Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) admitted Friday that he reopened bars too soon in the state as cases continue to surge.
“If I could go back and redo anything, it probably would have been to slow down the opening of bars now seeing the aftermath of how quickly the coronavirus spreads in the bar setting,” Abbott said in an evening interview with KVIA in El Paso.
The lesson Abbott said he learned is that “a bar setting in reality just doesn’t work with a pandemic.”
Duh.
Fun story from Texas Monthly magazine:
Satire from The New Yorker, by Andy Borowitz:
AUSTIN (The Borowitz Report)—Urging Texans to “keep things in perspective,” Texas’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, said on Wednesday that dying is “surely not as bad” as living in a state where he is lieutenant governor.
Patrick, whose vehement anti-living message has stirred controversy across the country, said that he was speaking out to remind Texans that there are “some things worse than dying.”
“It’s time for a reality check, folks,” Patrick said. “If you wake up every morning and remember that I am the second-highest-ranking elected official in your state, maybe dying doesn’t look so bad, after all.”
Arguing that “dying has got a bad rap,” he blasted the media for what he called its “flagrant anti-death bias.”
“All these media people who go on about how dying is the worst thing in the world have never spent any time with me,” he said.
From Esquire, by Charles P. Pierce:
Back when the Affordable Care Act was new, and Republican governors were turning down the FREE MONEY! being offered to their states for the purposes of expanding Medicaid, I remember thinking that everything I’d learned about politics in the Massachusetts State House had been thrown in the hopper forever. One of the first things I learned was that, regardless of the source, you simply never turn down FREE MONEY! And, of course, FREE MONEY! from the Feds is extra-double-good because, relative to other sources, it’s fairly clean. But, as it turns out, times have changed and stretching poor people on the rack to entertain your base and to own the libs now take precedence over other, more traditional political incentives, god help us all.
We’re seeing the same kind of thing going on now that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is diverting $3.6 billion in military funding to pay for construction of his big, stupid, and largely imaginary wall along the southern border. This diversion includes $48 million from Texas, where Republican Senator John Cornyn is standing for re-election next year, $80 million from North Carolina, where Republican Senator Thom Tillis is standing for re-election next year, and eight-million from Colorado, where Republican Senator Cory Gardner is standing for re-election. There was a time, and not so long ago, where senators would fight like rabid bats to keep their states from losing this kind of FREE MONEY!
Can you imagine trying to pry $48 million in military spending, money earmarked for child-care and new schools, away from Texas when Lyndon Johnson was the senator there? They’d need dental records to identify what was left of your presidency. But this is a new world and nothing is more important than indulging a batty president* and his big, stupid, and largely imaginary wall. And, of course, owning the libs.
From The Hill:
“‘As far as the caravan is concerned, our military is out. We have about 5,000. We’ll go up to anywhere between 10 and 15,000 military personnel on top of Border Patrol, [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and everybody else at the border,’ the president told reporters on the South Lawn.”
Where is the outrage, people? Why hasn’t Gov. Greg Abbott mobilized the Texas State Guard to keep an eye on these dangerous troops like he did before?
Huh? Huh? Huh?
On the eve of a committee hearing on his anti-transgender bathroom bill, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick compared the fight for passage of the measure to the Battle of the Alamo.
Patrick made the comments during a Monday briefing for pastors hosted by the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBT hate group, at the headquarters of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a corporate-funded right-wing think tank.
Addressing the bathroom bill, Senate Bill 6, Patrick called on pastors to “go out and win this fight for America.” He added that “a strong America depends on a strong Texas,” and said SB 6 is about “Texas values.”
From The Hill:
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is the leading candidate to be Energy secretary in President-elect Donald Trump‘s administration, Bloomberg reports.
Perry, when running for president in 2011, famously forgot the name of the Energy Department when listing government agencies he wanted to eliminate.
Donald Trump’s spokeswoman blamed the policies of President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the death of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, despite the fact that Khan died in 2004.
“It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagement that probably cost his life,” spokeswoman Katrina Pierson said in an interview Tuesday with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.
Khan died during the presidency of George W. Bush, while Obama was a state senator in Illinois.
Chris Christie on last night’s dumpster fire, otherwise known as Ted Cruz’s “endorsement” speech of Donald Trump at the GOP convention:
“I think it was awful,” Christie said. “And quite frankly, I think it was something selfish. And he signed a pledge. And it’s his job to keep his word.”
This from the man who gave his party’s keynote speech for Romney in 2012 but spoke mainly about his own accomplishments.
I Tried Being Tasteful... 