Meanwhile in Texas

 

Texas radio host @TheRyanHamilton is speaking out after his state’s extreme abortion ban left his wife in serious danger and distress during a miscarriage. Thank you, Ryan for your bravery in sharing your story and speaking up against this cruel ban on essential health care. pic.twitter.com/qqyqYhaBqh

— Center for Reproductive Rights (@ReproRights) June 18, 2024

So, a few weeks ago, the Texas Supreme Court denied a challenge to the oppressive anti-abortion law on the grounds that doctors who tell their patients they won't perform abortions because of the law are just being silly. Seriously. Which I take to mean that goddamn it, maybe the doctors who can perform this care should test the theory and see how bullshit it is. All they have to lose is their...livelihood and well-being. (See George Tiller, etc.) What does this mean for pregnant people in this state?

Kate Cox, who had to flee Texas to receive vital reproductive care: I'm actually pregnant. It's a very exciting time. But it's a hard feeling. There's so much happiness, but I'm scared at the same time. I live in a state with an extreme abortion ban. If I have an emergency with… pic.twitter.com/r4V1C3abhq

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) June 21, 2024

Concern that they will not receive life-saving care if needed, or that they will face the prospect of their life saved, but reproductively-impaired or maimed by sepsi sor other effects of a pregnancy gone wrong. This is not a pro-life stance at all--merely pro-abusing women for capricious reasons.

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. 

Razor Wire and the Supremacy Clause

 

The Supreme Court decided 5-4 that the federal government can remove the razor wire barrier erected by Gov. Abbott along the US border with Mexico. Note that I didn't say the "Texas border" because this is our border with another country. It should not be a states' rights issue. And yet four Justices, Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas and Kavanaugh (should I say, the usual suspects?) thought that it's just fine for a governor to put up a trap like something out of the Saw franchise between the US and Mexico. 

For human beings to be injured or killed by. A potential international incident in the making--it shouldn't be Abbott's call. It should be logical that the supremacy clause pertains here, but they seem to be starting from agreeing with the Republican governor against the Biden Administration with a rationale TBD. 

The reason this bothers me is that a standoff between the US government and the state government at the border feeds into the weird secessionist thing Texas has going, lately. Me being, well, me, I can't refrain from noticing that Texas secessionism has been encouraged by Russian propaganda. (They were behind a lot of support for "Calexit" as well.)

Not that I think Greg Abbott or the four Supreme Court justices are working for the Russians mind you. I only question what the whole entire fuck they think the US government is for and why they would want to undermine it for what looks to me like partisan dick-slappery.

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.

Fleeing the Texas Death Panel

 

Kate Cox, the 31-year-old Texas mother whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis, has left the state to obtain an abortion after a battle with Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) over whether she can legally terminate her pregnancy. pic.twitter.com/WN2P9qWrX9

— The Recount (@therecount) December 11, 2023

The decision to leave Texas to obtain an abortion was correct: the Texas Supreme Court denied her right to an abortion under the state laws medical exception:

The court ruled that the lower court made a mistake in ruling that the woman, Kate Cox, who is more than 20 weeks pregnant, was entitled to a medical exception. 

In its seven-page ruling, the Supreme Court found that Ms. Cox’s doctor, Damla Karsan, “asked a court to pre-authorize the abortion yet she could not, or at least did not, attest to the court that Ms. Cox’s condition poses the risks the exception requires.” Texas’ overlapping bans allow for abortions only when a pregnancy seriously threatens the health or life of the woman. 

“These laws reflect the policy choice that the Legislature has made, and the courts must respect that choice,” the court wrote.

There's a kind of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" catch for doctors, here. They can make "good faith" emergency decisions, but it has to be an emergency-emergency (death's door, apparently) in order to avoid professional penalties. This was the clarification sought, and per Texas Hold'em in the Uterus rules, she wasn't nearly close to death enough. Based on the arguments of state lawyers, you just can't believe dumb old doctors or dumb old women about these things, because they will just use the exception not in good faith, but to get an abortion anyway. (You know, claiming they have a real emergency in the same way women make claims about having been raped--subject to being told they are making it up. In other words, subject to how misogynistic the system wants to be: and given this law even exists, you pretty much know how it is.)

I am glad that Mrs. Cox did not wait around for the Texas death panel to see if she would die or not, but I fear for what real harassment might be in her future in this kind of culture and for what all this means for women in similar physical jeopardy who do not have the means to leave. Also, I fear that for anti-abortion zealots, this will only increase their resolve to enforce "fugitive womb" laws and create penalties for women seeking abortions--even if for their own lives and health. 

