Greg Abbott: Texas has a Shitweasel in the Governor's Mansion

[Howl]

Positive spin is so very important and Greg's on top of it: 

 

[Cartmann99]

Here's what my weather program says for my little patch o' dirt:

Spoiler

[Howl]

Oh my goodness! Sending you the facebook hug emoji, fuzzy blankets, a duvet and foot warmers!  Do you have enough cats?  Stocked up on tea, hot cocoa, soup, crunchy snacks?  Netflix?

Looks like those 3" of snow will stick around for a bit! 

[Cartmann99]

21 minutes ago, Howl said:

Oh my goodness! Sending you the facebook hug emoji, fuzzy blankets, a duvet and foot warmers!  Do you have enough cats?  Stocked up on tea, hot cocoa, soup, crunchy snacks?  Netflix?

 *snorts* The cats hold me personally responsible for cold weather. 😼

I'm in a good place as far as food, blankets, and entertainment. You?

 

[fraurosena]

Good grief, just did the F to C conversion. 0 to -8 degrees! That's insane.

Conversely, our winters have been extremely mild the last couple of years. Yesterday it was 9C (48.2F) over here. For context, Amsterdam lies roughly 3288 k (2044m) to the north of Cairo.

Climate change is real, people. How much more evidence do you need?

[Howl]

10 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

I'm in a good place as far as food, blankets, and entertainment. You?

I'm going to ride my bike to Trader Joe's this morning and pick up a few things before it starts raining later today, but more for exercise.  We've got the dripping faucet thing down for the really cold nights.  Our house is slab construction and we didn't get below 50 degrees inside during the Big Freeze, so I think we're OK for that. We have some really warm sleeping bags so no problems there. 

If the electricity goes out for any length of time, we'll put our refrigerated and frozen food outside in a cooler. 

I've been reading that the most challenged the energy grid will be is on Friday morning.  Has anyone encouraged citizens to conserve energy on Friday morning?  No, they have not! 

From last year, my understanding was that a lot of the problem was caused when key pipeline intersections in the natural gas collecting systems froze, stopping the flow of natural gas to power generating stations.   Looking at the forecast posted by @Cartmann99, this could certainly happen again. 

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Conversely, our winters have been extremely mild the last couple of years.

Here in Central Texas, it's common to have huge fluctuations in winter temperatures.  Approaching cold fronts pull warm air up from the Gulf of Mexico, temps in the 70s or higher.  Shorts, T shirts, sandals.  The cold front comes through, sometimes with rain and sometimes not, coats and shoes for a few days.  

I've noted that the term global warming is used less and climate change is used more.  Although the globe IS warming,  a by product is wider weather fluctuations and more weather extremes. 

 

[danvillebelle]

We're stocked up on people food and pet food and have plenty of wood for the fireplace.  We have propane for the grill, so we can still cook if the power goes out.  It's supposed to be over 50 again here by Monday, so I'm not too worried.  

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

I'm going to ride my bike to Trader Joe's this morning and pick up a few things before it starts raining later today, but more for exercise.  We've got the dripping faucet thing down for the really cold nights.  Our house is slab construction and we didn't get below 50 degrees inside during the Big Freeze, so I think we're OK for that. We have some really warm sleeping bags so no problems there. 

We didn't lose our power last year, but I'm charging up my various bad weather supplies just in case. 🤞

I am pleased to announce that our snow accumulations have been reduced in the latest forecast.

In shitweasel news, Abbott came to Midland yesterday. Sadly for him, it was too warm to bust out the barn coat for some "working man" cosplay:

Quote

"We all know that energy is the centerpiece of Texas, and there’s about a million jobs that are represented by the energy sector in the great state of Texas," Abbott said. "These are high paying jobs, high paying jobs who have made Texas and America energy independent."

Abbott also vowed to prevent anyone, on any level of government, from doing anything that would damage the industry and the jobs that come with it.

"Texas will not allow leftists, such as President Biden or Beto O’Rourke, to destroy the energy sector by crushing the high paying jobs that we have in Midland, Odessa and the Permian Basin," Abbott said.

According to Abbott, it's the oil and gas industry that has allowed the state to become an economic powerhouse.

"Over the course of the past two years, Texas has moved from being the 10th largest economy in the entire world to where we are today," Abbott said. "As we gather in Midland today, Texas now has the 9th largest economy in the entire world."

