Deep in the Dark Heart of Texas

 

BREAKING: Texas Governor Greg Abbott pardons Daniel Perry for killing BLM protester Garrett Foster pic.twitter.com/lSn3WafPE4

— BNO News (@BNONews) May 16, 2024

I could just blog about how TX Gov.  Greg Abbott is a signifying sociopathic fascist who is pardoning a racist and pedophile murderer to send a chilling message to his state about his values, but I need to point out that he is not just following through on a political promise, but that the Texas Pardon and Parole Board recommended it. 

Let me repeat that: this was not without the consent of other people who sit in judgment over who gets pardons or parole, but with their express approval. Greg Abbott isn't a brand-new baby governor trying to feel out the ethos of his state--he is a monster who has figured out that many people will clap for a particular kind of monster. 

In Texas, anyway. 

A Civil War Over the Texas Death Moat?

 

My statement on Texas’ constitutional right to self-defense. pic.twitter.com/seNFZdmujP

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) January 24, 2024

The governor of Texas seems to really be pushing this states' rights issue a bit hard in Biden's direction, but it's very curious to me that he's doing so precisely when congressional talks over a possible immigration deal are breaking down because Trump doesn't want them to do Biden any favors.  

“Trump wants them to kill it because he doesn’t want Biden to have a victory,” said the source. “He told them he will fix the border when he is president… He said he only wants the perfect deal.”

Trump’s meddling generated an “emotional” discussion in a closed door meeting between Senate Republicans on Wednesday, as senators vented their frustrations for hours about the largely secret negotiations over emergency aid for Ukraine, Israel and immigration. The conference is splintering into two camps: those who believe Republicans should take the deal, and those who are opposed at any cost.

“The rational Republicans want the deal because they want Ukraine and Israel and an actual border solution,” said the source. “But the others are afraid of Trump, or they’re the chaos caucus who never wants to pass anything.”

“They’re having a little crisis in their conference right now,” the source added.

(I know, I know, anonymous source and all that--but this is exactly what they seem to have been telegraphing they're doing, too.) 

And we're going to see other Republicans stand with Abbott even though he's grandstanding over his death moat, not an actual solution to the immigration problem because, like I've said, it's partisan dick-slappery. Just with increasing levels of potential death and constitutional crisis, because Republicans aren't just unserious people--they are truly terrible unserious people.  And this is Greg freaking Abbott, whose other answer to the immigration situation was shipping migrants from Texas to other states which is also not responsible, a total stunt, potentially dangerous, and not a serous solution to anything. 

For a party that wants to make immigration a signature issue, the Republicans genuinely aren't interesting in doing anything sensible about it, but grandstanding and making things worse. 

They should own every little bit of that. 

And keep in mind that in part, this is also about Trump, who has long associated himself with Civil War ideation. He would rather see this country broken if he isn't to rule it. No person who thinks like that can be said to love this country. I strongly suspect that he doesn't, and neither do his confederates. 

Snuffing Liberty's Lamp on the Borders

 

Trump praises an anti-immigrant military-style operation from the 1950s called “Operation Wetback” as he calls for rounding up Latinos in mass detention camps pic.twitter.com/9FYrI9zYQz

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 14, 2024

Detention camps. Build the wall. Iron Dome.  Trump is full of unnecessary antihumanitarian gimmicks. I think I know pretty well what he thinks he means by detention camps--something akin to what his good buddy Sheriff Arpaio had. How in the fuck, into the 21st century, was this shit something we as a modern nation allowed? 

 They love the hate and the othering. Calling other people names is a good substitute, they reckon, for figuring out the real cause of inequality. The grotesque ease with which untermenchen always figure out how to keep punching down while never challenging the ubermen. 

You know who also loves this stuff--Chip Roy of Texas. He applauded and supports Ron DeSantis because he shipped people from Venezuela who got to Texas all the way to Martha's Vinyard, because that is proof of something, and I want to say it is xenophobia and also proof that liberal cities are better at figuring out how to care for people than bigots in MAGAland ever could. 

