Monsters Among Us

April 07, 2021 By: Nick Carraway

Those that live in the Houston area are well aware of the Deshaun Watson situation. Watson is the star quarterback for the Houston Texans. Based on current events, the is will soon become was. Commenting on these cases is always difficult. He has been sued by 22 women for sexual misconduct and/or sexual assault. Two of those 22 women have gone to the police and filed criminal complaints.

We know only a few things. We know that Watson regularly gets massages. We know he has gone to Instagram to find massage therapists. We know what the women have all said. We know that he has denied it. From there, it’s all conjecture. The first woman to file a suit spoke yesterday. Her emotions were raw and real. It’s difficult to watch and listen and come away believing Watson. Then again, Watson hasn’t come out in public and made a statement since the first lawsuit was filed.

We can extend it beyond Watson and include Matt Gaerz and Andrew Cuomo if we want to be balanced and thorough. However, we could include any high profile potential abuser in this discussion. Watson’s opening statement on Twitter seems innocent enough by itself, but when taken in concert with the overwhelming amount of accusations and the repetitive nature of the modus operandi it is downright disturbing.

Notice the line in the middle. “I have never treated any woman with anything but the utmost respect.” This was actually following the first filed lawsuit. 21 further lawsuits have come. On the one hand it is predictable. It was almost as if Watson were daring those other women to come forward. We see this behavior frequently from famous abusers. The huge question comes in what the abuser believes themself.

Does he honestly believe that he is treating all of these women with respect? Is he saying it just because he feels like it is in his best interest to say it? In some cases, you can see the wheels spinning in their head. Some people are duplicitous jackasses. They know very well what they are doing. Cuomo and Gaetz have certainly been painted that way for good reason. With Watson I’m not so sure. I’m guessing a large part of him has been caught off-guard with all of these accusations. I’m sure a large part of him still believes he has done nothing wrong.

That’s the scary part of this whole deal. Most of us know monsters exist in the world and we’ve made our peace with it. There are all kinds of monsters. There are people that routinely do evil in the world. Not much can be done for them. We often call them sociopaths or psychopaths. They know right and wrong and see human weakness. For whatever reason they have chosen to exploit weakness instead of protecting and nurturing it. Fine. The world is made up of all kinds of people.

The ones that cross the line can be put in two groups. The sociopaths and psychopaths couldn’t give two craps about the line. They want to be gratified and see something they want. They recognize there is a line and they always know where it is so they can stay out of trouble. They just won’t let it stop them. They just cross the line. Those people are easy to understand once you admit to yourself that some people have no conscience.

The ones that always get me are the ones that seem to be ignorant of the line. When you have 20+ women accusing you of some form of assault or abuse we aren’t talking about stumbling over the line once on accident. This is a compulsion. Yes, we don’t know all of the facts, but we can probably put a picture together in our head. At the very least, it appears Watson has a compulsory need to recreate the same situation over and over. Yes, in isolation that situation might be perfectly legal, but when repeated and done purposely it is abuse. The fact that he may not know this is frightening. I couldn’t imagine doing it to 20, 30, or even more. Maybe that’s the difference between normal people and predators. Maybe he knows and just doesn’t care.

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Matt, Stop Digging

April 07, 2021 By: El Jefe

Matt Gaetz is spinning so fast he’s going to fall down.  After deny, deny, deny didn’t work, he’s now saying that the DOJ investigation into sex trafficking and crossing state lines with a minor for sex is all a Democratic plot to take him down.  The little detail he left out?  The investigation was begun last year when Trump and Bill Barr were still in office.  Oops.  Oh, and it gets worse.  While Gaetz continues to dig a deeper hole for himself, the NY Times is reporting that he had petitioned the Trump WH for a blanket preemptive pardon for himself a some unnamed associates for crimes they may have committed during his term in office.  Mercifully, WH counsel determined that request to be a non-starter.  Apparently, he did not disclose to the WH that he was under federal investigation at the time of the pardon request.  Oops, again.

