Greg Abbott is taking a stand to protect his state’s right to let children die in the Rio Grande, and four justices of the Supreme Court are encouraging him to do so.
Jesus, I get off work and suddenly there are 20 reports on comments about Abbott being in a wheelchair.
Removing ALL of them. You want to make fun of him for being a useless fuck? Go ahead. Pick on him for being emotionally and intellectually bankrupt? Not a problem.
Going after him because he can't walk is low hanging fruit. Do better.
For the unaware: He’s in a wheelchair because a tree branch fell on him while he was jogging. He sued the homeowner where the accident occurred, won millions in the settlement, and even got the homeowner on the hook for lost future earnings. Abbott had just graduated from law school a few months prior to the accident, and argued that since he wasn’t able to work he should be compensated for his future lost earnings. So the homeowner has to pay him a wage of $14k/mo (an amount the judge decided would be fair for a lawyer to make if they were able to work full time) for the rest of his life. Abbott then used that money to kickstart his political career.
The only time it’s “acceptable” to make fun of him being in a wheelchair is when pointing out his hypocrisy, because one of his first acts as a lawmaker was to put a cap on his exact type of settlement, with an exception for himself. So nobody else can get the same kind of massive settlement he did. The dude is the very definition of “pulling up the ladder behind himself.”
Precisely. It’s textbook GOP “fuck you, I got mine” behavior and he should absolutely be shamed with it, if that degenerate had the capacity to feel shame.
Thank you. That was pretty disappointing both how readily they were coming out and how thoroughly they were being supported. Taking a hard stand to not make that the norm is good for the community.
I think that they'd all rather be Sarah Palin than Donald Trump. Get famous enough that you can spend the rest of your days as a Fox/OAN talking head and 'best selling' author.
Abbott’s neo-secessionist bluster, cheered on by GOP governors and Republicans in Washington, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, has set up a confrontation with the federal government over immigration policy. “We encourage all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals, and to remove them back across the Border,” Donald Trump wrote on Thursday.
Maybe I’m reading about this too much, but I’m in Texas and really starting to worry about how this all ends & what the next step is. I don’t want to overreact, but with Abbott basically telling the feds to fuck off and Trump encouraging other states to send their National Guard…you know how crazy that fanbase is, we saw it on 1/6.
I know Eisenhower nationalized the Guard when Arkansas tried to pull this shit with desegregation, and yeah Biden has some harder choices because it’s an election year.
I guess I just don’t know where this goes and I hate it. I fucking hate that this is where we’re at.
I don't think Biden will do anything really. He is already making concessions by trying to push an extremely bad immigration bill in congress. His strategy for dealing with this stuff seems to be to make concessions, sending cases to the courts, and just wait for Texas and Republicans to move their attention to something else.
I think Biden should activate the national guard and force them to stop their shenanigans, but I don't think he will.
The Dems are playing the political game like they're in the 1990s, and the Reps are playing the game like they're in 1930s Germany.
Nothing is going to happen. Congress will pass a shitty immigration bill. Abbott will claim a victory for Texas and the whole thing will blow over.
The interesting thing is that Trump is trying to prevent congress from acting because he wants to campaign on the immigration issue. If Biden is able to get something through it will look like a victory.
Something will happen, and that's the point of Biden's remarks on Friday: If they pass the bill, they give him a victory on immigration he can campaign on. If they bend to the cheeto, he has an answer for the rest of the campaign every time they bring up immigration: You all voted against empowering me to close the border. Because the bill is already all over the news, Johnson's House doesn't have the option to do nothing. [And frankly I don't think it matters that much what Abbott does right this second.]
I half expect to see a repeat of what Biden did at last year's State of the Union re Social Security and Medicare, boxing the GOP in on an issue that's extremely important to them by making them choose between supporting him or taking an unpopular position that abandons their core constituents. If they don't pass this bill, the DNC should be shouting from the rooftops that the Republicans want Russian hegemony in Eastern Europe and open borders in Texas. If they pass it, then it's the biggest border security bill in a decade.