In other words, ignore the high rates of asthma and other respiratory issues caused by flaring, the earthquakes caused by wastewater injection, and shut the hell up about climate change because some people are making serious money.

A forum was held last night at the Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center (it's close to Midland) by some Republican Party groups for the Republican gubernatorial and attorney general candidates. Neither Abbott nor Paxton (the current AG) attended.

 Abbott: "I got my endorsements from the oil and gas folks. Why should I stick around?"

[zeebaneighba]

7 hours ago, Howl said:

 

 

Here in Central Texas, it's common to have huge fluctuations in winter temperatures.  Approaching cold fronts pull warm air up from the Gulf of Mexico, temps in the 70s or higher.  Shorts, T shirts, sandals.  The cold front comes through, sometimes with rain and sometimes not, coats and shoes for a few days.  

I've noted that the term global warming is used less and climate change is used more.  Although the globe IS warming,  a by product is wider weather fluctuations and more weather extremes. 

 

Kansas is like this, too.  It was 66F/18.9 C Monday; today we have about 6" of snow (so far) and it is supposed to bottom out at 3F/-16C tomorrow.  That's not counting the wind chill, which may go as low as -14F/-25.6 C.

Edited February 2, 2022 by zeebaneighba
trim quote

[Cartmann99]

4 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Abbott: "I got my endorsements from the oil and gas folks. Why should I stick around?"

Just so we're clear, this is me being snarky. To my knowledge, he's never said anything like this publicly, but I'm sure he thinks it.

[Howl]

3 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

In shitweasel news, Abbott came to Midland yesterday. Sadly for him, it was too warm to bust out the barn coat for some "working man" cosplay

The whole performative Carhartt barncoat/chore jacket pose drives me crazy.  Dan Patrick and  Ted Cruz have both done it. 

Lawzamercy, y'all, it's on the way!   

[Audrey2]

I just saw this by the Lincoln Project and really thought it was great!

 

[Howl]

12 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

I just saw this by the Lincoln Project and really thought it was great!

 

We record Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) and watch her in the morning.  This ad just played. It's very powerful.   

Abbott for Governor campaign ads are already airing in anticipation of the March 1 primary elections and are focused on border security.   Border Patrol and law enforcement endorsements for Abbott are in frequent rotation on TV.  Early voting in the Texas primaries starts on Feb. 14. 

Abbott's two main challengers in the primaries, Adam West and former TX state senator Dan Huffines, are working the border security angle hard.  Adam West,  the TX GOP chair, is a wingnut.  Huffines is a regular conservative (!) from Houston.  By regular conservative, I mean a typical TX asshole conservative politician, but not in la-la land, wing nut, conspiracy, MGT territory.  There are four other challengers, but I don't think they are competitive.  One, named Rick Perry (!), but not THAT Rick Perry, has never run for public office. 

It's wintry mix in Austin today, sleeting like mad, hovering between 29 and 31 degrees and the trees have a light coating of ice.   We'll see if the power holds out.  It's almost noon and no one has driven down our street today.  

I hate to see this.  I lost my pomegranate and fig trees in the Big Freeze last year, and the Texas oak in the front yard was damaged but put out some branches in the spring and was still hanging on.   Hopefully, it will leaf out this spring. 

[Howl]

So not Greg Abbott but Lt. Governor Dan "Let the elderly die of Covid" Patrick. It's Texas politics, y'all and I'm not up to starting a new thread.  

Lt. Governor in Texas is a very powerful position, because the lieutenant governor presides over the Senate in the Texas statehouse and sets the legislative agenda. 

In a dick move of stellar asshole-ry, Texas' own flaming imbecile Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick today MAGA'd all over himself by proposing the introduction of legislation that would eliminate tenure for all new hires in any of Texas' public university systems, and REVOKING TENURE FOR ANY FACULTY TEACHING CRITICAL RACE THEORY.   

In one statement, he has basically destroyed the ability of the premier research institution in Texas to recruit new faculty starting now because what rising academic in her or his right mind would take a chance on UT Austin?  Or Texas A&M or any of the other amazing public colleges and universities in this state?  Or maybe they'd take a job to mark time until their "real" (tenure track) job came along. 

 

[Cartmann99]

FFS...

