Texas Hold-Up

The economy is tanking, Social Security is in trouble, and people are ticked off about the big ugly bill.  So what can Trump do now?  He might decide - no, he did decide - to tell Texas governor Greg Abbott to redraw the districts in the Texas U.S. House delegation so that the Republicans can gain five House seats and thwart any effort by the Democrats to win back the chamber in the 2026 midterms.  So Abbott, who was only too happy to oblige and called a special session of the Texas state legislature.  Democratic legislators quickly left the state and didn't come back until after the special session expired.  Abbott was thwarted, but like the bad guy in any dime-store Western novel, he'll be back.

And when he is, Gavin Newsom (above) will be there to meet him.  The California Democratic governor has vowed to get the California state legislature to find a way to gerrymander California's U.S. House districts if Texas gerrymanders its own.  Until Texas acts, California will stand pat, so if and when Newsom makes his move, he will be fighting back, not playing tit for tat.  Democrats are finally fighting back against Trump.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that none of them are serving in Washington.  and they might not be serving in Congress for much longer.  When they return after summer recess, Trump just might have them arrested and sent to a concentration camp.  He already has the National Guard running the place.

And if California successfully thwarts Texas . . . well, Trump is already looking to outlaw mail-in voting, and he plans to "investigate" voter irregularities in any states that do allow mail-in voting in the 2026 midterms . . . even if the governors and legislatures there don't have any basis to look into such charges and tell Trump not to interfere.  

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Uvalde

Uvalde has to be the worst school shooting at least four years.

It's bad enough that 21 individuals - 19 of them children, most of them Hispanic - were shot to death by a gunman with an AR-15 assault rifle in the elementary school of this Texas town.  Even worse was that the police decided not to force their way into the classroom where the gunman did his deed because he barricaded himself in the classroom and they made the decision not refrain from storming the room per the situation at hand.  It was the wrong decision.  The gunman kept shooting, and a couple of kids inside had called 911 on their cell phones for swift action from the police that never came.  The authorities are till trying to explain away their fatal mistake, changing their stories constantly.

Texas governor Greg Abbott says he is livid about how the police acted, but he has no right to complain, since he paid lip service to improving school safety measures in Texas and has not supported and will not support sensible gun-control measures.  And I'm not sure Beto O'Rourke, Abbott's Democratic electoral opponent, wins any points for disrupting an Abbott press conference to confront the governor directly on guns, since it probably came across to many voters as a shameless stunt to get free media.  I still suspect that Abbott will be re-elected this November, if only because Texas voters care more about inflation.

U.S. Senate Republican leader has asked Texas Republican senator John Cornyn to talk with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut about a possible deal on gun-safety measures.  But even something that modest us unlikely, given the weakened-but-still-potent National Rifle Association's hold on Republican senators.

Seen outside this weekend's National Rifle Association convention in . . . Houston.  Houston, Texas.

I've pretty much given up on this country.  How do I live with what's going on in These States?  How do I deal with it?  I can't . . . I can't. 😢 

Texas Rising?

Pinch me!

Beto O'Rourke, the former Texas congressman who seemingly destroyed his political career by running for President and not even making it to Iowa, and who may have destroyed Martin O'Malley's political career for getting his endorsement, is the Democratic nominee for the governorship of Texas and is actually locked in a dead heat with Republican incumbent Greg Abbott in a recent poll.  Abbott leads O'Rourke 42 percent to 40 percent.

Abbott is in trouble because he's outlawed abortion by signing a law that is impossible to circumvent because it deputizes citizens to enforce it.  He also fiddled while the power in Texas went out in a winter storm, he's denied climate change as the state deals with fires and floods, he's fought COVID vaccine mandates at the local level, and he's restricted voting to the point where millions of mail-in ballots have been rejected. People are fed up - so much that they're practically willing to vote for a boy wonder with Kennedy hair who's already promised to take away their AR-15s! 

O'Rourke recently scored a coup by attacking Abbott's move to inspect trucks entering the state from Mexico for possible defective taillights and tires after they'd already been inspected by federal border patrol agents to slow down imported goods and hurt the state's - and the nation's - economy.  Abbott backed down quickly.  O'Rourke plans to go after Abbott on other issues that has made Texas the second worst state to live in, after Florida.  But with those restrictive voting laws in place and with Abbott mobilizing the far right to come out in droves to the polls, O'Rourke still has his work cut out for him,  I was ready to give up O'Rourke's political career for dead, but he may yet prove me wrong.  If I could give Beto advice, it would be this: Grab onto Abbott, and don't let go.