Biden is getting well up in years (and he's not alone in that), and he's no LBJ, but he's still a very capable politician. He's certainly got other campaign problems (ahem, the Israel albatross around his neck), but for the last few days, Joe Biden has basically done everything right on immigration.
You know what Texas already has? At least three Active Duty military bases. If every Guard wants to come driving down to say hi, you know what they need? Fuel.
And you can't find JP8 at Buc-ee's, so good luck using Cavaso's fuel point while on your way to flip off the feds.
Yes, the states can do what they want with their Guards but this isn't something to worry about unless you're worried about the waste of life and tax payers money.
Can’t Biden nationalize the Texas National Guard like Eisenhower did with Arkansas, as described here?
I suppose that coming to a head is what I’m worried about - Biden will issue the EO but the Texas National Guard will refuse to acknowledge it. And now there are convoys and shit joining them, so it will just be a standoff that goes on forever (not unlike the Bundy ranch saga) and potentially lead to a serious crisis within the military and the refusal to follow the ruling that SCOTUS handed down.
The Astroturfing is strong here, does anyone actually believe that liberals are suddenly, with absolutely no warning, crawling over each other to mock his disabilities instead of his decisions, despite never having done so before?
The proper method is to call him a cripple and insult everything about him, proper fucken insult methods. Have some respect and do the job right I say.
I dont know if I should add an /s because im only half joking.
Can we PLEASE, in the Trump / Brexit era, recognize how baseless accelerationism is? Have we not learned the lesson of
"Once these people do this terrible, stupid thing, they will realize how terrible & stupid it is"
-is completely false? And in fact tons of people will double down on the stupid terrible thing? They'll double down so much that they'll gladly swallow horse dewormer & bleach, and not get vaccinated, and literally die drowning in their own fluids before admitting that maybe that wasn't such a good idea?
I live here, in the thick of it, and honestly you could probably just tell most of them succession happened and it worked and everything is fine now and they'd probably believe you, and the crazy part is, they'd never notice because they likely expect nothing to change in their completely unaffected by anything ever in their entitled as hell daily lives
Also, this Texas Monthly article from late 2022 is an excellent read on the subject. It can never happen, because a post-Civil War law from 1869 makes a state's unilateral secession from the union illegal. There can be no secession, nor even a referendum. No wonder these drama kings are so confident.
Which is pretty whack. I don't in any way endorse what the Texas government is doing with the border, just to get that out of the way. The idea that a state isn't free to seceed is completely ridiculous. One can not rightfully claim the U.S. is a free country if the states are not free to leave the union. This idea that once you're a part of the union, you're apart of the union forever is a gang mentality that has no place in a free society.
A unilateral secession is illegal. If the others state agree to let you go, you can. Exactly the same as joining: the current states have to vote on whether to let you in. It makes a lot of sense. States joining or leaving on a whim creates major instability for the nation government. Having a fairly high bar for it is a good idea.
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I am seriously of the opinion that the United States is too large and needs to split into at least four independent nations. Mind you that the United States has completely perverted the definition of a "state" as that term normally refers to an independent entity, not part of a larger hole. Really, we should be 50 independent nations, but have chosen to follow the mandates of a higher authority, which could be removed.
Canada and others have territories, some are divided into other sub government entities, etc. they all still function. Just semantics.
I'm a fan of states setting their own environment. Some legalized recreational drugs. Others said they was crazy, doom and gloom. Prove it. Let them try, let's see the proof.
States have certain subcultures. I want them to compete. Compete for education, jobs, etc.
Nothing illegal however, shouldn't have to state that.
One of the key issues here is laws being or not being enforced, and interpretation.
Most people here, in my view favor, more open immigration, Texas seems to be insisting the current law isn't being followed.
Sounds like politicians can't get their jobs done and fix it. But hey, they are all still getting paid, and their health care coverage, and their retirements, and legal insider trading, and getting future employment opportunities, etc etc etc rant rant rant. I don't like politicians.
The real answer to all of this is just decentralization - this was the intention of the Constitution, I believe, and the very model of American government.