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.

The FBI arrested Thomas Barrack today, who is a 30-year ally of Trump and chairman of his inaugural committee.  They got him on lobbying for the UAE without reporting it, then lying to the FBI about it.  The cover up is always worse than the original crime.  Apparently the indictment is well documented and damning.  They’ve got Trump on tape repeating Barrack’s rewrite of his speech about stopping Middle East terrorism (which was just a cover for filling Barrack’s pockets).

This one is going to be good, and signals that the DOJ is getting closer and closer to His Orangeness.

This is the second excerpt from “I Alone Can Fix It”: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, by Phillip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig, published in the Washington Post this week.  This excerpt is the account of events leading up to and including the insurrection on January 6, and it is chilling to the bone just how close we came to Trump and his goons taking down the government.  This is a must read.

Trust me.

Those of us who reside in Texas know that, after almost 25 years of single party control, it is now a mere empty shell of the once Great State.  This fact was confirmed yesterday when CNBC published it’s annual study of states for business and livability.  While Texas ranked 4th for states friendly to business, and ranked as second worst in the nation for livability.  In rendering its verdict, CNBC pointed out that Texas is the hardest state in the nation to vote, has no laws against discrimination, and scored an F in livability.  It also said that the only thing that kept it from falling below Arizona was the fact that Democrats walked out during the regular session of the legislature to thwart Republicans’ efforts to make voting even harder, if that’s even possible.  After all these years of single party rule, Republicans have succeeded in destroying Texans’ access to healthcare, education, and the ballot box.  It’s turned our school curriculum into propaganda churning out ignoramuses who have warped understanding of our history and even science.  It’s worked tirelessly to deny healthcare for women, the economically disadvantaged, and the elderly. Even while making life miserable for anyone but the rich, the GOP also bungled our response to the pandemic, causing over 53,000 deaths so far, and allowed our power grid to fall into literal ruins, failing to provide power when it is needed most. The corruption and continuous lying from our politicians and RW networks have made truth unknowable, allowing bullshit to proliferate convincing people that Youtube videos are more reliable than scientists, doctors, and engineers.  They have played to people’s worst traits to cling to power while suppressing votes.

As our friend Mimi Swartz wrote this week in the NY Times, Texas has truly broken our hearts.

UPDATE: Politico is reporting that the DHS is taking the August reinstatement conspiracy theory seriously in terms of stepping up efforts to follow discussions of extremists on social media, concerned about potential violence caused by disinformation pouring our of right wing media and lunatics like the Pillow Guy and other nonsense peddlers.  This story is coming from those who are familiar with a private briefing by DHS to members of Congress.

ORIGINAL POST: Seth Abramson, a defense attorney and author, has been after Trump for years.  His latest work is digging into how Trumpland planned and directed the insurrection on January 6, but he also has posited the only theory I’ve heard that makes any sense about one of Trump’s most outlandish lies, and that is how he’s going to be reinstated to the presidency in August.  Now, you know, and I know that there is simply no mechanism to restore someone to the presidency, even if an election was stolen, which this one most certainly was not.  Once the Congress certifies the Electoral College vote from the states and the new president is inaugurated, it’s over, game, set, and match period, end of story.  No one outside of the line of succession to the presidency can become president unless he/she is elected in the next national election.

So what the hell is Trump and his loudmouths doing?  Why is he repeatedly asserting he will be reinstated?  Abramson says that is all a dodge to avoid indictment in NY.  Abramson says that Trump believes that with his rallies starting back up and his incessant repeating of The Big Lie, he can keep his insurrectionist based whipped up and the threat of violence would be so great that prosecutors wouldn’t dare indict him for fear of major social unrest.  This is the only thing that makes any sense to me, that Trump believes he can keep the grift going long enough to run and win the presidency again in 2024, which will hold back the prosecutorial wolves from the door another 4 years.

https://twitter.com/sethabramson/status/1400470960587816961?lang=en

Sounds crazy, right?  Of course it’s crazy and I don’t think the NY AG or NY DA give a good goddam about Trump’s fantasies.  If they can nail him, they will, and they most certainly owe it to all of us Americans who suffered through over 4 years of the Trump Shitshow to protect our democracy by prosecuting that son of a bitch.  I do think Abramson is onto Trump, and having written about him for years, most certainly knows him well enough to have an informed opinion.  Besides that, NOTHING else makes the slightest bit of sense.

