UPDATE: Just yesterday, the Texas House made it mandatory for professional sports teams to play the National Anthem before all games.  This pressing issue was a legislative priority of Radio Disc Jockey Dan Patrick, along with voter suppression and bathroom access supervision.

ORIGINAL STORY: This year, Texas has faced historic challenges – the global pandemic, the Big Freeze, and The Big Lie.  Add that to existing problems like a teetering education system, a failing healthcare system, crumbling infrastructure, and now a housing crisis, the governor and TXLege had their plates full.  So let’s have a look at that they did to address these issues:

• The Global Pandemic – Abbott, urged on by the Know Nothing wing of his party, played down the risk.  Abbott took away the authority of local leaders to protects their citizens, lifted science driven guidance for social distancing and quarantine recommendations way too early, and slashed recommended unemployment payments to Texans who were suffering.  He also dumped distribution responsibilities for PPE, and later vaccines, on local authorities in his own version of The Hunger Games, making cities/counties compete against one another.  All this caused untold sickness, suffering, and death.  What did the TXLege do this session?  Nothing.
• The Big Freeze – Over 20 years ago, Texas decided it was a good idea to have a “free market” for powering its grid, so the TXLege unwound the state’s regulatory framework, making the power regime in Texas “voluntary”, with no deliverability requirements and no penalties for failing to deliver power.  State air quality standards were also made voluntary.  This system was put in place on a grid that was already mostly disconnected with the grids in other parts of the country, so when it failed in February, no one could come to our aid by delivering power.  Over 200 people died and billions of dollars were lost.  What did the TXLege do to solve the problem and prevent it from happening again?  Nothing.
• The Big Lie – We all saw what happened after months of Trump’s ridiculous lie that an election that he had decisively lost was stolen from him.  When the US Capitol was stormed, hundreds of people were injured and 5 people died.  Trump actually attempted to overthrow the US government in order to stay in power.  Everyone with a hint of insight knows The Big Lie is false is corrosive to our democratic system.  What did the TXLege do to address The Big Lie? They amplified it, repeated it, and used it to pass the most restrictive voter laws in the US to make it harder to vote and to protect their minority power.
• Failing Healthcare System, Crumbling Infrastructure, Teetering Education System– Texas ranks 48th among the states in access to healthcare. Our education ranking is similar. Our crumbling roads, and poor public transportation systems rank among some of the worst in the country.  Under more than two decades of single party rule, our state has steadily declined in a number of measures, but especially healthcare.  Today, race, economic standing, and geographic location are predictors of healthcare outcomes, and the suffering from the pandemic followed these predictors.  The poor and minorities suffered greater infection rates and worse outcomes from the virus which compounded the other issues caused by lack of access to competent healthcare.  What did the TXLege do to address these inequalities?  Nothing.

So, what did the TXLege spend its time on this session? Here’s its list of accomplishments:

• As stated above, pushing the most restrictive voting measures in the US supporting Trump’s Big Lie.
• Passing a new abortion law that bans virtually all abortions, ignoring health, rape, or incest.
• Pushing criminalizing healthcare treatments for transgender kids.
• Passing unqualified carry legislation, making it legal for any idiot to carry whatever firearm said idiot wants to carry, making it virtually impossible for law enforcement to protect citizens from mass killers.
• Abbott criminalized mask requirements which imposes a $1,000 fine on any public official requiring masks, no matter local health conditions.

This is what you get when a minority party has cemented itself into power, taking away accountability to the public.  The GOP has had an iron grip on Texas for over two decades, aided by radical gerrymandering, lack of term limits, lack of spending limits, and lack of ethics laws.  The governor and the TXLege are now totally corrupt and pledged fealty to a criminal who so far has evaded prosecution and continues attempts to overthrow our democratic system of government.  Until The People wrest power away from such corruption, this state, among many other red states, are lost for the foreseeable future.

This is one of those topics that I hesitate to write about. It’s a personal topic that some people have difficultly relating to. This is also not a space where we wallow in our own stuff. So, we walk a fine line between talking about our own issues and looking at issues dispassionately with no personal connection whatsoever. I have to admit that I got inspiration from another spot.

I realize that around these parts the topic of faith and Christianity in general might be taboo, but I drudge on anyway. The phenomenon Pavlovitz noticed has actually been going on longer than that. When I sat on the pastoral council of my old parish we noticed that church attendance and donations were down. This was long before 2016 when Pavlovitz’s writing began to take off and he began addressing this malaise more directly.

As a council, we suggested that we conduct exit interviews (or a survey) to get to the bottom of why church attendance was dropping. Our pastor wouldn’t hear of it. He asserted that people were simply moving away. This was in spite of the fact that they are continually building new neighborhoods and new homes and people are moving into those homes faster than they can build them.