Which brings us to the tragedy at Eagle Pass, the woman and two children who died as Texas officials prevented federal officials from doing anything about them. This was according to design. This is what Governor Abbott expends his efforts with, instead of making life better for Texans.  Like fixing the energy grid and shoring up protections for Texas residents in shit weather. Like accepting money to feed hungry kids. 

Now, Greg Abbott is going to tell us that woman and those two children were already dead in the water. 

Sure, that's how he wants it. From the moment they left home and threw themselves at the demented Jigsaw trap this psychopath put between them and a life that was still grueling, but had to be better than whatever they left if you understand what they had to overcome to get so far in the first damn place. Of course, they were. By design.

Texas Isn't Here for the Children

 

At seven months pregnant, prison officer Salia Issa reported contraction-like pains at work but wasn’t allowed to leave for hours. She later delivered a stillborn.

Texas is fighting her lawsuit, in part by saying her fetus didn’t clearly have rights.https://t.co/Spn5mi6HVo

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) August 13, 2023

So, I feel like I just posted about how Texas isn't really pro-life, just pro-punishing female-bodied people. It feels like I just talked about how Governor Abbott turned the Rio Grande into a death moat--which had already taken life. And here we are, talking about how a pregnant person working for the state was told she doesn't have any rights as a worker as to the safety of her pregnancy and her fetus (a wanted child) didn't have any rights, when rights of the fetus was the exact reason why a healthy woman had to carry death in her womb--a fetus that would never be viable. Here we are, talking about a dead baby on a migrant bus on the way from Texas to Chicago, driven like a longhorn from ranch to packing lot. 

I'm not here to say Ms. Issa's fetus had rights--I'm going to say she had rights as a human being who had a wanted pregnancy and whose life could have been in the balance over a problematic delivery.  I'm not here to say Greg Abbott personally caused the death of the migrant baby that he sent on that final leg of their mortal journey--I'm saying he's oblivious to the value of that child, alive, and the value of that child's parents as workers, and migrants as being not a problem, but a community of souls. 

I'm saying that a person who dreams of saw blades or razor wire greeting people who mostly walked over a thousand miles to find safety is a sadist of the worst kind--the kind with the power to practice his sadism on especially vulnerable people. 

I don't know what it takes to get people like him out of office--the people had a more caring human being in his opponent in the last election. But if Democrats cannot demonstrate the examples of El Paso, Uvalde, the death moat, the migrant buses, and all the ways Texas GOP make the state more terrible and less secure for humans to have bodies in--what hope for humanity is there? Not that Texas would listen to me. But from where I am, what a government! When does it change!

Texas and the Cruelty of "Pro-Life" People

 

Texas women are telling their stories about their troubled and forced pregnancies under their state's strict anti-abortion laws, through tears and even vomit. They are testifying that they do not feel safe to be mothers in Texas, because it is not a safe state to be pregnant if abortion care does not exist there. It is a brutality that they have to tell these deeply personal stories under derisive and uncaring questioning under the assumption that the state's penalizing of fertile women for the heartbreak of reproductive mishap is not responsible for their misery is appalling, but worse is that they did undergo unnecessary injury, expenses, pain and suffering, because surgical options they could have had were made inoperable for them. 

Texas has a shitty record for maternal mortality. Let's get that upfront. Infant mortality as well. An actual pro-life position might well include trying to improve these stats with better health care access. But the rate of uninsured, access to hospitals for rural folks, and cost of getting medical care in Texas isn't a priority. I mean, not for the supposedly pro-life psychopaths in charge like Abbott, Patrick and Paxton. 

Figuring out ways to punish women and doctors for even having abortion as an option, apparently is. 

Governor Abbott is a Fucking Sadist (UPDATES)

 

Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande and not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat, according to an email from a DPS trooper. https://t.co/6yg2aNt9E2

— Houston Chronicle (@HoustonChron) July 17, 2023

The Republicans in Texas chose this man. He was a fucking sadist when he implied it was wrong to feed migrant children who were in federal care. He's been a sadist.  He's a signifying sadist about the border. He's a signifying sadist about whether workers need water in brutal heat. 

It's not enough for even children or mothers to be drowned, but they should be drowned bleeding from razor wire. He denies migrants in petty ways and in dangerous ways. He's a useless signifying knob, but in unpleasant stupid ways. 