UPDATE: Just yesterday, the Texas House made it mandatory for professional sports teams to play the National Anthem before all games.  This pressing issue was a legislative priority of Radio Disc Jockey Dan Patrick, along with voter suppression and bathroom access supervision.

ORIGINAL STORY: This year, Texas has faced historic challenges – the global pandemic, the Big Freeze, and The Big Lie.  Add that to existing problems like a teetering education system, a failing healthcare system, crumbling infrastructure, and now a housing crisis, the governor and TXLege had their plates full.  So let’s have a look at that they did to address these issues:

• The Global Pandemic – Abbott, urged on by the Know Nothing wing of his party, played down the risk.  Abbott took away the authority of local leaders to protects their citizens, lifted science driven guidance for social distancing and quarantine recommendations way too early, and slashed recommended unemployment payments to Texans who were suffering.  He also dumped distribution responsibilities for PPE, and later vaccines, on local authorities in his own version of The Hunger Games, making cities/counties compete against one another.  All this caused untold sickness, suffering, and death.  What did the TXLege do this session?  Nothing.
• The Big Freeze – Over 20 years ago, Texas decided it was a good idea to have a “free market” for powering its grid, so the TXLege unwound the state’s regulatory framework, making the power regime in Texas “voluntary”, with no deliverability requirements and no penalties for failing to deliver power.  State air quality standards were also made voluntary.  This system was put in place on a grid that was already mostly disconnected with the grids in other parts of the country, so when it failed in February, no one could come to our aid by delivering power.  Over 200 people died and billions of dollars were lost.  What did the TXLege do to solve the problem and prevent it from happening again?  Nothing.
• The Big Lie – We all saw what happened after months of Trump’s ridiculous lie that an election that he had decisively lost was stolen from him.  When the US Capitol was stormed, hundreds of people were injured and 5 people died.  Trump actually attempted to overthrow the US government in order to stay in power.  Everyone with a hint of insight knows The Big Lie is false is corrosive to our democratic system.  What did the TXLege do to address The Big Lie? They amplified it, repeated it, and used it to pass the most restrictive voter laws in the US to make it harder to vote and to protect their minority power.
• Failing Healthcare System, Crumbling Infrastructure, Teetering Education System– Texas ranks 48th among the states in access to healthcare. Our education ranking is similar. Our crumbling roads, and poor public transportation systems rank among some of the worst in the country.  Under more than two decades of single party rule, our state has steadily declined in a number of measures, but especially healthcare.  Today, race, economic standing, and geographic location are predictors of healthcare outcomes, and the suffering from the pandemic followed these predictors.  The poor and minorities suffered greater infection rates and worse outcomes from the virus which compounded the other issues caused by lack of access to competent healthcare.  What did the TXLege do to address these inequalities?  Nothing.

So, what did the TXLege spend its time on this session? Here’s its list of accomplishments:

• As stated above, pushing the most restrictive voting measures in the US supporting Trump’s Big Lie.
• Passing a new abortion law that bans virtually all abortions, ignoring health, rape, or incest.
• Pushing criminalizing healthcare treatments for transgender kids.
• Passing unqualified carry legislation, making it legal for any idiot to carry whatever firearm said idiot wants to carry, making it virtually impossible for law enforcement to protect citizens from mass killers.
• Abbott criminalized mask requirements which imposes a $1,000 fine on any public official requiring masks, no matter local health conditions.

This is what you get when a minority party has cemented itself into power, taking away accountability to the public.  The GOP has had an iron grip on Texas for over two decades, aided by radical gerrymandering, lack of term limits, lack of spending limits, and lack of ethics laws.  The governor and the TXLege are now totally corrupt and pledged fealty to a criminal who so far has evaded prosecution and continues attempts to overthrow our democratic system of government.  Until The People wrest power away from such corruption, this state, among many other red states, are lost for the foreseeable future.