House Republicans Cite Noah’s Ark In Motion Backing Texas Using Circular Saws, Razor Wire On Rio Grande

 

The Houston Chronicle reports:

More than 20 members of Congress want to join a federal lawsuit to help protect Gov. Greg Abbott’s buoy barrier in the Rio Grande, referencing Noah’s Ark and questioning if the river can be considered a “navigable waterway” despite being the fourth largest river in North America.

In a motion filed on behalf of U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, and other GOP members, lawyers for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation have asked to be part of the case and targeted how a key law is interpreted in it.

The U.S. Justice Department sued Abbott last month for deploying a 1,000-foot buoy barrier in the Rio Grande without first getting permission from the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers as required by the federal Rivers and Harbors Act.

From their amicus brief:

Indeed, if one takes the Book of Genesis literally, then the entire world was once navigable by boats large enough to carry significant amounts of livestock. Under the federal government’s theory, these anecdotes would render any structure built anywhere in Texas an obstruction to navigation subject to federal regulation.

Arrington was among the 126 Republican House reps who voted to overturn the 2020 election.

 

Send the goddamn Army Engineers to turn that shit into a scrap pile TODAY

The cruelty is always the point. And the point is always pointless. By their lack of reason, anytime there’s a flood, no one can do a thing about it, because Noah has an ark.

“Indeed, if one takes the Book of Genesis literally….”

Well, we have a problem already because no rational person takes those stories literally.

Indeed, if one takes the Book of Genesis literally, then drunken incestuous impregnation is a handy way to perpetuate the human race.

Dumb Idiot Ham has something like this in his putrid attractions. There’s a placard at his “museum” claiming that it was OK for anyone to commit incest back then because it was a way for humans to produce children like rabbits in the mythical Pre-Flood world.

 

To be certain, had Noah’s family been the only surviving one, then humanity would’ve quickly inbred itself out of existence.

From that same book in their bible they’re always so fond of quoting to condemn LGBT’s,

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

The evangelicals cherry-pick Bible verses that seemingly justify their own cruelty. Verses about welcoming strangers are ignored.

If we’re going to use the Bible to justify drowning and killing people looking for a better life, it’s important to remember that Jesus first and foremost commanded us to treat others as we want to be treated. Moreover, the Bible is full of verses telling us we should help the poor, needy, and strangers.

None of the things you mention there seem very christian, not in my experience. All I remember is bootstraps, poor people are bad and queers rot in a lake of fire for eternity. They are quite adamant about all of that. Then it gets weird.

 

Most of the stuff that the fundies rally around is from the Old Testament, even though Jesus said to ignore all the old teachings (which is why the Christians think it’s okay to eat pork).

Yes, but cherry pickers ignore those bits, especially if the strangers are the wrong color

again

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Yet another reason why every time Texas whines about seceding, I wish they’d put their money where their mouth is

That state is like a petulant child that is always threatening to run away from home but never does for all the obvious reasons.

An independent state of Texas would last for about 15 minutes. Then the power would go out and the cartels would take control. Texas would be reabsorbed into Mexico. Past is prologue.

 

I don’t think Mexico wants them either.

The Texas Republicans have gerrymandered and dirty tricked their way into staying in power, even though they don’t actually have majority support anymore. It’s a very divided state that remains in the hands of lunatics, for now. Eventually the majority will just be too big to suppress anymore, and it will flip.

 

A few thoughts before I do the weekly Sunday cleanings on the computers. This morning I scrambled to get through two windows of a combined total of 78 tabs, so I wouldn’t lose them due to cleaning. Hugs

Texas questions rights of a fetus after a prison guard who had a stillborn baby sues

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/texas-questions-rights-of-a-fetus-after-a-prison-guard-who-had-a-stillborn-baby-sues/

Ali sent us the link and as she mentions the state is trying to have it both ways, the fetus is a person from conception for forcing the pregnant person to carry even dead or dying fetuses to term, pay the costs for all the medical care along with funeral / burial costs as added punishment.   But when it comes to hardship for the state, costing the state money, or putting requirements on republicans they claim that personhood from conception is stupid and not legally recognized.  Hugs


DALLAS (AP) — The state of Texas is questioning the legal rights of an “unborn child” in arguing against a lawsuit brought by a prison guard who says she had a stillborn baby because prison officials refused to let her leave work for more than two hours after she began feeling intense pains similar to contractions.

The argument from the Texas attorney general’s office appears to be in tension with positions it has previously taken in defending abortion restrictions, contending all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court that “unborn children” should be recognized as people with legal rights.

It also contrasts with statements by Texas’ Republican leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who has touted the state’s abortion ban as protecting “every unborn child with a heartbeat.”

The state attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to questions about its argument in a court filing that an “unborn child” may not have rights under the U.S. Constitution. In March, lawyers for the state argued that the guard’s suit “conflates” how a fetus is treated under state law and the Constitution.

