certain to come, extending the misery in Texas even longer. Texas’ response to the pandemic has been nothing more than piss-poor. For comparison, let’s look at a country with similar populations with much better results: Taiwan. Texas has 29 million people. Taiwan, 24 million. Deaths in Texas? 44,000. Taiwan? 9. That’s right, 9. Taiwan did it right. They never locked down, but implemented strong quarantine rules, contact tracing, and most important, PAID their people to stay home. Like most of Europe, Taiwan took the financial stress out of the equation. By contrast, Abbott and the idiots in the legislature added to people’s misery by providing little to no assistance. He then re-opened the economy in May just as the pandemic was starting to rock. Realizing his blunder in July, he then implemented stronger shut down measures and a statewide mandate, but kept the state purse strings tied tight. The result was predictable. Add Abbott’s blundering to Trump’s gross negligence and incompetence, and you get some of the worst COVID response on the planet. Thanks for nothing.
Oh, and one last tidbit. Abbott made this announcement from a Mexican restaurant in Lubbock which, by coincidence, is not connected to ERCOT and didn’t experience the blackouts most of Texas suffered. Apparently the places in Texas he won’t get booed off the stage are getting a lot smaller. Asshole.