Tag Archives: Greg Abbott

national news

Abbott has lost his mind

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Greg Abbott has lost his ever-lovin’ mind.

He is off his rocker. His butter has slipped off its noodles. He’s gone ’round the proverbial bend.

The Texas governor has decided that no entity — private or public — should require vaccine mandates for employees or for the public.

Weird, huh? Well, I think it is.

Gov. Abbott once more is wielding his heavy hand, telling locals they can take no extraordinary measures to protect the public from a killer virus.

“In yet another instance of federal government overreach, the Biden Administration is now bullying many private entities into imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates, causing workforce disruptions that threaten Texas’s continued recovery from the COVID-19 disaster,” Abbott said in his executive order.

“Causing workforce disruptions?” Seriously, governor?

The Biden administration is trying to save lives, for God’s sake! Abbott, meanwhile, is seeking to cozy up to those who are resisting the government’s efforts to protect them against a virus that is still killing us.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bans any COVID-19 vaccine mandates | The Texas Tribune

I grew weary long ago of Greg Abbott’s insistence that he knows better than local government officials on how their communities should cope with this crisis. Yet he persists. Meanwhile, school districts issue mandates of their own, such as Dallas’s decision to require masks for students and faculty members.

Gov. Abbott appears to have adopted Donald John Trump’s view that “I, alone” can fight the COVID virus.

Bullsh**!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, State news

Texas AG under the gun

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a disgrace to the office he occupies.

Thus, it is no surprise that he would lash out at the Texas State Bar’s decision to investigate his specious lawsuit that sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in four states that Joe Biden won over Donald J. Trump.

Paxton makes me sick. There. I got that off my chest.

Two of the AG’s pals, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, came to his defense in their criticism of the Bar’s probe.

As the Texas Tribune reported:

“Texans know exactly what’s going on here,” Paxton said in a statement. “It is no surprise that a cabal of President Biden donors and voters are finding a way to retaliate against the work of my office for the State of Texas’s challenge to the constitutionality of the 2020 elections. Nearly half the nation joined Texas’s cause and two Supreme Court Justices voted to take up the case. I stand by our lawsuit. This is a total misuse of the Bar’s power and responsibility,” he said.

Amy Starnes, a spokesperson for the Texas State Bar, said her office could not discuss or confirm the existence of a pending investigation because of confidentiality rules.

Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick defend Ken Paxton over Texas bar investigation | The Texas Tribune

This Texan, meaning me, knows as well that Paxton is awaiting trial for securities fraud after being indicted by a Collin County grand jury. I also know that several of his top legal eagles quit the AG’s office and filed a whistleblower complaint that Paxton has engaged in criminal activity while serving as attorney general; the FBI is looking into that complaint.

Now the Bar has come forward with a complaint of its own, contesting the legitimacy of the lawsuit that Paxton filed with the U.S. Supreme Court over the results in other states. The court tossed the lawsuit out, saying that Paxton didn’t have standing.

The man is a disgrace. He needs to go. I do hope the Republican primary challenge he faces next spring can bring about the much-needed result … which would be his ouster.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news, State news

Ex-POTUS turns his phony fraud case to Texas

The Donald Trump phony vote fraud fishing expedition has cast its line into our neighborhood.

What a … joke!

The Texas secretary of state’s office, kowtowing to demands from the former Liar in Chief’s team, has announced an audit of 2020 presidential election returns in four of the state’s largest counties: Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin. Three of the four counties have something in common: Voters in Dallas, Harris and Tarrant counties cast most of their votes for Joe Biden; Collin County, where my wife and I live, voted narrowly for Biden’s opponent, the 45th POTUS.

Not surprisingly, officials in the three pro-Biden counties have proclaimed it a political ploy. Collin County Judge Chris Hill — a Republican and a supporter of the 45th POTUS — so far is silent. Imagine that, eh?

This is an exercise in grotesque stupidity.

Texas 2020 election audits called political ploy by county officials | The Texas Tribune

The former POTUS carried Texas by about 5 percentage points. He now is demanding that Gov. Greg Abbott add a “forensic audit” of the state’s returns to the Texas Legislature’s special session agenda.

What the former Numbskull in Chief continues to do is denigrate the hard work of county elections officials in those counties — along with those who worked in all the rest of the state — who produced a patently safe, fraud-free, legal and fair election.

How many times must we all say this: There was no “widespread voter fraud” in Texas! However, the Big Lie lives on in what passes for the minds of the cultists who swill the poison being served by the former POTUS.

This is a disgrace to our democratic form of government.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Catch your breath, Texas Democrats

(Bob Daemmrich/Pool Photo via AP)

Texas Democrats no doubt are having trouble catching their breath over recent polling news regarding the state’s top Republican: Gov. Greg Abbott.

I word of caution: Don’t get ahead of yourselves.

