Tag Archives: Dan Patrick

Lt. Gov. Patrick speaks to our worst instincts

Be advised, the next few words contains a term I dislike using without some form of disguise, but here goes: Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick really pisses me off!

Indeed, he’s been doing it ever since he got elected to the state’s second-highest public office.

Now he says that the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” when he criticizes the state response to the coronavirus pandemic.

He recently said old folks wouldn’t mind dying if it means the Texas economy could get restarted in the wake of the pandemic’s impact on economic matters.

Patrick sought to push that ghastly bathroom bill through the 2017 Texas Legislature, the bill that would require folks to use public restrooms in accordance with the gender noted on their birth certificate; the idea was to discriminate openly against transgender Americans.

He has punished a state senator, who happens to be a friend of mine, who made a snarky remark about a Patrick aide. Thus, he stripped Kel Seliger, an Amarillo Republican, of influence by removing him from the chairmanship of key Senate education and finance committees.

I cannot stand that this clown serves in such a place of power in Texas. As Ross Ramsey writes in the Texas Tribune: But a lieutenant governor is a constitutional amphibian, a rare creature of both the legislative and executive branches of government. He’s the governor when the governor is out of the state. And he’s one of two or three state leaders with ready access to the bully pulpit — the ability to get in front of the public on short notice and try to steer opinion.

It seems to me that every time he steps into that “bully pulpit,” he says things that (a) are patently offensive and (b) speak to Texans’ base and crass instincts.

This clown needs to go … somewhere far away.

Abbott performs stunning reversal

“COVID-19 is not going away. In fact, it’s getting worse. Now, more than ever, action by everyone is needed until treatments are available for COVID-19.”

That comment comes from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who today performed an astonishing public policy about face with regard to the pandemic that is raging out of control once again in many areas across the land.

Abbott issued an executive order requiring residents who live in Texas counties with 20 or more COVID cases to wear face masks in public.

This is astonishing … but it is welcome in our household. Collin County, where my wife and I reside, has become a bit of a hot spot for new infections. Our masks are at the ready. We will wear them when we go outdoors.

Why the astonishment? Let me count the ways.

Abbott has resisted issuing such an order. He has prohibited counties from stepping beyond the state mandates. Now he’s sounding very much like the county judges with whom he had tussled.

Then we have the blathering of the bloward lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who this week said that Dr. Anthony Fauci — the nation’s leading infectious disease expert — “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Patrick, who obviously does not possess a medical degree, said “No thank you, Dr. Fauci” when making policy decisions on how to handle the pandemic.

Except that Abbott’s statements today sound pretty damn Faucian in discussing the seriousness of the problem facing Texans.

Look, I do not think Gov. Abbott has handled this crisis with the steady hand it requires. However, I am heartened to hear him turn up the volume on the danger that this pandemic is posing to Texans. It now is up to all of us to heed the warning he has delivered. We need to wear masks and to stay the heck away from everyone else.

We also need to ignore the ignorant happy talk coming from the White House as well as the mindless blathering from the lieutenant governor.

Growing fonder of vote by mail

I am not King of the World, but if I held that title, I would mandate that we all vote on Election Day, in person, in the privacy of a polling booth.

However, since I cannot do that, I am left to deal with the real world. Reality at this moment rests in a pandemic that threatens the health of voters who want to cast their ballots for president of the United States. They fear that voting in person would expose them to COVID-19. So they want to cast their ballots by mail.

I do, too.

Thus, I am baffled, flabbergasted and confused by the opposition to vote by mail by Texas’ top elected officials. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton have formed a troika that opposes vote by mail.

Why? They contend it invites rampant voter fraud. They parrot Donald Trump. They’re all Republicans. They are launching a sickening end-around game that seeks to suppress voter turnout.

The Texas Tribune also reports — and this is rich, man! — that all three of them (four if you count Trump) have cast ballots by mail in the past. They have done so out of convenience, I reckon. The TT reports that Paxton regularly votes in person in his Collin County precinct, but has voted by mail. Same for Patrick and, yes, for Abbott.

So what’s the real problem here? Is it voter fraud as they contend? I think not!

I am not necessarily a fan of all-mail voting. You know that already. However I prefer it by a wide margin over not voting at all. I am one Texas resident who has a concern about potential exposure to a possible killer virus.

I also want Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton to stop hiding behind a phony excuse as justification for refusing to allow as many Texans as possible to cast ballots for the next president.

Rampant voter fraud does not exist. Nor will it exist if we develop a secure system of voting by mail.