“Just because several statutes define an individual to include an unborn child does not mean that the Fourteenth Amendment does the same,” they wrote in legal filing that noted that the guard lost her baby before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion established under its landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

That claim came in response to a federal lawsuit brought last year by Salia Issa, who alleges that hospital staff told her they could have saved her baby had she arrived sooner. Issa was seven months’ pregnant in 2021, when she reported for work at a state prison in the West Texas city of Abilene and began having a pregnancy emergency.

Her attorney, Ross Brennan, did not immediately offer any comment. He wrote in a court filing that the state’s argument is “nothing more than an attempt to say — without explicitly saying — that an unborn child at seven months gestation is not a person.”

While working at the prison, Issa began feeling pains “similar to a contraction” but when she asked to be relived from her post to go to the hospital her supervisors refused and accused her of lying, according to the complaint she filed along with her husband. It says the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s policy states that a corrections officer can be fired for leaving their post before being relived by another guard.

Issa was eventually relieved and drove herself to the hospital, where she underwent emergency surgery, the suit says.

Issa, whose suit was first reported by The Texas Tribune, is seeking monetary damages to cover her medical bills, pain and suffering, and other things, including the funeral expenses of the unborn child. The state attorney general’s office and prison system have asked a judge to dismiss the case.

Laura Hermer, a professor at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, described Texas’ legal posture as “seeking to have their cake and eat it too.”

“This would not be the first time that the state has sought to claim to support the right to life of all fetuses, yet to act quite differently when it comes to protecting the health and safety of such fetuses other than in the very narrow area of prohibiting abortions,” Hermer said.

Last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Hightower recommended that the case be allowed to proceed, in part, without addressing the arguments over the rights of the fetus.

 

‘Push Them In The River’ Texas’ Crimes Against Humanity?

Matt & David talk about horrifying allegations of abuse of migrants at the US/Mexico border.

Immigration, Texas, and Lazarus

Tyler Perry Offers $100,000 Reward For Information On Killing Of Gay Man

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tyler-perry-offers-100000-reward-for-information-on-killing-of-gay-man_n_64c26affe4b044bf98f39411

Josiah “Jonty” Robinson, a singer in Grenada, was found dead on a beach last month, with an autopsy reportedly concluding that he’d been strangled.

Marco Margaritoff

By Marco Margaritoff

Jul 27, 2023, 01:43 PM EDT

Actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry is hoping to find answers in the killing of Josiah “Jonty” Robinson, offering $100,000 to anyone with information that leads to a conviction.

Perry announced the reward Wednesday on Instagram after 24-year-old Robinson, an openly gay singer in Grenada, was found dead on a local beach last month. Perry, a writer, director and producer known for wholesome comedies featuring mostly Black casts, said his friend Yvette Noel-Schure was in tears when she told him about the killing.

“My soul ached as she shared that he was a young, gifted singer who was murdered because he was gay,” he wrote. “Yvette and I are offering a $100,000 dollar reward to anyone who brings forth information that leads to the conviction of the murderer.”

Tyler Perry likened Josiah “Jonty” Robinson's death to that of Matthew Shepard in 1998.
Tyler Perry likened  Josiah “Jonty” Robinson’s death to that of Matthew Shepard in 1998.

Robinson’s body was reportedly discovered in the same area of Grenadian town Morne Rouge where he had performed songs the day prior.

Speaking to The New Today, a source close to the Royal Grenada Police Force said an autopsy concluded that Robinson was strangled and thrown into the ocean. The local outlet later reported that police had questioned several people without making a breakthrough in the case.

Elsewhere in his Instagram post, Perry reflected on how Robinson’s death echoed similar tragedies from recent years.

“My mind immediately went to … [Matthew] Shepard, and all the other victims of racist, homophobic, antisemitic, xenophobic, senseless violence,” he said, referring to a gay student at the University of Wyoming whose 1998 killing sparked calls for stronger protections against hate crimes.

In a Wednesday essay for British Vogue, friend Tenille Clarke said that Robinson, who described himself on social media as a “Youth Ambassador,” lived as “an outspoken, openly gay man” in an environment that was hostile at times.

“While Pride month is celebrated annually in metropolises such as New York … his approach to activism in the Caribbean as a member of the LBGTQ community – his voracious desire to live in his simple, beautiful truth – often became a cyclic matter of life or death,” she wrote.

Anyone with information is urged to contact the Royal Grenada Criminal Investigation Division at +1 (473) 440-3921.

The murders keep happening just for being gay. Tears… Here is a photo of 24 yr old Josiah
https://www.huffpost.com/en…

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Let’s talk about why conservatives are mad at Fox….

