Yesterday, a parent responded to his refusal to mandate masks in schools despite the CDC recommendation that all schools must do so to protect the health of children against the delta variant. His response to his constituent on his official Facebook page starts with “WTH is wrong with you?”

Chris Hill also campaigned maskless in November, shaking the hands of many of his constituents. He later discovered he had COVID during this time, and then deleted all of the photos of himself campaigning without a mask.

Elections have consequences, Collin County. Specifically, tent hospitals, refrigerated body trucks, children on ventilators, and 870 fatalities.

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?

Yesterday, Eric Swalwell of California was leaving the House floor when he was confronted by a staffer to Marjorie Taylor Greene, yelling at him to take off his mask, saying, “Biden says to take off your mask!”  Swalwell responded appropriately: “You don’t tell me what to fucking do!”

Swalwell doesn’t think his response was explicit enough.  I think it was perfect, especially to Greene or any of the Mini Me fascists who work for her.

I had a mask on as I stepped off the Floor. An aide with @mtgreenee yelled at me to take my mask off. No one should be bullied for wearing a mask. So I told the bully what I thought of his order. Predictably, he went speechless. I regret I wasn’t more explicit. https://t.co/o8j0DXWOBm

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) May 14, 2021

Biden’s speech last night was like a breath of fresh air after we all endured the verbal manure that flowed so freely from Trump’s mouth and Twitterfingers for 4 years.  Biden spoke of a rising America and introduced his trillion dollar American Families Plan that, after decades of decline and neglect, will attempt to make our lives better.

Predictably, the Republicans hate it, all of it, and it’s all predictable.  This morning on CBS News, Rick Scott was given a remarkable 5 minutes of national airtime to spew nonsense and childish attacks against  Biden and the GOP’s other favorite targets.  His lies came fast and furious, blaming Biden for all the ills HIS side caused.

Why are Republicans so opposed to anything that makes Americans’ lives better?  Because if people are happy, they won’t keep them in power.  The GOP has raised hatemongering to an art form because they know that if they can keep millions of Americans miserable and pissed off, they can then blame Dems for that misery and drive angry people to the polls.  And it works like a charm.  The GOP base is driven by adrenaline fueled anger, fomented by hate radio, Newsmax, OAN, Fox Noise, and the NY Post where the blame is regularly placed on “socialists, gays, Satanists, Pelosi, AOC, and Bernie.” Instead of focusing on real issues like education, income inequality, job security, and healthcare, they focus on bathroom bills, gay wedding cakes, and now the new target “boys pretending to be girls leering at your daughters in the locker room” accusing trans kids of trying to take advantage by posing as the opposite sex.

If the GOP had to actually face voters over their piss poor performance they would lose every time.  THAT’s why they are willing to inflict generational misery to the populace so they can keep everyone pissed off and insecure so their base will blame the rest of us.  That’s also why they are trying to push through voter suppression bills to make it harder to vote.  They know the truth and are really worried now because Biden rammed through the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that helped to relieve some of that misery.  If we follow that with making airports, roads, and other public infrastructure once again usable, the GOP is terrified that their supporters will like their lives made better and the veil finally lifted on their scam.

And that’s why they have zero interest in doing their jobs and making Americans’ lives better.

Jon Stewart was right a few years ago when he described Trump’s behavior as, “Gleeful Cruelty and Dickishness”.  At the time, Stewart was talking about Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” immigration plan that separated thousands of children from their parents at the border, and then purposely lost track of them, but his characterization most certainly applied to his intentional slow walking of funding relief to Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017.  There was absolutely no reason to do so except to make American citizens’ lives more miserable as if that was even possible.  As evidence that his cruelty was intentional.  He then obstructed investigations into his cruelty just because.  Trump is an asshole, just to be an asshole.  He relished wielding the power of the presidency to not serve Americans, but too harass those he didn’t like, and I don’t have to describe who it is who he didn’t like.

Disappointingly, but not surprising, the obstruction of oversight was led by Ben Carson, the comatose Secretary of Housing and Urban development.  His staff aided in the corruption, even as Carson feigned concern about delays in approvals by OMB of funding while refusing to cooperate with the IG trying to get to the bottom of the delays.  It was classic Trump…assuaging his own need for adoration while urinating on people who desperately needed help.

It boggles the mind that a human being can be such a shitbag, but we are talking about Trump, so that’s no surprise.

The sky got a little brighter today when Rush Limbaugh died at age 70.  He announced sometime ago that he had stage 4 cancer and died from that today.  Limbaugh spent almost 30 years spewing bile and hatred over the radio waves culminating in Trump ruining the reputation of the Medal of Freedom by awarding it to Rush last year.

I’m not shedding any tears.  If that sounds harsh, it’s intended to be.