Gym Jordan was on MTP this morning babbling about how law enforcement has been weaponized, but only when it comes to conservatives being investigated.  He’s all over the “weaponized” FBI trying to protect school board members whose lives are being threatened, but completely blind to the tsunami of blatant law breaking on his own side.  When Chuck Todd brought up the fact that the NY Assistant US Attorney, Charles McGonigal, has been charged with taking money from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, Jordan stated he was going to investigate that, but brushed Todd off when he pointed out that Paul Manafort was Deripaska’s primary contact between the TFG campaign and the Russians.  He wants to investigate the Steele dossier, but is not interested in investigating whether the US Attorney’s office in NY was suppressing the dossier and leaking other stories to the press intended to damage Hillary during the 2016.  The new conservative House majority has only a few goals for this term – cementing in their own power, hamstringing the federal government, and exacting revenge for TFG’s loss in 2020.  That’s it, period.  They don’t give a flying shit about their country or their constituents; their only tools are retribution and disinformation.

When asked about the George Floyd act and reforming policing in the US, Jordan took the usual position of conservatives today, saying that the US government has no role in policing reform and that it must be handled at “state and local levels”.  This is the strategy now followed by most Republicans who shirk responsibility to avoid being blamed for the consequences.  It’s also the SCOTUS’s normal response to all issues of privacy, individual rights, civil rights, and voting rights.  The Court, under Roberts, has now taken the position of taking no position on critical issues like privacy, gun safety laws, campaign finance, radical gerrymandering, and systemic voter suppression, punting all those issues to the state level which in 35 states is under the iron fisted control of minority Republicans cemented into power by…wait for it…radical gerrymandering and voter suppression.  The Court has also gone so far as drawing the idiotic conclusions that money doesn’t corrupt and that magically the Voting Rights Act is no longer needed.

At the state level, DeSantis and Abbott are the poster children for shirking their duty.  They both habitually override local county and city officials who are trying to protect their own citizens by grabbing power at the state level to hamstring them, but then take no responsibility for massive failures like the 2021 Texas power failure that killed 700 Texans.  By keep a “free market” ideology where free markets don’t exist, they avoid blame when their own constituents suffer from their negligence.  By hiding behind idiotic libertarian ideology that has never worked anywhere on the planet, they can blame faceless villains rather than doing their goddam jobs to improve the lives of their constituents.

This is the biggest fraud that’s been committed against the American people, but they retain power through two strategies – using disinformation to blame non-existent bogeymen for their own failures, and radical gerrymandering that creates a base of voters who believe their destructionist rhetoric and bullshit.  AND, it’s getting worse, not better.

Dannie Goeb, a carpetbagger and radio talk show host from Baltimore, known in the Lone Star State as Dan Patrick, has gone all-in on stupidity in his effort to keep his Numero Uno spot with TFG and his crazy base for the 2022 election.  Goeb is already a walking public policy disaster and craven power grabber who’s cowed every Texas Republican office holder in Austin including Greg Abbott who’s also racing him off the far right edge of the Flat Earth.  In that race to the edge, Goeb’s being challenged by 5 Republican opponents who look less like serious political challengers and more like the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  They are campaigning on MAGA priorities such as ending all property taxes, outlawing all abortions, and seceding from the United States.

Goeb has responded to his challengers in kind, proposing idiotic policies such as ending all tenure for new professors at state universities and taking tenure away from professors who might dare to teach concepts that he doesn’t like.  Defending himself against massive backlash to this declaration, he tweeted, “I will not stand by and let looney Marxist UT professors poison the minds of young students with Critical Race Theory. We banned it in publicly funded K-12 and we will ban it in publicly funded higher ed. That’s why we created the Liberty Institute at UT.”  Talk about Cancel Culture with two capital Cs.  That tweet caused even greater backlash from academics all over the state who were already wary of the institute, especially after he lied that it was the idea of UT faculty, which it was not.

BTW, he’s starting the Liberty Institute with financing from billionaires Bud Brigham and Bob Rowling.  How much money these two have donated so far is unknown, but we do know that the state budgeted $6 million so far and the UT Board of Regents kicked in another $6 million.  Texas Monthly reported that the eventual annual budget could be as high as $100 million, 75% of which will be made up of your tax dollars and 25% billionaire pocket change.  Among banning university faculty tenure, and banning teaching of actual history, the institute is also intending to promote the ideas of “individual liberty, limited government, private enterprise and free markets”.  Apparently, these ideas have to align with Goeb’s own political positions, no matter how bad.

Capping off his big backlash week, Goeb also blundered with a mail in ballot scam that was carved out of the voter suppression bill that went into effect last September.  You’ll recall that the bill made it a felony for local election officials to mail unsolicited ballot applications or even suggest for people to vote by mail.  The carve out allows political candidates to mail out these ballot applications to their voters even pre-filled out.  Goeb did just that, but then shot himself in the foot again by having the return envelopes pre-addressed to the Texas Secretary of State instead of local county voter registrars.  This has caused a delays of thousands of mail in ballots because of the forwarding necessary from Austin to local counties all over the state.  Interestingly, when the story broke the Secretary of State website was suddenly scrubbed of a policy statement that all applications received by the office would be rejected.  When Goeb’s blunder was publicly reported, he said that he had ordered the applications be sent to Austin to protect voters from “blue county” registrars, who, like it or not, have to process all applications in that county.  It’s very possible thousands of Republicans may not get their ballots in time to vote.

That would be hilarious and a faint glimmer of justice.

Well, the results of the AZ GOP led Fraudit are in, and guess what?  Biden won again, but by a wider margin.  What is this, like 6 times?  By my last count of counts, recounts, hand recounts, audits, and now fraudits, Biden has won something like 720 electoral votes.  Of course, The Former Guy is not letting up, now convincing Mini Me Greg Abbott to “audit” Texas (where he WON, BTW) grasping at any little straw to throw to his base, which is starving for more lies so they’ll go buy more cheap Made-in-China TFG flags to add to the already overflown collection on their trucks.

Trump will never give up, and short of his major health problem or felony conviction, he’s the candidate for 2024.  Come On, Cyrus Vance.

The Texas legislature, over long opposition by Democrats and the majority of Texans, passed the most radical voter suppression law of 2021, making Texas the worst state in the union to exercise the Constitutional right to vote.  The GOP knuckle draggers rammed through a bill that wiped out very popular voting alternatives such as drive through voting, extended voting hours, and easy vote by mail rules.  They also empowered partisan goons to intimidate voters at the polls, and criminalized mistakes an honest voter might innocently make.  In short, GOP Fuckheads pushed us back to the days of poll taxes, arbitrary voter tests, and Jim Crow laws with Jim Crow 2.0.

Zero days since Texas was a National Embarrassment, racing other Red States to the bottom.

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.

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.