Statistics clearly show that church attendance and faith in general is on the decline. Obviously, for some this is not an issue at all. For some of us it is an issue felt deeply. I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but what I see is a schism between the beliefs that most Christians have and how the faith is practiced in most denominations in the American church. When one can no longer reconcile a benevolent God with all of the hate being spewed by people that call themselves Christian they no longer go.

Complex problems have complex solutions and any number of people to blame. While religious conservatives have played the biggest role in this problem, I don’t think progressives can get off without blame. Jesus was a progressive. When you read the gospels there is no way to come out with any other conclusion. The values of helping the poor and showing compassion to all are clearly progressive planks.

Yet, we have allowed Christianity to be hijacked by conservatives. So, progressives that are also Christian really have three choices. They can stop being progressive and give into the conservative message. They can stop being Christian so they can adhere to a progressive message. The final possibility to continue to be both. However, that requires that they bang their head against both walls. I often feel like that is where I’m at.

The problem with allowing the numbers to get smaller is that those remaining have abandoned progressive ideals. It’s similar to what is going on in the Republican party. Think of it as the Liz Cheney problem. If Cheney gets primaried then gets primaried by a guy that impregnated a 14 year old when he was 18. It seems nice to just assume a Democrat would win, but that’s not likely in Wyoming. So, you replace an ultra conservative with someone more conservative and less reasonable. Multiply that a few dozen times and that’s what’s happened to Congress.

If the same things happens to the American church things will just get worse. I’d rather have a good portion of the church stand up and say in one voice that Jesus was a progressive. Jesus loved his neighbors and condemned no one. Jesus fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and healed the sick. Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, transgender, or any other wedge issue. He spent more time on social justice issues than railing against sin. Maybe if we say these things we can save more Christians from leaving the flock. Maybe if we say these things we can attract more people to the progressive side because we can convince them that voting progressive is a full expression of their faith and not something they do in spite of it.

UPDATE: Mayor Sylvester Turner and County Commissioner Rodney Ellis have decided to take no shit from P.  They’ve written a joint letter to HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge requesting she “…halt all GLO actions associated with the current State Action Plan pending HUD’s review for appropriate and equitable distribution of funds to protect our city and region and build resilience as we adapt to an uncertain future.”  Looks like P overstepped here, and hopefully he’ll get sent to the woodshed for being a partisan asshole.  More to come.

ORIGINAL STORY: No, “P” hasn’t announced his run for the WH, but he’s most certainly started in that direction.  Since April, he’s been floating a run against criminally indicted Ken Paxton, who has somehow avoided trial for the last 5 years for securities fraud.  A demonstrated weirdo who has managed to be on the wrong side of every issue, Paxton has become weakened by scandal and become a target for being primaried, and it looks like P has him in his political sights.  P’s also been trying to shore up his conservative creds, even now pandering to the Texas GOP base which is all in on Trump, The Big Lie, and wishing death on everyone who disagrees politically.

P’s latest allocation of federal emergency funds for flood control in Texas counties is the hard evidence that exposes his pandering to the base.  In a $1 billion flooding mitigation grant from the federal government, Houston, which experienced 50% of the states’s damage from Harvey, received exactly…wait for it…zero.  That’s right, Houston which went for Biden in 2020 and continues to vote Democratic, was punished for voting against those who are supported by P’s base.  P has joined the deplorable wing of the GOP, happy to inflict suffering on fellow Texans, just to burnish his image for being an asshole for his base.  They think its funny.  Those who are suffering don’t.  Oh, and his spokesman lied, saying that they followed federal guidelines for distribution, but that’s bullshit, just like everything else coming out of P’s office.

The Bush’s are carpetbaggers, being New England bluebloods, but they’ve not generally been destructive to their adopted state.  W was stupid, manipulated by the corruption of Dick Cheney and others who duped him into invading Iraq.  HW was a milquetoast, but was a traditional diplomat who accomplished getting Saddam out of Kuwait. Jeb, also a milquetoast, got bulldozed by the Orange Menace.  What P is doing is more sinister…he’s playing to everything that’s bad about Americans, especially those who are all-in on Trump bullshit and corruption.  Urinating on the shoes of everyone in Houston is just a start.  It’s going to get worse.

The Texas state legislature and Governor Abbott have decided to abandon conservative principles, but then again what else is new? The mask has become the symbol for ideological warfare in America. There are all kinds of idiots out there, so there is little time to address them all. Suffice it to say, anyone that treats a mask as anything more than a piece of cloth or fabric is an idiot.

Enter Greg Abbott. The new law makes it illegal for a school or government building to require masks after June 4th. Considering the increasing rates of vaccinations and reducing positive rates it makes some sense on its face. Most adults are now fully vaccinated. So, there’s that.