Texas Placing Bets on Whether a Woman Will Die

 

The Texas Supreme Court put a lower court's decision on hold regarding whether Karen Cox could receive what might be a life-saving abortion of an almost-certainly doomed fetus, following on AG Ken Paxton's claim that any doctor or hospital that performed that procedure would be prosecuted. This woman is the stake in a fucking card game. It seems to me that the elected zealots involved, like Justice John Devine:

John Devine, an anti-abortion activist and self-styled “Ten Commandments Judge,” will become one of Texas’s nine Supreme Court justices early next year, as the Democrats are not fielding a candidate for the seat in the November election.

....

Devine has long been a staunch anti-abortion activist. At a June rally in Fort Worth, Devine told the crowd he had been arrested 37 times while protesting abortion clinics in the 1980s, Smith reported. Though, in a more recent interview, “he said he had been arrested during peaceful protests several times in the 1980s but did not remember how many,” Smith reported. Despite this history of activism, Devine insisted he “is still able to interpret the law impartially.”

In 2008, Devine and his wife, Nubia, showed everyone just how committed they were to the pro-life position when her seventh pregnancy endangered her life and that of the baby. The Texas Observer‘s Emily DePrang wrote about a video his campaign put out called “Elizabeth’s story.”

Like that bet. 

So-called pro-life people love to say that a woman's life isn't really jeopardized by a pregnancy. They love to act like they did something special by allowing a fetus to be born if it survives even briefly. And they will claim victory of anything short of this young mother of two just dying right now. Trisomy-18 isn't always fatal: kids with Edwards syndrome can live--see former Senator Rick Santorum's youngest child, Bella, for a story of a child with a way better than expected outcome. But keep in mind this is a former senator with a shit-ton more access to the best care for his kid, and whose wife did not have Cox's unique set of pregnancy complications.

Texas and the Empty Cradle

 

My heart leapt up when I heard that Kate Cox would be allowed to terminate her genetically ill-fated pregnancy, but I knew she better have a surgical theater in her living room, because the AG of TX, Ken Paxton, impeached, indicted, self-anointed protector of the fruit of the Texan wombs, has nothing better to do than threaten doctors who engage in a court-sanctioned medical procedure. He would ruin this woman's health and future fertility, and the careers and lives of the doctors who help this woman, because?

Because he's so pro-life? Because Texas isn't pro-life. Not when it comes to the death penalty.  The strict abortion ban isn't necessarily saving lives. But it would be better to make an example of this woman, and force her to give birth to a child that might exist just to die, because?

I've long felt that while life doesn't necessarily begin at conception, mothering does. You can decide to eat right or not drink or smoke and maybe figure out how to get pre-natal care. But sometimes even basic ability to take care of your body and your baby's body isn't in your means. You can't afford to eat right. You have an addiction. You don't have access to health care. And sometimes, you just get a bad genetic draw. Nothing you do will ever make you carry a wanted child to term, because that isn't what was in the cards. 

Texas-Sized Corruption

 

NEW: Ken Paxton’s far-right backers are promising swift retribution for those who supported his impeachment — namely House Speaker Dade Phelan — as the Texas GOP’s long-running civil war continues to escalate. #txlege #PaxtonTrial https://t.co/9ByJBI1qQe

— Robert Downen (@RobertDownen_) September 17, 2023

I have very little surprise reserved in the tank for Ken Paxton's acquittal: long story short, how can Texas Republicans even hold someone accountable for acting in his self-interest and doing the bidding of his big donors when it isn't in their self-interest and sends the wrong message to their big donors? But it's more than that:

“You and your band of RINOs are now on notice,” Defend Texas Liberty PAC leader Jonathan Stickland tweeted at Phelan on Saturday, as voting continued in the Texas Senate. “You will be held accountable for this entire sham. We will never stop. Retire now.”

Paxton’s impeachment trial was the latest — and among the most consequential — battle in an ongoing civil war between the Texas GOP’s establishment members and a well-funded right wing that has for years claimed the party is insufficiently conservative.

Being even somewhat opposed to Paxton's corruption is simply not conservative and you are not a real Republican if you bring it up.  He may even be corrupt, but he's the right kind of Republican so long as he's right-wing enough. 

I think the party refers to this ethos as: Values!

TWGB: F'ing Around During Finding Out Season

 

So, it looks like the brilliant press conference displaying the report that was supposed to present "irrefutable proof" of his Georgia win and all-around innocence has been cancelled because his lawyers told him it was a very, very bad idea. This disappoints me so much because I was hoping to bend the report over and give it a right Bishop Berkely refutation (by means of employing one's foot to the meat of the argument). It is apparently not to be. Who knew that reiterating one's fraudulent claims could pose such a hassle?