If Texas Republicans have any answer for why this is their Governor that isn't because they love that he's a whole entire piece of psychopathic shit I can hardly imagine it. 

The cruelty looks like the entire point to me. Psychopaths should not be in politics. 

UPDATE: The DOJ is suing Abbott for turning the Rio Grande into a bloody death moat. 

Abbott of course, is being a defiant asshole about it:

Abbott fired back Friday, writing on Twitter that Texas has "sovereign authority" to defend its border. The humanitarian crisis at the border was created because of Biden's refusal to secure the border and by his policies that encourage migrants to risk their lives by crossing illegally through the Rio Grande, Abbott said.

"We will continue to deploy every strategy to protect Texans and Americans – and the migrants risking their lives," he wrote. "We will see you in court, Mr. President."

Just for the record--Biden's policies have caused a drop in border crossings, and every time you see the words "seized" and "detained" WRT the border in a fucking Republican Tweet, you are looking at the results of a border that is being defended. 

But to understand why what Abbott is doing is only for the cruelty, here's a baby being passed through razor wire:

Was the razor-wire supposed to stop people so desperate they faced a 2,000 mile journey in the first place? Was the fear of drowning supposed to stop people when migrants from Africa and the Middle East make a journey and know they could drown in the Mediterranean Sea? Look at that razor wire. This is a normal person's idea of a border. It's like an act of war. 

And the people whose land these barriers are erected on or near don't even see the necessity. Texas is doing this in some cases on private land. And I can't help but think also about what this monstrosity means for local wildlife and even area livestock.

Mr. Abbott; TEAR DOWN THIS FLOATING WALL!

Bleeding America

 

It comes out that the mass shooter at the Allen, TX outlet mall was a man named Mauricio Garcia, who was fascinated with right-wing politics and white supremacy, and wore a "Right Wing Death Squad" badge. So, cue up the right wing defenders of the faith, saying it's unpossible that a Hispanic man is also a white supremacist. Nick Fuentes and Enrique Tarrio and so on and so on aside.  Leave it to normie suburban Republicans to try and defend actual white supremacists by saying they wouldn't allow freaking mestizos in the country club. Why are our racists not more racist?  is quite the realization for the party that accepted Trump and birtherism and wanted Muslin bans and mass deportations. 

Of course, here at this blog, we've been aware of the love some right wingers have for Pinochet. And know very well why Garcia's politics might be swept under the rug. It doesn't fit the narrative that it's always and only mental illness, and Garcia also suffered from that.  

Just today, another incident in TX claimed lives without guns: an SUV rammed into a bus stop claiming eight lives and injuring multiple others. And it is both senseless and fraught with meaning--did someone decide that immigrants were just people who could be killed because it was politically determined to be fine? I mean, don't people plow into crowds and have other people deem it to be fine? They were only illegal aliens, after all. 

Look, I can be hard on Texas, but we have a violence problem throughout this country. Sure, it's a North Texas meteorologist who is on high alert because a six year old with a missing kitten might ***gasp*** ring his doorbell, for which he needs to be strapped and locked and loaded, but also, we just have trigger happy herpderps out here for non-being Texan reasons. 

Greg Abbott is Still Greg Abbotting

 

You can go ahead and click to embiggen the above screencap, but the main takeaway is that Greg Abbott, Christian, can't even acknowledge the victims of a senseless and horrendous crime without pointing out that they were "illegal aliens". The eight-year-old dead child. The two women who died covering their children to try to save them from bullets. This after his appalling failure to even recognize the mass shooting earlier. 

This is Greg Abbott, Abbotting. This is the guy who didn't understand why the federal government would go so far as to feed babies in US custody if there was a formula shortage and who wanted (or still wants--don't even know!) to pardon a man who drove into a crowd of BLM protesters and then conveniently shot one who was lawfully open-carrying. 

It once again looks like Greg Abbott feels like there are mitigating circumstances to murder--if he agrees with who the victims were. But also, too, the murderer was an "illegal," so. There's a reward for his capture. 

I have to wonder if they were shot up by a white guy, would he try and commission a medal? Because that's the vibe I'm getting. 