 

[Cartmann99]

Ex-ERCOT chief says he was following Abbott's direction to halt blackouts when they ran up billions in bills during freeze

Quote

The former head of the Texas power grid testified in court Wednesday that when he ordered power prices to stay at the maximum price cap for days on end during last year’s frigid winter storm and blackout, running up billions of dollars in bills for power companies, he was following the direction of Governor Greg Abbott.

“She told me the governor had conveyed to her if we emerged from rotating outages it was imperative they not resume,” Magness testified. “We needed to do what we needed to do to make it happen.”

Last year the governor's spokesman, Mark Miner said the governor was not “involved in any way” in the decision to keep prices at the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour – more than 150 times normal prices. He described a decision to send an aide to ERCOT's operations center in the middle of the crisis as based on the feeling the grid operator was spewing “disinformation." 

"As Texans would expect, Governor Abbott instructed everyone involved that they must do what was needed to keep the power on and to prevent the loss of life.  This is the same instruction Governor Abbott gave to the PUC and ERCOT earlier this year: do what needs to be done to keep the power on," Miner said in an email Wednesday afternoon.

The decision to keep power prices at the maximum cap is now at the center of a bankruptcy trial waged by the Waco-based electric co-op Brazos Electric. 

Brazos contends that decision was made recklessly, adding up to a $1.9 billion power bill from ERCOT that forced them into bankruptcy.

“It did nothing at all to cause more generation to come online,” said Lino Mendiola, one of the attorneys representing Brazos. “It was an attempted remedy that didn’t solve any of the problems caused by the winter storm.”

The original order to raise power prices to the cap was made by the Public Utility Commission on Feb. 15, to try to get power plants back online and encourage large power users like factories and petrochemical plants to stay offline. ERCOT elected to keep prices at the cap until Feb. 19, a decision that the Texas Independent Market Monitor criticized in a report last year as having, “exceeded the mandate of the Commission.”

“This decision resulted in $16 billion in additional costs to ERCOT's market,” wrote Carrie Bivens, director of ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor.

Now Abbott is facing questions about his own culpability in the handling of last year's blackout. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke released a statement Wednesday claiming Abbott had, "once again put the profits of his donors over the people of this state."

"Abbott screwed us, and he’ll continue to screw us until we vote him out," he said.

Magness, who was fired last year, has long defended his and other ERCOT officials actions as necessary to keep the grid from slipping into a total blackout that could take weeks or months to recover from.

But in testimony in federal bankruptcy court in Houston Tuesday and Wednesday, he explained in detail how Walker had come to ERCOT's operations center in the middle of the crisis and relayed to him Abbott's demand that rotating blackouts come to an end.

Magness said he agreed that was still a risk, explaining even as power plants were starting to come back online on February 17, the system was far from secure. Some power plants were still coming offline because of cold or gas supply issues, and there was concern if power prices were allowed to return to normal market conditions, large power users might start coming back online and using crucial power reserves.

“We were still seeing 40,000 megawatts of outages. At the peak we had 52,000 megawatts but 40,000 is still a lot,” Magness said.  “We saw the potential for load shed coming again.”

And he described how after so many hours of power outages, there was risk that Texas's problems could cascade, explaining how water plants that had been relying on backup generation would have soon run out of fuel if rotating blackouts resumed.

“And I don’t know what else,” he said.

The judge overseeing the trial, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones, responded, “You’re looking into the unknown.”

“I don’t think anyone would say you were not trying to do the right thing,” he said.

 

[Howl]

Well, we all survived the cold weather, it's warming right up and now we go to the horror that is Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas politics.  A woman with a trans child who works for Department of Family and Protective Services  (DFPS in the tweet below) got a visit from the very state entity she works for and could lose her job...

This twitter thread goes on to note: 

On Feb 24, "Jane Doe was informed that her family would be investigated in accordance with Gov. Abbott's letter"...to determine if the parents had "committed abuse" by accepting their transgender daughter, the suit reads...

...On Feb 25, DFPS investigators (again, the very agency where the plaintiff works) interviewed the parents and child at their home and "sought access through releases to Mary Doe’s medical records, which the Doe Plaintiffs refused to sign"...

The Doe family says the sole allegation against them is that their daughter is "transitioning from male to female." Jane Doe faces being fired from her job and both parents face being placed on a child abuse registry, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit states that "the Doe family is living in constant fear about what will happen to them due to the actions by DFPS, the Governor [Greg Abbott], and the Attorney General [Dan Patrick]." (Note: both the governor and AG are up for re-election in today's Texas primary)

 

 

 

 

[Becky]

Unbelievable. My heart breaks for Texas. What happened to “ parents should be the ones making medical decisions for their children?” Which I believe Greg Abbott said regarding masking in schools. 