Patrick swills the voter fraud Kool-Aid

Texas Gov. Lt. Dan Patrick must’ve been mighty thirsty.

So what does he do? He grabs a helping of the Kool-Aid being served by Donald Trump and his Republican pals to put down efforts to expand all-mail voting in time for the 2020 presidential election.

Patrick, a Republican, says all-mail voting is a ploy by Democrats to “steal an election.” Do you get where he’s coming from?

He allegedly thinks that mail-in voting is inherently corrupt, that it promotes rampant fraudulent voting. Well, it doesn’t. State election officials where mail-in voting occurs swear by its integrity.

However, at the risk of being accused of engaging in “what-aboutism,” I want to offer this brief note.

If Patrick thinks Democrats are trying to “steal” an election by encouraging more voters to cast ballots, it’s fair to wonder if Republicans are trying their own game of theft by limiting voter participation.

In some quarters, they call it “voter suppression,” which is what many GOP officials have tried to do in several states.

So, for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to toss out the voter theft accusation against Democrats, he ought to come clean on whether his own objection to mail-in voting is based on his own version of trying to “steal” an election.

What’s more, it isn’t “laughable,” as Patrick suggests, for anyone younger than 65 to fear voting “in person.” Really, Dan? He should talk to any of the family members of younger victims of the killer disease. Tell them how laughable it is.

Lt. Gov. Patrick ought to eat those idiotic words

This editorial cartoon is one of many that have blasted to smithereens the remarks from Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who had the boorish bad taste to say that old folks ought to sacrifice themselves to the coronavirus to save the nation’s economy.

He’s taken his share of criticism. I have joined those who suggest that Dan Patrick’s butter has slipped off his noodles. He hasn’t responded to me, nor do I expect this goofball to fire back at little ol’ me.

However, I continued to be appalled that the state’s second-ranking elected official — and arguably Texas’ most powerful politician, as the presiding officer of the Texas Senate — would even think such a thing, let alone say it aloud.

Yet this clown said that elderly folks shouldn’t seek aid if the virus strikes them down. Dan Patrick’s alleged rationale? The economy needs to be Priority No. 1 over the care for aged Americans.

This guy disgusts me at virtually the same level as the president of the United States, Donald John Trump.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2020/03/not-afraid-to-die-for-the-economy/

I’m even more ashamed of Patrick now than I was when I posted this blog item.

Sickening.

Not afraid to die for the economy?

Dan Patrick does not make me proud. On the contrary, the Texas lieutenant governor makes me ashamed that most Texans have elected and re-elected this bozo to what arguably is the most powerful office in Texas government.

He presides over the Texas Senate. He wields his power with maximum confidence. He can punish senators who don’t toe the line, such as what he did prior to the 2019 Legislature when he stripped state Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo of key committee assignments. For what reason? Because Seliger was the lone Republican senator to decline to sign a letter endorsing Patrick for re-election in 2018.

Now Patrick has popped off, saying that old folks are willing to die from the coronavirus if it means the nation’s economy gets jump-started. What has this clown been swilling?

Patrick apparently thinks that old folks are expendable. As a 70-year-old Texas resident, I deeply, profoundly and categorically resent and reject that idiocy.

Moreover, the 69-year-old Patrick also seems to be willing to take one for the team.

According to NBC News: Patrick, who said he will turn 70 next week, said that he did not fear COVID-19, but feared that stay-at-home orders and economic upheaval would destroy the American way of life.

Well, I’ll just offer this: His fear of “stay-at-home orders” is so much horsesh**. 

Thanks a lot, Dan Patrick. This great state of ours deserves much better than what we are getting from you.

Moron.

Speak for yourself, Lt. Gov. Patrick

I’m not living in fear of Covid-19. What I’m living in fear of is what’s happening to this country. And you know (Fox News host) Tucker (Carlson), no one reached out to me and said, “As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on our survival, in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’ And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.

Those words of idiocy came from Texas Lt. Gov. Dan “The Dipsh**” Patrick, who said in effect that elderly Americans ought to be ready to die in order to preserve our national economic infrastructure.

Well, pardon me for breathing, Dan. But I ain’t willing to make that “exchange.”

Patrick bloviated on Fox News and offered what I believe to be a despicable observation about what is at stake.

Patrick is 69 years of age. For the record, I am 70. So this fellow is offering a bit of moronic logic that doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Let’s play that idiocy out just a bit.

If an old man like me or Lt. Gov. Patrick wants to resume normal living, interacting with other human beings as if nothing is wrong, then we are endangering not just ourselves, but we could be putting other Americans at risk, too. Yep, that would be young folks. Hmm. Maybe children. Are they to be sacrificed, too, in the of restoring the “America we all love”?