 

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The Unholy Trinity

April 06, 2021 By: Nick Carraway

The Republican party is made up of three primary factions. The oldest faction is the faction the party was built on. The Republican party has always been the party of big business. Leave it to that group to be the possible ultimate undoing of everything else. They always say that politics make strange bedfellows. It is bizarre to see racists, xenophobes, and homophobes get in bed with big business, and then saddle up to religious zealots in a kind of perverse love triangle. I shudder to say this now, but it looks like big business might become the voice of reason.

All of this stands in the backdrop of corporate America’s standoff with the Georgia GOP over their new voter suppression law. Some have dubbed the bill “Jim Crow 2.0.” Whether it is motivated purely by racism or if it is simply a sinister power grab that happens to disproportionately affect African Americans and people of color is open to debate. The impact cannot be debated. Fewer people will vote and that is exactly what the GOP wants.

We can marvel at the simplicity of it. We can marvel at the naked ambition and undemocratic principles of the notion. I choose to marvel at corporate America’s collective response. MLB has pulled it’s all-star game and MLB draft out of Georgia. The collective impact has been estimated at a loss of 100 million dollars of revenues for the city of Atlanta and the state. That kind of loss in revenue has its way of trickling down. Funny how this trickle down method could topple the Republican party as it stands.

See, Corporate America never does anything for anyone else if it doesn’t benefit themselves. MLB and those companies looked at the bottom line and discovered their customer base would be more upset if they just went along with it than if they embraced democracy and free and fair elections. NASCAR made a similar calculation when they came out in opposition to racism and in support of the aims of Black Lives Matter. The comments have been eerily similar from critics of both organizations.

Conservatives from the racism and religious wings have asserted that these companies will suffer at the box office if members of their wings boycott those companies. Businesses don’t stay in business long if they make short-term and rash decisions. Someone thought this through and someone figured out that they would come out ahead. They thought it through and determined that racism, xenophobia, and homophobia was bad for business. That might be the death knell of this entire unholy triumvirate.

Of course, this doesn’t stop the other wings from putting their foot in their mouth. Governor Greg Abbott (I’ll let you choose which wing he belongs to) not only refused to throw out the first pitch at the Rangers game. He also said that Texans didn’t want any part of hosting the all-star game. I’m sure Ray Davis and Bob Simpson were happy to hear that. The Astros aren’t likely to be in line to host the game, but the Rangers surely would have been. They just built a new stadium and MLB has a habit of rewarding cities that build new stadiums. Not all 100 million of that economic impact would have been theirs, but much of it would have been. Abbott’s big mouth just took money out of their pocket.

Nothing pisses off big business faster than stupid people that take money out of their pocket. Never in a million years would I have dreamt that it would be big business that would balk first, but it looks like that is about to happen. Big business is about to drag the Republican party kicking and screaming back into the 21st century and back into democracy. Of course, the racists and religious zealots are powerful and stubborn. Who knows where this finally ends up.

Abbott began his reign as governor as somewhat of a compromise candidate between all of the factions. He’d tip his cap to each as he walked the tightrope between all three. This is certainly true when you compare him with his lieutenant governor. You can’t walk that tightrope long. Eventually you have to choose either one or two sides to favor. Abbott has made his choice and it ultimately will be his undoing. The question comes whether that comes in 2022 or later.

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Abbott Strikes Again…

April 06, 2021 By: El Jefe

This morning, Greg Abbott banned vaccine passports in Texas, falsely claiming that they “reveal private health information”.  That’s the dumbest goddam thing I’ve heard since Trump recommended consuming bleach.  Protecting “private health information”?  For God’s sake I’m telling EVERYBODY.  Abbott’s confirmed once again that he’s a complete moron.

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Arlington Republican Says She Can be Racist Because She’s Korean

April 05, 2021 By: Jet Harris

Arlington must have Republicans taking care of the drinking water, y’all.

Lets go back in time, just a few months, to December of 2020. Representative Ron Wright (R), infamous for complaining that there is no federal protection for the ever-persecuted white American male, is the U.S. Representative for the 6th Congressional District of Texas. He believes that the 2020 election was fraudulent and votes against certifying the election results on the day of the Capitol riot, January 6.