Recent Texas Tribune polling shows significant slippage among Texas independents regarding the governor. Abbott now trails film star Matthew McConaughey by 9%. Then there’s former El Paso congressman Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who is sounding more and more like a Texas candidate for governor; O’Rourke is within spitting distance of Abbott … pollwise.

I am going to shake my head on all of this.

I also shall stipulate that I hope Abbott can be beaten next year when we elect the vast bulk of our state’s constitutional officeholders. Abbott is one of them. I am profoundly angry at the way he has governed since he first was elected in 2014.

He is tacking to the hard right. Abbott is facing Republican primary foes, such as former Texas GOP chair Allen West, the one-term Florida congressman who moved to Texas to further his political aspirations. We have former state Sen. Don Huffines, too, in the GOP primary contest.

I don’t know whether Matthew McConaughey will run as a Democrat or a Republican. He is being coy about his political orientation. Indeed, he is bobbing and weaving on plenty of specific issues as well.

As for the heavy breathing among Democrats that Abbott is on the ropes, it is way too premature to start ringing the death knell on the governor’s political career.

Texas is to this day a heavily Republican state, no matter the demographic changes that are turning this state into more of a political battleground. Let us not forget that GOP voters in Texas are capable of electing some serious losers to serious public offices.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

Government applies medical pressure?

Ron Paul, a former member of Congress from Texas — and one-time Republican presidential candidate — has made an intriguing and likely unintended case against a hideous Texas law that essentially outlaws abortion.

Paul is a physician and is the father of a sitting U.S. senator, Rand Paul of Kentucky. This item showed up on my Facebook news feed.

I’ll venture a presumption that the statement is intended to refer to President Biden’s mandates to require vaccinations against the COVID-19 virus. Think, though, about the overarching message contained in the statement attributed to Dr. Paul.

“Freedom over one’s physical person is the most basic freedom of all and people in a free society should be sovereign over their own bodies.”

Therein lies the most essential argument possible against that Texas law that has become the subject of lawsuits seeking to overturn it. The Legislature passed the law that Gov. Greg Abbott signed that prohibits women from obtaining an abortion after being pregnant for six weeks. Many women — arguably most women — don’t even know they are pregnant six weeks after conception. The law’s intent is to take the teeth out of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in January 1973.

Let’s be clear about something. This law will not prevent abortion. Women will continue to terminate pregnancies. Many of them might seek “back-alley” procedures that could do them terrible physical harm. The law is ghastly and it is the product of ham-handed legislative tyrants who seek to exert control over women and the decisions they make regarding their own bodies.

Ultraconservative legislators have seized the moment in Texas with this legislation. They have gotten their way, at least for the time being. The state, however, does not “own our bodies.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Ex-POTUS brings Big Lie to Texas

Donald Trump said what?

That he wants Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to add a “forensic audit” of the 2020 presidential election in Texas to the Legislature’s special session agenda? Good ever-lovin’ grief!

The Texas Tribune reported:

In a letter published Thursday, Trump said, “Texans have big questions about the November 2020 Elections,” and time is running out to conduct an audit of the “2020 Presidential Election Scam” because paper ballots are kept for only 22 months after an election.

“Governor Abbott, we need a ‘Forensic Audit of the 2020 Election’ added to the call,” Trump wrote. “We’re quickly running out of time and it must be done this week.”

Despite his victory in Texas and no credible evidence of widespread fraud, Donald Trump calls for election audit legislation | The Texas Tribune

The only Texans who “have big questions about the … election” are the loons who have swilled The Big Lie being served up by the 45th POTUS. And it is a lie. The 2020 presidential election was secure in Texas. It was done legally. It resulted in POTUS 45 earning the state’s electoral votes.

What in the world is the former Numbskull in Chief seeking to do here? Don’t answer that. I know.

He is seeking to sow more doubt about an election that President Biden won fairly and squarely. He has alleged the election was “rigged” to defeat him. In truth, the only “rigging” being sought is by the ex-POTUS and his cult followers. It reminds me of how the then-Liar in Chief kept accusing the media and his foes of fomenting “fake news” while he was promoting phony stories about, oh, Barack Obama’s citizenship.

Now he wants Gov. Abbott — one of his minions — to order an audit of an election where there was no fraud?

Give me a break!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

Texas AG sues districts … for seeking to keep everyone safe?

There’s a lot of things that get past me. Not this item.

Masks help prevent the spread of a deadly virus. Local Texas school districts are defying a governor’s order that bans them from issuing “mask mandates.” The Texas attorney general, who’s under felony indictment, has sued six Texas school districts for defying Gov. Greg Abbott’s order prohibiting them from issuing mask mandates.

So, wait. Does that mean that Abbott and the AG, Ken Paxton, don’t want districts to do what they can to protect teachers, students, parents and staffers? Really?

Two of the districts — Sherman and Richardson — are in North Texas. This is a ridiculous waste of time and money. Why? Because the governor is flat wrong to ban local officials from doing what they can to protect their constituents against the COVID-19 virus.