The Dangers of Vice-Signaling

 

I wrote very recently about Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas' determination to pardon a convicted killer because Tucker Carlson told him to, and the publication of former Sgt. Daniel Perry's prior social media history highlights how very, very, ill-advised it would be to pardon someone like this. 

The documents released Thursday were filed on March 27, when prosecutors announced their intent to introduce messages and posts they'd gathered from Perry's cellphone. Some of Perry’s messages were presented during his trial, including a May 31, 2020, social media post where he said he might have to kill people. But the newly unsealed filing contains dozens of other posts and messages that weren’t presented publicly. 

Each piece of evidence is listed separately in the 76 pages. They include Internet searches for news about George Floyd-related protests, posts of memes that appear to encourage or rationalize shooting protests, and Perry's own messages in which he talks about being angry and scared over the protests or writes about committing violence.

More documentation of Perry's social media history is here.  And to be fair, I might have searched many of the same things he did--because I write about movements like Black Lives Matter being in favor of them and I write about extremist violence being very much against. 

Governor Abbott is Who He Is

 

I could write rather a lot about what pardoning a man who said he was thinking of killing people on his way to work, who did plow into a crowd of peaceful protesters who were exercising their 1st Amendment rights, and then fatally shot someone in the crowd who was lawfully exercising his 2nd Amendment writes would mean: the sanctioning of murder based on whether you agreed with the choice of victims--

But let's face it, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas choosing to do just that based on Fox News and the opinions of no less an intellect and subject matter expert on this than Kyle Rittenhouse is very, very on brand, And saying more just feels like a waste of words, in a way. 

This Sums Up the Day For Me

 

You signed a bill last year eliminating the requirement for Texas schools to teach about MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. https://t.co/Lm8m1cXazN

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) January 16, 2023

All Republicans who have promoted anti-CRT (which is so nebulous it might as well be "anti-Black History") curriculums and also who have gone out of their way to support voter suppression and create hateful divisions among people based on race and creed have no business putting Martin Luther King, Jr.'s name in their mouths--but they do try. And they do it in a way that tastes like an insult, to be honest. If they are going to stand for everything the man fought against, they could just as well choose to stay quiet and let their actions speak for themselves, because that's what will actually be remembered of them, anyway.

UPDATE: More of this, actually:

delete your tweet rand. https://t.co/KzovVTcQOW pic.twitter.com/NettLrb0HQ

— Annie Wu (all socials: annie_wu_22) (@Annie_Wu_22) January 16, 2023

We all know the senator changed his mind in an election year and supported the act he previously blocked.  But we don't forget a lot out here on the internet. 

The War on Christmas

 

It's Christmas Eve and about 50 migrants were dropped off in front of Kamala Harris' residence with the temperature in the teens. Another stunt by Greg Abbott. pic.twitter.com/wUjkxplYmB

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) December 25, 2022

You can tell me there was no room at the inn, but does anyone honestly mean to say there was no room--in Texas? Or was it only that in his fondness for the stranger (as even He had been a sojourner in Egypt), Governor Abbott felt it correct to send these people across a storm-thrown passage because he couldn't be sure he could keep the lights on for them?

 

Martha's Vineyard and the Migrants

 

So, I think that the DeSantis stunt of hijacking undocumented people from Texas (who had not ever stepped a foot in Florida) and were mostly Venezuelan (escaping a left-wing government nightmare that would be familiar in treachery to Cuban immigrants) was obviously signaling about his national ambitions, not the current gubernatorial battle; his ass thinks he has that sewed up.  I want to concentrate on how what he did here, spending some ridiculous sum to transport asylum seekers processed by DHS to try and own libs, was dumb as hell. (Is it human trafficking--or kidnapping? It totally feels like a violation of human rights.)

I have been saying DeSantis is covering up his clusterfuckery with culture war signifying, and this is just another example of that. Does someone need to spend taxpayer money for 50 people that never set a step in Florida to actually get decent treatment in a receptive and empathetic community of people who are welcoming and actually happy to help people in trouble--in a whole other state? 

You know, a lot of liberals are going to focus on the cruelty. That these people were misled to get them onto the transport with promises of jobs and they weren't even fed or told where they were going to go. I don't think that matters to DeSantis fans. They love the cruelty part of it. They get off on it. These thimble dicks think that owning libs is exactly what went down and...

