ProPublica report revealed today that Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted fancy trips from Republican big donor Harlan Crow for twenty years but not disclosed them as required by freekin’ law. One such trip had a value of half a million dollars.

On the other hand, he took Ginni with him, which by all reckoning made the trip practically worthless.

Clarence like to talk small and live big.  Get a load of this crapola.

“I don’t have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States,” Thomas said in a recent interview for a documentary about his life, which Crow helped finance.

“I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas said. “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that.”

Pro Publica outlines the extravagant travels on private jets and super yachts that Harlan Crow has gifted the Thomases. None of them include an RV or a damn WalMart parking lot.

Ya know, if Justice Elena Kagan had done this, the rightwing would be flying her bra over Riker’s Island within hours.

By the way, Crow says all this means nothing because he never asked Thomas for any favors. Holy crap, dude, you practically fund the Federalist Society.  You think you need a wish list?

One other thing. I read in one of these articles that Crow had tasteful nice golf shirts made up commemorating each of these trips. I guess Thomas ran out of places for the branding iron.

Like everything else in our reality, media is ever evolving. The question is whether it is evolving in the right direction. That question could not be clearer following Marjorie Taylor Greene’s interview on 60 Minutes. Someone somewhere along the line said that the fourth estate’s job was to call balls and strikes. However, after decades of accusations that the mainstream media is liberal, mainstream media decided their job was to make sure there were an equal number of walks and strikeouts. It sounds the same and sometimes looks the same, but in a world where one side of the ideological divide has allegedly gone insane, calling both pitchers the same doesn’t do the same thing when one is throwing pitches against the backstop and into the dirt.

The decision to interview a MTG cannot be an easy one. On the one hand, she is a leader within the modern GOP. It is difficult to ignore someone with as much clout and sway as she has in the modern GOP. Yet, the modern GOP has become something beyond a mainstream political party these days. She is anything but mainstream. So, it begs the question of whether someone like her deserves to be thrust into the mainstream. One could argue that it introduces an important current figure to an audience that might not be familiar with her. If done correctly one could claim that showing her warts and all could be a public service should her star rise even more. On the other hand, you are single-handedly putting forth ideas that are far outside of the mainstream. There is an inherent danger there.

If one were to look at the best possible outcome they could compare this to the Katie Couric Sarah Palin interview. Palin was the vice presidential nominee for the GOP and seemed very charismatic. That was until the Couric interview revealed that she knew very little. The interview is attached for anyone that really wants to relive that, but Couric did very little pushback. She played matador and allowed Palin to self-destruct on her own. One could argue that Lesley Stohl was trying to do the same thing in her interview of MTG. She allowed those crazy ideas to come bubbling over with very little pushback. Democrats were called pedophiles. We know she once called school shootings false flags. Palin was revealed to be an empty suit. Was MTG revealed to be an extremist? Only time will tell.

Was it wise to give her a platform in the first place? That’s not an easy question to answer. What would have been the most effective way to handle the interview? That’s an even harder question to answer. As satisfying as it would seem to just ambush her with all of her crap over the last half decade, it is possible that such a gamut would backfire. Those that know of her have already formed an opinion. Those that haven’t might feel like ambushing her feels cruel and unnecessary. Allowing her to throw out her manifesto unchallenged doesn’t feel right either. The key was for average everyday Americans to come away seeing her for what she really is. How much faith do you have in the intellect and gumption of the average American?

While you’re waiting for information on the news, I just wanted to let you know that I was totally and delightfully correct that the FEC has absolutely no sense of humor.

They wasted no time at all to let the Greg Abbott for Governor Committee know that they don’t buy whatever those folks in Grand Prairie are selling.

Notice they mailed it to the actual Greg Abbott campaign site – the only address involved that’s not an Arby’s.

You can help keep score right here.

By the way, I am purposely refusing to turn on my teevee today.  So, if something even mildly important does happen, somebody is gonna have to let me know. Otherwise, I’ll be tending my garden because we’re getting a cool front and some much needed rain tomorrow. A cool front in Texas in April means 60 degrees for a couple of days and then back to 90.  I’ve got tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, string beans, summer squash, all manner of mints, basil, cilantro, rosemary, and Lord knows what else will sprout up.

A somewhat well-known progressive commentator sent out a tweet last week that started a firestorm. David Pakman of the David Pakman show sent out a tweet that has since been taken down. Of course, the tweet will live on forever as the far right has receipts. In the meantime, the whole incident is a nice focal point for any number of issues/lines of battle. The tweet and the response are tremendous examples of the lack of nuance in our modern politics as well as the overwhelming effect that social media has on the political debate. Finally, we get to the great hypocrisy machine that is cancel culture. The controversial tweet is below.

I’ve discussed religion and politics before. So, depending on your point of view I am either the perfect guy for this message or the last guy for this message. I have also received slings and arrows for being longwinded. I could throw out excuses for all of that, but this tweet is an example of why. Pakman is attempting to use 280 characters or less to throw out a nuanced argument and fails miserably. Naturally, the failure is not all on him. We can control our intention and we can control our execution, but we cannot control how anything is received. At any rate, I could launch a whole critique of what is wrong or not wrong with this tweet, but that’s really not the point.

As someone that enjoys sarcasm, I can certainly appreciate that here. Pakman certainly isn’t denying the existence of God or the power that God possesses. At least he isn’t doing it in this tweet. He simply is pointing out that thoughts and prayers haven’t done a damn thing to prevent school shootings and that Godlessness had little to no impact on a Christian school becoming the latest in a long line of schools that have suffered this fate.

