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?

God; Guns; Gays; Prayer in Schools; War on Christmas; Politically Correct; Death Tax; Illegals; National Anthem; ACORN; Benghazi; Massive Voter Fraud; Stop the Steal; White Genocide.  These, and dozens of other bumper sticker talking points are all fodder to whip up fake outrage in the base to keep them wound up and angry over non-issues.  The latest is Critical Race Theory.  Virtually unheard of before March of this year, it is now the key topic on Fox Noise, OAN, social media, and Hate Radio all over the country.

What’s going on?  What’s going on is what always goes on…whip up an issue to piss off the base, flog it until it becomes ingrained in conservative DNA, then find another fake issue to piss off the base, flog it until it becomes ingrained in conservative DNA, rinse, repeat.  They use the tactic to drive the base to the polls and for fundraising.

Media Matters has been following these tactics for years and have publish a new review to the Critical Race Theory outrage.  Now, to be clear, Critical Race Theory has been in academia for over 40 years.  It was developed back then, primarily in law schools, including Harvard, to frame the approach to legislation in an effort to understand how racist policies from centuries ago have become ingrained in our laws.  It’s not political and has not been taught in schools to children.  This issue was dredged up as Trump started flogging the fake issue by banning discussions of race in the military and in government agencies call it “sensitivity training” and other pejoratives as part of his campaign in the 2020 election.

To show how these issues are flogged, Media Matters tracks the number of mentions of certain key words.  Here’s their recent tracking of Critical Race Theory on Fox Noise.

Media Matters did a great exposé a couple of years ago about how Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs whipped up the War on Christmas in 2004 which is now resurrected and marched down Bullshit Street every holiday season.  Bullshit is the proper descriptor for all of this, but it’s worse than that.  It’s corrosive and undermines people’s confidence in government, has destroyed all decorum between political ideologies and is a common tactic in totalitarian governments like Russia.  The proliferation of this bullshit makes truth unknowable.  Normally rational people spout said bullshit on social media in a continuous stream, destroying civility between digital and even actual friends.  This is how you get a HUGE proportion of Republicans actually believing Trump is still president and how whites are being systematically eliminated from society.  It’s all bullshit, but it’s also ingrained in the belief systems of millions of Americans.  Even in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, people still believe this bullshit.

It’s tragic and seriously threatens our democracy.

NPR has just published a very good explanation of our problem in America, which is the cementing in of minority rule, and how its unsustainablity threatens democracy.  Over the years, especially since 2010, Republican gerrymandering has unfairly locked in Republic seats that are almost impossible to defeat by a Democrat.  Here’s the chart that shows the problem in the US House (click on the little one to get the big one):

This chart shows that since 2000, Republicans have controlled more seats than votes for them support and Dems much fewer.  Beginning in 2002 when states like Texas started mid-decade redistricting and using computers to do it, you can see the effect of the disenfranchisement of millions of voters all over the country by giving disproportionate representation to those who received less votes.  Only in 2008 when the Obama election turned out so many voters did the House come anywhere near parity between number of votes and seats won.  The problem WILL get worse with this year’s continued gerrymandering which the Supreme Court has condoned by turning a blind eye to the corrosion of partisan gerrymandering.  That’s how you get permanent majorities in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina where Republicans get over 70% of the seats no matter what the vote.

The Senate is worse.  You now have a situation where the majority of Americans are ruled by a minority of voters because each state gets two Senators no matter the population.  As population continues to move, you’ll have 30% of Americans controlling 70% of the representation in the Senate.

The system is broken and getting worse, and the US can no longer call itself a republic governed by democratic principles.  This is why electing autocrats, especially to the WH, is so incredibly dangerous.  Many state legislatures are broken, the Congress is most certainly broken, and the Supreme Court is broken if not outright corrupt.  The only tool that remains to keep us from sliding into the abyss of autocracy is the presidency.  That’s why keeping Republicans out of the WH is so critical and reform of our Democracy mandatory.

Mother Jones published a leaked video yesterday of the head of Heritage Action, the activist affiliate of the Heritage Foundation, which acts as a propaganda delivery mechanism for Republicans while masquerading as a “non-partisan research organization”.  The Heritage Foundation’s “research” consists of twisting up facts in order to justify conclusions paid for by self serving right-wingers and businesses.  In the video, the head of Heritage Action is bragging to big donors, taking credit for drafting the voter suppression laws that have swiftly been passed in GOP controlled states all over the country.  Here’s the video:

This is how oligarchy works.  Wealthy donors get government to work for them by doing the work of politicians who’ve been corrupted.  The only difference between the Republicans (and their owners) and Russians is that they haven’t killed those who stand in their way (yet).