That isn't what happened. 

Migrants and local high school AP Spanish students, who have been dismissed from school to help interpret, play a ball game in the Parish House parking lot to pass the time. pic.twitter.com/KsyRKsoslv

— Brooke Kushwaha (@BrookeKushwaha) September 15, 2022

What really happened was a whole community chipped in.  This could have been Ron DeSantis, but he doesn't have that grace. This could have been Greg Abbott too, who did the same stunt times two in DC. What if just treating immigrants and asylum-seekers like human beings was such an accessible idea that governors in an election year never had to signify about treating them like pawns and not even people, and just--fucking showed basic human decency? What if decency was always an option, and we recognized that choosing whatever this is--is not ok? 

Texas GOP are Making Special Choices

 

Apparently, the Log Cabin (I always fight my fingers not to type "Log Closet") Republicans are a little bit mad that the Texas GOP shut them out of their little get together. Like, yeah you can be disappointed but how are you surprised? Did Gov. Abbott not just criminalize basically treating trans kids at all? Make families where trans kids exist basically have to consider where they will move? In a state where the Governor basically puts a target on LGBT families, (the threat is real everywhere) are Gay Republican Texans thinking they are up above this mess? 

Tell you what, the "besieged" party that has been running Texas for the past couple decades thinks the answer is letting the queers know they are abnormal.  Forget what you think you know about what ails the state-- it's at least a little bit about LGBT people and maybe the whole weather thing is about prayer. (I'm just saying--same religious signifying, now with more scapegoating.) Could Texas Republicans do actual things that matter policy-wise for their citizens?*

Hahahahah-nope. They want a constitutional convention to prevent the federal government from stopping them from being as shitty as they want to be for marginalized people. They would greatly prefer no one ever taught their kids non-Confederate-loving history and worry the church is threatened by education existing. 

And Proud Boys attacked Dan Crenshaw of all conservative people as being John McCain with an eyepatch because their golden White Supremacist media god Tucker Carlson told them to. That's fucking crazy. 

But again--not surprising. The thing with a monster is, if you feed it, it grows, and that is what happens when you feed fascism. It grows. And that means that eliminationism becomes a fact, and the "management" of political figures by violent correction becomes a fact. When you encourage conspiracy theories, the truth becomes hairy. When you scapegoat, anyone can come under the onus. When you enable bullying, the bully boys become the only government that exists. And they suck. 

That means people need to make better choices while choices are still available. 

* (Yes, if they chose Beto O'Rourke and give him some Democrats in the State leg. Otherwise, probably not, all things like this considered.) 

UPDATE: I know full well they put some bullshit about wanting to secede from the Union and not accepting Joe Biden as their president into that document. But in the grand scheme of things, there's less they can immediately do about that shit than they can about fucking up marginalized peoples' lives and so on. And I know there are people who are like "Let Texas secede." Yeah, well, let me tell you about the people who don't vote Republican/don't vote at all. They don't deserve that life. It's a shame to suggest it. But yeah, the only out I see is the people make the stupids go away by taking their asses out of office. 

UPDATE: I know it's kind of fucked up that I didn't even reference the election denialism and the implied secessionism, but after the Tea Party and Birtherism, that's kind of old hat, isn't it? The Big Lie invalidates Biden because Biden is an old white guy and you can't pretend he wasn't born here. But I take for granted all Republicans believe that any Democratic president is somehow, some way, invalid. President Clinton's first term was supposed to be problematic because he didn't have a majority, with there being a third party candidate (that was trashed when he decisively won his second term, and the Whitewater investigation had to get nastier). And when Obama had Bin Laden taken out and issued his birth certificate, you know, Benghazi became this major thing. Republicans don't believe Democrats should exist be in office. I believe one of their pundits once said a fewliberals should be kept around in cages to remind people of what we were like but I can't remember who it was at the moment. Probably Ann Coulter.