I do fear the coronavirus, Dan Patrick. I fear for my health and for the health of my family.

To hear that kind of tripe coming from a supposedly responsible leader of a great state such as Texas is sickening in the extreme.

Governor honors White Settlement hero

I’ll stipulate up front that I am not a fan of allowing guns in church sanctuaries.

With that out of the way, I want to offer a word of gratitude for a gentleman who was providing security at a White Settlement, Texas, church a couple of Sundays ago.

A gunman walked into the sanctuary and opened fire, killing two parishioners at West Freeway Church of Christ. He had six seconds to live.

That’s when Jack Wilson dropped the shooter with a single shot from his pistol. The crisis was over.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott today presented Wilson with the Governor’s Medal of Courage. According to CBS/DFW: “This church had its own security team. They were well-trained,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said on the day of the shooting. “The heroism today was unparalleled. The team responded quickly … ”

Wilson has said he doesn’t consider himself to be a hero.

Well, actually he is. His response in the moment of terror was quintessentially heroic, as is the humility he has exhibited in the days since the violence erupted at West Freeway Church of Christ.

Lt. Gov. Patrick to Trump faithful: We are fighting ‘the enemy’

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was part of a warm-up act for Donald Trump’s “Keep America Great” rally at the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas.

He didn’t disappoint those who came to cheer the president.

I was still working my way into the arena when Patrick took the stage, but I did see and hear him on the jumbo screen on the side of the AAC. He used the “e” word to describe foes of his conservative Republican policy machine.

He said “progressive socialist Democrats” aren’t just “our opponents; they are the enemy.” There you go. He went on to say they are the enemy of “liberty,” of “national security,” and I presume of the American way.

A future speaker of the U.S. House, Newt Gingrich, once declared during the 1994 Contract With America campaign that his aim was to make “Democrats the enemy of normal Americans.” Donald Trump declared the media to be “the enemy of the American people.”

Oh, there have been plenty of politicians who toss the “e” word around like that. Lt. Gov. Patrick is just the latest.

There is no need to wonder just how our political interaction has developed this level of coarseness.

I still prefer the approach sought by the late President George H.W. Bush that hoped to create a “kinder, gentler” nation. The “enemy” talk that I heard from Dan Patrick just makes me angry. We have enough anger out there already.

Two GOP ‘allies’ now at each other’s throats

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and right-wing activist Michael Quinn Sullivan are having a major spat these days.

They’re blaming each other for “destroying” the Republican Party.

Hmm. Which one is guilty as charged? Well, I’ll and cast my lot with the lieutenant governor, who has taken on the National Rifle Association in seeking increased background checks on firearm purchases. Sullivan, the head of Empower Texans, opposes Patrick’s position on gun control.

Thus, I am siding with Patrick.

The gun argument is just part of it. Patrick is angry with Sullivan’s role in the matter involving Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and former Texas House Republican Caucus Chairman Dustin Burrows of Lubbock.

Sullivan says he has recordings of Bonnen offering him the names of 10 House Republicans that Empower Texans could target in the 2020 election in exchange for press credentials on the House floor. Bonnen denies it all. Sullivan isn’t releasing the full recorded conversation.

Patrick is siding with Bonnen.

The fight is on.

Both men say the other guy is hurting the Republican Party. Frankly, I don’t care much about the future of GOP, although I would prefer to see a more reasonable party than the one that has emerged in Texas. Patrick is part of the right-wing emergence of the GOP.

As for Sullivan, he and Patrick have been allies in the past.

Now, though, they are fighting over gun control and that weird conversation that allegedly occurred between Sullivan and Bonnen.

The two men have been sparring via Twitter. I would prefer they speak to each other face to face, man to man, fruitcake to fruitcake. Instead, they choose the social medium to fire insults at each other. Childish? Yes! Effective? Not really.

I detest both men. Of the two, though, I detest Sullivan more. Empower Texans has gotten involved too deeply in local politics, seeking to influence local political races, seeking to seat men and women who ascribe to the political action committee’s far-right-wing agenda. They went after two friends of mine in the Texas Panhandle in 2018: state Sen. Kel Seliger and state Rep. Four Price of Amarillo, two mainstream Republicans and two damn fine legislators who represent the Texas Panhandle with honor and distinction.

They seek to handpick local representatives who put Empower Texans’ needs above those of their constituents back home. That entire strategy is offensive to the max.

But … keep fighting Lt. Gov. Patrick and Michael Quinn Sullivan.