Not long after Rep. Wright made it back to Arlington, he tested positive for COVID. And died. He had spent the entire last year battling lung cancer and tweeting that businesses and schools should re-open because COVID-19 isn’t all that dangerous.

Moving forward, 23 people have filed to run for his seat. Texans will be voting in a special election May 1. One of the candidates, former wrestler and current carpetbagger Dan Rodimer, has already had himself gossiped about at the beauty salon for being a fool. Not to be outdone, let me introduce y’all to one of the ladies running for Wright’s seat.

Sery Kim is Korean. Last week, there was a forum for the GOP candidates where they could out-stupid each other to try and win the Republican votes. Kim decided to play the race-card.

On the subject of Chinese immigrants, “I don’t want them here at all,” Sery Kim said. “They steal our intellectual property, they give us coronavirus, they don’t hold themselves accountable.” She said the racist part out-loud. Trump voters love that.

“And quite frankly, I can say that because I’m Korean,” she added.

She has refused to apologize, saying it’s the big bad liberal media’s fault and that she “will not back down from speaking the truth.” She lost the endorsements of the two Korean Republican Representatives in the House: Young Kim and Michelle Steel.

In a political climate where you’ve got to be a giant jack-ass to get on the ballot, she just might have a shot.

As I was writing this, I saw some more political news out of Arlington. Governor Abbott has turned down the offer to throw out the first pitch at the Ranger’s game this week, citing Major League Baseball’s opposition to Georgia’s restrictive Voter ID law. I’d wager three jars of El Jefe’s South Texas Pucker Up & Slap Yo’ Knee Bread n’ Butter pickles that Abbott expects to be boo’d out of the stadium by Texans still pissed off about last month’s power grid failure. Besides, no one watches the Rangers anyway. Go ‘Stros!

 

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Teach your children well

April 05, 2021 By: Nick Carraway

We always start with what we know. We know Matt Gaetz is guilty of something. We know that he played up the Q conspiracy on his own ends and for his own ends. We know that he is likely guilty of the same things that he was accusing others of doing. It makes no sense to write an entire post about these things we know. We already know it.

These things are troubling and yet it is not these things that trouble me. Eventually we get to the point where we recognize that evil exists in the world. We may even get to the point where we recognize evil in certain people before the world acknowledges it. In fact, psychologists tell us that most sexual assault victims had an uneasy feeling about their attacker  before the attack. For whatever reason, they chose to ignore that feeling. I can only assume that same intuition exists beyond immediate predators and those we just see on television.

The fact is that most people are better judges of character than what they think. Reports have come out now that even Republicans refused to have their picture taken with Gaetz. They knew something like this was coming. Of course, when he’s busy showing off naked pictures of girls he knows and playing Harry Potter inspired sex games then it isn’t difficult to see something horrible coming down the pike.

The question for today is how we teach all of our children these important life lessons. I promise we try to teach students about the importance of choosing good sources for information. I’ve sat in the room when teachers have gone over the difference between heavily biased sources and sources that are more reliable. I’ve watched as we have identified left leaning sources and right leaning sources. Wikipedia and YouTube were never suggested as reliable sources.

Yet, years later you see many of these same people quoting these same dubious sources when they talk about the widespread sex trafficking problem. Some of that is to be expected. I still remember getting my sources from the card catalog. Our English teachers made us write down the quotes from each source onto index cards and then wrote down all of the pertinent information about the source as well so we could build a bibliography from scratch. It’s easy to imagine people from this generation propagating crap from the internet.

Unfortunately, we are still far too busy teaching the STAAR test to spend time making sure kids understand the differences between biased and unbiased sources. In science classes we don’t spend nearly enough time helping students be on the lookout for junk science. Not enough students take basic statistics. Don’t even get me started on social studies and what we are doing in there. Yet, conservatives have the audacity to accuse of us indoctrinating students. Again, we accuse others of what we do ourselves.

The state curriculum is built on what the test tests for. The test doesn’t test students based on these skills. So, these skills only get taught if teachers are determined to teach it on their own. Many of the teachers I know do that, but I certainly can’t speak for everyone and I won’t even try to vouch for the majority. I can only hope each generation becomes more internet savvy than the last. Otherwise we are in a lot of trouble.

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