Perhaps, the overarching point of the whole exercise was the right wing response to this tweet. Fox News and several other television, radio, and online media sources descended on Pakman like a plague of locusts. They pressured advertisers. They made him a household name in conservative circles for all of the worst reasons. In short, they attempted to cancel him. Naturally, they proved a point I have been making repeatedly in this place and others: free speech and expression is a powerful thing and it encompasses far more than simply a back and forth on ideas. Pakman is not the first progressive to suffer the slings and arrows of right wing outrage. In point of fact, one could very credibly claim that the right wing created cancel culture in the first place.

We can certainly go as far back as the Dixie Chicks or even John Lennon when firing up our examples. People have destroyed albums, burned clothes, and smashed televisions in the name of cancel culture. If you want to buy stuff only to destroy it be my guest. That’s your money you’re flushing down the toilet. If you want to try to cancel someone you are free to try. What you cannot do is decry cancel culture and then turn around and use it for your own benefit. Pakman certainly could have worded this better, but he is not wrong. It’s just a message that a lot of people are not ready to hear.

Okay, so here’s what you do. Get a sticky note. Write Greg Abbott’s name on it with a big No. Stick it on the inside of the cabinet where you keep the coffee mugs. Look at it everydamnday so you will not forget to never, ever vote for this guy unless you’re on the jury and guilty is an option.

Like this.

I’m telling you to do this because it’s important.

It appears that maybe Greg Abbott has announced his intention to run for president.  Maybe. It’s hard to tell.

These papers were filed with the FEC on April 1 which is kinda like throwing a wrench into a dumpster fire during a tornado.

Here’s, in part what was filed. You can see the whole thing right here.

So Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen found this and sent it to me on an express jet with a tail wind. What the dickens is this?  It says it is the principle campaign committee. But is it?

The treasurer and custodian of record is a person by the name of John Grayson Dyer. Dyer is not a registered voter in the State of Texas and an internet machine trace of his name turned up a couple of ghosts. So, the address of this Dyer guy returns to an Arby’s in Grand Prairie as does the phone number. For you people from foreign states, Grand Prairie is smack dab in the middle between Dallas and Fort Worth, where you could not pay me a billion dollars to live because you’ve got the worst weather in Texas and Fort Worth touches you like your gross brother in the backseat of your mom’s sedan.

Anyway, back to the papers.  Based on what I’ve told you so far, I’d bet five dollars cash American money that this is joke.

However. If you look at #1 at the top of the form …

That’s the real address of the Greg Abbott political campaign.

Seriously. Right here. Scroll to the bottom.

Now, here’s my thought. The fellas at the FEC do not have a sense of humor. In fact, they are required to have a humorectomy to get promoted. And lately they’ve taken a pretty good effort to discourage fake filings – including very hurtful fines.

But, anyway, please let this be a red flag for you. There’s a thousand reasons to never vote for Greg Abbott and the fact that a seasoned hairdresser like me can’t tell if this is a joke or not ought to be 1,001. He’s kinda that paranoid and crazy.

I remember it like it was yesterday. In my second year of teaching, the entire country was rocked by the events at Columbine. Obviously, it wasn’t the first school shooting we had ever seen, but it was likely the precursor for the kind of events we are now seeing on a daily basis. The shooting came on April 20th. We ended up having three different bomb threats between that shooting and the end of school. During one of them, one of the teachers heard that they were going to send us in to look for the bomb. “Cut the green wire, no cut the red one. Cut both? Oh damn…”

Of course, the next big event was 9/11. We had parents roaming the entire school grounds looking for their child to take them home. There were rumors that day that the terrorists would actually try to fly a plane into the neighboring refineries close to the school. If that had happened it would have been game over. Considering the crisis, the school capitulated and allowed students to carry cellphones from that moment on.

What do these events have in common? Well, they involved the same sentiment as the jackass in Tennessee that  decided that mass shootings weren’t going to be solved. We’ve tried nothing and we are all out of ideas. Following Columbine we were constantly on the lookout for students that were disenfranchised or possibly unstable. I remember one of them being suspended for a book that he had in his locker. Somehow, we do everything but what actually makes sense.

In order to illustrate this, I’m going to walk us through the cellphone portion of the discussion. It started simply enough. Students could have cellphones in case of an emergency. They shouldn’t be out and before the invention of the iPhone, there really was no sense in having it out. Then, they became little mini-computers so we allowed them to be used on occasion for academic purposes. Naturally, as you might suspect, it became harder and harder to police that. So, schools began to use a system where we could confiscate phones if they were clearly becoming a distraction.

A few years ago, our district surrendered. They decided that we couldn’t confiscate phones because the parents would complain too much. Sure. Our district really doesn’t have a huge problem with helicopter parents. My daughter’s school is ten times worse in that regard, but they can still confiscate phones. They have a coherent policy on how to deal with them. Individual teachers still have some freedom within that framework, but it is understood that if you are misusing your phone it will be taken up. Peer in any room in our building and you will see the vast majority of students staring at their phone and not paying attention to what is going on. We lost the battle without firing a single shot.

What is truly galling is the apathy of it all. Each of us individually hate the distraction of cellphones but feel powerless to do anything because administration chose to give up. It’s almost like there is a parallel here to the problem of mass shootings. Some bloviate about doors. The latest shooting didn’t involve an open door. Some bloviate over transgender this that or the other. 99 percent of shootings aren’t done by transgender people. There is one thing each of these events have in common. If those in government choose to give up before even trying anything then we are truly lost and we have collectively failed our children. May they have mercy on us all.