And please, Beto, no hopping on restaurant tables this time, okay? 

Texas

In just one week, Texas passed a voter-restriction law, liberalized gun rights, and passed an abortion restriction bill that does an end run around constitutional law by going after women who get abortions after six weeks of pregnancy (which is usually when women find out they're pregnant).  Congress is unlikely to codify Roe v. Wade (which is already moot, given how abortion is already inaccessible in much of the country) thanks to the Senate filibuster rules, and even if it did the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the same conservative majority that let the Texas abortion law go into effect (honorable exception - Chief Justice John Roberts) would likely find it unconstitutional.

Oh yeah, the new abortion law can be enforced by private citizens who can rat on violators and sue enablers of said violators by taking them to court - sort of a cross between bounty hunters and a citizens' Gestapo.

All thanks to Texas' Dear Leader, Governor Greg Abbott, who until this week was best known for banning locales from doing anything serious about combatting COVID.

People in the rest of the country had better not laugh at, much less mess with, Texas.  Because when America laughs at Texas, it's laughing at its own immediate future. 😱

Hey, Abbott!

The good news about COVID is that President Biden has gotten Johnson & Johnson and Merck to work together to produce enough single-dose vaccines to, along with the Pfizer and Moderna double-dose vaccines, have enough to vaccinate every American by Memorial Day, this possibly ending the COVID pandemic early in the U.S.

The bad news is that, thanks largely to Texas governor Greg Abbott (below), none of that matters.

Abbott repealed face-covering mandates for the entire state and allowed businesses to operate at 100 percent capacity.  In Mississippi, Governor Tate Reeves also rolled back COVID restrictions, but Abbott's actions are far more serious.  His moves not only endangers Texans but people in other parts of the country, given frequent travel between Texas and other states and the fact that Texas has more people than any state except California. 

A lot of people in Texas are angry at Abbott's move, especially Democrats like Beto O'Rourke, who said that Abbott signed "the death warrant for many Texans" with his actions, but even some Republicans are angry at Abbott, many of theme furious over what they consider an attempt to deflect blame for the power crisis that affected the state last month.  Abbott is so clueless that he may has many Texans missing Rick Perry.

Abbott made it clear the has doesn't think COVID is over, and he made it a point through a spokeswoman that "all Texans should follow medical advice and safe practices to continue containing COVID.  The spokeswoman further said, though, "It is clear from the recoveries, the vaccinations, the reduced hospitalizations, and the safe practices that Texans are using, that state mandates are no longer needed. We must now do more to restore livelihoods and normalcy for Texans . . ..  The governor's focus has been, and always will be, protecting the lives and livelihoods of Texans."  If Abbott wants it both ways, fine.  But he shouldn't hide behind a spokeswoman.  He should just come out and face his critics in person.  Don't hold your breath.

Abbott Is Costello

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (below) has overseen a recent loosening of gun restrictions in his state, allowing even teachers to pack a rod on the job.  And yet he had the gall to say this following the shootings on the I-20 corridor between Odessa and Midland:

"Too many Texans are in mourning.  Too many Texans have lost their lives.  The status quo is unacceptable in Texas, and action is needed."

And I can only think, "Gee . . ..  It's too bad he's not in a position to actually do anything about it."

But then, maybe this hapless fool of a governor isn't in a position to do anything about guns in his state.  Because even if he had any actual power - Texas has a weaker governorship than most states, with the legislature setting a good deal of the state's agenda - he'd find it hard to regulate guns when so many people in Texas cherish their constitutional right to bear arms.  And it's an attitude found in so-called liberal states like New Jersey, where I saw a pro-gun window decal in the rear window of a Chevrolet pickup truck.

Abbott won't even admit that the cheap, plentiful supply of high-power firearms is a problem.  Forget the Presidency, Beto O'Rourke should run for governor of Texas in 2022.  Texas ought to have a governor who's ready to use foul language to get things done when the situation calls for it.