For decades the Republican party has squawked about non-existent massive voter fraud as an excuse to pass draconian voting laws to make it harder for the “wrong people” to vote.  We all know that the “voter fraud” trope was just bullshit to cover the real reason, which was to reduce turnout of voters who typically vote for Democratic candidates.  With a few rare slip ups, the GOP has stuck to that script for years, repeating it so often that their base actually believes it.

That tactic has worked really well up until Trump took the Big Lie and turned it into the Gigantic Gargantuan Godzilla King Kong Lie.  Everyone in the US (except for Trumpists and Newsmax Morons) knows Trump lost the election because he got fewer votes than Biden.  All 50 states including the Red States certified their elections, and all of Congress with the exception of Trumpist ass lickers voted to certify the election.  Even Pence refused to interfere with the certification, and that’s really saying something.  The real problem for Republicans voter suppression efforts started a few months ago when legislatures in 43 states cited the Gigantic Gargantuan Godzilla King Kong Lie as the precise reason that it was an “urgent priority” to pass over 250 new restrictions that would do nothing to stop the massive fraud that doesn’t exist.  As many have said, the GOP came up with a solution in search of a problem.

Things went along swimmingly up until the moment Georgia passed their voter suppression bill that even criminalized giving people bottled water as they stood in hours-long lines to vote.  I believe they would have gotten away with the rest had they not made that one last overstep.  The backlash for that provision, and the law itself was so severe that big business finally had to pull its head out of the sand and take a stand.  Over the last couple of weeks, over a 100 company CEOs have condemned the laws not only in Georgia, but in many other states, and Georgia has been made an example of bad policy making which has brought out the truth of the voter suppression efforts.

Knowing that the Gigantic Gargantuan Godzilla King Kong Lie is no longer working, the GOP has taken on an entirely new tact – telling the truth.  One lawmaker, Arkansas Republican John Kavanaugh, actually came out and said it on national television, admitting that Republicans want not all votes, but just “quality” votes which translates to Republican votes.  Talking to CNN, he said:

“There’s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans.  Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they’re willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”

“Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues.  Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

And there you have it – truth that didn’t just slip out inadvertently.  And so now this truth telling is even more obvious with the National Review now admitting that voter suppression laws really are voter suppression laws.  In one of the most tone-deaf articles (even for the National Review) was by Kevin Williamson who, in this tsunami of stupid statements posited this:

“There would be more voters if we made it easier to vote, and there would be more doctors if we didn’t require a license to practice medicine. The fact that we believe unqualified doctors to be a public menace but act as though unqualified voters were just stars in the splendid constellation of democracy indicates how little real esteem we actually have for the vote, in spite of our public pieties.”

He goes on about how we should vigorously test potential voters to weed out those “not qualified” to vote, which is simply a dog whistle for meaning those who might vote against Republican ideology.  The GOP even said it in a hearing last month in the Supreme Court when Michael Carvin, attorney for the Arizona Republican party had this exchange with Amy Coney Barrett about how Republicans want to toss ballots cast in the wrong precinct:

Coney Barrett: “What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?”

Carvin: “Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.  Politics is a zero-sum game. And every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretation of Section 2 hurts us, it’s the difference between winning an election 50-49 and losing an election 51 to 50.”

Once again counsel for the GOP said in open court that they don’t care if a voter is qualified.  They’re trying to eliminate Democratic votes, period, end of sentence.  Since they’re now being truthful about their voter suppression, can they just PLEASE drop the Gigantic Gargantuan Godzilla King Kong Lie?  It would sure save a lot of time and a lot of column inches.

Latest lie from the GOP and its official networks – “Colorados voting laws are like Georgia’s, so MLB shouldn’t have moved the All Star game there.”  As we all know, the controversy began when Georgia Repubs, not liking the results of the 2020 election, rammed through a whole new set of voting restrictions designed to suppress the votes of those they don’t like.  They lied that it was about “election integrity”, but we all know that’s pure USDA Grade A bullshit.  It’s about voter suppression, though they’re working hard to make it look like what it’s not.

In response to the bill, many large corporations belatedly condemned the law (after their customers and activists protested).  MLB announced they were pulling the All Star game from Atlanta and subsequently moved it to Denver.  The immediate response of Repubs?  Corporations should stay out of politics (except for donating money to us).  They also started lying about Colorado’s voting laws, falsely claiming that it’s laws are worse than Georgia’s.  Of course, that’s not true, not even close.

Jen Psaki was asked about that lie in the WH press briefing, and she set the record straight –

Boom.