[GreyhoundFan]

On 3/1/2022 at 4:17 PM, Becky said:

Unbelievable. My heart breaks for Texas. What happened to “ parents should be the ones making medical decisions for their children?” Which I believe Greg Abbott said regarding masking in schools. 

Silly @Becky parental choice only applies if the parents choose the reich wing way. If they think they choose something else, they’re wrong and should be imprisoned, according to Abbott and his ilk. 

[Howl]

On 3/1/2022 at 1:27 PM, Howl said:

The lawsuit states that "the Doe family is living in constant fear about what will happen to them due to the actions by DFPS, the Governor [Greg Abbott], and the Attorney General [Dan Patrick]." (Note: both the governor and AG are up for re-election in today's Texas primary)

Lots of confusion between Dan Patrick (Texas Lieutenant Governor) and Ken Paxton (Texas Attorney General).   Dan Patrick is the "let the elderly die of Covid" guy. 

Attorney General Ken Paxton has been under indictment for years over illegal stock activities and has also been accused by his senior staff of inappropriate behavior/illegal activities. That senior staff either quit or were fired by Paxton.   Paxton has also gone mega MAGA.  

Texas politics has turned into an absolute fluster cluck of crazy with policies damaging to so many. 

 

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Howl

[Cartmann99]

Unrolled version of thread is here.

[Howl]

Abbot has signed memoranda of understanding with the governors of various Mexican border states to attempt to unfuck the total border disaster he created. 

This is a lot of hot air, an MOU has zero binding legal authority and the FEDERAL GUBMINT is in charge of stuff at the border, not the state....Greg. 

What Abbott needs to do is send the highway patrol back to patrolling highways, clear the backlog of trucks waiting to cross and STOP USING THE BORDER AND IMMIGRATION ISSUES as agitprop. 

He can't unfuck perishables lost as trucks waited days to cross the border and the epic amount of ill will generated among truckers. 

 

[Cartmann99]

Abbott's stunt is not just affecting those waiting on produce orders:

Quote

The logjam also has the potential to compound existing supply chain issues in the manufacturing industry, said Erik Lundh, principal economist at The Conference Board.

Following the early stages of the pandemic, when lockdowns in China resulted in significant delays in shipments, it spurred a renewed interest by US companies in working with suppliers in Mexico, he said.

"What are companies going to think about this?" he said. 'What are they going to think when they see that Mexico, which has emerged as a potential alternative to China, can suffer these kinds of impacts in this US political sphere."

Those issues could further compound inflationary woes that are already heightened by the war in Ukraine and the new wave of Covid that has hit China, he said.

"Coupled with the difficulty in getting things across the border from Mexico," he said, "it layers two different kinds of sources of inflationary pressure on top of one another and makes things even more complicated."

You know things are insane when Sid "Jesus shot" Miller, Texas' corrupt Agriculture Commissioner, is the voice of reason. Earlier this week from the Dallas Morning News:

Quote

In a strongly worded statement, Miller warned Gov. Greg Abbott that commercial vehicles are being forced to wait up to 12 hours to enter Texas from Mexico because of the stepped-up state inspections. As a result, Miller said, produce is rotting in idling trucks and ultimately, prices could spike for consumers.

“This is not solving the border problem, it is increasing the cost of food and adding to supply chain shortages,” said Miller, a two-term Republican who is up for reelection this year. “Such a misguided program is going to quickly lead to $2.00 lemons, $5.00 avocados and worse.”

 

[Becky]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

Abbott's stunt is not just affecting those waiting on produce orders:

You know things are insane when Sid "Jesus shot" Miller, Texas' corrupt Agriculture Commissioner, is the voice of reason. Earlier this week from the Dallas Morning News:

 

Abbotflation, I love it! More fodder against a presidential run, I hope. Way to go, Greg. 

Edited April 16, 2022 by Becky
Riffle

[Audrey2]

8 minutes ago, Becky said:

Abbotflation, I love it! More fodder against a presidential run, I hope. Way to go, Greg. 

He's a republican. I'm sure not only will he get a pass but he will convince people that it was Biden's fault.