It *Was* Worse

 

Gov. Abbott is livid that he was misinformed about the police response and that so many things he said in his comments following the tragedy and later on Wednesday turned out to be entirely wrong. The shooter had an AR-15, not a handgun. There was no resource officer on campus. The local cops were on the scene but waited nearly an hour, even stopping other officials and parents from breaching the classroom due to the wrong idea that the shooter was barricaded and no longer an active shooter--when he was locked in a classroom actively still killing children. And the children in the room were still calling 911. 

It could have been worse--but it is glaringly obvious that it should have been better. (It should not have happened at all. That young man had warning signs including animal abuse and misogyny, made threats and previously tried to get his sister to obtain a weapon for him. A red flag law may have stopped him,) 

If the governor is livid, I'm going to suggest that Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin (who was calling Beto O'Rourke a "sick son of a bitch" for interrupting the solemn lying because of politics) probably helped him get misinformed. The chief of police has his share of the blame. But to some extent, the worst kind of misinformation a man in a position of responsibility allows is the kind he invites. 

The "good guys with a gun stopping the bad guy with a gun" story was the narrative he wanted. It was more complicated than that. It always is. 

Interrupting the Solemnities

 

Democratic gubernatorial challenger Beto O'Rourke interrupted the assembled unified Republicans at their press conference whilst they were performing part of their sacred office--moving from the ritual saying of thoughts and prayers that sanctified the slaughter of the innocents, to the Ceremonial Blaming of Other Things. 

By pronouncing the feared "assigning of blame to Republicans about anything, ever", there was a narrow danger that attention might be directed at the people in the room who literally do less than nothing every single time this horrific nightmare happens. O'Rourke was expelled for the grave sin of politicizing the solemn event, because you know, people who politicize human misery are the wooooorrrrst. The danger past, the Republicans went on to assign blame to various things, like mental illness and doors, as others suggested rap music, fatherlessness, and lack of prayer in the schools. 

This is how Republicans demonstrate that they are so very serious about gun violence, in addition to mentioning Chicago. They will probably all go to a nice NRA event in a couple of days and their jowls will cease to quiver with rage about the heathen who violated their safe space with the threat of accountability and reality-facing. 

Abbott and Audacity

 

INBOX: ⁦@GovAbbott⁩ slams ⁦@JoeBiden⁩ ⁦@POTUS⁩ for providing baby formula to undocumented immigrants during a national shortage #txlege #tx2022 pic.twitter.com/OGhLYVl1Q5

— Evan Smith (@evanasmith) May 12, 2022

It seems to me that the complaint Gov. Abbott makes that the Biden Administration is feeding babies in immigrant detention is an obvious example of Adam Serwer's axiom: "The cruelty is the point."  There isn't an option here--you feed the kids or they die of starvation. Texas Governor Greg Abbott understands that, but he also understands that there are people who really don't care if that happens. And those are his people. He doesn't have a solution to the issue of fixing the food supply or actually taking care of these children.

What? Greg Abbott, concerned about the supply chain or child welfare? 

It really feels like he doesn't care if children are endangered so long as he is making a culture war point.  He comes up with complaints about things, not real solutions even while real people can be harmed. So of course he has something to say about even the babies of undocumented immigrants--he has made the border his business, and threatening babies I guess makes him look tough. 

Or it makes him look like a sick SOB. I know how I see it. 

The Smokin' Crater Party

 

Marge Greene says in 2022 she is going to “blow away the Democrats’ socialist agenda,” then blows up a car with “socialism” on it with a 50-caliber rifle she is auctioning off for contributions. pic.twitter.com/b10wGwVVW2

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 18, 2021

I'm not brand new, so I know that one of the points of an ad like this is outrage and getting liberals to point to it and here I am, Pavlov's liberal, pointing. Does she even have to run ads in her extremely red district? (But of course, shhhh, this is about fundraising and whatnot). But leaving aside the Palin-crosshairs-style violence indicated and the McCarthyist claim of anything she doesn't like as socialism, and it's really just distilled trolling. Because she believes trolling is her job.

No kidding. She recently told Steve Bannon that she's the "most effective member of Congress." That's objectively nonsense. She lost her committee seats. She's responsible for no legislation. What the heck is effective--did she mispronounce "defective"?  But she trolls and gets a response. It doesn't have to be a good response. 