The Texas Tribune reports: Some 85 school districts and six counties have instituted mask mandates of some kind in defiance of Abbott’s ban — citing the need to protect schoolchildren too young to get the vaccine amid the spread of the highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19.

Texas AG sues Sherman, Richardson, other ISDs over masking (ketr.org)

This is preposterous in the extreme. School districts have an obligation to do what they can to protect children, teachers and anyone who enters these public buildings. They shouldn’t be fighting the governor — for crying out loud! — in that effort.

As for the AG, he’s got his own legal battles to fight, as he is awaiting trial on a Collin County indictment that he committed securities fraud.

Abbott and Paxton are managing to enrage me more each day.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Roe v. Wade far from ‘settled’

If you thought the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States had become “settled law,” you had better think again.

The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision is now under a full frontal assault by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature. Texas now has a law on the books that prohibits a woman from obtaining an abortion as early as six weeks into her pregnancy.

President Biden calls the law “unconstitutional.” The current Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 to let the law take effect even though it is being contested by multiple lawsuits.

One of the four dissenting justices, Stephen Breyer, calls the SCOTUS decision “very, very, very wrong.”

The Texas Tribune reports: The Texas law is novel for incentivizing private citizens to police abortions. It empowers anyone living in the state of Texas to sue an abortion provider or anyone else they suspect is “aiding and abetting” abortions after the six-week mark. Those opposing the law say this may be far-ranging and could include the abortion provider or anyone who provided transportation to a woman, or counseled or referred a woman for an abortion.

Stephen Breyer calls Supreme Court decision on Texas abortion law ‘wrong’ | The Texas Tribune

There’s a fascinating bit of irony at play here. Conservatives proclaim proudly that they oppose what they call “judicial activism.” They say they dislike court decisions that go beyond the Constitution’s strict adherence to original intent.

From my perch in North Texas, it appears that most of the court’s conservatives — except for Chief Justice John Roberts, who sided with the liberal wing — are engaging in a raw form of judicial activism by dismissing the lawsuits and declaring that a law that is being challenged should take effect.

Wouldn’t a “conservative” court just let the litigation play out and stay out of the way?

Settled law? Not when you have a group of judicial activists on the nation’s highest court.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news, State news

Abbott won’t end abortion, either

Now that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has declared his intention to “eliminate rape” from Texas, I have this overwhelming need to remind him of something else.

He won’t be able to eliminate abortion, either.

Indeed, what the governor and the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature have done is spur desperate women to take desperate measures to terminate a pregnancy. Their measures could kill them.

Abbott signed a law that disallows abortion later than six weeks into a pregnancy. Most women, from what I understand, don’t even know they are pregnant that early.

What is the most egregious element of this law is that it does not allow for any exceptions for rape and incest victims. A woman gets raped or is entangled in an incestuous encounter and become pregnant by her attacker? Tough sh**, lady! You have to give birth to that child.

What, though, might she do? She could go to a medical quack who could perform what they call a “back-alley abortion.” What happens then? Only God Almighty knows.

This is the kind of world that awaits women who might seek to end a pregnancy. It is cruel. It is inhumane. It also speaks to the profound hypocrisy of our state’s political leadership, which proclaims itself to be “pro-life” as it regards the unborn but ignores the needs of sentient human beings who are being told they must carry a pregnancy to full term while enduring enormous heartbreak along the way.

Reports have poured in that Mexico’s supreme court has declared abortion to be legal. Will Texas residents flee across our border to seek an abortion in a country that doesn’t criminalize that act? Or will they merely go to neighboring states in this country where they can end a pregnancy without the threat of being arrested and jailed? Yes, those options await some women.

Those who cannot afford to travel or who are unable to make contact with medical professionals are left to take desperate measures.

Our Legislature and our governor have performed an act of cruelty.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, State news

Eliminate rape? Umm … how?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott officially has lost his ever-lovin’ mind.

He has signed a bill that bans abortion in Texas virtually across the board. It says women cannot terminate a pregnancy after the sixth week when most women — as I understand it — don’t even know they’re pregnant.

The new law also does not exempt women who have become pregnant as a result of rape or incest. Abbott’s response to a question from a reporter about that?

He said he is going to “eliminate all rape in Texas.” What? Huh? How in the world does he propose to do that?

No law ever written has deterred a madman from attacking a woman, forcing himself on her and impregnating her. No law can ever prevent rape from occurring. None! What in the world is Gov. Abbott saying here?

Do not misunderstand me on a key point: There are few things in the world I would want more than to see an end to violent sexual assault … such as rape and incest. However, it cannot be legislated. It cannot be mandated just because a governor, or a legislature, or Congress or the president declares his or her intention to “eliminate” it.

Women will continue to be raped. Some of them will conceive children as a result of that dastardly act. Now, under Texas law, they will have to carry that pregnancy to full term and these women will have to give birth to someone who came into their lives as the result of a violent crime.

Someone will have to explain the humanity of that law to me. Anyone? I’m all ears.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com