The problem is two-fold. One of the problems exists on a philosophical level. Conservatives have been crying for generations about how much national and state governments have exercised too much control over local governments and the people. So, here the state government is barring the local governments and school districts from exercising local control. Does anyone else see the problem here?

The move at least follows a pattern with Abbott and the legislature throughout the pandemic. He is anything but consistent. From the beginning he has refused to lead in any positive way to limit the spread of the virus. He prefers to let local entities do the work. That would be fine except that whenever a local entity acts responsibly and safely he tells them they’re doing it wrong. This is another one of those instances.

The second problem is that while adults are getting vaccinated, children are not. Children under 12 cannot be vaccinated and those over 12 have just started. The good news is that by June 4th, most students and teachers will be home for the summer. Yet, there will still be summer school and who knows how many students will be vaccinated by August.

It is quite possible to overreact to something like this. For one thing, it is highly possible that most school districts would have reached this conclusion on their own. After all, the order doesn’t say you can’t wear masks. It just says that you can’t require it. However, some districts likely would have maintained the mask order if left to their own devices.

It also brings us back to the original point about masks. They have become a political symbol. I usually still wear one in public even though I am vaccinated. We have to wear one at work and it is just easier to do it rather than have to remember which places allow you to go without and which ones don’t. I increasingly get dirty looks in public because people automatically make an assumption about my politics based on my adherence to wearing a mask.

In this case they would be right, but that’s not really the point. The point is that a public safety measure shouldn’t be the flashpoint for a political debate. That’s true whether you look down at someone for wearing a mask or make fun of someone for not. Either way you are turning a piece of cloth or fabric into something it was never intended to be.

Gohmert: When I took it, did very well.. I’m sure that shocks people who think I’m the dumbest guy in Congress pic.twitter.com/4U63Qb3dYu

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 20, 2021

It happens slowly. It’s not unlike the tale of cooking the frog. See, you can’t put a frog in boiling water. It will hop out immediately. Slowly turn the heat up and the frog will be none the wiser. Sadly, many of us are no more observant or wise than the common frog.

January 6th happened. We all saw it happen live. We all know exactly how we felt while watching it. We remember the combination of fear, horror, and seething anger. What’s more, we saw all of the lawmakers on that day. We saw all of them cowering. We saw the fear and anger in their eyes. In many of them you can still see it.

Yet, for some the effort has already begun. Like the frog, they didn’t completely deny it immediately. No one would have bought that. We’re much too smart for that. It started with simple conflation with a little bit of gaslighting thrown in. Those attacks weren’t any worse than the Antifa attacks on our cities. After all, those “terrorists” caused more property damage and loss of life than the “misguided patriots” that attacked the capital.

Misguided patriots. I’m sure you caught that too. I’m sure your blood boiled just a little when you heard that phrase. Defense attorneys are already working overtime to exonerate those charged with the insurrection. It wasn’t their fault. They were duped. They are America loving patriots that just got sold a lemon by a barking con man. Of course, what gets to happen to the con man? Well, he gets secret service detail and he can look for voter fraud in every sand trap at Mar Lago.

If it stopped there it would be one thing. In the abstract, we all acknowledge that lawyers have to earn a living. Defense attorneys levy ridiculous defenses every day in court. It’s their job. When truth is not on your side you resort to any other means you possibly can. Yet, as we know it didn’t end there. The opposition is slowly turning up the heat on the frog.

Now, they are saying it wasn’t an insurrection at all. It was a normal, average day at the capital. The protesters were simply acting like any group of tourists would. Of course, this theory is pure fiction, so it gets a few variants. One such variant has the MAGA crowd as fine, upstanding citizens just protesting while Antifa operatives sewed discontent and performed most of the violence. Sure. Makes perfect sense until you actually think about it.

Others still acknowledged that something happened and yet want to conflate it with “all of the other violence” going around the country. That’s what happened when most of the GOP caucus opposed a 1/6 commission. They were given their demands. They got equal representation on the commission. Both parties have subpoena power. Still, they think the commission should be investigating Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

A political party that spent millions of tax payers money and hours of precious time investigating Benghazi think that an event with a similar death toll and far more injuries deserves little to no time. Seems just about right. This one was only an attack on our very own government. It was an attack on our very own soil. It was in an attack in a building that hasn’t seen one in its storied history. It was an attack on the very institutions that keep our government humming.

It’s been only a few months. Just wait until a few years have gone by. Just wait until a few decades have gone by. What was the scariest collective moment in many of our lives will become another footnote in history. It will become a mild mannered protest where a few people got hurt. Maybe it will rise to the level of a Kent St. in some people’s minds. Maybe it will completely disappear from others. At least that’s the goal and that is why the opposition must keep the story line going. Nothing as obtrusive as a commission seeking the truth can get in the way of the “truth.”