Not every Republican trolls at MTG's level, but they all have the same basic idea of what governing is about--do stuff libs hate, but do things that are actually...useful? No. Absolutely not. So if Governor Abbott in TX wants to concentrate on the border instead of the power grid, or MS Gov. Reeves acts bemused when challenged on his state's lousy COVID-19 numbers, it's makes sense to realize that the ad above is the goal. Ask not what good government can do for you, ask what you can do to troll the libs. 

And you get to "govern" over a smoking crater for your trouble. 

It's The Public Health, Stupid

 

President Biden made some important steps just now to try and end the COVID-19 pandemic which is, thanks to anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, becoming more of an "endemic" problem here in the good ol' US of A. He has mandated COVID-19 shots for federal employees and contractors and large employers (100+ employees) and expanded testing regimes. This is actually a great start--we had a chance for people to voluntarily choose to take shots that would protect them from severe disease (given that breakthrough cases might still exist because--variants, but that spread of the disease only increases the risk of--variants--like the Delta variant that is ripping through the latest wave, and now we're hearing about Lambda and Mu, both believed to be more immune-dodging buggers). 

Some didn't take that chance, and even patted themselves on the back for not doing it. Now, anti-vax grace period is over, and if you special little people want to be employed and to travel and whatnot, get your whole special asses with the program and get the shots. That's right. Because the majority of us are vaccinated now, and because of you, we can barely have nice things. And we've fucking had it.

Needless to say, the Republican sociopath slow genocide squad started bleating about their freedumbs at once. Ohio Senate Candidate Josh Mandel stood in a cornfield in front of a Trump sign and had a very natural one, which for some reason I find endlessly hilarious.  Yes, don't comply with tyranny. Shoot the vaxstapo if they come to your door! This is normal stuff to say! I am not a crank! 

And the funny old thing is, I don't think Mandel is an actual crank. I think he's a political opportunist and has boosters with his morning coffee and just doesn't give a fuck who dies. He definitely triggers an obvious bovine fecal aroma alert every time I check in on him. 

But this is the Trumpublican party line, right? The hardcore Trump guys are all in for antivax. Like the ratbastard Flynn clan, who are pimping sheep drench. Even the Chinese fuck whose yacht Steve Bannon got arrested on is all up in the antivax shit. 

And you all could ask why, and the dry eye reason why is Republicans can afford to send masses of red state bodies to wingnut Valhalla for the culture war. And they'd still win elections there. And that's pretty Leninist of them. Let's give them a tankie golf clap. 

Anyways, so even if definitely not an authoritarian asshat Greg Abbot wants to now invoke the "right to choose" for Texans (uh no, sonny, that's what Merrick Garland is trying to ensure, not you):

and other Republican nihilist death-eating sonsabitches want to tussle with the mandates, actually still and all, it's about the public health and there's precedent.  Vaccine mandates are as American as cherry pie.  And I cannot tell a lie about that. 

Regardless of the lies others spread, the kind that get people killed. The kind that have already resulted in so many unnecessary American deaths, as Republicans have told for purely political reasons. Because that kind of evil is just beyond me. And well beyond Joe Biden, who just wants you not to die, God love ya. Not because the unvaxxed should be punished, but because he doesn't want Americans to die. How much more simple does it need to be? 

Maybe He Should Have Started With That

 

This is an incredibly bizarre statement. When asked why sex assault victims who get pregnant have to carry to term under TX law, first Abbott says they have 6 weeks to get abortion, then says he is going to eliminate rape by arresting all future rapists. pic.twitter.com/OYFH11xT1G

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 7, 2021

If that's a thing he could do--I mean, honestly? What was stopping him? Of course it's just twaddle. People who don't care about reproductive choice are pretty notoriously unconcerned with consent, either.

UPDATE: Although the real problem is--even in the case of an exception for incest or rape, we're conditioning a pregnant person's rights on what someone else has done or what someone else deems to be morally abhorrent, not on what that person needs for their own care. Why should someone have to establish they "deserve" a right that should simply be theirs?

UPDATE 2: For Abbott's primary challenger, Don Huffines, even the 6 weeks allowed under the new law is way too much. I would suppose he's also no fan of Plan B. He's a piece of work.  But he demonstrates that as bad as this legislation is, there's the potential for worse.