TGIF 3/5/21

Can you believe it's Friday again, already? 

Let's dive right in with the bad week list, and get that out of the way.

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared his state open - fully, freely, masklessly, crowdedly open - this week, saying that there are vaccines (!!) that will protect his constituents. He did say that people are urged to "continue wearing the mask" but that it was time to have the government stop running their lives. 

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbot also said that "the Biden administration is recklessly releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants who have COVID" into Texas, and that the administration must "IMMEDIATELY end this callous act that exposes Texans and Americans to COVID." That second statement is kind of silly, I think. I mean, if we just urge them to wear a mask, everything's going to be just fine, right? And who says they have COVID anyway? And are they also rapists and murderers and drug dealers, or just virus carriers? 

• Federico Klein, a former Trump campaign worker and later, a "special assistant in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs" in the State Department, was arrested for participating in the January 6th insurrection. Klein was seen on police body cam video "jamming a riot shield into doors at the Capitol," and was "heard on video trying to encourage others to clash with police." He's been charged with assault on police officers, interfering with law enforcement, obstruction, and other charges. MAGA, or something.

• Andrew Cuomo, my Sonofa Gov, has had a horrible week. Pick your favorite search ending and search Andrew Cuomo news, and you'll have an idea. 

Voters had a decidedly mixed week, depending on what you read and, heaven forbid, on your own opinions, should you have them - please say you have opinions on this! Take a look:

• Former lynching target Mike Pence had an op-ed about election integrity, which attacks HR1, the House voting rights act. Mostly, he says, it's full of changes making it harder for all kinds of people - the living, breathing kind I'm fond of, and the other kind, too - to engage in political speech. Not only that, but

Every single proposed change in HR 1 serves one goal, and one goal only: to give leftists a permanent, unfair, and unconstitutional advantage in our political system.

• Compare that "one goal only" that Pence talked about to the goal expressed by the Arizona GOP in a virtual appearance before the Supreme Court earlier this week. When asked by Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett about "the interest of the Arizona RNC " in keeping certain disqualification rules on the books, attorney Michael Carvin was disarmingly honest. 

Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to the Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game. And every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretation (of the Voting Rights Act) hurts us. It's the difference between winning an election 50-49 and losing an election 51-50.

As the linked article notes, "credit the Arizona Republican Party for at least admitting that these bills aren't about ensuring the integrity of Arizona's elections and they certainly aren't about ensuring democracy." 

• There are over 200 bills under consideration in red states that will, at least in the eyes of the opposition, suppress voting rights. That includes changes to Georgia's election laws that will, among other things, make it a misdemeanor  to hand out food and drinks to voters standing in line to vote. That's taking the 'zero sum game' to a whole nother level, don't you think?

I'll have a separate post on HR 1, which was passed by the House without a single Republican vote. There's a ton of stuff in it, some good and some bad - and the chances for it to make it out of the Senate, scathed or unscathed, are less than stellar.

Now, for the good week list.

• In a really cool use of technology, a 300-year-old sealed letter was 'read' after it was virtually opened. The letter, from 1697, was found in a postmaster's trunk. Historians and techies are both excited by the prospects.

• A townhouse development that didn't happen in an Atlanta neighborhood  allowed for something better: a 7-acre free 'food forest" which contains 2500 edible and medicinal plants, in an area where the nearest grocery store is a half-hour bus ride away. The article notes are there are 70 free food forests in the country now.

• Let's end with a good news story about the pandemic, to help wipe out the foolishness from Texas. Dolly Parton, who donated $1M to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center to help fund an early trial of the Moderna vaccine, got her first dose of the vaccine this week. And, to encourage others to do the same when it's their turn, she updated one of her classic songs. 

That's it for today - TGIF, everyone.