It is possible something has changed in the atmosphere of TrumpWorld. Even Trump's Truth Social posts are creating a problem for him: is he witness-tampering? Is he giving the message to others to do witness tampering--or even jury-tampering? Because jury-tampering appears to be part of what is going down. Threats against jurors and court officials are now being investigated in the wake of the most-recent indictment. 

And these sad, violent souls think they are "helping".  They also like to apply Trump's new term "rigger" in the way he meant it--a word with two hard "r's". What he always meant by the vote-rigging in 2020  2016 and since isn't lost on me, or anyone with a good sense of who he is. And his race-based theories as well as his voter-fraud theories were and are...baseless. 

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!

Ken Paxton Got Himself Impeached (UPDATED)

 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) impeached by Texas House of Representatives 121-23 pic.twitter.com/wlNtCgGlB2

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 27, 2023

I believe that is the Speaker of the Texas House Dade Phelan who was censured for being drunk on the floor but frankly, when I watched this without audio, I thought the man would have more slurring because I'm not saying I know drunk when I see it, but I have known drunk when I've been it. Drunk or sober, the count is what it is, and Ken Paxton got hugely impeached by the supermajority Texas House. This wasn't about liberals trying to get him, and this wasn't about RINOS trying to get him. This was about the creep of Ken Paxton's various problems becoming not just his problem, but the State Leg. problem, and they did not want that for themselves.

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. 

Bleeding Texas

 

Mass Shootings in Texas
2023 Allen (9 dead)
2023 Cleveland (5 dead)
2022 Uvalde (22 dead)
2019 El Paso (23 dead)
2019 Odessa (8 dead)
2018 Santa Fe (10 dead)
2017 Sutherland Springs (27 dead)
2017 Plano (9 dead)
2015 Waco (9 dead)
2015 Houston (8 dead)
2009 Fort Hood (14 dead)

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) May 7, 2023

No, this is inadequate. Charles Whitman climbed the watchtower on the University of Texas campus in 1966 and the Luby Cafeteria shooting is infamous from 1991. This mass shooting thing in Texas is deep and makes the resolve of the elected officials there to just rely on "thoughts and prayers" to do anything at all while broadly supporting the NRA disgraceful. Of course, nice thoughts aren't fixing this. 

The culture is clearly fucked up. but the resort of fucked up people to utilize guns to manifest their fucked-upness is a critical problem. I don't want to criminalize folks just having guns, but figuring out who potential criminals are and not arming them would be great. 

I see people out there decrying the folks mocking "thoughts and prayers" as being spiteful about god. Nope, these people are critical of prayers being used hypocritically, to be seen on the street corner doing conspicuous prayer, while being in private doing conspicuously nothing at all. While real humans suffer.  Being shot in innocent surroundings. Sometimes dying, sometimes living with a forever affected life. 

Do you have thoughts and prayers for the permanently maimed and terrorized? Do you consider that survivors have trauma and feel different in public spaces, maybe for a lifetime? 

It Comes Down to Hurting Women

 

A Florida woman, unable to get an abortion in her state, carried to term a baby who had no kidneys. Her son died in her arms shortly after he was born, just as her doctors had predicted he would. https://t.co/f9kwtQ4dBH

— CNN (@CNN) May 3, 2023

The so-called "pro-life" movement isn't that at all. There was no good reason for her to carry this doomed child to this outcome--only a stubborn idea that being born is better than not, even when biology stubbornly also insists, sometimes--no. 

If we look at the snitching-based law in Texas that allows anyone to sue a person who obtains an abortion or aids and abets it--here's where we end up. The worst human ever gets to use this law to further abuse someone who certainly does not owe him offspring. The reality of what anti-abortion legislation is for becomes obvious. 

It's about control. It's about telling someone who is female-bodied they have no rights the state needs to respect. Women are shuttled from pillar to post as lawyers argue whether they are close enough to death to be given reproductive care. The law that says they can seek care to save their lives is disregarded for the sake of the anti-abortionists' imaginary fetal friends. 

We have states where women are told to wait even in a parking lot until they are close to death before they can seek care. 

The reality of their situation needs such careful documentation. Like once again, in Florida, where a rape victim needs a paper trail to prove her situation. Consider a minor child, a victim of incest. How easy is it for that person to document what happened to them? A person economically dependent on their rapist (a situation a groomer/abuser certainly tries to create). A person stalked, threatened with further violence based on their actions? 

There are people who can't easily demonstrate they are raped or even physically imperiled by their pregnancy until their situation is literally them--at death's door. And this is not where someone should be compelled by law to be for their care.  No one should be so compelled to save their own life, or negotiate the euthanasia of their own child, by way of a protracted argument in a biologically time-limited situation. We need to give this space to them. It should not be a debate.

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.