Bowling for Columbine (2002) – A Brief History of the United States Scene (8/11) | Movieclips

NYT: DeSantis Worsened Florida’s COVID Death Toll

If you remember Der DeathSantis attacked hard anyone who disagreed with his covid denial.   When the vaccines were first made available the governor made sure his wealthy friends got first chance to get them, making sure distribution sites were next to or in wealthy enclaves.  Then he held a sort of lottery where the pharmacy / company that gave him the largest donation would have exclusive rights to give out the vaccine.   That was the Publix chain of grocery stores, which are found by and run on “Christian” principles.  When state officials challenged his views of forcing companies to violate federal guidelines, he fired them and used the state legal authorities to attack and harm the whistleblowers.  When the state medical community would go along with him he fired them, and hired one of the Frontline doctors that were scamming the maga by charging $90 or more for a short video medical consultation and then charged them for an Ivermectin prescription.   This was led by the “semen doctor” who claimed demons were having sex with people leaving demon semen seed in them causing all sorts of illnesses.   His new quack head of the Florida health department is a complete anti-vaccine covid denying fraud who is now raking in almost $600,000 when he first took the position because Der DeathSantis forced a state university to make him their president.  Not a bad gig, going from scamming random maga people to making over half a million a year just to parrot and provide pseudo-science reasons for what ever the governor proclaims.  Hugs

The New York Times reports:

In Florida, unlike the nation as a whole — and states like New York and California that Mr. DeSantis likes to single out — most people who died from Covid died after vaccines became available to all adults, not before. As the governor’s political positions began to shift, so did his state’s death rate, for the worse.

Mr. DeSantis and his aides have said that his opposition was to mandates, not to the vaccinations themselves. They say the governor only questioned the efficacy of the shots once it became evident that they did not necessarily prevent infection — which prompted him to criticize experts and the federal government.

Tapping into the Republican revolt against scientific authority made him a political star. But that revolt came with costs. “These were preventable deaths,” Dr. Rivkees, who resigned as Florida’s surgeon general in September 2021, said in a recent interview.

Read the full article. It’s quite the deep dive. Gift link.

 

. “These were preventable deaths,” Dr. Rivkees, who resigned as Florida’s surgeon general in September 2021, said in a recent interview.

Resigned or forced out? It’s a shame that he was replaced by the current whackadoo surgeon general.

Quite often a political resignation is prefaced by “I want your letter on my desk in the morning.”

Many Floridians who died from Covid learned helpful new skills!

Could have told you that after he fired his epidemiologist…. And then sent the cops after her.

And hired an unqualified quack as her replacement.

 

Siccing the cops was even worse because they took her computer that she was using to track the true Florida COVID rate, which she had the audacity to make publicly available. DeSaster couldn’t tolerate that.

So the NYT thinks NOW this is news? By the end of 2020, anyone with half a brain knew DeathSantis was killing off his own citizens in the name of “liberty”.

…in the name of a nasty political stunt.

Just like flying/bussing immigrants around the country. He does not value human life. He sees people as bargaining chips or pawns at his disposal.

It may be obvious to us that Florida did worse on COVID than DeSantis has been pretending, but it’s valuable reporting to look at the data and tell the truth, especially since there is the wide impression, if you look only at overall numbers, that FL didn’t do any worse than a number of blue states.That red states in general and Republicans specifically died in greater numbers after vaccines were approved and after their political leaders began poo-pooing their effectiveness has been underreported.

Would have been helpful had this piece of valuable reporting come a few years
back in a more timely manner, like when it was happening.

The NYT did have a number of articles about the increasing disparity between red-state and blue-state COVID deaths after the vaccines.

I haven’t read this entire NYT piece as it just came out, but my impression is that it uses data compiled over several years—it’s hard to do perfectly timely reporting on data that takes years to accumulate.

Not by the end of 2020. As the excerpt Joe posted notes, DeSantis’ position changed dramatically over the course of the pandemic.

Not by the end of 2020. As the excerpt Joe posted notes, DeSantis’ position changed dramatically over the course of the pandemic.

What’s the difference between the Jaws mayor and Ron DeSantis? One’s a politician who ignored warnings about an obvious danger and left the beaches open, resulting in preventable deaths, and the other’s a character in a Steven Spielberg movie.

And the antivaxxer tourists went to Florida as a mecca. Then came home and spread it far and wide.

And those weren’t counted by Florida as Florida cases. They pushed em off on wherever else or erased them.

Yup, a way to cook the books.

Florida Covid deaths weren’t counted as Covid deaths. Other causes of death were listed.

Mr. DeSantis and his aides have said that his opposition was to mandates, not to the vaccinations themselves. They say the governor only questioned the efficacy of the shots once it became evident that they did not necessarily prevent infection — which prompted him to criticize experts and the federal government.

 

Something the vaccines were neither designed to do nor approved for.

Few vaccines, never mind against this kind of virus, are 100 percent effective at preventing exposure from becoming an infection, the Republicans whine that these were running around ‘only’ 90-95 percent before they bred yet more strains with their ddeniallism and disease-spreading.

All this did was prevent herd immunity, thus making the vaccines less effective…self fulfilling prophecy. Ignorance breeds more ignorance.

 

Bad Faith Justifications For Trans Political Persecution MUST Be Met With Militant Advocacy

Cody from Denver shares his experiences with the devastating real-world impact of transphobia on individuals and their communities, and inspires a discussion of the absolute need to be a militant advocate for marginalized communities, particularly in the face of escalating political persecution and bad faith attempts to justify them.