It’s A Whole New Mess Now UPDATED!
Okay, below the cartoons I have been updating the giant bustercluck that is the Republican State Convention in Texas. They cannot seem to do what high school kids do every damn day.
It was supposed to start yesterday, then they had to move it to today at noon. I had a fresh batch of popcorn popped by 9:30 and was ready to watch all afternoon. Damn. Now they moved it until tomorrow because they are still untechnical, I dunno, maybe it’s distechnical.
So now they are promising it’ll be tomorrow. Until 5 minutes ago when this breaking news hits the Quorum Report.
So, last week they went to state court and the Texas Supreme Court (which is 100% Republican) and got a big giant nope at both places. So, now they are going to try federal court two days after the convention is supposed to have started.
Now, let me tell you why this even matters.
State conventions are where each Texas state senate district elects electors to vote on the presidency. After the November election these electors meet in Austin and cast their votes for the presidential candidate of their party. The winner gets the state’s electoral votes. There is no other method provided by the election code for electors to be elected.
Soooooo … if they don’t have a convention to elect electors and Donald Trump wins, there’s no electors for him so he gets 0 electoral votes from Texas. Joe Biden wouldn’t get them, but neither would Trump.
So, if Trump were to win, Texas would end up with zero electoral votes because these Republican bozos could not get a computer to work.
This is so typical of the Trump years that it is raging fierce justice.
UPDATE: 4:30 Houston Time
So, apparently, you have a constitutional right to spread a killer virus.
I stand with Mayor Turner.
TX GOP fits a job evaluation someone once did.
1“His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity.”
And Trump would blame the Democrats.
2No Ideas – Imagination – Theories
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnG4lpcn9aM
3Never a dull moment.
4megasoid: Thanks for that!
5I don’t remember if that was in the book or not, but it was funny as hell!
P.P. @ 5 Douglas Adams on the first day of shooting suggested the idea… Owww, for the skit which was not in either book or script. In essence, that was his idea… Ow, my god, what was that?
6Are they really so cheap that they can’t pay a bunch of computer geeks to run the thing? Better yet, ask their 22 year old nephew/niece and pay him/her with a case of beer. It’s really not that hard.
7@ Mike – + 10!
As to the lawsuit, I very much doubt even a far right Republican court would dare to say that a force majeure clause was invalid just because Republicans couldn’t find the “any” key when told “press any key to continue…”
8In the meantime, tv has been putting out the bulletin that Houston is locked down. Yesh, that convention isn’t going to happen
9I think the Demo caucus byi Congressional district.
10Having gone to accounting school and not lawyering school, what is the advantage/use of going to federal court after you’ve lost in state court? I’m sure they will look for a chummy judge, but is there another advantage?
11What we’re seeing is the result of GOP/rich folks primary characteristic: laziness.
1. It’s not that hard to handle this kind of an online event, it just takes some minor effort to hunt down which technologies to use, which will scale to the size of the event, and to run tests that the stack will work.
2. Since they’ve never had to work hard, they assume it must be easy. So they don’t hire any competents for the task.
3. If they do hire anyone, it’s brother-in-law Dave who almost got an MBA at Doug’s School of Business and Evangelical Theology. OK, actually he once walked by a classroom where some business prof was lecturing. Anyway, let’s give Dave $3M to take care of it. Then Dave calls his ex-frat bros, because one of them once got the VCR to stop flashing 12:00 all the time. They in turn hire their idiot children, and since it is laziness all the way down, in the end lots of money gets spent but nobody competent is hired.
12Democrats caucus by senatorial districts. I know because my Bubba was on the SDEC and I was elected a national delegate in 2012. It’s all done by our 31 state senatorial districts. I’m in SD 18, and there are 20 counties down the south Texas coastline in it.
13So if the Republicans hold their convention in person, knowing full well they could infect delegates, delegates who will then scatter home across the state and create COVID clusters – – since it would be clear all of this could have been prevented…
do we call it The Republican Virus?
14The BOFH weighs in:
15Maybe they should pick extra alternates. No telling how many will ne alive in January.
16I’m not a lawyer, so maybe someone can explain to me how hizzonner can find a constitutional issue in this even if he uses an electron microscope. The city of Houston has done absolutely nothing to prevent the NSGOP from holding a convention. The city just said they can’t do it here, which should be well within the city’s rights. Turner is appealing, as well he should.
17New – federal appeals court says it still can’t happen.
18@ BFSMan- From what I’ve seen, the city invoked a standard contract called “force majeure” (aka “Act of God). If something unusual happens that prevents a party to perform their duties under the contract, such as a flood or a pandemic, they can invoke the force majeure clause.
The problem the Republicans have is that this is a very standard clause “boilerplate” clause in all contracts. If a court voids that clause, big corporations will get very grumpy.
I expect the Republicans are so used to being above the law that they didn’t expect they’d have much trouble getting a Bush v Gore style partisan decision letting them do whatever they want.
19Just to remind everyone, the GOPs are going to be supplying us with that replacement (much, MUCH better) for the ACA.
Any day now…
20They aren’t un-techie
they hired the bidder with the biggest kickback or bribe.
21https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-07-17/texas-gop-gets-court-nod-for-last-minute-in-person-convention?utm_content=politics&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&__twitter_impression=true
Midnight order bars TX GOP from convention hall
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